The U.S. Justice Department and the FBI have acknowledged that almost all of the experts in the FBI forensic unit dedicated to microscopic hair comparison gave false testimony against defendants prior to 2000, according to The Washington Post.
EVIDENCE
The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the Innocence Project found that “26 of the 28 examiners in the FBI’s microscopic hair comparison unit overstated evidence in more than 95 percent of 268 trials” that have been examined. The cases include those of 32 defendants sentenced to death. Of those, 14 have been executed or died in prison, The Washington Post reported.
“Federal authorities launched the investigation in 2012 after The Post reported that flawed forensic hair matches might have led to the convictions of hundreds of potentially innocent people since at least the 1970s, typically for murder, rape and other violent crimes nationwide,” stated an article by The Associated Press .
The study conducted by the NACDL found that when FBI experts testified about a“near-certainty of “matches” their testimony instead was based on incomplete or misleading statistics drawn from their casework.
INVESTIGATION
The FBI and the Justice Department issued a joint statement vowing to continue the investigation, notify affected defendants and ensure accuracy in future cases.
– By John Lam
