Grisham gives lawmakers a lesson in forensics

BEST-SELLING crime author John Grisham told lawmakers that faulty science is all over the US justice system, and urged nationwide improvements to forensic techniques.

“It is time to clean up the bad science,” said Grisham, who serves on the board of the Innocence Project, a group that works to exonerate wrongly convicted people mainly through using DNA evidence. The project has helped 280 such victims to date.

“Faulty science is rampant in American courtrooms. It is procured by prosecutors, often well meaning, it is tolerated by judges, offered by experts and considerably believed by jurors in good faith,” Grisham told the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.

Common problems include improper eyewitness identification, poor forensic techniques, false confessions, false testimony from jailhouse informants, bad defence lawyering, and misconduct by police and prosecutors, he said.

A number of techniques popular in television crime shows — like analysis of bite marks, soil, hair and fibres — do not stand up to scientific rigor. About half of all wrongful convictions are due to “bad forensic science”, he added.

“It is still happening today... with tragic results,” Grisham said.

The committee’s central recommendation was to create a national agency to oversee forensic science.

Smaller steps could be taken, such as replacing coroners — who are often locally elected officials and small-time politicians — with scientifically trained medical examiners.

Terry Fenger, director of the Forensic Science Center at Marshall University in West Virginia, said 1,500 forensic analysts have trained at his centre since 2005, and urged a nationwide system of accreditation along with a doctoral degree for forensic experts.

Grisham, whose nonfiction book The Innocent Man recounts the saga of a wrongly convicted man who is finally set free, said: “You have got to leave the science in the hands of the scientists. Not the lawyers, not law enforcement.”

At one point in the hearing, Senator Amy Klobuchar asked: “Mr Grisham, have you seen any ideas for books in this discussion here? Maybe you could do a thriller on the very slow process to get things done?”

“Well, everything is fair game for a book,” he replied.