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Human Rights Watch on Thursday urged acting Rio de Janeiro governor Ricardo Couto to pass a bill that would establish fully independent forensic services and mandate additional measures to strengthen forensic analysis, citing repeated failures by the civil police, whose current control over forensic work has undermined justice and fueled impunity.
Brazil researcher at Human Rights Watch, Andrea Carvalho, commented on the gravity of this longstanding issue, stating: “Forensic services should be independent to ensure they are based solely on science, to prevent conflict of interest or bias, to preserve the credibility of the findings in court, and to avoid judicial errors. Independence is particularly important when forensic experts review the circumstances of a police killing.”
Along with the federal district, Rio de Janeiro remains one of a handful of states in the country where forensic units are heavily subject to police oversight. This structural flaw has led to intense scrutiny by human rights organizations regarding the quality of forensic analysis in the state, with critics pointing out that in cases of police killings, the investigative process is fundamentally compromised by an institutional conflict of interest. In turn, this has led to fears that experts are coerced into falsifying or withholding evidence to protect officers from taking accountability for extrajudicial killings.
Critics note that in addition to these procedural flaws, various systemic scientific flaws exist in the way that such forensic investigations are conducted. For instance, in cases where officers claim that a victim had fired a weapon, examiners often fail to request samples of the gunpowder residue and fail to perform thorough ballistic or angle-of-trajectory analysis. Autopsy procedures have also been criticized as being inadequate in nature ,with pathologists regularly omitting crucial descriptions of internal and external injuries, oftentimes failing to examine victims’ clothing, and neglecting to collect projectiles.
Instances where control over forensic investigations has led to injustice are well-documented, such as in 2007 when a 17-year-old victim was shot by officers, who justified it as a “resistance killing.” However, an autopsy contradicted the police’s account of this event, showing that he was shot six times, once from around 50 centimeters away, a piece of evidence that illustrates an extrajudicial killing. In 2021 during the deadly Jacarezinho Raid, forensic experts from abroad found multiple discrepancies in the autopsy reports of the victims, such as the omission of distance-of-fire characteristics, which made it almost impossible to pinpoint the exact circumstances surrounding the deaths.
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Brazil researcher at Human Rights Watch, Andrea Carvalho, commented on the gravity of this longstanding issue, stating: “Forensic services should be independent to ensure they are based solely on science, to prevent conflict of interest or bias, to preserve the credibility of the findings in court, and to avoid judicial errors. Independence is particularly important when forensic experts review the circumstances of a police killing.”
Along with the federal district, Rio de Janeiro remains one of a handful of states in the country where forensic units are heavily subject to police oversight. This structural flaw has led to intense scrutiny by human rights organizations regarding the quality of forensic analysis in the state, with critics pointing out that in cases of police killings, the investigative process is fundamentally compromised by an institutional conflict of interest. In turn, this has led to fears that experts are coerced into falsifying or withholding evidence to protect officers from taking accountability for extrajudicial killings.
Critics note that in addition to these procedural flaws, various systemic scientific flaws exist in the way that such forensic investigations are conducted. For instance, in cases where officers claim that a victim had fired a weapon, examiners often fail to request samples of the gunpowder residue and fail to perform thorough ballistic or angle-of-trajectory analysis. Autopsy procedures have also been criticized as being inadequate in nature ,with pathologists regularly omitting crucial descriptions of internal and external injuries, oftentimes failing to examine victims’ clothing, and neglecting to collect projectiles.
Instances where control over forensic investigations has led to injustice are well-documented, such as in 2007 when a 17-year-old victim was shot by officers, who justified it as a “resistance killing.” However, an autopsy contradicted the police’s account of this event, showing that he was shot six times, once from around 50 centimeters away, a piece of evidence that illustrates an extrajudicial killing. In 2021 during the deadly Jacarezinho Raid, forensic experts from abroad found multiple discrepancies in the autopsy reports of the victims, such as the omission of distance-of-fire characteristics, which made it almost impossible to pinpoint the exact circumstances surrounding the deaths.
The post Rights group urges iterim Rio de Janeiro governor to guarantee fully independent forensic services appeared first on JURIST - News.
Continue reading...
Note: We don't have any responsibilities about this news. Its been posted here by Feed Reader and we had no controls and checking on it. And because News posted here will be deleted automatically after 21 days, threads are closed so that no one spend time to post and discuss here. You can always check the source and discuss in their site.