Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that he was ending the Forensic Science Commission.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions will end a Justice Department partnership with independent scientists to raise forensic science standards and has suspended an expanded review of FBI testimony across several techniques that have come under question, saying a new strategy will be set by an in-house team of law enforcement advisers.
In a statement Monday, Sessions said he would not renew the National Commission on Forensic Science, a roughly 30-member advisory panel of scientists, judges, crime lab leaders, prosecutors and defense lawyers chartered by the Obama administration in 2013.
What a terrible thing to do, given the impact of junk science on wrongful convictions. Who doesn’t pine for the old days now, when the Department of Justice heeded the voices of scientists telling them that all their cool forensics were bullshit. Just total bullshit.
Sessions’ solution to scientists telling the government that its reliance on the circle jerk of forensic authorities available for rent is junk is to get rid of the scientists calling it junk. As opposed to the Holder and Lynch solution, which was to keep them in the budget and ignore or deny them. Sessions changes everything. He’s just awful.
Maybe if Sally Yates was still there, because she loves the marginalized and is totally trustworthy? But alas, she’s gone and we’re left with Sessions. All is lost.
Update: Just out, the National District Attorney Association agrees with Sessions!!!
The Commission lacked adequate representation from the state and local practitioner community, was dominated by the defense community, and failed to produce work products of significance for the forensic science community. Very few of the recommendations from the Commission were adopted and signed by the previous Attorney General during its existence. Those that were signed, such as universal accreditation, had already begun to develop organically within the forensic science community as accepted best practices, thus replicating ongoing work and wasting taxpayer dollars.
Now more than ever, an Office of Forensic Science (OFS) under the Department of Justice (DOJ), and in consultation with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), should be created. DOJ has a vested interest in maintaining the overall integrity of the criminal justice system while NIST has a role in the innovation of forensic science.
Trust the prosecution. Why would they lie?
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Is there a reason, other than the omnipresent one of funding, why the judicial branch shouldn’t have such a commission itself?
Indeed, there is. The judicial branch already knows the answer. It’s been authoritatively stated twice now. The missing piece of this silliness is that it’s up to judges to be the gatekeepers of forensic evidence, to hold Frye or Daubert hearings, as their jurisdiction requires, and to end the introduction of junk science in the courtroom. They don’t need another commission. They need some balls.
Sure. But they seem unlikely to grow them. “Perhaps” an up-to-date authoritative listicle of things that don’t even require such a hearing could both give them cover and contribute to judicial economy. Settled science to go with settled law.
My repurposed Miss Cleo hat now tells me if someone is guilty or innocent just by me looking at them. And while we will give you a FAIR trial, you sir, look guilty as hell!
Don’t be ridiculous. Those hats don’t work. Not like the Magic 8 ball, which is totally legit.
Well, except for the edition of the Magic 8-Ball with the “Not guilty” response, which is clearly inadmissible.