FBI Forensics Scandal
The Machinery of Injustice, Fake Science, Twisted Evidence
April 27, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
On April 20 the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced that microscopic hair analysis by FBI laboratories that has been used in courts to convict many people over the years has been found to be “erroneous.”
They did not use the term “falsified evidence” nor state the fact that this evidence has been used to frame people for crimes they did not commit. They did not mention the ugly truth that people have been put on death row and some have been executed based on FBI lies.
The FBI identified some 3,000 cases in which FBI “experts” testified at trial about microscopic hair evidence found at crime scenes. In 268 cases in which FBI testimony was used to incriminate people, 257—96%—of the testimony was found to be “erroneous." The Innocence Project reports that “Defendants in at least 35 of these cases received the death penalty and errors were identified in 33 (94%) of those cases. Nine of these defendants have already been executed and five died of other causes while on death row.”
“These findings confirm that FBI microscopic hair analysts committed widespread, systematic error, grossly exaggerating the significance of their data under oath with the consequence of unfairly bolstering the prosecutions’ case,” said Peter Neufeld, Co-Director of the Innocence Project, which is affiliated with Cardozo School of Law. [See more at: http://www.innocenceproject.org/news-events-exonerations/press-releases/fbi-testimony-on-microscopic-hair-analysis-contained-errors-in-at-least-90-of-cases-in-ongoing-review]
Why are we still fighting for justice in 2015?
"Why are we still fighting for justice in 2015?" is a clip from the film REVOLUTION AND RELIGION: The Fight for Emancipation and the Role of Religion; A Dialogue Between CORNEL WEST & BOB AVAKIAN. The film is of the November 2014 historic Dialogue on a question of great importance in today's world between the Revolutionary Christian Cornel West and the Revolutionary Communist Bob Avakian. Watch the entire film here.
The issue is that the supposed “science” that can link a known person with a hair sample from an as yet unknown person is completely UNscientific. The Innocence Project, which has been working to exonerate unjustly convicted people by using DNA analysis, has pointed out that “no public (or even private) database exists that tracks different types of hairs and there is no established method explaining how to construct such a database that is representative of a population, valid and reliable.” The Innocence Project makes it clear that there are no tested and objective methods for “declaring positive associations, and [no] peer-reviewed published studies that validate these methods.”
According to a 2009 report by the National Academy of Sciences, microscopic hair comparisons are a highly unreliable way to try to tie a person to a crime. The only method of scientific analysis that can accurately show links to an individual is mitochondrial DNA testing of human evidence such as hair and blood samples. The Innocence Project has used DNA testing to exonerate 329 wrongfully convicted people. 74 of those convictions were based on unreliable microscopic hair evidence.
Despite this, FBI examiners have used what amount to circumstantial and unscientific comparisons and their own anecdotal memories in court testimony, resulting in sending innocent people to prison, to death row, and then to the gas chamber or electric chair. The FBI has NOT, in any way, shape, or form, admitted to the fact that that their methods are more like witchcraft than a scientific methodology.
The FBI did not come forward on their own because they are interested in providing justice. The Innocence Project along with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, confronted the FBI with scientific facts that exposed the fraudulent methods and results of the FBI’s lab reports. So now the FBI has pledged to correct their “bad science.”
Why would the FBI deliberately and consciously use lies to convict people?
The sham science of FBI lab reports is only one part of the whole machinery of injustice that is at the core of how the American ruling class maintains their “law and order.”
The FBI and the Department of Justice of which it is a part are and always have been essential tools of government repression. Since it was created in 1870, the DOJ has enforced the exploitation and oppression on which the USA is based: slavery, patriarchy, the tyranny of private property over human need. More recently, the FBI and DOJ were instrumental in suppressing resistance to Jim Crow and KKK terror against Black people, in rounding up and imprisoning Japanese-Americans during World War 2; in spying on and harassing activists in the Civil Rights movement; and in attacking, assassinating and criminalizing the Black Panther Party and other activists in the Black Liberation movement and the movement against the war in Vietnam.
What must be understood is the criminality and illegitimacy of the whole setup of INjustice that the FBI is an arm of and enforces.
Volunteers Needed... for revcom.us and Revolution
If you like this article, subscribe, donate to and sustain Revolution newspaper.