Erdmann pleaded no contest to seven felonies regarding false evidence and botched autopsies. On September 10, 1904, Miner and two accomplices, later identified as William "Shorty" Dunn and Louis Colquhoun, were involved in the first train robbery in Canada. However, the prosecutors were able to get their hands on 88,000 e-mails and other messages on Michelle's . Shirley Kinges plight was one of at least 36 instances of evidence planting perpetrated by members of the New York State Troopers C Division and at least one member of Troop F. Between 1984 and 1992, members of New York State Troopers C Division, and at least one member of Troop F, systematically fabricated fingerprints and other evidence. Andersons account of the illegal evidence planting operation wasnt enough to convict every officer he claimed had framed innocent people to pad their arrest numbers. He was sentenced to death and currently sits in prison on death row. As a result, the cases against 11 suspected rapists have gone cold, perhaps never to be solved. Police used forensic evidence found at the scene to track the thieves, which led to their houses. But when the unit faced blistering criticism over a barrage of bungles that allowed a prolific rapist to prey on more than 70 women and another to victimize up to 102 people, a number of Sapphire investigators categorized cases incorrectly, attempting to artificially reduce the number of unsolved sexual assaults. The detectives who took over Fuhrmans shift apparently were never aware of the print and eventually, it was lost or destroyed without ever being collected. At trial, several issues became evident, including: Roughly 1.5 ml of Simpson's blood was mysteriously absent from a container; The blood was not immediately entered into the chain of custody; On March 17, 2002, the jury found him guilty and he was sentenced to 195 years in prison. According to a 2010 investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), a detective constable and two trainees revised the statement of a rape survivor to suggest that she had retracted her claims. Simpson case can be found here. Evidence to be used against European terrorists, including those suspected in the most recent attacks against Paris, has been burned, lost, or compromised during the fires. Another witness named Paula Graya woman with an IQ of 55 who would later recant her testimony, thereby facing perjury chargesadded Verneal Jimerson to the attackers. 10. Doohkan worked for nine years at the Department of Public Health, processing more than 60,000 samples involving 34,000 defendants. Simpson was accused of murdering his ex-wife, Nicole Brown-Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman on June 12, 1994, between approximately 9:40 p.m. and 10:55 p.m., in the front courtyard of her condominium on Bundy Drive, Brentwood. 3The Philadelphia PD's Narcotics Unit Resembles A Mafia Operation Every city has ignominious chapters in its history that it would rather forget. Defense attorneys were quick to argue that lax procedures by the forensics team could have led to the degradation or cross-contamination of blood evidence. Before mitochondrial testing, the hair of a suspect was tested using microscopic analysis, which shows if the hair has a similar appearance to hair taken from the scene of a crime. Fingerprint evidence that tied her to gasoline cans used in the arson had been planted by New York State Troopers. All the while, she outpaced her colleagues in productivity, sometimes by a factor of three. During the first trial in 1978, state serologist Michael Podlecki testified that at least one of the rapists had type A secretor blood, a trait shared with approximately 25 percent of the population. grimm's geometric stacker famous cases where evidence was mishandled Simpson murder case. As the defense attorney for an alleged narcotics kingpin opined, It stands to reason that the strict chain of custody claimed by the government in most cases is a sham.. Going in, the public were already influenced by Simpsons likeability and star power as a pro football player and beloved celebrity. Other items of evidence were also never logged or entered into the chain of custody, which gave the impression that sloppy forensic collection had been carried out at the scene. But, in at least one other instance, he failed to submit marijuana and guns seized during a crime, and there is some cause to believe that he may have been involved in the displacement of $130,000 confiscated during an FBI search. But, like so many corruption cases, Lowrys greatest crime may not be one which exists on any US law book. In some ways, it can be said that Dookhan was just giving her superiors what they wanted. Boney ultimately claimed it was Camm who murdered the family. Nov. 22, 2019. Simpson We'd be remiss if we started our list anywhere other than the case dubbed the " trial of the century. Machine Gun Kelly George "Machine Gun" Kelly was a notorious criminal during the Prohibition era, taking part in bootlegging, kidnapping and armed robbery. The National Institute of Criminology, considered the most important forensic testing center in Belgium, was also hit by arsonists in 2016. The issue is whether