The Washington Post released an article last week detailing how 20 years-worth of criminal trials have included flawed testimonies regarding hair analysis from "nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit."
The government has identified around 3,000 cases that involved hair comparison analysis, and as of March 2015, around 500 have been reviewed. The FBI has stated that the purpose of these reviews is to "ensure that FBI Laboratory examiner testimony regarding microscopic hair comparison analysis met accepted scientific standards."
Yet based on what they’re finding, these standards have either been completely neglected or have very little validity.
In 95 percent of the cases reviewed so far, 26 out of 28 examiners with the FBI Laboratory’s microscopic hair comparison unit have overstated forensic matches in ways that favored prosecutors. 95 percent!
Yet based on what they’re finding, these standards have either been completely neglected or have very little validity.
In 95 percent of the cases reviewed so far, 26 out of 28 examiners with the FBI Laboratory’s microscopic hair comparison unit have overstated forensic matches in ways that favored prosecutors. 95 percent!
Decades in Prison and On Death Row
The Guardian recently reported on George Perrot, a man who has spent almost 30 years in jail. He was 17 when he was arrested for the burglary and rape of an elderly woman in her home. The FBI found a single piece of hair on the woman's bedsheet, nothing more.
She stated that the intruder had short hair and was clean-shaven. Neglecting every bit of evidence that pointed away from Perrot - including the fact that he had long, shaggy hair and a mustache and goatee - that piece of hair put him in prison after an "expert in hair and textile fiber" from the FBI testified against Perrot, stating that it was his indeed.
These hair analysis testimonies have also sent inmates to death row. There have been 32 death-penalty cases with flawed forensic testimony.
An article released by The Daily Beast describes how Willie Jerome Manning, a man on death row for 21 years, was convicted of the murder of two white students through hair analysis back in 1994.
She stated that the intruder had short hair and was clean-shaven. Neglecting every bit of evidence that pointed away from Perrot - including the fact that he had long, shaggy hair and a mustache and goatee - that piece of hair put him in prison after an "expert in hair and textile fiber" from the FBI testified against Perrot, stating that it was his indeed.
These hair analysis testimonies have also sent inmates to death row. There have been 32 death-penalty cases with flawed forensic testimony.
An article released by The Daily Beast describes how Willie Jerome Manning, a man on death row for 21 years, was convicted of the murder of two white students through hair analysis back in 1994.
"Manning was a black man facing an all-white Southern jury, and the cards were already stacked against him. The prosecutor’s case relied on testimony from a jailhouse snitch and a woman who wanted to see her own criminal charges disappear—and an FBI expert who said a hair sample linked Manning to the crime. Manning was convicted and sentenced to death."
While both Perrot and Manning are still behind bars, these new findings of flawed hair analysis have provided them and thousands of other potential innocent people in jail with a ray of hope that their decades-long prison sentences will come to an end.
