NCIP Legal Director Linda Starr interviewed with 1350 KSRO Newstalk of Sonoma County on Tuesday morning to explicate upon the Justice Department and FBI’s recent acknowledgment that for over a two-decade period before 2000, almost all examiners in an elite…
Han Tak Lee, 79, was released Friday after spending 24 years behind bars in a Pennsylvania prison for a wrongful arson-murder conviction. A federal judge ruled this month that the conviction was based on faulty fire science and ultimately overturned…
It was a dreary morning on Treasure Island on Thursday, August 14th, 2014, as a group of curious public defenders, detectives, and prosecutors came together for arson investigator Paul Bieber’s showcase event: a live burn of two furnished mockups, one…
California Senate Bill 1058, which would help exonerate innocent men and women who have been wrongfully convicted of crimes, is headed to Governor Jerry Brown’s desk. Authored by Senator Mark Leno, the legislation would allow a judge to overturn a wrongful…
This month, the Department of Justice ordered the continuation of a massive reinvestigation of thousands of criminal cases from the 1980s and 1990s that most likely include flawed forensic testimony from an FBI unit. The FBI post-conviction review started in…
Kevin Martin spent 26 years behind bars for a wrongful murder conviction until a Washington D.C. Superior Court judge exonerated him on Monday, citing new DNA evidence that ultimately proved Martin’s innocence. In 1982, 19-year-old Ursula C. Brown was abducted,…
Faulty fire science has contributed to another wrongful conviction. Louis Taylor, who spent 42 years in prison wrongfully convicted of setting a hotel fire in 1970 that killed 29 people in Tucson, Arizona, was released last Tuesday. New methods of…
A Texas court reversed Ed Graf’s murder and arson convictions this week after experts determined that the science used to convict Graf was likely faulty. While the court declined to issue a finding of actual innocence, it did say, “False…
Congressional lawmakers have proposed legislation that would create federal grants to establish forensic science standards in an effort to reduce wrongful convictions. The Forensic Science and Standards Act is sponsored by Sen. Jay Rockefeller and Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson. The…
An Alameda County Grand Jury has found serious problems with the Oakland Police Department’s (OPD) crime lab. The report details a huge backlog of evidence waiting to be tested, inadequate facilities, and a severe staffing shortage. In 2011, the Forensics…
