FBI lied in court cases for 20 years

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VMI77
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FBI lied in court cases for 20 years

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http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/04 ... latestnews
The Justice Department and FBI have reportedly acknowledged that nearly every examiner in the FBI Laboratory’s microscopic hair comparison unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials where they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than 20-year period before 2000.
Apparently Fox News also has a problem with the truth when it comes to the government telling it...or at least certain parts of the government. "Overstated" and "flawed" testimony are weasel words. After several paragraphs of weasel words, the very last paragraph admits the reality. Testifying under oath to a near-certainty (false on its face) based on misleading statistics is what normal people who speak English fluently call "lying."
The review confirmed that FBI experts systematically, testified to the near-certainty of “matches” of crime-scene hairs to defendants, backing their claims by citing misleading statistics drawn from their case work. In reality, according to the newspaper, there is no accepted research on how often hair from different people may appear the same. Since 2000, the lab has used visual hair comparison to rule out someone as a possible source of hair or in combination with more accurate DNA testing.
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Re: FBI lied in court cases for 20 years

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It isn't about justice. It is about conviction records. The liars should all be sent to prison to serve the same sentence as the wrongfully convicted.
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Re: FBI lied in court cases for 20 years

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anygunanywhere wrote:It isn't about justice. It is about conviction records. The liars should all be sent to prison to serve the same sentence as the wrongfully convicted.
:iagree:
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Re: FBI lied in court cases for 20 years

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Yeah, but you know there's not an ice cube's chance in Pecos that will happen!
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Re: FBI lied in court cases for 20 years

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I'm not sure what this actually means. They "overstated" the forensic match.
Does that mean that they said there was an 85% of a match rather than an 80% chance of a match?
Or does it mean that they indicated a match where there was absolutely no credible scientific evidence of a match?
There are two extremes with very different impacts. Of course, the article doesn't tell us...


'....nearly every examiner in the FBI Laboratory’s microscopic hair comparison unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials where they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than 20-year period before 2000."

So either every single person that has worked there is a conspiring liar and no one in 20 years blew the whistle, or it's a little less intentional than that.


One thing does speak to me though:
The cases include those of 32 defendants sentenced to death; of those, 14 have been executed or died in prison, the Post reported in a story posted on its website.
You guy who continue to be pro-death penalty need to understand that this cost is going to be executing innocent people from time to time... I'll support it when: 1) It costs less than life. 2) It's factually infallible.
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Re: FBI lied in court cases for 20 years

Post by mojo84 »

Some don't understand why there is such distrust in the legal system. People promote the idea of allowing the legal system to work and justice will be served. That may be the case for some but not all. I'm sure justice was served in many of these cases but I also bet there are some where this testimony made the difference when in fact it wouldn't have if the correct testimony was given.
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Re: FBI lied in court cases for 20 years

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cb1000rider wrote:I'm not sure what this actually means. They "overstated" the forensic match.
Does that mean that they said there was an 85% of a match rather than an 80% chance of a match?
Or does it mean that they indicated a match where there was absolutely no credible scientific evidence of a match?
There are two extremes with very different impacts. Of course, the article doesn't tell us...


'....nearly every examiner in the FBI Laboratory’s microscopic hair comparison unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials where they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than 20-year period before 2000."

So either every single person that has worked there is a conspiring liar and no one in 20 years blew the whistle, or it's a little less intentional than that.


One thing does speak to me though:
The cases include those of 32 defendants sentenced to death; of those, 14 have been executed or died in prison, the Post reported in a story posted on its website.
You guy who continue to be pro-death penalty need to understand that this cost is going to be executing innocent people from time to time... I'll support it when: 1) It costs less than life. 2) It's factually infallible.

Mmmm....we have a government that routinely lies. It has done things like conduct medical experiments on Black men for DECADES without it being revealed. Remember who the FBI accused of being involved in the Madrid train bombing? This is hardly the first time the FBI has been caught lying, SYSTEMICALLY:
The FBI described the fingerprint match as "100% verified". According to the court documents in judge Ann Aiken's decision, this information was largely "fabricated and concocted by the FBI and DOJ". When the FBI finally sent Mayfield's fingerprints to the Spanish authorities, they contested the matching of the fingerprints from Brandon Mayfield to the ones associated with the Madrid bombing. Further, the Spanish authorities informed the FBI they had other suspects in the case, Moroccan immigrants not linked to anyone in the USA. The FBI completely disregarded all of the information from the Spanish authorities, and proceeded to spy on Mayfield and his family further.

