Two Rome University professors said there was no certainty that traces of DNA, found on a knife allegedly used in the murder, belonged to Kercher. The DNA traces on the knife, which were discovered by police in Sollecito's kitchen, appeared "unreliable in as much as [they were] not supported by scientifically validated analytic procedures", the experts' report said. And, for a time, its Sapphire sex crimes unit was expected to be no exception. He did not perform a thorough psychiatric evaluation. The first point in every trial, is to establish the facts of the case; for he who fails in his proof, fails in everything. Apparently, old habits die hard. In addition to the untold numbers of people who have been convicted on faulty evidence, a fair number of known violent drug offenders have also been released, leading to an increase in the crime rate and time spent rearresting offenders released because of fabricated evidence. Hearn said Pinholster, 58, is the only known example of evidence destruction in a case of a living death row inmate convicted in L.A. County. She was also accused of taking cocaine from positive samples and adding it to negative samples to help secure convictions. Of course, the evidence is available for experts with trained eyes and the proper equipment, but the science isnt without fault. Dubbed "The Phantom of Heilbronn," the anonymous woman's genetic material was detected at the scene of more than forty crimes over a two-decade period. For nine years, Annie Dookhan worked as a crime lab chemist in Massachusetts, performing drug tests for criminal cases. How many criminals are walking free due to untested rape kit backlogs? 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Jamie founded Listverse due to an insatiable desire to share fascinating, obscure, and bizarre facts. Not only is there a huge volume of data collected for current investigations, but there is also a huge volume of digital forensics that must be stored indefinitely, in case of later appeals. Fearing the flat had been robbed, Romanelli began rummaging around, unknowingly disturbing the crime scene. The abbreviation CSI has become a household term to capture the magic of Hollywoods high-tech vision of forensic work. One of the most renowned cases involving problems with the chain of evidence was the O.J. The government obtained warrants to search Mr. Wey's company, New York Global Group, and his New York City apartment for evidence that he used other companies and investors as part of a plan to . Rather, she had been faking test results at a rate of thousands per year. DNA wasn't always widely accepted as valid evidence in court cases the way it is today. For example, the police didnt wear caps or change gloves as they collected items, allowing cross-contamination of the objects in the room. Blood samples found inside of Simpsons Bronco, which was discovered outside Simpsons home the next day, were equally matched to Simpson and both victims. 4 Wrongful Conviction Cases in California. No one knows how many innocent men and women have been put to death because of faulty forensics or inaccurate experts. Mishandled Evidence Should Have Prompted a Mistrial. Over her career, Dookhan completed as many as 60,000 analyses, making her partly responsible for an estimated 11,000 criminal convictions. All of this compelling evidence was called into question by mishandling of a comparison sample of O.J.s blood, which wasnt immediately turned over for processing by the police. Atty. One piece of key evidence that was overlooked was Michael's navy blue shirt. Items were photographed without being labeled and logged, making it difficult, if not impossible, to link the photos to any specific area of the scene. They lose lives. Williams, Adams, Rainge, and Gray all received harsh sentences. It wasnt until many years later that investigators would attribute his wounds to Willingham being in the fire before the flashover (i.e., when the entire room suddenly ignites in flames). The collection and meticulous analysis of evidence arent easy processes and the techniques are still far from perfect. The cases were reported to include homicide investigations and officer-involved shootings. The overwhelming evidence of lab misconduct has already resulted in the dismissal of 200 drug cases and reduced sentences in 60 more. Grigson cited Willinghams tattoo of a skull and serpent and some of his music posters as evidence that he was a sociopath. Nov. 22, 2019. After the police refused, Romanellis friend broke through the door to uncover Kerchers bloody and partially naked body. The mistakes of a single unidentified lab technician forced the New York medical examiners office to review 843 rape cases for DNA evidence which could have been improperly processed. This is a broad concept that can range from using excessive force, performing illegal searches, selective law . Sollecito tried to force the door open and failed, prompting him to call the police. Changing that initial perception was going to be tough. Few cases in history have been more focused on forensic evidence than the O.J. The errors came to light when lawyers from the Innocence Project and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers got together with members from the Department of Justice and the FBI to ensure more thorough testing and testimony. This case is documented as the first to establish the modern law of negligence. Lawyers, experts say forensic evidence was too experimental for courtroom. In 2006, he faked DNA evidence that was used to solve the murder of Jessica OGrady. Jurors, infuriated by evidence of racism within the LAPD, questioned whether the missing blood was a result of planted evidence on the part of the detectives. Simpson murder case. A criminalist collects, documents, preserves, and examines the physical evidence at a crime scene, which could be something as huge as a bus, or as tiny as a pollen grain; criminologists, on the other hand, study why crimes occur, how they can be prevented, and the effects they have on a society. (Evans, 