TJ Weekly - Valena Beety

You've written about so many areas of junk science, a few of which we've touched upon today.

So we have outdated and always faulty arson science that's been discredited, bite marks, which we discussed, shaken baby syndrome, everything that is discussed here in Pink Crime.

You mentioned self-regulation in the article on bite marks.

Some states have passed or are looking into junk science statutes.

What do you think is the best fix here, if there is one, to regulate junk science overall and specifically in the space of pink crimes?

So within the agencies, I definitely believe that crime labs should be disclosing scientific evidence and lab work evidence equally to the defense and to the prosecution.

And we have an example of that with the Houston Forensic Science Center that just has a portal.

These labs have portals where they upload data.

their findings, they upload their work, and they share that with prosecutors.

So why not just share it directly with prosecutors and defense? If you're saying this is upstanding, impartial, unbiased scientific evidence, Then share it equally with the defense and the prosecution instead of only giving it to the prosecution.

And then the prosecution decides whether to turn it over, whether they need to turn it over or not.

So that's one thing within the system.

But external to the system is social pressure.

We have elections this fall for prosecutors.

And our head prosecutors are elected positions.

And this is so local and so important and so often just flies under the radar.

But your prosecutor decides whether to prosecute women for miscarriages, whether to.

bring charges against someone who has an ID that doesn't match their gender presentation, right? Their ID says male and their gender presentation is as female or as femme.

It's the prosecutors who decide whether to bring those cases or not.

So if there is no political vocalization, if there are people saying, this is not our priority, we want you to focus on domestic violence, for example, this is not our priority, then that can really make a difference.

Thank you for bringing that up because I rail about that all the time, that the power of the prosecutor is greater than the power of the entire system sometimes.

But most people have no idea who their local elected officials are anyways and don't realize how important that is.

In kind of the same vein of that question is, I mean, your work is mostly looking kind of at post-conviction remedies, right? Like in these situations, what are the remedies when...

The defense here is like this is this is a conviction or a prosecution based on identity.

You