FBI checking prints in death row cases

[AmyStrange]

FBI checking prints in death row cases
By Richard Willing, USA TODAY

FROM: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-01-10-fingerprints-review_x.htm
The FBI is reviewing the cases of all state and federal prisoners scheduled for execution to determine whether bureau fingerprint examiners made errors that led to death sentences.
The monthly reviews were first disclosed in a Justice Department report released Friday. They began 18 months ago, after FBI examiners mistakenly matched a print found near the site of terrorist bombings in Madrid to a lawyer in Portland, Ore., said Joseph DiZinno, the FBI's deputy assistant director for forensic analysis.

The lawyer, Muslim convert Brandon Mayfield, was held as a material witness in the bombings for two weeks. He was released after Spanish police matched the print in Madrid to an Algerian linked to Muslim terrorists. The bombings killed 191 people, most of them on commuter trains.

The episode embarrassed the FBI. It prompted the bureau to focus on fingerprint analyses it had done in death penalty cases, out of concern that an error could lead a wrongful execution. Since the reviews began, the FBI has examined at least 92 death penalty cases and found 10 in which it had analyzed fingerprints, DiZinno said. No error has been found, he said.

The FBI is continuing to examine death row inmates' convictions at least a month before their scheduled executions, DiZinno said. Nine inmates across the USA are scheduled for execution later this month, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a Washington, D.C., group that opposes capital punishment. There are more than 3,000 death-row inmates across the nation, but it's unclear how many of their cases involved fingerprint analysis.

READ THE REST: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-01-10-fingerprints-review_x.htm

© Copyright 2006 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

[Karmakaze]

1. Wait a minute...

What does this mean?: "The FBI is continuing to examine death row inmates' convictions at least a month before their scheduled executions"

Are they saying if they haven't reviewed it by the month before the execution, they won't review it?