The Innocence Projects and Forensic Science
Barry Scheck (from Cordozo Law School)
Barry Scheck was the third speaker for WVU’s Festival of Ideas. He talked about his work with the Innocence Project, which has used DNA and other forensic evidence to exonerate 142 men who had been convicted of crimes they did not commit, and had lost all appeals, and most of whom had been in jail for more than 20 years.
Barry Scheck had much praise for WVU’s Forensic Identification Program, saying that it was one of the premier intuition of its type in the nation. He also said that there was much WVU could do to further the program, especially in becoming a leader in conducting independent audits in cases where forensic analysts have been shown to be incompetent or corrupt, such as happened in WV with Fred Zane, or in other states with other analysts. He did praise WV for the way it handled the Fred Zane case, in how we went back and started looking into all the cases where Zane did the forensic work. Other states and other areas have not done so when other analysts have been proven wrong repeatedly.
His talk was interesting, though he did use a lot of names and numbers in his presentation, which were necessary, but did get a tad bit overwhelming after awhile.
Some of the more important numbers presented were that of those cases presented to the Innocence Project, 75% go unresolved due to a destruction or loss of evidence. This is partially because of the amount of time that has elapsed since the crime was committed, and partially because there is little incentive for police departments and prosecutors to cooperate, since the project is in essence saying that they made mistakes in doing their jobs.
One of the more interesting figures he presented was that there is about a 50/50 split of innocence and guilt in the cases they investigate (40/60 across the country), which surprised me. For whatever reason, people who are truly guilty will go through this process, only to have their guilt proven inconclusively, which makes little sense, but then humans frequently make little sense. However, the more important thing is that half of those who continue to insist that they are innocent actually are so. As he said, there is no way to extrapolate this figure to the general prison population, or even to prisoners on death row, but it is a sobering figure to consider.
Some of the other numbers he mentioned that of the 142 post conviction exonerations, there were 35 homicides with 15 innocent men sitting on death row. More importantly, with a second look at the DNA evidence, in 44 cases, the guilty party was found. This is something that he stressed throughout his talk. That when a man or woman is convicted and sent to prison for a crime they didn’t commit, the guilty party, the person who actually committed the crime, is walking around free, able to commit further crimes.
He presented a brief history of DNA testing, saying that the FBI began DNA testing in 1989, typically for rape and or murder cases, and typically found that in 20 to 30% of those cases, the primary suspect is proven to be innocent of the crime. Again, these numbers can not be extrapolated to the general prison population, but it is something to consider. An important point he made about DNA testing, is that the results are not being collected by anyone, despite the fact that this would be an incredible opportunity to learn about the criminal justice system, primarily as a way to fix things.
Although there is no national data, he was able to share data on what led to false convictions in the cases researched by the innocence project: 65% were mistaken identity, 24% were false confessions, 17% were jailhouse snitches, 45% were due to prosecutor misconduct, 51% were due to police misconduct (both of these were due primarily to suppression of exculpatory evidence) and 30% of false convictions were due to a bad defense.
One of the things he repeated as imperative was the need of forensic departments and analysts to be independent from police and prosecutor departments, and also the development independent audits. He also suggested that the US needs to create an Innocence Commission. Just as the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) goes in after a transportation disaster and asks questions to keep such a tragedy from happening again, an Innocence Commission would look at cases where an innocent has been falsely convicted and ask “what went wrong?” and more importantly, “how can we make sure this doesn’t happen again?”
ADDENDUM the FIRST:
Do not e-mail me asking for Berry Sheck’s contact information. I do not have it. Go to the Innocence Project.
