Junk Science and the American Criminal Justice System

Written by M. Chris Fabricant

Narrated by Chris Henry Coffey

From CSI to Forensic Files to the celebrated reputation of the FBI crime lab, forensic scientists have long been mythologized in American popular culture as infallible crime solvers. Juries put their faith in “expert witnesses” and innocent
people have been executed as a result. Innocent people are still on death row today, condemned by junk science.

In 2012, the Innocence Project began searching for prisoners convicted by junk science, and three men, each convicted of capital murder, became M. Chris Fabricant’s clients. Junk Science and the American Criminal Justice System
chronicles the fights to overturn their wrongful convictions and to end the use of the “science” that destroyed their lives. Weaving together courtroom battles from Mississippi to Texas to New York City and beyond, Fabricant takes the reader on a
journey into the heart of a broken, racist system of justice and the role forensic science plays in maintaining the status quo.

At turns gripping, enraging, illuminating, and moving, Junk Science is a meticulously researched insider’s perspective of the American criminal justice system. Previously untold stories of wrongful executions, corrupt prosecutors, and
quackery masquerading as science animate Fabricant’s true crime narrative.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 5, 2022
• ISBN: 9781705061510

M. Chris Fabricant

M. Chris Fabricant graduated with honors from the George Washington University Law School. After two years as a pro se law clerk in Manhattan's federal district court, he began his career as a criminal defense attorney.

Reviews for Junk Science and the American Criminal Justice System

[fionaanne · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Bite mark identification is the sole subject of this book and I noped out pretty quick cause the writing's not very good and the structure is terrible.

[dono421846 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Heartfelt account of how bad science can lead to the miscarriage of justice. The author's chosen narrative thread is the use of bite mark analysis to link defendants to the the scenes of crimes, a technique made most famous after its use in convicting Ted Bundy. But the author argues that the method lacks any scientific foundation, and is basically spun out of the imaginations of dentists.This book can be reliably read for a surface discussion of some forensic details and history. The problems appear when one looks deeper. Unfortunately, Fabricant's enthusiasm leads him down some questionable narrative choices. He basically believes all the dentists who worked on bite mark analysis are bad actors who intentionally are using "junk science" to advance their personal agendas. Maybe that's true. But at the end of the day the dentists can say whatever they want; the real damage comes when they are offered by the legal profession as experts on incriminating evidence. But these actors the author thinks generally act in good faith, and are basically being fooled by the evil dentists. Now this is an overstatement, but not by very much.He is led into this questionable characterization in part not only because it makes for better storytelling but also because Fabricant offers a very strange summary of what the judicial process is all about. He states categorically that the goal is to find the truth. This is wrong. That is the purpose of the inquisitive system of civil law, such as one finds in Europe; we, however, have a system based on the adversarial system, not truth, which sometimes will be sacrificed in order to preserve other values, such as personal rights. Victory at trial goes to the most persuasive side, not to the one who is most truthful. This claim appears in the text (p. 305), but in the words of an antagonistic judge, so we're obviously meant to dismiss it. Getting this wrong leads the author to find bad actors who are hiding the truth and thus disrupting the rule of law in state courts. A surprisingly mistaken take from any attorney.

