
The FBI faked an entire field of forensic science (2015) - mkagenius
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2015/04/fbi_s_flawed_forensics_expert_testimony_hair_analysis_bite_marks_fingerprints.html
======
Overtonwindow
IMHO this is indicative of a "win at all cost" justice system. By and large
prosecutors are allowed to say just about anything they want, solicit any
testimony they wish, and those in law enforcement, forensics, and the state,
dutifully follow suit. The machine of the state is at fault here, and
prosecutors should themselves be thrown in jail for such behavior.

~~~
nateabele
'Justice' implies something other than what the system is. This is a 'win at
all cost' _punishment_ system. Justice doesn't come into it. I can tell you
from first-hand experience [0] that, if the system has an opportunity to
punish you, it will do so to the _maximum_ extent it possibly can,
irrespective of the impact on the victim, the accused, society at large or,
frankly, sanity. It is not 'corrective', it is not 'restorative', it is not
any of the other euphemisms they use. It is purely punitive.

[0] [https://fundrazr.com/nicoleabele](https://fundrazr.com/nicoleabele)

~~~
djsumdog
Someone told me in a lot of other countries, there aren't dedicated
prosecution and defense attorneys; that in places like the UK a pool can be
drawn from to represent both. Is this true?

I feel like the win/closure rate is a huge part of the problem.

~~~
arethuza
Well, there isn't really a single legal system in the UK.

Here in Scotland, which I think is fairly similar to England even though the
terminology is completely different, the public prosecutor is the _procurator
fiscal_ who directly employs solicitors to prosecute cases in the lower courts
(Sheriff Courts). Defendants will typically be defended by solicitors working
criminal defence firms - often paid for by the state through Legal Aid.

However, for more serious crimes there is a completely separate court - the
High Court of the Justiciary before which normal solicitors can't appear - you
need to be a specialised advocate and they can't be employed directly by
clients but only by solicitors (you do get Solicitor Advocates but apparently
they don't appear nearly as often as you might expect). You might be getting
the idea of a shared pool from this idea of an advocate (barrister in England)
who in theory will take any side of any case. In practice there are advocates
working for the public prosecutor for a stint and others who focus on criminal
defence. However I suspect most advocates have no desire to do criminal work
unless they want to be Sheriffs or Judges.

~~~
tripzilch
Do you have this "jury of peers" thing as well? Cause that's such a scary
notion in the US legal system, I'm happy we do without (in the Netherlands).
It's such an obvious part of the problem. Yes it's nice they're peers or
something, but they're pretty useless considering how easily they get wooed by
any expert speaking with a sound of authority and the fact that they're a 100
times more familiar with the CSI:Fairytales on TV than they are with the
actual justice system.

The big difference is that a professional working in this system will actually
get a notion of how trustworthy tea-leaf readings actually are when
determining objective true facts (or something similarly scientific, like
polygraphs--they don't seem to get much use outside the US either, weird).
Well, unless of course the incentives for the professional are wrong, and
again it's this "jury of peers" idea that gets in the way, the incentives
become about populism and convincing the jury, about the show. Not what's
really real, but who can produce the biggest superstimulus of hyperreality.
Thanks a lot, Baudrillard :-(

~~~
arethuza
Yes - we have jury trials - juries picked purely at random with no vetting
(I've been selected for jury duty a few times and never actually been picked):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_by_jury_in_Scotland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_by_jury_in_Scotland)

------
js2
Arson cases too have been based on flawed forensics.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameron_Todd_Willingham](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameron_Todd_Willingham)

[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/09/07/trial-by-
fire](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/09/07/trial-by-fire)

 _In 2005, Texas established a government commission to investigate
allegations of error and misconduct by forensic scientists. The first cases
that are being reviewed by the commission are those of Willingham and Willis.
In mid-August, the noted fire scientist Craig Beyler, who was hired by the
commission, completed his investigation. In a scathing report, he concluded
that investigators in the Willingham case had no scientific basis for claiming
that the fire was arson, ignored evidence that contradicted their theory, had
no comprehension of flashover and fire dynamics, relied on discredited
folklore, and failed to eliminate potential accidental or alternative causes
of the fire. He said that Vasquez’s approach seemed to deny “rational
reasoning” and was more “characteristic of mystics or psychics.” What’s more,
Beyler determined that the investigation violated, as he put it to me, “not
only the standards of today but even of the time period.” The commission is
reviewing his findings, and plans to release its own report next year. Some
legal scholars believe that the commission may narrowly assess the reliability
of the scientific evidence. There is a chance, however, that Texas could
become the first state to acknowledge officially that, since the advent of the
modern judicial system, it had carried out the “execution of a legally and
factually innocent person.”_

------
fsloth
The imprecise nature of forensics work should be a sufficient argument for
leniency in all criminal justice cases. Instead there seems to be this witch-
hunting mentality where _someone_ needs to take the fall.

The fact that the justice system of the mightiest and wealthiest country in
the history of the planet uses methods no better than pricking is quite
disturbing
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pricking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pricking)).

