FBI overstated forensic hair matches in nearly all trials before 2000

The trouble in my opinion with some judges in my country and with the police in some countries is, that everybody just assumes, that because they work for law enforcement, they have a high level of integrity. But when you look how they are educated, the subject "integrity" is not even touched (I even don't think, that it is taught in law schools).

In my country, when somebody is already a judge, there is nearly no chance at all, that this person will be held accountable for misjudging. I think, not even the highest courts can replace a judge that repeatedly and knowingly is bending the law. At least I don't know of any case at all where a judge was punished or even replaced. And don't think, that all judgments are correct in my country.

In my opinion, when there is one thing to be learned from history, it is that any person can err and even the best meaning persons can change into dictators over time depending on situations.

> The history of the FBI Lab hasn't been without controversy. Dr. Frederic Whitehurst, who joined the FBI in 1982 and served as a Supervisory Special Agent at the Lab from 1986 to 1998, blew the whistle on scientific misconduct at the Lab. In a subsequent investigation, it was found that evidence had been falsified, altered, or suppressed, or that FBI agents had testified falsely, in as many as 10,000 cases, resulting in many false convictions. More than a decade later, cases were still being overturned because of this massive fraud.

Yes, the problem is that those "crime labs" are not scientists, they are basically scientists-turned-cops.

As you propose, those should be independent labs, perhaps private, that live and die by their reputation for results (and could be hit with a huge lawsuit if they're not careful, unlike a government agency).

And double-bind should be mandatory too.

http://www.innocenceproject.org/free-innocent/improve-the-la...

I've never understood how the possibility of new evidence doesn't immediately reopen a case (in general). I thought we wanted real, actual, blind justice based only on facts and absolutely nothing else. It turns out it is rarely that simple.

The problem was that the method they used, i.e. how they were taught, was incorrect.

So it's not so easy to throw it out as you might suspect - it's the job of jury to decide if the evidence is "good" (they hear lots of evidence, much of it conflicting). True, the jury relied on false information on what counts as good. But because the jury accepted the evidence undoing that is not as simple as you think unless there are specific laws about it.

Starting from that weak position, the FBI then ignores basic statistics:

http://freakonomics.com/2008/08/19/are-the-fbis-probabilitie...

The problem is, these things were indicators, but they have been manipulated to be used as if they were proof.

If the suspect is a red head male, and the witness describes seeing a red head male, then the jury is inclined to think that's the same guy.

IT's human nature.

Even in New York City.

Where there are at least 84,000 red headed males!

Yes, a strong preexisting demand and no way to fulfill it honestly. (Really, the first is doing most of the work.)

Same reason you get charlatans and incompetents in love spells, medicine, and longevity.

The main problem is TV I guess, for the average guy, these kind of technologies are completely infallible and people tend to forget that just like anything else, it's just an indicator that can be fooled / misinterpreted / badly gathered.

Anybody proposing to make it double-blind is going to need to find the money, either from other departments or by raising taxes. Without a chorus of public support behind them, this is a very hard sell. And easily reversed after the next election.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_wall_of_silence