Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Money-Making Opportunities

In these troubled times, why not explore the field of sending innocent people to death row?
This is how I -- a journalism graduate student with no background in forensics -- became certified as a “Forensic Consultant” by one of the field’s largest professional groups.

One afternoon early last year, I punched in my credit card information, paid $495 to the American College of Forensic Examiners International Inc. and registered for an online course.

After about 90 minutes of video instruction, I took an exam on the institute’s web site, answering 100multiple choice questions, aided by several ACFEI study packets.

As soon as I finished the test, a screen popped up saying that I had passed, earning me an impressive-sounding credential that could help establish my qualifications to be an expert witness in criminal and civil trials.

For another $50, ACFEI mailed me a white lab coat after sending my certificate.
YOU GET A REAL LAB COAT.
Among the thousands of people that ACFEI has certified is one particularly controversial expert in forensic pathology: Dr. Steven Hayne.

[...]

[His] findings aided in the convictions of Levon Brooks for the first murder and of Kennedy Brewer for the second. Brooks was sentenced to life in prison. Brewer was sentenced to death.

After the men spent more than 30 years combined incarcerated, the Innocence Project recovered DNA evidence that led investigators to the real killer. He confessed to both crimes [...]
And of course...
He has sued the Innocence Project for defamation in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi.

UPDATE:

Know who else gave out fake diplomas? HITL— no wait, Anders Breivik.

8 comments:

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

The good ol' boy might even win, down there.
~

wiley said...

Wow. That's. disheartening.

Substance McGravitas said...

This'll cheer everyone up.

Smut Clyde said...

Memo to self: seek "Forensic Psychiatrist" qualification. Like Dr Grigson, who managed the difficult feat of embarrassing the APA so badly they disbarred him, or Denbowski who got away with a reprimand.

Both from Texas! Who could have imagined it!

Come to think of it, isn't Dr Mrs Instapundit a forensic psychologist, endowed by the justice system with similar powers of life and death?

Justice Department officials said that they met their legal and constitutional obligations when they learned of specific errors, that they alerted prosecutors

...who in turn met their own legal and constitutional obligations when they threw the letter from the Justice Department into the round filing cabinet...

mikey said...

So maybe I'm just another Yankee, but shouldn't Mississippi have to establish some actual benefit to society as a cost of being one of the fifty states?

I mean, I'm not trying to raise the bar unreasonably high here, but I'm pretty sure Mississippi is just the Land O'Dicks...

Smut Clyde said...

According to a mate from N'Yawlins, Mississippi mainly exists to make Louisiana look not quite so bad.

Substance McGravitas said...

Louisiana has a colourful history along those lines. Nevertheless the UK courts say NOT BOGUS.

tigris said...

According to a mate from N'Yawlins, Mississippi mainly exists to make Louisiana look not quite so bad.

In Georgia we used to say the only good thing about Alabama is it kept us that much further away from Mississippi.