So I am quite literally snowed in right now. Front door won’t open. It’s been crazy. Photos and videos of puppy snow frolicking forthcoming.

In the meantime….

• Actual sentence from an actual news story: “It’s designed for young girls ages 8 and older, but some say the mysterious product is a “dangerous spiritual game” that opens up anyone, particularly Christians, to attacks on their soul.”
• Because anything that tastes good is obviously an appeal to children.
• Looks like the former DA Texas Gov. Rick Perry appointed to head up the state’s forensics panel is doing all he can to make sure the panel does nothing to help the state’s forensics system.
• Here’s a good cop story: Bozeman, Montana cop buys food for man caught shoplifting school supplies for his kids.
• Time to renew my ACLU membership.
• Gun-free snowball fights. Novel idea!
• Twelve-year-old Queens girl hauled out of school in handcuffs for writing on desk.

An independent audit of 548 fingerprint analyses done by the Houston crime lab found “irregularities” in more than half of them. Two analysts have been put on leave, one has resigned. The three had worked cases in the lab for a combined 84 years.

This is the third forensics scandal to hit Houston in the last several years. In 2006, another independent audit found that…

Houston crime lab analysts skewed reports to fit police theories in several cases, ignoring results that conflicted with police expectations because of a lack of confidence in their own skills or a conscious effort to secure convictions, an independent investigator says in his latest report on the scandal.

In more than 20 cases reviewed in this stage of the ongoing probe, the investigative team concluded that analysts at the Houston Police Department crime lab failed to report the results of blood-typing and DNA tests that did not implicate the suspects police had identified.

That came a few years after local media exposed other problems with the credibility of the lab’s experts and its shoddy handling of forensic evidence. In 2004, the Houston Chronicle reported a number a number of questionable autopsies done by Harris County Medical Examiner Patricia Moore, who colleagues accused of tailoring her findings to please prosecutors.

Seems like a good time to note another forensics-related story this week: On Monday the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Briscoe v. Virginia, a case many court watchers say could undo or limit last term’s decision in Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, which established the right of criminal defendants to cross-examine crime lab experts (as opposed to having experts submit signed lab reports).

The court’s membership has changed since the 5-to-4 decision in June in Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, which said that the Sixth Amendment’s confrontation clause, which gives a criminal defendant the right “to be confronted with the witnesses against him,” does not allow the mere presentation of a lab report to prove, say, that white powder found with a defendant was cocaine.

Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote the majority opinion in Melendez-Diaz, said there was only one reason to revisit the issue so quickly.

“Why is this case here except as an opportunity to upset Melendez-Diaz?” he asked. After a lawyer tried to answer what was a rhetorical question, Justice Scalia made his meaning plain: “I’m criticizing us for taking the case.”

I wrote about Melendez-Diaz last August. Ideas on how to reform the forensics system here.

CORRECTION: A spokesman from Houston PD called to say that the while fingerprint unit is part of the Houston Police Department, it is separate from the Houston Crime Lab. Apologies for the error.

This week, New York State’s inspector general issued a blistering critique of the state’s crime lab. The report came after a private accrediting organization found significant problems with one particular lab worker who had so little training that he couldn’t operate the microscope he was supposed to be using for hair and fiber analysis. Armed with a cheat sheet from a former supervisor, Gary Veeder managed to fake lab reports in criminal cases for 15 years. He killed himself last year.

A wayward crime lab worker who fakes his way into the job is one thing. A fraud who manages to stay on the job for 15 years is a symptom of mass institutional failure. And that’s the most disturbing part of the story. The institutional failure continued even after the embarrasing episode was exposed. From the New York Times:

…when the State Police became aware of the analyst’s misconduct, an internal review by superiors in the Albany lab deliberately omitted information implicating other analysts and suggesting systemic problems with the way evidence was handled, the report said. Instead, the review focused blame mostly on…Veeder…

Mr. Veeder’s allegations involving other lab workers were never part of the final report to the State Police’s internal affairs division. State Police investigators and the lab’s management “minimized and precipitously discarded the seriousness and extent of problems” at the lab, the inspector general’s report said.

