JUNK SCIENCE AND THE AMERICAN CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

A chilling account of forensic science—beloved of prosecutors, judges, and TV writers but often wildly inaccurate.

Fabricant, the Innocence Project's Director of Strategic Litigation, points out that before pharmaceutical companies can market a drug, they must prove that it works. Forensic science, on the other hand, is entirely unregulated. When allowing “experts” to testify, a judge is not required to rule on their expertise, only on legal precedent. Fabricant recounts cases of convictions and the junk science involved. Perhaps the most outrageous is bite mark analysis, but readers—especially those fond of TV detectives and their infallible crime labs—will be flabbergasted by his list of forensic techniques long used by labs, including the FBI’s, and proclaimed by highly paid “expert witnesses” that, when investigated by competent researchers, turn out to be unreliable or worthless. These include arson investigation; hair and fiber microscopy; lie detector tests; voice spectrometry; and analyses of handwriting, bloodstains, shoe and tire prints, and bullet lead. Even fingerprints do not come out unscathed in Fabricant’s rigorous investigation. In 2009, after years of hearings and testimony by genuine experts, the National Academy of Sciences issued a massive 300-page report documenting the worthlessness of junk science that outraged the forensic establishment. Prosecutors and district attorneys downplay the findings because almost all are elected officials, and getting convictions keeps them in office. The report is not law, so they and judges often ignore it, and juries “tend to believe what prosecutors tell them.” The author’s case reports and denunciation of junk science make fascinating reading, but this is not a story with a happy ending. As Fabricant shows, Americans seem obsessed with punishing evildoers regardless of the fallout, and their elected officials loudly proclaim agreement. The rate of incarceration in the U.S. is by far the highest in the world, disproportionately affecting Black Americans, who are “incarcerated at five times the rate of white people.”

A brilliant rebuttal of junk science in the courtroom.