The issue I will be addressing for my Civic Issues is the use of forensic evidence in the court room and the way it is presented. Over the years many pieces of evidence such as dental analysis were thought to be infallible and proof of guilt. However we now know that dental evidence isn’t bullet proof. Using forensic science improperly or saying it is without error can cause massive problems within the justice system that the jury should be aware of. Up to 24% of exonerees were convicted using improper forensic evidence. Up 23% of homicide cases have used improper or misleading forensic evidence to gain a conviction.

As of 2020 six states have laws that allow people to retrial based on if evidence used to convicted them has been discredited. Those states are Texas, California, Connecticut, Wyoming, Michigan and Nevada. Even then some of theses have time limits such as only allowing the retrial to take place if the conviction happened 2 years ago or less. Now how are people who are innocent that were convicted on discredited forensic evidence a decade ago going to see justice?

I fully believe this is an inadvertent cause. I believe that is an inadvertent cause because as a society we like to believe in science and analysis. For us this is mostly how we make sense of the world, by looking for patterns and causes and effects. So when someone who was murdered has a bite mark and some else says that another person has the same dental pattern it makes sense. Our brains see x and y and link it up. The same goes with finger prints. Finger prints are good for identifying people however they are not accurate enough to be used as good evidence in court. Yet the public perception of it says otherwise. On crime shows finger print evidence is seen as 100% someone was at the crime and committed it.

Now how do we fix this problem? As while finger prints have lead to false convictions they also have lead to people being exonerated. Where do we draw the line for what we can and can’t use in a court as evidence? I think the we should do more in-depth research about evidence types before it can be used in a court and every 5 to 10 years look at every type of evidence allowed in a court room. This way evidence types that are misleading or false (like dental) will be removed and new misleading evidence types will have a harder time or ideally be prevented for being used in court. This would also catch any types of misleading evidence types that slipped through upon first examination.

I also think that we need to use “capacity builders” or educating the public to help this problem. By educating the public about how some forensic analysis might not be all that infallible. I remember when I was younger seeing all these crimes shows looking for finger prints and if they had a finer print lining it up to try and catch the bad guy. They acted like this was the only piece of proof they needed to put someone behind bars. For years I thought this was the case until I learned that finger prints analysis wasn’t great and wasn’t all that accurate. I only learned that cause I had an interest in the criminal justice flied. I think that more people need to be aware of this not only to help prevent false convictions but to help exonerate innocent people currently sitting in jail.

Not everything presented in court is done to find the truth. Some people just want to convict who ever is on the stand for whatever reason is going through their head whether that be through prejudges or just wanting to be done with the case. They might use evidence that generally public thinks is accurate and acceptable to try and convict someone knowing that it has it’s faults. By putting more effort to bar misleading evidence from the court room and by educating the public I believe that we can stop this plague of misleading proof and lies from entering the court room, convicting innocent people, and tainting our justice system.