Current Events > Jeff Sessions cuts DoJ's Forensic Science Commission

(+) Yeah! (+)

Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently announced a renewal will not be granted to the National Commission on Forensic Science. Possible alternatives mentioned include setting up a new forensics division within the Department of Justice, reports the Washington Post.

The soon to be defunct multi-disciplinary advisory committee, comprised of judges, lawyers, research scientists, and crime lab heads, was established in 2013 by the U.S. Department of Justice and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Its creation followed a report that called many forensic methods and practices into question, notes Science. That document was released in 2009 and by the National Academy of Sciences. It revealed that a number of forensic techniques were neither backed by science nor as reliable as they'd been made to seem.

Among the recently cut commission's goals were to use science to assess the validity of forensic methods in question and set standards for the forensic science field.

As its April 23 term deadline approached, some members reached out to Sessions via a letter, making a case for why a renewal would be in the nation's best interest.

The authors note, "...the Commission has facilitated an important discussion regarding issues at the intersection of science and law that are unique to forensics and require the full diversity of the Commission's members to solve. Many of the issues the Commission has taken on would have been examined in only a narrow or cursory manner, or in some cases would not have been debated at all, had we not been able to participate in this work."

https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/04/18/jeff-sessions-cut-department-of-justice-forensic-science-commission/22045410/
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Imagine crying about what you voted for
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Woah, a citation from aol dot com O-O
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toptopmax posted...

Imagine crying about what you voted for

I dd not vote for Trump. I never even endorsed him. I don't get why people keep assuming this.
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Sayoria posted...

toptopmax posted...

Imagine crying about what you voted for

I dd not vote for Trump. I never even endorsed him. I don't get why people keep assuming this.

Probably because you played up your "hehe I'm transgendered but very conservative, you cuck!" gimmick for the election.
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COVxy posted...

Sayoria posted...

toptopmax posted...

Imagine crying about what you voted for

I dd not vote for Trump. I never even endorsed him. I don't get why people keep assuming this.

Probably because you played up your "hehe I'm transgendered but very conservative, you cuck!" gimmick for the election.

He's right, you're awful
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covxy pls stop being mean to people.
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toptopmax posted...

Imagine crying about what you voted for

Imagine making things up.
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foreveraIone posted...

covxy pls continue reporting the facts

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They push a lot of bullshit, like the claim that fingerprint identification is "shaky forensics". They also downplay partial DNA profile matches, ignoring the context of these profiles.
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Sayoria posted...

toptopmax posted...

Imagine crying about what you voted for

I dd not vote for Trump. I never even endorsed him. I don't get why people keep assuming this.

You're still lying and crying over this bullshit?
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Ammonitida posted...

They push a lot of bulls***, like the claim that fingerprint identification is "shaky forensics". They also downplay partial DNA profile matches, ignoring the context of these profiles.

How are their claims bullshit?
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AltonBrownFan posted...

You're still lying and crying over this bulls***?

Whenever us LGBT are put into concentration camps, I think we should all thank Sayoria first.
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toptopmax posted...

AltonBrownFan posted...

You're still lying and crying over this bulls***?

Whenever us LGBT are put into concentration camps, I think we should all thank Sayoria first.

It's just ridiculous how she apparently expects us all to have the memory of goldfish.
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toptopmax posted...

AltonBrownFan posted...

You're still lying and crying over this bulls***?

Whenever us LGBT are put into concentration camps, I think we should all thank Sayoria first.

Not gonna happen unless ISIS takes over and decides they would rather get some work and torture out LGBT people before beheading them/burning them alive.

Not even Pence would put gays in concentration camps and there is no way he would be able to actually do it if he wanted too.

And Trump Himself isn't even anti gay.
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You guys are ridiculous. I've stated it time and time again.

I've voted for Gary Johnson (Yeah, yeah, throw away but I did NOT vote for Trump).... Trump sucked. Clinton sucked. Stein sucked. I honest-to-God voted Johnson on the grounds that seeing him in the news often would make me laugh.

If my "I voted" sticker had the name of who I voted for on it, I'd show you that. The only Republicans I would have voted for would have been Kasich, Romney if he ran, and possibly Bush..... possibly, but probably not.
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Sayoria posted...

