Recommendations from Forensic DNA Interpretation and Human Factors: Improving the Practice Through a Systems Approach: What the Defense Needs to Know
In Spring 2024, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the National Institute of Justice published the Expert Working Group on Human Factors in Forensic DNA Interpretation Forensic DNA Interpretation and Human Factors: Improving the Practice Through a Systems Approach. This important report, the third in a series that includes previous reports in latent print examination and handwriting analysis, focuses on human factors in DNA analysis— in other words, the interactions between individuals and all other elements of a system, among technology, training, products, procedures, workspaces, the overall environment, resources, and institutional culture.
This report includes critical recommendations regarding testimony on transfer and persistence, cognitive bias, transparency, language to be used or avoided by analysts in reporting and testimony, and other areas key to defense practice in DNA cases. Clinton Hughes, a veteran public defender and DNA litigation specialist, was also a member of the expert working group that drafted this report, and this presentation will include his insights on key recommendations and how the defense can make effective use of this major report.
Presented by Dana M. Delger, an attorney consultant to the Forensic Science Standards Program at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and Clinton Hughes, Senior Forensic DNA Attorney with Brooklyn Defender Services (BDS)
Wednesday, August 7, 2024 beginning at 2pm ET / 11am PT
Faculty
Dana M. Delger is an attorney who works as a consultant to the Forensic Science Standards Program at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Between 2014 and 2020, she served as senior staff attorney in the Strategic Litigation Unit at the Innocence Project. Ms. Delger previously represented clients in state and federal criminal proceedings at the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem and at Morvillo Abramowitz Grand Iason & Anello P.C.. She also served as a law clerk to the Honorable Rosemary S. Pooler on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Ms. Delger graduated from New York University in 2007 and Columbia Law School in 2010, where she was a James Kent and Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar.
Clinton Hughes is the Senior Forensic DNA Attorney with Brooklyn Defender Services (BDS). He has spent the last 26 years as a public defender. For the past 11 years, Mr. Hughes has served as a Forensic DNA legal specialist, advising attorneys and their clients in thousands of cases involving DNA evidence. He has also been a pro bono advisor for attorneys in state and federal courts in California, Georgia, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Texas and Wisconsin on cases involving complex DNA mixture evidence and probabilistic genotyping. He has presented to judges, forensic scientists and criminal defense attorneys on legal issues related to forensic DNA analysis. Mr. Hughes was the lead attorney of the pro bono DNA litigation team that successfully precluded the application of the DNA mixture software STRmix and the modified random match probability to DNA samples in the upstate New York murder case People v. Hillary, in 2016. Mr. Hughes was also a member of the legal team that successfully precluded use of the Forensic Statistical Tool (FST) software and low copy number (LCN) DNA testing in People v. Collins, in Brooklyn, New York in 2014.
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