It said that one State Police investigator, Keith Coonrod, mischaracterized Mr. Veeder’s responses implicating other lab scientists and skewed Mr. Veeder’s statements to give the impression that it was his incompetence — not widespread misconduct — that led to the problems.

The IG’s report, on the other hand, took direct aim at Veeder’s superiors, noting, “There exists no doubt that laboratory management possessed sufficient information that Veeder’s individual misconduct implicated potentially broader systemic issues, but failed to take appropriate action.” The lab’s director, George Zeosky, is still on the job. Assistant Director Richard Nuzzo—whom the report also accuses of intimidating another lab technician—was promoted to a position in the New York State Police Department’s internal affairs office. Which means the guy in part responsible for turning a blind eye to incompetence and misconduct in the state’s crime lab is now investigating other misconduct and incompetence within the department.

New York criminal defense attorney Scott Greenfield predicts the report will have no effect at all on the way New York judges treat crime lab reports.

Once the prosecution gets its results from the crime lab, everything after that is all a big joke.  The defense testing is viewed as a desperate grasping at straws, making life difficult for the cops and prosecution, and just another waste of time for the court.  Sure, judges will acknowledge that state crime labs have their issues, but the “real” problem is always in some other case, before some other judge.  Every judge believes that the lab results before him or her are routine.  There’s no problem here, counselor. Move along.

What makes scientific results different, however, is their conclusive affect on a judge and jury.  If the lab report says so, then so it is.  As much as judges and lawyers aren’t scientists, neither are most jurors.  We all bow to the god of science, even when we know that it’s not omnipotent.

So the state, at least the Inspector General, acknowledges that the State Police Lab, sucks.  Do you think there will be a single judge across the State of New York who refuses to admit a lab report into evidence as a result?  I don’t.  Not one.  Even if it was written in crayon.

The scandal in New York is yet another argument for several of the forensic reforms Roger Koppl suggested in a 2007 report for the Reason Foundation (publisher of Reason magazine and Reason.com). One is to send forensic evidence to private labs for testing and verification of the state crime lab’s results. Even if it’s only on every fourth or fifth or tenth case, as long as state lab technicians don’t know when they’re being checked, you eliminate the bias toward pleasing bosses and prosecutors. You also strengthen the incentive for accuracy.

And that’s the other incentive problem, here. The state crime lab is run by the state police. That isn’t a recipe for objective science. If you’re going to have a state forensics laboratory, it ought to be wholly independent of police agencies and prosecutors.

This episode is also further evidence of the importance of the Supreme Court’s decision earlier this year in Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, which established that the Constitution’s Confrontation Clause gives defendants the right to cross examine the authors of crime lab reports. That decision had prosecutors across the country raging, complaining about the costs and burdens they now face in making forensic experts available for court. The ruling may already be in jeopardy; the Court will hear arguments next year in a Virginia case that could limit its reach.

Somewhat related: The woman who took Melendez-Diaz all the way to the Supreme Court, where she unsuccessfully argued against a right to cross-examine forensic specialists, was Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley. Coakley is the Democratic nominee and heavy favorite in next month’s special election to replace Ted Kennedy in the U.S. Senate.

Jonathan Turley has the awful story of Sherry Sherret Robinson, a Canadian woman wrongly convicted in 1996 of killing her infant son due to the bogus testimony of a disgraced pathologist named Charles Smith. Robinson served a year in prison and was forced to give up custody of her other child.

Smith has since been exposed as a fraud. Robinson was finally exonerated this week by a court in Ontario. Her other son was given up to a foster family after her conviction, who has raised him for the last 13 years. She won’t get him back. She has asked only that he be told the truth about her.

Read Robinson’s blog here. Former Toronto Star reporter Harry Levy has been covering Charles Smith scandal on a blog devoted to Smith and other forensic nightmares.

