[HN Gopher] Another scientific body has debunked bitemark analysis
___________________________________________________________________
Another scientific body has debunked bitemark analysis
Author : colinprince
Score : 237 points
Date : 2022-10-20 18:26 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (radleybalko.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (radleybalko.substack.com)
| boxed wrote:
| Found a spelling/grammar/idiom error ("little to know" -> "little
| to no"). Tried to commend, but I have to pay for that. Tried to
| click to that persons profile. Have to create an account. This
| seems like a bad idea...
| cobaltoxide wrote:
| > Tried to commend
|
| ironic
| ALittleLight wrote:
| This seems like a really straightforward thing to test. If I get
| a thousand people together, have them each bite 10 human skin
| analogues, identify the participants and each of their bite
| records with a GUID, can bite mark analysts map bite records to
| biters and with what accuracy?
|
| If they can't, why did the courts think they could? Why are we
| doing the tests for whether or not a method works _after_ making
| use of that method?
|
| After skimming one of the papers linked in the NIST analysis - it
| seems bite mark analysis is far below this standard. The analysts
| being tested had substantial disagreements over whether something
| was a bite mark and whether it was caused by adult or child
| teeth. Matching bite marks to a reference mark seems well out of
| reach.
| chmod775 wrote:
| > This seems like a really straightforward thing to test. If I
| get a thousand people together, have them each bite 10 human
| skin analogues, identify the participants and each of their
| bite records with a GUID, can bite mark analysts map bite
| records to biters and with what accuracy?
|
| Not quite the same thing. Because that assumes you already know
| it was one of those people.
|
| More appropriately you should ask the labs "does this bite mark
| fit any of these 100 people", where none of those people
| actually caused the bite mark.
|
| Will the lab recognize it was none of them? If they just
| falsely identify one out of the hundred, that extrapolates to
| millions of people.
| umvi wrote:
| > The field has a horrendous track record: More than two dozen
| people arrested or convicted with bitemark evidence have since
| been exonerated.
|
| It's probably true that bitemark analysis is ineffective at
| identifying biters, but I would appreciate it if the full data
| picture were painted. 2 dozen people out of how many total?
|
| It's like saying "X vaccine has a horrendous track record: more
| than 50 people have died after receiving it". 50 out of how many?
| If 200, that is indeed horrendous (25% death rate), but if 50
| million, then it's not horrendous (0.0001% death rate). Let me be
| the judge of what is horrendous or not by giving me full context.
| PebblesRox wrote:
| From the article, seems like only a few hundred cases:
|
| "Bitemark analysis has been used only in a small percentage of
| criminal convictions...At worst, it would require the re-
| opening and reinvestigation of a few hundred cases.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| Good. I am not saying forensic ballistics is just as pseudo-
| science, but it also needs a hard look to re-validate the
| deductions and now-accepted methodologies.
| gubernation wrote:
| I had a feeling this research would come out. Just goes to show
| what a disgrace Ted Bundy's trial was. We sanctioned the murder
| of an innocent man and even televised his persecution.
| the_doctah wrote:
| What? Are you saying Ted Bundy was innocent? The guy who
| escaped police custody and proceeded to the nearest sorority
| house to bludgeon three girls to death in their sleep?
| nova22033 wrote:
| Proves the main thesis of his excellent book
|
| The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist: A True Story of
| Injustice in the American South
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Cadaver-King-Country-Dentist-Injustic...
| helloSirMan wrote:
| So no way to be sure if I bought Jon Voights car?
| skc wrote:
| Heh, I used to watch true crime documentaries pretty religiously
| at one point.
|
| But the more I read about just how flimsy the science behind some
| of these forensic techniques was the less comfortable I felt
| until I pretty much stopped watching altogether.
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| I'd be curious to see a list of all of the classic cinema police
| cliche's that have no basis in evidence. So far there's the lie
| detector, blood spatter analysis, bite marks.. what else?
| rincewind wrote:
| hand-held laser speed measuring
| hinkley wrote:
| Tracking calls that are over 60 seconds.
|
| Everything is electronic now. There are audit trails. It may
| take a while to figure out where you were, but they will. So
| the only advantage of getting off the phone early is to not be
| there when the cops show up. And the fact of where you were and
| what phone you used might help them identify you anyway.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Ballistic fingerprinting is almost completely nonsense as used
| in media. Has some real life use, but limited.
|
| There are multiple types.
|
| 1. Capturing a spent casing and comparing to a reference of
| that firearm. The idea being the primer indentation, and
| chamber wall tolerances/imperfections should let you match
| fired case to firearm. This was believed in so much that every
| firearm sold in the past 20 or so years in NY/MD/?? has
| required a spent case to be shipped with the gun and a case
| kept at some crime labs, or the owner is required to provide
| when registering the gun - the bullshit is that it doesn't work
| at all - and not one single solved crime has ever been
| attributed to this system. Giant waste of money / feel good
| legislation. There is some correlation to be made... Factory
| Glocks have fairly unique square firing pins and it's easy to
| say a case was or wasn't fired from an _unmodified_ Glock.
| Likewise, MP5 platform guns typically have fluted chambers and
| one can easily see the case marks on a fired case, but neither
| of these things will help with storing a sample.
|
| 2. Muzzle/barrel printing. While this is a LITTLE more
| scientific, mostly shit. For the most part, you need a really
| large flaw in a barrel to leave a matchable print on the
| barrel. You can look a fired bullet and easily tell the
| rifling. Polygonal (Glocks again), cut, button, hammer
| forged... but the whole microscope printing of miniature and
| unique imperfections is a lot more art than science. Again,
| easy to prove this bullet didn't / couldn't come from this gun
| - but hard to prove it came from this specific gun.
|
| 3. Micro stamping entirely bullshit. This is where a California
| despite overwhelming evidence it doesn't work is still trying
| to get firing pins to leave a unique impression on the primer.
