The FBI faked an entire field of forensic science.

[n2doc]

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.

The massive review raises questions about the veracity of not just expert hair testimony, but also the bite-mark and other forensic testimony offered as objective, scientific evidence to jurors who, not unreasonably, believed that scientists in white coats knew what they were talking about. As Peter Neufeld, co-founder of the Innocence Project, put it, “The FBI’s three-decade use of microscopic hair analysis to incriminate defendants was a complete disaster.”

more

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2015/04/fbi_s_flawed_forensics_expert_testimony_hair_analysis_bite_marks_fingerprints.html

[spanone]

1. another reason to oppose the death penalty.

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.

[RedCappedBandit]

2. Death penalty = innocent people murdered by the state.

[d_legendary1]

9. More like state sanctioned murder

[onyourleft]

23. Absolutely.

I definitely oppose the death penalty.

[ohheckyeah]

3. I've long doubted the bite

forensics. Not that I thought he was innocent, but the bite mark testimony against Ted Bundy was convoluted and less than convincing.

[JonLP24]

66. the snaggle tooth killer was let out in az

I'm on a phone but the teeth are simply not science yet same experts were or are still testifying even after trials they were wrong cBC of dna look it is up

[ohheckyeah]

68. The trouble

with forensics goes way back.

[Baitball Blogger]

4. If the USA were an organic being,

it would be suffering from an autoimmune disease. All the organizations that are supposed to be protecting the integrity of a fair process are going bad.

[erronis]

29. +1 - great analogy. Internal destruction of the body politic.

Interesting that this is where the SCROTUS is leading:

A body politic is a metaphor in which a nation is considered to be a corporate entity,[2] being likened to a human body. The word "politic" in this phrase is a postpositive adjective; so it is "a body of a politic nature" rather than "a politic of a bodily nature". A body politic comprises all the people in a particular country considered as a single group. The analogy is typically continued by reference to the top of government as the head of state,[3] but may be extended to other anatomical parts, as in political readings of the Aesop's fable, "The Belly and the Members". The metaphor appears in the French language as the corps-état.[4] The metaphor developed in Renaissance times, as the medical knowledge based upon the classical work of Galen was being challenged by new thinkers such as William Harvey. Analogies were made between the supposed causes of disease and disorder and their equivalents in the political field which were considered to be plagues or infections which might be remedied by purges and nostrums.[5]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_politic

[Baitball Blogger]

31. I agree with the prescription.

If we can't hold those agencies accountable for the way they have strayed, then at least we should be looking at major staff changes.

[fasttense]

34. It's all due to the infestation of capitalism

Our justice system is little more than whoever has the most money can get away with the most crimes. These liars and cheats on the FBI certainly were NOT putting away the uber rich with their fake testimonies. They were putting away poor and sometimes middle class people. The FBI and the police no longer serve and protect citizens. They are there to monitor and control us in order to protect the uber rich.

But it makes you wonder why the NSA bothers with all that spying on us when in reality all that needs be done is some fake evidence and lying.

[Baitball Blogger]

38. It would be in our best interest to analyze just how they are doing it.

Yes, all those public agencies are far too focused on enforcing laws that hamstring minorities and/or the poor. But the sucker punch comes from the way our illustrious status quo is able to redistribute wealth in our country without having to answer to anyone. They operate with impunity because they are able to disguise their methods under the heading of public business.

The public-private partnerships are the obvious offenders, so we need to start taking a closer looking at how they operate. In a nutshell, they are given too much freedom. As a result, the shakers and movers of a community are able to selectively spread goals and objectives without fear of interference. This process is directly responsible for taking over private agencies which at one time, served as a safety net to the kind of abuses that are now common.

These private agencies include the legal field, the newspapers and whatever civic groups are necessary to recruit foot soldiers to spread misinformation in a community. This is the negative effect of the ill-advised partnerships between the public and private sector. They create tremendous inequities in society because minorities are heavily underrepresented, and because the poor and honest people in the middle class are intentionally excluded.

The exclusion of honest members of society would be imperative in this process, because they could put a stop to it if there were enough voices to sound the alarm.

