Kiwi forensic researcher Niki Osborne keeps fielding calls from American media. "What about the bloodstain pattern analysis in that series The Staircase?" they ask.
We're the first New Zealand media to call. You could read that two ways – maybe New Zealand is immune to the growing global disquiet about the reliability of forensic science. Of 350 wrongfully convicted Americans exonerated by DNA, 45 per cent had unvalidated or improper forensics as a contributing cause, according to The Innocence Project. Of those, 20 were sentenced to death.
Or maybe we're only now catching up.
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