FBI has admitted use of bad science for over two decades

[Itse]

This could lead to big changes in use of forensic evidence in general.

Washington Post:

The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic 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.

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.

In the District, the only jurisdiction where defenders and prosecutors have re-investigated all FBI hair convictions, three of seven defendants whose trials included flawed FBI testimony have been exonerated through DNA testing since 2009, and courts have exonerated two more men. All five served 20 to 30 years in prison for rape or murder.

The story goes quite a bit beoynd this, I highly recommend reading the whole thing.

(It's worth noting that if I'm reading the story correctly, the FBI has actually been trying fix it's mess instead of much worse options.)

[Wastedyouth]

And the system has failed the people, once again.

[metallicat]

I thought this was going to at least mention polygraphs, and how they're complete crap.

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by oilers_fan

I thought this was going to at least mention polygraphs, and how they're complete crap.

Finger print analysis is also bogus.

[Huntingwhale]

An American government agency lying to it's own people in order to suit their own needs and keep funding going? Shocking.

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by Huntingwhale

An American government agency lying to it's own people in order to suit their own needs and keep funding going? Shocking.

It's almost like the FBI has been doing that since it's inception.

[Itse]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

Finger print analysis is also bogus.

It's not bogus, and neither is hair analysis completely bogus. But yeah, they're just not nearly as reliable as they are made out to be. Heck, even DNA analysis is not as reliable as it's thought to be. Forensic science is like all natural science, messy and complicated and bad at giving definite answers with small samples. And of course eyewitnesses and people's memories in general are also terribly unreliable. Still, you have to work with what you got.

I hope this starts another debate on death sentences too in the US.

No justice system is reliable enough to give such an absolute sentence.