~~~
pjc50
The entire US approach to dealing with crime is tainted by both racism and a
religious-fundamentalist approach to sin. People very much want to believe
that there are good people and bad people, and that it's feasible to sort
everyone into those categories and put the bad people in prison and punish
them eternally for their intrinsic badness.

This blinds people to misconduct by the ""good guys"".

------
neilellis
I believe the problem here is that we (humans) are terrible at dealing with
systemic failures. It would seem we find it easy to accept that a small number
of cases/people/situations are flawed, and that feels like something we can
fix. But usually, when faced with a problem so large it is described as
systemic we choose to ignore it and move on rather than face it and fix it.
I.e. the problem just seems too big. That is why I think that even when we
discover such a horrific problem as listed here there is no proportional
public outcry.

For example if someone is imprisoned in another's basement for 10 years we
accept their right to sue the person who kept them imprisoned - even many
years later. But when faced with systematic slavery we classify the problem as
a systemic failure and move on, the idea of reparation seems crazy.

Another example would be the crash of 2009, once the flaw was discovered (high
risk debt rolled up into low risk securities) very few people accepted it was
a problem to fix even when shown the facts; in part because 'everybody is
doing it', what can we do. I.e. the problem was systemic not localised to a
small group of people. Interestingly a lot of the same bad practises appear to
be continuing and are often reported - but again, what to do, it's a failure
in the system!

And finally it's also like the story of the discovery of Yellowstone caldera -
the scientists couldn't work out where exactly the volcano was in Yellowstone
initially they didn't believe/realise it was in fact all of Yellowstone.

~~~
Zigurd
This is another reason prosecutorial immunity is bad. Prosecutors and cops
should be bonded so that the bad ones price themselves out of the business.

------
hackuser
An excellent source on forensics' scientiic basis is the "Reference Manual on
Scientific Evidence: Third Edition"

[http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13163](http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13163)

It was written by the National Academies as a guide for federal judges (i.e.,
for non-scientists), so it's based on deep scientific expertise and yet is
pretty readable. Also, the first section on how science really works in
practice, relative to theories of scientific method, is unique (AFAIK) and
exceptional.

EDIT: If there's not a free version available at that link, I'm pretty sure
you can find one from a credible source elsewhere, I think from one of the
other organizations involved. However, consider paying and supporting the
National Academies' work.

------
readams
We've long required the state to provide an attorney to those that cannot
afford one. It may now be necessary for the state to provide scientists to
those that cannot afford them as well.

Sadly prosecutors too often see their job as winning cases rather than serving
justice.

~~~
coldtea
> _We 've long required the state to provide an attorney to those that cannot
> afford one. It may now be necessary for the state to provide scientists to
> those that cannot afford them as well._

Well, the state provided poor people bottom of the barrel attorneys, who
didn't care much about the defendants (and had not much of a financial motive
to), and urged them to plea so that they can move ahead, in a hell of a lot of
cases.

So, this "state scientist" process to exist, it should be really to work
better than that if it's to do any good.

~~~
sbov
It's not always that they don't care, it's also that the caseload can be
insane - some public defenders being assigned upwards of 1,000 felony cases
per year.

~~~
derefr
You'd think that supply would rise to meet demand.

Being a public defender in a free market would be an attractive career: the
stability of a public servant, and the lucrative nature of a skilled job
requiring high intelligence.

Of course, we don't have a free market; we have a lawyer's guild with a set
yearly intake of applicants.

~~~
gamblor956
Don't blame the "lawyer's guild" for this. This is not a matter of supply and
demand; there are currently more lawyers looking for work than there are jobs
available.

Public defenders are largely government employees. Most governments have
resisted increasing the budgets of their respective Public Defenders' offices
to allow for the hiring of additional staff. Blame the legislators, and blame
the taxpayers for not wanting to pay an extra $1/year.

------
mabbo
'“the cases include those of 32 defendants sentenced to death.” Of these
defendants, 14 have already been executed or died in prison.'