Smith was a frequent witness in Canadian courts, commonly testifying for prosecutors in child death cases, where his testimony proved crucial in making homicides of deaths that could just as easily have been accidents. A disreputable pathologist can do incredible damage in these cases, since it’s usually his testimony that makes or breaks the case. Because the question isn’t who killed the child but whether the child was killed at all, there will never be DNA testing or new evidence to exonerate the suspect (of, for that matter, confirm his guilt). In U.S. courts at least, it’s extremely difficult to get a new trial without new evidence. Simply noting that an expert you had the opportunity to cross examine has since been shown to have given questionable testimony in other cases usually isn’t enough.

The big difference between the Charles Smith scandal and the Steven Hayne/Michael West forensic disaster I’ve been reporting on in Mississippi is that once questions arose about Smith’s competence, Ontario’s coroner launched an inquiry into Smith’s practices. That led to a wider inquiry ordered by Ontario’s government. The results of that inquiry are now being used to revisit cases where Smith’s testimony may have led to a wrongful conviction, like Robinson’s.

Mississippi state officials have ordered no such investigation. On the contrary, they’ve repeatedly insisted that any such inquiry isn’t necessary, and there’s no reason to question the prior work of the two doctors, despite their role in at least two wrongful convictions and the considerable and still accumulating evidence of their incompetence. The state did buckle to public pressure and finally fire Hayne last year, but as I reported earlier this year, now faces an effort by the state’s coroners, assisted by Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood, to bring him back. There are also two men currently on death row in Mississippi for murdering children in their care where, like Smith’s, Hayne’s testimony was critical to securing their convictions. In both cases, Hayne’s trial testimony has since been questioned by more reputable pathologists. Mississippi’s courts don’t seem to care. They’ve rejected appeals and post-conviction petitions from both men.

The integrity of the criminal justice system isn’t necessarily undermined by the fact that fraudulent experts and bad testimony occasionally creep into criminal trials. That’s going to happen. But when the courts and government learn of these problems and not only do nothing to address them, but actively engage in trying to cover them up, it’s time to start questioning the legitimacy of the entire system.

A local Mississippi newspaper describes the post-prison life of Tyler Edmonds, who was acquitted last year of killing his sister’s husband. Edmonds was 13 at the time of the murder, 15 when he was tried and convicted the first time. He was sentenced to life without parole. In 2007, his conviction was tossed out by the Mississippi Supreme Court, in part due to unscientific testimony from controversial medical examiner Steven Hayne.

Edmonds was tried again last year without Hayne’s objectionable testimony, and was acquitted.

One year after he heard a jury say, “Not guilty,” Edmonds has made a new life for himself.

He’s traveled.

He’s working and training to become an emergency medical tech.

And he’s moved with his dog, Bud, to his own place in Columbus.

Now, his biggest worry isn’t life without parole, it’s his Dec. 11 final exams at East Mississippi Community College and passing the national EMT certification…

This date last year, jury selection got under way in Oktibbeha County as Edmonds sat accused of helping his half-sister, Kristi, kill her husband.

Five days later, he heard the words that set him free.

It was almost surreal, he recalled, truly being out from under the total control of someone else.

“I really just didn’t know what to do,” he remembered. “Now, I have my life back.

“Now, I have direction and something to be proud of.”

As the weeks and months passed, Edmonds said he began to consider his future and knew more education was important.

Now that he’s completing his EMT training, he said he thinks he may undertake two years more to become a paramedic.

Via the NMissCommentor.

Over at Hit & Run, I have an update on the latest in the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, a possibly innocent man put to death by the state of Texas in 2004.

The story’s getting even weirder.

