Aggregated News
Donald Eugene Gates, convicted of murder in Washington D.C., would spend 28 years in prison before he was exonerated in 2009 through the tireless work of his lawyers at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia - but it was not until this Spring that the flawed FBI forensics supposedly "matching" his hair to the crime scene would finally come under broader scrutiny.
The case brought still worse problems to light. This Spring, the Washington Post released the results of a remarkable investigation, uncovering a buried 1990's Department of Justice inquiry into FBI hair cases, and finding hundreds more cases with flawed forensics. Some of the cases were death row cases -- for example, a Texas man was executed in the late 1990s, but if it had not been for the FBI's flawed hair analysis, he would not have been even eligible for the death penalty.
This Spring, the Public Defender Service also cleared two more people who had flawed FBI hair testimony, using DNA tests. One, Kirk Odom had served 22 years in prison for a crime...
The case brought still worse problems to light. This Spring, the Washington Post released the results of a remarkable investigation, uncovering a buried 1990's Department of Justice inquiry into FBI hair cases, and finding hundreds more cases with flawed forensics. Some of the cases were death row cases -- for example, a Texas man was executed in the late 1990s, but if it had not been for the FBI's flawed hair analysis, he would not have been even eligible for the death penalty.
This Spring, the Public Defender Service also cleared two more people who had flawed FBI hair testimony, using DNA tests. One, Kirk Odom had served 22 years in prison for a crime...