| The people that push for this stuff have no idea how guns work,
| never have.
| [deleted]
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| Lived in MD. They did away with the spent shell casing law.
| Turns out they were literally throwing them unorganized into
| barrels. No way to organize or search through them if there
| was a need. Just a massive waste of taxpayer money.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| "The Lie Behind the Lie Detector" had a big impact on me [1].
| As a kid I made lie detectors (a 9 volt battery, 1M-Ohm
| resistor, BC108 transistor and buzzer) and got sent home from
| school for "Interrogating" the other kids. The teacher
| evidently thought it really worked - even though as an 8 year
| old I knew it was just an electronic trick.
|
| 40 years later the Iraqi government was purchasing thousands of
| ADE 651 "bomb detectors" [2] - basically a stick - that no
| doubt caused some poor dudes to get blown to bits by IEDs.
|
| All technology (indistinguishable from magic) has a cult-like
| aura around it, in that there's the reality of what it does,
| and a separate set of human _beliefs_ about what it does.
| Cybersecurity is full of wishful and magical thinking in this
| regard. I sometimes feel like a kind of James Randi, trying to
| debunk the _certainty_ people want and project on to
| technologies.
|
| [1] https://antipolygraph.org/lie-behind-the-lie-detector.pdf
|
| [2] https://www.cnet.com/culture/divining-rod-reborn-as-
| explosiv...
| ghastmaster wrote:
| Thank you. I had not heard of this product before. I want
| one.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651
|
| > According to Iraqi police officer Jasim Hussein, "The vast
| majority of the people we stop, it's because of their
| perfume". A fellow officer, Hasan Ouda, commented that "Most
| people now understand it's what gets them searched, so they
| don't use as much."
| efficax wrote:
| fiber analysis is also fake as hell (like saying: these threads
| came from your carpet, or your shirt).
|
| ballistic forensics only works if the gun is barely fired after
| the time that the bullets in question are fired, becuase each
| time you fire a gun it wears down the barrel again, in new
| ways.
|
| Fingerprint analysis is not based on solid science, nobody
| knows how common it is for someone to have very similar
| fingerprints to another person, and nobody knows what the right
| standard for "points of similarity" is. Fingerprint analysis
| has been used to convict people of crimes they could not have
| committed because they were not in the same state or even
| country, in ways that are provable:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Mayfield
| bornfreddy wrote:
| Thank you for the link! Though I would say it highlights a
| different problem (investigators' bias) than stated. The
| Spanish police have rejected findings apparently.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| Forensics evidence is almost always circumstantial.
|
| For your example - If everyone wears wool sweaters except one
| person wearing poly microfibre, what is the inference?
|
| The first rule that is taught in forensics is that every
| interaction leaves a trace of some sort. The poly microfibre
| showed up at the scene. How did it get there is now a
| different type of forensics and where lawyers step in. The
| prosecutor will insist because the poly microfibre owner was
| there, while the defense lawyer will insist, there was a
| party the night before and everyone was rubbing against each
| other, the poly microfibre wearer and the wool sweater
| wearers. It can be anyone.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| > nobody knows how common it is for someone to have very
| similar fingerprints to another person
|
| Your last example is definitely a good counterexample to
| this, but I feel in most of cases, the suspects are very few
| so fingerprints only need to be able to distinguish one of
| the others, than say, identify a random dude from billions.
| So it's still useable.
|
| It's like while SHA-1, or even CRC32, is totally incapable
| for security, it's still perfectly fine to be used to detect
| if a known file is corrupted (through natural cause, not
| deliberately altered) or not.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| That's like saying if a witness says "he had brown hair,
| that's all I can say", and only one of "the suspects" had
| brown hair, that's reason to convict him.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| You are misrepresenting the odds of a group of people
| having an outlier hair color vs a group of people having
| one which matches sufficiently well to a piece of
| evidence which excludes the others.
|
| 'I remember a brown car' vs "I remember a brown 1976 Ford
| coupe with worn tires and a broken side window'.
| derefr wrote:
| > fiber analysis is also fake as hell (like saying: these
| threads came from your carpet, or your shirt).
|
| I'm not a forensic technician, but I've watched probably
| every episode of every true-crime forensic documentary TV
| show / YouTube channel / podcast / etc that exists; which
| probably has some weak but non-negligible correlation with
| having a gestalt impression of what people do and don't use
| forensic techniques for in practice. (At least in the
| "solved" cases, since the point of these shows is "how they
| solved it.")
|
| In every use of "fiber analysis" I ever saw covered, where
| the "fiber analysis" was actually used to prove something,
| the thing they're always noticing is "trilobal fibers" --
| presumably because, at least for some period in recent
| history, those type of fibers only ever got used by specific
| manufacturers for specific use-cases (vehicle manufacturers,
| for car floor matting, IIRC); and weren't part of the
| composition of anything sold to individuals at retail
| (except, perhaps, replacement car floor mats.) So "trilobal
| fibers on the body" could be taken to imply "this person was
| at some point in a car footwell/trunk."
|
| I don't ever recall any case that made a "fiber analysis"
| claim _other than_ that particular one. ( _Maybe_ once
| someone claimed something about what proprietary dyes were
| used on the fibers via GCMS assay -- but that 's not really
| "fiber analysis" per se.)
| giantg2 wrote:
| I don't have a link handy, but there was a huge FBI scandle
| where their experts were essentially calling things a match
| to a specific person, etc.
|
| But yes, the science is fine if interpreted correctly. The
| correct phrasing would be exclude or not exclude a suspect.
| Or for your example, it could be consistent with someone
| having been in a vehicle. The problem is when the experts
| say they _must_ have been in a vehicle, or especially a
| specific individual vehicle.
| Ekaros wrote:
| That seems something that should be criminal. And
| realistically always asked how many vehicles with this
| type of material is there around?
