The Justice Department is reviewing its standards for how forensic evidence is presented in court.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said Monday that the department will be creating a new program, dubbed the Forensic Science Working Group, that ensures “our own forensic experts testify only in ways that are supported by available research.”
“We must use forensic analysis carefully. But we must continue to use it. We should not exclude reliable forensic analysis — or any reliable expert testimony — simply because it is based on human judgment,” Rosenstein said in prepared remarks at the International Association for Identification Annual Conference in Atlanta early Monday.
Rosenstein said the Working Group will first resume work Uniform Language for Testimony and Report, which first started last year. In draft guidance released in June 2016, the Justice Department put forth standards for examining and reporting forensic evidence, over seven disciplines, including body fluid testing, foot prints and tire tread, fingerprints and toxicology.
That work, Rosenstein said, will ensure Justice Department forensic examiners and federal prosecutors will give testimony in court “consistent with sound scientific principles and just outcomes.”
In April, Attorney General Jeff Sessions ended the department’s partnership with an independent commission of judges, defense attorneys, researchers and law enforcement officials that focused on forensic science accuracy.
The new Working Group will replace that partnership, the Justice Department said Monday. Ted Hunt, a former member of the National Commission on Forensic Science and longtime prosecutor from Missouri, will lead the Working Group as the department’s in-house senior adviser.
Hunt “will coordinate closely with federal, state, local, and tribal forensic science practitioners and identify ways to conduct ongoing outreach” to outside stakeholders in forensic science, Rosenstein said, including defense attorneys and scientists.
“We plan to examine workload, backlog, personnel and equipment needs of public crime laboratories, and the education and training needs of forensic science practitioners,” Rosenstein said.
