Forensic Science and Wrongful Convictions

Abstract

An edited volume on the subject of wrongful convictions published prior to 1990 might not have had a chapter on forensic science. Certainly forensic science has been cited as a contributor to miscarriages of justice since as long ago as the Dreyfus case. But, until the last couple of decades forensic science has tended to take a back seat in discussions of miscarriages of justice, compared to other issues like eyewitness identifi cation, perjury, offi cial misconduct, and interrogation practices (Roberts & Willmore, 1993, p. 1). Although the earliest U.S. study of miscarriages of justice mentioned “[t]he unreliability of so-called ‘expert’ evidence” as a contributor to wrongful convictions (Borchard, 1942, p. xix), most of the early U.S. studies which attempted systematically to identify causes of wrongful conviction discussed eyewitness identifi cation; false confessions; police and prosecutorial misconduct; bad lawyering; race; failures of the discovery process; and public pressure for a conviction, but made scant mention of forensic science (e.g., Frank & Frank, 1957; Huff, Rattner, & Sagarin, 1996; Radin, 1964). Radelet et al. (1992, pp. 141, 253) was a notable exception, discussing the use of misrepresented serology and hair evidence to leverage false confessions and misleading medical examiner testimony.