Jump to content

Paladin of Ice

Members
  • Posts

    2,801
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by Paladin of Ice

  1. FBI forensic examiners misidentified suspects in hundreds of cases in the 80s and 90s, their results biased cases towards prosecutors and may have resulted in untold numbers of convictions, extended sentences, and even executions of innocent people.

    Quote

    Justice Department officials have known for years that flawed forensic work might have led to the convictions of potentially innocent people, but prosecutors failed to notify defendants or their attorneys even in many cases they knew were troubled.

    Officials started reviewing the cases in the 1990s after reports that sloppy work by examiners at the FBI lab was producing unreliable forensic evidence in court trials. Instead of releasing those findings, they made them available only to the prosecutors in the affected cases, according to documents and interviews with dozens of officials.

    In addition, the Justice Department reviewed only a limited number of cases and focused on the work of one scientist at the FBI lab, despite warnings that problems were far more widespread and could affect potentially thousands of cases in federal, state and local courts.

    As a result, hundreds of defendants nationwide remain in prison or on parole for crimes that might merit exoneration, a retrial or a retesting of evidence using DNA because FBI hair and fiber experts may have misidentified them as suspects.

    In one Texas case, Benjamin Herbert Boyle was executed in 1997, more than a year after the Justice Department began its review. Boyle would not have been eligible for the death penalty without the FBI’s flawed work, according to a prosecutor’s memo.

    The case of a Maryland man serving a life sentence for a 1981 double killing is another in which federal and local law enforcement officials knew of forensic problems but never told the defendant. Attorneys for the man, John Norman Huffington, say they learned of potentially exculpatory Justice Department findings from The Washington Post. They are seeking a new trial.

    Justice Department officials said that they met their legal and constitutional obligations when they learned of specific errors, that they alerted prosecutors and were not required to inform defendants directly.

    The review was performed by a task force created during an inspector general’s investigation of misconduct at the FBI crime lab in the 1990s. The inquiry took nine years, ending in 2004, records show, but the findings were never made public.

    In the discipline of hair and fiber analysis, only the work of FBI Special Agent Michael P. Malone was questioned. Even though Justice Department and FBI officials knew that the discipline had weaknesses and that the lab lacked protocols — and learned that examiners’ “matches” were often wrong — they kept their reviews limited to Malone.

    But two cases in D.C. Superior Court show the inadequacy of the government’s response.

    Santae A. Tribble, now 51, was convicted of killing a taxi driver in 1978, and Kirk L. Odom, now 49, was convicted of a sexual assault in 1981.

    Key evidence at each of their trials came from separate FBI experts — not Malone — who swore that their scientific analysis proved with near certainty that Tribble’s and Odom’s hair was at the respective crime scenes.

    But DNA testing this year on the hair and on other old evidence virtually eliminates Tribble as a suspect and completely clears Odom. Both men have completed their sentences and are on lifelong parole. They are now seeking exoneration in the courts in the hopes of getting on with their lives.

    Neither case was part of the Justice Department task force’s review.

    ...

    The Post found that while many prosecutors made swift and full disclosures, many others did so incompletely, years late or not at all. The effort was stymied at times by lack of cooperation from some prosecutors and declining interest and resources as time went on.

    Overall, calls to defense lawyers indicate and records documented that prosecutors disclosed the reviews’ results to defendants in fewer than half of the 250-plus questioned cases.

    Michael R. Bromwich, a former federal prosecutor and the inspector general who investigated the FBI lab, said in a statement that even if more defense lawyers were notified of the initial review, “that doesn’t absolve the task force from ensuring that every single defense lawyer in one of these cases was notified.”

    He added: “It is deeply troubling that after going to so much time and trouble to identify problematic conduct by FBI forensic analysts the DOJ Task Force apparently failed to follow through and ensure that defense counsel were notified in every single case.”

     

    Link

  2. In the last week and a half or so I've been hitting the gym for the virtually the first time since the pandemic began, aside from a couple of sessions in the summer of '21, right before the Delta variant started kicking all our asses. I knew I'd lose a lot of muscle performance from being out of commission that long, and especially after spending the last few months mostly sedentary (it was another story when I was running specimens across the street and up three flights of steps a dozen times a day at my old job), and it's not like I was at the top of my game back in early 2020 either, but I did not expect to be set back as far as I was.

    Not only am I nowhere near where I was on various weights and such, but my cardio is also a shadow of its former self. I was apparently one of the rare freaks who actually liked cardio (so many people I knew always bitched about it), at least on a good elliptical machine when I got in the rhythm and had the right music urging me along. Every time so far I've fallen short of my cardio goals and simply had to stop at some point because I couldn't go on.

    On the plus side I can already feel a difference in how clothing fits and some exercises I was recommended years ago by a doctor who was also a big fitness guy have already cut down significantly on pain in my knee. Looking forward to hitting it again in a few hours.

  3. 8 hours ago, LongRider said:

    I voted yes, leave now, gtfo, begone asshole!   :) 

    I definitely had some fun spreading it around. I'm sure that one of these three scenarios will play out: he'll ignore it, he'll have some buddy lined up to run it much as he would, or he'll spend the next several months "searching" for an ideal candidate to take over while he continues his flailing and obsessions, but for the egg on his face and the bruises to his ego, it's worth it.

  4. 5 minutes ago, Week said:

    Tesla's founders were pushed out in 2008 by the rainmaker that joined a year after its founding.

    Thank you for posting this. It astonishes me how many people don't know that Elon's main contributions at Paypal, Tesla, SpaceX, etc. was just bringing in massive amounts of money and wanting to name the company or whatever product they're offering "X". Until maybe 4ish years ago I didn't know any better either, but the more Elon moved into the spotlight the more the truth beyond the PR facade has been exposed.

  5. If people bring so much courage to this world, the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave all impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too, but there will be no special hurry.

    Ernest Hemmingway, A Farewell To Arms

×
×
  • Create New...