Sharing "The Watch"

Radley Balko's excellent discussion on a firearms case ruling and "re-ruling"

Over at The Watch, Radley Balko covers two rulings by judges on the legitimacy of firearms as a forensic science*. He’s written on this at length before and it’s excellent, if troubling. Radley clearly demonstrates the essential frisson of forensic science*, that of being captive to the criminal justice system:

[The judge’s] reasoning mirrors the gap between law and science we see over and over in these cases. While the law strives for consistency and predictability, science is constantly changing as we acquire new information. Those clashing priorities create huge problems when the two fields intersect. Under [the judge’s] opinion, so long as there’s sufficient case law supporting it, no Illinois court short of the state supreme court can reconsider the reliability of any field of expertise, no matter how much scientific research shows it to be nonsense.

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