FORENSICS and LAW in FOCUS @ CSIDDS | News and Trends

The Guardian has effectively put a human face here on the tragedy of the FBI’s admission this week that its agents presented flawed testimony in almost every trial in which they testified against criminal defendants for more than two decades before 2000.

The face is that of George Perrot, whose case was previously covered on the Wrongful Convictions Blog here and in which, it should be noted, this writer has played a small role.

Perrot was convicted as a teenager on rape charges in 1985 greatly on the testimony of FBI agent Wayne Oakes that a hair found on the victim’s bed was similar to a known sample of Perrot’s hair. It didn’t matter to the jury that the elderly victim said that the rape didn’t occur on the bed or that the long-haired, bearded Perrot didn’t resemble the short-haired, clean-shaven man who raped her. Oakes’ testimony was enough, an…

• State of Mississippi to make pay outs in more than a dozen wrongful conviction cases
• Pennsylvania Innocence Project wins new trial for woman convicted 42 years ago on flawed arson science
• Charges dropped against California Innocence Project client Michael Hanline, who is the longest serving wrongfully convicted Californian
• Ronald Cotton and Jennifer Thompson honored for courage by DOJ
• Well-done video from British TV about Ohio Innocence Project’s recent new trial wins for Wheatt, Glover and Johnson based on flawed gun-shot residue evidence and Brady violations
• New Yorker article on compensation for the wrongfully convicted
• Exoneree Martin Tankleff mulls run for Congress

From the Washington Post:

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.

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, according to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and the Innocence Project, which are assisting the government with the country’s largest post-conviction review of questioned forensic evidence.

The cases include those of 32 defendants sentenced to death. Of those, 14 have been executed or died in prison, the groups said under an agreement with the government to release results after the review of the first 200 convictions.

The FBI…

This article is about how forensic experts who sound convincing to juries shape their images as ‘scientific’ by misinformation and resorting to desperate measures to mislead the US judicial system. Since this article was published in early April 2015, the target of the article, the American Board of Forensic Odontology, is investigating its members about who is the “reliable source” mentioned in the article. This is an American Academy of Forensic Sciences sponsored organization. Retribution may follow, but this story is  compelling evidence of  misconduct and bad faith. I’ve used it in my Elsevier published book “Forensic Testimony: Science, Law and Forensic Evidence” as a framework for a junk science masquerading as being legitimate.

A bite mark matching advocacy Washington Post’s Raley Balko covers the ABFO’s latest failed attempt at legitimacy  Highlights added for emphasis.