National Academy of Sciences Finds FBI Forensic Analyses Unreliable
We are all human and if someone murders another we want that person to pay for his crime with his life. We emotionally need for that person to pay the ultimate punishment for the most heinous of all crimes. I'll admit it, in my barbaric heart I want murderers to be put to death. But who is to judge?
As I said, we are human and humans make mistakes.It is one thing to make a mistake by putting an innocent person in jail and it's another thing to make a mistake by putting an innocent person down. We can correct the first; there is no correcting the second. The second mistake is in fact no different than the murder for which he was executed.
Two thousand years ago the Jewish sages determined the death penalty too arbitrary, too uncertain, too barbaric and therefor effectively abolished it. Although I am an Atheist, allow me to quote Jesus who echoed the sentiments of the time regarding Capital Punishment (John 8:7): "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her."
Jesus, as the second sinless person in history [the opinion of 1.2 billion Catholics], accordingly had the right to cast the first stone, but did not, so there is no delicate way to write this: those who are in favor of the death penalty are not following the most important lesson taught by Jesus Christ, that the death penalty is off-limits to humans.
Some of my readers want to believe that it is possible to have evidence so direct, so strong, so righteously obvious that there can be no doubt of the person's guilt. Sadly, there is no such collection of evidence. As I have written previously, police have fabricated fingerprint evidence, most prosecutors tamper evidence, hide exculpatory evidence, and can even convince five people at a time to confess to a crime they did not commit. As well, future articles will show that eyewitness testimony is wrong 75% of the time, DNA evidence is not available in 80% of crimes, and that almost all so-called scientific forensic evidence as seen on TV is bogus and worthless as evidence of any crime at all.
For this article we will show that even forensic evidence from the FBI is unreliable and worthless as evidence. Consider the case of Claude Jones who was executed in 2000 because of his conviction based on faulty hair analysis. In 2010, DNA evidence showed the hair really wasn't his (1).
Texas came to examine his hair evidence because in 2009 the National Academy of Sciences found the FBI's method of microscopic hair analysis, which was done in his case, to be completely unreliable (2).
Oh, well - mistakes happen.
ENDNOTES
(1):
The Texas Observer, 11 Nov 2010, DNA Tests Undermine Evidence in Texas Execution
Claude Jones always claimed that he wasn’t the man who walked into an East Texas liquor store in 1989 and shot the owner. He professed his innocence right up until the moment he was strapped to a gurney in the Texas execution chamber and put to death on Dec. 7, 2000. His murder conviction was based on a single piece of forensic evidence recovered from the crime scene—a strand of hair—that prosecutors claimed belonged to Jones.
But DNA tests completed this week at the request of the Observer and the New York-based Innocence Project show the hair didn’t belong to Jones after all. The day before his death in December 2000, Jones asked for a stay of execution so the strand of hair could be submitted for DNA testing. He was denied by then-Gov. George W. Bush.
(2):
The Austin Chronicle, 13 Jan 2014, Hair Analysis: The Root of the Evidence Problem
The Texas Forensic Science Commission voted unanimously Friday morning to move forward with a first-in-the-nation review of state criminal convictions that included testimony on microscopic hair analysis – a field of forensics deemed unreliable in a sweeping 2009 report on the state of forensics by the National Academy of Sciences.
Texas' planned review piggybacks on a groundbreaking federal investigation announced in July 2013. That inquiry involves 2,000 criminal cases in which hair comparison analysis linking a defendant to crime scene evidence was provided by Federal Bureau of Investigation examiners. That review is being conducted via an agreement between the FBI and Department of Justice with the New York-based Innocence Project and National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
