The Fbi’S Three-Decade Use Of Microscopic Hair Analysis To Incriminate Defendants Was A Complete Disaster.

[t-pain]

Talking mostly about where they visually matched hair samples under a microscope and how they've exhonorated people using dna tests on those same hair samples.

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/fbi-overstated-forensic-hair-matches-in-nearly-all-criminal-trials-for-decades/2015/04/18/39c8d8c6-e515-11e4-b510-962fcfabc310_story.html

 

Of 28 examiners with the FBI Laboratory’s microscopic hair comparison unit, 26 overstated forensic matches in ways that favored prosecutors in more than 95 percent of the 268 trials reviewed so far, according to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and the Innocence Project, which are assisting the government with the country’s largest post-conviction review of questioned forensic evidence.

 

The admissions mark a watershed in one of the country’s largest forensic scandals, highlighting the failure of the nation’s courts for decades to keep bogus scientific information from juries, legal analysts said. The question now, they said, is how state authorities and the courts will respond to findings that confirm long-suspected problems with subjective, pattern-based forensic techniques — like hair and bite-mark comparisons — that have contributed to wrongful convictions in more than one-quarter of 329 DNA-exoneration cases since 1989.

 

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a former prosecutor, called on the FBI and Justice Department to notify defendants in all 2,500 targeted cases involving an FBI hair match about the problem even if their case has not been completed, and to redouble efforts in the three-year-old review to retrieve information on each case.

 

hair match was not the only evidence used in many cases, i wonder if they are counting plea deals too..

[trichcycler]

no worries, soon all of our hair will be pulled out !

[t-pain]

overall its disgusting that this only comes to light by defense lawyers challenging its authenticity.

 

scientifically unsound methods of analyzing evidence should never be used in court in the first place.