31 ms·

A man who was jailed on the fantasy evidence of a single hair

249 points by ghosh 11y ago

natejenkins 11y ago
"Having performed thousands of similar hair examinations over the previous 10 years, the FBI agent told the court, there had been only eight or 10 times when hairs from two different people were so similar that he could not tell them apart" At worst this is a 1% error rate, at best 0.1%. Scientific validity aside, I find it unbelievable this was not considered reasonable doubt.
- no_gravity 11y ago
  > At worst this is a 1% error rate If those 1000 pairs of hairs really were from different, randomly choosen people. But we don't know the quality of that sample. Maybe the examiner looked at 1000 pairs of hairs, 10 looked similar to him and those 10 were from different heads, while the 990 that looked different were from the same head. That would give an error rate of 100%. Even if we assume there were no errors in the sample, then we still don't know anything about the correlation between the judgement of the examiner and reality. Maybe he randomly considers one in 100 pairs of hairs to look similar. So while yes, the error rate would be 1%, his judgement would have absolutely no informative value. It would be as good as throwing dice.
- rogeryu 11y ago
  So take two people, take two hairs of each, pick two random hairs of those two, and compare them. I guess this could work out quite well. Do this for 1000 pairs of two different people, and 10 will fail, so that is 1%. This is how I understand it now. It's not that he says that he compares one hair to those 1000, and then still was sure to be able to keep them apart. That was how I first read it. For a good comparison, he should have used a line-up. Take one hair from 100 persons with similar hair color and use that as test sample. If he was still able to tell which was from the same person, he would have a case.
- mbroshi 11y ago
  Kirk Odom notwithstanding, presumably they were only doing hair anlysis of suspects that were already presumed guilty. This is not a random sample.
- notahacker 11y ago
  The comments section adds an interesting counterpoint to the Guardian's spin: he was also jailed on the evidence of the victim identifying his photograph, picking him out of an identity parade based on appearance and voice and testifying against him in court. Whilst DNA evidence has subsequently exonerated him, there were pretty good reasons for the jury at the time to consider the case proven beyond reasonable doubt that didn't involve placing too much faith in dubious "expert witness" testimony about hairs.
  - ptaipale 11y ago
    Interesting that you get downvoted for saying that. There are good grounds to be somewhat suspicious of forensic evidence; however, my understanding is that technical evidence like this is usually far, far more reliable than e.g. eyewitness statements. Those are horribly unreliable, and experienced investigators (or should we say "investigators") are able to convince their witnesses of having seen things that did not really happen at all.
    - notahacker 11y ago
      Eyewitness statements aren't reliable (hell, I've given an eyewitness description that wasn't that reliable, judging by the reaction of the police officer who had just taken a statement from somebody else), but I'd see it quite hard for a court in a pre-DNA testing era not to have convicted when a reasonably certain and consistent testimony from a rape victim is supported by the supposed forensic experts at the time, especially not if the chief argument for the defence was a weak alibi offered by the accused's mother. Though since they've had DNA techniques sufficient to overturn the expert witness evidence for rather a long time now it's surprising it took this long to overturn.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
    - marrs 11y ago
      That's from the article. Parent is referring to the evidence that wasn't mentioned in the article.
- marrs 11y ago
  Well, scientists are like priests: their word is gospel to the unwashed masses. I suppose the defendant didn't have a scientist on his side who could identify and challenge the bullshit.
- rhino369 11y ago
  1% chance a person is innocent is probably roughly around the reasonable doubt standard. The problem is courts often misapply statistics. Prosecutors will often say in a case like this that there is a 100:1 chance that he did it because of the error rate. But they aren't applying Bayes Theorem.
JupiterMoon 11y ago
I wonder if DNA evidence will prove to be subject to the same kind of over-interpretation?
- avodonosov 11y ago
  Yes, I wonder that too.
- Marazan 11y ago
  "Low copy number" DNA analysis has had a degree of controversy swirling over it.
- SixSigma 11y ago
  I like how they say "the chances of a match with a random chosen person and not the defendant is X" But people who are genetically related are not randomly distributed.
  - jessaustin 11y ago
    Also if DNA is the only thing linking the suspect to the crime, it's possible that something like a national DNA database just becomes a way to convict people for having been in places where crimes later occurred. If you have DNA, it's going to "match" some set of people.
BlackFly 11y ago
I do like how they double down on the pseudoscience and had Odom performing regular lie detector tests.
- RVuRnvbM2e 11y ago
  The US is a world leader in bureaucratic use of pseudoscience. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygraph#Usage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygraph#Usage I was astounded to learn how widely the Polygraph is used in the US, despite it being described as only about "90% reliable" by its proponents! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygraph#Validity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygraph#Validity
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    Tests are never perfect. And false positives are not critical in many applications. For instance, filtering folks for a job - you can reject extra candidates if you have plenty of candidates or a strict criterion that must not be violated.
    - fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
