M. Chris FabricantReseñas

Author Chris Fabricant, attorney for the Innocence Project, reveals some of the work he has done for clients sitting on Death Row for crimes they did not commit. Many of those clients are there because of expert testimony using what is called forensic science to analyze things such as bite marks, tool marks, shoe imprints, hair analysis, blood spatter and so much more. Fabricant makes the case that this “science” is not data-driven science at all, but merely one man’s subjective analysis without any of the measurements needed to be true science.

Prosecutors fight to use this unreliable testimony and judges are willing to allow it in their trials, not because of its reliability but because it has been allowed in the past. Because of this, many defendants have been wrongfully convicted. In a six year span, in Texas alone DNA evidence proved the actual innocence of 13 of these prisoners.

Do we, as a society, believe that a trial is a search for the truth? Do we believe that it is better for a guilty man to go free than for an innocent man to go to prison? If we truly believe in these concepts, one of the steps we must take is to eliminate junk science from our courtrooms. And that is only the first step in reforming our justice system. As awful as the concept of junk science is, even more horrifying is the amount of time, financial cost and effort it takes to exonerate a prisoner and release him once he is proved innocent, even if that proof is DNA.

Since reading the book, I have done some research of my own and the University of Michigan reports that over 3400 innocent people have been falsely convicted based on reasons such as junk science and expert witness testimony, false confessions, mistaken identification, and law enforcement/prosecutorial bias. Although the book could have used some editing, particularly in the timeline of events, it made such an impact on me that I'm giving it 5 stars.

I had a friend in college who was majoring in forensic science who used to always tell us that most of what you see on television regarding science in criminal investigations was at best partially true--and CSI was the worst of all at blending fact and fiction. So I came into this book already a little skeptical about my own conceptions of how forensics are used in the justice system. But this opened my eyes even wider. Prepare to be shocked. A must-read for anyone who has even a passing interest in 'true crime' for sure.
Note: I received a free copy of this book through the Early Reviewers program in exchange for an honest review.

CSI hasn’t done the American court system any favors. But long before that, forensic scientists convinced judges that they could give definitive results with uncertain methods. Junk Science looks at this specifically from the perspective of bite mark identification, but really the problem is more general - overstating the usefulness of unproven techniques. Reading this one will probably make you angry. It’s marred by occasional overblown language, but still worth it for the lesson it brings.

While this book was absolutely infuriating to read, I also found it to be quite fascinating as well. The research on the cases and the "science" that was used in them to get convictions was very thorough and was presented without a ton of technical jargon that would make it difficult for the reader to understand. My two complaints regarding the book is that the descriptions of the crimes themselves could be quite graphic and aren't for those with squeamish stomachs. Also the jumps between cases made it hard to follow and I think that the book could have been organized a bit better.½

Much like _Just Mercy_, an infuriating read for any American.

How anyone associated with any of these prosecutions can sleep at night is beyond me. There is a world of difference between building a case and making a conviction for a crime, and what happened to these men.

Bad policing, bad investigating, bad lawyering, bad judging, and it reflects on all of us capable of acting to end these abhorrent practices.

So many deserve so much better, from all of us.

I won't soon forget reading this, knocked it half a star because it was difficult to keep up with the jumps between the cases.½

Utterly fascinating. Fabricant, working with the Innocence Project, takes us through the history of how poorly researched “science” has been used in courtrooms to convict men for crimes. He focuses on three different cases which all relied on bite mark evidence, but also discusses arson, hair analysis, lie detectors, and other areas of “junk science” where there are no peer reviewed studies or industry standards to support conclusions made by “experts” testifying in the courtroom. This “junk science” only reinforces the racist stereotypes that dominate in criminal justice and American culture, and keeps those with authority and power in control. While the topic is fascinating and worthy of pursuit, I do wish this book had been organized a little differently. It was tough to keep up with the changing cases, characters, and events, as the narrative revisits each several times. Another warning for some: the cases are terribly violent and troubling, and may be difficult to read about.

There's a lot of important information in here, and Fabricant is very much the right author to share it. I watched a lot of CSI as a teenager and definitely needed to learn that much of that science is, well, junk.

The book is poorly organized. It would have been better structured as a series of long form magazine article length essays instead of the choppy pieces. It is hard to connect the dots as written here.

Additionally, I found this a slow read because some of the crimes detailed are truly horrific and violent and scary, and I did not find that easy to manage. A word of warning if that's hard for other readers.

