Using a bogus technique that was formulated in 1855, the FBI and the people it trained at the state level, testified in thousands of cases that convicted the accused person despite having no other evidence.
The pseudo-science deployed in 1855 changed little in over a century. What did change was that after the second world war, the FBI embraced the technique, giving it a professional veneer – a government stamp of approval.
“They began presenting false evidence to juries based on scientific language that was very impressive to juries. It was like a dirty bomb that went off in the criminal justice system – hair analysis was said to be objective, unbiased and definitive, so it was both very prejudicial against defendants and very powerful,” said Chris Fabricant, the Innocence Project.
Over the past few years, advanced understanding in the science of hair types has left hair analysis, as a forensic tool, in tatters. Today’s consensus by real experts is more straightforward than ever: there is nothing that can credibly be said, by FBI-approved analysts or anyone else, about about the frequency with which particular characteristics of hair are distributed in the human population.
The government has identified almost 3,000 cases in which FBI agents may have given testimony involving the now-discredited technique. So far only about 500 of those cases have been been reviewed and in many of those cases the prosecutors are fighting a retrial.
Some 268 of those involved FBI examiners providing expert evidence in court that pointed to the guilt of the defendant – of which 257, or 96%, included false testimony.
Most shockingly, at least 35 defendants received the death penalty, 33 of which were the subject of false FBI testimony. Nine of the prisoners were executed and five died from other causes on death row.
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