The National Academy of Sciences says many courtroom claims about fingerprints, bite marks and other evidence lack scientific verification. It finds forensics inconsistent and in disarray nationwide.

Sweeping claims made in courtrooms about fingerprints, ballistics, bite marks and other forensic evidence often have little or no basis in science, according to a landmark report released Wednesday by the nation’s leading science body.

The National Academy of Sciences report called for a wholesale overhaul of the crime lab system, which has become increasingly crucial to American jurisprudence.

Many experts said the report could have a broad impact on crime labs and the courts, ushering in changes at least as significant as those generated by the advent of DNA evidence two decades ago. But the substantial reforms would require years of planning and major federal funding.

In the meantime, the findings are expected to unleash a flood of new legal challenges by defense attorneys.

According to a lawsuit recently filed, the Los Angeles County Sheriffâ??s Department violated the civil rights of an inmate who was paralyzed below the chest after being shocked by a stun gun. The attorney for the inmate says that deputies should have known that shocking the man while he was standing on a top bunk would result in a dangerous fall. Five deputies and a supervising officer were disciplined for their role in the incident, the sheriffâ??s department said

FDA says Georgia peanut processor knowingly shipped salmonella-tainted products

The Food and Drug Administration says that a plant in Blakely, Ga. knowingly shipped salmonella-tainted peanut products. The facility had not undergone an FDA inspection since 2001.

The plant is under federal investigation in connection with an an outbreak of salmonella poisoning that has sickened nearly 600 people in more than 40 states. Eight may have died because of it.

Pamela Griffin and her husband have a challenging relationship.

At 36, Pam had just moved to Omaha from Sacramento to take a job as an associate in the banking department of a respected law firm in an old building on Farham Street. Pam and Robert had fallen in love during the 11 years she was married to his older brother, Gerry.

In prison visits and letters, they shared their private struggles and a nascent awareness of an intense emotional bond. Robert proposed to her in the visiting room at Folsom, in front of the vending machines. The place smelled of burnt popcorn. She laughed him off. She had just signed her divorce papers.

But she felt no one could ever know her the way Robert did. A few months later, she agreed to do it and the Griffins were married in the visiting yard at Folsom State Prison in July 1984. He had been incarcerated since 1970, first for an armed robbery in Fullerton, then for an assault on a fellow inmate in San Quentin and the murder of an inmate at the state prison in Chino. He had an almost mythic reputation in the system as a leader of the Aryan Brotherhood, or the Brand.She didn’t tell anyone about their marriage — not her parents, brothers or friends. She knew women who fell for prisoners were viewed as naive, delusional or possessed by some fetish for outlaws. She didn’t want to carry that burden as she started her career.

Pam graduated from McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento a year after the wedding and took the job in Omaha. When an appeals court threw out Robert’s murder conviction, Pam expected he would be paroled soon and they could start their life together.

Instead corrections officials sent him to Tehachapi and locked him down, under new security measures meant to control prison gangs, which were becoming increasingly potent.

Guards barely let Robert leave his cell. Robert was 38 now and trying to convince everyone he was done with the gang — that he just wanted to live a quiet life with his wife in the Midwest.

Prison officials gave him the choice all gang members were now given: “debrief” and become an informant, or stay locked up in the hole.

But becoming an informant put an inmate, and even his family, in danger. Robert told Pam he could not go down this path. He said he wanted to walk cleanly away from his life of crime. He did not want to be beholden to the government, “dancing for his dinner.”

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and other financial firms hid their true fiscal health in order to boost stock offerings, a new wave of shareholder class actions claims. According to the lawsuits, the financial firms and their executives violated responsibilities to shareholders by failing to disclose their exposure to risky subprime mortgage investments. Among the firms named in the latest filings are Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs & Co., UBS Securities LLC and Wachovia Capital Markets LLC.

The US government must pay more than ½ million dollars to a man who was imprisoned after 37 pounds of marijuana were discovered in a vehicle he purchased from the federal government.  Attorneys for the man claimed the customs officials failed to search the vehicle, which had been sized from drug traffickers and sold at auction. 

