Aside from eyewitness testimony, some of the most believable evidence presented in criminal cases in the United States comes from the FBI crime laboratory in Quantico, Va. Part of its job is to test and analyze everything from ballistics to DNA for state and local prosecutors around the country, introducing scientific credibility to often murky cases.
But a six-month investigation by 60 Minutes and The Washington Post shows that there are hundreds of defendants imprisoned around the country who were convicted with the help of a now discredited forensic tool, and that the FBI never notified them, their lawyers, or the courts, that the their cases may have been affected by faulty testimony.
The science, called bullet lead analysis, was used by the FBI for 40 years in thousands of cases, and some of the people it helped put in jail may be innocent.
William Tobin is the former chief metallurgst for the FBI.
Tobin says the Quantico lab was the only place in the country that did bullet lead analysis, and the assertion that you could actually match a bullet fragment to a specific batch or box of bullets went unchallenged for 40 years — until Tobin retired in 1998 and decided to do his own study, discovering that the basic premise had never actually been scientifically tested.
Asked what he found out, Tobin tells Kroft, “It hadn’t been based on science at all, but rather had been based on subjective belief for over four decades.”
“So what you’re saying is that this is junk science?” Kroft asks.
“That’s correct,” Tobin says. “It’s worthless as a forensic tool.”
It’s a long and thorough article – including examples of how judges, police departments, the FBI reacted to this invalidation.
Thanks, KB
So Oswald didn’t do it after all.
A corrupt and incompetent government agency, I’m shocked. Especially since it was started by such a stand up guy like J. Edgar Hoover.
When I first heard about gun power ID, I didn’t think it was true. Gun powder is mixed in “big” batches with a common formula. I can see large useless identifications, but not to individual boxes of ammo?
I’m not a chemist. I’m not a gun person.
I am shocked the defense attorneys laid over like this. Almost makes one doubt claims of global warming?
I would like to know WHAT science Backed up the creation of this system in the FIRST place.
Bobbo, sometimes I have to wonder about you…
“I am shocked the defense attorneys laid over like this.”
I truly hope you’re being facetious…
But in the event you’re not:
“Almost makes one doubt claims of global warming?”
Lesseee here – Research scientists, whose job is to determine what is true-to-fact, versus criminal defense lawyers, whose job is to prevent the truth from being heard… interesting juxtaposition, there, Ace. What’s your point? Criminal defense lawyers, i.e., professional liars, are not the ones claiming that AGW is real, professional truth-determiners are.
Maybe you can clarify what you’re trying to say here…
FWIW, this article starts out with a serious distortion of reality, whether it was intentional or not.
Q: Can you see the problem with this sentence:
“Aside from eyewitness testimony, some of the most believable evidence presented in criminal cases in the United States comes from the FBI crime laboratory in Quantico, Va.”
The magic word here is believable. “Believability” has nothing to do with truth, it’s about convicting a possibly innocent person or getting a possibly guilty one off. What is relevant in a criminal proceeding is supposed to be accurate and reliable evidence.
Yes, eyewitness testimony is the most believable and believed form of evidence, but that doesn’t mean Jack Shit, because eyewitness testimony is the absolutely least accurate, least reliable, most error-prone form of evidence that ever existed.
More innocent people are imprisoned and even executed on the basis of faulty eyewitness testimony than anything else, by a huge margin. In fact, it’s not going too far to say that bogus eyewitness IDs are responsible for practically every death sentence imposed on an innocent person for the last 50 or 60 years.
Citing the form of evidence which is the most responsible for unjust trial outcomes is hardly the way to argue against another, very limited and uncommon, form of evidence as promoting unfair verdicts.
I’m here ta tell ya, this be some fucked-up shit, y’all.
Lauren and Jason, you got some proving to do.
NB, “corruption”, “incompetence”, and “false assumption” are not synonyms.
Bobbo, I am a “gun person”. You are right about the size of the gun powder batches. That stuff is blended up in ton lots, and one metric ton will load over 3 million cartridges if each cartridge contains 5 grains of powder (about average for a 9mm).
And there’s about one quarter of a million 125grain bullets (common 9mm) in one metric ton. Bullets are also made up tons at a time, and there is simply no reason to sell a partial case of ammo to keep the bullet lots seperated. (I’ve seen boxes of ammo with two different types of bullets in them; slight difference in the nose, a slight difference in jacket color, etc.)
