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The Case of Junk Science - Hair Microscopy Evidence
📻 Episode #152
🎙️ Hosted by Jason Flom
📅 Aug 26, 2020
About This Episode
Josh Dubin speaks with Vanessa Antoun, Senior Resource Counsel at the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) to learn about Hair Microscopy Evidence.
The Case
Josh Dubin speaks with Vanessa Antoun, Senior Resource Counsel at the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) to learn about Hair Microscopy Evidence.
Even when examined under a microscope, the similarities that can be observed between two hairs are open to wide interpretation, there are no definitive traits that can prove with any scientific certainty that a suspect’s hair matches a hair found at a crime scene. Yet hair comparison analysis was still being used to falsely identify and convict innocent people up until the year 2000 and people are still incarcerated who were convicted based on this false evidence.
So how did this evidence get admitted into courts in the first place?
https://www.nacdl.org/
innocenceproject.org/exoneree-fund-2020
https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/junk-science
In Their Own Words — transcript excerpts
Short excerpts from the episode's official published transcript, with timestamps — listen from these moments, or read the full transcript via the podcast's own platforms.
00:03:48“Speaker 1: That shuffle back into the courtroom, and none of them Speaker 1: will look at you when you hear the word guilty. Speaker 1: There's the sudden eruption of uncontrolled sobbing, the turning on Speaker 1: of a spigot. There's the unraveling of your mother in Wales. Speaker 1: Not my baby, my baby didn't do it. Your aunts”
00:16:14“Speaker 2: And the problem with hair and why this happened was Speaker 2: because unless there was tissue at the root of the hair, Speaker 2: Like if you yank your hair out and it may Speaker 2: or may not have some tissue at the root. Unless Speaker 2: there was tissue there that could be tested with nuclear DNA,”
00:28:06“Speaker 2: those tools have to be scientifically valid and they have Speaker 2: to be scientifically sound. Speaker 1: So can't this model that the NACDL and the FBI Speaker 1: employed here, which is rear reviewing cases and exposing problems Speaker 1: and helping right these wrongs. Can't this model be applied”
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← #151 Kristine Bunch #153 Willie "Pete" Williams →
Also on the podcast: #145 Junk Science - Bite Mark Evidence · #147 Junk Science - Bloodstain Pattern Evidence · #149 Junk Science - Arson Evidence