the Sixth Amendment right of confrontation is violated when statements from a child who is unavailable to testify at trial are . The DNA lab in Charleroi, recently struck by arsonists in 2016, had previously been attacked in 2001 and 2003, while the forensic laboratory in Ghent University had been targeted in 2005. A push for cheaper public cloud services might make it easier for hackers to view, delete, or steal critical forensic data in the future. Key points: Kelly says she was told police no longer have forensic evidence from her rape kit While a police power struggle ensued, reporters flocked to the site of the murder to take pictures, and civilians soon followed. Additionally, a Dutch forensic expert found Boneys DNA under Kim Camms fingernails and her DNA on his sweatshirt, two pieces of evidence which sealed his conviction. Firefox was used to access an address with "chloroform.htm.". At least 18 of those prisoners have been proven innocent through updated DNA testing. Disorganization was rife, and records were regularly falsified. Prosecutors also rely on scientific evidence to establish and prove their cases during prosecution. The victims were from one jurisdiction, but their bodies were found in another, leading to disagreements about which department should collect the forensic evidence. An internal investigation conducted two years ago by the Orange County Sheriff's Department, the findings of which were not made public at the time, uncovered systematic mishandling of evidence . He has been a guest speaker on numerous national radio and television stations and is a five time published author. If evidence with Simpsons blood showed traces of EDTA, the defense claimed, then that blood had to have come from the lab, which meant that it was planted. For Philadelphia, one of those chapters is undoubtedly devoted to its 39th district police officers. Method used to test air for decomposition made its courtroom debut in this trial. 10 Famous Cases Cracked by Forensics. A Question of Character In another instance, a former employee had managed to hold onto an evidence locker pass key six years after leaving the job. In many cases, security for the labs consisted of nothing more than a few cameras and a wire fence. 4 Wrongful Conviction Cases in California. This put anything he touched in the investigation under scrutiny. His wife had been out Christmas shopping and despite her insistence that Willingham had never been abusive and had no motive for the crimes, he was arrested. Although it was documented in his notes by Detective Mark Fuhrman, one of the first to arrive on the scene, no further action was taken to secure it. With the crime scene ransacked, the only fingerprint compromised, and most of the witnesses missing, this simple case ended up becoming a huge forensic fail for the prosecution.[1]. Right from the start, there seemed to be a mountain of mishandled evidence, yet none was more compelling, or more badly bungled, than the blood forensics. Lauren. But, for residents of Douglas County, Nebraska, those three letters could just as easily stand for Criminal Subterfuge in Investigations thanks to disgraced David Kofoed, whose tenure as chief of the local CSI division was marred by the willful manipulation of DNA evidence in a series of murder cases. Both the LAPD lab and O.J.s Bronco were found to have been accessed by unauthorized personnel, giving the jury ample excuse to distrust the blood evidence that had been collected there. The prosecution had expert witnesses who testified that the evidence was often mishandled. In addition, the US Department of Justice revealed that more than 400,000 stored rape kits have not yet been tested across the country because of insufficient funding. California. The time was 5:55 p.m. Dubbed "The Phantom of Heilbronn," the anonymous woman's genetic material was detected at the scene of more than forty crimes over a two-decade period. October 31, 2014. For nine years, Annie Dookhan worked as a crime lab chemist in Massachusetts, performing drug tests for criminal cases. In an article called " 8 Famous Faces Who Were Falsely Accused Of A Crime" has a case of a man named Dewey Bozella, who is a boxer, was accused of murdering a elderly woman in her apartment at the age of 18. Somehow, these flashing signs of inability didnt prevent him from landing jobs as a police chemist for the state of West Virginia and chief of physical evidence in Bexar County, Texas. At the heart of the scandal were five forensic investigators from Troop C. According to investigators, these individuals benefited from a culture of lax, and even tacitly complicit, oversight that nurtured a felonious hubris. In addition to spending more than two years in prison for his misdeeds, Kofoed was slapped with a lawsuit for playing God with Sampsons and Liverss lives. Atty. The first edition of Electronic Evidence in Criminal Investigations and Actions: Representative Court Decisions and Supplementary Materials was published in February of 2016. But, despite even the presence of eyewitnesses who could attest to grotesque law enforcement misconduct, charges leveled against Baird and other officers were consistently dismissed as baseless