Straying far a bit?

Straying far a bit ... or perhaps not!!!

I happened to be surfing the net for further information relating to the Royal Scottish Fingerprint Inquiry concerning Detective McKie presently being undertaken by Scottish authorities and I encountered a case involving the use of a Forensic Lip Reader often known for her skills involving conversations video recorded in prison visiting areas. After having had her testimony accepted in hundreds of court cases, she was finally put to the test of lip reading a film segment of two actors speaking to each other: she correctly identified three percent of the words and was unable to identify any of the topics discussed. It is mind boggling how her testimony had been accepted in so many Scottish court cases much less how she had been relied upon in so many additional police investigations wherein her expertise was given great weight.

Now you may think that a Scottish judicial inquiry about fingerprints in a homicide case is a long way from a Boulder, Colorado homicide investigation and yes, perhaps I am straying far. Or perhaps I am not far from the mark at all. We have the much maligned Lou Smit. We have various linguistic pronouncements concerning the text of the ransom note. We have various handwriting pronouncements related to the penmanship of the ransom note. And we have various profiling pronouncements relating to the discovery of a corpse within a home as opposed to outside a home. I guess Scotland is not really that far from Colorado at all. Unfortunately.

If such bogus expertise makes it all the way into court testimony, I cringe at the thought of just how far such bogus expertise makes its way into police investigations wherein there is no preliminary concern about meeting a threshold of a Daubert test or Frye test. How many investigations are being tainted by police reliance upon such unproven forensic techniques such as voice stress testing? We hope crystal balls and tea leaves don't sway investigators but it seems that our hopes may be dashed. Companies that sell crystall balls or tea leaves may be doing real well with various American police forces.