Attorney General Ends Forensic Program Started by D.C. Public Defender Complaint

  U.S. Attorney Jeff Sessions tried to close out an issue this week that started when the Washington, D.C. Public Defender Service revealed a pattern of unreliable forensic evidence that resulted in possible wrongful convictions of innocent defendants.

   Sessions announced he was ending a Justice Department partnership with independent forensic scientists and suspending a review of FBI evidence-gathering techniques. The independent scientists will be replaced by an in-house team of advisers.

   The scientists were associated with the National Commission on Forensic Science, a 30-member panel that included judges, crime lab directors, prosecutors and defense lawyers. They were organized under the Obama administration in 2013 to upgrade the forensic science that can play a crucial role in criminal prosecutions.

   Obama was trying to respond to allegations that started with the D.C. Public Defender Service showing that hair-matching most often used in rape trials was unreliable. DNA tests sometimes contradicted evidence from the hair-matching, the public defenders said.

   The allegations reported by the news media led to a Justice Department investigation that found not only were the hair-matching analyses exaggerated by experts, similar patterns of unreliable evidence were found for bullet-tracing by chemical composition and bite mark matching.

   Wrongful convictions based on unreliable evidence in Washington, D.C. included the case of Santae A. Tribble, who was imprisoned for 28 years after being convicted of killing a taxi driver in 1978. A D.C. Superior Court judge ordered that the District government pay him $13.2 million in compensation.

   Tribble was convicted in 1980 after an FBI examiner testified hairs found in a stocking mask worn by the killer matched Tribble's. Prosecutors told the jury there was only a "one in 10 million" chance of mistake in the hair-matching test.

   The conviction was overturned in 2012 when DNA testing showed the hairs in the stocking mask were not Tribble's.

   The subsequent Justice Department investigation revealed unreliable forensic tests had been used as evidence for more than 20 years.

   FBI Director James B. Comey acknowledged the previous mistakes last year in a letter to state governors in which he asked them to review the reliability of hair comparison tests from their local forensic labs.

   “We want to make sure there aren’t other innocent people in jail based on our work,” Comey wrote. “Unfortunately, in a large number of cases, our examiners made statements that went too far in explaining the significance of a hair comparison and could have misled a jury or judge.”

   Sessions did not blame the National Commission on Forensic Science for any of the earlier omissions. He merely said it was time to move forward with other programs.

   Sessions said there was a need to survey crime-lab workloads, backlogs and equipment to increase the labs’ productivity as well as to ensure reliability and “specificity” in evidence presented to the courts.

   Six scientists from the forensic science commission said Sessions was ending their program too soon, possibly risking the quality of criminal evidence.

   For more information, contact The Legal Forum (www.legal-forum.net) at email: [email protected] or phone: 202-479-7240.