CLPEX Chat Board

Posted: **Mon Aug 07, 2017 9:05 am**

http://thehill.com/regulation/administr ... -testimony

FYI: this is the same Ted Hunt I mentioned in this thread

The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced plans Monday to issue federal guidance on what forensic experts can and cannot say in court.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said the Uniform Language for Testimony and Reports will ensure testimony given in court by DOJ forensic examiners is “consistent with sound scientific principles and just outcomes.” Federal prosecutors will be directed to follow the same guidelines.

“Forensic evidence can be extremely important. But we also need to recognize that it can be abused and misused, as is true of every discipline,” Rosenstein said while speaking at the International Association for Identification’s conference in Atlanta, Ga., according to his prepared remarks.
“There have been instances in which people have operated in bad faith, masquerading as reliable experts when they lacked sufficient knowledge or failed to perform appropriate tests. In other instances, people have testified in good faith but used language that may have suggested more confidence than was warranted.”

In addition to the guidance, Rosenstein said DOJ is creating a new program to monitor its forensic examiners and ensure the testimony they provide follows the guidelines and that Attorney General Jeff Sessions has tapped Ted Hunt, a former member of the National Commission on Forensic Science, to serve as the department’s in-house adviser on forensics.

In April Sessions ended DOJ's partnership with the independent panel of judges, defense attorneys, researchers and law enforcement officials, which former President Obama formed in 2013 to address wide-ranging concerns about problematic forensic techniques, PBS Newshour reported at the time.
In a statement, a DOJ official said Hunt, a former state prosecutor, will oversee development and implementation of forensic science initiatives and work with external forensic science stakeholders, including scientists, crime lab leaders, law enforcement, and legal practitioners.

Rosenstein said the DOJ plans to examine the workload, backlog, personnel and equipment needs of public crime laboratories and the education and training needs of forensic science practitioners, collect and review existing data and assess the department’s internal needs.

Posted: **Mon Aug 07, 2017 12:08 pm**

Boyd Baumgartner wrote: ↑Mon Aug 07, 2017 9:05 am
The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced plans Monday to issue federal guidance on what forensic experts can and cannot say in court.

I always thought the requirement was that we pause slightly to give the other side a second or two to object, then answer the questions put to us honestly. Just answer the questions that are asked. Truthfully.

Now they are going to dictate the words we say and how we say them? What if the prosecutor or defense attorney asks a question for which the answer is not on the list of approved wordings?

What else? Will there be a dress code, too? Men: three piece blue pinstripe suit, black wingtips, white shirt, blue striped tie. Women, only closed toe shoes, heels not to exceed 2", no jewelry or makeup, white sleeved blouse, grey skirt to the knees (must get on knees and have skirt touch the floor, or you won't be allowed to testify)?

And don't forget to take a certified copy of your birth certificate to prove gender compliance with the dress code.

Seriously, are frauds and liars a statistically significant problem that is NOT being dealt with under current rules of evidence and codes of criminal procedure???

Posted: **Mon Aug 07, 2017 12:27 pm**

Fair critiques for sure, but I would say the more updated M.O. would be to pause slightly and wait for every ambitious person who hasn't worked in the industry for years to jump on the subject matter expert bandwagon and fight about things that haven't been relevant for over a decade while referring to the last committee they were on that did the same thing until the grant money ran out and accomplished nothing.

The worse case scenario in my mind is that they come up with something that only ties the hands of the federal agencies or agencies that receive federal grants to operate.

Posted: **Wed Aug 16, 2017 9:28 am**

Department of Justice Proposed Uniform Language documents for fiber, footwear and tire treads, general chemistry, glass, latent prints, serology, and toxicology can be found here:
https://www.justice.gov/archives/dag/de ... ds-general

The latent Print document specifically is here:
https://www.justice.gov/archives/olp/fi ... 1/download

The language is not really groundbreaking, except it explicitly bars examiners from expressing certainty in numerical terms. Not sure how that will affect those who do decide to adopt statistical models. It also applies only to DOJ personnel.

Posted: **Thu Aug 17, 2017 8:15 am**

LPE123 wrote: ↑Mon Aug 07, 2017 12:08 pmSeriously, are frauds and liars a statistically significant problem that is NOT being dealt with under current rules of evidence and codes of criminal procedure???

From the defense point of view, yes. Just look at the Dookhan and Farak disasters in Mass for an example of how much damage this can do.

What I see more commonly is what I suspect are good-faith mistakes -- examiners (in many fields) guessing at probability when asked how often something occurs or doesn't occur or still using language like no other firearm in the world. The examiner isn't lying, but what he or she is saying may not be backed up by any research or records. Neither attorney catches it because the answer sounds plausible, and they aren't subject matte experts. So there's no objection. If there's no objection, I can't raise the issue on appeal, so it gets kicked over to habeas, where the habeas attorney has to decide whether an ordinary, reasonable attorney would have caught the error and objected, and whether the mistake is so significant that it calls the verdict into question. Short answer -- the legal system is woefully unprepared to deal with errors in expert testimony.

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