Forensic Evidence: Hoffman V. Florida

Question 1: The scandals that attribute to the current findings of having an issue with the methods being used to obtain forensic evidence, the first to speak of would be Hoffman v. Florida where there was a Brady violation due to the fact that the prosecution did not turn over exculpatory evidence to the defense. This was because there wasn’t enough of it to pass onto the defense which is why prosecution did not do so to begin with; even though this was the case it was still the law that all reports of tests have to be turned over to the defense. In the end Hoffman got granted a new trial solely based on the Brady violation because of evidence and testimony withheld from defense. With this particular case it most definitely was to blame on the prosecutions part due to not gathering enough information when having a hair analysis …show more content…
Linscott was pertaining to hairs found on the victim which were being used to identify that Linscott was indeed the one to commit the murder of three victims, this was solely based on the hair evidence found at the scene of the crime. The issue in this case was the two expert witnesses whom testified in court on the behalf of the state and that one expert witness said that the evidence found could only be used to identify of whom the hair belonged to, while the other expert witness stated that the hair could not be used to correctly identify someone. All the while the prosecutor was convinced that based on these two testimonies from the expert witnesses, then the court ruled that it was indeed an improper argument to present in a trial. What’s to blame is the inconsistency within the two expert’s testimonies because when it comes to that in the deepest of opinions both testimonies should be in connection with each other at best. This problem can be easily resolved by having two expert witnesses both agree on the principle of that hair evidence can for sure ID someone as to if they were at the scene of the