Former Baltimore police Sgt. James A. Kulbicki stared silently from the defense table as the prosecutor held up his off-duty. 38-caliber revolver and assured jurors that science proved the gun had been used to kill Kulbicki's mistress...Prosecutors had linked the weapon to Kulbicki through forensic science. Maryland's top firearms expert said that the gun had been cleaned and that its bullets were consistent in size with the one that killed the victim. The state expert could not match the markings on the bullets to Kulbicki's gun. But an FBI expert took the stand to say that a science that matches bullets by their lead content had linked the fatal bullet to Kulbicki.
The jurors were convinced, and in 1995 Kulbicki was convicted of first-degree murder in the death of his 22-year-old girlfriend. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole...
Then the scientific evidence unraveled.
Earlier this year, the state expert committed suicide, leaving a trail of false credentials, inaccurate testimony and lab notes that conflicted with what he had told jurors. Two years before, the FBI crime lab had discarded the bullet-matching science that it had used to link Kulbicki to the crime.
The technology used to convict Mr. Kulbicki turned out to have been over-hyped, as it seems forensic technologies touted by over-eager law enforcement and government entities often are.
For more than three decades, bureau experts had testified that they could tie bullets or bullet fragments from crime scenes to suspects by comparing the lead content to bullets in an ammunition box or in a gun recovered from a suspect.
In 2005, the FBI abruptly stopped using the technique after studies — including one by the National Academy of Sciences — found that FBI witnesses had inappropriately suggested to jurors that they could match bullets to specific boxes or guns.
Perhaps a cautionary tale as we discuss exciting developments in forensic science?
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