I’d never heard of this “method” of linking bullets to crimes, but it does not pass the sniff test. I’d guess the Judges were just ignorant of ammo making processes or this “method” would have been debunked and trashed years ago.
That’s what comes of having so much fear and hatred of firearms in a culture, people start believing the stupidist things about them.
Blast. That should be “one eighth of a million bullets” per ton.
Lauren, people cannot tell what “truth” is, all we can go by is “believable at the time”. It’s part of being a fallible human being.
Yes, well “good enough” or “well, we tried” is not good enough when an innocent persons liberty or life is on the line. The reliance on eyewitness “evidence” serves the interests of the prosecutors sometimes and the defense at some others. But it does not serve justice. That which is unfair or likely to be wrong, and eyewitness accounts are both, needs to be discarded.
My sister’s husband, who was an actual scientist (Microbiologist) once told me that even in closely and rigidly controlled laboratory experiments, that you could pretty well take at least fifteen to twenty percent of your carefully obtained results, and just flush them down the toilet. That’s in a laboratory setting, mind you, where you can at least minimize random outside influences. When you’re dealing with out in the wide wild world with a statistical sample of like one, you have to figure the flush percentage is a lot higher.
LOL, well, Lauren, I guess you support liberalizing CCW? The person best able to tell if a mugger is really trying to mug someone is the person being mugged, right?
The test under discussion involved “proving” that a quantity of ammunition recovered from a suspect matched that obtained from a bullet recovered at a crime scene.
The procedure involved analyzing the lead in both samples.
The problem with the test is that lead is pretty much lead…. Even when one looks at alloy mixes (bullets are rarely pure lead and, if jacketed, you may have jacket materials – usually copper – in the mix) one box of ammunition is pretty much the same as the next one.
You might be able to show that the lead alloy is similar between the samples, but where things go wrong is the assumption that “this bullet had to have come from that box”…. It might be valid to say that the same manufacturer made the two samples, but that’s about as far as you can go.
The same basic arguments apply to trying to match powder samples too. Not to mention the mix of burned materials recovered at the crime scene.
It took a little long to figure that one out….
Regards,
Stu.
OT
Wow, a new site design!
STILL would like to know what led to them Taking this stance in the first place…
Oh don’t ya just hate when this happens? Not me, I love it! First….
Bobbo, it’s not “gunpowder” analysis, it’s bullet lead analysis. They’re analyzing the lead mix of the bullet(s) found. To try and match it to some suspect batch or formulation of lead and other metals. Whether done by a commercial supplier, or by a amateur/novice gun hobbyist. We’ve always just assumed that if the Feds say that they could accurately analyze a lead sample and match it to another. That they were being truthful. Well, apparently not.
This isn’t the only investigative science that’s been called into question. I remember that “bitemark analysis” was also debunked not to long ago. And even DNA has it’s problems and uncertianties, which have been surpressed. And fingerprinting has hardly been standardized across the US. There are places where poorly trained sheriff deputies are called upon to take prints. And the number of matching points needed has never been universally established.
As with DNA, it quite possible that an innocent person could have enough matching elements to the crime sample, to falsely accuse them. But the legal system is loathe to admit that it has so few reliable tools, that can’t be called into question. Why hasn’t any of this stuff every gone thru the US Department of Standards? Probably because those responsible already know that much of their stuff wouldn’t pass the tests. Or the crime lab certifications would be too high for them to meet. They can’t all afford to be Gil Grisom.
BTW, this bullet lead analysis testing failure, is also another argument against the Dead Penalty. Besides, it’s not justice. It’s just grandstanding by the elected officials. Sacrificing a few “supposed” murderers, makes them look good to the voters. That’s all they really care about. Their careers. I personally don’t think anyone’s life is worth a judge’s, or mayor’s, or govenor’s high living.
That’s what comes of having so much fear and hatred of firearms in a culture, people start believing the stupidist things about them.
Geez, you’re not paranoid, are you? If there was a way to match a specific slug to a specific purchaser, one would think the NRA would be all over it. Hey, let’s actually take care of the “people that kill people” and leave the law-abiding folks alone with their targets. What could possibly be wrong with that concept?
It makes some sense that lead batches could be matched, or at least it’s a reasonable theory on it’s face. It’s not a friggin conspiracy.