Legal and forensics specialists at the American Constitution Society’s panel discussion at the Boston Bar Association yesterday said unless changes are made to the legal process, forensic evidence should not be the main decider in a capital punishment conviction case.

Sponsored by the Boston Lawyer Chapter of the American Constitution Society, Suffolk University’s ACS Law School Student Chapter, the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Section of the Boston Bar Association and Rep. Marty Walz, the panel tackled the topic: “The Future of the Death Penalty: Can Science Ever Make it Foolproof?”

Former Gov. Mitt Romney’s bill to reinstate the death penalty in Massachusetts, defeated in the House in November, inspired the panel. The bill states that with the proper use of scientific testing, preservation of evidence and better funding for crime labs, scientific evidence must be used for cases in which capital punishment is applicable.

“I think this bill has no chance of passing [even if it were changed] – there is significant opposition to the death penalty in the state legislature,” said Walz, who voted against the bill.

The panelists discussed how scientific advances like DNA testing would affect the use of the death penalty and whether using it to prove guilt would make the use of capital punishment more “foolproof.”

American Bar Association Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project Director Deborah Fleischaker said the goal of the ABA’s Moratorium Project is to raise the quality of legal representation in order to reduce unfairness in the justice system.

“[Lawyers] have a responsibility to speak up when we see our legal system is not working as it was designed to work,” she said.

She said the ABA does not take a position on capital punishment but works to ensure due process for everyone facing the death penalty. Fleischaker said DNA testing has helped the justice system as a whole by providing another form of concrete evidence.

“Good science can only take you part of the way,” she said. “You need adequate human action to take it further.”

DNA testing can answer questions of linkage or association between victims, suspects and scenes, but cannot answer questions of guilt or innocence, said Connecticut State Department of Public Safety’s forensic lab DNA unit supervisor Carl Ladd.

The nuances of science in general do not appeal to juries – DNA evidence does not usually sway them one way or the other, Ladd said.

“DNA or any science never makes any aspect [of the situation] foolproof,” Ladd said. “We’re supposed to do what legislators tell us to do.”

Ladd also gave evidence of forensic fraud, instances when forensic scientists presented false DNA, among other scientific results, in capital cases. He said forensic DNA testing is nothing like television show CSI, which skews facts about the role of forensic labs in investigations.

Northeastern University law professor Daniel Givelber, a founding member of the New England Innocence Project, said DNA testing could not help the system because in “stranger cases” where the victim and the defendant have no connection, there is little physical evidence and the case is based primarily on defendant statements.

“DNA is like a partial print,” he said. “It becomes debatable.”