Evidence

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in law enforcement investigations continues to put innocent people, especially innocent people of color, at risk of wrongful arrest. Artificial intelligence technologies are being developed and implemented by law enforcement agencies across the country. Police increasingly use AI tools to surveille communities, investigate crimes, and collect large amounts of data related their targets. However, with this increased use of AI in policing, comes a growing number of innocent people being wrongfully arrested.

Colorado’s star DNA scientist intentionally manipulated evidence for years, calling into question all of the criminal cases she worked on in her nearly three-decade career, according to a preliminary investigation released by officials Friday (view full article).

Jasmine Yoon has been confirmed by the Senate and will become the first Asian American Article III federal judge to serve in Virginia (view full article).

She will be a U.S. District Judge for the Western District of Virginia.

Yoon, who was born in South Korea, was nominated by President Joe Biden to fill the position when Chief Judge Michael F. Urbanski assumes senior status in July 2024.

New FBI data released on Tuesday confirms previous indications that crime in the U.S. declined significantly in 2023, continuing a post-pandemic trend and belying widespread perceptions that crime is rising.

Federal public defenders would avoid the most dire budget scenarios under the fiscal 2024 funding package unveiled Thursday, with Congress set to spend tens of millions of dollars more than previous proposals from the House and Senate (View press release).

The U.S. Judicial Conference's Advisory Committee on Evidence Rules met and struggled to determine whether or how to draft rules that would allow courts to ensure the authenticity and reliability of trial evidence generated by artificial intelligence (article available here).

Attorney Generals from across the country are urging the Supreme Court to give the “utmost” deference to Oklahoma’s admission and confession of prosecutorial misconduct in the case of Glossip v. Oklahoma, Case No. 22-7477, which resulted in Richard Eugene Glossip’s death sentence. In their amicus brief, the attorney generals are asking the Court to overturn Mr. Glossip’s conviction and death sentence noting “‘confessing error is a momentous step, one that attorneys general never take lightly. . .

The Training Division and Defender Nation pay tribute to the contributions and dedicated service of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders (AANHPIs), past and present, have played in our shared mission and commitment to equal justice under law, during May and throughout the year.

A first of its kind, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Wisconsin has charged a man for allegedly producing and possessing images of child pornography. The images at issue were generated entirely through artificial intelligence using the generative artificial intelligence model Stable Diffusion and created using text prompts describing the images to be generated. Images of children are not alleged to have been used in generating the images.

As of July 1, 2024, 200 people in the U.S. have been exonerated and freed from death row since 1973 (access full article).

In 2021, the Death Penalty Information Center dubbed this national reality an “innocence epidemic” when the number of death row exonerations had reached 185 people. Two recent exonerations have brought the number to 200: the June 19, 2024 exoneration of Kerry Cook in Texas and the July 1, 2024 exoneration of Larry Roberts in California.