Can Forensic Science Be Trusted?

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

55% : They depend on law enforcement for funding and operate under ever-present financial and psychological pressure to collaborate in securing convictions.
52% : Lenhart left the bureau in 1994 and returned to state government years later, as Ohio's director of law enforcement.
51% : Parsons's attorney was never told about the administrative leave or the bureau's concern that her analyses might tilt in a single direction: toward law enforcement.
50% : When G. Michele Yezzo, from the Bureau of Criminal Investigation, was called to the stand, she focused tightly on the fiber evidence.
47% : With respect to her scientific analysis: "Her findings and conclusions regarding evidence may be suspect," Daniel Chilton, the assistant superintendent of the Bureau of Criminal Investigation, had written in a memo to his boss in May 1989.
47% : Second, the overwhelming majority of crime labs are not independent but tucked into police departments or state law-enforcement agencies.
45% : Because his conviction rested substantially on Yezzo's testimony, the Innocence Project requested her personnel file from the Bureau of Criminal Investigation.
45% : The Ohio attorney general's office declined to comment about Yezzo, citing the ongoing litigation, and added that since Yezzo's retirement, the Bureau of Criminal Investigation has developed "several quality controls."
43% : White then brought the matter to the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, where the case was assigned to a forensic scientist named G. Michele Yezzo, a bloodstain specialist.
35% : The Bureau of Criminal Investigation documents revealed a suspicious timeline.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.