In Arizona, defense attorney's call into question the scientific validity of shoe print evidence.

PRESCOTT - Hoping to remove testimony from an FBI expert about shoe prints that prosecutors contend may link Steven DeMocker to tracks found behind his former wife's house shortly after her murder, defense lawyers filed a motion Tuesday claiming that type of evidence has no scientific validity.

Defense lawyers asked Superior Court Judge Thomas B. Lindberg to bar testimony from FBI shoe print expert Eric Gilkerson and John Hoang, a scientist with the Department of Public Safety. The lawyers cite a new law signed by the governor on Monday that tightens standards for forensic evidence. The law, SB1189, requires state courts to use the same standard as federal courts and that expert witnesses have the "knowledge, skill, experience, training or education" to offer an opinion "based on sufficient facts and data."

"They are doing something finally about unreliable comparison evidence about the use of this class of unreliable comparison evidence because the use of this class of unreviewed and untested testimony offends our basic notions of the right of a defendant to due process and a fair trial," the lawyers said in the motion.

The motion also quotes retired federal Judge Harry Edwards, co-chairman of the Forensic Science Project of the National Academy of Sciences, that issued a report concerning the reliability of expert testimony in areas such as fingerprints, comparative bullet lead analysis and hair comparisons.

"With the exception of nuclear DNA analysis, no forensic method has been rigorously shown to have the capacity to consistently, with a high degree of certainty, demonstrate a connection between evidence and a specific individual or source," Edwards said. "Yet for years, the courts have been led to believe that disciplines such as fingerprinting stand on par with nuclear DNA analysis."

Link:
http://www.dcourier.com/main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1086&ArticleID=80990