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Forensic reliability?
Solomon Moore, Science Found Wanting in Nation’s Crime Labs, N.Y. Times, 4 February 2009.
John Eligon, New Efforts Focus on Exonerating Prisoners in Cases Without DNA Evidence, N.Y. Times, 7 February 2009.
Criminal justice experts say exonerations have shed light on two circumstances once thought to be extremely rare or even inconceivable: Witnesses are sometimes wrong, and people sometimes confess to crimes they did not commit.
Peter Tillers, News Flash!: Witnesses Make Mistakes (or “I was born yesterday”), Tillers on Evidence and Inference, 8 February 2009. A piece critical of Moore’s article.
The Carnegie Legal Reporting Program, Lawbeat, in Big play for leaked forensic science report, is also critical of Mr. Moore’s article.
In fact, the heart of the story is sourced so opaquely that the story requires readers to take on faith all its newsy facts.
Would Solomon have been right today? Solomon did not have the benefit of DNA, that could of helped avoid a potential catastrophe. Can you imagine what would have happened if both women had said “give it to her.” Solomon did have a wealth of experience though with human nature, bearing false witness, and other non-scientific rules of evidence.