I honest-to-God voted Johnson on the grounds that seeing him in the news often would make me laugh.

that's a fucking horrible reason to vote someone for the President of the United States of America. you seriously should be ashamed of yourself for shitting on Democracy like that.
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Forensic science seems to have existed prior to 2013. It'll continue to exist after 2017.

pikachupwnage posted...

And Trump Himself isn't even anti gay.

Bullshit.
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Questionmarktarius posted...

Forensic science seems to have existed prior to 2013. It'll continue to exist after 2017.

Sayoria posted...

Its creation followed a report that called many forensic methods and practices into question, notes Science. That document was released in 2009 and by the National Academy of Sciences. It revealed that a number of forensic techniques were neither backed by science nor as reliable as they'd been made to seem.

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Giant_Aspirin posted...

Sayoria posted...

I honest-to-God voted Johnson on the grounds that seeing him in the news often would make me laugh.

that's a fucking horrible reason to vote someone for the President of the United States of America. you seriously should be ashamed of yourself for shitting on Democracy like that.

What was I supposed to do when all of the candidates sucked?
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Sayoria posted...

Giant_Aspirin posted...

Sayoria posted...

I honest-to-God voted Johnson on the grounds that seeing him in the news often would make me laugh.

that's a fucking horrible reason to vote someone for the President of the United States of America. you seriously should be ashamed of yourself for shitting on Democracy like that.

What was I supposed to do when all of the candidates sucked?

vote for the candidate whose policy you most align with?
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Giant_Aspirin posted...

Sayoria posted...

Giant_Aspirin posted...

Sayoria posted...

I honest-to-God voted Johnson on the grounds that seeing him in the news often would make me laugh.

that's a fucking horrible reason to vote someone for the President of the United States of America. you seriously should be ashamed of yourself for shitting on Democracy like that.

What was I supposed to do when all of the candidates sucked?

vote for the candidate whose policy you most align with?

I didn't align with any of their policies well. I'm more conservative, so typically yes, I'd vote Republican, but I didn't.
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This is a fuck you to those who have been screwed over by faulty forensics practices
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Giant_Aspirin posted...

Sayoria posted...

Giant_Aspirin posted...

Sayoria posted...

I honest-to-God voted Johnson on the grounds that seeing him in the news often would make me laugh.

that's a fucking horrible reason to vote someone for the President of the United States of America. you seriously should be ashamed of yourself for shitting on Democracy like that.

What was I supposed to do when all of the candidates sucked?

vote for the candidate whose policy you most align with?

But they all sucked...
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Antifar posted...

This is a fuck you to those who have been screwed over by faulty forensics practices

May just be a reorganization anyway

Possible alternatives mentioned include setting up a new forensics division within the Department of Justice, reports the Washington Post.

This whole Sayoria situation reminds me of the guy whose wife voted for trump and then he got deported

based trump

XmasPikachu posted...

This whole Sayoria situation reminds me of the guy whose wife voted for trump and then he got deported

Except I didn't vote for Trump.
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You disgust me Say with your anti-LGBT attitude.
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Sayoria posted...

I honest-to-God voted Johnson on the grounds that seeing him in the news often would make me laugh.

wow
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Seems like a good thing to be cut. It's not like forensics still can't be questioned. This is a typical waste of tax payer money. If certain forensics turn out not to be accurate then don't let them be admissible in court. The data will speak for itself whether it's accurate or not. Don't need an advisory panel to tell us that.
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Gojak_v3 posted...

If certain forensics turn out not to be accurate then don't let them be admissible in court. The data will speak for itself whether it's accurate or not.

The problem with that is you often don't find out about accuracy until after the trial and sentencing

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/fbi-overstated-forensic-hair-matches-in-nearly-all-criminal-trials-for-decades/2015/04/18/39c8d8c6-e515-11e4-b510-962fcfabc310_story.html?utm_term=.6695870d7101

The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000.

Of 28 examiners with the FBI Laboratory’s microscopic hair comparison unit, 26 overstated forensic matches in ways that favored prosecutors in more than 95 percent of the 268 trials reviewed so far, according to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and the Innocence Project, which are assisting the government with the country’s largest post-conviction review of questioned forensic evidence.

