It’s crazy. I’m looking at the book, Strengthening Forensic Sciences in the United States: A Path Forward – Congress (and just about everyone) has recognized for a long time that there’s a lot of junk science that leads to people being convicted of crimes. And they came out with this study that it was supposed to be the beginning of eliminating that, raising the standards and making sure that scientific standards would be followed. I thought when I initially got the book, I ordered it when Congress issued the findings, I thought, “Oh, great. Things are going to change.” Unfortunately, it has been the opposite. They have used that study as a sword.
And courts have used it to exclude defense witness experts that are questioning the science. I’ll get a little bit political here – the follow up which basically was going to be a reporting that it had been used as a sword, and that nothing had improved since this book was first published.Trump canceled that. So then it wasn’t issued. It was then reauthorized by Biden. I do expect that there’s going to be additional reporting on that. But you know what, it’s like the tool mark analysis on firearms. So many people were executed in the south because of that type of science. It’s pretty well known now. It’s junk science.
