That's the title of an OpEd by former federal district judge and FBI Director William Sessions. It's subtitled, "Increased DNA testing can assure the guilty are convicted and the innocent exonerated.
In two courts, half a country apart, judges last month grappled with the reliability of testimony and forensic hair evidence analysis that Federal Bureau of Investigation agents provided in criminal trials decades ago. John Norman Huffington, imprisoned nearly 32 years in Maryland, had his conviction overturned by a judge after DNA testing revealed that the hair that was presented as key evidence against Mr. Huffington did not belong to him. Willie Jerome Manning, mere hours from death, won a stay of execution from the Mississippi Supreme Court to give his lawyers time to conduct DNA testing, which they believe could exonerate him. FBI testimony in both cases provided key evidence that led to their convictions.
Most of us are aware of the need for accurate and scientifically reliable evidence to ensure that those guilty of crimes are convicted and properly sentenced, and that those wrongfully convicted are exonerated. In Mr. Huffington's trial for the 1981 murders of two people in Harford County, at a time when DNA testing was not yet available, an FBI agent testified that the microscopic hair analysis was 99.98 percent accurate in determining that hair found in the bed where one victim was killed belonged to Mr. Huffington. This April, DNA testing revealed that the hair samples were in fact not his. In overturning his conviction and ordering a new trial, the judge noted that "due to the substantial weight given to the microscopic hair analysis by the jury … as well as the results of the DNA test [directly contradicting the FBI agent's testimony] … there is a significant possibility that the outcome of [Mr. Huffington's] case may have been different."
In Mr. Manning's trial for the 1992 murders of two college students, an FBI agent testified that microscopic hair analysis could identify a hair sample as belonging to Mr. Manning, to the exclusion of all others. Mr. Manning was convicted in 1994, in part based on the FBI agent's testimony. But such testimony, as a U.S. Department of Justice review found, "exceeded the limits of the science," and therefore the testimony was erroneous and "invalid." Had DNA testing (relatively new at the time) been performed on the hair sample, we would have had far greater certainty about the outcome in Mr. Manning's trial.
These are two examples among the potentially thousands of cases in which the reliability of FBI forensic analysis and testimony, particularly microscopic hair analysis, has been called into serious doubt.
Related posts are in the DNA category index. Sessions is active in the Constitution Project.
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