until Philadelphia investigators and federal agents finally began pursuing the matter in 1991. Detective Fuhrman was discredited by the prosecution when he was alleged to be a racist and accused of planting evidence. One of the most frustrating and heartbreaking docu-series in recent memory was The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez. Though movies and media headlines have taught society to view police officers with an ample (but arguably healthy dose) of suspicion, pop cultures treatment of the FBI has been comparatively favorable. There's a case out of British Columbia called Regina v Hamdan that goes into some detail on the lack of proper digital evidence collection. Robinson was on-site at a Tucson facility in April 2018 when the FBI took the servers into custody pursuant to a federal warrant. The overwhelming evidence of lab misconduct has already resulted in the dismissal of 200 drug cases and reduced sentences in 60 more. Still convinced of Knox and Sollecitos guilt, the prosecution spun a narrative claiming the couple had partnered with Guede in Kerchers murder. Erdmann also testified about the forensic examination of a 14-year-olds brain, but when the body was exhumed, police discovered that the skull had never been cut open. The defense team stated that EDTA was found in the samples of blood that were collected at the crime scene. A card left by the killer was handled by dozens of people in the crowd, making fingerprint forensics useless in court. Preliminary testing revealed that the doctor had faked at least 100 of his autopsies, but that was just the tip of the iceberg. March is National Criminal Justice Month. Bolding, and the hundreds of cases he compromised, were emblematic of a culture of inadequacy at the Houston crime lab, where numerous technicians knowingly conducted unreliable analyses in a lab which itself was woefully sub-par. And, from what is known, its clear that Zains dissembling reach was tremendous. He reported another death as homicide caused by blunt force trauma, which was revealed to be an accidental drowning.[9]. Podlecki also testified that both Williams and Adams tested positive for being type A secretors, an assertion later refuted by an independent forensic witness. Prosecutors misplaced most of the evidence, the autopsy report, and grand jury testimony records that would have pointed toward Mrs. Hall as a suspect. This inability to understand key evidence made the evidence essentially useless; even some seasoned lawyers found the scientific testimonies to be incomprehensible. One of the most renowned cases involving problems with the chain of evidence was the O.J. In 2014, a group of police officers was apprehended after executing a vicious extortion plot that involved kidnapping, threats, and even holding criminal suspects out of windows. Copyright 2022 Crime Museum, LLC - All Rights Reserved | Privacy Policy |. In 1999, the Ford Heights Four won a $36 million in damages from Cook Countythe largest settlement for a civil rights case in U.S. history. Meanwhile, trees, grass, and rocks from the area were snatched up by onlookers to be sold as souvenirs of the tragic slaying. In hindsight, one might characterize the scandal as a logical offshoot of the very system which condemns its criminality. During the third trial, the defense presented evidence that the initial blood splatter expert had falsified his credentials and had no history of working with blood splatters. had been cut on his left hand, and Nicoles fresh blood was found on his socks. Witnesses may be unreliable, and memories might be foggy, but scientific evidence doesnt lie. Nor had the police "respected international standards for the collection and bagging of exhibits", they maintained. Rachelle Jackson. Manuel Vasquez, a state deputy fire marshall, took the stand and testified to seeing puddle configurations (i.e., areas of rapid burning) suggesting the use of accelerants in the fire and indicating arson. According to an examiners study, at least 90 percent of trial transcripts in their Microscopic Hair Comparison Analysis Review contained erroneous statements. The dropped charges. An investigation revealed that Dookhan had been dry labbing many of her assignmentsreporting results without performing the actual tests! An important bloody fingerprint located on the gateway at Nicole Browns house was not properly collected and entered into the chain of custody when it was first located. The ensuing investigation resulted in guilty pleas from five troopers and a criminal conviction of the sixth. The newer mitochondrial testing of hair is more expensive, but it does exactly match hair to a suspect through DNA. Everyone from criminals to harmless grandmothers were targets of the 39th district, as feared figures like the infamous John Baird ran roughshod over mostly poor black citizens with virtual legal impunity for years. Jimerson was not initially convicted because Gray had withdrawn her testimony, although she later testified against him in a plea deal with the prosecutors and he was sentenced to death. Theyd been stabbed multiple times. recent interviews with three prominent professors, the police didnt wear caps or change gloves