The FBI's Worst Hair Days

An article by Spencer Hsu in yesterday's Washington Post suggests that the FBI lost a tug of war within the Justice Department. In 201...

A Long Shot Pays Off in Long Island

A family member shouted “we love you” as police took John Bittrolff back to jail. A court in Long Island had just ordered him held without b...

Looking Backwards: How Safe Are Fingerprint Identifications?

Yesterday , I explained why the frequency with which factors like confessions are found in cases of wrongful convictions does not measure th...

Looking Backwards: How Prevalent Are False Confessions?

Studies of false convictions are tremendously important. They can rebut complacent assumptions that such things never happen, and they can s...

Up in Smoke: 5 Million Neonatal Blood Samples Incinerated

Originally posted: Double Helix Law Blog , Mar. 15, 2010 An effort to avoid the pointless destruction of the millions of Guthrie cards maint...

A Texas Tall Tale of “DNA Deception”

Originally posted: Double Helix Law Blog , Mar. 4, 2010 A “non-profit, nonpartisan public media organization,” the Texas Tribune broke a re...

Stopping a Defendant from Using a DNA Database Trawl to Blame Someone Else in Diggs v. State

A violent burglary and robbery of two unsavory characters in their apartment near Rockville, Maryland, led to felony charges against two men...

Judge Richard Posner on DNA Evidence: Missing the Trees for the Forest?

In the cornucopia of court opinions, errors in the description of statistical concepts are a dime a dozen. Most never see the light of day. ...

The Constitutionality of DNA Collection Before Conviction: An Updated Scorecard

Note : This posting updates previous ones. It is current as of July 17, 2014. Seventeen years ago, Louisiana adopted a law mandating that &...