Related Research Articles
Forensic science, also known as criminalistics, is the application of science principles and methods to support legal decision-making in matters of criminal and civil law.
Police perjury, sometimes euphemistically called "testilying", is the act of a police officer knowingly giving false testimony. It is typically used in a criminal trial to "make the case" against defendants believed by the police to be guilty when irregularities during the suspects' arrest or search threaten to result in their acquittal. It also can be extended to encompass substantive misstatements of fact to convict those whom the police believe to be guilty, procedural misstatements to "justify" a search and seizure, or even the inclusion of statements to frame an innocent citizen. More generically, it has been said to be "[l]ying under oath, especially by a police officer, to help get a conviction."
Chain of custody (CoC), in legal contexts, is the chronological documentation or paper trail that records the sequence of custody, control, transfer, analysis, and disposition of materials, including physical or electronic evidence. Of particular importance in criminal cases, the concept is also applied in civil litigation and more broadly in drug testing of athletes and in supply chain management, e.g. to improve the traceability of food products, or to provide assurances that wood products originate from sustainably managed forests. It is often a tedious process that has been required for evidence to be shown legally in court. Now, however, with new portable technology that allows accurate laboratory quality results from the scene of the crime, the chain of custody is often much shorter which means evidence can be processed for court much faster.
A miscarriage of justice occurs when an unfair outcome occurs in a criminal or civil proceeding, such as the conviction and punishment of a person for a crime they did not commit. Miscarriages are also known as wrongful convictions. Innocent people have sometimes ended up in prison for years before their conviction has eventually been overturned. They may be exonerated if new evidence comes to light or it is determined that the police or prosecutor committed some kind of misconduct at the original trial. In some jurisdictions this leads to the payment of compensation.
Joyce Gilchrist was an American forensic chemist who had participated in more than 3,000 criminal cases in 21 years while working for the Oklahoma City Police Department, and who was accused of falsifying evidence to help prosecutors. Her evidence led in part to 23 people being sentenced to death, 12 of whom have been executed. After her dismissal, Gilchrist alleged that she was fired in retaliation for reporting sexual misconduct.
False evidence, fabricated evidence, forged evidence, fake evidence or tainted evidence is information created or obtained illegally in order to sway the verdict in a court case. Falsified evidence could be created by either side in a case, or by someone sympathetic to either side. Misleading by suppressing evidence can also be considered a form of false evidence ; however, in some cases, suppressed evidence is excluded because it cannot be proved the accused was aware of the items found or of their location. The analysis of evidence may also be forged if the person doing the forensic work finds it easier to fabricate evidence and test results than to perform the actual work involved. Parallel construction is a form of false evidence in which the evidence is truthful but its origins are untruthfully described, at times in order to avoid evidence being excluded as inadmissible due to unlawful means of procurement such as an unlawful search.
Martha Mary Coakley is an American lobbyist, lawyer, and former politician who served as Attorney General of Massachusetts from 2007 to 2015. Prior to serving as Attorney General, she was District Attorney of Middlesex County from 1999 to 2007.
Stella Maudine Nickell is an American woman who was sentenced to ninety years in prison for product tampering after she poisoned Excedrin capsules with lethal cyanide, resulting in the deaths of her husband Bruce Nickell and Sue Snow. Her May 1988 conviction and prison sentence were the first under federal product tampering laws instituted after the 1982 Chicago Tylenol murders.
The FBI Laboratory is a division within the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation that provides forensic analysis support services to the FBI, as well as to state and local law enforcement agencies free of charge. The lab is located at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Quantico, Virginia. Opened November 24, 1932, the lab was first known as the Technical Laboratory. It became a separate division when the original Bureau of Investigation (BOI) was renamed the FBI.
Frederick Salem Zain was an American forensic laboratory technician in West Virginia and Bexar County, Texas, who falsified serology results to obtain convictions.
Frederic "Fred" Whitehurst is an American chemist and attorney who served as a Supervisory Special Agent in the Federal Bureau of Investigation Laboratory from 1986 to 1998. Concerned about problems he saw among agents, he went public as a whistleblower to bring attention to procedural errors and misconduct by agents. After the FBI retaliated against his claims, he began to attend law school at night and used his Juris Doctor degree to continue his fight. After ten years of refusal, the FBI investigated his claims and agreed to 40 reforms to improve the forensic reliability of its testing.