~~~
tobltobs
Guess what will happen with the other 18.

~~~
jessaustin
If the executive branch had any courage or decency, they'd be pardoned. Along
with tens of thousands of other unjustly imprisoned citizens.

~~~
794CD01
Bad evidence having been presented against them does not mean they are
necessarily innocent. Their cases did not all hinge entirely upon this one
piece of forensic evidence. Although what happened to them was wrong, pardons
go too far in the opposite direction. Retrial would be far more appropriate.

~~~
jessaustin
Retrials ain't gonna happen, not least because there aren't enough courts to
retry all the cases for which retrial is "appropriate", and also work through
current cases. (In my county, there is a rapist of children still on pretrial
bail after three fucking years because "there aren't enough judges" and the
real priorities around here are traffic offences and drug possession. How
eager do you think the courts are going to be to clean up ancient FBI
fuckups?)

Besides, which cases are you talking about? Juries will convict with _no_
evidence. A _single_ piece of "evidence" is enough for a judge to let the
conviction stand. Most of these trials _did_ "hinge entirely upon this one
piece of forensic" bullshit. Fake forensics has allowed LEOs to pick suspects
out of a hat and get convictions for decades. Do you really want to leave all
those innocents in prison because you feel good about their hat-picking
percentages? Far better for one innocent prisoner to be released than for
hundreds of guilty people to stay in prison.

~~~
794CD01
I'm talking about the 32 capital cases referred to in the article. Which are
you talking about? The ones you imagine as a symbol of systemic injustice? Or
actual cases?

~~~
jessaustin
Ah, OK, I can see how that was confusing, from a certain point of view. From
TFA:

“ _Of 28 examiners with the FBI Laboratory’s microscopic hair comparison unit,
26 overstated forensic matches in ways that favored prosecutors in more than
95 percent of the 268 trials reviewed so far._ ”

That is, these dickheads lied almost every time. We shouldn't suspect only the
250 verdicts their lies about which have been documented. We should suspect
every single verdict that they touched. The WaPo article is more informative
than TFA in this respect, in that it reveals that 2500 cases over this period
had FBI hair testimony, while only 342 had been reviewed when that article was
published. It also drops this bomb: " _The bureau expects this year to
complete similar standards for testimony and lab reports for 19 forensic
disciplines._ " That is, there are tens of thousands more cases with shitty
lying FBI expert testimony.

I tried digging out more precise figures on this last part, but the Innocence
Project's site is kind of a mess.

------
tyingq
They are apparently big fans of the polygraph as well:
[http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/special-
reports/article24749...](http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/special-
reports/article24749254.html)

~~~
Overtonwindow
Ooohhh careful! Don't you dare tell anyone how to defeat a polygraph or they
will come after you!

Source: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/indiana-man-accused-
of-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/indiana-man-accused-of-teaching-
people-to-beat-lie-detector-tests-faces-prison-
time/2013/08/31/a7cbe74a-08ea-11e3-9941-6711ed662e71_story.html)

~~~
tyingq
"obstruction of an agency proceeding". Wow...didn't know that law existed.
Seems easily abused and overly broad.

~~~
goldenkey
It appears that they entrapped him as an accessory to a crime. By saying
things like 'I need help cheating my border patrol test. Can you help me?'
Terrible..

------
baldfat
FBI and Federal Prosecutors are so aggressive.

As my friend is close to being indited by the FBI and a "Star Witness" just
plead guilty for bribery, tax evasion and bribery. The FBI released one
recording where my friend was pissed at a company and the "Star Witness" who
was wired was the one saying he would do illegal activities. Also FBI "You
will find that (my friend) did not have direct contact with other people and
kept himself separated from other people who did illegal activities.

So far the "Star Witness" has brought down 6 people after he got caught for
tax evasion.

