Exclusive Interview with the Hon. Judge Wool:
Appellate Squawk: Judge, I understand you were a prominent member of the National Commission on Forensic Science asking some tough questions about the validity of these cop-created sciences.
Judge Wool: I was, but now I’m back to selling pencils outside the courthouse. Our “make-America-great-again” regime replaced us with a law enforcement outfit headed by a prosecutor. The Justice Department has dissed our work as “efforts in the courtroom and elsewhere to reject reliable and admissible forensic evidence.”
A-S: But how can they ignore the National Academy of Science report, the PCAST report and the Innocence Project’s embarrassing revelations of wrongful convictions caused by forensic so-called science?
Judge Wool: Same way the courts manage to ignore them. Cops are still testifying to “a reasonable degree of ballistic certainty” that a squashed piece of lead could only have been fired from the defendant’s gun. Or to a reasonable degree of inkpad certainty that a smudgy partial print matches the defendant. As for those trained seals from the Medical Examiner’s Office babbling about how no one in a bajillion gazillion planets except the defendant has the same 3 alleles as those found on the gun, don’t get me started –
A-S: Are you saying courts don’t understand science?
Judge Wool: They understand that science is the enemy of law. Courts wouldn’t last a day if they were held to the same standards as science. For example, imagine a clinical test where everybody knew whether they were taking the drug or the placebo.
A-S: It wouldn’t prove anything. The subjects would be influenced by what they knew.
Judge Wool: Even if they promised under oath not to be influenced? What if they were experienced testees who could be presumed not to be biased by what they knew?
A-S: Why, that’s just like having the same judge do the trial who did the suppression hearing! Or who knows the defendant’s criminal record.
Judge Wool: Exactly. And what if experimental results were considered final and could never be retested because the first experimenter saw and heard the experiment?
A-S: Well –
Judge Wool: Or because the experimenter was a senior scientist? Or swore on the Bible that the results were accurate?
A-S: Science would still be in the Middle Ages.
Judge Wool: Just like the law.
h/t to Adina Schwartz, firearms & toolmarks skeptic for “to a reasonable degree of ballistic certainty.”
Oh boy! Welcome back hair comparisons, tool marks and teeth bites. I plan to become an expert on crime scene astrology.
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They should definitely rearrange the system – need an unbiased leader of law enforcement = no prosecutors! Not sure where we’d find that but..
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We nominate Alex Bunin, crime scene astrology expert.
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Robbers are typically Scorpios.
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Therefore, all Scorpios are typically robbers.
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It’s a tricky relationship, science and law. As a coworker of mine said, science is about improving our approximation of the truth, law is about making a decision. You kinda hope those two are related, but…
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We’d say law is about making a decision and claiming it’s God’s unalterable truth. . .
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