SAMANTHA BEE: Welcome back to the show.
Americans hold a number of favorite pastimes, baseball,
apple pie, baseball pie.
But perhaps the most treasured is the overdramatic police
procedural.
MEDICAL EXAMINER: Given the big fat medulla, I'd say canine,
and given its coarseness, I'd say it could be a poodle
or a Portuguese water dog.
SPECIAL AGENT: He's taking the blood
and organs from the bodies and putting
them in cylindrical containers.
MEDICAL EXAMINER 2: She left deep bite marks in his penis.
SAMANTHA BEE: We couldn't get the rights to the Law and Order
dun dun sound, but we could get the rights
to the Home Improvement grunt.
[GRUNT]
That was $45,000.
The portrayal of forensic science
is the foundation of police procedural shows
like CSI, CSI Miami, and CSI Six Flags Over Georgia.
The twist?
He does all the crimes himself.
But a watershed report from the National Academy of Sciences
in 2009 found little scientific backing for most forensics
methods other than DNA.
According to the National Registry of Exonerations,
"False or misleading forensic evidence
was a contributing factor in 2004
of all wrongful convictions nationally since 1989."
And yet, bad evidence from flawed forensics
is still admissible in court, not just
on TV but also in real life.
Let's start with blood pattern analysis, like the kind
you'd see on Dexter.
DEXTER: Now over here, you have nice, clean sprays of blood,
and that can only happen when you're holding something light
and moving quick.
Nice, sharp slices through the body.
No splashes.
No drips.
Clean and easy.
SAMANTHA BEE: Incidentally, clean and easy
was also my nickname in high school.
Although, I'm not sure why because neither was true.
The idea behind bloodstain analysis
is that if you can figure out how the blood splattered,
you can essentially reverse engineer the crime.
You can also use it to tell if the victim
was being way too dramatic.
In 1986, a Texas man was convicted of murdering his wife
based largely on the analysis of a few drops
of blood found on a flashlight.
After spending more than 30 years in prison,
a forensic commission found that the evidence used against him
was not scientifically supported.
That's because blood is literally thicker than water
and far more complex.
As soon as it leaves a human body,
blood begins to cool and thicken while also
warping under the combined influence of gravity and air.
And that's all before it even lands
on a surface, which has its own properties that can affect
the impressions left behind, just
like Dexter affected our impressions of serial killers.
I used to think they were bad, but now I think, hey,
the hot ones are all right.
Another area of pattern analysis that's basically
just something out of Dick Wolf's wet dreams
is fire pattern analysis a.k.a.
arson investigation.
SPECIAL AGENT 2: I want to set a dormitory on fire.
Where would I start?
In the basement.
SPECIAL AGENT 3: The timer sets the road
flare, which then lights the chemical mixture
inside the canister.
Simple.
This guy doesn't go on dates.
He doesn't go to parties.
He doesn't feel comfortable in front of groups.
SAMANTHA BEE: That doesn't narrow anything down.
That description matches 2/3 of guys in college
and 3/3 of the guys I dated in college.
Historically, "most arson investigators
were former police officers or firefighters with little
or no scientific training.
And many relied "on now discredited techniques"
like "window 'crazing' in which cracks supposedly indicate
rapid heating caused by arson."
They don't.
Those cracks are just caused by rapidly cooling temps when
firefighters spray water on the fires,
unlike the rapidly rising temps when firefighters
spray water on each other.
But of all the pattern matching disciplines,
bite analysis has been singled out
for especially harsh criticism.
One study even found that in all but a few cases
bite experts couldn't agree on whether or not they
were looking at a bite at all.
As my close personal friend Ice-T would say,
"That's messed up."
But forensic science isn't necessarily any better even
when it's done inside a lab.
And not just because of all the medical examiners eating
sandwiches right next to dead bodies,
I mean, talk about your finger sandwiches,
it turns out hair matching is as pointless as Mandy
Patinkin yelling, "Enhance" at grainy surveillance footage.
REPORTER: Microscopic hair analysis
was thought of as cutting edge science,
even though there was no way to scientifically identify
a match before DNA testing.
SUBJECT: It's not science to visually examine something
and say they're the same.
That's not science.
That's subjectivity.
REPORTER 2: In the cases reviewed,
FBI testimony about hair evidence
was scientifically invalid 95% of the time.
SAMANTHA BEE: It makes sense that the FBI would be
so wrong about hair evidence.
Not one of them has a cool haircut.
I've never seen an FBI agent with a mohawk
or pigtails or a Rachel.
Not one.
Finally, there's fingerprinting, the money
shot of police procedurals.
But just like a money shot when you look closer,
it blows up in your face.
SUBJECT 2: Fingerprint examiners have been taught that there's
only one person in the world who could
have left this fingerprint.
There's no scientific basis for that.
SUBJECT 3: Parts of a fingerprint
can be so similar it's possible for two people
to be identified to one latent print.
INTERVIEWER: How do you decide it's a match?
SUBJECT 4: At some point, you are examining this evidence
and based on your training and experience,
you make a leap of faith.
SAMANTHA BEE: Hey man.
When I want my faith mixed with my science,
I'll listen to my pastor.
Tell me more about how Moses lived with dinosaurs.
The problems with many of these forensic techniques
stem from the fact that most were invented by people
in law enforcement, largely outside
of the scientific community.
In fact, most were developed by this guy.
He doesn't just take a bite out of crime.
He takes a taste of literally every drug he confiscates.
That dog doesn't chase squirrels.
He chases the dragon.
But hey, now that we know this is all junk science we can just
stop doing it move on, right?
No, unfortunately, we haven't.
The law relies on precedent, so judges often
feel bound by a previous court decisions about what
evidence is admissible.
So if other courts have allowed the testimony, of, say
forensics scab tasters, then it's fair game for other courts
to allow it too.
"Scab Tasters" is also the name of the newest show on TLC.
It will definitely beat this show in every demographic.
The use of junk forensic science has
very real life consequences.
Hundreds of convictions have been overturned
after new evidence came to light,
but tragically, many of the wrongly accused
had already spent decades of their lives in prison,
or worse, they received the death penalty.
These are the stories that police TV shows don't tell,
and the system is producing more victims all the time.
But there are ways we can fix things,
like requiring actual qualifications for experts.
INTERVIEWER: There's no national organization that you could
go to say, is this expert--
what's their track record?
JENNIFER MNOOKIN: No, there's no national organization
for that at all.
INTERVIEWER: For any of the forensic sciences?
JENNIFER MNOOKIN: As far as I know.
I've heard it said that there's more licensing
requirements for your hairdresser
than for forensic scientists.
SAMANTHA BEE: Well, that answers a lot of questions I had
about the Phil Spector trial.
We could also reform the system by following
the lead of the most progressive state in the country, Texas.
Texas monitors the reliability and integrity of
forensic science used in court.
And some cities have set an example
by having forensic labs independent from law
enforcement.
And Texas is one of only seven states
that allow wrongfully convicted people
to get back into court based on discredited forensic evidence.
I'm sorry, can we just make sure this isn't some other Texas
that we're talking about?
Like the country didn't like a new Texas
or a North Texas or something?
No?
OK.
Look, real life isn't TV, which is
unfortunate because TV's fun.
I mean, except for this show of course.
We've won Bleakest Comedy five years in a row
at the Depressed People's Choice Awards.
We all know the system will never be as strong and healthy
as Christopher Meloni's butt, but we
should at least try to achieve that kind of perfection.
To make our justice system truly just,
we need more oversight on forensic science,
better standards, and an appeals process
that takes into account discredited science
and new evidence.
But you know it's not discredited?
That ass.
We'll be right back.