------
pakled_engineer
I was a juror in a trial 10 yrs ago where the police fielded their so-called
blood splatter expert who testified he could recreate the entire crime just
from casual observations about bloodstains at the scene complete with props
using red dyed water to further the fraud. As soon as he was done the judge
instructed us that the entire testimony be thrown out since it was blatant
pseudoscience but later when I looked the police agents name up he had given
the same false testimony in other trials and it was admitted as evidence
without question.

~~~
MichaelGG
>instructed us that the entire testimony be thrown out

This is moronic. Human minds aren't able to just discard information and
biases like that. The fact that so much is allowed to be said in a courtroom,
to untrained people, then simply reasoned away with "well, it's not evidence"
is insane. I'm thinking of the lawyer's arguments, too. They get to present
things under the guise of non-evidence.

------
arca_vorago
Slightly ot, but this is one of the reasons I have always felt like the law
shows and csi shows had a rather obvious tinge of propaganda to them, in a way
that is meant to normalize certain viewpoints. For example, how the accused in
shows almost never have a lawyer present, or that the science is perfect, etc.

Shades of operation mockingbird.

~~~
ams6110
Those shows are nearly compete fiction. Like how they show a DNA test coming
back in 5 minutes when in reality it takes weeks.

~~~
askldfhjkasfhd
This is definitely true. But even with awareness of the inaccurate
representation, I think some of the message seeps into the brain of even the
most aware human.

Then realize how unusual it is. Most people do not have the critical thinking
skills, or industry expertise, to grok that medicine or forensics or
programming is nothing like the movies.

------
maxxxxx
I would have expected that some higher ranking people in the justice system
would be horrified by these things and do something.

In fields like medicine or air travel errors happen but it's part of the
system to address them and make sure they don't happen again. That doesn't
seem to be the case at all in the justice system.

~~~
tobltobs
Why do you believe that higher ranking people in the justice system didn't
know this before? I would guess that it is an requirement to accept this
system if you want to climb higher ranks.

~~~
maxxxxx
I am pretty sure they knew. I am just surprised that they aren't horrified. If
I were the head of an organization that sends innocent people to death (while
the real killer is free) I would do my best to avoid this.

------
hackuser
The systemic fix is that there needs to be accountability for these mistakes.
Knowingly giving false testimony that leads to someone's conviction and
incarceration should be a crime, as should knowing utilization of false
testimony by a prosecutor.

Just like with torture and other criminal failures of government, nobody goes
to jail; there is no incentive to avoid corruption next time someone has a
choice like this one.

~~~
elthran
> Knowingly giving false testimony that leads to someone's conviction and
> incarceration should be a crime

Does the USA not have a crime of perjury?

~~~
misnome
Who is going to prosecute, when it is the person who decides who gets
prosecuted, doing the perjury? And all the other prosecutors use the same
methods to get forward in their jobs?

------
jMyles
> jurors who, not unreasonably, believed that scientists in white coats knew
> what they were talking about

I don't think I agree with the "not unreasonably" part. At what point do we as
a society expect more from jurors? Ask yourself: If you or one of your close
friends is called to be on a jury, do you think you'll just take some song-
and-dance at face value without carefully weighing the ostensible expertise of
each witness?

Rather, it seems to me that the process of juror selection has become so
obtuse - yet so routine - that critical jurors who might lead the jury away
from swallowing this kind of hogwash are filtered out before the case makes it
to trial.

> There were no scientifically accepted standards for forensic testing, yet
> FBI experts routinely and almost unvaryingly testified, according to the
> Post, “to the near-certainty of ‘matches’ of crime-scene hairs to
> defendants, backing their claims by citing incomplete or misleading
> statistics drawn from their case work.”

...and nobody questioned this? No defense attorney or jury foreperson over the
years brought any serious attention to this? _That 's_ the broken part.

That the government will lie is to be expected and is part of the nature of
government. That people will unflinchingly proceed as though its lies are
actually veracious and sober elements of a criminal trial - this is fixable.

> There is no lack of good ideas for reform. (Journalist Radley Balko and
> Roger Koppl, a professor of finance at Syracuse University’s Whitman School
> of Management and a fellow at Syracuse’s Forensic and National Security
> Sciences Institute, offered up a laundry list of fixes in Slate—almost seven
> years ago.)* These solutions are not all that expensive or complicated.
> Among them: giving defendants their own forensic experts, untethering crime
> labs from the prosecutors and cops to which they now answer, verification
> and standards.

Radley has been so tireless in his reporting. Glad to see his work mentioned
here. He's a true hacker and a great speaker and researcher. The
recommendations mentioned here are so obvious and so easy that it's
unthinkable that the failure to implement them is attributable to anything but
the desire to continue to convict, truth be damned.

