NJIT Co-Hosts Second Annual Forensic Science Summit for the Criminal Defense Bar
On March 22-23, New Jersey’s forensic and legal professionals will convene again at the 2022 Forensic Science Summit for the Criminal Defense Bar to discuss the latest advances in forensic sience and its increasing influence in today’s courtrooms.
The summit is considered among the leading annual forensic science conferences for New Jersey’s defense attorneys and investigators, promising a variety of talks from experts and collaborative training workshops with forensic scientists, law enforcement, legal professionals and students from across the state.
For the second consecutive year, the event will be co-hosted by the Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers of New Jersey (ACDL-NJ), New Jersey State Office of the Public Defender (NJOPD), and New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), which launched New Jersey's first forensic science undergraduate degree program in 2018.
"After the success of the inaugural summit, our aim again this year is to continue highlighting the importance of competency in the forensic sciences for members of the defense bar,” said NJIT’s Forensic Science Program Director David Fisher. “Through the great partnership formed between NJIT's forensic science program, the NJOPD and ACDL-NJ, we’re looking forward to another meaningful conference for defense attorneys seeking vital education about the ever-increasing science involved in their cases."
The summit’s keynote will be delivered by Janis Puracal, executive director of the nonprofit organization Forensic Justice Project. The nonprofit is aimed at preventing and correcting wrongful convictions due to false or misleading forensic evidence, which has been a contributing factor in 24% of all wrongful convictions nationally, according to the National Registry of Exonerations.
Puracal is scheduled to give her talk on implicit racial bias in forensic science.
“The presumption of guilt facing Black and brown people is very real,” says Puracal, who started the Forensic Justice Project after her brother was wrongfully convicted and later exonerated. “We want to think that forensic science will save us, but it doesn’t work that way. Implicit racial bias can impact every aspect of the system, even the forensics. We can, and should, be doing much better than we are right now.”
This year’s summit will feature a number of other expert talks on emerging issues from the field of digital forensics, including discussion over geofence warrants used by law enforcement to access anonymized data from devices within targeted geographic regions.
The multi-day event’s diverse discussions also include presentations by former Somerset County investigator and NJIT Forensic Science Professor of Practice Kevin Parmelee, on recent advances and challenges of fingerprint evidence submitted in court, as well as talks covering the latest in underwater crime scene investigation techniques by professional diver and founder of the Northeast Public Safety Divers, Timothy Andro.
The summit will be free to students and will be held via Zoom webcast.
For further event details, visit: http://www.acdlnj.org
To register, email Judith Smith at judith.smith@opd.nj.gov.
