Idiot’s Rebuttal

FBI BulletLeadTestimony 40yrs of LeadBalloonLies

[[ Source: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/16/60minutes/main3512453.shtml?source=search_story#ccmm ]]

40 yrs of Bullet Lead Analysis = Junk Science = Scores to Hundreds of Wrongful Convictions and RUINED LIVES…excellent work folks…excellent work…!

60 Minutes (CBS, 11/18/07)…some of the most believable evidence presented in criminal cases in the United States comes from the FBI crime laboratory…investigation by 60 Minutes and The Washington Post…hundreds of defendants…convicted with…a now discredited forensic tool, and that the FBI never notified them, their lawyers, or the courts…

e.g. …convicted in 1986 of murdering two people…based on the testimony of two questionable witnesses and…erroneous ballistics testimony from the FBI…

e.g. …By the 1980’s, the FBI was routinely using this analysis to link bullet fragments found at a crime scene with bullets found in the possession of a suspect…

e.g. …the [FBI] assertion…match a bullet fragment to a specific batch or box of bullets went unchallenged for 40 years — until Tobin [FBI chief metallurgist] retired in 1998 and decided to do his own study, discovering that the basic premise had never actually been scientifically tested. “It’s worthless as a forensic tool.”

Tobin spent months buying…testing…consulting with manufacturers…bullets from the same batch weren’t chemically uniform, that bullets from the same box didn’t always match, and that it was statistically possible for every bullet…to have tens of millions of twins.

…in 2002, the FBI lab asked the National Academy of Sciences to conduct an independent review…18 months later…report calling into question 30 years of FBI testimony…model the FBI used…was deeply flawed and…misleading under the rules of evidence.

“Did you order a review on all the cases in which this testimony had been given?” Kroft asks. “No,” Adams says. (Dwight Adams, former FBI lab director)

A year after the National Academy of Sciences report, Adams decided that the lab would stop doing bullet lead analysis and the FBI notified police departments and the national associations of district attorneys and criminal defense lawyers. The form letters… underplayed…the problem…[saying] “still firmly supported the scientific foundation of bullet lead analysis,”…

“I’ve got a copy of the letter that you sent to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers,” Kroft tells Adams. “Nowhere in here does it say that the testimony you’ve been offering for 30 years is no longer valid.”

“Did you tell the Justice Department, ‘We have this problem and … you ought to undertake a review of these cases?’?” Kroft asks.

“It’s not my position to tell the Department of Justice what they should and should not do,” Adams says.

Adams says he sent a memo to FBI Director Robert Mueller, stating “we cannot afford to be misleading to a jury” and “we plan to discourage prosecutors from using our previous results in future prosecutions.”

But neither the FBI, nor the Justice Department, made an attempt to identify the cases in which flawed testimony had been given, or to notify the defendants, prosecutors or judges involved.

Only the FBI can identify the cases in which bullet lead analysis was performed, yet it has resisted releasing that information.

On Friday, the FBI agreed. It acknowledged that it had made mistakes in handling bullet lead testimony and should have done more to alert defendants and the courts. As a result of the 60 Minutes-Washington Post investigation, the bureau said it will identify, review and release all of the pertinent cases, and notify prosecutors about cases in which faulty testimony was given.