Before his arrest, Spanish authorities informed the FBI in a letter from April 13, that they reviewed the fingerprint on the bag as a negative match of Mayfield's fingerprint,[4] though this letter was not communicated to Mayfield's attorneys. On May 19 the Spanish authorities announced that the fingerprints actually belonged to an Algerian national, Ouhnane Daoud; Brandon Mayfield was released from prison when the international press broke the story the next day — May 20, 2004.[3] A gag order remained in force for the next few days. By May 25, the case was dismissed by the judge, who ordered the return of seized evidence and unsealing of documents pertaining to his arrest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Mayfield

How about the Atlanta Olympics bombing?

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1997 ... ning-video
FBI Director Louis Freeh launched an internal investigation in October into allegations that Jewell -- initially hailed as a hero for discovering the knapsack bomb minutes before it exploded July 27 -- was tricked into talking to agents who said they wanted his help in making a training video.
How about the infamous Whitey Bulger case?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitey_Bulger

The FBI helped cover up his crimes, including murder, for almost 20 years.
Throughout the 1980s, Bulger, Flemmi and Weeks ran shakedowns throughout eastern Massachusetts, e.g., extortion, loansharking, bookmaking, truck hijackings and arms trafficking. State and federal agencies were repeatedly stymied in their attempts to build cases against Bulger and his inner circle. This was caused by several factors. Among them was the trio's paranoid fear of wiretaps, South Boston's code of silence, and also corruption within the Boston Police Department, the Massachusetts State Police, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation
.

I could go on with this, there's plenty more, but consider another article on the OP:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/cri ... story.html
In August, Harold Deadman, a senior hair analyst with the D.C. police who spent 15 years with the FBI lab, forwarded the evidence to the private lab and reported that the 13 hairs he found included head and limb hairs. One exhibited Caucasian characteristics, Deadman added. Tribble is black.

But the private lab’s DNA tests irrefutably showed that the 13 hairs came from three human sources, each of African origin, except for one — which came from a dog.

“Such is the true state of hair microscopy,” Levick wrote. “Two FBI-trained analysts, James Hilverda and Harold Deadman, could not even distinguish human hairs from canine hairs.”
Yet:
Key evidence at each of their trials came from separate FBI experts — not Malone — who swore that their scientific analysis proved with near certainty that Tribble’s and Odom’s hair was at the respective crime scenes.
You can't reconcile these facts and dismiss FBI testimony as an error or mistake. It was perjury. Furthermore:
In the discipline of hair and fiber analysis, only the work of FBI Special Agent Michael P. Malone was questioned. Even though Justice Department and FBI officials knew that the discipline had weaknesses and that the lab lacked protocols — and learned that examiners’ “matches” were often wrong — they kept their reviews limited to Malone.
That's a conspiracy to obstruct justice. It wasn't a mistake or an error, it was deliberate with foreknowledge:
In 1974, researchers acknowledged that visual comparisons are so subjective that different analysts can reach different conclusions about the same hair. The FBI acknowledged in 1984 that such analysis cannot positively determine that a hair found at a crime scene belongs to one particular person.
Yet they continued this kind of nonsense testimony until 1999.
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WildBill
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Re: FBI lied in court cases for 20 years

Post by WildBill »

This is disturbing, but not surprising.
For years the FBI lab has had the reputation for being the premier forensic laboratory in the world.
The testimony of an FBI special agent is expected to be beyond reproach, so his statements could definitely influence a jury to vote guilty.

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/lab/forensi ... edric1.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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Re: FBI lied in court cases for 20 years

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VMI77 wrote:http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/04 ... latestnews
The Justice Department and FBI have reportedly acknowledged that nearly every examiner in the FBI Laboratory’s microscopic hair comparison unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials where they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than 20-year period before 2000.
Apparently Fox News also has a problem with the truth when it comes to the government telling it...or at least certain parts of the government. "Overstated" and "flawed" testimony are weasel words. After several paragraphs of weasel words, the very last paragraph admits the reality. Testifying under oath to a near-certainty (false on its face) based on misleading statistics is what normal people who speak English fluently call "lying."
The review confirmed that FBI experts systematically, testified to the near-certainty of “matches” of crime-scene hairs to defendants, backing their claims by citing misleading statistics drawn from their case work. In reality, according to the newspaper, there is no accepted research on how often hair from different people may appear the same. Since 2000, the lab has used visual hair comparison to rule out someone as a possible source of hair or in combination with more accurate DNA testing.
Your criticism of Fox News make no sense. The Fox News article is simply reporting information from the Washington Post. :headscratch

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/cri ... story.html
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Re: FBI lied in court cases for 20 years