      When I interview candidates, I take half of the resumes we receive and throw them in the trash. I don't want to hire unlucky people. /s I have a sneaking suspicion that the polygraph is often just cover for implementing an arbitrary hiring process based upon the feelings of the interviewer. For example, let's say you're hiring police officers, let's also say that you're also a bit of a racist, now you can reject women and minorities and still have an "objectively fair" hiring process, since every candidate had to undergo the same process.
      - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
        Sure you do - by not ever collecting them to begin with. Probably more like 99%. We can make up things about racist police hiring, but that's not the same as facts.
harry8 11y ago
Wow the FBI really do act like they still call their headquarters the J. Edgar Hoover building. Celebrating one of the worst american criminals of the 20th century. Is the FBI beyond reform? Should it just be shut down entirely and a wholly new agency set up. The more you find out about what they actually do the worse it gets. It's dumbfounding.
- theandrewbailey 11y ago
  > Wow the FBI really do act like they still call their headquarters the J. Edgar Hoover building. Don't all of us? https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/history/hq https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/history/hq
  - harry8 11y ago
    No I don't think all of us celebrate that kind of criminal or want the FBI to be a criminal organisation. At the point you're faking evidence to get convictions on an institutional basis, yeah, it's more than one person agreeing to commit a crime. When it's their policy to repeatedly do so and to abuse whistleblowers, it really is organised crime. Beyond salvation? Clearly a large number of people at the FBI need to be in jail for breaking very serious laws. Falsifying evidence "to get convinctions" of the innocent. Yeah. Anyone doing that need to defending their actions in court as the accused.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
gurtwo 11y ago
So what are the real success/failure figures of the technique?
- RobAley 11y ago
  Well that's the problem, no body has studied it so no body knows. And with DNA matching now available, there's little point wasting time and money studying it now. Future cases can use DNA matching, as can historical cases (and if the hair samples are no longer available, even if the technique were studied and found to be valid there is no way to verify that it was applied properly in the first place).
junto 11y ago
That's so sad. He missed his child growing up on the whim of a police officer and a prosecutor.
rayiner 11y ago
The National Academy of Sciences report mentioned in the article is pretty damning about the whole field of "forensic science." https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/228091.pdf https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/228091.pdf. Pretty much only DNA analysis rises above shamanism,[1] and juries and judges have incorrect perceptions about the accuracy of those tests. While the often-quoted false random match probability is astronomically low, that error rate is dominated by lab error, which can rise to 1-2%. As an aside, the Innocence Project has a better description of the details of what happened: http://www.innocenceproject.org/cases-false-imprisonment/kirk-odom http://www.innocenceproject.org/cases-false-imprisonment/kir... [1] See also: http://lst.law.asu.edu/FS09/pdfs/Koehler4_3.pdf http://lst.law.asu.edu/FS09/pdfs/Koehler4_3.pdf.
- s_kilk 11y ago
  Forensic Science is basically a fiction, one which unfortunately has great power to ruin the lives of the people it touches.
  - jackreichert 11y ago
    The glorification and exaggeration of the CSI television franchise doesn't help the matter either.
    - thechao 11y ago
      Anything that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle glorified (Sherlock) is guaranteed to be soft-headed thinking—the man was infamous for it. Houdini had a long-standing "feud" with his good friend Doyle, because Doyle would popularize all of these crank theories & practices.
- Tloewald 11y ago
  The biggest scandals are fingerprint analysis and eyewitness testimony. The New Yorker had a big article on fingerprint analysis years ago and little has improved. In essence, FBI and other "experts" have frequently attested to partial matches being reliable when they're pretty much subjective. Similarly, the FBI would claim matches based on far fewer points than other countries deem acceptable. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/05/27/do-fingerprints-lie http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/05/27/do-fingerprints... Meanwhile, the unreliability of eyewitness testimony is legion, and it falsely convicts more people than anything else. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-the-eyes-have-it/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-the-eyes-have-i...
avodonosov 11y ago
Do you think this "expert" should get 22 years in prison? And maybe his boss too
- mfoy_ 11y ago
  I'd rather see his expression if he ever found himself face to face with someone his false testimony put away for a couple decades... the majority of the prime of someone's life gone in a flash because of such incompetence... it's hard to fathom.
  - visarga 11y ago
    The FBI expert doesn't want to accept the truth, preferring to see himself as the victim of false scientific claims. He says: > about the nationwide inquiry that is under way into the FBI’s use of hair analysis: “It’s all a bunch of baloney,” he said. “It’s all a bunch of poppycock. His bosses too. > A senior manager from the FBI laboratory, Harold Deadman, told his global partners: “We are believers in hair comparisons.” They are BELIEVERS. You can't challenge men of faith.
  - spacemanmatt 11y ago
    I'd rather see his expression if he ever found himself maliciously prosecuted and placed behind bars based on his own specious arguments.
- mirimir 11y ago
  They should all be tried for perjury. Edit: And it's too bad that civil suits aren't an option.
