Legislators and Criminal Justice Experts Push for Advanced Forensic Programs for States

 When Kenneth Ireland was wrongfully convicted of murder in Connecticut in 1988, he sat in jail for 21 years.

DNA evidence brought last year by the Connecticut Innocence Project - a part of the office of the State of Connecticut Public Defender Services - eventually proved that another man actually committed the murder, and Ireland was released in August.

But Connecticut isn't the only state that's turning toward forensic science to improve its criminal justice system.

Indeed, more states in the Northeast could benefit from DNA tests to exonerate the wrongfully convicted, as well as to catch criminals who had previously escaped conviction, criminal justice officials said.

In 1999, McKinley Cromedy of New Jersey was exonerated for an attack on a woman in 1992, after DNA evidence proved him innocent, for example.  And in 2007, Anthony Capozzi, a Buffalo resident, was exonerated of rape after spending 20 years in jail. DNA tests in March 2007 showed that another man had instead committed those crimes.

Many of these cases were handled by the Innocence Project, a non-profit legal clinic affiliated with the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University in New York.

Improving and regulating more forensic research in criminal justice cases can aid law enforcement officials and enhance homeland security, according to "Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward," a report released by the National Academy of Sciences.

"It is clear that change and advancements, both systematic and scientific, are needed in a number of  forensic science disciplines to ensure the reliability of work, establish foreseeable standards and promote best practices with consistent application," the report said.

Criminal justice experts agree.  

"There's an increased awareness that policing is more of a scientific understanding than how we thought about it 50 years ago," Peter Neufeld, the co-director for the Innocence Project said during a presentation at CSG Justice Center's Board of Directors Meeting, during CSG/ERC's 49th Annual Meeting in Vermont in August. Neufeld created the Innocence Project with attorney Barry Scheck in 1992.

Advances in DNA testing and forensic science have made it easier for law enforcement officials to free wrongfully-convicted people from jail, as well as to solve previously unsolved criminal cases, according to the National Academy of Sciences report.

"Over the last two decades, advances in some forensic science disciplines, especially the use of DNA technology, have demonstrated that some areas of forensic science have great additional potential to help law enforcement identify criminals," the report said. "Many crimes that may have gone unsolved are now being solved because forensic science is helping to identify the perpetrators."

According to the National Academy of Sciences report, there are "serious deficiencies" in the country's forensic science system, including underfunded or understaffed forensic laboratories and too few mandatory certification programs for forensic scientists.

"Much research is needed not only to evaluate the reliability and accuracy of current forensic methods but also to innovate and develop them further," Constantine Gatsonis, professor of biostatistics and director of the Center for Statistical Sciences at Brown University said in a release about the report.  "An organized and well-supported research enterprise is a key requirement for carrying this out."

States in the Northeast are seeing the benefits of forensic research on their criminal justice systems.

Vermont State Senator Richard Sears introduced a bill early this month requiring  law enforcement agencies to make video or audio recordings of custodial interrogations of criminal suspects, as well as create a forensic laboratory oversight commission, for example.

"Some of the keys are the preservation of evidence, working with prosecutors as well as the Innocence Project," said Sears, who is also chairman of CSG's Criminal Justice Advisory Board. "But also the idea that if you've throwing the wrong person in jail that means that the guilty person is still out there committing crimes."