The award will cover lost income, medical bills, and legal fees plus the cost of the vehicle.

Many liberals claim that the military justice system is broken and that the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the military’s criminal code, has failed or that the United States pay lip service to the law of war while disregarding it in fact.

The first response is "Hogwash." Remember that war crime charges involve very few of the many thousands of heroic U.S. war fighters in Iraq and Afghanistan, and also that being charged does not necessarily mean one is guilty. (Duh) The Uniform Code of Military Justice has proved itself in peace and combat, including in Iraq and Afghanistan. But, undeniably, there are problems in prosecuting war crimes.

Although the code works well, the law of war — the part of international law that regulates armed hostilities — does not. The wonder is that it works at all. Some war crimes go unreported. After the Abu Ghraib scandal, greater attention is now given to enforcing the law of war, which partly explains the greater number of media accounts of criminality. Our military is not riddled with criminals. Rather, commanders are paying closer attention to possible war crimes and, as required by military law, they are investigating and reporting them.

In Haditha, after an improvised explosive device killed a popular Marine, 24 Iraqi noncombatants were killed. The Marine battalion commander denied the possibility of his men’s criminality and failed to make sufficient inquiry into their actions, multiple investigations allege. Time magazine backed this up, and Marine headquarters cast a wide net in charging those possibly involved, including senior officers who may have inadequately investigated. The division commander, a two-star general, has been administratively punished.

After a shaky start in Iraq, military justice is working. Three soldiers involved in the rape-murder-burning of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl were court-martialed and sentenced to 90, 100 and 110 years confinement. Problems remain, but find a system without problems. Over time, our military’s courtroom record is good.

The Justice Department is putting the final touches on regulations that could give any Attorney General important new sway over death penalty cases in various states, including the power to shorten the time that death row inmates have to appeal convictions to federal courts.

The rules implement a little-noticed provision in last year’s reauthorization of the Patriot Act that gives the attorney general the power to decide whether individual states are providing adequate counsel for defendants in death penalty cases. The authority has been held by federal judges.

Under the rules now being prepared, if a state requested it and if the Attorney General agreed, prosecutors could use "fast track" procedures that could shave years off the time that a death row inmate has to appeal to the federal courts after conviction in a state court.

The move to shorten the appeals process and effectively speed up executions comes at a time of growing national concern about the fairness of the death penalty, underscored by the use of DNA testing to establish the innocence of more than a dozen death row inmates in recent years.

Amid the public debate, the number of people executed in the U.S. has declined steadily since the mid-1990s.

And, o f course, there is the political side as this move gives the Democrats another reason to critize Atty. General Gonzales and blame the execution of innocents on President Buish. Then there are the bleeding hearts that say the way the states administer a three-drug lethal cocktail unnecessarily risks excessive pain for the inmate and therefore violates the constitutional bar against cruel and unusual punishment. Of course, nobody seems to care about the excessive pain the convict inflicted on his or her victim.

Prosecutors say many death penalty cases take far too long to resolve even when the issue of guilt is clear. Especially in the West, where the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco has blocked many executions, cases can take decades to wind through the courts. In its most recent term, the U.S. Supreme Court restored the death penalty in three cases in which the 9th Circuit had reversed the sentence.

One of the cases involved a two-time Arizona murderer who told the sentencing judge: "If you want to give me the death penalty, just bring it right on." He was sentenced in 1990.

Some Arizona officials say the new procedures are long overdue. "If you are going to have the death penalty at all, it shouldn’t take 20 to 25 years," said Kent Cattani, the chief capital litigation counsel in the Arizona attorney general’s office. "Either get rid of it altogether, or try to have a good system in state courts and then accelerate it through the federal courts."

It would also impose strict guidelines on federal judges for deciding such inmates’ petitions. Federal district judges would have 450 days, appeals courts 120 days. Proponents say that would prevent foot-dragging by liberal judges.

Five years after the Supreme Court declared in Atkins vs. Virginia that the death penalty was unconstitutional for those who are mentally retarded, Daryl Atkins still sits on death row.