You might remember my original post on this case, wherein police actually nabbed a suspect by illegally posing as a lawfirm and mailing him a solicitation to join in a class action lawsuit. When the unsuspecting target mailed back his envelope with his request to join in the suit, police retrieved DNA from the […]

I can tell just from the calls that I get that cybercrime is on the rise. Last week the FBI issued results of a corporate survey inquiring into the incidence and impact of cybercrime on American businesses. Some of the key findings:
Frequency of attacks.
Nearly nine out of 10 organizations experienced computer security incidents in a […]

I’ve written about some of the problems associated with GSR (Gunshot Residue) analysis, and how its theoretical foundation is being challenged by courts and commentators alike. It’s a hell of a story because GSR has been one of the fundamental, bread and butter disciplines in most state crime labs for some time.
It’s not surprising, […]

I’ve reported here regularly about the many post-conviction exonerations that have followed questionable convictions originally based on junk science. A lot of them have happened in Texas. So many so, that even the Houston City Council decided to hire a professional investigator to come in and take a look at their crime labs and assess […]

As I’ve reported here in the past, even the reliability of such forensic mainstays as fingerprint analysis has come under attack, mostly because of abuses that can occur whenever zealous crusaders get it in their head to zero in on a focused suspect at the expense of actual science. In the heat of the Madrid […]

Governor Mark Warner of Virginia has taken yet another action in the fight to pursue justice wherever it may take us. In the first move of its kind, the Governor has ordered post-mortem DNA testing to be done to determine if a man executed for murder in 1982 was in fact innocent.
Roger Keith Coleman may […]

Back from the holidays!
I continue to see examples of a growing national trend toward institutional skepticism of the forensic sciences, including ones we’ve all come to rely on. For example, troubling new questions are being raised about common practices surrounding fingerprint analysis and gunshot residue (GSR) analysis. And now a Federal District court in […]