Thursday, August 19, 2010

Life or death by the numbers…

230 cases.

190 tainted convictions.

Investigators in North Carolina have uncovered 230 cases where crime lab analysts filed reports that resulted in at least 190 tainted convictions.

8 crime lab analysts are alleged to have manipulated evidence to aid prosecutors for 16 years.

One man has been exonerated after having been incarcerated for 17 years.

His case led to the investigation into the crime lab…

…and 4 people with cases under review are on death row.

3 of the cases under investigation involved death sentences that were already carried out.

3 executions…4 people on death row…190 tainted convictions…1 man exonerated after 17 years…8 crime lab analysts cooking the evidence for 16 years.

Life or death by the numbers.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Working in the legal system, one area that has always caused me no small amount of horror is the lack of any real accountability or surety from the labs and expert witnesses. There's so little oversight and everyone assumes what they say is gospel - there's never any consideration of bias or fudging results (or even just supportingt he prosecution - after all, an expert who performs well for the prosecution is used more - and paid more) when it comes to the scientists and experts.

I would be very surprised if this wasn't just the tip of the iceberg

J9 said...

Sounds like what happened here in Northern CA, and was swept under the rug - I'm afraid that this is likely what really happened here, but not said.

catnmus said...

I am shocked and immensely saddened by this. This kind of thing is EXACTLY why I'm opposed to the death penalty.

David N. Brown said...

Is it too much of a cheap shot to note that this is the state that let Rashid Buttar keep his license?

Anonymous said...

Hey, if it keeps a few more spooks off the streets then it is all good!! Every boon of the streets is 20 or 30 crimes prevented!! You know the stats.

Shark-Fu said...

Gawd, I love how you assholes keep it real Anonymously...priceless.

And, um...if I thought for one second you truly gave a shit about the facts I'd toss a few at you.

But "spooks" kind of gave your racist ass away...

Get thee gone...your rock is lonely...

Anonymous said...

Yes. It is just the tip of the iceberg.

What you need to know is that dna tests are bullshit. Thus, technicians change the results with Photoshop-like softwares. How do they get the "good" results ? In fact, they know what the police thinks about the case. So, they can give the result the police want to hear. It's an American attorney who has discovered that.

If the police thinks guy A is guilty, they will say that the dna of guy A is the one of the culprit. They will move the dna strips on their software, and the dna of guy A will correspond to the one of the supposed culprit.

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