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| The judge should have thrown it out.
|
| Second thing they teach in forensics is that unless I
| witness the actual event, it is really hard to tie it to
| a specific person. I can present dozens and dozens of
| circumstantial evidence which has sufficient weight for a
| reasonable person to make that inference, but I cannot
| attest to that.
| paradisechris wrote:
| Fire pattern analysis often falsely claimed, from visual
| analysis alone, that fires were started with an accelerant.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Body language experts... Thankfully I don't think it is used as
| evidence, but still...
| LtWorf wrote:
| Think again.
| duskwuff wrote:
| Fire investigation was historically plagued by myths like
| "concrete spalling means the floor was soaked in gasoline
| before being set on fire". Turns out, concrete just does that
| whenever it gets very hot, with or without an accelerant.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Ironically, Law and Order SVU has an entire episode focused
| on that issue.
| aidos wrote:
| This was posted years ago on HN and it has always stuck with
| me.
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/09/07/trial-by-fire
| eftychis wrote:
| Oh
|
| That was a thing? Was/is there any actual expert involved
| ever in these claims?
|
| I am more worried about all the claims that one field expert
| can look at someone and tell if they are drunk, using
| specific substances or had a head trauma. Doctors can't do
| that but I guess... there are "experts."
| knodi123 wrote:
| Hell yes. A probably-innocent man in Texas executed for
| murdering his family, based primarily on the evidence of
| fire analysis which was later shown to be almost entirely
| bullshit.
|
| https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-
| issues/innocence/execute...
| ghastmaster wrote:
| > Ultimately, the authorities concluded that Willingham
| was a man without a conscience whose serial crimes had
| climaxed, almost inexorably, in murder.
|
| This is what has condemned innocents throughout history
| to death, torture, and prison. His history is what got
| him convicted, in my opinion. So many people forget to
| shield themselves from future indictment by acting
| "normal" in the present.
| eftychis wrote:
| This is so sad in so many ways. I had to research the
| topic and this was the first case popping up. Thank you,
| and... I am still really sad...
| duskwuff wrote:
| > That was a thing? Was/is there any actual expert involved
| ever in these claims?
|
| Unfortunately, a lot of fire source experts were trained
| based on a mishmash of folk theories about arson, many of
| which have been subsequently disproven by scientific
| testing. There have been some improvements over the last
| decade or two, but the field is still heavily contaminated
| by junk science.
| av3csr wrote:
| This report is relevant. If I recall correctly it pointed that
| some of these analyses are not really reproducible.
|
| https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/228091.pdf
| eftychis wrote:
| You'd be surprised.
|
| a) Drug recognition experts -- commented that on a sibling
| comment too -- identifying drug usage vs e.g. trauma by sight.
|
| b) blood alcohol levels imply alcohol consumption -- you could
| actually be walking around with elevated alcohol levels not
| realizing it due to liver issues+yeast biome/diabetes
| (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK513346/)
|
| c) uniqueness of fingerprints -- studies pointing always this
| is a statistical argument not a unique identifier --
| https://www.aaas.org/resources/latent-fingerprint-examinatio...
|
| d) partial DNA match implying perfect match -- partial matches
| have been used to convict people
|
| e) probably every depiction of mental illness -- there are
| exceptions but can't say Hollywood does its best there
|
| f) lawyer interaction -- no your lawyer can't just barge in:
| you have to ask specifically and probably persist on needing a
| lawyer to consider any further interaction. (And even how you
| word that is a minefield in the U.S.)
|
| g) talking to the police -- somehow invoking the fifth is
| something only bad guys do -- it is the other way around. And
| that is causing issues already.
|
| h) DNA, fingerprints imply you were there. No material can be
| moved around. And police knows that. (And of course substances
| too, e.g. you were in a tax/uber after someone exposed to X,
| you are now exposed to X.)
|
| i) pretty much all of statistics -- this case one would have
| hoped would be the eye opener
| (https://forensicstats.org/blog/2018/02/16/misuse-
| statistics-...)
|
| P.S. j) ... science honestly? I am always dumbfounded with how
| much lack of basic scientific knowledge plagues courts and in
| extend society. Courts can not survive with uncertainty: they
| have to make decisions and stick to them. Science is different.
| tinalumfoil wrote:
| A lot of these problems come from deference to experts who
| wear the hat of science. For instance,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Adams a man was convicted
| because an expert said the DNA gave 1 in 200 million chance
| of incorrect match (or something similar), which is
| incorrect. I don't remember enough details to look it up, but
| I recall a US case where the prosecution repeatedly used an
| expert with a history of lying on stand and of course people
| wrongly spent time in jail for that.
|
| I think a bigger issue here, at least in the US, is
| prosecutions seems to have a really easy time finding
| experts, often on the same payroll as the prosecution, who
| say the things needed to get a conviction and jurors are
| encouraged to blindly trust that.
| vkou wrote:
| That's the whole point of the adversarial system. The
| prosecution finds experts that state one _opinion_ , the
| defense finds experts that say a contrary _opinion_ , the
| juries pick out whose _opinions_ they want to believe. That
| 's the whole point of expert witnesses - they are the only
| witnesses in the courtroom who are there for their
| _opinions_.
|
| The problem is that one side of this equation has a cottage
| industry of well-funded experts to pick from, but there
| isn't a cottage industry of well-funded 'bullshit
| debunkers' to work for the defense.
| the_af wrote:
| > _g) talking to the police -- somehow invoking the fifth is
| something only bad guys do -- it is the other way around. And
| that is causing issues already._
|
| The "don't talk to the police" video has been shared enough
| times on HN that I know I will never do so, at least in the
| US. The video claims you are likely to incriminate yourself
| and be charged with something _even if you didn 't commit the
| crime the police is investigating_!
