Innocence Project presses for improved evidence standards

This arti­cle hits on a very impor­tant point. The pop­u­lar TV show states “the evi­dence doesn’t lie.” That’s true, but evi­dence doesn’t speak either. It’s up to the foren­sic sci­en­tists at trial to give voice to the evi­dence. The prob­lem lies in the inter­pre­ta­tion the foren­sic sci­en­tists puts on the evi­dence. Be it based on delib­er­ate per­sonal bias, or inno­cent igno­rance of the big­ger pic­ture sur­round­ing the case at hand, often the trier of fact only hears one pos­si­ble expla­na­tion for the phys­i­cal evi­dence from the prosecution’s wit­ness. That expla­na­tion usu­ally con­demns the defen­dant, and an alter­nate expla­na­tion that could exon­er­ate the defen­dant isn’t enter­tained, or expressed by the police scientist.

Original arti­cle posted here.

By ROCCO LaDUCA
Observer-Dispatch
Posted Dec 01, 2008 @ 06:22 AM
Last update Dec 01, 2008 @ 06:48 AM

The Innocence Project is press­ing for national stan­dards in how foren­sic evi­dence is used at tri­als after recent DNA resulted in vacated charges against Marcy man con­victed in the 1985 rape and mur­der of 16-year-old Kimberly Simon.

When recent DNA tests secured Steven Barnes’ release from prison nearly 20 years after he was found guilty, Innocence Project co-director Barry Scheck high­lighted how ques­tion­able foren­sic evi­dence and shaky eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mony sealed Barnes’ fate in 1989.

The Innocence Project is a non­profit orga­ni­za­tion founded in 1992 to help exon­er­ate inno­cent prisoners.

Among the most dis­turb­ing evi­dence at Barnes’ trial, Scheck said, was:

> Testimony that soil on Barnes’ truck tires was sim­i­lar to soil at the crime scene

> Testimony that an imprint in mud on the out­side of Barnes’ truck matched the fab­ric pat­tern on a par­tic­u­lar brand of Zegna brand jeans Simon wore when she was killed Sept. 18, 1985.

Such tes­ti­mony, Scheck said, should not be con­sid­ered evi­dence with­out expert tes­ti­mony from both the pros­e­cu­tion and defense.

“Unvalidated and exag­ger­ated sci­ence con­victed Steven Barnes and cost him nearly two decades, but real sci­ence finally secured his free­dom,” said Scheck, cit­ing a recent round of DNA tests that proved Barnes did not rape Simon, a junior at Whitesboro Junior High School.

Oneida County District Attorney Scott McNamara said he under­stands the Innocence Project’s desire that wit­nesses should have a basis for any opin­ion they offer at trial.

“I have no prob­lem look­ing at foren­sic evi­dence and con­sid­er­ing if we should have stan­dards reg­u­lat­ing its use,” McNamara said. “Anything we can look at to make tri­als bet­ter and to make the pub­lic more con­fi­dent in ver­dicts … I would never oppose.”

While McNamara agreed that stan­dards should be applied to foren­sic tes­ti­mony, he cau­tioned against elim­i­nat­ing such evi­dence from tri­als altogether.

“Jurors today want to see every­thing, and if we don’t let them see cer­tain things, then they’ll think it didn’t exist,” McNamara said. “Instead, judges should tell jurors how much weight they should give evidence.”

‘Yes, I’ll say it’

Simon, of River Road, Marcy, was beaten and sex­u­ally assaulted before she was stran­gled to death in a wooded area along the Mohawk River in Whitestown, pros­e­cu­tors said. Investigators dis­cov­ered her par­tially clothed body the day after she dis­ap­peared while walk­ing to meet friends at the high school.

DNA tests, ini­ti­ated by the Innocence Project first in 1996 and then in 2007, con­cluded that an unknown male’s DNA was found inside Simon’s body, while a mix­ture of DNA from two unknown males was found on her cloth­ing, pros­e­cu­tors said.

McNamara last week agreed to vacate Barnes’ con­vic­tion and release him from cus­tody. Barnes’ charges of rape, sodomy and mur­der still remain pend­ing as police renew their investigation.

Scheck said that vacat­ing Barnes’ con­vic­tion righted what was one in “a long line of wrong­ful con­vic­tions based on improper or invalid foren­sic science.”

“Until there are clear national stan­dards about what kind of foren­sic sci­ence can be allowed in court, more peo­ple like Steven Barnes will be wrong­fully con­victed while the actual per­pe­tra­tors of vio­lent crimes remain at large,” he said.

Local defense attor­ney Frank Policelli, how­ever, blames the judge and jury for Barnes’ con­vic­tion, not wit­nesses’ testimony.

“Steve Barnes should never have been con­victed in the first place,” said Policelli, who recalled watch­ing the trial in 1989. “The real blame goes to the judge and the jury because they don’t do their job.

“Yes, I’ll say it,” he said, shout­ing. “They don’t do their job.”

The O-D reported at the time that cloth­ing sales­man Charles Kearns said no more than 36 pairs of Simon’s Zegna– brand jeans were sold in Oneida County in 1985.

A state police expert, Elaine Pagliaro, tes­ti­fied that she com­pared the fab­ric imprint in mud on the fender of Barnes’ truck to other brands of jeans, and none matched. She also said soil sam­ples from Barnes’ truck shared “some sim­i­lar char­ac­ter­is­tics” with soil taken from the crime scene roughly a year after Simon’s death.

While sev­eral wit­nesses tes­ti­fied they saw some­one match­ing Barnes’ descrip­tion with Simon that night, none were absolutely cer­tain of their obser­va­tion. Barnes has always said he was at the Riverside Lanes bowl­ing alley at the time of Simon’s death.

Policelli called such tes­ti­mony “circumstantial.”

“Anything that could be used toward guilt could also be used toward inno­cence,” he said. “The jury had an even-Steven case at the end of the day, so it was obvi­ous they didn’t give him the pre­sump­tion of inno­cence. They had a rea­son­able doubt because they didn’t know if it was coin­ci­dence or if he was guilty.”

A National Academy of Sciences com­mis­sion is prepar­ing to release a report after con­duct­ing a study of foren­sic sci­ence used in court­rooms nationwide.

The unprece­dented report will out­line their find­ings and rec­om­men­da­tions for how to ensure the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem relies on sound science.