The L.A. Times editorializes for reforming the forensics system:

In 2006, Congress charged the National Academy of Sciences with studying the application of forensic science in the U.S. judicial system. Its findings, released last year, are grim. Almost every branch of forensics but DNA testing — hair and fiber analysis, arson investigations, comparisons of bite marks — lacks the extensive scientific research and established standards to be used in court conclusively…

In February, the science academy issued a report calling for Congress to create a national institute of forensic science, and there is more than enough evidence that one is desperately needed. As an independent agency, not part of the Justice Department, it would be charged with conducting research, setting national standards for forensic disciplines and enforcing those standards. Right now, standards vary wildly. An expert in San Diego, for example, might testify that a fiber is similar to one found at a crime scene, while an expert in San Bernardino might testify that a match is impossible to determine.

Advances in forensics have revolutionized the judicial system, aiding both prosecutors and defense attorneys, exonerating the innocent and confirming the guilty in ways that were impossible just a generation ago. The patchwork state of forensic science should not become an excuse to shy away from its use; rather, the nation should invest in the rigorous research required to standardize techniques and application.

I’m generally skeptical of the “blue ribbon panel” approach to public policy, but there are really two issues that need addressing here, and one of them could actually be addressed by the sort of federal agency the Times endorses.

That problem, as the Times explains, is setting a baseline for what sort of forensic evidence ought to be admitted at trial, and establishing what level of certainty a specialist should be permitted to convey to a jury about his conclusions. The faux science of matching bite marks left on skin to human teeth, for example, should never be admitted into evidence. There’s simply no science to support it. A fiber expert can convey important information to a jury, but should be required to accurately describe the limited evidentiary value of a fiber match. The other problem you see occurs when a forensics specialist testifies truthfully and accurately, but in closing arguments, a prosecutor (and less often, a defense attorney) will exaggerate the degree to which the expert’s testimony implicates or vindicates the defendant.

If a federal standards-setting agency can survey the latest scientific research to issue guidelines trial judges then use to determine what evidence should and should not be allowed, and that appeals courts can then consult when determining when improper or scientifically unsupported testimony was wrongly allowed into evidence or improperly exaggerated by a prosecutor in his closing—that all seems like a good thing. It seems unreasonable to expect a trial judge to keep up on the latest forensic and medical research. I don’t see much problem in having a government agency ensure that we’re using good science in criminal cases.

But the other problem with forensics is the bias—intentional and otherwise—and human error that creeps into crime lab work. A standards-setting federal agency isn’t going to be able to do much about the forensics specialist who gives testimony that falls within the parameters of the agency’s general guidelines, but was influenced, perhaps subtly, by the fact that he reports directly to the DA or state attorney general, or he’s a private specialist whose opinions might be influenced by who’s paying for his services.

That’s a problem that calls for the more comprehensive sorts of reforms that economist Roger Koppl recommended in a 2007 report for the Reason Foundation. Koppl and I also wrote a condensed version of his recommendations for Slate.

In the late 1990s, Harris County, Texas, medical examiner Patricia Moore was repeatedly reprimanded by her superiors for pro-prosecution bias. Yet she was still able to keep her position doing official autopsies for the county until 2002. In 2004, a statistical analysis showed Moore diagnosed shaken baby syndrome (already a controversial diagnosis) in infant deaths at a rate several times higher than the national average. Roger Koppl and I noted her case in recommending statistical analysis as one way of checking the integrity of state forensic specialists.

One woman convicted of killing her own child because of Moore’s testimony was freed in 2005 after serving six years in prison. Another woman was cleared in 2004 after being accused because of Moore’s autopsy results. In 2001, babysitter Trenda Kemmerer was sentenced to 55 years in prison after being convicted of shaking a baby to death based largely on Moore’s testimony. The prosecutor in that case told the Houston Chronicle in 2004 that she had “no concerns” about Moore’s work. Even though Moore’s diagnosis in that case has since been revised to “undetermined,” and Moore was again reprimanded for her lack of objectivity in the case, Kemmerer remains in prison.

Now another innocence claim has been filed in a case where Moore diagnosed shaken baby syndrome. According to the Chronicle, the Harris County Medical Examiner’s Office has “quietly rewritten” the results of a 1998 autopsy performed by Moore that was used to convict a nurse of killing a child in her care. The revision downgraded Moore’s homicide conclusion to an “undetermined” cause of death. So far, the prosecutors in that case are standing by their conviction.