Post by VMI77 »

puma guy wrote:
VMI77 wrote:http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/04 ... latestnews
The Justice Department and FBI have reportedly acknowledged that nearly every examiner in the FBI Laboratory’s microscopic hair comparison unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials where they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than 20-year period before 2000.
Apparently Fox News also has a problem with the truth when it comes to the government telling it...or at least certain parts of the government. "Overstated" and "flawed" testimony are weasel words. After several paragraphs of weasel words, the very last paragraph admits the reality. Testifying under oath to a near-certainty (false on its face) based on misleading statistics is what normal people who speak English fluently call "lying."
The review confirmed that FBI experts systematically, testified to the near-certainty of “matches” of crime-scene hairs to defendants, backing their claims by citing misleading statistics drawn from their case work. In reality, according to the newspaper, there is no accepted research on how often hair from different people may appear the same. Since 2000, the lab has used visual hair comparison to rule out someone as a possible source of hair or in combination with more accurate DNA testing.
Your criticism of Fox News make no sense. The Fox News article is simply reporting information from the Washington Post. :headscratch

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/cri ... story.html
I get what you're saying...OTOH, to me, repeating what another news source says (and one of questionable veracity at that) doesn't make you a "news" source. To me, a news source would take that lead and then add something, rather than merely repeating it. So to me, a real news organization would check and question something from a source like the NYT and not accept its particular spin. But that requires time and effort and expense so it's not what typically happens in the MSM these days. About 80% of what passes for news and isn't advertising is a regurgitation of someone's press release.
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Re: FBI lied in court cases for 20 years

Post by The Annoyed Man »

cb1000rider wrote:I'm not sure what this actually means. They "overstated" the forensic match.
Does that mean that they said there was an 85% of a match rather than an 80% chance of a match?
Or does it mean that they indicated a match where there was absolutely no credible scientific evidence of a match?
There are two extremes with very different impacts. Of course, the article doesn't tell us...


'....nearly every examiner in the FBI Laboratory’s microscopic hair comparison unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials where they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than 20-year period before 2000."

So either every single person that has worked there is a conspiring liar and no one in 20 years blew the whistle, or it's a little less intentional than that.


One thing does speak to me though:
The cases include those of 32 defendants sentenced to death; of those, 14 have been executed or died in prison, the Post reported in a story posted on its website.
You guy who continue to be pro-death penalty need to understand that this cost is going to be executing innocent people from time to time... I'll support it when: 1) It costs less than life. 2) It's factually infallible.
FWIW, my personal standards for the death penalty come from the Bible - that there must be multiple witnesses to the crime, and that those witness be unimpeachable. (For me, "credible" is not a sufficient standard, because any good liar is "credible".) The legal system being what it is, for me there is no higher authority than the Word of God........but that's just me. I agree with you that statistical relevance of a hair-acquired DNA sample can be deceiving. IF the flaw in the testimony is that, rather than the DNA being a 100% perfect genetic match to the accused, the genetic match is actually a 1 in 320,000,000 match........ in a state with a population 26,000,000, in a county with a population of 2,000,000; and IF there is other evidence which points to the guilt of the accused; and IF there is no credible exonerating evidence; then the state has met its burden to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the accused is guilty. Last I checked, that is still the standard - "beyond reasonable doubt".

Also, remember that DNA is ALSO being used (with some success) to free prisoners who were possibly unjustly or erroneously accused and convicted. You have to ask yourself.......IF DNA testing is not a reliable indicator of guilt, then is it a reliable indicator of innocence either? And if it's not, then can it legitimately be used as evidence to free people? I ask, because evidence either IS or ISNT. Evidence has no opinion. It either exists and is admissible, or it does not exist and it is not admissible. That cuts both ways, in either proving guilt.......or in the case of releasing a prisoner, proving his innocence. If a hair that was used as evidence turns out not to have come from the prisoner, all that proves is that it is not his hair. It does NOT prove that he wasn't there and didn't commit the crime. All it proves is that the person from whom the hair originated had passed through the crime scene at some point before the investigation took place. Therefore, OTHER evidence must be considered too.

Just a thought.......
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Re: FBI lied in court cases for 20 years

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It's not necessarily the accuracy of the [DNA] test, but the source of the sample, evidence chain of custody, and the testimony that are in question.
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Re: FBI lied in court cases for 20 years

Post by The Annoyed Man »

WildBill wrote:It's not necessarily the accuracy of the [DNA] test, but the source of the sample, evidence chain of custody, and the testimony that are in question.
Then that could be a problem.
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Re: FBI lied in court cases for 20 years

Post by MechAg94 »

Make sure you apply that level of scrutiny and objectivity the next time you serve on a jury. That is the easiest way for people to affect this.
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Re: FBI lied in court cases for 20 years

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MechAg94 wrote:Make sure you apply that level of scrutiny and objectivity the next time you serve on a jury. That is the easiest way for people to affect this.
I am not likely to be picked to be a juror. Anyone who has experience in a testing laboratory is likely to get excused on a case that depends highly on forensic evidence.
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