Forensic Science Research

Bad Forensic Science is Rampant in the U.S. Legal System

Nearly one-third (29%) of exonerations documented since 19891 remedied convictions that relied on improper or invalid forensic evidence at trial. In over half (60%) of these exonerations, false or misleading testimony from forensic analysts led jurors to conclude that a defendant’s likelihood of committing a crime was much higher than the evidence implied.² A review of criminal justice expert stakeholders concluded that “the most common forensic error was improper testimony at trial by a state’s witness who overstated the precision or the inculpatory [incriminating] nature of the results.”³

Defense Attorneys Need Help Navigating Forensic Science

Unfortunately, many defense attorneys report feeling underprepared to successfully challenge the admission of outdated or unvalidated scientific theories during a trial.⁴ In approximately 20% of all criminal trials, defense attorneys fail to call an expert witness to challenge the forensic evidence against their client. This may be for a variety of reasons, including a significantly higher caseload than their prosecutorial counterparts,⁵ unfamiliarity with scientific concepts, or a lack of funding for expert testimony.⁶

Our Research Levels the Playing Field in Forensic Science

The Research Team at The Center for Integrity in Forensic Sciences assists attorneys in bridging the gap between science and the law by curating and creating educational materials for attorneys learning to challenge specific forensic science evidence in state and federal court. We also collaborate with other justice-focused nonprofit organizations to support forensic science and expert witness testimony needs within the defense community.

Citations

¹ National Registry of Exonerations, 2025

² National Registry of Exonerations, 2025

³ Bonventre, C. (2022). Wrongful convictions and forensic science. WIREs: Forensic Science, 3(1406)

⁴ Jin, A., & Salehi, N. (2024). (Beyond) reasonable doubt: Challenges that public defenders face in scrutinizing AI in court. In Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’24), May 11–16, 2024, Honolulu, HI,  

 USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 19 pages. https: //doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3641902

⁵ Jurs, A.W. (2016) Expert Prevalence, Persuasion and Price: What Trial Participants Really Think About Experts.  Indiana Law Journal,  91:2(4). https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ilj/vol91/iss2/4

⁶ Pace, N.M., Brink, M.N., Lee, C.G., & Hanlon, S.F. (2023). National Public Defense Workload Study. Accessed 03 February 2026 at https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RRA2500/RRA2559-1/RAND_RRA2559-1.pdf?trk=public_post_comment-text.