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Minnesota Public Radio reported often about systemic problems in the St. Paul, Minnesota crime lab over the last few years.

http://blogs.mprnews.org/cities/2013/08/st-paul-police-crime...

It seems those problems are now mostly cleaned up, and there is no particular implication here that a similar problem exists in the state crime lab, but it is a very good idea for citizens to press law enforcement administrators to make sure that crime lab procedures are validated and standardized and checked and rechecked.

When I started reading the skeptical literature a decade or so ago, I was astonished to discover that even fingerprint identification is not a well standardized or well validated procedure. And I used to believe that defense attorneys (I am a lawyer by training, although I don't practice law) were mostly willfully ignorant of science when they cast doubt on DNA evidence. But now I heartily approve the side-effect of our adversary system of justice, which when it works best should have the "other side" questioning every form of evidence and putting it to the test of rigorous validation. I think too often people trying to solve the problem of crime through the criminal justice system look for quick answers rather than exact answers.

AFTER EDIT: This background article link

http://badchemistry.wbur.org/2013/05/19/annie-dookhan-and-th...

from the NPR affiliate in Boston updates the story and is more current than the NPR link kindly submitted here (which is from March 2013 rather than May 2013).




> It seems those problems are now mostly cleaned up, and there is no particular implication here that a similar problem exists in the state crime lab

Except that the incentives are still massively perverse. It doesn't take an organizational dynamics genius to know it's a safe bet these are not the only two state crime labs with this problem.




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