Science Thursday

The U.S. Supreme Court considers another case about a defendant’s right to confront forensic scientists on the stand, and San Francisco officials face allegations that they deliberately mislead state inspectors who were investigating the city’s crime lab. Here’s a roundup of this week’s forensics news:

For the third time in four years, the U.S. Supreme Court will

consider how laboratory report

s should be presented in criminal courts. This time, the issue is whether a state can allow an expert witness to testify about the results of DNA testing conducted by

another analyst who has not appeared

as a witness at the trial.

A controversial new DNA interpretation method was accepted in a UK court.


 

A secret court transcript implicates the San Francisco Police Department and the District Attorney’s Office in deliberately attempting to hide problems in the city’s troubled crime lab.

A North Carolina man whose conviction was based on the testimony of a discredited State Bureau of Investigation blood spatter analyst may receive a new trial.

The FBI opened a New Mexico Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory to allow local law enforcement to access the FBI’s high-tech digital forensic investigation tools.

An opinion piece in the Hartford Courant argues that insufficient resources, not the scientists, are to blame for a Connecticut crime laboratory’s problems.