The cases include those of 32 defendants sentenced to death. Of those, 14 have been executed or died in prison, the groups said under an agreement with the government to release results after the review of the first 200 convictions.

The FBI errors alone do not mean there was not other evidence of a convict’s guilt. Defendants and federal and state prosecutors in 46 states and the District are being notified to determine whether there are grounds for appeals. Four defendants were previously exonerated.

The admissions mark a watershed in one of the country’s largest forensic scandals, highlighting the failure of the nation’s courts for decades to keep bogus scientific information from juries, legal analysts said.

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FFS.... And jurors put a ton of stock in forensics.
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CrimsonAngeI posted...

You disgust me Say with your anti-LGBT attitude.

Crimmy. ;_____;

*As I sit here in a Gay and Lesbian youth center and plan to attend an LGBT dinner gathering tonight* :P
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Gojak_v3 posted...

Seems like a good thing to be cut. It's not like forensics still can't be questioned. This is a typical waste of tax payer money. If certain forensics turn out not to be accurate then don't let them be admissible in court. The data will speak for itself whether it's accurate or not. Don't need an advisory panel to tell us that.

So what do you propose we use instead of forensics?

One way to interpret this move is a statement of intent to imprison innocent people.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/11/opinion/sessions-is-wrong-to-take-science-out-of-forensic-science.html

The 2009 report concluded that the only way to ensure effective oversight of forensic evidence was to protect its independence from law enforcement. But its recommendation of a national, independent oversight agency was met with intense resistance from federal and state law enforcement. Instead, the national commission was formed as a compromise solution that brought in the National Institute on Standards and Technology as co-chairs and stewards of scientific values. Some forensic scientists — at times grudging partners in the process of reform — even came to embrace greater professionalization, and one major professional organization recently declined to support the Justice Department’s proposal to move forensics in-house.

The loss of an even partially independent national commission is no trivial matter.

In its brief two years of existence, it drafted 43 standards that actually changed forensic science, on the ground, for the better. The commission’s guidance covered issues like certification requirements for forensic examiners (who, unlike your local manicurist or food server, typically must not pass any basic competency exams still), discovery rules (providing criminal defendants with at least some of what parties receive in civil cases) and reporting standards (discouraging the use of the popular phrase “reasonable degree of scientific certainty” as it has “no scientific meaning and may mislead fact-finders”). The National Commission on Forensic Science was even poised to issue a raft of best practices for the wild west of digital forensics, which has exploded without supervision over the years. It seemed that a promising new era of accuracy, transparency and accountability in forensic science had dawned.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2017/04/11/jeff-sessions-wants-to-keep-forensics-in-the-dark-ages/?utm_term=.6b9d6d823a98

When Jeff Sessions was a senator on the Senate Judiciary Committee, he was part of hearings to address the National Academy of Sciences report on the use of forensics in America’s courtrooms. The NAS report had been commissioned by Congress after DNA testing had revealed not only that hundreds of people had been wrongly convicted of serious crimes like murder and rape, but also that about half those people had been convicted due in part to or because of forensic testimony that could only have been wrong.

Sessions wasn’t buying it. “I don’t think we should suggest that those proven scientific principles that we’ve been using for decades are somehow uncertain and leaving prosecutors having to fend off challenges on the most basic issues in a trial,” he said, rebutting the scientists who had come to precisely that conclusion in their report. The “scientific” and “proven” parts were precisely what the report found lacking in too many forensic disciplines. Sessions either didn’t read it — he has a record of criticizing reports without reading them — or simply dismissed it.

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Antifar posted...

One way to interpret this move is a statement of intent to imprison innocent people.

Yeah, no it's not.
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Gojak_v3 posted...

Yeah, no it's not.

That is the exact effect it will have. The elimination of even this semi-independent commission is a return to a status quo that put forensics evidence and science solely in the hands of law enforcement who had every incentive to skew it to their own purposes: namely, the conviction of people who might otherwise not be.

Any so-called conservative should recognize that this amounts to giving unaccountable power once again to state entities at the expense of innocent people's imprisonment. This gives government the power to railroad citizens as they see fit.
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XmasPikachu posted...

Gojak_v3 posted...

