That's the title of an editorial in today's Houston Chronicle. It's subtitled, "Canine witnesses need tighter judicial leashes."
With very little science to back them up, so-called scent lineups have been used extensively to convict defendants in Texas courts.
Dogs sample the odor of a suspect and several other persons and sniff crime-scene evidence. Then they indicate to their handlers through signals whether there's a match. In many law enforcement jurisdictions, officers can use the evidence to justify a search, an arrest, even a criminal charge.
One of the leading practitioners and popularizers of the technique is Fort Bend County Deputy Keith Pikett, who has constructed a lucrative career testifying to the accuracy of his pack of bloodhounds, colorfully tagged with monikers like Columbo, James Bond and Clue. In testimony for prosecutors, Pikett has claimed that his dogs are almost never wrong in their determinations in thousands of cases.
That assertion is under fire in federal court in Houston, as three men wrongfully accused on the basis of Pikett's scent lineups are suing for damages after spending months in jail.
Cedric Johnson and Curvis Bickham were charged with capital murder after Pikett's hounds linked them to a charred gas can found at the scene of a triple killing. Johnson spent 16 months in jail and Bickham eight before all charges were dropped. Another litigant in the federal suit, Ronald Curtis, was incarcerated after the dogs implicated him in a string of cell phone store burglaries. He spent eight months in the slammer before the real thief was arrested.
As a report issued by the Innocence Project of Texas documents, the practice of using of dogs for scent lineups is unreliable and amounts to “junk science.”
And:
If the Texas Forensic Science Commission ever finishes up its delayed investigation of arson findings in the case of executed convict Cameron Todd Willingham, members should start sniffing up the trail of scent lineups.
The Innocence Project of Texas report is available in Adobe .pdf format.
Courthouse News Service distributes, "Cops' 'Scent Lineup' Called Junk Science," by Cameron Langford.
Three men say Houston police and Fort Bend County sheriff's officers used dogs in a "junk science" lineup technique to prosecute them for crimes they did not commit - including capital murder. Fort Bend County Deputy Sheriff Keith Pikett invented the technique in the 1990s, using bloodhounds to "match" crime scene evidence to suspects, according to the federal complaint.
"Defendant Pikett never tested the dog scent lineups' accuracy, nor did he establish a set of standards under which to conduct the lineups," the plaintiffs say. "Instead, defendant Pikett repeatedly lied under oath about his qualifications, his training and the supposed infallibility of his dog identifications."
Plaintiffs Ronald Curtis, Cedric Johnson and Curvis Bickham say Pikett used the unreliable "dog scent lineup" techniques in thousands of criminal investigations. They say Houston police officers helped Pikett concoct the fraudulent evidence used against them.
Pikett's techniques were exposed as fraudulent in 2006 when his dogs implicated an innocent man in a murder in which the true perpetrator later confessed, the plaintiffs say.
Johnson and Bickham say they were wrongfully accused of capital murder when Houston police swabbed their faces with gauze and gave it to Pikett, whose dogs "confirmed" their scent on evidence from the crime scene.
Curtis says he was wrongfully convicted of robbing stores by Pikett's dog scent lineups, and he spent 3 months in jail before the charges were dismissed.
Earlier coverage begins with this post.
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