[diana.hauser · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Junk Science and the American Criminal Justice System is written by M. Chris Fabricant.Junk Science was published April 2022 by Akashic Books. I would like to thank Akashic Books for an ARC (Advance Reading Copy).M. Chris Fabricant is “the Innocence Project’s Director of Strategic Litigation and one of the nation’s leading experts on forensic sciences and the criminal justice system. Mr. Fabricant is featured in the Netflix documentary The Innocence Files.” “In 2012 The Innocence Project began searching for prisoners convicted by junk science, and three men, each convicted of capital murder, became M. Chris Fabricant’s clients. Junk Science and the American Criminal Justice System chronicles the fights to overturn their wrongful convictions and to end the use of the ‘science’ that destroyed their lives. Weaving together courtroom battles from Mississippi to Texas to New York City, Mr. Fabricant takes the reader into the heart of a broken, racist system of justice and the role forensic science plays in maintaining the status quo.”The first thing I do with any nonfiction title is to check the credentials of the author. I also look at any acknowledgements, notes and citations.My check list over, I can say that Junk Science is the real deal.Junk Science and the American Criminal Justice System consists of 4 Parts with 26 Chapters; an Epilogue; Acknowledgements; extensive Notes and Citations; and photographs.Part I: Virginia v. Keith Allen Harwood and the Rise of Junk ScienceThe chapters in Part I revolve around dentists organizing as forensic odontologists and lobbying for their recognition as specialists.It sets the stage, so to speak, for convictions reliant on forensic science (biased and untested forensic science).Part I begins with the case and trial of Virginia v. Keith Allen Harwood and his conviction based on the identification of ‘bite marks’ on the victim. “The dentists drove bite marks into mainstream forensics by a well-executed strategy and dumb luck.” p.32“Forensic Science in the US is an entirely unregulated industry.” p. 39Part II: Texas v. Steven Mark Chaney and the DNA Revolution“The advent of forensic DNA, first harnessed by two former public defenders in thelate 1980s, changed everything.” p.97The chapter on Bias (pp.134-139) really stood out for me.“In the American Criminal Justice System, the customers for junk science are primarilyprosecutors, and most are satisfied with the status quo.” p.149“Among existing forensic methods, only nuclear DNA analysis has been rigorously shown to have the capacity to consistently, and with a high degree of certainty, demonstrate a connection between an evidentiary sample and a specific individual or source.” p.152 Those 38 words challenged a century of legal precedent.Part III: Mississippi v. Eddie Lee Howard & a Junk Science reckoning (of sorts)bite marks againPart IV: Eddie Lee Howard, Steven Mark Chaney & the Dentists’ Last Standthe downfall of dentists and forensic odontologyThis book opened up a whole new world for me. Who knew about jaded forensic odontology??The title was fascinating, depressing, revealing, infuriating, compelling, disgusting and so sad - all these reactions rolled into one.I was left emotionally drained and shaking my head in disbelief on many occasions.Junk Science was well-written, well-researched with easy to read (and locate) notes and citations. And the cover was very clever.I was very fortunate to have read this book - a real eye-opener. *****

[capewood · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

First off, I received a copy of this book for free from librarything.com in return for an unbiased review.The title refers to various methods of forensic crime investigation that have often been used to send people to prison, often to Death Row, which have little or no basis in actual science. The author, M. Chris Fabricant, is the Innocence Project's Director of Strategic Investigation. He has been involved in numerous cases where wrongful convictions were reversed. According to its Wikipedia page, the Innocence Project has had over 300 convictions overturned since 1992. About 50% of these were reversed based on DNA analysis.The book casts doubt on a number of forensic methods including bite mark analysis, comparative bullet-lead analysis, hair and fiber analysis, tool mark analysis, arson investigation, and even fingerprinting.The book spends a lot of time on cases involving bite mark analysis, the idea that bite marks on human skin can be matched with 100% certainty to a cast made from a suspect's teeth. A group of dentists invented this method (apparently out of thin air) in the '70s and got it formally accepted by the American Society of Forensics Academy and such evidence is accepted by state courts in every state.The author outlines several cases where convictions, obtained only by bite mark analysis, were overturned either by DNA analysis, or by discrediting the bite mark analysis. Often the men convicted had been in prison awaiting a death sentence for 20-30 years.In 2009, the National Academy of Sciences conducted hearings on a number of key forensic methods (especially on bite mark analysis) and concluded that the science behind the methods was weak and methods couldn't be relied to either identify a suspect or even to conclude how likely the evidence was unique to an individual.The human side of this story is the countless years of wasted life of men in prison for crimes they did not commit. And any number of men put to death for crimes they didn't commit. For some of these men, the fact that there was still potential DNA for analysis still locked away in evidence lockers after 30 years was amazing to me.I don't watch shows like CSI because I believe that these shows are unrealistic. I'm pretty sure that forensic scientists don't carry guns and go out to arrest suspects. But I never questioned the science behind these shows until now. I recommend the book if you're interested in true crime stories.

[bragan_8 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Fabricant is a lawyer working on the Innocence Project, which strives to free wrongly convicted prisoners. Here, he discusses the contribution of bad forensic "science" to some of those convictions, including cases he has personally worked on. Although there are a truly depressing number of unscientific techniques permitted as evidence in court, he focuses primarily on the matching of bite marks on victims with the teeth of suspects -- a topic which I was interested to read about, as I'd vaguely heard something about it recently, but hadn't gotten the full story.The full story, apparently, is that this technique basically consists of dentists looking at marks on the victim's skin (including not just clearly identifiable bite marks, but also various dents and bruises not even identified as bites during autopsy), comparing them with casts of the suspect's teeth, and saying, "Yeah, looks the same to me." There was no actual scientific verification that this method was accurate, however -- quite the contrary, in fact -- and little or no attempt to address the inevitable bias inherent in knowing that the teeth you're trying to match are those of someone police or the prosecution already believe to be guilty. And yet, expert witnesses would testify that this "scientific evidence" left essentially no room for doubt, something that more than once meant the difference between an innocent and a guilty verdict. People were sentenced to death based on this testimony. And here I didn't think I needed any more reasons to lose faith in humanity.This book definitely isn't perfect. It's an eensy bit disorganized, and I do kind of wish Fabricant had spent a little more time getting into the science and carefully spelling out all the exact reasons why this stuff is unscientific. It was clear enough to me (although I would have appreciated a few more specific details), but I happen to have a background in science and a pretty strong grounding in the skeptical evaluation of pseudoscientific claims. Not all readers are going to have that kind of advantage, and I don't think such readers should, for instance, have had to wait until a hundred pages in for a very brief discussion of the scientific principle of blinding and why its lack is a big problem here. But despite that criticism, I still found this enlightening, infuriating, important, and worthwhile.