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Wait - blood spatter must follow the rules of physics, so there
| is _some kind_ of analysis that would be valid, surely?
|
| Reading online I see its still respected lots of places and
| still taught in forensics. Don't know where that came from.
| agf wrote:
| I think if you read this article you'll see (at least part
| of) the answer. Not only does a given action have to cause a
| definable result, the medium upon which the result is
| deposited has to provide enough detail to read the result
| back off it, and the people reading the result have to be
| able to be consistent and accurate in their analysis of that
| result.
|
| With bite marks, the skin has to hold the bite mark (which it
| doesn't) and experts have to be able to map it back to real
| human teeth (which they can't). With blood spatter, there are
| analogous problems.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Which sounds miles from 'have no basis in evidence'. So
| that might have been a little hyperbolic.
| snapcaster wrote:
| I'm not sure why you're trying to play devil's advocate
| on that. The things they are claiming about the analysis
| techniques literally have no basis in evidence. Saying
| "blood spatters follow laws of physics" has nothing to do
| with what the experts are doing now
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| ...and I countered with "the physics surely have
| validity", which the plentiful science done to date has
| corroborated.
|
| Not playing devil's advocate; just doing some simple
| searches and calling out hyperbole.
|
| These days folks have replaced science with advocacy. You
| know, that thing lawyers do to convince a jury. To the
| point folks think that you can arrive at a conclusion
| with advocacy. Instead of looking at the data.
|
| I'd ramble on about how the world is going to pot,
| because folks thing a sarcastic remark or clever-sounding
| turn of phrase is 'just as good' as facts. But oh well.
| kortilla wrote:
| You confused the GP statement about "blood spatter
| analysis" with a statement about "blood spatter".
|
| If someone critiques astrology you don't reply that
| "planets follow physics".
| snapcaster wrote:
| "Blood spatter analysis" is not a physics based
| discipline. The other comment responding to you with the
| analogy about astrology is good explanation of what is
| wrong with your reasoning
| ouid wrote:
| not so, if i square a number, and get 4, There is no
| basis in evidence for the claim that the number I squared
| was 2. it could equally likely have been -2. Science is
| capable of making no stronger a claim than that.
| DSMan195276 wrote:
| I mean the Wikipedia article on it basically says as much:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodstain_pattern_analysis
|
| > The validity of bloodstain pattern analysis has been
| questioned since the 1990s, and more recent studies cast
| significant doubt on its accuracy. A comprehensive 2009
| National Academy of Sciences report concluded that "the
| uncertainties associated with bloodstain pattern analysis are
| enormous" and that purported bloodstain pattern experts'
| opinions are "more subjective than scientific." The report
| highlighted several incidents of blood spatter analysts
| overstating their qualifications and questioned the
| reliability of their methods. In 2021, the largest-to-date
| study on the accuracy of BPA was published, with results
| "show[ing] that [BPA conclusions] were often erroneous and
| often contradicted other analysts."
|
| That's not the same as saying it could _never_ be done
| properly, but the analysis being done right now is not that,
| even though it's presented in courts as expert opinion with
| high certainty.
| d1sxeyes wrote:
| I think the key challenge to blood spatter analysis is not
| that there's _no way_ it could be valid, it 's that so far,
| it's based primarily on unsupported assumptions and
| statements. Those assumptions may well be correct, but the
| hard physics behind it has not been done yet, it's been just
| folks saying 'well I'm very clever and this is what I think'.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| An internet search shows there is research done,
| particularly the 'hard physics' behind it..
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Is there? Simulating forward sounds doable. Some fluid
| sprayed from here, with this mass and so on it lands as
| so. Backwards from a spatter pattern on an object sounds
| a lot harder, not least because there will be multiple
| possible answers and heaps of unknown variables.
| [deleted]
| etempleton wrote:
| Blood splatter is still studied. What I think most forensic
| experts would tell you is they are really trying to compile
| as much evidence as possible that allows the largest
| reconstruction of what may have happened. It is not like the
| movies, or it shouldn't be, where you find a single finger
| print and that determines who the killer is.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| Everything follows the rule of physics. The existence of some
| way to do something is a very low bar to clear. There may be
| some way to determine if there's water underground, but that
| doesn't mean a dowsing rod can.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Many things do have a basis in science. The main problem (with
| almost all of them) is that the results are interpreted in
| incorrect ways. For example, you can compare hair and fibers
| just fine. You cannot say it's a match. You can only tell if it
| excludes or does not exclude someone. Yet many experts would
| say it's a "match" and the juries believe it's unique to the
| suspect.
| cscheid wrote:
| From my understanding, fingerprint analyses don't have widely-
| accepted specificity or sensitivity rates either. Those "73%
| match" figures are not derived from any sound principles.
| LtWorf wrote:
| This presents a summary of all the bullshit science.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScmJvmzDcG0
| TotoHorner wrote:
| Breathalyzer tests are incredibly inaccurate and prone to
| false-positives.
|
| Not saying they have no basis in evidence, but people
| drastically overestimate their accuracy.
| Ekaros wrote:
| And that is why they should only be for suspicion and any
| real evidence should be from blood test administered in
| suitable location verified in lab.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| They have an accuracy rate that is pretty good. Sure they
| have false-positives (eat a gas station pizza, ping positive)
| but far more likely are false-negatives due to bad air
| sampling. Folks go to all sorts of extremes to fake them in
| the car-installed devices e.g. have somebody else blow; blow
| through a long tube so the sample is just what's in the tube;
| hold it out the window and let the wind 'blow' into it; put
| two straws into a half-full drink cup, blow into one and
| connect the device to the other, and on and on.
|
| The devices have all sorts of countermeasures now including a
| dash-cam, temperature sensors, humidity sensors etc to try
| and ensure its actually the right human's breath.
| TotoHorner wrote:
| "Pretty good" is completely unacceptable if states will
| suspend your drivers license for 12 months if you refuse to
| take the breathalyzer test (many states do this).
| kelnos wrote:
| Yeah, it's gross that consent to a breathalyzer test is a
| precondition for even getting a license in the first
| place.