You'd have to be living under a rock or willfully ignorant not to know that there are serious problems with the justice system in the US. I consider myself a reasonably well-informed person who stays on top of the news... and yet, the sheer scale of this <i>still</i> managed to shock me.

Read this if you want to know how the entire foundation of modern forensic evidence is untested, fabricated, or severely misrepresented (depending on which subfield), and more importantly, how various US jurisdictions from federal to state to local largely fail to do anything about it. The book focuses largely on how forensic bite mark analysis is not based in science whatsoever - in fact, so-called bite mark "specialists" did WORSE than straight-up guessing when tested! - but there is some discussion of other forensic subfields as well, such as fingerprinting and tool mark identification.

The most horrifying part, of course, is seeing just how pervasive it is for courts to refuse to even look at new data when it could exonerate someone, or to toss out data when you have very good reason to believe it was fabricated (in this case, bite marks that somehow appeared after the autopsy photos and only the forensic dentist saw them, but the photos he supposedly took went missing... sure they did!). Even as jaded as I am with the US justice system, I didn't realize how often this very situation occurs. The courts are more interested in showing that they punished someone than getting it right, even when it ruins lives and leaves the actual perpetrators free to commit more crimes.

Read this! You may be sorry about the state of the American justice system, but you won't regret learning about the junk science and efforts to get it out of our legal system.

I received a free copy from Akashic in exchange for my honest review.

If you're anything like me, you already know the U.S. "justice" system is anything but - ESPECIALLY if you're a person of color. This book, however, really highlighted the disgusting and deceitful tactics that the prosecution employs to sway the jury and the poor reasoning used by judges when convicting. I'd heard a little about how some "sciences" used at crime scenes are not as accurate as we're lead to believe (especially in the media), but had no idea the extent to which all the methods mentioned in this book have little to no scientific backing. The book largely focuses on faulty bite mark "analysis" and how it was used to convict and sentence several men, some to their deaths. There is some talk of shoeprint/tread, fire, and even ballistics analysis, but the main focus is the bite marks and the dentists who popularized the junk science (essentially declaring themselves experts in the field with no scientific backing) and became famous in the legal scene.

I do think this book struggles a bit with organization. Fabricant is a talented writer for sure, but maybe a little fact sheet at the end of the book for each case he details would be helpful. The book does largely go through the years of legal and junk science developments chronologically, but sometimes it weaves between several cases, or almost teases the conclusion of a case, only to set it aside for several chapters. I felt bad because I did have a hard time keeping track of the names of the men who were convicted and which crime they were convicted of, which is why I think a little summary for each would be a good reference. There is a sort of storytelling aspect to the book though, that leaves the conclusion of a few cases until the end of the book, which is why maybe something like a summary was left out.

Organization aside, this is well worth the read, especially maybe for people who may be pro-death sentence. Maybe reading specific case examples will help to humanize convictions for some people. Reading the details of the cases and how evidence was misused or completely fabricated, then used to sentence someone to death...it's just really rough. I would imagine that after understanding the human element to these convictions, it might be harder to say that the death sentence is the way to go.

The book is not totally without hope though - there have been some advances in the legal and scientific fields of fighting the use of these junk sciences, though we have a long way to go and now corporations are coming up with digital junk science that needs to be fought. There are some cases with...I hesitate to say positive outcomes, as even if someone is declared innocent, how good of an outcome is that really, after they've spent 25+ years in jail (or even on death row.) Even those happier cases were very depressing to read about. Mostly this book made me mad at the system we have in place, but grateful that there are groups out there like the Innocence Project, who are working very hard to combat them.

Content warnings may seem obvious here, but the book does go over several cases and, if I remember correctly, all of them are violent. The victims of these cases are almost entirely women and children. Warnings for sexual assault, child abuse, murder, drug use.

This is a frightening account of much of the evidence used to convict suspects of crime. Equally appalling is the reluctance to overturn faulty convictions and the snail's pace of our justice system. These failings are presented using a series of particular cases.

Usually the books I get from this site don't have much personal impact on me, but this one does. At one point as a high school student I considered going to college to study criminal forensics, mostly for job security reasons - as long as there are people, people will do crimes. I eventually decided not to do that and went with something else, and reading this book makes me very glad that I didn't do that.

I didn't realize the extent to which criminal forensics as a field is absolute garbage. Apart from DNA, pretty much every other well known forensic thing (bullet analysis, bite marks, shoe/bootprints, etc) is unscientific gibberish that's mostly passed on with about as much validity as tarot cards or psychics. Fingerprints are somewhat better but not by much, considering that real world fingerprints collected as evidence are not the ones you do on the cards in police stations. The 5th-grade me who did a science fair project on fingerprints didn't consider that because that was the '90s and I was a kid. At least nobody got sent to prison or executed on the strength of my 2nd-place presentation showing how fingerprints differ from each other.

