Reforming Forensics

Originally posted here.

Reforming Forensics

Radley Balko | May 14, 2008, 11:09pm

Fairleigh Dickinson Professor Roger Koppl argues for a sig­nif­i­cant over­haul of foren­sics in the U.S. in the cur­rent issue of Forbes. Forbes edi­tor William Baldwin was alarmed enough at Koppl’s exam­ples of foren­sics malfea­sance to write a sharply-worded edi­to­r­ial of his own.

Koppl wrote a study on foren­sics reform for the Reason Foundation, and wrote a sum­mary of the study for the November issue of rea­son. Koppl and I have also co-written an arti­cle touch­ing on sim­i­lar themes that will appear in an upcom­ing issue of Engage, a jour­nal pub­lished by the Federalist Society.

Koppl’s work deserves more atten­tion. Controlled stud­ies have shown that the bias foren­sic experts absorb even by such seem­ingly innocu­ous inter­ac­tions as speak­ing with police and pros­e­cu­tors before run­ning tests can have a dis­turbingly sig­nif­i­cant impact on their results. This bias exists even in well-intentioned, pro­fes­sional sci­en­tists. That’s bias that’s inde­pen­dent of the more egre­gious exam­ples such as Dr. Hayne in Mississippi, or cases where pros­e­cu­tors put eth­i­cally dubi­ous pres­sure on foren­sics experts to tai­lor their find­ings to help the prosecution’s case.

Koppl’s pro­pos­als employ com­pe­ti­tion, proper incen­tives, and strate­gic manip­u­la­tion of infor­ma­tion (that is, sep­a­rat­ing infor­ma­tion about the crime from the analy­sis of the evi­dence) to pro­duce more accu­rate results—results less likely to be influ­enced by unin­tended bias, and that also would also go a long way toward uncov­er­ing the more egre­gious offend­ers. Koppl esti­mates that the cost of imple­ment­ing his ideas would be less than the cost of just a cou­ple wrong­ful convictions.

The most urgent of Koppl’s reforms is the idea of giv­ing foren­sic vouch­ers to indi­gent defen­dants. We need a Gideon v. Wainwright for foren­sics. Until defen­dants are given access to their own experts, far too many crim­i­nal cases will fea­ture tes­ti­mony only from state foren­sic sci­en­tists, and all the prob­lems that come with that. When only one guy with let­ters after his name is tes­ti­fy­ing, jurors are going to tend to put quite a bit of faith in what he says. We’ve seen this even when what the expert is say­ing is absurd, and scoffed at by just about every­one else in the sci­en­tific com­mu­nity. When poor defen­dants aren’t given access to their own experts, then, it calls into ques­tion whether we really have an adver­sar­ial crim­i­nal jus­tice system.

Unfortunately, too many peo­ple think all of the country’s foren­sic labs work like the ones they see on CSI. I’m not sure it’s enough to merely ask that judges take a more aggres­sive approach to weed­ing out the frauds. First, judges can be duped, too. Second, even com­pe­tent, pro­fes­sional foren­sic sci­en­tists can make mis­takes. The changes need to be more rad­i­cal. Another of Koppl’s sug­gested reforms essen­tially applies the idea of peer review to the crim­i­nal foren­sics process. That would go a long way toward cut­ting down on mis­takes, inten­tional and otherwise.