Seems like a good thing to be cut. It's not like forensics still can't be questioned. This is a typical waste of tax payer money. If certain forensics turn out not to be accurate then don't let them be admissible in court. The data will speak for itself whether it's accurate or not. Don't need an advisory panel to tell us that.

So what do you propose we use instead of forensics?

XmasPikachu posted...

XmasPikachu posted...

Gojak_v3 posted...

Seems like a good thing to be cut. It's not like forensics still can't be questioned. This is a typical waste of tax payer money. If certain forensics turn out not to be accurate then don't let them be admissible in court. The data will speak for itself whether it's accurate or not. Don't need an advisory panel to tell us that.

So what do you propose we use instead of forensics?

Maybe ask a question about something I actually commented on and I'll answer it. I said if it turns out certain forensics aren't accurate they shouldn't be used. The question becomes why would you want to use flawed forensics in court?
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Sayoria posted...

*As I sit here in a Gay and Lesbian youth center and plan to attend an LGBT dinner gathering tonight* :P

Yet support conservatives, Republicans (even if Trump was one step too far).

Gojak_v3 posted...

Antifar posted...

One way to interpret this move is a statement of intent to imprison innocent people.

Yeah, no it's not.

Antifar posted...

Sessions wasn’t buying it. “I don’t think we should suggest that those proven scientific principles that we’ve been using for decades are somehow uncertain and leaving prosecutors having to fend off challenges on the most basic issues in a trial,” he said, rebutting the scientists who had come to precisely that conclusion in their report. The “scientific” and “proven” parts were precisely what the report found lacking in too many forensic disciplines. Sessions either didn’t read it — he has a record of criticizing reports without reading them — or simply dismissed it.

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Gojak_v3 posted...

said if it turns out certain forensics aren't accurate they shouldn't be used.

This is the group that goes towards determining those those forensics aren't accurate as presently used. This is the group that says they shouldn't be used.

Gojak_v3 posted...

The question becomes why would you want to use flawed forensics in court?

To increase convictions, as has been the case with flawed forensics for decades.
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This topic is kind of a perfect example of several people not reading the actual linked article and just assuming they know what it's saying.
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Antifar posted...

Gojak_v3 posted...

said if it turns out certain forensics aren't accurate they shouldn't be used.

This is the group that goes towards determining those those forensics aren't accurate as presently used. This is the group that says they shouldn't be used.

Gojak_v3 posted...

The question becomes why would you want to use flawed forensics in court?

To increase convictions, as has been the case with flawed forensics for decades.

I was responding to the other guy who seemed to think my post implied we should do away with forensics. I'm not sure how he got that idea. Secondly, I simply don't agree with yer cynical view of law enforcement or the justice system. If there are people that want to lock up people for the hell of it then they are monsters. I find it hard to believe that kind of thing is systemic though.
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Gojak_v3 posted...

I simply don't agree with yer cynical view of law enforcement or the justice system.

This is the conclusion experts from this group reached: forensic evidence was widely misused and overstated over the course of decades and across the country to serve prosecutors' needs.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/11/opinion/sessions-is-wrong-to-take-science-out-of-forensic-science.html

A blue-ribbon panel of the National Academy of Sciences raised the same concern in a 2009 report that found nearly every familiar staple of forensic science scientifically unsound.

Prompted in part by that report, the Justice Department initiated a review of thousands of cases involving microscopic matching of hair samples. In 2015, the F.B.I. announced its shocking initial findings: In 96 percent of cases, analysts gave erroneous testimony. At a meeting last spring of the commission that Mr. Sessions just disbanded, the department said it would expand the view to include a wider array of forensic disciplines.

You, as somebody who is opposed to overreaches of government, should recognize the threat that poses and the lives harmed by it. But for you to pretend it isn't happening is nothing more than burying your head in the sand.
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Sir Will posted...

Sayoria posted...

*As I sit here in a Gay and Lesbian youth center and plan to attend an LGBT dinner gathering tonight* :P

Yet support conservatives, Republicans (even if Trump was one step too far).

Fiscally conservative. Socially liberal. Two different things. Spending money on the shit we do with a liberal government is foolish. We need to make money, not "make everyone happy by expanding the national debt to 3x the cost" .... Obama doubled our debt alone. Heart is in the right place, but the man sucked with money.
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