Criminal Defense Seminar

Another speaker at the Seminar was Dr. Fredrick Whitehurst, recently blogged about here, who spoke about errors being made by forensic laboratories. He listed a great number of State and federal facilities which had been caught in error (error usually meaning faked or false test results and/or false testimony by experts). I took down the ones he put up news articles for; there were others which he claimed but I do not include because the papers on the viewscreen looked like they were some sort of internet mail-list. The list included:

FBI

Houston

Honolulu

Chicago

Ohio

Oklahoma

Montana

Kansas

Maryland

Indianapolis

Tennessee

Pennsylvania

Washington State

DEA (Dallas)

Secret Service (see Martha)

He also discussed the FBI's long-standing claim that it could identify bullets by their metallic composition and how that was eventually debunked.



Lest ye think the Virginia lab came through unscathed I must point out there was a discussion of the Earl Washington case (although not first brought up by the speaker). I don't know all the facts in the Washington case but apparently DNA tests should have excluded him because he had the wrong blood type. Later, when the forensic lab retested, it was certified that two people's DNA were in the sample (neither Washington) but even this was called into doubt when a California lab tested and only found one.