This book is by turns fascinating, infuriating and depressing, assuming you think the purpose of the criminal justice system should be justice and not just throwing whichever person the cops, arson "investigators" and/or prosecutors decide is guilty into prison or on death row. Almost no actual science (as in, rigorous testing that you can duplicate with identical results, plus other aspects of the scientific method) by peers who don't have monetary or career incentives in your research being accepted as truth goes into criminal forensics. The author mostly focuses on bite marks as one of the biggest offenders, but goes to some extent or another into arson "science", bullet analysis, prints left by shoes or boots, marks from tools (pliers, hammers, wire cutters, etc) and a couple other things. Blood spatter gets name-dropped as garbage but he doesn't go into it - which isn't surprising, considering that there are lots of other nonsense things accepted as evidence that shouldn't be and he would otherwise write a phone book trying to explain all of them.

Probably the single most horrifying thing (apart from a bunch of bored dentists getting together to get themselves declared forensic experts and then helping overzealous prosecutors kill innocent people) in the book is the doctrine of finality - an arbitrary legal rule that basically means "I the judge of this court refuse to allow any new evidence because a conviction is a conviction". On the one hand I can see why this may have originally arisen, because someone could have spent all their time in jail trying to come up with spurious evidence to waste the court's time, but on the other hand the existence of DNA technology isn't a question of wasting the court's time, it's a question of determining actual guilt or innocence. Considering the number of people executed by various states on fraudulent nonsense sold to juries as evidence, that isn't a thing that should happen with old cases like this - especially when prosecutors hide evidence or evidence was just misfiled, lost, or shuffled away somewhere because it was prior to the advent of DNA technology and nobody knew or cared.

It's also not only the fortunate choice I made to not be a junk science peddler that bothers me about this stuff, it's also the omnipresence in pop culture (especially in unhinged garbage like CSI, which is so bad that even criminal forensics people hate it for how unrealistic it is) of the criminal forensics expert as the wizard who can find the truth with some preposterously unscientific nonsense. Like everybody else in the '90s who grew up watching Law and Order, or NYPD Blue (if your parents let you) or LA Law or any of the nonstop parade of cop and crime shows and movies that followed it, I've seen tons of this stuff in pop culture, and it really bothers me how suffused our culture is with this kind of copaganda. He also name-drops Radley Balko as having had a big part in blowing open fraudulent forensics - Balko probably being most well-known for "Rise of the Warrior Cop", which I still need to read.

The author also includes an extremely relevant point in the last few pages of the book - even though bite marks and bootprints may be on their way out, there's a risk of emerging technologies promoted by for-profit companies being used for the same purpose of locking up whoever the cops want to accuse, like ShotSpotter, facial recognition and various other ideas. He specifically calls out facial recognition software as being used to wrongly identify Black people, and I know from other sources that that's true, since facial recognition is only as good as the faces you use as training data for your algorithm. It's not impossible to make facial recognition AI that is good at telling Black people (or anybody else) apart, but preventing that kind of racist problem from getting into the field requires identifying the problem and rigorous work to fix it.

Finally, a note on the author: He works for the Innocence Project, which in turn works to reverse wrongful convictions and free innocent people. Kind of by definition he's not a neutral observer, since as far as I know the Innocence Project comes down hard on the side of the people whose cases they choose to take. At the same time, his agenda is essentially, "Don't kill or imprison innocent people on the basis of testimony that isn't much better than Salem Witch Trials nonsense about spectres, demons and other gribblies that you can't actually prove exist". He is also a very good writer (which seems like a skill you'd have to acquire working as an Innocence Project lawyer) in terms of communicating information easily, which I appreciate for a story that goes in as many different directions as this one.

This book was written by a lawyer involved with the Innocence Project. Fabricant gives details on the forensic techniques used by sometimes highly-paid 'expert witnesses' to attempt to ensure a conviction. This book chronicles the plight of three men wrongfully convicted using that tactic from the prosecution, and Fabricant's fight to have those convictions overturned.

nonfiction - true crime, criminal justice reform, social justice (advance reading copy provided by publisher)

This book focuses on the pseudoscience (primarily bitemark analysis, but arson analysis, microscopic hair comparison, "shaken baby syndrome" and polygraphs are also discussed, with a warning towards newer, higher-tech versions of equally unreliable forensic techniques) based on anecdotal examples rather than replicable scientific analysis, and declared valid merely by the "experts" who make their living from testifying against defendants) of various forensic techniques that have been largely unquestioned in courts. It's a little bit true-crime horror (don't expect to sleep well right after reading the opening chapters), but also a significant amount of legal strategy and analysis, and makes a fascinating read for anyone interested in the criminal justice system and social justice.