2003) Copyright 2022 Crime Museum, LLC - All Rights Reserved | Privacy Policy |. Three days later, Camm was arrested for the deaths of his family. On Monday, Rudy Guede, who has also been convicted and jailed for the 2007 murder, repeated his claim that the pair had carried out the killing. In reality, not all blood spatter can be seen with the naked eye. For Philadelphia, one of those chapters is undoubtedly devoted to its 39th district police officers. Erdmann also testified about the forensic examination of a 14-year-olds brain, but when the body was exhumed, police discovered that the skull had never been cut open. She had been shot in the head . Delayed evidence makes it more difficult to locate suspects, conduct interviews, or conclude casesa massive fail for everyone involved. She told them that just before sunrise, at 5:50 a.m., her ex, John, confronted her on the street with a gun. On March 27, 2015, both Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were exonerated for the murder of Meredith Kercher. 2 Henry and Leon McCollum. The reputation of Brooklyns officers has been doubly besmirched, as not only had they likely been arresting innocent people for years as a matter of convenience, but they covered up that behavior by casting themselves as heroic wrongdoers when, in reality, they were simply doing wrong. Nor had the police "respected international standards for the collection and bagging of exhibits", they maintained. One of the few witnesses brave enough to testify against Mrs. Hall was Jane Gibson, a swine herder who became known as the Pig Lady in the press. At the time, tests were not readily available to differentiate between natural and contaminant EDTA or the differences in the level of EDTA in blood. Ironically, the work of a man determined to secure criminal convictions, regardless of innocence, may allow an apparently guilty man to go free. Somehow, these flashing signs of inability didnt prevent him from landing jobs as a police chemist for the state of West Virginia and chief of physical evidence in Bexar County, Texas. The person who drew the blood could only guess he had taken 8 mL; only 6 mL could be accounted for by the LAPD. Among the mounds of evidence, there was a glass wine decanter, a clock radio and hair samples, all kept in evidence bags after being collected from the March 5, 1985 murder scene. The next day brought another disturbing discovery: A county road worker found 16-year-old Patricia Kalitzke's body in an area north of Great Falls, the paper reports. Research has shown that " analysis of forensic evidence was associated with [increased] case referrals to prosecutors, [and] charges filed ." Evidence from a medical forensic exam can be key in the prosecution of a sexual assault case. During the first trial in 1978, state serologist Michael Podlecki testified that at least one of the rapists had type A secretor blood, a trait shared with approximately 25 percent of the population. In at least 26 cases, the technician missed biological evidence that could have been useful for a rape trial. Marco Raymond Butterfield, 22, was arrested following the robbery and shooting of a 27-year-old man outside a barber shop in northwest Oklahoma City. He could not prove his whereabouts during this time. The daylight murder of the disabled 18-year-old on Aug. 5, 2000, galvanized a drug-racked neighborhood otherwise numb to the grim pornography of casual, curbside killings . Its worth noting that as of June 2017, the federal government remains committed to keeping current processes in place. An additional 500 convictions are slated to be challenged with thousands more in the works. [10] No one can say for certain how many innocent prisoners have been executed, died in prison, or served time for crimes that they did not commit. West Virginia alone paid $6.5 million in compensation to innocent people convicted by Zains deception, and the state of Texas shelled out $850,000. On March 17, 2002, the jury found him guilty and he was sentenced to 195 years in prison. Second only to Sherlock Holmes and Batman, Scotland Yard is what people associate with excellence in detective work. In 2008, Brooklyn cops were caught siphoning off drugs confiscated in arrests which, for many observers, would constitute a textbook case of crooked policing. Not Guilty: Famous Successful Defense Cases By Diana Aizman Esq. 4.2 Suzanne Johnson. His wife had been out Christmas shopping and despite her insistence that Willingham had never been abusive and had no motive for the crimes, he was arrested. He has been a guest speaker on numerous national radio and television stations and is a five time published author. Shocking reports have been filed against crime labs, police departments, and sheriffs offices concerning improper, underfunded, and outrageously inadequate forensic storage facilities. On October 24, 2015, after spending 13 years in prison for the deaths of his wife and two children, David Camm was acquitted and released. Even those at the upper echelons of criminal justice have been found guilty of fraud in forensics. To buttress law enforcement accusations, Kofoed planted traces of blood which tied the suspects to the murder scene, ultimately securing a guilty verdict in court. We. According to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics, there were 1,442 death row executions in the US between 1977 and 2016. In the results-driven world of laboratory work, her virtually inhuman ability to amass test results placed Dookhan in a position of distinction. Not only did several key witnesses against Mrs. Hall disappear forever, but forensic evidence did as well. 9. The murder victim, Raveesh Kumra, was a 66-year-old investor who lived in Monte Sereno, a Silicon Valley enclave 10 miles and many socioeconomic rungs away. According to Officer Steve Anderson, who himself was caught partaking in the scheme, this translated into undercover narcotics agents handing over some of the drugs purchased during covert operations to officers who were struggling to meet arrest