  - avodonosov 11y ago
    Yes, perjury should be considered in the first place. He testified it's very very unlikely for hairs of two people to be so similar, which (according to the article) is false. For convenience, here is a quote from the article, describing what the expert said: Having performed thousands of similar hair examinations over the previous 10 years, the FBI agent told the court, there had been only eight or 10 times when hairs from two different people were so similar that he could not tell them apart – suggesting the firm probability that the rapist’s hair and Odom’s hair had come from the same scalp. I think it's worth to address the suggesting the firm probability that the rapist’s hair and Odom’s hair had come from the same scalp. as a lie. He said this is supported by thousands of experiments, but didn't give enough information to the court about the methodology of the experiments, so we address only this conclusion he provided. He should not escape by saying - "I told the court the numbers and they should have calculated probability themselves". But in addition it's worth asking about those thousands of experiments. Did he really perform the experiments? What was the methodology? And if the experiments were organized so that they obviously do _not_ support his conclusion, then it's an additional evidence of lie - he knew these experiments do not suggest any firm probability. Also, was he instructed by his superiors to testify in that form?
smegel 11y ago
> that has finally been discredited I wonder when the myth that women don't lie about rape will be discredited. You want to start talking about "fantasy evidence". You would think cases like this would be enough, but no: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/22/johnathan-montgomery_n_2175208.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/22/johnathan-montgomer...
- icebraining 11y ago
  -1 Flamebait
  - avodonosov 11y ago
    Ok, not 22, then 2, or 5 years. They should be responsible for putting arbitrary people into jail just to get better conviction numbers.
    - DanBC 11y ago
      Icebraining is not replying to you, but to a comment that has been flagged.
      - avodonosov 11y ago
        I thought I saw his reply when the flagged comment text was displayed in full, and thought it is my comment. Maybe I am wrong, or maybe it is some HN glitch that his thread separated from my comment. I don't know, but not important.
        icebraining 11y ago
        I was definitively replying to smegel, not your post :)
        dang 11y ago
        The layout can get misleading when comments are flagged or deleted. Sorry about that. We've tweaked it a couple times to reduce this problem but obviously not enough.
mavdi 11y ago
Thankfully not as severe as this, but a few years police came to my door and arrested me on suspicion of robbery. I was told they had a forensic evidence that I was involved in it. As part of UK Visa procedures, I had to provide my biometric details. They had found my finger prints on a phone book and concluded that I must have done the robbery. They had no other evidence, they hadn't done any background checks or found a motive. The phone book was one of the ones my mom was distributing in her small van. I had helped her loading them up the van. I explained this, they checked with the distribution company and I was freed. But the thought that I had been incredibly lucky to have an explanation never left me. Just imagine a situation like this, maybe you go into a shop, pick up an item and put it back. Someone somewhere gets killed and your forensic information is left on an item in the murder scene. What happened to this guy is terrifying. And I'm sure there are thousands of innocent people in jails because since the introduction of forensics, law enforcements and the courts have become too lazy to analyse the situation. "Evidence is there, must be guilty" mentality.
- cmdkeen 11y ago
  But that is how arresting in England and Wales is supposed to work. The standard of suspicion to arrest someone is pretty low because it affords the police time to question a suspect, obtain DNA and fingerprint samples, search your house etc. The problem we have is when the investigating officer gets focused on a suspect thanks to forensic evidence to the exclusion of other suspects. The CSI effect is real and strong, in reality in many cases there is little to no useful forensic evidence at all.
  - jbattle 11y ago
    How long can they hold you while fishing for evidence?
    - strategichorse 11y ago
      24 hours. Can apply for up to 96 hours for a serious crime. Or 14 days under the Terrorism Act
    - 11y ago
avodonosov 11y ago
A happy-end story to dilute the sore: http://goo.gl/raZTTm http://goo.gl/raZTTm
vermontdevil 11y ago
In the American south - bite marks are becoming discredited now. http://www.greenfieldreporter.com/view/story/8b3bd7ebee8c4ae6ac0191a53e2cd903/MS--Bite-Marks-Slayings-Appeal http://www.greenfieldreporter.com/view/story/8b3bd7ebee8c4ae... Hopefully now all other forensic techniques are going to be heavily scrutinized as it should be. It can be a great tool but it should be carefully used.
kw71 11y ago
I have never been on a list for consideration to sit in a jury, but my impression of the process is not very high: I am led to believe that successful, intelligent people more likely to be excused by virtue of having something to do (my family/business depends on me being productive and not in court) but also that anyone with relevant experience related to the matters at issue will be excused on the basis that they are not 'impartial.' With the recent popularity of stories about false convictions and bad evidence, I wonder how it would be different if we could make sure that a jury included a scientist, medical doctor or lab technician in cases where someone from those professions was to be asked for his conclusions in court. I would be surprised if my view that winning a jury trial is all about showmanship is in the minority.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  Both of your impressions are generally wrong. Having something important to do with very few narrow exceptions justified, at least in California, a deferral of service to a specified future date, not an excuse; relevant experience usually doesn't justify a for-cause challenge, but may be the basis for a peremptory challenge. Though, even there, I think it's a lot less so than popular, entertainment media driven, perceptions would suggest. Your view may or may not be in the minority, but even if it isn't that doesn't make it correct, just popular.
