The DOJ and the FBI admit to giving ‘flawed testimony’ from DNA unit for twenty years

 This story is very troubling to say the least: The Department of Injustice and the FBI have admitted that the FBI’s Laboratory microscopic hair comparison unit gave “flawed testimony” and “overstated forensic matches” in virtually every single case in which the unit was called in to testify over a twenty year period.

  Here is more:

The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in the FBI Laboratory’s microscopic hair comparison unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000, The Washington Post reported.

Twenty-six of the 28 examiners overstated forensic matches in ways that favored prosecutors in more than 95 percent of the 268 trials reviewed so far, the Post reported Saturday, citing information from the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the Innocence Project.

The cases include those of 32 defendants sentenced to death; of those, 14 have been executed or died in prison, the Post reported in a story posted on its website.

The review confirmed that FBI experts systematically testified to the near-certainty of “matches” of crime-scene hairs to defendants, backing their claims by citing incomplete or misleading statistics drawn from their case work, the Post reported. In reality, according to the newspaper, there is no accepted research on how often hair from different people may appear the same.

  Many of the people who oppose the death penalty make the claim that there could be many people on death row who are innocent and because of this there should be no death penalty and they might actually be on to something–however it could be due to the fact that the government helped to convict them with “flawed testimony” for two decades. If we cannot trust the Department of Injustice and the FBI to follow the law in the courts who can we trust?

  But just because the government used “overstated” and “flawed testimony” in order to gain a conviction it does not mean the people were not guilty:

The FBI errors alone do not mean there was not other evidence of a convict’s guilt, the Post said.

  I guess the government just knew in their hearts these people were guilty and if they needed a little help to secure the conviction it was okay because the end justifies the means…

  What the Department of Injustice and the FBI are calling “overstated” and “flawed testimony” would have a different name if it were an average American citizen who presented untrue testimony while under oath and that name would be “perjury.” Would it not?

  Will anyone be held accountable for this? Only time will tell but I think I know the answer…

Malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium