US government ends forensic science commission

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced on 10 April that he is terminating the National Commission on Forensic Science (NCFS). What turned out to be the final meeting of the commission, which was formed in 2013 to advise the US Department of Justice, was in progress when the announcement was made. According to a DOJ statement , the department will instead take unspecified actions to “advance forensic science and help combat the rise in violent crime.”

The 32 members of the NCFS included prosecutors, defense lawyers, judges, scientists, victim advocates, statisticians, and representatives from forensics labs and from local, state, and federal law enforcement. It was jointly chaired by the DOJ and NIST. During the commission’s four-year existence, members met 13 times and published 43 documents on topics such as accreditation qualifications for forensics labs, proper terminology usage in forensic testimony, and the need to establish a national code of responsibility for forensics practitioners.

Given the “trajectory that science policy has taken under this administration,” says S. James Gates Jr, a University of Maryland physicist and member of the commission, the cancellation was as “surprising as the Sun coming up on a new day.” Still, “I do not believe it will cause a freezing of the process” of establishing science-based forensics, he says. “There are too many people in the forensic science community who understand what is at stake.”

The goal of the NCFS, says commission member Jules Epstein, a Temple University law professor, “was to strengthen forensic science and acknowledge and work to overcome its limitations.” He notes that for much of history, forensic science testimony began in the police station, not the lab. By including so many stakeholders, the commission was “part of the change in the conversation about forensics, moving it toward scientifically grounded forensic testimony and forensic analysis.”

Equally important, Epstein says, was the NCFS’s function as a visible, transparent forum for discussing forensic science on a national level. With its termination, “we lose this very public presence.” He adds that there will inevitably be distrust in an advisory group and other activities that are based exclusively within the DOJ.

Commission member Dean Gialamas, technology director in the Los Angeles County sheriff’s department, says that in his 25-plus years in forensic science, he had “never seen that level of communication going on, and that is a hugely positive thing. The commission created relationships among stakeholders, and we need to keep that going.” But the NCFS was “only an advisory body,” he adds. “If forensic science is going to move forward, what we need is an entity that has teeth.”

“I am concerned that innocent Americans will continue to be convicted because juries are told that procedures are based on good science, but they are not,” says Gates. In particular, he notes that judges are ill equipped to fulfill their responsibility—according to the 1993 Daubert ruling by the Supreme Court—of assuring the validity of scientific expert testimony. (See Physics Today, November 2016, page 32 .) A key part of reforming the system is educating judges and lawyers, says Gates. “It’s a massive educational effort. We [the NCFS] have made recommendations that have been taken up by the American Bar Association.”

The commission was started in response to a 2009 report by the National Research Council, Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward. The NCFS was the first body to consider forensic science at a national level. “That will be missing, but the pressure to reform the system is not going to disappear,” says Gates. “Forensic science, not fake science, is what is needed for justice in this country.”