DNA Forensic Error and the Execution of Innocents
Source: Huffington Post
DNA Forensic Error and the Execution of Innocents
Posted: 05/04/2013 2:18 pm
Willie Jerome Manning, a 44-year-old black man, is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Tuesday for the 1992 kidnapping and murder of white college students Jon Steckler and Tiffany Miller in Mississippi. No physical evidence has ever linked Manning to the crime. And the Justice Department has just come clean that the FBI's forensic analysis implicating Manning was invalid.
A jury convicted Manning almost 20 years ago based on three kinds of circumstantial evidence. First was the testimony of his cousin and a jailhouse informant who claimed that he confessed the crime to them. The cousin had accused two other men before Manning, however, and the informant has since recanted altogether. Second were Steckler's jacket, ring, and CD player from his car that Manning was arrested for trying to sell. Manning told police from the beginning that he had acquired the stolen property from someone he didn't know.
Critical to the prosecution's case was the last piece of evidence against Manning: expert testimony by an FBI agent that African American hair fragments were found in Miller's car. Not only did DNA and fingerprints found at the crime scene never incriminate Manning himself, however two days ago, the Justice Department notified Manning's lawyer and the County District Attorney that "testimony containing erroneous statements regarding microscopic hair comparison analysis was used in this case." Federal officials have yet to detail the precise errors involved, but made clear in their letter that the FBI's forensic evidence was unsound not least because it "exceeded the limits of science" at the time.
The Washington Post reported yesterday that the Justice Department discovered the errors "as part of a broad review of the FBI's handling of . . . forensic hair examinations before 2000 -- at least 21,000 cases -- to determine whether agents exaggerated the significance of purported hair 'matches' in lab reports or trial testimony." This admission comes days after a 5-4 majority of the Mississippi Supreme Court denied a request by Manning's lawyers to reexamine the forensic evidence in his case on the ground that "conclusive, overwhelming evidence of guilt was presented to the jury."
Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dov-fox/dna-forensic-error-and-th_b_3215504.html
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