Innocence Project lawyer M. Chris Fabricant relates how these unreliable and inaccurate techniques became established in our justice systems (very often to pin the blame on poor or minority suspects when no actual evidence existed) and the ongoing battle to expose the numerous errors, discredit the 'evidence,' end the practice of allowing it to be used in future cases, and exonerate those wrongly convicted. It's a lot of information, but worth a read.

See also : Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy½

True crime readers need to read this book, which challenges basic assumptions about the fairness of the legal system. Bite mark analysis, fire origin studies, and blood spatter pattern research are some of the forensics presented in courtrooms that convict defendants yet fail to meet standards for scientific inquiry. Sadly, even after convictions are overturned, those who were wronged struggle to regain any kind of normalcy in their lives. The book weaves personal stories and legal beagle case stuff together in a very readable way.

M. Chris Fabricant is the Director of Strategic Litigation at The Innocence Project, and the author of a new book on junk science in the American criminal justice system. Junk science is the term used by lawyers like Fabricant, and others, to discuss a set of techniques accepted by the courts with little scientific backing.

If you are a fan of mysteries, and particularly of the CSI shows on TV, you may be surprised to learn that many of the techniques long used by crime labs, including those of the FBI, quite possibly do more harm than good. When rigorously reviewed by research scientists, these techniques have been repeatedly shown to be without scientific basis and are considered scientifically unreliable and without merit.

In his book M. Chris Fabricant spends quite a bit of time on the techniques of “bite mark analysis and comparison”. Bite mark analysis is one of the forensic techniques first called into question by the National Academy of Sciences Hearings requested by Congress in 2006. When the Academy issued their report in 2009, they included these 38 words which in Fabricant’s telling moved the debate on junk science into the criminal court system: “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.”

Those 38 words, Fabricant says, challenged a century of legal precedent. Tens of thousands of people have been convicted based on “matching” techniques of hair samples, bullet marks, bite marks, tire treads, even fingerprints - none of which can show a clear scientific basis to support the assumed certainty of their matching. There has been no scientific experimentation conducted to demonstrate that these techniques can accurately and repeatedly show that the matches they make are accurate.

Many of these matching techniques rely on training and technique, which is not necessarily a guarantee of their effectiveness. At one point in the book Fabricant makes the point that astrologists also train and spend years honing their technique. Even so, their predictions are not valid, and are generally vague or wrong, because the underlying practice has no scientific basis. That is the same case with all these matching techniques.

Even despite the NAS report, and a follow up report in 2016 by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology which reached similar conclusions, bite marks and other matching evidence remain admissible in criminal courts in all fifty states, and “expert witnesses” continue to train and hone their techniques.

Over the course of the book, we follow the evolution of the criticism of these techniques, and also follow three cases that Fabricant was involved in through his work with the Innocence Project. In those three cases, innocent men wrongly convicted on the strength of these techniques were exonerated. Given the numbers convicted on the basis of these junk science techniques, one wonders how many more there are.

This was a very interesting, and eye-opening look at how junk science in our criminal justice system continues to be used to convict the innocent. It will leave you frustrated at the state of our justice system.

RATING: Four Stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐

NOTE: I received a promotional copy of this book from Akashic Books and LibraryThing, and am voluntarily providing this review. The book was published April 5th, 2022.

In this book Fabricant, a former defense attorney and an authority on forensics who now applies his expertise to exonerate wrongly-convicted prisoners as part of The Innocence Project, illustrates the ways in which junk science has been used historically as evidence in courtrooms, why and how these types of evidence have been discredited, and ways in which the slow grind of the legal system is catching up to the (lack of) science and liberating the innocent.

First, the good: The Innocence Project is inspiring and important. I'm guilty of never having given much thought to junk science, and I was until now oblivious to how frequently the U.S. justice system has used bite mark evidence, often the ONLY evidence, in criminal convictions. It's mind-blowing and demonstrates just one way in which the justice system is in this country is seriously messed up.