|
| Are people convicted of DUI based on breathalyzer
| evidence alone? I would hope that the breathalyzer is
| just used as a first gate (since it's relatively easy to
| administer), but then a conviction would require
| corroboration from a blood test. Then again, with our
| "justice" system as it is, I wouldn't be surprised if a
| breathalyzer is enough in some circumstances.
| deepspace wrote:
| > Are people convicted of DUI based on breathalyzer
| evidence alone?
|
| In some jurisdictions, absolutely
| kkielhofner wrote:
| > Are people convicted of DUI based on breathalyzer
| evidence alone?
|
| Yes and no. In the US the DUI process looks like this
| (it's an interest of mine):
|
| 1) Pattern of impaired driving or other reason to justify
| the stop. This one is ridiculous and of course highly
| subjective - it includes things like a "sweeping turn"
| which is essentially not turning into the closest lane of
| traffic on a turn (think left turn and not turning into
| the left most lane), tires brushing a line, etc. Then
| obviously there's speeding, running stop signs, etc. In
| some states DUI checkpoints are legal where courts have
| ruled (essentially) that the Fourth Amendment doesn't
| apply for one reason or another to blanket stops for
| investigating impaired driving.
|
| 2) Some justification to start or continue a criminal
| investigation beyond the justification for the stop -
| this is the classic/infamous template: slurred speed,
| bloodshot/watery eyes, smell of alcohol, etc that you see
| in literally every single police report for impaired
| driving.
|
| 3) Field sobriety tests (FSTs). These are designed for
| you to fail and completely ridiculous. In the era of dash
| and body cams you're essentially going to put on a
| horrible performance that makes you look intoxicated or
| at least ridiculous even if you aren't. It's been
| demonstrated time and time again these tests are
| subjective and failure prone under ideal controlled
| conditions with known factors, let alone someone suddenly
| pulled out of their car on the side of a dark road
| somewhere...
|
| 4) Preliminary breath test (PBT). This is the small,
| roadside, handheld unit. You're usually going to get this
| no matter what. Obviously if this reports above the legal
| BAC limit you're going to get arrested. Depending on a
| variety of factors (how the officer feels, your FST
| performance, etc) you can be arrested for impaired
| driving regardless. This is obviously to account for
| other drugs that impair driving but of course do not
| register on an alcohol test. Additionally, you can be
| under the legal limit and still get arrested for impaired
| driving for the real/suspected "I had a beer but I also
| took a bunch of Xanax" type situations. To my knowledge
| these results are not admissible (or easily defeated) in
| court.
|
| 5) Certified test. When you get down to the police
| station (or wherever) they're going to have you do a
| breath test on a "certified" machine that's supposedly
| tested, calibrated, etc. Interestingly, in most places
| there are two tests, typically spaced by 20 minutes (or
| so). Apparently this is to account for the
| surface/residual alcohol issue. If you swish Listerine
| around your mouth and blow into a breathalyzer it will
| max out and tell you you're dead (essentially). Yet
| obviously none of this alcohol is in your blood. My
| understanding is for most cases the second reading is
| emphasized/reported/charged even though it's almost
| always lower because it eliminates a "residual alcohol"
| defense and the result is typically far over the legal
| limit anyway. This test is defined as "scientific" and
| admissible in court.
|
| Of course in many cases where a breath test is refused or
| other drugs are suspected they can get a warrant for
| blood. Typically the barrier here is having a judge on
| call at 2 AM (or 10 AM, whenever) with a rubber stamp to
| issue these. That said, most places with DUI checkpoints
| now will have judges at the ready so more and more a
| refusal to do FSTs or a PBT at a checkpoint is signing
| yourself up for an almost instant blood draw.
|
| But, to answer your question there have almost certainly
| been people convicted on breathalyzer evidence alone.
| However, "convicted" is a stretch here because to my
| knowledge there aren't a lot of jury trials for DUI -
| it's just not really worth it to anyone because the
| stakes for either side aren't really that high. Besides,
| in many states the Department of Motor Vehicles or
| whoever controls licensing has a completely separate
| administrative process that applies to your driving
| privilege.
|
| I suspect in many cases where a breathalyzer has been the
| sole evidence even many (most?) innocent people will
| plead to "reckless driving" or whatever the prosecution
| offers - especially because in most places there isn't
| jail time for a first offense regardless, most states
| have some kind of hardship/occupational standard in place
| so that you can still drive for work, school, worship,
| child care, etc, and as mentioned the DMV process is
| somewhat separate anyway.
|
| Because of the car-first culture in the US (vast
| distances, limited/non-existent public transportation,
| costs of ride sharing, etc) many people just drive with
| suspended licenses anyway which, to get back on track
| with tech here on HN, isn't what it used to be. ALPRs
| (automatic license plate readers) have really changed the
| game there.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| This depends on the country.
|
| In mine (slovenia, a lot of drunk people here), you can
| not-sign the agreement with the breathalizer result, and
| the police will take you to a clinic to do a blood test.
| Usually breathalizers show a bit less (larger
| tolerances/errors that the police have to subtract from
| the measured result), but if you're big/heavy enough, and
| the nearest clinic is far enough, it might be worth it,
| since you'll process some of the alcohol in the time to
| get the blood taken... depending of course if you're on
| the upper limit to a higher fine or near the lower limit.
| [deleted]
| iudqnolq wrote:
| You want the book _Junk Science and the American Criminal
| Justice System_ [1] by Chris Fabricant, the Innocence Project
| 's Director of Strategic Litigation.
|
| The book is an approachable, anecdotal tour of some of the
| significant issues with each major sub-speciality within
| forensic science.
|
| The Innocence Project uses DNA testing to prove convicted
| criminals are actually completely innocent of everything, them
| undergoes the massive legal battle required to have a chance of
| going from conclusive evidence of innocence to release in the
| American Justice System. The are reasonable quibbles with their
| methods on the margin, but taken as a whole their work is an
| amazing contribution to society.
|
| Edit: I imagine some people might be skeptical that there's an
| uphill battle after conclusive evidence of innocence. Take a
| look at Shinn v Ramirez. Mark Brnovich, the Arizona Solicitor
| General, successfully convinced the Supreme Court to tell a
| federal judge they couldn't look at Ramirez's evidence he's
| innocent. Notably Brnovich said "innocence isn't enough here"
| [2][3].
