Judge helping advance forensic science field
For the past three decades, Imperial County Superior Court Christopher Plourd has had the opportunity to observe and, more recently, help determine how forensic science is used in the courtroom.
Plourd’s initial venture into the forensic science field had come in 1988 as an attorney representing a murder suspect whose trial in San Diego marked the first case in California where a particular technique of DNA analysis was presented as evidence in court.
“There were only about five people in the United States at the time that new anything about DNA,” Plourd said. “So I talked to them all.”
Since then, Plourd has kept close tabs on advancements in forensic science as it relates to court evidence, given dozens of presentations on the subject and earned prestigious positions on nationally recognized forensic science standards organizations and boards.
Nowadays, he said he often finds himself on the receiving end of inquiries asking about forensic evidence presented in the courtroom.
Today, as a voting member of the Forensic Science and Standards Board, Plourd helps direct the development of forensic science standards and guidelines recommended by the 600 forensic scientists that serve on the 28 subcommittees of the national Organization of Scientific Area Committees.
As chairman of the OSAC’s Legal Resource Committee, Plourd currently works with forensic scientists in a wide range of fields to help develop scientific procedures and techniques that have the potential to be presented in court.
“It’s cutting edge technology, so I get to work with the top forensic scientists in the world,” Plourd said. “Who can say that that’s a bad thing?”
Such working relationships date back to 1998, when the Valley native was appointed by the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Commission on the Future of DNA Evidence to a technical working group on crime scene evidence collection.
In 2003, the National Institute of Justice called on Plourd to take part in another DOJ commission on principles of forensic DNA for officers of the court.
Closer to home, Plourd was appointed by the chief justice of the California Supreme Court to serve on the California Judicial Counsel of California’s Science and Law Steering Committee in 2005.
Plourd’s extensive experiences now allow him as OSAC LRC chair to make sure forensic scientists are not working on something unusable by a court system or a legal professional, he said.
“If a forensic scientist develops a procedure, method or test that doesn’t have any foundational reliability we can advise them that they need to demonstrate that by publishing some type of a study or doing some type of research to show that what they’re doing comes up with the right answer,” Plourd said.
All of which is a highly technical way of saying that the error rates of forensic science techniques need to be kept to as low a minimum as possible to maintain their credibility in court.
“Forensic science tends to convict the guilty and protect the innocent if it’s done correctly,” he said
Although the additional work and travel that Plourd has shouldered because of his deep interest in forensic science keeps him busy most weekends and nights, it had previously provided for an interesting career as a consultant for some attorneys working on major cases.
That consultancy included working on high profile cases such as the Unabomber and Phil Spector cases, as well as having a peripheral role in the O.J. Simpson case, Plourd said, noting that he had declined the chance to participate in the Casey Anthony case in 2011.
“After you’ve done them all it’s not as exciting anymore,” he said.
His extensive experience makes him a welcome and “highly esteemed” member of the OSAC Forensic Science Standards Board, said Mark Stolorow, director of OSAC Affairs Office of Special Programs.
Just as appreciated is Plourd’s approach to his work, which Stolorow described as that of a “consummate jurist” who listens carefully, offers balanced assessments and thoughtful mediation and applies the law with a vast wealth of knowledge and experience – all done without the slightest hint of ego.
“When he renders his opinion, it resonates with forensic scientists as clear as a bell,” Stolorow stated in an email. “Meetings with Judge Plourd are always a valuable learning experience.”
Plourd’s pursuit of a legal career is owed largely in part to his father’s similar choice of career as a practicing attorney in the Imperial Valley, where Plourd also had gotten his start after first obtaining an undergraduate degree from Butler University in Indianapolis, Ind., and a law degree from Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego.
His budding interest in the emerging field of forensic science in the late 1980s and early 1990s also came at a time when high level federal officials started to take note of inmates’ convictions being overturned as a result of post-conviction DNA testing.
For the most part, both Democratic and Republic policymakers have shown interest in ensuring DNA analysis and forensic science steers clear of partisan political agendas, Plourd said.
Yet, the recent decision by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions allowing the two-year charter of the National Commission on Forensic Science to expire did attract some concerns that Sessions had no interest in allowing independent scientific review help advance the field of forensic science.
Although Plourd said he was not overly concerned about Sessions’ recent decision, he did share that he had been invited by Sessions’ DOJ to take part in another commission tasked with examining the recent nationwide spike in opioid-related overdoses and deaths.
“I’ve been asked to be on a working group to try to help them better understand why people are all of sudden dying of these overdoses,” Plourd said.
Based on recent toxicology and death investigation reports, evidence suggests the overdoses and deaths are largely being driven by increased amounts of fentanyl that is being shipped from China to Mexico and the United States and which in turn is being mixed with heroin.
Should the political turmoil currently roiling Washington, D.C., fail to sidetrack the DOJ’s working group, Plourd said it can be expected to try to further develop laser-emitting technology used to detect fentanyl in internationally mailed packages.
“They’re trying to get more reliable testing-technologies,” he said.