Nearly every criminal case reviewed by the FBI and the Justice Department as part of a massive investigation started in 2012 of problems at the FBI lab has included flawed forensic testimony from the agency, government officials said.
The findings troubled the bureau so it stopped the review of convictions last August. Case reviews resumed this month at the order of the Justice Department, the officials said.
The inquiry includes 2,600 convictions and 45 death-row cases from the 1980s and 1990s in which the FBI's hair and fiber unit reported a match to a crime-scene sample before DNA testing of hair became common. The FBI had reviewed about 160 cases before it stopped, officials said.
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Two Decades of Errors in FBI Forensic Lab
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(Score: 3) by Sir Garlon on Thursday July 31 2014, @01:48PM
By "flawed" they mean "faked," of course.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 3, Funny) by present_arms on Thursday July 31 2014, @03:20PM
Definitely fake. I Can't imagine how many people are in jail because the law enforcement "liked" the dudes (or dudettes) and made up evidence against them just to get a conviction. It's sickening.
http://trinity.mypclinuxos.com/
(Score: 2) by tibman on Thursday July 31 2014, @04:29PM
That sounds like a crime.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Sir Garlon on Thursday July 31 2014, @06:35PM
That's what I'm implying, yes. Though for the label "crime" to have any actual effect, a prosecutor would have to purse the offense. What prosecutor would press charges against the foresnic laboratory workers who have been so helpful in producing the evidence they've been asked for? Paid for, in fact -- forensic laboratories are funded by the prosecutor's office, which is a glaring conflict of interest for the laboratories.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 2) by Rune of Doom on Thursday July 31 2014, @07:32PM
Yet another example of the crapification of everything in the US, particularly our bedrock institutions - Rule of Law is basically dead. Things can keep trundling along, quite possibly for decades, but when there's a national crisis or massive systemic shock, the public (rightfully) isn't going to be inclined to "trust the system" and the results will end up being breakdown and collapse.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Thursday July 31 2014, @11:38PM
This story isn't about intentional fraud by forensic lab workers, much as you seem to want it made into that.
Its about junk science, that can make even honest lab workers totally wrong.
The most well publicized of these techniques that was summarily thrown out as total junk science was bullet lead composition matching, which was used to "prove" that the bullet that killed the guy came out of the same box in the possession of the accused.
It was total bunk, and the bullet could match 10000 boxes of ammunition. But the lab tech didn't do this maliciously, or even knowingly. The manual said you analyse the sample this way and report the results in this fashion. But even junk science done correctly is still junk science.
Some flunky lab tech at the FBI usually has no ax to grind for some local shooting. But when the science is junk, the results will be too.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday August 01 2014, @12:12AM
The lab itself might well have blinded itself. It is the prosecutors and courts guilty of fraud.
As soon as the courts and prosecutors learned (or should have learned) that the qvidence used in uncountable convictions was entirely untrustworthy, they should have called for a re-examination case by case. The fact that they didn't is where criminal fraud comes in. They have willingly embraced the known bad evidence.
(Score: 2) by Sir Garlon on Friday August 01 2014, @12:31PM
Junk science *is* intentional fraud.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 31 2014, @02:31PM
Wait, so Bones is a fraud?
Bad Temprance, bad.
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Thursday July 31 2014, @05:46PM
No, she works for the Smithsonian.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by danmars on Thursday July 31 2014, @02:43PM
It's not complicated. Almost everything except DNA evidence is unreliable, and so is a bunch of the evidence that is, since the lab can lie. The TV/movie depiction is terrible and creates unrealistic expectations and misplaced faith in the process among jurors.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/criminal-justice/real-csi/forensic-tools-whats-reliable-and-whats-not-so-scientific/ [pbs.org]
http://www.innocenceproject.org/understand/Unreliable-Limited-Science.php [innocenceproject.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 31 2014, @03:03PM
The FBI and the Myth of the Fingerprint [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [greanvillepost.com]
Another one I like:
the FBI's "anti-terrorism" strategy appears to be setting up its own fake terrorist plots, convincing gullible young men to "join", and then arresting them for participating in a terrorist plot where there was no chance of any actual terrorism happening [techdirt.com]
I saw a figure recently that of all the "terrorism" cases the FBI has brought, only 4 were not instigated by FBI employees.
Why are we still giving these jerks $billions each year?
Why wasn't this criminal organization disbanded the day Hoover's unconstitutional crap was revealed?
-- gewg_
(Score: 3, Funny) by bob_super on Thursday July 31 2014, @03:51PM
It fits with Sarkozy's logic that people should be screened for potential future trouble-making as early as Kindergarten.
The problem with the FBI abuses is that
BRB, someone's at the door.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 31 2014, @04:24PM
So when firing pin marks found on brass at the crime scene match marks made by the defendant's gun during test firing, and rifling marks on the slug removed from the corpse match markings on a slug test fired from the defendant's gun, that's not evidence?
(Score: 5, Informative) by hemocyanin on Thursday July 31 2014, @04:46PM
It may be evidence, but it isn't necessarily reliable evidence.
Ballistics Evidence Under Fire: http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/publications/criminal_justice_magazine/cjw11scientificevidence.authcheckdam.pdf [americanbar.org]
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(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 31 2014, @04:43PM
> Almost everything except DNA evidence is unreliable
Even DNA evidence is not 100%. Part of the problem is that a standard forensic DNA comparison only looks at a small number of loci (at most 13).
DNA can be damaged during handling, collection or when it is left at the scene, this can reduce the number of testable loci.
