AN EMERGENCY IN AMERICA’S JUSTICE SYSTEM. Today is Law Day, a suitable time for calling attention to a very important crisis in our system of justice. This article by Spencer S. Hsu in the Washington Post (April 18) states the problem:
“The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000.”
Forensic evidence carries a great deal of weight with juries. There are a lot of people serving time in jail right now whose trials were affected by these errors. There is an urgency to addressing these issues.