FBI "troubled" by their errors in a review of cases. So, they stopped their reviews.

This is asinine.  They don't like being found screwing up so much, so they just stop reviewing the cases.  PROBLEM SOLVED!

Quote :

Nearly every criminal case reviewed by the FBI and the Justice Department as part of a massive investigation started in 2012 of problems at the FBI lab has included flawed forensic testimony from the agency, government officials said.

The findings troubled the bureau, and it stopped the review of convictions last August. Case reviews resumed this month at the order of the Justice Department, the officials said.

U.S. officials began the inquiry after The Washington Post reported two years ago that flawed forensic evidence involving microscopic hair matches might have led to the convictions of hundreds of potentially innocent people. Most of those defendants never were told of the problems in their cases.

The inquiry includes 2,600 convictions and 45 death-row cases from the 1980s and 1990s in which the FBI’s hair and fiber unit reported a match to a crime-scene sample before DNA testing of hair became common. The FBI had reviewed about 160 cases before it stopped, officials said.

The whole article at  the Washington Post.

Id be Leary of this. Its hard to say what they found. Because as I see them, it appears the DOJ is on a mission to set as many crooks free, especially black ones.   

Come on Chrissy, you are a scientist. This is about science and people's lives, not about race or politics. If it was your kid who was wrongly convicted you would be beating this drum the loudest.

Anyone left wondering why people don't trust the damn government?? Jeez, this is horrifying.

Quote :

The investigation resumed after the Justice Department’s inspector general excoriated the department and the FBI for unacceptable delays and inadequate investigation in a separate inquiry from the mid-1990s. The inspector general found in that probe that three defendants were executed and a fourth died on death row in the five years it took officials to reexamine 60 death-row convictions that were potentially tainted by agent misconduct, mostly involving the same FBI hair and fiber analysis unit now under scrutiny.

/snip/

Quote :

According to a Justice Department spokesman, officials last August completed reviews and notified a first wave of defendants in 23 cases, including 14 death-penalty cases, that FBI examiners “exceeded the limits of science” when they linked hair to crime-scene evidence.

/snip/

Quote :

This month, the inspector general reported that inattention and foot-dragging by the Justice Department and the FBI led them to ignore warnings 15 years ago that scientifically unsupported and misleading testimony could have come from more than a single hair examiner among agents discredited in a 1997 inspector general’s report on misconduct at the FBI lab.

The report said that as of 1999, Justice Department officials had enough information to review all hair unit cases — not just those of former agent Michael P. Malone, who was identified as the agent making the most frequent exaggerated testimony.

By 2002, Maureen Killion, then director of enforcement operations, had alerted senior criminal division officials to “the specter that the other examiners in the unit” were as sloppy as Malone, the inspector general said.

“This issue has been raised with the FBI but not resolved to date,” Killion wrote to then-Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff and his principal deputy, John C. Keeney, in July 2002, the report said.

^This is just the tip of the iceberg... there's more horror in the article.

Just wow.

I'm just amazed Holder let this information be made public or even followed through investigating!

Eric wrote:

This is asinine.  They don't like being found screwing up so much, so they just stop reviewing the cases.  PROBLEM SOLVED!

Quote :

Nearly every criminal case reviewed by the FBI and the Justice Department as part of a massive investigation started in 2012 of problems at the FBI lab has included flawed forensic testimony from the agency, government officials said.

The findings troubled the bureau, and it stopped the review of convictions last August. Case reviews resumed this month at the order of the Justice Department, the officials said.

U.S. officials began the inquiry after The Washington Post reported two years ago that flawed forensic evidence involving microscopic hair matches might have led to the convictions of hundreds of potentially innocent people. Most of those defendants never were told of the problems in their cases.

The inquiry includes 2,600 convictions and 45 death-row cases from the 1980s and 1990s in which the FBI’s hair and fiber unit reported a match to a crime-scene sample before DNA testing of hair became common. The FBI had reviewed about 160 cases before it stopped, officials said.

The whole article at  the Washington Post.

Explains a lot about investigations....When they are conducted like what is reported it's no wonder when officials go on record and say things like .... there's no a smidgeon of wrongdoing...maybe it's not an erroneous statement but rather a screwed up investigation....

So many lives ruined by zealots.

Tragic.