  - JoblessWonder 11y ago
    I wish he would see your response, because you are 100% correct (at least in California.) I've been called for jury duty in two different counties and every time we get into a courtroom the people who have flimsy "sob" stories are usually told to buck up and aren't excused.
- venomsnake 11y ago
  You have the power of jury nullification. That alone is a good reason to attend if given the opportunity.
  - BJBBB 11y ago
fennecfoxen 11y ago
Could be more ridiculous. Keith Brown (a UK citizen) was arrested in Dubai on allegations that the authorities had found 0.003 grams of marijuana on the sole of his shoe, and threatened with four years of jail. (Eventually they just shipped him back, though.)
- rwmj 11y ago
  And the Swiss guy who according to the story served 4 years for poppy seeds on his clothes. My conclusion from this is that I never wish to go to Dubai. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7234786.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7234786.stm
  - spacemanmatt 11y ago
    Eating the wrong bagel can put a probationer in the states back in jail. Their drug tests are ridiculous, sometimes.
LordKano 11y ago
People make jokes about the Libertarian practice of repeating "Am I being detained? Am I free to go?" when questioned by a police officer but it would have done this man a lot of good. I see this as being just as much about the power of police officers to steer an investigation, regardless of where the evidence points as it is about the reliance on pseudoscience and the CSI effect.
- Someone1234 11y ago
  > People make jokes about the Libertarian practice of repeating "Am I being detained? Am I free to go?" when questioned by a police officer but it would have done this man a lot of good. People should very much remember their rights and the distinction between being detained and "voluntarily" cooperating. The reason why libertarians get made fun of is because they just keep shouting the same thing over and over, even after an answer in the affirmative has been given ("Am I being detained?" "Yes" "Am I being detained?"). They sound like a toddler who thinks they have a get out of jail/trouble free card if they just keep shouting the same phase over and over. But, sure, teach people their rights and their right to remain silent (and to have a lawyer). But also remind them that shouting some phase over and over again doesn't provide them legal cover or help situations de-escalate. And, yes, they will be made fun of for acting like an idiot.
  - Crito 11y ago
    > "The reason why libertarians get made fun of is because they just keep shouting the same thing over and over, even after an answer in the affirmative has been given ("Am I being detained?" "Yes" "Am I being detained?"). They sound like a toddler who thinks they have a get out of jail/trouble free card if they just keep shouting the same phase over and over." From what I've seen, that is more a sovereign citizen thing. People make fun of libertarians for things that sovereigns and anarchists say, because hey, why not? Politics is dirty; if the shit sticks, throw it.
    - spacemanmatt 11y ago
      We also make fun of them for being ideologues. Don't forget that part.
advael 11y ago
A lot of stories like this are coming out, and it really leads me to wonder: Why do the FBI, the courts, and prosecutors have such strong incentives to convict someone? This story elucidates a lot of problems: Poor standards on the part of the FBI for determining what kind of test produces accurate results, poor scientific literacy and critical thinking skills on the part of the jury, a belief in forensic technology that treats it as basically voodoo magic. But what strikes me as most problematic is that it seems like people in this story, prosecutors, the investigator, etc., simply need to convict someone more than they need to find the truth, and face no consequences for getting it wrong, even though it ruins lives in a really serious way. Whether it's a systemic career incentive or simply confirmation bias for the first suspect they get combined a desire to see "justice served", something about the way crimes are prosecuted is horribly broken, and bad science being used to justify locking people up is just a symptom.
- dmitrygr 11y ago
  Because the number of convictions is a simple metric and superiors love simple metrics to evaluate their inferiors on. It is much simpler than admitting that performance in a job is a multi-faceted thing and cannot be dumbed down to a single number...
danschumann 11y ago
Rand Paul is the strongest candidate regarding the much needed criminal justice reforms. He's also the one best at his current job, senator.
__z 11y ago
Hair comparison seems questionable on the surface. I can pull two hairs out of my head that look very different. I have some sections of hair that are very fine and lighter and some sections that are thick and darker. My hair has also changed texture over the years which seems common for my family. Here is another sad story of a man put to death based on pseudoscience http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/09/07/trial-by-fire http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/09/07/trial-by-fire There is also the partial print of the Madrid bomber fiasco... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Mayfield https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Mayfield
frogpelt 11y ago
Did he heck. I know we are in a different age of journalism. But about two-thirds through the article, a paragraph starts with the above sentence. How does The Guardian let something like this slip by?
limeyx 11y ago
Absolutely repulsive. The people giving this "evidence" should be put in jail and the key thrown away.

