Dr. Arpad Vass has been on the stand in the Casey Anthony case. He is an expert on body decomposition with the University of Tennessee's Body Farm and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. ORNL took air samples from Anthony's trunk and determined that there had been body decomposition there. Jose Baez, Anthony's lawyer, has been trashing the findings, saying it is junk science. The case does not solely depend on the air trunk findings, but it is a big piece of the prosecution's evidence. So, in effect, the Body Farm itself is on trial.
The Body Farm and ORNL are serious and legitimat research facilities. Even though the air sample collection is apparently new science and has not been used in a trial before, it did pass the Frye, hearing, which means it is seen as reliable to be able to be admitted into evidence. And even if this science is new, it is based on other science, which is tried and true, at least according to Vass. And I don't see any reason to question that.
I also had Dr. Bass, the founder of the Body Farm, and mentor of Dr. Vass, as my anthropology teacher at UT. He is the considered the grandfather of forensic science and has trained many or most of the leading forensic anthropologists today. No one who knows Dr. Bass or about the Body Farm at UT would ever consider this to be junk science.
But to give Baez credit, he is just doing what any defense lawyer would do whose client is facing the death penalty: tear down the prosecution witnesses any way they can.
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