According to the Chronicle, Moore today works for a private firm that performs official autopsies for six Texas counties.

Last June, I put up a post about a Mississippi cardiologist named Roger Weiner. Weiner moved to the Mississippi Delta town of Clarksdale from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1999. I had contacted Weiner because he was involved in a protracted court battle with controversial Mississippi medical examiner Steven Hayne. You can read about that battle at the link above.

Weiner is an outspoken guy. He not only gave me an on the record interview about Hayne and what he, Weiner, perceived to be Mississippi’s corrupt medical investigation system, he has also spoken out against the HMOs he says he came to the state to get away from. He was so disturbed by his experience with Hayne that he successfully ran for Coahoma County Supervisor. He also told me that though he’d never previously touched a gun in his life, after he was elected he felt compelled to keep a shotgun in his home, dryly explaining that, “Not everyone down here is happy about an East Coast Jew getting elected to county office.”

In May of this year, Weiner was arrested by five FBI agents at the improbably named Shady Nook gas station. The charge? Violating the federal Mann Act—a century-old law banning the transport of women across state lines for “immoral purposes.” Specifically, federal agents had posed as prostitutes on a chat room for a Memphis-based website called sugardaddyforme.com, a site aimed at pairing older wealthy men with young women.

The FBI claims Weiner agreed to pay agents posing as escorts to make the 80-mile trip from Memphis to Clarksdale to have sex with him. My sources in Mississippi told me at the time that unofficial word from the U.S. Attorney’s office was that more serious charges against Weiner were imminent. The implication was that he’d be indicted for child pornography, or soliciting sex a minor. But as weeks went by, those charges never came. All the women, or fake women, Weiner is accused of soliciting were of age (one agent posted as a 31-year-old).

Now the solicitation charges themselves are looking pretty weak, too. U.S. District Judge Neal Biggers recently threatened to toss the entire case against Weiner unless U.S. attorneys turned over the cell phone records they had been keeping from Weiner’s defense. As it turns out, there was a pretty good reason why the feds were keeping those records to themselves. It came out yesterday at Weiner’s hearing. The Mississippi blog NMissCommentor was there:

What happened here was that the F.B.I. had a “tip” that Dr. Weiner was somehow involved in child pornography on the site sugardaddy.com.  So they checked it out and discovered, nope, no child pornography there.  Case closed?  Nope, the F.B.I. then decided to run in some fake “sugarbabies”– agents masquerading as escorts– to try to lure Weiner into agreeing to meet them.  Some of the time, one of the agents playing “escort” was a guy!

Just to be clear:  Dr. Weiner never met one of these “women.”  Dr. Weiner never paid one of these “women” a dime.  Dr. Weiner even told the first would be escort,  Ginger (well, the agent or agents masquerading as Ginger), that there was “a difference between a sugar baby and a hooker, and I’m not interested in a hooker.”

According to a motion Weiner’s lawyer filed in federal court, federal prosecutors left this information out of the affidavit they filed to get a search warrant for Weiner’s home. The motion says “the Government knew when it applied for the search warrant that the defendant had already informed the Government agent that he was not interested in a hooker, wanted noting to do with a hooker, and the Government agent assured him that she was not a hooker.” If you’re going to arrest a man for soliciting prostitutes, it seems like it would be pretty important to include in your affidavit the fact that he specifically told an undercover agent he wasn’t interested in a prostitute. Of course, you’d then have no pretext to search his home for the really juicy stuff.