249 points by ghosh 11y ago

"Having performed thousands of similar hair examinations over the previous 10 years, the FBI agent told the court, there had been only eight or 10 times when hairs from two different people were so similar that he could not tell them apart" At worst this is a 1% error rate, at best 0.1%. Scientific validity aside, I find it unbelievable this was not considered reasonable doubt.

no_gravity 11y ago
> At worst this is a 1% error rate If those 1000 pairs of hairs really were from different, randomly choosen people. But we don't know the quality of that sample. Maybe the examiner looked at 1000 pairs of hairs, 10 looked similar to him and those 10 were from different heads, while the 990 that looked different were from the same head. That would give an error rate of 100%. Even if we assume there were no errors in the sample, then we still don't know anything about the correlation between the judgement of the examiner and reality. Maybe he randomly considers one in 100 pairs of hairs to look similar. So while yes, the error rate would be 1%, his judgement would have absolutely no informative value. It would be as good as throwing dice.
rogeryu 11y ago
So take two people, take two hairs of each, pick two random hairs of those two, and compare them. I guess this could work out quite well. Do this for 1000 pairs of two different people, and 10 will fail, so that is 1%. This is how I understand it now. It's not that he says that he compares one hair to those 1000, and then still was sure to be able to keep them apart. That was how I first read it. For a good comparison, he should have used a line-up. Take one hair from 100 persons with similar hair color and use that as test sample. If he was still able to tell which was from the same person, he would have a case.
mbroshi 11y ago
Kirk Odom notwithstanding, presumably they were only doing hair anlysis of suspects that were already presumed guilty. This is not a random sample.
notahacker 11y ago
The comments section adds an interesting counterpoint to the Guardian's spin: he was also jailed on the evidence of the victim identifying his photograph, picking him out of an identity parade based on appearance and voice and testifying against him in court. Whilst DNA evidence has subsequently exonerated him, there were pretty good reasons for the jury at the time to consider the case proven beyond reasonable doubt that didn't involve placing too much faith in dubious "expert witness" testimony about hairs.
- ptaipale 11y ago
  Interesting that you get downvoted for saying that. There are good grounds to be somewhat suspicious of forensic evidence; however, my understanding is that technical evidence like this is usually far, far more reliable than e.g. eyewitness statements. Those are horribly unreliable, and experienced investigators (or should we say "investigators") are able to convince their witnesses of having seen things that did not really happen at all.
  - notahacker 11y ago
    Eyewitness statements aren't reliable (hell, I've given an eyewitness description that wasn't that reliable, judging by the reaction of the police officer who had just taken a statement from somebody else), but I'd see it quite hard for a court in a pre-DNA testing era not to have convicted when a reasonably certain and consistent testimony from a rape victim is supported by the supposed forensic experts at the time, especially not if the chief argument for the defence was a weak alibi offered by the accused's mother. Though since they've had DNA techniques sufficient to overturn the expert witness evidence for rather a long time now it's surprising it took this long to overturn.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
  - marrs 11y ago
    That's from the article. Parent is referring to the evidence that wasn't mentioned in the article.
marrs 11y ago
Well, scientists are like priests: their word is gospel to the unwashed masses. I suppose the defendant didn't have a scientist on his side who could identify and challenge the bullshit.
rhino369 11y ago
1% chance a person is innocent is probably roughly around the reasonable doubt standard. The problem is courts often misapply statistics. Prosecutors will often say in a case like this that there is a 100:1 chance that he did it because of the error rate. But they aren't applying Bayes Theorem.

JupiterMoon 11y ago

I wonder if DNA evidence will prove to be subject to the same kind of over-interpretation?

avodonosov 11y ago
Yes, I wonder that too.
Marazan 11y ago
"Low copy number" DNA analysis has had a degree of controversy swirling over it.
SixSigma 11y ago
I like how they say "the chances of a match with a random chosen person and not the defendant is X" But people who are genetically related are not randomly distributed.
- jessaustin 11y ago
  Also if DNA is the only thing linking the suspect to the crime, it's possible that something like a national DNA database just becomes a way to convict people for having been in places where crimes later occurred. If you have DNA, it's going to "match" some set of people.

BlackFly 11y ago

I do like how they double down on the pseudoscience and had Odom performing regular lie detector tests.