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/Science-American-Criminal-Justice-
| Sys...
|
| [2] https://deathpenalty.org/innocence-isnt-enough-here-
| arizona-...
|
| [3] https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/shinn-v-
| ramirez/
| muaytimbo wrote:
| handwriting experts?
| bolangi wrote:
| Fingerprint analysis is rather sketchy, convicting someone
| based on a tiny part of a print. Also lie detector analysis.
| codeflo wrote:
| Lots of scandals around DNA evidence as well. It's not the
| science itself that's wrong, but mistakes can be made and were
| made during collection and in interpretation.
| amenghra wrote:
| There's also cases of people who received a transplant who
| then supposedly have two (or more) different DNAs in their
| blood.
| kstrauser wrote:
| It also turns out that chimerism may be a lot more common
| than we'd thought.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Wow, that's pretty crazy. I never really thought about how
| transplants imply two different sets of DNA cohabitating in
| the same body.
| neaden wrote:
| I think the relevant transplant is bone marrow, since
| that produces Red Blood Cells. Here is an article about
| it:https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/07/us/dna-bone-marrow-
| transp...
| knodi123 wrote:
| Wasn't there a famous incident where the police assumed they
| were dealing with a serial killer because identical DNA was
| found at dozens of crime scenes, and only much much later did
| they learn it was the DNA of a guy who worked at the DNA
| analysis lab who didn't always wear gloves like he was
| supposed to?
| nebalee wrote:
| Sounds similar to this:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_of_Heilbronn
| LtWorf wrote:
| Nowadays DNA is matched by a proprietary software that nobody
| knows if it's buggy or not. But I've never seen a non buggy
| software before...
| glenstein wrote:
| This was my first thought as well. I think penmanship analysis
| is a candidate.
| googlryas wrote:
| There are two types of handwriting analysis - "Graphology"
| and forensic handwriting analysis. Graphology claims to be
| able to derive personality/psychological traits of the
| penman, and is just for charlatans. But, forensic handwriting
| analysis is "real" and useful, for determining if a known-
| author handwriting sample matches an unknown-author
| handwriting sample.
| monocasa wrote:
| Hair analysis is another. Famously, a man was convicted based
| on hair at the scene that turned out to belong to a dog
| instead.
|
| https://splinternews.com/the-fbi-convicted-this-man-using-ha...
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| If only it was limited to the cinema.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/fbi-overstated-fo...
| 2bitencryption wrote:
| I've been listening to the podcast Your Own Backyard (yes, I
| occasionally indulge in true crime, sue me!)
|
| There was recently an entire episode dedicated almost entirely to
| cadaver dog testimony. Well, the dog was not testifying, the
| handler was.
|
| Now, I have no doubt that cadaver dogs can, and do, find
| cadavers, and can detect when a cadaver was recently present.
|
| But listening to the testimony of the handler, from their
| viewpoints, the cadaver dogs are _psychic_. The ability of their
| senses verges on mysticism.
|
| I don't doubt that there is value to cadaver dogs - clearly they
| work, and get results. But the humans who testify on the dogs'
| behalf have a cult-like behavior about what the dogs can
| realistically detect, and how they interpret the dogs behaviors.
| asveikau wrote:
| > (yes, I occasionally indulge in true crime, sue me!)
|
| Sounds like civil court rather than criminal.
| ghastmaster wrote:
| Similarly, handler beliefs affect scent detection dog outcomes
| to at least some degree as indicated in this study:
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3078300/
|
| > No conditions contained drug or explosive scent; any alerting
| response was incorrect
|
| > Within marked conditions, handlers reported that dogs alerted
| more at marked locations than other locations.
|
| > The overwhelming number of incorrect alerts identified across
| conditions confirms that handler beliefs affect performance.
| Further, the directed pattern of alerts in conditions
| containing a marker compared with the pattern of alerts in the
| condition with unmarked decoy scent suggests that human
| influence on handler beliefs affects alerts to a greater degree
| than dog influence on handler beliefs
|
| I found this to be very telling. It at the very least warrants
| more study. At the worst and in my opinion, warrants
| elimination of dog scent detection as the sole factor in a
| search.
| wsc981 wrote:
| A bit similar in the story of the counting horse from Germany
| in the early 20th century:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans
| rozab wrote:
| Check out this article from the National Detector Dog
| Association - 'The Double-Blind Attack'. These people
| seriously don't believe in science.
|
| https://nndda.org/the-double-blind-attack/
| MereInterest wrote:
| Wow. Everything in that article reads as an admission that
| canine units are utterly useless, even as the article tries
| to defend their use. The primary argument seems to be that
| dogs need constant and immediate reinforcement in order to
| be effective, and therefore double-blind studies are not
| effective measurements. This same argument would also imply
| that canine units are not effective in the field, since the
| handler wouldn't be able to provide accurate reinforcement.
| ghastmaster wrote:
| Wow!
|
| > Results in confusion and frustration in the canine - As
| stated previously, under doubleblind testing, the
| determination of the team's accuracy cannot be made at the
| time of the alert. Therefore, to provide or withhold a
| reward from the canine under such a condition can result in
| confusing and frustrating the canine, which will lead to an
| increase chance of incorrect responses.
|
| Juxtapose that with the real world. I am not an expert but
| I sincerely doubt that K9s in airports get treats every
| time they correctly identify a illicit source. That is why
| they are trained constantly(I presume). Testing for one
| hour or one day will likely not have an effect on the long
| term ability of the dog to correctly sniff illicit sources.