Back to the NMissCommentor:

This led the F.B.I. to run in a second fake sugar baby, Mary.  And, because masquerading Mary was in Mississippi during all the conversations with Dr. Weiner, there was no chance of her crossing a state line, the very essence of a Mann Act violation!  (The U.S. Attorney argues that, well, he meant for her to cross a state line, because she said she was in Memphis)…

…it gets even weirder.  Mary emailed the doctor that she was in Memphis on business, and would like to come down to see him.  He said nope, I’m on call and too busy.  She then asked how’s about tomorrow lunch.  He said don’t bother to come all the way just for me.  She then ventured– oh, I’ve got to drive back home from Memphis to Mobile, and can just pass through Clarksdale en route.  He said well all right, she got off the phone, and some brighter prosecution-side type thought–

–wait a minute, if she’s “going to drive home” and that’s why she’s “crossing state lines,” where’s the Mann Act violation!?

So she calls back to suggest, er, um, I’m not really going to Mobile at all, just coming to see you.  Shortly thereafter, five F.B.I. agents arrested Dr. Weiner at the Shady Nook north of Clarksdale.

Let me stress here that I have no evidence that the feds’ pursuit of Dr. Weiner is in any way related to his outspoken criticism of Steven Hayne and Mississippi’s death investigation system. But it sure seems like someone had a reason to . . . well, I’ll just defer to Judge Biggers, here:

Judge Biggers asked some pointed questions:  Why are they prosecuting him?   Judge Biggers also said, “Something is going on here that is not on the surface that they would bring in 3 government agents in contact with him over and over again.  When he didn’t express interest, they bring in another one.  Something is going on that is not evident.  Perhaps [U.S. Attorney] Mr. Roberts can explain it.”

Other comments from the bench:  “You’ve come a long way from the purpose of this statute in the bringing of this charge.”  “It took five F.B.I. agents…to arrest him?” (This drew a response from the prosecutor hemming and hawing about not being able to assume things just because the arrest involves a doctor and not second guessing the agents about safety).  And:  “This case seems like overload.”

It sure does. Let’s assume for a second that the feds’ pursuit of Weiner has nothing to do with his criticism of Hayne, the Coahoma County coroner, the medical establishment in Mississippi, or that it has any political motivation whatsoever. Let’s just look at it as a question of priorities. Because that’s troubling enough. Hayne and Michael West have been corrupting Mississippi’s justice system for 20 years, with little attention from the federal government. Yet the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s office have time to devote three agents and a team of prosecutors to invoke a century-old law against sex slavery to entrap a man who was using an Internet dating site to meet women.

Criminal defense attorney Matt Eichelberger has found an fascinating little document I haven’t yet seen in my reporting on Steven Hayne, Mississippi’s controversial, fallen, and possibly rising again, medical examiner.

To set up the document, a quick recap: By law, Mississippi is required to have an official state medical examiner. Hayne briefly held the position on an interim basis in the late 1980s, but was forced to step down when it was discovered that he wasn’t board certified in forensic pathology. State law requires certification in forensic pathology by the American Board of Pathology. Hayne took the certification exam in the mid-1980s, but failed it.

The state then hired a trio of reputable, qualified state examiners, all of whom eventually left the position in frustration after continually battling Hayne and his allies in the state’s coroner and DA offices. The last of the three, Emily Ward, left in 1995. The position has remained vacant since, leaving Hayne to do 80 to 90 percent of the state’s autopsies with no oversight.

Hayne is a doctor in private practice. Officially, he holds no position in Mississippi. Or at least he isn’t supposed to. Yet Hayne has testified in court a number of times that he is Mississippi’s “chief state pathologist,” a position that has no basis in state law.

The document Eichelberger explains where Hayne got that title. It’s a contract signed in 2006 between Hayne and the state’s then Commissioner of Public Safety, George Phillips. The contract essentially creates the uncompensated, non-position of “chief state pathologist,” and gives the title to Hayne. The position includes nearly all of the powers of the official state pathologist, save for the ability to make the rules other medical examiners are to follow while conducting official state autopsies. Given that Hayne was essentially the only game in town, and that he flagrantly violates the standards of his profession, Phillips probably found that portion of the law unnecessary.

To give Hayne the position outlined by state law would have required the legislature to eliminate the certification requirement, which probably would have attracted some negative attention. So Phillips just created a new position with most of the same powers and a similar title, and quietly bestowed it upon Hayne.