RVuRnvbM2e 11y ago
The US is a world leader in bureaucratic use of pseudoscience. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygraph#Usage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygraph#Usage I was astounded to learn how widely the Polygraph is used in the US, despite it being described as only about "90% reliable" by its proponents! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygraph#Validity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygraph#Validity
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  Tests are never perfect. And false positives are not critical in many applications. For instance, filtering folks for a job - you can reject extra candidates if you have plenty of candidates or a strict criterion that must not be violated.
  - fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
    When I interview candidates, I take half of the resumes we receive and throw them in the trash. I don't want to hire unlucky people. /s I have a sneaking suspicion that the polygraph is often just cover for implementing an arbitrary hiring process based upon the feelings of the interviewer. For example, let's say you're hiring police officers, let's also say that you're also a bit of a racist, now you can reject women and minorities and still have an "objectively fair" hiring process, since every candidate had to undergo the same process.
    - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
      Sure you do - by not ever collecting them to begin with. Probably more like 99%. We can make up things about racist police hiring, but that's not the same as facts.

harry8 11y ago

Wow the FBI really do act like they still call their headquarters the J. Edgar Hoover building. Celebrating one of the worst american criminals of the 20th century. Is the FBI beyond reform? Should it just be shut down entirely and a wholly new agency set up. The more you find out about what they actually do the worse it gets. It's dumbfounding.

theandrewbailey 11y ago
> Wow the FBI really do act like they still call their headquarters the J. Edgar Hoover building. Don't all of us? https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/history/hq https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/history/hq
- harry8 11y ago
  No I don't think all of us celebrate that kind of criminal or want the FBI to be a criminal organisation. At the point you're faking evidence to get convictions on an institutional basis, yeah, it's more than one person agreeing to commit a crime. When it's their policy to repeatedly do so and to abuse whistleblowers, it really is organised crime. Beyond salvation? Clearly a large number of people at the FBI need to be in jail for breaking very serious laws. Falsifying evidence "to get convinctions" of the innocent. Yeah. Anyone doing that need to defending their actions in court as the accused.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

gurtwo 11y ago

So what are the real success/failure figures of the technique?

RobAley 11y ago
Well that's the problem, no body has studied it so no body knows. And with DNA matching now available, there's little point wasting time and money studying it now. Future cases can use DNA matching, as can historical cases (and if the hair samples are no longer available, even if the technique were studied and found to be valid there is no way to verify that it was applied properly in the first place).

junto 11y ago

That's so sad. He missed his child growing up on the whim of a police officer and a prosecutor.

rayiner 11y ago

The National Academy of Sciences report mentioned in the article is pretty damning about the whole field of "forensic science." https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/228091.pdf https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/228091.pdf. Pretty much only DNA analysis rises above shamanism,[1] and juries and judges have incorrect perceptions about the accuracy of those tests. While the often-quoted false random match probability is astronomically low, that error rate is dominated by lab error, which can rise to 1-2%. As an aside, the Innocence Project has a better description of the details of what happened: http://www.innocenceproject.org/cases-false-imprisonment/kirk-odom http://www.innocenceproject.org/cases-false-imprisonment/kir... [1] See also: http://lst.law.asu.edu/FS09/pdfs/Koehler4_3.pdf http://lst.law.asu.edu/FS09/pdfs/Koehler4_3.pdf.

s_kilk 11y ago
Forensic Science is basically a fiction, one which unfortunately has great power to ruin the lives of the people it touches.
- jackreichert 11y ago
  The glorification and exaggeration of the CSI television franchise doesn't help the matter either.
  - thechao 11y ago
    Anything that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle glorified (Sherlock) is guaranteed to be soft-headed thinking—the man was infamous for it. Houdini had a long-standing "feud" with his good friend Doyle, because Doyle would popularize all of these crank theories & practices.
Tloewald 11y ago
The biggest scandals are fingerprint analysis and eyewitness testimony. The New Yorker had a big article on fingerprint analysis years ago and little has improved. In essence, FBI and other "experts" have frequently attested to partial matches being reliable when they're pretty much subjective. Similarly, the FBI would claim matches based on far fewer points than other countries deem acceptable. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/05/27/do-fingerprints-lie http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/05/27/do-fingerprints... Meanwhile, the unreliability of eyewitness testimony is legion, and it falsely convicts more people than anything else. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-the-eyes-have-it/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-the-eyes-have-i...

