In a perverse way, criminal defense lawyers, like everyone else, want to believe that the police crime labs are competent. It’s not that we don’t want to be capable of disputing their findings, but that we realize that lab results are almost invariably persuasive to judges and jurors. That means that their scientific results put people away. At the very least, let’s hope that they are correct about it.
Science, unfortunately, has prove to be one of the most difficult disciplines to meld into law from nearly every perspective. It’s a killer because it’s so difficult to challenge, but it’s been corrupted at every turn in the courtroom. Judges rely upon it because they are clueless when it comes to science. There are no science courses in law school, and at best they pretend to know the words uttered by witnesses without having the slightest idea of what underpins their testimony or expertise. Forget Daubert. Forget Frye. It’s all gibberish to us.
So when we learn that the New York State Police Laboratory was staffed by incompetents and managed by liars and deceivers, none of whom care a whit about the fact that their “scientific” results are a fraud and scam designed for the sole purpose of achieving the outcome of conviction, it’s a killer. From the New York Times :
The New York State Police’s supervision of a major crime laboratory was so poor that it overlooked evidence of pervasively shoddy forensics work, allowing an analyst to go undetected for 15 years as he falsified test results and compromised nearly one-third of his cases, an investigation by the state’s inspector general has found.Even under the best of circumstances, we’ve come to learn that police crime labs have forsaken scientific inquiry in favor of reaching the desired conclusions needed to convict the people the police wanted to convict. The National Academy of Science has already determined that the goal of crimes labs isn’t to perform good science, but to nail the bad guy.
And when the State Police became aware of the analyst’s misconduct, an internal review by superiors in the Albany lab deliberately omitted information implicating other analysts and suggesting systemic problems with the way evidence was handled, the report said.
The report named a number of lab supervisors at the time — including the director, Gerald Zeosky, and assistant director Richard Nuzzo — and describes them as unfazed by the inquiry and dismissive of Mr. Veeder’s broader claims. Mr. Zeosky remains in charge of the lab. Mr. Nuzzo was promoted and given a new job in the internal affairs division, but police officials said he would have had no involvement in the investigation of the lab.
But as shown by the New York State Inspector General’s report, it’s not just that they don’t care about incompetence. They’re fine with it. Maybe even proud of it.
Here’s the rub. As any lawyer who is fortunate enough to have the wherewithal to conduct independent testing of substances or evidence knows, they will be met with sheer and utter disdain by the judge. The prosecutor will ignore requests, or stonewall them, or create roadblocks based on chain of custody or adulteration claims, so that we are ultimately constrained to go back to the court for an order to allow an independent scientific evaluation. And the judge will pooh-pooh it away. If we can even get the judge to consider the motion.
Once the prosecution gets its results from the crime lab, everything after that is all a big joke. The defense testing is viewed as a desperate grasping at straws, making life difficult for the cops and prosecution, and just another waste of time for the court. Sure, judges will acknowledge that state crime labs have their issues, but the “real” problem is always in some other case, before some other judge. Every judge believes that the lab results before him or her are routine. There’s no problem here, counselor. Move along.
What makes scientific results different, however, is their conclusive affect on a judge and jury. If the lab report says so, then so it is. As much as judges and lawyers aren’t scientists, neither are most jurors. We all bow to the god of science, even when we know that it’s not omnipotent.
So the state, at least the Inspector General, acknowledges that the State Police Lab, sucks. Do you think there will be a single judge across the State of New York who refuses to admit a lab report into evidence as a result? I don’t. Not one. Even if it was written in crayon. I would love to be dead wrong about this, but I don’t think I will be.
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Okay, ignorant amateur question coming: given the history of this crime lab, can’t a CDL raise the unreliability of the lab as a matter of fact (or, for that matter, of law; is it generally accepted science that claims from a provenly unreliable lab are reliable?) when its findings are used by the prosecution?
Much like challenges to the many other evidentiary “issues”, like eyewitness ID, false confessions, the answer is generally no. Unless the challenge is to the specific evidence before the court, it’s held irrelevant since it’s a generic problem rather than a problem specific to the evidence in the particular case.
Seems absurd, but that’s how evidence is sanitized from pervasive or systemic problems. And that’s why the judge’s role as gatekeeper of evidence, a critical yet neglected role, is so problematic.
Well, yeah, it does seem absurd. “We can prove, Your Honor, that one third of these pills are poisoned. Let’s not have my client swallow any of them.”
“Unless you can prove that this particular pill is poisonous, your client’s going to swallow. And no, you can’t have it tested in advance.”
Yucko.
I was waiting to get new tires put on my car last night, and the waiting area had a tv turned to a news station. The story about James Bain came on and a woman sitting near me made a comment about how DNA matching science isn’t so precise.
There’s hope that the reality will eventually filter through to the general public – maybe someone will make a TV show about a smart, wise-cracking scientist who debunks forensic lab results? He can wear sunglasses… and they can license a song from The Who…
To clarify – I am not suggesting that the DNA evidence that exonerated James Bain was faulty. It just mentioned DNA testing, and she was referring to the field of DNA testing in general.
I am overjoyed that an innocent man was finally recognized as innocent.
I’m sure no one would think you meant otherwise.
So, if the judges are more than happy to use evidence obtained from craptacular crime labs that are known to tilt towards the state and won’t take defense requests for independent analysis seriously – what’s the remedy?
Even having a scientist in the jury probably wouldn’t help. Even if the defense lawyer has found valid problems with the lab work, the scientist is probably going to trust the science-talking-guy more than the he’s going to trust the law-talking guy, so he’ll assume the “problems” are misdirection. Also, he’s probably going to assume the lab wouldn’t be allowed to operate unless its results were pretty good.
Jurors with science backgrounds will not necessarily trust the science-talking-guy more than others, especially if what he is saying doesn’t make sense. In some cases that I have watched online, the expert witnesses were terrible–and some of them were from the FBI (I really expected more from them, but maybe I’m naive). Scientists, like lawyers, are skeptics.
Geez, I hope not. It’s beginning to look like there are few groups more naive and susceptible to being duped than lawyer. I hope scientists are a whole lot more skeptical than we are.
As James Randi likes to point out, scientists aren’t really very skeptical: Nature is complex, and nature is strange, but nature is never intentionally deceptive. Unlike witnesses.
Yeah, he does. I’ve been meaning to ask him about centrifugal force — which may not be deliberate, but is deceptive — but our paths have never crossed.
Your best bets for jurors are atheists and magicians (hat/rabbit variety). Both have a cynical view of what others believe is the truth although not all atheists are equal – some are Christians with serious problems with their religion. Magicians can almost always see how the trick works.
Scientists aren’t that good outside of their own narrow field and lawyers and doctors are worse. Remember the doctor/lawyer/foreman on the Scott Peterson trial – he couldn’t organize his thoughts sufficiently to convince anyone else even after hours of deliberation and wound up being intimidated into quitting the jury.
So, where are the double-blind criminal testing labs?
Scott,
What you write about here is equally true of the Amanda Knox/Rafaele Sollecito case, upon which you have also written in a different context.
Many posts here share common themes, but address different fact patterns or legal aspects. I try to keep them separate to avoid confusion or overly simplistic analysis.