As Eichelberger points out, another interesting portion of the contract allows Hayne to conduct private autopsies at the modern, state-funded lab in Jackson at just $100 a pop. That worked out well for Hayne. For most of his career, he had been performing his all-night, marathon autopsy sessions in the basement of a funeral home owned by Rankin County Coroner Jimmie Roberts. Roberts and Hayne had a falling out in 2006. Some of my sources in Mississippi have wondered, and never been able to explain, how Hayne was able to move into the state facility despite not holding any official state position. Now we know.

It’s really pretty incredible to continue to discover the extraordinary lengths to which Mississippi officials have gone over the years—and continue to go—to keep Hayne on the witness stand.

Archive of my prior reporting on Hayne here.

A disturbing new report casts doubt on a recent execution in Texas.

In a withering critique, a nationally known fire scientist has told a state commission on forensics that Texas fire investigators had no basis to rule a deadly house fire was an arson — a finding that led to the murder conviction and execution of Cameron Todd Willingham.

The finding comes in the first state-sanctioned review of an execution in Texas, home to the country’s busiest death chamber. If the commission reaches the same conclusion, it could lead to the first-ever declaration by an official state body that an inmate was wrongly executed.

Indeed, the report concludes there was no evidence to determine that the December 1991 fire was even set, and it leaves open the possibility the blaze that killed three children was an accident and there was no crime at all — the same findings found in a Chicago Tribune investigation of the case published in December 2004.

Willingham, the father of those children, was executed in February 2004. He protested his innocence to the end…

Among Beyler’s key findings: that investigators failed to examine all of the electrical outlets and appliances in the Willinghams’ house in the small Texas town of Corsicana, did not consider other potential causes for the fire, came to conclusions that contradicted witnesses at the scene, and wrongly concluded Willingham’s injuries could not have been caused as he said they were.

The state fire marshal on the case, Beyler concluded in his report, had “limited understanding” of fire science. The fire marshal “seems to be wholly without any realistic understanding of fires and how fire injuries are created,” he wrote.

The marshal’s findings, he added, “are nothing more than a collection of personal beliefs that have nothing to do with science-based fire investigation.”

Beyler is the ninth forensic arson specialist to review the case. The other eight came to similar conclusions. The other major piece of evidence against Willingham was the testimony of a jailhouse informant who claimed Willingham confessed to him. Jailhouse snitch testimony tends to be a pretty common second piece of evidence in these stories. Funny how that works.

Willingham isn’t the most sympathetic figure. He was a career criminal, and at his trial witnesses testified to a number of disturbing statements and incidents, including one witness who said Willingham once beat his pregnant wife in an effort to cause a miscarriage.

Death penalty opponents have cast this latest report as proof that Texas executed an innocent man (I should note that after reading initial accounts of the report, I cast the case in a similar light on my Twitter feed). Upon reflection, I think a more accurate characterization would be to say that Texas executed a man who should never have been convicted. The Tribune’s description of the latest report doesn’t say the fire wasn’t caused by arson, it says there wasn’t enough evidence to conclusively say that it was, and that investigators failed to consider other causes.

None of which makes Willigham’s conviction and execution any less disturbing. His case is merely the latest example of the damage done by junk forensics that should never have been allowed in the courtroom—and of the failure of both the trial judge and the appeals courts in allowing it to stand.

My crime column for Reason this week looks at the unusual connection between the 1997 murder of a Scottish spinster, some embarrassing mistakes by a world-renown crime lab, and the FBI’s attempt to cover those mistakes up so as not to jeopardize the investigation into the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.

It’s an intriguing little story.

Jackson’s Clarion-Ledger picks up the story about the Mississippi coroners and DAs trying to bring back Steven Hayne.

A couple of interesting things here. First, Public Safety Commissioner Steve Simpson wouldn’t comment for the paper. When I spoke with him a few weeks ago about all of this, he was quite critical of the plan. Not sure why he’s not talking now.

