Understatement

            The FBI has “admitted flaws in hair analysis”, according to the headline of an article in the Washington Post last weekend in what may be the most fantastical understatement ever; in plainer language, almost every examiner in their ‘elite’ unit gave testimony that was A. favorable to prosecutors and B. exaggerated wildly.

            While it doesn’t mean that every case they testified in resulted in a wrongful conviction, it does mean that the justice system willingly allowed false testimony about an infinitely disprovable forensic science. If they are willing to fake hard, physical evidence on such a massive scale, how can anyone not doubt the myriad cases decided on nothing more than words?

            Hair matching, bite analysis, DNA exclusion, these are pillars of the justice system, and yet each has been revealed to be far, far less accurate than anyone could have imagined. Doubts about some of these disciplines have existed for years and yet prosecutors continue to use them to win cases. How could one even begin to study whether or not an expert witness was overstating their feelings, their experience, or their capabilities? It would be impossible.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2015/04/fbi_s_flawed_forensics_expert_testimony_hair_analysis_bite_marks_fingerprints.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/fbi-overstated-forensic-hair-matches-in-nearly-all-criminal-trials-for-decades/2015/04/18/39c8d8c6-e515-11e4-b510-962fcfabc310_story.html

Gag Order

So, this happened:

“4. Offenders are prohibited from maintaining active social media accounts for the purposes of soliciting, updating, or engaging others, through a third party or otherwise.”

TDCJ has made it a punishable offense for anyone to maintain a social media account in the name of an inmate; Although they cannot punish the individual maintaining the account, they are more than happy to take it out on the prisoner.

I’m not sure how this will affect the blog, if at all. It is definitely not being run in Carlos Coy’s name, although I suppose some might argue that it’s being done on his behalf. I’m going to look into this a bit more, and I encourage you to do the same. If you have friends or family currently incarcerated, be careful. The updated Offender Handbook is available for download in English and Spanish here: http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/info_families.html

http://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2016/04/ban-on-surrogate-social-media-for.html

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/04/14/criminal-justice-department-banning-inmates-social/

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/texas-prison-system-unveils-new-inmate-censorship-policy

Satanic Panic

Dan and Fran Keller are a couple convicted in the 90's of sexually assaulting multiple children in their care; I've mentioned them here before, but the details of the testimony against them are mind-boggling. Their convictions were vacated and they were released from prison in 2013, but the state of Texas has yet to declare them 'actually innocent'.

They are still working on compensation from the state. The Intercept has a really good synopsis of the case, along with an overview of Conviction Integrity Units across the country; check it out here: https://theintercept.com/2016/04/08/convicted-of-a-crime-that-never-happened-why-wont-texas-exonerate-fran-and-dan-keller/

Flake-out

No post today.