by Matt Clarke
On July 19, 2017, the Maryland Office of the Public Defender released a video recording made by Baltimore Police Officer Richard Pinheiro's body-cam showing him planting drugs in a backyard then "discovering" them a few minutes later. Because of the video recording, a man who was held ...
by Matt Clarke
On August 4, 2017, prosecutors dropped criminal charges against two Harris County sheriff's deputies who publicly performed a body cavity search on a Black woman on June 20, 2015. This prompted her attorney, Sam Cammaack, to release a dash-cam video recording of the incident he calls "rape ...
by Matt Clarke
The parents of a North Dakota State College of Science student have filed a lawsuit against a deputy sheriff and the county he works for, alleging he used two arrests--for sales of marijuana totaling 3.3 grams – to bully their son into becoming a confidential informant, with ...
by Matt Clarke
A recent investigation by Reuters revealed that over 1,000 people died after being socked by Taser "conducted energy weapons." Tasers are marketed as a "non-lethal" alternative to firearms, but Reuters discovered that the Tasers' electroshock was listed as a cause or contributing factor in 153 of the ...
by Matt Clarke
In July 2017, the American Civil Liberties Union of South Dakota (ACLU) filed a lawsuit alleging law enforcement authorities in South Dakota forced catheters into four men, one woman, and a toddler to acquire urine samples for drug tests. Two of the men were willing to voluntarily ...
by Matthew Clarke
In the summer of 2017, the Houston Police Department announced that it was ending its longstanding practice of using $2 field test kits for drugs that had frequently been used to persuade defendants to plead guilty—even when they were innocent.
In December 2016, the Timothy Cole Exoneration ...
by Matt Clarke
Statistically, U.S. law enforcement agencies are the worst crime solvers in the Western world. According to official data, there are arrests for about one-eighth of burglaries, about one-third of rapes, and about two-thirds of murders. But official methods of reporting can distort and exaggerate murder clearance rates, ...
by Matt Clarke
A 2009 report by the National Academy of Sciences (“NAS”) criticizing the varying quality of crime labs throughout the nation and questioning the scientific basis of several forensic methods that were routinely used to convict criminal defendants led to the hope that enforceable standards would soon be developed for forensic labs and the scientific methods introduced in court validated. That hope has proven to be overly optimistic, as prosecutors across the nation continue to introduce forensic testimony that makes unproven claims based on invalidated and even disproven methods such as bite mark analysis, microscopic hair comparison, and bullet groove and tool mark comparison. Even the gold standard cited in the NAS report—DNA testing—has proven to be fallible when comparison of complex, multiple-donor crime scene samples depends upon the subjective interpretation of forensic technicians.
The problems with forensic tests themselves are daunting, but they pale in comparison to the problems caused by corrupt and inept crime lab technicians who have tainted tens of thousands of criminal cases in recent years. Even when the technicians do their job honestly and competently, some prosecutors put a spin on the results that is anything but scientific.
Bite Mark Analysis
One common ...
by Matt Clarke
On April 27, 2016, the Eighth Circuit held that an Arkansas state trooper was not entitled to qualified immunity when he failed to seek medical care for a man he arrested who was exhibiting obvious medical problems and found dead at a detention center a few hours ...
by Matt Clarke
On August 12, 2015, the Supreme Court of Connecticut ruled that to execute a person following the state legislature's prospective abolition of the death penalty would violate the state constitution's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
Eduardo Santiago was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in ...
