Forensic Science Dbq Essay

The discipline of forensic science has been under fire for quite some time now, and one can say that it is completely justified. Fraudulent and incompetent analysts, such as Annie Dookhan, have performed investigations in flawed crime labs, like that of the Baltimore crime lab, and through this process, have imprisoned the innocent, just as Cameron T. Willingham was falsely convicted. Issues occurred in all of these instances that allowed for the devaluing of the field of forensic science. If a lab is faulty or fraudulent, it is likely for the analysts who work within it to be flawed as well, as the two are essentially a team. With the case of the Baltimore crime lab, it was revealed that the lab analysts were contaminating evidence with their own DNA, as they did not put their own DNA samples into the system. Their DNA thus becomes a …show more content…
The Innocence Project explains that “he was convicted based on the testimony of forensic experts who said they had determined that the fire was intentionally set and a jailhouse informant who said Willingham had confessed to him” (Case summary section, para. 2). He was later sentenced to death. Years later, his attorneys sent a report from a nationally recognized arson expert, stating that the conviction was based on false forensic analysis. “Documents obtained by the Innocence Project show that state officials received the report but apparently did not act on it” (Innocence Project case summary section, para. 3). Not long after, Willingham was executed by lethal injection. Due to this, the Innocence Project assembled a team of arson experts to analyze the evidence of the case, and they found that “none of the scientific analysis used to convict Willingham was valid” (Innocence Project case summary section, para. 4). However, nothing was actually set into place to acknowledge a wrong based on