Forensics Under Fire: Are Bad Science and Dueling Experts Corrupting Criminal Justice?

Murder, kidnapping, the evidence of crimes committed--it's front-page news and the subject of countless popular films and television shows. There's even a name for it: The CSI Effect. But as these portrayals reveal, the path from crime to conviction is never straight and smooth, and much controversy and skepticism swirls around claims of evidence and innocence. In Searching for Clues: Problems in Forensic Science, Jim Fisher takes us on a journey through familiar and not-so-familiar cases in which the details of true crime remain obscure. While convictions may have been handed down, or the guilty set free, the facts of many case are fraught with errors, corruption, misinterpretation, and false conclusions. From SIDS cases to print identification, forensics experts often find themselves with inconclusive data--and yet the criminal justice system relies on their expert science to render decisions of guilt or innocence. Fisher shows us in case after case, that the jury is--or should be--still out.