Latest Texas Forensic Flap Shows Major Gaps in Oversight of Scientific Evidence
Texas has seen more than its share of controversy surrounding forensic science in recent months.
Most recently, the Houston Chronicle reported that an audit of the Houston Crime Lab’s fingerprint division identified problems in more than half of the 548 cases selected for review. The problems discovered were serious enough to lead the authorities to require that more than 4000 violent crime cases from the past six years be reanalyzed… >>Continue reading
Cole Pardon a Stark Reminder of the Need to Fix Eyewitness Procedures
On March 1 Texas Governor Rick Perry officially pardoned Timothy Cole, who was wrongfully convicted over two decades ago. Tragically, the DNA tests that proved Cole’s innocence came too late: he died in prison in 1999 while serving time for a rape he did not commit. A faulty lineup led to inaccurate eyewitness evidence in Cole’s case, which serves as a reminder of the urgent need for eyewitness identification reforms that increase reliability and reduce the risk of mistakes. >>Continue reading
How Many More Innocent People Aren’t So Lucky?
Texas has made many headlines in recent years for the spate of exonerations of wrongfully convicted men. In most of these cases, fortuitous turns of events, along with the hard work of innocence advocates, led to solid proof that eyewitness evidence was mistaken. The same is true in this case, in which a Dallas judge released two men based on evidence developed by students at two of the state’s university-based innocence projects. >>Continue reading