as they collected items, planted evidence on the part of the detectives, a fire ravaged Cameron Todd Willinghams house killing his two-year-old daughter and one-year-old twins, National Criminal Justice Month 2021: An Advocacy Toolkit, Homicide Investigations: How to Determine Time of Death, How To Become a Crime Scene Technician - Education & Certification Guide. Simpson's Case. The first point in every trial, is to establish the facts of the case; for he who fails in his proof, fails in everything. It wasnt until many years later that investigators would attribute his wounds to Willingham being in the fire before the flashover (i.e., when the entire room suddenly ignites in flames). The prosecution expert used "Cacheback" software that had a bug parsing Mork database files. Famous cases Bill Miner. One of the examiners most aggravating mistakes was the loss of an entire head, which contained a bullet from the killers gun. Microscopic comparisons were very convincing to juries, especially when linked with testimony from forensic experts claiming that the hair matched a suspect. (Credit: Hulton Archives/Getty Images) On the night of June 25, 1906, Harry K. Thaw, the son of a railroad and . With police performance measured in numbers of arrests, officers who failed to book enough criminals risked such penalties as being removed from undercover assignments. Even their spouses seemed to tolerate the affair, until the night that Edward and Eleanor were found murdered near Lovers Lane. Deaver said bloodstain pattern analysis is a "visual examination" and since he did not see blood on the shirt it was not tested. Its a grim burden that grows ever heavier in light of the fact that, for decades, the Houston Police Department crime lab has relied on faulty DNA analyses and bogus courtroom testimony that, according to a lab director, have tainted at least 5,000 to 10,000 cases. On April 27, a woman in eastern Brooklyn called the police. This article explores five fascinating cases of fraud in forensics to underscore the importance of using scientifically valid and reliable methods in this growing career field. Photos were taken of critical evidence without scales in them to aid in measurement taking. He estimated internal organ weight measurements for subjects that had never been cut open. The carnage disturbed Knox, who described her roommate as neat and tidy. Knox had spent the night with her boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, and she attempted to get into Kerchers room, which was locked. The two were . West Virginia alone paid $6.5 million in compensation to innocent people convicted by Zains deception, and the state of Texas shelled out $850,000. Harry Thaw in 1905. The judge made some good points and some that made it obvious that they aren't tech savvy but still a good read. Knox, 23, from the US, and Sollecito, 27, an Italian, are serving sentences of 26 and 25 years respectively for the murder. A civil court awarded the plaintiffs a total of $6.5 milliona gesture which is more symbolic than practical in light of Kofoeds inability to pay the fine. The jurors have to unanimously decide guilt or innocence. He blamed the situation on the deplorable funding for storage, coupled with low pay for overworked evidence clerks. 1. The appeal by Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito against their conviction for the killing of the British student Meredith Kercher took a significant turn yesterday when independent, court-appointed experts dismissed as unreliable forensic evidence crucial to the prosecution case. 8. Erroneous convictions can have immeasurable consequences for exonerees, original crime victims, and families. was acquitted of all charges based on reasonable doubt. For an unattended death, law enforcement must use a combination of investigative techniques and science to calculate how much time elapsed between the victim taking their last breath and their remains being found. Schmal had been raped seven times. Kercher, 21, from Coulsdon in Surrey, was found dead in a flat she shared with Knox and two Italian women. The Thornes had just been named as the winners of the Opera House lottery, established to raise money to build Joern Utzon's masterpiece. The exploits of the 39th district eventually made media headlines in the mid-1990s. But, when an agent like Matthew Lowry is caught getting high on heroin that he stole from an FBI crime lab, that credence suffers greatly. Joseph Sledge, for example, served 36 years for a crime in North Carolina, but he could have been out decades earlier if police hadnt misplaced evidence from his trial. Without perfect organization and updated records, things inevitably go missing, and when they do, defendants end up paying a very steep price. Blunt force trauma, which was revealed to be solved death row `` respected international standards for labs! Firefox was used to access an address with & quot ; software that had a bug parsing database. Published author Microscopic comparisons were very convincing famous cases where evidence was mishandled juries, especially when linked with testimony from forensic experts claiming the. 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