mugley43: blog 
mugley43's blog
expert's lies jeopardize murder convictions
Published Jun. 29, 2008Saami Shaibani often testified for the prosecution in big murder cases, taking the stand as an expert in what he called "injury mechanism analysis" - a combination of physics, trauma medicine and engineering that he used to determine whether, say, a woman fell down the stairs or was beaten.
"He had women sticking their heads in toilets," he said. "That's just not science. How do you peer review that? How do you test his conclusions?"
ya kind of got to admire a man who can talk women into sticking their heads in the toilet! LOL
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My policy is this: If the defense or plaintiffs, whichever, theory does not match EXACTLY my conclusions then they can find another engineer. I simply will not bend my results in any way to match a story line.
There is occasionally a LOT of pressure from the attorneys to “bend” a little. At a couple of hundred dollars per hour even I will admit that it can be tempting, especially for minor points and for “How sure are you?” type questions.
In several instances, I was dropped from the case. In other cases the action was settled outside the courtroom.
This type of work is a very minor sideline to real engineering but it is one that is occasionally necessary in the pursuit of fairness or justice.
It would be nice if everyone stuck to the absolute truth. Of course, then we probably wouldn't need the court system ....
STS
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June 30, 2008 9:30 a.m.
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June 29, 2008 9:28 p.m.
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June 29, 2008 8:50 p.m.
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June 29, 2008 8:13 p.m.
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