Above: Joanna Grivetti, crime scene investigator in the homicide division of the Richmond, California, police department, inspects a vehicle in which a young man was shot in the back of the head during a drive-by shooting on March 9, 2012.
Monday, April 16, 2012
From the courtroom to the living room (thanks to the hit television series “CSI”), forensic science is king. Expertise on fingerprints, ballistics and bite mark analysis are routinely called on to solve the most difficult criminal cases — and to put the guilty behind bars. But how reliable is the science behind forensics?
A FRONTLINE investigation finds serious flaws in some of the best-known tools of forensic science and wide inconsistencies in how forensic evidence is presented in the courtroom. From the sensational murder trial of Casey Anthony and the FBI’s botched investigation of the Madrid terrorist bombing to capital cases in rural Mississippi, FRONTLINE documents how a field with few uniform standards and unproven science can undermine the search for justice.
Above: How reliable is the science behind forensics? FRONTLINE finds serious flaws in some of the best-known tools of forensic science and wide inconsistencies in how forensic evidence is presented in the courtroom.
Video
Can Unconscious Bias Undermine Fingerprint Analysis?
Above: In 2004, cognitive neoroscientist Itiel Dror set out to examine whether the process of fingerprint analysis, long considered one of the most reliable forms of forensic science, can be biased by the knowledge examiners have when they attempt to find a match for prints from a crime scene. In the clip above from the film "The Real CSI," FRONTLINE correspondent Lowell Bergman explains the way Dror constructed an experiment using the case of Brandon Mayfield.
Above: In "Post Mortem," FRONTLINE correspondent Lowell Bergman reports the results of a joint investigation with ProPublica, NPR, and the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley.
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