Ethics Forensic Science Legal and Ethical Issues in Forensic Science

When most people think about the conviction of criminals, scientific evidence provides some of most credible evidence available. Scientific evidence is generally considered to be fail-safe by a majority of the public. However, this is not always the case. There are many errors that can occur during the scientific accumulation of the evidence. Furthermore, there are also some cases in which the evidence is purposefully altered to provide leverage for either party in a trial to further their personal ambitions. There are also cases of negligence in which the evidence was simply not handled to the appropriate standards. Whatever the case may be, when peoples' lives are on the line, there are clear legal and ethical requirements for forensic scientist that must be upheld at all times. This analysis will focus on a few examples of unethical or illegal behavior that occurred in this profession.

Falsifying Evidence

One example of illegal and unethical behavior is the act of falsifying evidence by a forensic scientist. Most people would assume that a forensic scientist would have to be coerced into falsifying evidence; maybe there was a financial reward, maybe someone threatened the safety of the forensic scientist's family member, or possibly the forensic scientist used to get beat up by a potential suspect in elementary school. All of these scenarios in which evidence would be falsified would be appalling, yet would still be understandable on some level. However, not all forensic scientist have a real motive when falsifying evidence.

In a recent case, Massachusetts state chemist Annie Dookhan,...

As the New York Times sums up, "Prosecutors say Ms. Dookhan declared drug samples positive that she had not bothered to test, tampered with evidence, forged signatures and lied about her credentials to enhance her standing in court as an expert witness. In all, her actions may have tainted more than 40,000 drug samples involving thousands of defendants (Beiser, 2013)."
As a result, said the judge who sentenced Dookhan to three to five years in prison, "Innocent persons were incarcerated…. Guilty persons have been released to further endanger the public, millions and millions of public dollars are being expended to deal with the chaos Ms. Dookhan created, and the integrity of the criminal justice system has been shaken to the core (Beiser, 2013)." As a result of this illegal and unethical negligence, more than three hundred people convicted partly thanks to Dookhan's work have since been released. It appears that Dookhan's motive for putting her job on the line, peoples' lives at stake, and the safety of the public in question was just shear laziness and professional negligence.

Ethics in Forensic Testimony

In most trial settings juries and individual jurors consider the testimony of a forensic expert virtually infallible unless otherwise proven. There is often a good reason to believe an ethical analyst. If they are ethical then they have an obligation to the truth as well as an obligation not to mislead the jury, defense, or the state when testifying before the court, or when preparing their reports relating to their analyses of forensic evidence…