[darthdeverell · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

M. Chris Fabricant’s Junk Science and the American Criminal Justice System examines the role of untestable, unrepeatable claims lacking a hypothesis that have infiltrated the criminal justice system as “science” under the auspices of expert witnesses, thereby perverting the course of justice and leading to the conviction of innocent defendants. Fabricant, an attorney with the Innocence Project, primary draws upon the cases of Steven Chaney, Eddie Lee Howard, and Keith Harward in his survey, though he also examines other cases and events in the field of odontology for how they shape case law. Fabricant concludes, “Bite mark analysis involves subjective interpretation of a bruise on skin and guessing whether it could have been made by teeth, and, if so, whether a particular suspect’s teeth made the mark. Few appreciate that the ‘subdisciplines’ of forensic odontology have nothing whatsoever to do with each other, though they can be made to sound like they do” (pg. 35). Fabricant argues that cases in which dentists take dental molds in prison are “a uniquely biasing experience.” He summarizes, “The suspected ‘biter’ has already been imprisoned and charged with a violent crime, typically a gory murder… Most forensic experts make no effort to shield themselves from this type of biasing information” (pg. 37). Finally, Fabricant concludes, “Scientifically illiterate case law … obviates the need for rigorous research in forensics. Few traditional forensic techniques have useful applications outside of the justice system and, as a result, once courts allow a technique to be used, there is no real incentive to conduct research – or even test the abilities of putative experts. Why conduct research on a technique that has already been accepted in court, the only place it matters?” (pg. 40).Fabricant tracks how lawyers and scientists worked to ensure the cause of justice. While the Daubert decision could have done away with the ipse dixit standard that enabled experts to testify based solely on their reputation rather than the evidence and the technique’s standing in the scientific community, it initially applied only to federal cases (pgs. 70-76). Discussing the finality doctrine and legislatures placing restrictions on DNA evidence, Fabricant writes, “The result is a system that values finality over justice, expedience over due process; a system that routinely ignores blatantly racist prosecutions, prosecutorial misconduct, ineffective assistance of counsel, and actual innocence” (pg. 154). In many cases, prosecutors or police extracted false confessions that later outweighed scientific evidence. Fabricant writes, “…Confessions are so persuasive that jurors have convicted innocent defendants who have presented exculpatory DNA evidence at trial, crediting the false confession over scientific proof of innocence. Prosecutors can also use implausible facts to fend off accusations of a coercion. They argue, for example, that detectives would have concocted a better story if they had made it up” (pg. 168).Fabricant draws upon several cases to conclude of junk science, “All three men were Black, convicted by the same poor people science. All three victims were white. And while all junk science compromises the integrity of the justice system, hair microscopy could also be used to racialize expert testimony in prosecutions of defendants like Gates, Odom, and Tribble. Terms the FBI adopted in the 1950s to categorize hairs by ethnicity – especially ‘negroid’ = had the effect of infusing expert testimony with racial bias in the guise of scientific jargon” (pg. 211). Despite recent scientific advances and critiques, “bite mark evidence… remains admissible in all fifty states, and is but one of the thirteen forensic techniques critiqued in the NAS’s landmark 2009 study… There is no forensic technique – not impressions, not hair microscopy, not DNA mixture interpretations, and certainly not bite marks – capable of interpreting the source of crime scene evidence. Most are incapable of providing information as to how likely it is that the suspect is the source of the evidence” (pg. 326).This work will primarily appeal to those studying the law, particularly with the aim of working as defense attorneys, as well as those interested in forensic science. Fabricant’s Junk Science and the American Criminal Justice System offers a damning indictment of the systems people take for granted in upholding a classist, racist system of justice that condemns millions to life in prison – or to forfeit their lives – based on non-scientific expert testimony.

[loraineo_8 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Chris Fabricant , director of strategic litigation for the innocence project ,has written a very detailed description of the use of forensic science and the court system. He discusses how this 'science' is unregulated and often mistakes are made. People are wanting the guilty person found, even though at times the person charged is not the guilty person .No way to know how many innocent are in prison ...the Innocent Project has been so helpful to find the truth and continues to have dedicated people working to help free innocent people. Very good , informative book.