It's not enough for the police to discover (to their own satisfaction) who committed a crime. The point is to prosecute the offender or otherwise resolve it in a way that protects the public.
"Old-fashioned detective work" doesn't help with that at all. What does it turn up? Eyewitnesses? About the worst evidence possible, on par with dreams and reading tea leaves. Sometimes it bullies someone into perjury. That's not even evidence at all.
Forensics are about the only thing that counts as real evidence outside of capturing crimes on video. And if they seem to cause bad results, it's probably because we're not doing it enough. Hell, we have the technology to prove to anyone's satisfaction that chain of custody hasn't been broken... no one's bothered to build the product.
Absolutely, a significant portion of "old timey police work" was to blame it on the least liked guy you could find. A large percentage of people ON DEATH ROW are later proved innocent by actual evidence, including people who were convicted by those "old timey" methods.
>Forensics are about the only thing that counts as real evidence outside of capturing crimes on video
One huge problem is what courts accept as "forensics" is closer to CSI bullshit than actual science. Most forensic methods have no basis in science, come from a single ex cop who goes around the country speaking to other cops for a hundred grand a pop, and a network of "experts" who are willing to tell a jury that it is "scientifically sound" for a few thousand dollars. Things like handwriting analysis, micro-expressions, all the nancy drew types who pour over a ten second 911 call to overanalyze every tick and stammer in the stressed callers voice to paint them as the perp (THIS IS A REAL THING THAT HAPPENS)
If it wasn't outright illegal, American police would 100% be using lie detectors as evidence
> One huge problem is what courts accept as "forensics" is closer to CSI bullshit than actual science. Most forensic methods have no basis in science, come from a single ex cop who goes around the country speaking to other cops for a hundred grand a pop,
While there's some of that, let me tell you about my brush with this. I was called for grand jury duty. A day a week for a full month. Most was bullshit drug charges, child abuse/molestation, a few weird ones. Only one actual murder. Until that point, they never even bothered to have witnesses testify for any of it... it was like Junior Assistant DA show-and-tell time, but without the "show" part. That's another story though.
The murder was decades past, and they'd always had a suspect. He did seem like a real piece of work. But one of the evidence exhibits was the car he drove back during the murder. At the time, they found tire tracks where the victim's body was dumped. Identified some named model of tire, Firestone I think. I asked a question, which the detective misunderstood at first... he thought I was asking "did anyone sell that tire in this city back in the late 1980s" to which he answered "it was so common, many shops would've sold it". So I had to ask again. I asked:
"Was this particular tire model ever manufactured in a size where it would even have fit on that car?"
He uhhed-and-ahhed for a moment, before saying "that's a really good question".
Like, what the fuck am I supposed to do with that? Do I generalize, and think that if they fucked up on this one, all the rest of their evidence is complete horseshit too? If I penalize their bumbling by no-billing, am I letting a murderer go? It's not like they'll find the smoking gun next year, you know... this was like 30 years ago already. And, if I do vote to indict, the man's got no shot at a real trial. 99% of them plead down. Even for murder charges, maybe especially with those since they can dangle the death penalty as a means of compelling cooperation.
That was my one brush with the competence and skills of detectives. Despite this, all I can think is that no matter how bad their forensic evidence is, anything else is just so much fucking worse.
Off-topic trivia: While we were waiting on something one morning, one of the asst DAs was bragging about how in our city there are about 4000 cases each year, of which only maybe 30 would go to trial pre-covid. Assuming things have normalized so that they're giving trials to almost 1% of defendants again.
which is a confession. You insert interesting falsehoods here, on Hacker News.
You yourself confessed, in your own words, you're full of shit.
Yeah because 1% going to trial sounded a little too high, most liars go for 2%, more believable. Stanford tried 2% of the accused, 1% is pushing it. 2% annual inflation. 2% of rape accusations are false. Say 1% or 0.75% and people call bullshit.
N again, you confessed that you "[insert interesting falsehoods here]" [sic brackets]. You wrote that w brackets in the original, i don't escape brackets as this isn't coding, normally brackets when i quote are when not absolutely sure word-for-word quote, to protect the integrity of my testimony for my eventual trial. Which is getn closer n closer, any day now, the longer you wait the less time left until your day in court, n it's been more than 14 years waiting for Stanford to try me.
The courts routinely allow the chain of custody to be a mess and when you challenge they respond with 'good faith'. Go search Lexus/Nexus for 'good faith' and find that 'chain of custody' really isn't a requirement because really who needs anything more than 'good faith'?
Lots of 'forensic science' has been found to either be garbage or complete subjective and results dependant on the person doing the 'science'. Some of that is still allowed in court because our court is based on precedent and if it was allowed before you as the accused have to fight precedent and prove why it should not longer be allowed (even though everyone accepts it has been disproven outside of court). Lie detector tests while not allowed to be a lone factor for conviction are still routinely used and required by the courts, especially as conditions of supervised release(parole/probation) and are administered at the supervised persons expense (court mandated and $280 a pop for pseudoscience that can get you hemmed up).
"Old-fashioned detective work" doesn't help with that at all. What does it turn up? Eyewitnesses? About the worst evidence possible, on par with dreams and reading tea leaves. Sometimes it bullies someone into perjury. That's not even evidence at all.
Forensics are about the only thing that counts as real evidence outside of capturing crimes on video. And if they seem to cause bad results, it's probably because we're not doing it enough. Hell, we have the technology to prove to anyone's satisfaction that chain of custody hasn't been broken... no one's bothered to build the product.