DNA can be contaminated - like when the victim and the perpetrator's blood are mixed in the sample.
Family members share a lot of common DNA, even completely random strangers typically share 2 or 3 loci.
For "cold hits" - when you have a sample and want to figure out who it is, the larger the database you are searching against, the more likely a false hit.
Here are some examples of forensic DNA failures. [nasams.org]
In essence, DNA is pretty good for ruling people out. It is much less reliable as a tool for proving guilt and the FBI knows this because they have started to forbid defense teams and academics from getting access to their database. [washingtonmonthly.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by cafebabe on Thursday July 31 2014, @04:57PM
Any defense lawyer will say that DNA evidence is unreliable. If your DNA is on anything, it doesn't prove that you was anywhere at any particular time. And it may only indicate cross-contamination at the crime scene or at the lab.
As I understand, DNA "matches" are done with enzymes and, due to the birthday paradox [wikipedia.org], two people in a busy courtroom could be matches.
There's also the sensitivity of tests. For example, you may be carrying banknotes which have detectable amounts of cocaine but that doesn't mean you're a drug dealer or that you snort coke.
1702845791×2
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 31 2014, @05:11PM
> As I understand, DNA "matches" are done with enzymes and, due to the birthday paradox, two people in a busy courtroom could be matches.
No. With a correctly administered test (full 13 loci, no sample contamination) the chance of a positive match for two totally random strangers is 1 in trillions -- so even with a database of millions of samples you would still be looking at a 1-in-a-million chance of a false positive. The problems come when those conditions are not met but the test is used anyway.
(Score: 1) by deimtee on Friday August 01 2014, @12:30AM
Rubbish.
Assuming equal probability of alleles, if there are two possibilities at each of 13 loci the odds of a match between two samples is 1 in 8192.
If the alleles don't have equal probability, (they don't) then that can raise or lower the odds of a match.
(Note for the gp post, as one of the the samples is pre-selected the birthday paradox does not apply.)
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 01 2014, @02:31AM
Nearly everything you wrote is wrong.
Because the 13 loci that are currently used for discrimination are independently assorted (having a certain number of repeats at one locus does not change the likelihood of having any number of repeats at any other locus), the product rule for probabilities can be applied. This means that if someone has the DNA type of ABC, where the three loci were independent, we can say that the probability of having that DNA type is the probability of having type A times the probability of having type B times the probability of having type C. This results in the ability to generate match probabilities of at least 1 in a quintillion (1x1018).
(Score: 2) by Hawkwind on Thursday July 31 2014, @10:11PM
Although the book does move quickly and is written in an entertaining style, this is a rather depressing topic.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 31 2014, @02:55PM
Thou shalt not point out that the emperor is naked.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by e_armadillo on Thursday July 31 2014, @05:19PM
You don't like what you find, so you stop looking? It seems that the proper response would be to send up the flares and redouble your efforts . . .
I can only imagine I tried their approach, "I am sorry, boss, but the results of my regression tests were troubling(too many failures), so I stopped them . . .
"How are we gonna get out of here?" ... "We'll dig our way out!" ... "No, no, dig UP stupid!"
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 31 2014, @05:35PM
> You don't like what you find, so you stop looking?
> It seems that the proper response would be to send up the flares and redouble your efforts . . .
It took me a long time to figure why people act like this - hide institutional problems rather than fix them. My best understanding is that they have a belief/faith in the "institution" and think that revealing the problems will damage all the good stuff that the institution has done.
In criminal cases the adversarial system exacerbates that phenomenon because the system encourages people to keep score based on the number of convictions not total amount of justice. Thus information like this puts convictions at risk and even false convictions count as "wins" so double whammy -- the institution is damaged and the careers of people who relied on the corrupt evidence, through no fault of their own, are also damaged. Add in the common belief that if these people aren't guilty of this crime that they are probably still guilty of some crime and there is even more motivation to sweep it under the rug.
Obviously hiding this stuff ends up making the damage even worse when it eventually does get revealed. But people are notoriously short-term thinkers, many believe that if they hide it good enough it will never come out (and in some cases that is probably true).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 01 2014, @02:22AM
Yes, and that tells you the real purpose of the organization - winning cases, rather than catching real criminals.
That choice told you the FBI would happily put innocent people in jail as long as they can get the credit for "solving" their investigation, and the FBI have no real interest in finding the actual criminal at all.
They have the same incentive as a treasure hunter selling the treasures he found. As long as he have enough "proof" to convince one sucker to buy, he has no interest in the real truth. If a test is going to show his "treasure" is a fake, of course he is going to stop doing that test!
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday August 01 2014, @02:27AM
Just ask the pharmaceutical companies. They know all about just keeping the good news around ..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 01 2014, @07:10AM
That's why I was taught: "The purpose of testing is to find bugs. A successful test is one that finds bugs. A test that finds no bugs is a waste of time".
(Score: 2) by e_armadillo on Thursday July 31 2014, @05:23PM
I even previewed and missed that . . .
"How are we gonna get out of here?" ... "We'll dig our way out!" ... "No, no, dig UP stupid!"
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday July 31 2014, @09:06PM
I just previewed then submitted a story, and right after found 3 bad-looking mistakes in the text I wrote, including a typo in the title.
Not sure if I trust the editor to fix them or just resubmit it.
While we can't edit posts, we should probably be able to edit submissions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 31 2014, @11:43PM
Just re-submit.
I think the number of times people want to edit a submission is so low that it isn't worth the effort to make them editable.