quotas. One of the main issues in the Casey Anthony case was that the prosecution went forward with evidence that the forensic experts told them was questionable. Helmsman of the drug lab for nearly two decades, and himself suspected of professional improprieties, Callery had overseen a spate of irresponsible hiring decisions. Defense attorneys became suspicious because Erdmann seemed to be able to supply prosecutors with whatever testimony they needed, without the proper testing to back up his reports. The defense team stated that EDTA was found in the samples of blood that were collected at the crime scene. In another instance, a former employee had managed to hold onto an evidence locker pass key six years after leaving the job. A series of arson attacks against forensic laboratories in Brussels has alerted the world to a huge security fail going on in Belgium. Beyond poor evidence collection techniques, sloppy maneuvering at the scene caused more bloody shoe prints to be left behind by LAPD than by the perpetrator. The National Institute of Criminology, considered the most important forensic testing center in Belgium, was also hit by arsonists in 2016. O.C. IDAHO, PETITIONER v. LAURA LEE WRIGHT. Understanding Forensic Science William A. But they may explain why Zain spent the duration of his forensics career habitually faking lab results and lying to courtrooms in order to secure criminal convictions. "Even after the state Supreme Court threw out Ralph Armstrong's conviction based on evidence of his innocence, the prosecutor continued to withhold yet more evidence of his innocence." The Innocence Project got involved in Armstrong's case in 1993 and has worked on the case ever since with Wisconsin attorneys Jerome Buting and Keith Belzer. According to a 2010 investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), a detective constable and two trainees revised the statement of a rape survivor to suggest that she had retracted her claims. He spent 26 years in jail before a group called The . Microscopic comparisons were very convincing to juries, especially when linked with testimony from forensic experts claiming that the hair matched a suspect. Additionally, some jurors have since admitted that the verdict was retribution for the acquittal of white police officers in the beating of Rodney King in 1992. But the evidence of his wrongdoing, along with the actions of other Brooklyn officers, was enough to throw out 400 different drug cases and secure the release of over two dozen people wrongfully arrested on drug charges. It is reported that the DNA evidence showed that the chance that some of the blood found near the bodies came from anyone but Simpson was 1 in 170 million. On November 2, 2007, American college student Amanda Knox returned to her flat in Perugia, Italy. Two people were convicted and imprisoned for that brutal affair: Michael Kinge and his mother, Shirley. Dr. Ralph Erdmann had a reputation as an excellent witness to call to the standif you were a prosecutor. district attorney drops or reduces charges in 67 cases over mishandled evidence Dist. Even before the shoddy evidence testing began, samples were often contaminated via a leaky roof. Nearly everyone in the town of New Brunswick, New Jersey, seemed to know that Reverend Edward Wheeler Hall and choir singer Eleanor Reinhardt Mills were in love. He surrendered his medical license in August 1992, but the huge testimony fail he created is still causing ripples in the system. It began during the trial of a suspected Oxycontin dealer, when the court discovered that confiscated drugs had vanished and been replaced with heart medication. In the wake of the legal, ethical, and financial chaos wrought by Annie Dookhan, her punishment may strike many as light. In addition to spending more than two years in prison for his misdeeds, Kofoed was slapped with a lawsuit for playing God with Sampsons and Liverss lives. While a police power struggle ensued, reporters flocked to the site of the murder to take pictures, and civilians soon followed. The new figures, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, reveal the total number of people whose trials have ended or the charges against them dropped due to a failure to disclose evidence . Manuel Vasquez, a state deputy fire marshall, took the stand and testified to seeing puddle configurations (i.e., areas of rapid burning) suggesting the use of accelerants in the fire and indicating arson. Not only were there many claims that the evidence was mishandled in the police lab but there were also claims that evidence was planted at the crime scene. But, in at least one other instance, he failed to submit marijuana and guns seized during a crime, and there is some cause to believe that he may have been involved in the displacement of $130,000 confiscated during an FBI search. In an article called " 8 Famous Faces Who Were Falsely Accused Of A Crime" has a case of a man named Dewey Bozella, who is a boxer, was accused of murdering a elderly woman in her apartment at the age of 18. The prosecution expert used "Cacheback" software that had a bug parsing Mork database files. He was sentenced to death and currently sits in prison on death row. People are being sentenced to jail for life or are being put on death row. It found that only single-source DNA had both of the requisite types of scientific validity: foundational (i.e., accurate in a controlled lab environment) and applied (i.e., applicable in a real world context). California. Fingerprint evidence that tied her to gasoline cans used in the arson had been planted by New York State Troopers. In 2006, the lab rehired a forensic analyst who previously resigned under suspicion of falsifying data. Over the course of this three-year period, Coleman-Farrow not only neglected to interview suspects, but also forged victim statements, allowed video evidence to remain untouched, and failed to bring forensic evidence to the proper channels. 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famous cases where evidence was mishandled