Roger Koppl wants competition:
How can we preserve the usefulness of forensic evidence while protecting the public when it breaks down? The core problem with the forensic system is monopoly. Once evidence goes to one lab, it is rarely examined by any other. That needs to change. Each jurisdiction should include several competing labs. Occasionally the same DNA evidence, for instance, could be sent to three different labs for analysis.
This procedure may seem like a waste. But such checks would save taxpayer money. Extra tests are inexpensive compared to the cost of error, including the cost of incarcerating the wrongfully convicted. A forthcoming study I wrote for the Independent Institute (a government-reform think tank) shows that independent triplicate fingerprint examinations in felony cases would not only eliminate most false convictions that result from fingerprint errors but also would reduce the cost of criminal justice if the false-positive error rate is more than 0.115%, or about one in a thousand.
Other reforms should include making labs independent of law enforcement and a requirement for blind testing. When crime labs are part of the police department, some forensic experts make mistakes out of an unconscious desire to help their "clients," the police and prosecution. Independence and blind testing prevent that. Creating the right to a forensic expert for the defense would help restore the imbalance in scientific firepower that too often exists between prosecution and defense. Private labs are subject to civil liability claims and administrative fines, giving them financial incentives to get it right.
Forbes also has a favorable editorial on Roger's argument, including a quote from our very own David Bernstein.
More importantly: What happens when you have a pool of 5 labs and one of them gets a reputation for delivering results favorable to the defense--i.e., strictest standards for positive proof, or they always include some statement about doubting the results. Can the prosecution "conveniently" choose to send their tests to the other 4 labs and ignore the one? Would there be an enforced randomness factor to determine which labs in the pool get the testing business? Does the defense have a right to demand the evidence is tested by more than three labs, or that the one specific lab be allowed to test it? (I know they could have their own experts look at evidence, but I'm talking about doing it on the taxpayer dime here.)
Where does this conclusion come from?
First off, how do you propose maintaining chain-of-custody with blind testing?
How exactly is the market for these "competing" labs supposed to work. I assume they are all going to be in the private sector. Do you have any idea how expensive it is to maintain a lab and the procedures to process evidence such that the results are admissable in court. The EPA has a lab certification program for environmental samples that may be subject to litigation, and the number of labs that participate is limited because the requirements are so stringent. Even then, labs have been caught cheating.
A small price to pay for convictions? I don't think so. Lab disagreement are Brady material and must be disclosed. Defense lab tests (In California) are also discoverable.
If there's too much discrepancy and the results cannot be reconciled or duplicated, then the evidence is not reliable and therefore inadmissible.
To response to Redlands' comment, John Grisham's non fiction book, The Innocent Man, recounts a specific example of this issue when a lab was tasked with hair analysis in a capital murder case. The "suspect's" hair samples were conveniently labelled to avoid confusion.
Later, the convicted defendant "underwent DNA testing that proved his innocence beyond a doubt. And on April 15, 1999, he was completely cleared of all guilt."
http://www.law.virginia.edu/html/news/2006_fall/grisham.htm
Blind test with multiple labs is minimal due process.
There are numerous cases of labs giving back the desired result not the correct result. I too am skeptical of Professor Zywicki's conclusion...but mostly the "unconscious" part.
I also have no problem at all with the defense being routinely allowed to test evidence itself at a separate laboratory, as long as proper protocols are maintained to protect the evidence and the chain of custody.
If you introduced competition among crime labs, how would they compete. Price would be one factor. Next to that, I think the customer would be most interested in the labs that got the "best" results. For prosecutors, the best results wouldn't necessarily be the most accurate, but the results that led to the most convictions. The converse would be true for the defense.
If, instead, you sent everything to a number of labs, you wouldn't be eliminating the problem of monopoly. You would just have a number of labs that each had a monopoly under the given procedure.
I assume you mean "Professor Koppl's conclusion"--as I have no conclusion!
Of course that's what I meant....
This same range of opinion may be available in many different tests. A competent lab person may be able to provide the investigator with something more than yes or no. So, the ability of the scientist performing the test and the investigators to communicate easily and honestly is very important.
Cops don't need lab results that rubber stamp pre-conceived notions. They need genuine factual data (to the degree that whatever test can provide factual data - as opposed to informed opinion). I can't deny that the quote may be accurate in some situations, but most investigators don't need hand-holding from a crime lab. They want test results which are independent of any bias. In my personal experience, when investigators found a lab tech who shaded results, that tech was not used any more.
Contrary to the beliefs of at least some posters, cops don't just saunter out of the donut shop and grab the first minority who wanders by to solve a crime. We actually try to put the correct bad guy in jail for the corresponding crime.