[hifiguy]

45. The very healthy tumors have nearly killed the host.

It's only a matter of time before the host dies. The tumors are too well-entrenched.

[duhneece]

60. OR, having been bad for years, decades

are revelations more closely approximating the truth happening? Is more light being shed and revealed?

[Baitball Blogger]

61. There was still belief in the system when we felt

that we had watchdogs protecting us. This would have included a competent newspaper organization that actually did hard investigative pieces; attorney generals who actually sought out graft in their states; lawyers who actually stepped up to take on novel cases that challenged corporations; and an intelligent, informed population that respected the law.

But, we lost that over the years. The papers became less effective when they began to go along with the crooks in the status quo that know how to talk a big talk; our attorney generals are mostly political hacks; the legal field stopped being a profession in the eighties when they began to follow the business model and wilfully compromised their ethics in order to protect their big paying clients; and most Americans have become useful idiots for whoever knows how to bait them.

It has been the result of a slow, eroding process, more than a big bang.

[Orrex]

5. I'm surprised that they aren't still convicting people on phrenological evidence.

k/r

[christx30]

19. “Of course you’d say that, you have the brainpan of stage coach tilter.”

Sorry. It's my favorite Mr. Burns quote from the Simpsons. Never thought I'd get to use it.

[Jerry442]

6. It boggles my mind...

...how many institutions in the world we once believed to be above reproach have turned out to be thoroughly corrupt, self-serving, mendacious, and just plain incompetent.

Dylan had it right. Everything is broken.

[Enthusiast]

7. What kind of justice is this?

[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]

[malaise]

44. Institutional racism

or classism - promotions for the boys.
They don't give a flying fuck.

[hifiguy]

46. Mostly ass-covering and

safeguarding budget increases in cases like this one.

[Enthusiast]

53. Apparently the FBI is nothing more than a criminal rat's nest.

The false notion of American exceptionalism grows more tenuous by the day.

[Enthusiast]

8. K&R! This post should have hundreds of recommendations!

Well, it should.

[niyad]

10. and people wonder why some of us have zero trust in any institutions, including the government.

[sabrina 1]

16. And 'scientists in White Coats' with an agenda!

Shameful how corrupt the system is.

[niyad]

20. as the old saying goes, "just because you are paranoid, does not mean they aren't

out to get you"

[sabrina 1]

27. True!

[suffragette]

48. Exactly. This reminds me of the attempted prosecution of the Oregon lawyer

Based on fingerprints.
As I recall, they tried to railroad him until Spain disputed the fingerprint evidence.

[sabrina 1]

51. I don't remember that case, suffragette. Maybe just can't recall it for the moment, but it says a

about our system when a defendant needs a foreign country to intervene on their behalf. I will look it up though.

I'm assuming they falsified his fingerprints?

[suffragette]

56. FBI accused Mayfield of Spanish bombing even after Spain debunked fingerprint being his

Here's an excellent interview with Democracy Now about it, long but worth reading all:


http://www.democracynow.org/2006/11/30/exclusive_falsely_jailed_attorney_brandon_mayfield

The U.S. government has agreed to pay two million dollars and issue a written apology to a Muslim attorney in Oregon who was jailed two years ago after the FBI mistakenly linked him to the Madrid train bombings.

Brandon Mayfield was arrested and jailed for two weeks in May 2004. At the time the FBI claimed his fingerprints matched those found on a bag filled with detonators used in the Madrid bombings that killed 191 people. The FBI ignored warnings from Spanish authorities that the fingerprints were not Mayfield’s. Prior to his arrest, the FBI used the Patriot Act to break into his home and office and to electronically monitor his conversations.

