“Once a jury hears something scientific, there’s a kind of mythical infallibility to it,” Peter Neufeld, a co-founder of the Innocence Project, told me. “That’s the association when a person in white lab coat takes the witness stand. By that point — once the jury’s heard it — it’s too late to convince them that maybe the science isn’t so infallible.”

If judges can’t be trusted to keep spurious forensic analysis out of the courtroom, and juries can’t be trusted to disregard it, then how are we going to keep the next Earl Washington off death row? One option would be to permit anybody convicted on the basis of biological evidence to subject that evidence to DNA analysis — which is, after all, the one form of forensics that scientists agree actually works. But in 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that convicts had no such constitutional right, even where they can show a reasonable probability that DNA analysis would prove their innocence. (The ruling was 5–4, with the usual suspects lining up against convicts’ rights.)

That leaves one last option: reforming the sprawling field of forensics itself. For years, this job proved nearly impossible, due in large part to what the National Academy of Sciences called the “extreme disaggregation” of forensics. Until lab technicians follow some uniform guidelines and abandon the dubious techniques glamorized on shows like CSI, forensic science will barely qualify as a science at all. As a recent investigation byChemical & Engineering News revealed, little progress has been made in the five years since the National Academy of Sciences condemned modern forensic techniques.

The Obama administration has started to aggregate forensics practices, creating a National Commission on Forensic Science to develop uniform standards to be used across the country

There is, however, some hope on the horizon. The Obama administration has started to aggregate forensics practices, creating a National Commission on Forensic Science to develop uniform standards to be used across the country. The National Institute of Justice has also given out more than $1 million to fund research into the efficacy and consistency of commonly used forensics techniques. More and more, labs across the country will know which methods of forensic analysis are trustworthy—and which are glorified pseudoscience.

But what about those thousands of people who’ve already been put behind bars based on evidence analysis that we know today to be utterly unreliable? Even those inmates fortunate enough to obtain capable counsel will often need access to biological evidence, which the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to grant them. Every state provides post-conviction DNA access in theory, but many states restrict access after a few years—which is sure to leave some innocent prisoners marooned on death row. Our national experiment in untested forensics may soon be coming to a close. But it hasn’t ended in time to prevent a few more people like Earl Washington from being sacrificed on the altar of pseudoscience.