The Keepers is a seven-episode American documentary web series that explores the unsolved murder of nun Catherine Cesnik in 1969. Cesnik taught English and drama at Baltimore's all-girls Archbishop Keough High School, and her former students believe that there was a cover-up by authorities after she suspected that a priest at the high school, A. Joseph Maskell, was guilty of sexually abusing students. The series was directed by Ryan White and released on Netflix in 2017.
Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, 557 U.S. 305 (2009), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that it was a violation of the Sixth Amendment right of confrontation for a prosecutor to submit a chemical drug test report without the testimony of the person who performed the test. While the court ruled that the then-common practice of submitting these reports without testimony was unconstitutional, it also held that so called "notice-and-demand" statutes are constitutional. A state would not violate the Constitution through a "notice-and-demand" statute by both putting the defendant on notice that the prosecution would submit a chemical drug test report without the testimony of the scientist and also giving the defendant sufficient time to raise an objection.
The National Registry of Exonerations is a project of the University of Michigan Law School, Michigan State University College of Law and the University of California Irvine Newkirk Center for Science and Society. The Registry was co-founded in 2012 with the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law to provide detailed information about known exonerations in the United States since 1989. As of February 6, 2020, the Registry has 2,551 known exonerations in the United States since 1989. The National Registry does not include more than 1,800 defendants cleared in 15 large-scale police scandals that came to light between 1989 and March 7, 2017, in which officers systematically framed innocent defendants.
Annie Dookhan is an American convicted felon who formerly worked as a chemist at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health Drug Abuse lab and admitted to falsifying evidence affecting up to 34,000 cases.
Erin Lee Carr is an American documentary filmmaker. She is also an author for publications including VICE and her memoir called All That You Leave Behind: A Memoir, a story about love, addiction, and the relationship between father and daughter. In 2015, Variety included Carr as one of its "10 Documakers To Watch". Carr made the 2018 Forbes 30 under 30 list.
Trial 4 is a 2020 true crime documentary television series directed by Rémy Burkel. It tells the story of Sean K. Ellis, who was unjustly convicted as a teen in the 1993 killing of Boston police officer John J. Mulligan. Ellis fights for his freedom while exposing systemic racism and corruption within the justice system.
Shannon Patricia O'Neill is an American comedian, actress, writer, and director who worked as the artistic director of the Upright Citizens Brigade. O'Neill was a regular guest on The Chris Gethard Show and has had numerous roles in film and television. In 2020, O'Neill appeared as Sonja Farak in How to Fix a Drug Scandal, a true crime documentary miniseries. In the series, O'Neill recreates Farak's court testimony using official transcripts from her grand jury trial.
The William A. Hinton State Laboratory is a state laboratory in Massachusetts. It was known as the Massachusetts State Public Health Laboratory and Massachusetts State Laboratory Institute until 1975 when it was renamed for William A. Hinton. It houses the Massachusetts state drug lab.
In Massachusetts, the Committee for Public Counsel Services (CPCS) oversees the state public defender system for indigent criminal defendants.
References
- ↑ Horton, Adrian (1 April 2020). "How to Fix a Drug Scandal: behind a staggering Netflix crime docuseries". The Guardian.
- 1 2 "'How to Fix a Drug Scandal' Review: Netflix's True-Crime Doc Is a Boring 'Breaking Bad'". Collider. April 2020. Retrieved 2020-05-03.
- ↑ "How to Fix a Drug Scandal: behind a staggering Netflix crime docuseries". The Guardian. April 2020. Retrieved 2020-05-03.
- ↑ Lavoie, Denise (4 March 2014). "Inspector General: Dookhan 'Sole Bad Actor' In State Drug Lab Scandal". CBS Boston.
- ↑ McDonald, Danny (25 September 2019). "24,000 charges tossed because they were tainted by former Amherst lab chemist's misconduct". The Boston Globe.
- ↑ Schoenberg, Shira (21 September 2020). "Bar oversight agency considers misconduct by attorneys in lab scandal case". CommonWealth Magazine. Retrieved 13 April 2023.
- ↑ Lisinski, Chris. "Defendants could share $14 million settlement over state drug lab scandal". The Berkshire Eagle . State House News Service. Retrieved 13 April 2023.
- ↑ Mulvihill, Maggie; Schuppe, Jon (23 September 2022). "Epic Massachusetts crime lab scandal may involve even broader wrongdoing, judge says". NBC News . Retrieved 13 April 2023.
- ↑ Trahan, Erin (9 April 2020). "Netflix's 'How To Fix A Drug Scandal' Elevates Process Over Personality". WBUR.
- ↑ Wilkinson, Alissa (1 April 2020). "How to Fix a Drug Scandal is the staggering true story of justice gone very wrong". Vox.