Mayfield, who is a former Army lieutenant, sued the FBI alleging that his civil rights had been violated and that he was arrested in part because he is a Muslim convert. Brandon Mayfield and his wife Mona join us from Portland Oregon.

~~~
AMY GOODMAN: In looking back on the case now, it’s clear, and from the big report that came out, almost 300 pages, that Spanish officials were raising serious questions about the fingerprints, from the beginning, on the blue bag, but that the FBI was rather insistent. Finally, they link the fingerprints to an Algerian named Ouhnane Daoud, who was among a group of militants, The Oregonian writes, who blew themselves up in April as police were raiding their suburban Madrid apartment. The FBI agent in charge in Portland, Robert Jordan, told the Indianapolis Star, quote, "If a similar investigation was being conducted and we were provided a fingerprint identification, we would do exactly what we did in the case of Mr. Mayfield. Of course," he said, "we regret what happened to Mr. Mayfield, but, again, we are proud of what we did here." Your response to that, Brandon Mayfield?

[JonLP24]

67. finger prints are bad science too

There was a huge popublication proving all this bad science a few yearsvago from to in e covered it

[suffragette]

69. Clear there is much more bias involved than public has been led to believe

And in the case above, even after having been proved wrong in such a strong manner, to still say they would do it again.

[closeupready]

11. Sigh. What a disappointment.

K&R

[raouldukelives]

12. Sickening. nt

[d_legendary1]

13. Some of those examiners should be hit with an obstruction of justice charge

Last I checked messing with evidence is illegal.

[zeemike]

30. No no no...mistakes were made.

and it is just an accident that they all favored the prosecution.

[d_legendary1]

42. I believe in coincidences

but this looks more like the Mark Furhman approach of handling evidence.

[hedda_foil]

14. Even more chilling...

From the story:

This problem doesn’t stop with the FBI labs or federal prosecutions. The review focuses on the first few hundred cases, involving FBI examiners, but the same mistakes and faulty testimony were likely presented in any state prosecutions that relied on the between 500 and 1,000 local or state examiners trained by the FBI. Some states will automatically conduct reviews. Others may not. Much of the evidence is now lost.

Systemic change, in other words, is being left to the discretion of the system itself.

[sabrina 1]

18. That's why nothing gets fixed. And cops don't get prosecuted. They all get to investigate themselves

[BlancheSplanchnik]

24. jeeeezus.....

[ChairmanAgnostic]

15. So, it is no different than their "analysis" of lead from bullets

used to ID and prosecute innocents.

Or their pathetic DNA tests, which were found to be worse than mere guesswork.

[denem]

32. Do the "pathetic DNA tests" include the Project Innocence evidence which 'exonerated' 300+ people

'wrongfully onvicted by the criminal justice system'?

http://www.innocenceproject.org/news-events-exonerations/the-death-penalty

[ChairmanAgnostic]

36. Yup.

Actually, this is Round 3 against the Fibbie's Lab.

They had one scientist, I forgot her name, who was at the heart of the worst of the lies. I know she was fired, but I also think she may have been prosecuted.

Google Fred Whitehurst Whistleblower. He blew the lip off the Fibbie's mess.

Little Loooie Freeh has a lot to answer for, too. Many of his best friends and supporters were guilty of some of the most outrageous crap.

[denem]

39. Wow.

Who would have guessed that Project Innocence were an incompetent bunch of crooks and liars?

[ChairmanAgnostic]

40. I was not referring to that, but rather

the many grounds on which the FBI has been caught with its pants down. Did you even try to look up Whitehurst?

[denem]

41. Yes. I did searches on Fred Whitehurst,

and I agree.

[mrdmk]

47. This is the Fred Whitehurst in the above thread

Tainting Evidence
Inside the Scandals at the FBI Crime Lab
By JOHN F. KELLY and PHILLIP K. WEARNE
The Free Press

Prologue: Examining the Examiners

The tall, graying legislator strode past the American flag onto the platform of Committee Room 226. With a quick adjustment of his black-and-white spotted tie, he seated himself at the center of a semicircular dais under the carved eagle on the hardwood-paneled wall. As the lights of six television cameras were switched on and photographers and cameramen began to jostle for position, Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa began to read slowly from three sheets of paper. It was his opening statement as chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight into the Courts at hearings entitled, "A Review of the FBI Laboratory: Beyond the Inspector General's Report."

