So much of our beliefs about “who done it” is conclusively wrapped up in the gold standard of identification, DNA. It’s not just all scienc-y, but good, solid repeatable science. Sure, there are tons of quibbles about the statistical likelihood of DNA being from a different person, contamination, magic-box testing and whatever other screw-ups humans bring to the lab, but when we’ve got it, we can take comfort in knowing that science says we got the right dude. Or better yet, they got the wrong dude, an innocent person, so cut him loose.

But there remains another nasty problem with DNA, that it doesn’t like to stay in one place.

Back in the 1980s, when DNA forensic analysis was still in its infancy, crime labs needed a speck of bodily fluid—usually blood, semen, or spit—to generate a genetic profile.

That changed in 1997, when Australian forensic scientist Roland van Oorschot stunned the criminal justice world with a nine-paragraph paper titled “DNA Fingerprints from Fingerprints.” It revealed that DNA could be detected not just from bodily fluids but from traces left by a touch. Investigators across the globe began scouring crime scenes for anything—a doorknob, a countertop, a knife handle—that a perpetrator may have tainted with incriminating “touch” DNA.

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The first trial ended in a hung jury, to the consternation and outrage of onlookers certain that there could be no outcome other than conviction. The difference was that the jury heard evidence. This time, the atmosphere may be different.

Bill Cosby’s retrial for drugging and sexually assaulting a former employee of his Philadelphia alma mater, Temple University, resumed. His first court case ended in a mistrial in June 2017, after the jury deliberated for more than 50 hours, but couldn’t agree on a verdict. But, things might be different this time. This second trial comes in the wake of the national #MeToo movement. And, it could change everything.

This is quite right, and very wrong. There was much wrong about the fact that the evidence itself was old, stale, in the sense that it reflected mores of an earlier time which have since been supplanted by presentism, the view that historic facts be considered in current context rather than the context of their time. And still Cosby’s jury hung.  Continue reading →

The attention of lawyers was drawn to one sentence, uttered during the protest to silence Josh Blackman at CUNY law school. Perhaps it was the fear that they had tainted all law students at the school, given that they might someday care to work in the legal profession, or perhaps it was the fact that no lawyer or academic supported their worthy sacrifice for the cause, the CUNY law chapter of the National Lawyers Guild issued a letter explaining themselves.

What We Mean When We Say “Fuck the Law”

Before the explanation, my understanding was when the law was, in their view, “unjust,” then the law was wrong. It was a simplistic, but comprehensible, position. If there was a law that said a police officer may shoot a person at will if, in the officer’s view, the person deserved to be shot, I would scream “fuck the law” too. This was merely their version of it, and they are entitled to believe that some laws are unjust whether Josh, or I, agree.

But as it turns out, that was not quite right. Continue reading →

Judge Mark W. Bennett takes a momentary break from his thoughtful posts here to take a deep dive into the myth of empiricism of the federal Sentencing Guidelines.

A federal district judge who has sentenced more than 4,000 offenders in multiple districts shares his experience and criticisms of current federal sentencing. The article begins with a history of federal sentencing, then focuses on problems related to mandatory minimum sentencing and application of 21 U.S.C. § 851 prior conviction enhancements in federal drug cases. The next section exposes the myth of empirical federal sentencing guidelines. The final section offers eight specific suggestions for federal sentencing reform.

Judge Bennett has made the point before, that we’re “addicted to sentencing,” and have come to believe the myth that there is some particular magic, some empirical reality, to the numbers of the guidelines that make them real, worthy, appropriate. Continue reading →

It started as a white supremacist rally, the sort that was used to explain how the nation was being overtaken by Naxos bent on taking over Trump Nation. About two dozen showed.

A neo-Nazi rally outside of Atlanta on Saturday drew only a few participants and did not last very long.

It proved, yet again, that they are utterly insignificant. Better used as a source of humor and ridicule, if only people still had a sense of humor. So naturally, the unduly passionate in desperate need for a target of their outrage and zeal appeared to protest the handful of pathetic worms. Continue reading →

It’s hard. It’s a burden. Your life is so full, so busy, and then Darth Cheeto goes and farts again. You’re literally shaking, but can’t muster the energy to lift your finger in protest. Does that make you a bad person? Where can you turn for a tummy rub that the utter pointlessness of your existence doesn’t make you a traitor to the cause?

Dear Roxane,

Yes, *Roxane Gay. Who better to turn to when you need serious life advice?  Continue reading →

When a tragic suicide, as if there’s any other kind, makes the rounds on social media, there’s an outpouring of sympathy, “thoughts and prayers” and a push to try to do something to help. Someone did just that for 17-year-old John Albers in Overland Park, Kansas.

When 17-year-old John Albers threatened suicide on FaceTime, his friends called police.

Albers, a junior varsity soccer player and wrestler, was home alone on Jan. 20, 2018, in Overland Park, a suburb of Kansas City, when police were called to the two-story house to check on him.

Was he a young man in distress? Maybe, though it’s a hard call to decide whether to act upon one’s concern, one’s fear. After all, what if, this time, he did it and you did nothing to stop it? Didn’t that make you complicit?  Continue reading →

A racist thing happened at Starbucks, but since nobody wants to say it aloud, I will. It wasn’t implicit bias, the benign sounding word that makes you feel as if you may have been racist, but didn’t mean it. As fashionable as the phrase may be, I don’t buy it. There is no such thing as implicit bias. There’s bias.

On May 29, Starbucks will close 8,000 locations to administer racial bias training for 175,000 of its employees. The move is a response to national outrage over the arrests of two black patrons while they were simply waiting for a meeting to begin at a Philadelphia coffee shop.

But racial bias training for employees is not enough to address the epidemic of discrimination by American companies.

This isn’t an epidemic of discrimination by American companies, but people being people, and they prejudge black guys as being a problem, just as cops prejudge them as being a threat. There’s nothing implicit about it. It’s as explicit as any other bias. Continue reading →

What does actress Jenna Fischer from The Office have to do with racism? The initial responce would likely be, “nothing, as far as I’m aware,” but that’s likely because you’re not sufficiently woke to connect the invisible dots. Fischer, herself, may have nothing whatsoever to do with racism, but she draws people’s attention because of her celebrity. And that’s close enough.

Several dozen students interrupted an event featuring actress Jenna Fischer at DePauw University Tuesday to protests recent racial incidents on and near campus.

Many of them held signs with things claiming they are “afraid for their lives” after recent events.

If you think cops these days are too afraid, it’s nothing compared with students, who function under the belief that a word will break their bones. Continue reading →

A free speech event was held at Harvard the other day. It was given the title “Dissent From Minorities Within Minorities,” which provides about as much clarity of purpose as the title of an SJ post. It was about free speech, but the phrase was nowhere to be found in the title.

Because we were warned not to have the phrase “free speech” in naming our event, lest the student union disapprove it.

The rationale? “Free speech” is now a dog whistle to the far-right.

— Melissa Chen (@MsMelChen) April 19, 2018

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