The FBI is going to review 2,000 cases of hair analysis to see if they were scientifically accurate:
In 1981, for instance, an 18-year-old Washington resident named Kirk Odom was convicted of rape and sodomy. At his trial, an FBI analyst testified that Odom’s hair samples and samples taken from the crime scene “were indistinguishable” and that this was very rare. Odom was convicted and served about 22 years in prison. In 2011, he was exonerated by DNA testing that wasn’t available at the time of his original trial.
Odom’s case, along with the cases of two other Washington men who’d also been exonerated by DNA testing after convictions based, in part, on testimony about hair analysis, prompted the broader FBI review.
[…] Of 310 individuals exonerated through DNA evidence, according to an Innocence Project database, 72 were convicted in part because of microscopic hair evidence.
This sounds like a voluntary review, and it is only the FBI crime lab, not state crime labs which presumably have thousands more cases that should be reviewed.
David in NY
Now they need to go after stuff like bite marks. There’s a lot of voodoo science involved in putting away the people police have decided must be guilty. Not to mention the occasional out-and-out fraud. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/02/nyregion/panel-to-review-up-to-50-trial-convictions-involving-a-discredited-brooklyn-detective.html?_r=0
Even fingerprints can be faked by a diligent cop.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_State_Police_Troop_C_scandal
Belafon
Yeah, but only liberals question whether they were right or not. Real Americans allow the hand of God to guide them, and therefore there is no reason to review good Christian convictions.
cathyx
There is no excuse to not test them all now that we have the technology. Find the money and do it.
catclub
The juxtaposition of this and the Mann global warming fraud is striking. Odd that NR never took the time to criticize those FBI scientists raking in the big bucks.
Another Halocene Human
I’m pissed at CFI right now over sexism and shit but I must say in their defense that Skeptical Inquirer did articles on this and other issues with forensics (including fingerprints) over the last decade, long before other outlets wanted to touch the subject. (False memory syndrome, which has come up in court, too.)
Hmm, I give money to Innocence Project which has also been pushing this issue. Maybe I should throw them the change I’m withholding from CFI for being craven sexist idjits.
Another Halocene Human
And to think people on this very blog flamed me for criticizing the FBI.
@catclub:
Another Halocene Human
FYWP, FYWP VERY MUCH!
SFAW
In keeping with the FBI’s reputation for scrupulous attention to detail, the investigation will be headed by Annie Dookhan.
Cassidy
@Another Halocene Human: If it the conversation i remember, that’s not what actually happened. You’re making that up, but whatever.
EconWatcher
I’ve had some experience with local medical examiners’ offices and other public forensic experts, and it’s quite terrifying. Even when they’re structured to be nominally independent, they view themselves as a wing of the prosecutors’ office, and they bend their analysis and testimony that way–sometimes very far.
If you don’t have money for your own lawyers, investigators, and experts–and very few people do–it would be very easy to be convicted for a crime you did not commit.
Punchy
But wont that release a bunch of poor, prison-hardened blahs on unsuspecting neighborhoods? Who will think of the children? Looks like Zimmerman will have a job after all!
Villago Delenda Est
Meanwhile, white guys in suits steal billions from pensioners, with fully traceable audit trails, and not a fucking thing is done.
America! What a country!
Villago Delenda Est
@EconWatcher:
One of the most central dysfunctions of our criminal “justice” system is the MBA like concentration on “metrics”. As in what’s your conviction/acquittal ratio? Whether those convicted or acquitted were actually guilty or not guilty is irrelevant.
Mnemosyne
@Another Halocene Human:
That’s a tricky one, though, because false memory syndrome has a pretty specific genesis (basically, very bad therapy that includes hypnosis that the therapist and patient interpret as “true” because of a disproven idea that people can’t lie under hypnosis), but some defendants have tried to claim it even when the accuser has had very clear memories of what happened the entire time.
I can’t find the title right now, but I have a really interesting book at home that points out that it’s very easy for investigators to accidentally create false memories for kids because kids always assume that if you ask them the same question more than once, it’s because they didn’t give the right answer the first time.
David in NY
@Mnemosyne: The problem is that, eventually, even when the memory is demonstrably “false,” the “victim” has a very clear memory of the false thing. This is a problem not just in therapy- or interrogation-induced memories, but in eyewitness situations — by the time of trial, the eyewitness is absolutely sure that “that’s the man.” Sometimes this results from entirely innocent circumstances, the victim spots someone on the street who looks like the criminal (and maybe, coincidentally, has a record), and sometimes from police actions that suggest the suspect is “that man.”
Arclite
@cathyx:
This. 1000 times this.
JR
Fire investigation has the same black mark on its recent history. Anyone familiar with the Cameron Todd Willingham execution in Texas knows what I mean.
mclaren
Hair “evidence” (unless based on DNA analysis of a follicle) is junk science, like fiber “evidence” and bite mark “evidence.”
It’s all garbage science, based on nothing, derived from nothing, pure witchcraft and voodoo.
DNA analysis and 5-point fingerprint comparisons and trace evidence analyzed by mass spectroscopy or spectroscopy are valid forms of evidence. Carpet fibers and hairs are not valid evidence because there exist too many carpets in too many homes and cars which are “consistent” with a carpet fiber found at a crime scene, and there exist too many other hairs from other people which are “consistent” with a hair strand found at a crime scene.
Bite mark analysis is worthless because skin stretches, distorting the bite pattern too much for valid comparisons.
Mike G
And the repercussions for the scumbags who railroaded innocent people into jail? Nothing.
We’ve seen how much respect right-wingers and their institutions have for scientific evidence in the fields of climate change and evolution — it’s a tool to be crassly manipulated and distorted for political ends. Why would they have any more respect for truth in forensics when they can exploit it to jail people they’ve already decided are “bad”?
Mnemosyne
@David in NY:
IMO, a false identification is different from a false memory. When people talk about “false memory syndrome,” they’re talking about people who falsely believe that a crime was committed against them, with the most famous examples being people who “recovered” memories of sexual or Satanic abuse that never actually happened.
We have to be careful of classifying false or incorrect identifications as “false memory,” because in those cases the crime actually did happen, but the eyewitness identified the wrong person. There is no question at all that Jennifer Thompson was brutally raped, but she misidentified her attacker in a lineup and the wrong man went to prison. Thompson didn’t have a “false memory” of being raped, but she did mistakenly make a “false identification” of the perpetrator.
daverave
Maybe when they get done with this the FBI can be convinced that the recording of interrogations is a good thing….
mclaren
@Mnemosyne:
Good point. There’s a huge difference twixt bizarre atrocities like the McMartin preschool child molestation case, which was based on bogus theories of “repressed memory” that have now been debunked and involved events which never happened, and incorrect witness identification.
Sadly, witness i.d. is notoriously unreliable. See “The reliability of eyewitness identification: The role of system and estimator variables,” Cutler, Brian L.; Penrod, Steven D.; Martens, Todd K, Law and Human Behavior, Vol 11, No. 3, pp. 233-258, 1987.
Abstract:
AHH onna Droid
@Cassidy: ooh, I have a stalker now. Carry on, or whatever.
AHH onna Droid
@mclaren: ur over generalizing, for example mass spectroscopy can be used as well as industry investigation to identify manufactured items. You are correct that this is often grossly misused in court where a dipshit lab worker tells a jury that visual similarity under the microscope is an extant and uniqye identifier… A self serving law enforcement LIE and/or perfect demo of Dunning-Kruger