Attorney Mahoney has worked with some of the very best forensic experts available, including Cyril Wecht, M.D. (regarded as the best pathologist in the country), Brian Pape, Ph.D. (perhaps the best toxicologist in the country), David Benjamin, Ph.D. (a nationally recognized pharmacologist/toxicologist), and Georgia Pasqualone, (a crime scene reconstructionist and medical expert growing in national stature).
Governor Mitt Romney wanted to re-institute the death penalty here in Massachusetts. Romney argued that the advancements in forensic techniques make it extremely unlikely that an innocent man could be convicted for a crime he did not commit. Many criminal prosecutions rely not on forensics, but eyewitness accounts, confessions and snitches. Eye-witness testimony, while compelling evidence for juries is dismissed by experts as highly unreliable. Detectives have wrung hundreds of “confessions” from innocent men (see False Confessions articles). Least reliable of all, of course, is the self-serving testimony of the snitch, who would not only sell his mother down the river, but he’d send her C.O.D.
And what of those prosecutions based on “sound” forensic techniques? Can we not, as a society, say with assurance that crime lab experts, with no stake in the matter, provide us today with mistake free evidence? Hardly. In 1993, a jury convicted Christina Martin of 1st degree murder for poisoning the victim with LSD. Ms. Martin, at that time, was represented by another lawyer. Unfortunately for Ms. Martin, Commonwealth experts not only sat on super-reliable toxicology testing the exonerated her, but perjured themselves to obtain the conviction by misrepresenting unreliable toxicology testing that they themselves had discredited with further testing. It took Attorney Mahoney eight years to undo this injustice. The government’s forensic experts are part of the government team and many are team players.
Like other types of evidence, forensic evidence is not “black and white.” Instead, it is mostly grey, at times contradicted by competing testing methodologies, always at risk for collection inadequacies and contamination, and rarely free of conflicting interpretations. Testimony from a fingerprint “expert” is, for instance, nothing more than an educated guess by a police officer utilizing a standardless methodology – which is to say, no methodology at all. It is irresponsible for Governor Romney to argue that forensic evidence so irrefutably proves guilt that we can, without hesitation, allow our government to put to death our fellow citizens.
Articles on various forensic specialties, investigatory techniques, and testing are included here as a public service. These articles are not dissertations, but pithy summaries. For a more complete description of the areas covered, readers should read the books and articles referenced at the end of each page.
