Pseudoscience in the Witness Box: The FBI faked an entire field of forensic science by Dahlia Lithwick.
From the post:
The Washington Post published a story so horrifying this weekend that it would stop your breath: “The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000.”
What went wrong? The Post continues: “Of 28 examiners with the FBI Laboratory’s microscopic hair comparison unit, 26 overstated forensic matches in ways that favored prosecutors in more than 95 percent of the 268 trials reviewed so far.” The shameful, horrifying errors were uncovered in a massive, three-year review by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the Innocence Project. Following revelations published in recent years, the two groups are helping the government with the country’s largest ever post-conviction review of questioned forensic evidence.
Chillingly, as the Post continues, “the cases include those of 32 defendants sentenced to death.” Of these defendants, 14 have already been executed or died in prison.
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You should read Dahlia’s post carefully and then write “untrustworthy” next to any reference to or material from the FBI.
This particular issue involved identifying hair samples to be the same, which went beyond any known science.
But if 26 out of 28 experts were willing to go there, how far do you think the average agent on the street goes towards favoring the prosecution?
True, the FBI is working to find all the cases where this has happened, but questions about this type of evidence were raised long before now. But questioning the prosecution’s evidence doesn’t work in favor of the FBI.
Defense teams need to start requesting judicial notice of the propensity of executive branch department employees to give false testimony and a cautionary instruction to jurors in cases where they appear in trials.