~~~
lawpoop
I think a solution would be to move to a system of professional jurors.

As it stands, the current jury system seems to be a horrible mess of people
who can't get out of going to jury duty, relying not on understanding of the
law or legal procedure, but rather the judge's instructions and the arguments
of lawyers, and all the crime/courtroom drama shows and movies they've
watched. They can't question lawyers during the trial or anything like that;
they just watch a show for a while and then make a decision.

Given that a jury decision is, in the most abstract sense, an alternative to a
judge's decision, then it would make sense to have jurors who at least as
competent as a judge is for the job.

There would still be the issue of them becoming too close to prosecutors,
lawyers, or judges, as we have now with judges, prosecutors, and law
enforcement. But there are ways to address that. Nonetheless I believe it
would be an improvement on the current system

~~~
jMyles
Extending the credentialism that already plagues the "justice" system seems
like the wrong move to me.

I think we need a cultural change that makes jurors (and, more generally,
participants in various civic activities) feel more empowered to think
critically and speak out about their conclusions.

It was pretty obvious that the bitemark stuff was complete junk science to
anybody who read about it. The hair analysis may have been a little tougher,
but I'm sure it was knowable.

------
tristanj
Story needs a (2015) tag, this was published April 22 2015.

~~~
EdHominem
Also ' \- hair analysis' to save the click if you've already read it.

------
chinathrow
How can these fellows sleep at night?

“Of 28 examiners with the FBI Laboratory’s microscopic hair comparison unit,
26 overstated forensic matches in ways that favored prosecutors in more than
95 percent of the 268 trials reviewed so far.”

~~~
Amygaz
It's like fsloth said earlier in this thread: someone needs to fall.

Personally, twice I had FBI field agents as my neighbor, and I while my n=2
can hardly be generalized, my first impression (and you only get one chance to
make a good first impression) is that the FBI doesn't get to hire the cream-
of-the-crop. Maybe it's not the staff fault: the FBI seems to be investing a
lot more in their PR department than in its departments actually doing the job
in the trenches.

~~~
dsr_
The FBI cannot (or does not) pay as well for technical positions as nearly any
private position. The background of agents (and, subsequently, management) is
in either accounting or "criminal justice", neither one of which is a field
noted for reassessment of theory or appraising scientific evidence.

As a result, they tend to accept promises of accuracy that line up with their
biases, and not dig too deeply into methods.

~~~
ams6110
This mindset is common in practitioners. Faith in the process, or the way it's
always been done, or the way they were trained. Even in development, it's very
common in corporate or government settings to find developers who know the one
language and OS that they use, and the one set of patterns they use, and are
not very curious about anything else. It's a job.

------
hellofunk
The Making a Murderer series on Netflix provides some specific case insight
into possible FBI misconduct with regards to forensic tests they were asked to
do when they didn't have the science to do them.

~~~
gypsy_boots
Thought of that right after I read the headline. If there was foul play here,
I wonder if there was foul play in the Avery case.

------
Gratsby
Breathalyzers aren't nearly as accurate as they are purported to be and the
whole justice system just accepts it because drunk drivers are bad.

The justice system isn't a science system and never has been.

~~~
Spooky23
Never consent to a breathalyzer if you've been drinking.

~~~
frandroid
In my jurisdiction, refusing a breathalyzer test is felony, as it should.

~~~
llamataboot
Is your jurisdiction in the United States? If so, that's not true. You may
automatically have your license revoked if you refuse a breathalyzer and a
field sobriety test. But that's different than committing a felony. Your
penalties may be harsher if you are eventually be found guilty of DUI without
the breathalyzer evidence, but that is not being charged with a felony.

You absolutely have the 5th Amendment right to not incriminate yourself in
every jurisdiction of the US. There are automatic consequences to refusing a
breathalyzer (losing ones license), but they have nothing to do with being
charged with a crime, much less a felony.

------
_Codemonkeyism
I've read on HN several times that finger prints in principle or how they are
handled are also 'fake'? Is this the case?

~~~
mnordhoff
Kind of? There was the infamous Brandon Mayfield case a decade ago, where the
FBI came down on an innocent American lawyer for the 2004 Madrid train
bombings, despite the skepticism of Spanish security, because he was one of
twenty people with similar-ish fingerprints.