avodonosov 11y ago

Do you think this "expert" should get 22 years in prison? And maybe his boss too

mfoy_ 11y ago
I'd rather see his expression if he ever found himself face to face with someone his false testimony put away for a couple decades... the majority of the prime of someone's life gone in a flash because of such incompetence... it's hard to fathom.
- visarga 11y ago
  The FBI expert doesn't want to accept the truth, preferring to see himself as the victim of false scientific claims. He says: > about the nationwide inquiry that is under way into the FBI’s use of hair analysis: “It’s all a bunch of baloney,” he said. “It’s all a bunch of poppycock. His bosses too. > A senior manager from the FBI laboratory, Harold Deadman, told his global partners: “We are believers in hair comparisons.” They are BELIEVERS. You can't challenge men of faith.
- spacemanmatt 11y ago
  I'd rather see his expression if he ever found himself maliciously prosecuted and placed behind bars based on his own specious arguments.
mirimir 11y ago
They should all be tried for perjury. Edit: And it's too bad that civil suits aren't an option.
- avodonosov 11y ago
  Yes, perjury should be considered in the first place. He testified it's very very unlikely for hairs of two people to be so similar, which (according to the article) is false. For convenience, here is a quote from the article, describing what the expert said: Having performed thousands of similar hair examinations over the previous 10 years, the FBI agent told the court, there had been only eight or 10 times when hairs from two different people were so similar that he could not tell them apart – suggesting the firm probability that the rapist’s hair and Odom’s hair had come from the same scalp. I think it's worth to address the suggesting the firm probability that the rapist’s hair and Odom’s hair had come from the same scalp. as a lie. He said this is supported by thousands of experiments, but didn't give enough information to the court about the methodology of the experiments, so we address only this conclusion he provided. He should not escape by saying - "I told the court the numbers and they should have calculated probability themselves". But in addition it's worth asking about those thousands of experiments. Did he really perform the experiments? What was the methodology? And if the experiments were organized so that they obviously do _not_ support his conclusion, then it's an additional evidence of lie - he knew these experiments do not suggest any firm probability. Also, was he instructed by his superiors to testify in that form?

smegel 11y ago

> that has finally been discredited I wonder when the myth that women don't lie about rape will be discredited. You want to start talking about "fantasy evidence". You would think cases like this would be enough, but no: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/22/johnathan-montgomery_n_2175208.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/22/johnathan-montgomer...

icebraining 11y ago
-1 Flamebait
- avodonosov 11y ago
  Ok, not 22, then 2, or 5 years. They should be responsible for putting arbitrary people into jail just to get better conviction numbers.
  - DanBC 11y ago
    Icebraining is not replying to you, but to a comment that has been flagged.
    - avodonosov 11y ago
      I thought I saw his reply when the flagged comment text was displayed in full, and thought it is my comment. Maybe I am wrong, or maybe it is some HN glitch that his thread separated from my comment. I don't know, but not important.
      - icebraining 11y ago
        I was definitively replying to smegel, not your post :)
      - dang 11y ago
        The layout can get misleading when comments are flagged or deleted. Sorry about that. We've tweaked it a couple times to reduce this problem but obviously not enough.

mavdi 11y ago

Thankfully not as severe as this, but a few years police came to my door and arrested me on suspicion of robbery. I was told they had a forensic evidence that I was involved in it. As part of UK Visa procedures, I had to provide my biometric details. They had found my finger prints on a phone book and concluded that I must have done the robbery. They had no other evidence, they hadn't done any background checks or found a motive. The phone book was one of the ones my mom was distributing in her small van. I had helped her loading them up the van. I explained this, they checked with the distribution company and I was freed. But the thought that I had been incredibly lucky to have an explanation never left me. Just imagine a situation like this, maybe you go into a shop, pick up an item and put it back. Someone somewhere gets killed and your forensic information is left on an item in the murder scene. What happened to this guy is terrifying. And I'm sure there are thousands of innocent people in jails because since the introduction of forensics, law enforcements and the courts have become too lazy to analyse the situation. "Evidence is there, must be guilty" mentality.

cmdkeen 11y ago
But that is how arresting in England and Wales is supposed to work. The standard of suspicion to arrest someone is pretty low because it affords the police time to question a suspect, obtain DNA and fingerprint samples, search your house etc. The problem we have is when the investigating officer gets focused on a suspect thanks to forensic evidence to the exclusion of other suspects. The CSI effect is real and strong, in reality in many cases there is little to no useful forensic evidence at all.
- jbattle 11y ago
  How long can they hold you while fishing for evidence?
  - strategichorse 11y ago
    24 hours. Can apply for up to 96 hours for a serious crime. Or 14 days under the Terrorism Act
  - 11y ago

avodonosov 11y ago

A happy-end story to dilute the sore: http://goo.gl/raZTTm http://goo.gl/raZTTm

vermontdevil 11y ago

In the American south - bite marks are becoming discredited now. http://www.greenfieldreporter.com/view/story/8b3bd7ebee8c4ae6ac0191a53e2cd903/MS--Bite-Marks-Slayings-Appeal http://www.greenfieldreporter.com/view/story/8b3bd7ebee8c4ae... Hopefully now all other forensic techniques are going to be heavily scrutinized as it should be. It can be a great tool but it should be carefully used.

kw71 11y ago

I have never been on a list for consideration to sit in a jury, but my impression of the process is not very high: I am led to believe that successful, intelligent people more likely to be excused by virtue of having something to do (my family/business depends on me being productive and not in court) but also that anyone with relevant experience related to the matters at issue will be excused on the basis that they are not 'impartial.' With the recent popularity of stories about false convictions and bad evidence, I wonder how it would be different if we could make sure that a jury included a scientist, medical doctor or lab technician in cases where someone from those professions was to be asked for his conclusions in court. I would be surprised if my view that winning a jury trial is all about showmanship is in the minority.

