Law Commons^™

During the Symposium for the Judicial Conference Advisory Committee on Evidence Rules, held at Boston College on October 27, 2017, the scientists, statisticians, legal academics, and criminal defense lawyers presented a unified theme: the federal courts have not fulfilled their role as gatekeepers to exclude or limit potentially unreliable feature-comparison methods of forensic science evidence (“FCM evidence”). The only voiced dissents came from the DOJ and FBI lawyers, who argued that the courts had been admitting such pattern-matching evidence properly and that the evidence was indeed reliable.

This article will discuss the Academy Standards Board Consensus Body for Forensics in the area of Firearms and Toolmarks, and its role in the scheme of standards, commissions and entities doing this type of work.