The other item of note is that Hayne attorney Dale Danks actually admits in the article that Hayne isn’t board certified in forensic pathology. Hayne has maintained all this time, and has testified in court, that he is board certified in forensic pathology, just not by the American Board of Pathology. He told a Jackson TV station in October 2007 after my Wall Street Journal article came out that he “couldn’t remember” the name of the group that had certified him. Is Danks now conceding that every time Hayne has testified in court over the years that he is board certified in forensic pathology, he was lying?

The Mississippi legislature can undo all of this fairly easily. They merely need to pass a law revoking the old law. That would prevent Hayne’s return. I guess we’ll see what happens once they’re back in session.

Jackson station WLBT picks up my report about the Mississippi coroners’ effort to bring back Hayne.

Looks like the plan is moving ahead. Unbelievable.

Or, sadly, entirely believable.

So I guess the important thing here is that CNN is giving the Steven Hayne story national attention.

That’s great.

And I guess I shouldn’t dwell too much on the fact that CNN piggybacked on my three years of reporting without giving me even the slightest acknowledgment. Journalists who have been in the game far longer than I tell me this kind of thing happens all the time. Bigger outlets don’t really feel obligated to credit smaller ones for breaking stories.

Still. A little frustrating.

I’m fairly sure CNN didn’t just stumble into this story on its own. The network’s producers spoke with two of my sources who say CNN’s people explicitly told them that they found their names through my Reason pieces.

Oh well. If this focuses more national attention on Hayne, West, and the people victimized by them, all the better.

Just. You know. A little hat tip would be nice. That’s all.

My crime column this week is on the Melendez-Diaz case, and its uncertain future.

The Supreme Court ruled last term that prosecutors must make forensic experts available for cross examination if they’re going to admit the experts’ reports into evidence.

The ruling was important, but it may already be in trouble.

I’ll be on Supertalk Mississippi tomorrow morning at 8:05 ET. You can listen here.

Topic: My report on the Mississippi coroners trying to bring back Dr. Hayne.

The article has gotten some nice play down there. It was picked up by several TV stations across the state, and was also reprinted in the Jackson Free Press, Jackson’s alternative weekly.

This week, my crime column for Reason is an exclusive report from Mississippi, where believe it or not, the state’s coroners and prosecutors are mounting an insurrection to bring back Dr. Steven Hayne.

The only word I can conjure for all of this is shameless.

Popular Mechanics has a terrific cover story this month on the crumbling integrity of forensic science. Here’s a taste:

The scientific method is instrumental to our understanding of the physical world. To scientists, the process is sacrosanct: Research your topic, generate a hypothesis, test the hypothesis, analyze your data and then publish the results for peer review. Forensic science, however, was not developed by scientists. It was created by cops—often guided by little more than common sense—looking for reliable ways to match patterns from clues with evidence tied to suspects. What research has been done understandably focuses on finding new techniques for putting criminals in jail.

In the academic community the legal sciences get a comparative trickle of federal funding. In 2007, the National Institute of Justice awarded 21 grants for forensic research (excluding DNA) totaling $6.6 million; the National Institutes of Health awarded 37,275 grants totaling $15 billion. And without a wealth of statistically defensible research to back up their evidence, forensic examiners generally rely upon their own intuition and the experience of their colleagues. “You can’t take a few case studies and say, ‘Oh, it worked on these people; it must be reliable,’” says Karen Kafadar, an Indiana University statistics professor and a member of the NAS committee. “That is hardly a placebo-controlled, double-blind randomized trial.”

The article includes a skeptical look at four common forensic specialties, including fingerprint analysis, ballistic evidence, trace evidence, and biological evidence, and explains how none are as certain as they’re often portrayed in the courtroom.

For more on this, be sure to check out the paper Roger Koppl wrote for the Reason Foundation on how to introduce real scientific rigor to the forensic process, or the piece on the same topic that Koppl and I co-wrote for Slate.