He was also Muslim, worked on a terrorism case, had interest in flying, and
his daughter had done a school project about a hypothetical Spanish vacation,
which the FBI built into a damning case of misconstrued circumstantial
evidence.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Mayfield](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Mayfield)

[http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/2/the-
terrifying-...](http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/2/the-terrifying-
surveillancecaseofbrandonmayfield.html)

~~~
_Codemonkeyism
Thanks!

------
Myrmornis
The first questions that one should ask regarding things like this are:

\- How does this compare to other countries?

\- Do other countries make use of similar lines of evidence in similar ways?

\- Have other countries made the same mistake of over-interpreting the
evidence and subsequently overhauled it?

The World contains a convenient set of correlated pseudo-replicates of western
societies. Discourse in the USA often fails to make use of them.

------
abannin
Thanks for posting this. I'm shocked at the lack of response to this issue.

------
unabst
There is no good side or bad side in American justice or anywhere with similar
systems. The defense is expected to lie through their teeth even if they're
guilty, and the prosecution is expected to convict at all costs regardless of
innocence. There are no ethical or moral grounds for either stretching their
practices, especially in the big leagues where every win counts. As with
sports, so often we find the winners were actually just the dopers that got
away with it, until they get caught, like now.

Fair and balanced? It's pretty disgusting actually, but so is the NFL
depending on how offensive you feel it is to taint studies on concussions. The
analogy goes further than one might expect, with the justice system struggling
with their image just like any other professional sport institution. It's the
Justice League. Justice is a brand.

The real question is, are we really that desperate? Or rather, why wouldn't we
be? When you're forced to win, you're forced to do a lot of things.

Instead, we should just be forced to get it right.

------
Zigurd
Forensics should be contracted from the private sector, independent of law
enforcement, be equally available to defendants, and QA'ed with test data in
double-blind tests.

------
backtoyoujim
> Chillingly, as the Post continues, “the cases include those of 32 defendants
> sentenced to death.” Of these defendants, 14 have already been executed or
> died in prison.

------
VikingCoder
Aren't these 26 forensic witnesses guilty of massive perjury?

I have no sympathy for them AT ALL, and I think they should be personally
prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

------
yalogin
This is disturbing. This got me thinking, is there any institution or system
that can be trusted? I mean these are organizations that enforce laws and the
very foundation the rest of the society is built on. If that is flawed to the
coare, what can you trust?

~~~
Zigurd
It's more that every system that asks for trust should be rigorously tested:
Random double blind tests, "red team" tests, etc. Without testing, they are
not even at the starting line for building trust.

------
ck2
We also need to revisit all shootings the FBI declared justified.

Which would be all of them.

No FBI agent has ever been found in the wrong for killing anyone, ever.

------
JackFr
"Paradoxically, Justice Antonin Scalia has emerged as a vocal early skeptic
about the risk of taint in the work of crime labs" \-- there is nothing
paradoxical about it all. The paradox exists only in the mind and shallow
analysis of an intellectually lazy author who has been conditioned to believe
that he should categorically disagree with Scalia.

~~~
ohyes
The paradox is that he's skeptical of the crime labs, which have been used in
convicting/sentencing people to death, yet in the quote he appears to state
that there have never been wrongful death sentence convictions because of
tainted/false evidence.

The paradox is between Scalia's statements and is actually pretty clear. But
you do have to put the entire paragraph and read the link to understand the
context.

“It should be noted at the outset that the dissent does not discuss a single
case—not one—in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime he
did not commit. If such an event had occurred in recent years, we would not
have to hunt for it; the innocent’s name would be shouted from the rooftops by
the abolition lobby.”

“Two years ago, Scalia spoke for a 5-4 majority reversing the conviction of an
alleged cocaine dealer from Massachusetts because prosecutors did not bring to
court a lab analyst whose test confirmed the bags of white powder were indeed
cocaine. The dissenters, including Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and
Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and Samuel A. Alito Jr., said a lab technician who
conducts a test is not a "witness" in the ordinary sense of the term.“

Based on Scalia's constitutional views (a very literal interpretation), I'd
say it probably isn't really a paradox to him, but an outside observer might
see the results as conflicting. (I mean, obviously it wasn't going to be a
literal paradox, that's not what paradoxically is taken to mean colloquially).

~~~
kobayashi
I'd imagine that Scalia would have argued in response that the legal system
provides for enough failsafes, since that individual wasn't actually executed.