Next, the not-so-good: I don't think Fabricant was the right person to write this book. The writing felt dumbed-down, almost patronizingly so, which give it a self-published feel. The overall organization comes across as sloppy, and the narrative bounces around frequently from case to case. That, combined with the number of names, places and pieces of evidence the reader must mentally juggle at all times, made for a rather dizzying experience. However, by far my single strongest complaint about this book is the egregious and excessive use of quotation marks. It was excruciating and nearly drove me bonkers, to the point where I was so completely distracted by unnecessary punctuation that I was unable to focus on the content. Where was the editor?

I received this ARC via LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program.

*I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review*
Chris Fabricant's new book Junk Science and the American Criminal Justice System is an outstanding examination and criticism of the use of untested and unreliable "science" in criminal cases. Fabricant follows several cases from the commission of the crime through trial and conviction, to the ultimate vindication of the defendant after decades spent in prison, often on death row. Fabricant explains how junk science came to be used and misused and challenges both the justice system's failure and its frequent refusal to admit its failure. While the subject matter is difficult, this was an easy book to read. It will cause you to rethink many of the tenets of our criminal justice system that you have taken for granted.

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.

A startling look at the US justice system. He focuses mainly on bite mark evidence, but does touch on arson detection and the technicalities that can haunt a conviction not allowing for justice to be done. The thing I always wonder is why it doesn't trouble these prosecutors and judges that if they have convicted the wrong person it means that the real perpetrator is still on the loose continuing to commit crimes. Yet they still seem to be married to an obviously wrong conclusion. Well read. Compelling narrative. Somewhat discouraging outlook on things.

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 Science
The 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. 39
Part II: Texas v. Steven Mark Chaney and the DNA Revolution
“The advent of forensic DNA, first harnessed by two former public defenders in the
late 1980s, changed everything.” p.97
The chapter on Bias (pp.134-139) really stood out for me.
“In the American Criminal Justice System, the customers for junk science are primarily
prosecutors, 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 again
Part IV: Eddie Lee Howard, Steven Mark Chaney & the Dentists’ Last Stand
the downfall of dentists and forensic odontology

This 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. *****

2022 Book #22. 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.

This book was interesting, compelling, and is about a topic I am certainly interested in reading about. However, this book was very poorly organized and in desperate need of an editor (or at least somebody to tell the author to cool it with the overuse of scare quotes).

Let me get the good parts out of the way: a book like this is important, and more laypeople such as myself need to understand how broken the criminal justice system is in the US. I found myself constantly shaking my head over how such flimsy arguments can be used to incarcerate and execute human beings.

However -- I frequently found myself losing track of the thread, and just blamed it on my overtiredness until the seventh or eighth time thinking it, and then I realized the book just isn't organized cohesively. The author will discuss a topic, meander to something else, get off on a tangent, then maybe in a couple chapters, get back to the first topic, which by that time I'd forgotten about.

The author also uses a lot of legal terms and discusses legal arguments in ways that I'm sure make a lot of sense to lawyers, but made no sense to me. This was particularly the case when discussing the courtroom things that weren't trials -- I don't know the name for it because I'm not a lawyer. The author would bring up some nuance in the proceedings that I'm sure would be like "oh snap, that happened!" to a lawyer but to me I'm like "okay now why is he upset?"

I was also hoping for more of an analytical look into each of the forensic techniques outlined in this book. I mean, I understand they're junk science, so maybe there's nothing much to explain, but other than bite mark matching and the arson stuff, and a tiny bit about hair matching, there wasn't much of an explanation behind the techniques this book is about.

I came away with this book interested, but feeling like I'd read a rough draft. I'd be very interested in reading a well-edited and coherent revision.

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.

Fabricant, Director of Strategic Litigation for the Innocence Project, makes a powerful argument that certain aspects of forensic science as used by our criminal justice system are not as infallible as our popular culture (c.f. the multitude of CSI-type shows) would have us believe. In fact, that understates the truth: as he shows in case after case, junk science often sends innocent people to death row, from which many do not return. In three sections he focuses on three cases with some commonalities: each man was convicted of murder using questionable science, and each spent decades in prison before being released when the science that sent them to prison was eventually discredited. In between is a history of the use of bite mark evidence (an especially sketchy subfield of forensic dentistry in Fabricant's telling) in criminal cases and its gradual fall from grace after the 2009 National Academy of Science's report on strengthening forensic science. Many cases are brought up, and the jump from one case to another is sometimes jarring. Perhaps most disturbing is that prosecutors and courts in all 50 states continue to accept junk science long after it has been discredited and are most likely to accept and use it in death penalty cases. If that doesn't make you angry, check your pulse. An important book that deserves the widest possible audience.