|
| The NNDDA article is addressing the "double blind attack",
| which in my opinion is their way of redirecting from the
| notion that the K9s _should not_ be used as a gold standard
| to ascertain probable cause. I would have to think more on
| the subject to comment on reasonable suspicion. If they
| truly believed in the idea that handlers are benign, they
| would embrace the double blind process.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| Reminds me of audiophiles. When the scientific method is
| the enemy, you are dealing with some massive
| psychological effects that people refuse to acknowledge.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I would be fascinated to know how many and to what extent
| police techniques that appear to stretch believably are really
| tools to perform parallel reconstruction and get around shady
| sources of evidence.
| rnk wrote:
| Probably a lot of them. The US justice system has a lot of
| good things, but parallel reconstruction, constantly using
| the easiest way to get info even if it is illegal. Of course
| the latest thing is spying on all of us either through apps
| on our phones or just asking the phone company directly.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "... and how they interpret the dogs behaviors."
|
| The interpretation part is huge in many disciplines. If you
| especially look at high profile cases, you can have experts for
| each side presenting opposing interpretations (not even
| involving animals).
|
| _Then it 's up to the jury to decide which is more
| believable._
|
| There's your spooky story for the day.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| And, unfortunately, "reasonable doubt" is not a reliable
| fallback in such a situation.
| FpUser wrote:
| So it seems that "beyond the reasonable doubts" is a fiction
| unless one can afford really expensive lawyers.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| _Some of the humans_ , the subset who's testimony was selected
| to appear on that show.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| The entire industry, yes industry, of "expert witnesses" is
| murky.
| jessaustin wrote:
| A cadaver dog could be useful for _finding_ a carcass, human or
| otherwise. Once a carcass is found, can 't more qualified
| experts testify about it? Are we talking about cases in which a
| carcass _wasn 't_ found, but was theorized to have been present
| at some point?! How do we know the carcass was human? How do we
| know how long ago it was present? If we could be certain of
| either of those things, how do we know it was the particular
| human whose murder is being prosecuted?
|
| We can't blame dog enthusiasts for testifying, but it's a
| judge's job to keep fantasists out. Judges who allow such
| testimony aren't stupid; they are evil.
| ouid wrote:
| well, one potential nefarious use of dogs is the parallel
| construction of evidence that was gathered illegally in some
| way. That's, I assume, what psychics are for.
| bombcar wrote:
| When they find a body, it's easy.
|
| It's the cases you'll read about when it says the dog
| "activated" or "altered" five times on the property, even
| though nothing was found, and that's somehow used as evidence
| of something.
| P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote:
| That scares the shit out of me if I'm being honest.
|
| years ago I read an article by bruce schneier talking about
| how he ran an open home network so if someone accessed
| illegal content he could claim it could have been anyone.
| His argument was that if it was secured the police would
| argue it had to have been him.
|
| I got the point but disagreed.
|
| a year or two later I was reading an article about a police
| officer that got convicted of accessing child pornography
| on the police computer systems. The chief of police was
| quoted as saying "we know it was him because he used his
| password".
|
| My ass went home that night, opened up my home network, and
| I've ran it that way ever since.
|
| _of course_ it 's not that simple, understanding why that
| chief of police was wrong (I'm not making any claims about
| whether that police officer did or didn't access that
| material) in his confidence is what caused me to suddenly
| strongly agree with Bruce Schneier.
|
| So when I hear things like your dog story, I just know that
| confidence has to be misplaced, even if I don't fully
| understand why (although in this case I do).
| rnk wrote:
| Those aren't really the same thing. You can go to the
| next level of detail on the password question. Was the
| officer reliably in the area, was his password well
| known, is it trivial for anyone to find the password.
| Whereas wifi at your home, there are endless ways to get
| it, plus did you share it with anyone.
| MereInterest wrote:
| Or, when a dog's "evidence" is used to get a warrant. The
| argument is that the right to privacy does not exist for
| illegal actions, and a dog will only alert for illegal
| contraband. So a baseless fishing expedition without any
| reasonable justification is rendered legal based on
| pseudoscience.
| jessaustin wrote:
| That's hideous. Judges who allow that testimony should be
| impeached and disbarred, at a minimum.
| vkou wrote:
| I don't see why judges can't allow bunk testimony, the
| problem is that juries have been watching way too much
| CSI:Miami and don't believe any arguments brought up by
| the defense that forensic 'experts' are reading chicken
| entrails.
| MereInterest wrote:
| For the same reason that a defendant may not be presented
| to the jury in handcuffs or in a prison uniform. Because
| we humans are not able to return to a blank slate, free
| from biases imparted by information later learned to be
| false. For methods that are known to be useless, the jury
| shouldn't be asked to perform the impossible.
| usefulcat wrote:
| Easy to say. But to the extent that it's easy to get rid
| of judges they can't be an effective check on the other
| branches.
| iudqnolq wrote:
| There's also "dog alerted, after five days of digging we
| found a single bone fragment 200ft away. Insufficient DNA
| remains for us to conclusively say it's human, but all the
| evidence is consistent with human"
| phpisthebest wrote:
| This is like saying "Dont hate the player hate the game"
|
| No I am perfectly capable of rightly placing blame on both.
| In this context the Cops, prosecutors and judges all have an
| ethical duty to the truth. All 3 seem to have forgotten that
| underlying obligation in the system
|
| They want that "win", that conviction, that revenge, or what
| ever.
|
| So yes I will blame the judge for letting bad "evidence" in
| that lacks proper foundation, but I will also blame the cop
| that is presenting the "evidence" and the prosecutor that
| presented the "evidence"
|
| Our systems have layers for a reason, we can not and should
| not have to relay solely upon the Judge as the first, last
| and only line of defense here.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| > In this context the Cops, prosecutors and judges all have
| an ethical duty to the truth. All 3 seem to have forgotten
| that underlying obligation in the system
|
| Could you clarify: are you referring to every single member
| of those 3 groups, or just some?
|
| And if it's just some, then roughly speaking, what fraction
| do you mean, and what evidence supports that?