His purpose, he explained, was to help restore public confidence in federal law enforcement in general and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in particular. But the facts the senator went on to outline hardly seemed likely to do that. The hearings had had to be postponed twice, he stated, because of the FBI's refusal to cooperate by supplying requested documentation and by making FBI employees available to testify without the bureau's lawyers present. This, Senator Grassley said, was despite FBI director Louis Freeh's appeal for more oversight to another congressional subcommittee just four months earlier, when he had stated that the FBI could be the most dangerous agency in the country if "not scrutinized carefully."

Senator Grassley said the FBI was being hypocritical. "It is not the message that rings true. It's the actions. The Bureau's actions contradict the director's assertion that it is inviting oversight. And until the actions match the words, the ghosts of FBI past are still very much in the present." He went on to say that he expected the requested documentation to arrive the moment the hearings finished. In fact, within an hour, Senator Grassley had to apologize to the packed committee room for being "so cynical." The documents had arrived but were so heavily redacted as to be virtually useless, he said, holding up page after page of blacked-out FBI memos.

Senator Grassley's hearings took place in the wake of the release five months earlier of a damning 517-page report by the Inspector General's Office of the Department of Justice, the result of an eighteen-month investigation into the FBI laboratory. The investigators had included a panel of five internationally renowned forensic scientists, the first time in its sixty-five-year history that the FBI lab, considered by many -- not least, by itself -- the best in the world, had been subject to any form of external scientific scrutiny. The findings were alarming. FBI examiners had given scientifically flawed, inaccurate, and overstated testimony under oath in court; had altered the lab reports of examiners to give them a pro-prosecutorial slant, and had failed to document tests and examinations from which they drew incriminating conclusions, thus ensuring that their work could never be properly checked.

A lot more here at the link: http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/k/kelly-evidence.html

[matt819]

17. This is third world crap

Every day comes a new report or new revelation documenting the continuing plunge of a once great country into third world status.

[AtheistCrusader]

21. On our dime, in our name, and with our sanction.

I feel complicit in this.

Fuck.

[AuntPatsy]

26. We are...

[pnwmom]

22. And the bite mark experts, arson experts, shaken-baby syndrome experts, water-flow experts . . .

it goes on and on.

Horrifying. The only way to fight them is to be able to spend a ton of money on your own experts, which most people don't have.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

25. yep.

I feel ill.

[mountain grammy]

28. I'm sick, but not as surprised as I thought I'd be.

[hootinholler]

33. Where are the perjury charges?

Where are the obstruction charges?

[morningfog]

35. This is how prosecutors and cops operate as a rule. They are corrupt.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

37. Now add how many innocent people plea guilty to a lesser charge.....

Our justice system is all about getting a guilty verdict.

"Innocent until proven guilty" is a joke.

[suffragette]

43. And these findings are just from the first stage

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/21/fbi-jail-hair-mass-disaster-false-conviction

As the scientific basis of hair analysis has crumbled, the scale of the judicial catastrophe caused by the FBI’s enthusiastic use of it for decades until about 2000 has now begun to emerge more fully. On Monday, the FBI and the US Justice Department, together with the Innocence Project and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, released the findings of the first stage of a joint investigation into these historic civil rights mistakes.

