Grits for Breakfast points to developments in a civil trial filed against the Houston Crime Lab, one notorious for bad practices and misconduct.

John Terzano of the Justice Project blogs on TPM Muckraker with more details about the case:

A trial is now underway in Rodriguez’s civil lawsuit against the City of Houston, and the city is claiming that there was nothing it could have done to prevent the misconduct of their lab analyst, whose lie led to Rodriguez’s wrongful conviction…

This argument is very troubling because it ignores the tragic history of mistakes and misconduct within the Houston Police Department’s crime lab. Independent research conducted in 2007 found that the crime lab repeatedly incorrectly tested DNA samples, and in some cases, made up the results without actually testing the evidence. It was also discovered that serology work, the same type of forensic evidence used against George Rodriguez, was not properly performed in over four hundred cases. With a history of producing flawed and inaccurate analysis, it is little wonder that the problems of the Houston crime lab led to the false testimony of the crime lab analyst. (emphasis added)

There’s a frustrating paradox – and a saddening reality – inherent in forensic science, and it’s this: that for all of the power of scientific analysis, people are still people. Our faith in forensic science can only be as strong as our confidence in the methods employed by the fallible scientists themselves. Oversight, accountability, and independence are critically necessary for – in fact, they’re precursors to – a reliable institution of forensic science.

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