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Depends on which part of that quote...
|
| I believe every single member of all 3 have an ethical
| duty to the truth
|
| I think a significant number of all 3 groups have
| forgotten that, or believe something else take precedent
| further I believe every member of all 3 groups knows
| about a co-member of the group that has ignored or
| violated their ethical duty and looked the other way, or
| actively covered for that abuse
| paperwasp42 wrote:
| I think it's important to note that cops, prosecutors,
| judges, etc. are trained and encouraged to "listen to the
| science" and "don't rely on your gut." Of course, many
| disregard this, due to corruption or other moral failings.
| But many _do_ follow this advice, and sometimes it results
| in presenting faulty evidence simply because they have been
| taught faulty science.
|
| In addition to rooting out corruption and dismantling
| immoral incentives, we need to seriously re-examine the
| forensic science that is the backbone of many cases. People
| --including judges, juries, cops, and lawyers--are far too
| willing to blindly trust "science," and it can have
| extremely scary outcomes. We need more replication of
| studies and better science education for our criminal
| justice professionals.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| the bigger problem is we have lost the true meaning of
| "science" or rather the "scientific method" as a huge
| part of forensic "science" has no connection with the
| "scientific method" upto and including the foundational
| "science" of fingerprints which is more of interpretive
| art than science
|
| Too much of science today is Hypothesis -> Gather Data to
| support, reject any that does not -> Report Conclusions
| -> Burn Heretics
| levi_n wrote:
| "2biteencryption", name checks out
| Jenda_ wrote:
| > But the humans who testify on the dogs' behalf have a cult-
| like behavior about what the dogs can realistically detect, and
| how they interpret the dogs behaviors.
|
| There was a scandal here in .cz regarding forensic odorology
| using dogs, as a report came out where the authors basically
| found out they were unable to test it, because the dog-
| operators either did not understand what is a double-blind
| experiment, or they even actively sabotaged it. It is then
| implied that when they do the identification for real, they are
| not blind to who the suspect/control is. (report, unfortunately
| only in Czech: https://jenda.hrach.eu/f2/salamoun-testovani-
| pachovych-stop.... google translate:
| https://jenda.hrach.eu/f2/salamoun-testovani-pachovych-stop-...
| )
| rnk wrote:
| It's clear that this resistance to being reasonably tested is
| because the handlers are obviously influencing the dogs. It's
| freaking irritating. A lot of that is drug war bs. I thought
| only us law enforcement would be resistant to evaluation.
| cybervegan wrote:
| This little eggcorn in the article made me chuckle "little to
| know" (should be "little to no").
| Jenda_ wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Dookhan
|
| I find it shocking that there is no "continuous quality
| assurance" of these labs - for example, one should take the lab
| as a blackbox, and send 10% known-negatives, 10% known-positives,
| and 10% random samples from previous batches in every batch, and
| then evaluate a) how many known positives/negatives turned out
| right, b) how many samples from previous batches return the same
| result.
| vanattab wrote:
| How offen are people bitting people and only being id through the
| bite marks? Are there people sneaking into bedrooms biting
| people? I don't get it.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Typically it's a "man bites dog" kind of case. [ducks]
| mypalmike wrote:
| When there are violent struggles, it's not actually that
| uncommon for bite marks to be present on victim or assistant.
|
| *Source - I've seen lots of episodes of Forensic Files.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| I'd imagine it's not uncommon for bite marks to be at least one
| piece of evidence. Victim struggles, bites assailant, cops
| arrest somebody with a bite mark, suspect insists it's from
| some fun times with their SO and not from a victim defending
| themselves, cops call upon their pseudoscientists to "prove"
| that the bite mark came from the victim. Or another way around,
| a victim of a violent assault might have been bit while
| fighting off their attacker. In a grappling scenario, there is
| definitely a portion of the population who will instinctively
| use their teeth, from my experience in water polo, I'd reckon
| about a quarter of people.
| beastie29a wrote:
| There was an HBO documentary series named Autopsy[0] I watched
| back in the 90s and two crimes stick out. The series mainly
| followed the case file of a Forensic Pathologist named Dr.
| Michael Baden.
|
| If I can remember them correctly, one case was a murder that
| appeared as a break-in and a bite marking found on a garbage
| bag was tied back to the victim. The other was an inmate that
| left bite marks on a guard and tied the crime back to the
| inmate with.
|
| It's so interesting to see this research now and wonder what
| would come of those cases now that the main evidence is
| seemingly unreliable.
|
| [0] https://www.hbo.com/autopsy
| kuprel wrote:
| Bite marks were used to convict Ted Bundy
| luxuryballs wrote:
| I'm surprised that this even needed a study, which also makes it
| rather alarming.
| holiveros wrote:
| Mexican here, in my country these type of "evidences" are harder
| to support / enforce, as long as your lawyer / you are willing to
| provide enough scientific indication they're not reliable, those
| evidences are dismissed.
|
| Of course, as any country, there's corruption at every level.
|
| Wonder what's the stance of other countries?
| bombcar wrote:
| Often these types of evidences are used to get the subject to
| confess or agree to a plea deal.
|
| (In other words, they're often used "when we know you did it"
| kind of things.)
|
| The justice industry isn't very pretty, best not to look too
| closely at it.
| Zigurd wrote:
| "Crime labs" cannot be trusted. They are unaccountable and
| dependent on police departments for funding. Their results are
| "good" if people get convicted. That's perverse and contrary to
| scientific principles. That extends to publications in that
| field. It's systemically corrupted and needs to be restructured
| to be independent of police and prosecutors.
| irsagent wrote:
| Are any implications drawn from these findings from a dentist
| perspective?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-10-20 23:00 UTC)