2016/11/29

The Columbus Dispatch November 26, 2016: Debate rages over quality of science in crime labs

Ray Krone had just finished delivering the mail when police cars rushed into his driveway and officers arrested the U.S. postal carrier on a murder charge.

The Arizona man was accused of the brutal killing of a Phoenix bar manager, mainly because a forensic expert said Krone’s teeth matched a bite mark left on the victim’s breast.

In 1992, a jury convicted the Air Force veteran, who had no previous criminal record, in a three-day trial and sentenced him to die. He spent more than a decade in prison, including three years on death row, until DNA testing proved his innocence and pointed to the real killer in 2002.

“They were going to kill me using this junk bite-mark science,” said Krone, 59, who now lives in Tennessee. “The system is set up so that mistakes will be made. That’s why it’s beyond important for scientists to make sure what they are saying about evidence is true and can be backed up with scientific proof, not guess work. You guess wrong and people can die or lose chunks of their life behind bars.”

Tiny clues collected at crime scenes — bite marks, footprints, tire tracks, blood patterns, stray hairs and fibers — have helped convict thousands of people across the United States.

But the analysis of this trace evidence, especially in the years before DNA became reliable in the early 2000s, has been dubbed junk science by several experts including scientists, FBI analysts, judges and defense attorneys. Government officials, prosecutors, defense attorneys and scientists continue to debate the authenticity and value of trace evidence. more