Conservatives love talking about government abuse
EXCEPT when it comes to policing abuse, but even then
will only discuss it when a Democrat is the president. For example,
"Fast and Furious" is being blared about by conservatives but they
don't mention it started, or at least also occurred, during the Bush
administration.
Justice Department officials have known for years that flawed forensic
work might have led to the convictions of potentially innocent people,
but prosecutors failed to notify defendants or their attorneys even in
many cases they knew were troubled.
Officials started reviewing the cases in the 1990s after reports that
sloppy work by examiners at the FBI lab was producing unreliable
forensic evidence in court trials. Instead of releasing those
findings, they made them available only to the prosecutors in the
affected cases, according to documents and interviews with dozens of
officials.
In addition, the Justice Department reviewed only a limited number of
cases and focused on the work of one scientist at the FBI lab, despite
warnings that problems were far more widespread and could affect
potentially thousands of cases in federal, state and local courts.
As a result, hundreds of defendants nationwide remain in prison or on
parole for crimes that might merit exoneration, a retrial or a
retesting of evidence using DNA because FBI hair and fiber experts may
have misidentified them as suspects.
In one Texas case, Benjamin Herbert Boyle was executed in
1997, more than a year after the Justice Department began its review.
Boyle would not have been eligible for the death penalty without the
FBI’s flawed work, according to a prosecutor’s memo.
Justice?
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