~~~

Fabricant, who is also acting on the Bridges case, said that states where examiners had been trained by the FBI in hair analysis had to act.

“Tens of thousands of people may have been caught in this trap,” he said. “When even the FBI has admitted liability, then states who were trained to use this discredited technique are now legally and morally obligated to step up to the plate.”

[mrdmk]

50. This is speculation here, what are the ends here for using the, 'Pseudo-Science' stick here?

It seems that there is more than meets the eye at this point.

[suffragette]

57. Not sure about your point. Could you clarify?

[Heidi]

49. Kick, kick, kick!

[blackspade]

52. What a total clusterfuck.

[Octafish]

54. What corruption?

Hoover?

[MrScorpio]

55. I'm not surprised...

For the longest time, for years, I've operated under the firm belief that every single public and private institution in this country is corrupt in some way.

Corruption itself is institutionalized and relied upon by all, whether or not we admit it or not.

Money and power in our capitalist system trumps all, even human life and dignity.

I've been wary of the FBI particularly for over half my life, after I've read books about their operations under Hoover. Today, many of their previously discredited tactics still exist, even if they operate under different names. But the reason that they behave this way is simple, they're comprised of a federal bureaucracy which does everything it can to justify its existence, even if they have to do it in the most corrupt way possible.

[dreamnightwind]

58. system integrity fail

"But as long as crime labs answer to prosecutors, and indeed, according to Business Insider, in some cases they are compensated for each conviction, the incentives for reform are hopelessly upside-down. The problem, in short, isn’t that we can’t identify the problem."

Seems we have a system problem here, crime labs who are incentivized to work for convictions.

Many of this country's institutions are similarly corrupt. I believe in governement bureaucracy, to me it's a better model than privatization, we need to fix government not dismantle it. The system is largely captured by monied interests, corruption of government is largely the result of that.

[woo me with science]

59. K&R

[midnight]

62. Geez Louise... the facade just keeps on falling lower and lower.

[Mycos]

63. Law-enforcement is very attractive to people w/ authoritarian personality syndrome

And as decades of research into the syndrome clearly shows us, both high-scoring RWAs [Altemeyer] and SDOs [Pratto] display behavioral traits that are in no way conducive to the administration of justice in a civilized society. Most any study accessed using Google Scholar (filters out non-peer reviewed garbage being produced by Taser International, Force Science Research Center, and other pro-LE propaganda) and the search terms - "RWA-SDO, authoritarianism, conformity, conservatism" will produce a list of personality traits of which many alone should serve to legally disqualify LE applicants.

For instance there's the tendency for RWAs to "seize and freeze" on a given solution to a problem, meaning they tend to, when pressured, come up with premature (and therefore often wrong) solutions to problems they are expected to solve. Be it a math problem or a time constraint ....they tend to seize on the first "solution" that comes along without adequately testing it's validity. Then once they've seized on it, they "freeze" on it, refusing to accept that it is not a solution at all despite mounting evidence and earnest advice from their peers.

Now...if it were only an accounting error or an itinerary that goes wrong resulting in somebody being late for an appointment, that's one thing. But for a LE officer to "seize and freeze" on solutions means we now have people running around with badges granting them the authority to decide who lives and dies in a given situation who tends to wrongly accuse people of crimes without sufficient evidence to make such claims. Someone who will then develop a "tunnel vision" , refusing to accept suggestions from peers, evidence from witnesses; even simple common sense pointing out they now have the wrong man in custody.
Time and time again we hear of a DA or county sheriff refusing requests to have DNA tests done on old evidence that was used to convict someone on Death Row. Why? Because they're "certain of the condemned man's guilt", and they "know" the request is nothing more than "a legal maneuver...a trick by a cold-blooded killer to buy himself more time before being executed." Add to that how RWAs are also much more likely to also be racist, misogynistic, homophobic, bigoted, lack empathy, fearful and violent than the average person, and it should now be crystal clear why policing in America has became the cesspool of criminal violence only now making the nightly newscasts because of the recent widespread availability of video cameras.

[alcibiades_mystery]

64. Wayne Williams sits in Georgia prison on carpet fiber evidence

Think on that one for a while.

Does anyone even believe anymore that "carpet fiber" evidence has the slightest capacity to convict somebody of multiple counts of murder?

[lpbk2713]

65. Fake it until you make it ... for over twenty years.

You have to wonder how many other departments or agencies exist only to give false info to prosecutors.

[redgreenandblue]

70. This is why conspiracy theories aren't fun anymore.

In the 90s we'd be like: "What if the government was actually spying on everyone and faking all of the forensic investigations." - "Wow, scary shit dude"


Today: "Meh, business as usual."

[tomp]

71. well..this is hoover's machine, right?

can anyone really be surprised?

[dembotoz]

72. sad thing is..with the juries I have been on if the cops say black is white...the jury believes them

No faith in the system in my very red suburban area
And heaven help you if u are black

[LuvNewcastle]

73. Our for-profit justice system, as well as

our for-profit everything else, only work for those who can pay. Lying to convict someone who is up for the death penalty is about as twisted as it gets. Oh well, I'm sure those poor bastards were guilty of something at some time in their lives. Right?