dragonwriter 11y ago
Both of your impressions are generally wrong. Having something important to do with very few narrow exceptions justified, at least in California, a deferral of service to a specified future date, not an excuse; relevant experience usually doesn't justify a for-cause challenge, but may be the basis for a peremptory challenge. Though, even there, I think it's a lot less so than popular, entertainment media driven, perceptions would suggest. Your view may or may not be in the minority, but even if it isn't that doesn't make it correct, just popular.
- JoblessWonder 11y ago
  I wish he would see your response, because you are 100% correct (at least in California.) I've been called for jury duty in two different counties and every time we get into a courtroom the people who have flimsy "sob" stories are usually told to buck up and aren't excused.
venomsnake 11y ago
You have the power of jury nullification. That alone is a good reason to attend if given the opportunity.
- BJBBB 11y ago

fennecfoxen 11y ago

Could be more ridiculous. Keith Brown (a UK citizen) was arrested in Dubai on allegations that the authorities had found 0.003 grams of marijuana on the sole of his shoe, and threatened with four years of jail. (Eventually they just shipped him back, though.)

rwmj 11y ago
And the Swiss guy who according to the story served 4 years for poppy seeds on his clothes. My conclusion from this is that I never wish to go to Dubai. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7234786.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7234786.stm
- spacemanmatt 11y ago
  Eating the wrong bagel can put a probationer in the states back in jail. Their drug tests are ridiculous, sometimes.

LordKano 11y ago

People make jokes about the Libertarian practice of repeating "Am I being detained? Am I free to go?" when questioned by a police officer but it would have done this man a lot of good. I see this as being just as much about the power of police officers to steer an investigation, regardless of where the evidence points as it is about the reliance on pseudoscience and the CSI effect.

Someone1234 11y ago
> People make jokes about the Libertarian practice of repeating "Am I being detained? Am I free to go?" when questioned by a police officer but it would have done this man a lot of good. People should very much remember their rights and the distinction between being detained and "voluntarily" cooperating. The reason why libertarians get made fun of is because they just keep shouting the same thing over and over, even after an answer in the affirmative has been given ("Am I being detained?" "Yes" "Am I being detained?"). They sound like a toddler who thinks they have a get out of jail/trouble free card if they just keep shouting the same phase over and over. But, sure, teach people their rights and their right to remain silent (and to have a lawyer). But also remind them that shouting some phase over and over again doesn't provide them legal cover or help situations de-escalate. And, yes, they will be made fun of for acting like an idiot.
- Crito 11y ago
  > "The reason why libertarians get made fun of is because they just keep shouting the same thing over and over, even after an answer in the affirmative has been given ("Am I being detained?" "Yes" "Am I being detained?"). They sound like a toddler who thinks they have a get out of jail/trouble free card if they just keep shouting the same phase over and over." From what I've seen, that is more a sovereign citizen thing. People make fun of libertarians for things that sovereigns and anarchists say, because hey, why not? Politics is dirty; if the shit sticks, throw it.
  - spacemanmatt 11y ago
    We also make fun of them for being ideologues. Don't forget that part.

advael 11y ago

A lot of stories like this are coming out, and it really leads me to wonder: Why do the FBI, the courts, and prosecutors have such strong incentives to convict someone? This story elucidates a lot of problems: Poor standards on the part of the FBI for determining what kind of test produces accurate results, poor scientific literacy and critical thinking skills on the part of the jury, a belief in forensic technology that treats it as basically voodoo magic. But what strikes me as most problematic is that it seems like people in this story, prosecutors, the investigator, etc., simply need to convict someone more than they need to find the truth, and face no consequences for getting it wrong, even though it ruins lives in a really serious way. Whether it's a systemic career incentive or simply confirmation bias for the first suspect they get combined a desire to see "justice served", something about the way crimes are prosecuted is horribly broken, and bad science being used to justify locking people up is just a symptom.

dmitrygr 11y ago
Because the number of convictions is a simple metric and superiors love simple metrics to evaluate their inferiors on. It is much simpler than admitting that performance in a job is a multi-faceted thing and cannot be dumbed down to a single number...

danschumann 11y ago

Rand Paul is the strongest candidate regarding the much needed criminal justice reforms. He's also the one best at his current job, senator.

__z 11y ago

Hair comparison seems questionable on the surface. I can pull two hairs out of my head that look very different. I have some sections of hair that are very fine and lighter and some sections that are thick and darker. My hair has also changed texture over the years which seems common for my family. Here is another sad story of a man put to death based on pseudoscience http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/09/07/trial-by-fire http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/09/07/trial-by-fire There is also the partial print of the Madrid bomber fiasco... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Mayfield https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Mayfield

frogpelt 11y ago

Did he heck. I know we are in a different age of journalism. But about two-thirds through the article, a paragraph starts with the above sentence. How does The Guardian let something like this slip by?

limeyx 11y ago

Absolutely repulsive. The people giving this "evidence" should be put in jail and the key thrown away.