Q: Does what the guests on the show say surprise you? Why or why not? If you’ve taken courses in forensics, do you agree with their assessments? Summarize your position briefly.
No, what the guests on the show said were absolutely right from the scienist not doing their job fully to where Forensic Science needs a hero and I totally agree with there assessments because if you are a forensic scientist your job is to bring the right people to justice. If you are just going by word of the mouth that shows you do not care about the person’s life who is being convicted. That person you accidently put in prison could have been innocent but instead you wanted to get the conviction over with because you were too lazy to do your job correctly.
Q: If you were being tried for a crime, would you have faith that the evidence would be weighed fairly and honestly? Explain that belief. Based on their commentary, what forms of evidence do you think hold up to scrutiny, and which do not? Justify your responses.
If I were to be tried for a crime I would not have faith that the evidence against me was weighed fairly and honestly. As i stated in the previous question, most forensic scientist do not commit to their jobs fully and end up putting the wrong person in prison, they do not give the evidence enough time to go through the proper testing and also with scientific evidence Susan Bell was also correct about how evidence needs to go through certain laws and rules before it can even be permissible in court, due to those laws it also hurts the chances of anybody having a proper trial.
In the podcast Betty Lane talked about how certain evidence holds more weight then others such as Luminol testing, and fingerprinting. While bite marks that leave prints in the skin do not hold as much weight, she also stated that it is very disccredited due to the fact that there is sometimes nothing unique about bite marks because some people could have the same type of teeth. So in the forensic science world fingerprinting and DNA testing such as luminol are the go to test for trying to find the right criminal.
Q: Do you think the criminal justice system is living up to the idea of “innocent until proven guilty”? Support your opinion with ideas or quotes from the podcast.
No I do not believe that the criminal justice system is living up to the idea of innocnt until proven guilty. As Susan Bell said in the podcast she stated that “Most crminal cases do not even go through court or through a jury they just go through a plea bargining.” So if most cases are going through plea bargining’s instead of a traditional court with a traditional jury what is the point of the idea of innocent until proven guilty. You are basically saying yes to the crime you maybe did not commit, you have the fighting chance to be innocent if you do not take the plea bargining and just take the case to court.