FBI launches $1B ID search program

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is stepping up in its quest to exploit new technology to hunt down criminals, investing in a new system steeped in biometrics.

The FBI's $1 billion Next Generation Identification (NGI) program's aim is to significantly improve the existing fingerprint identification service. The ambitious project may raise the hackles of privacy advocates, but the FBI is intent on including facial recognition, iris scanning, DNA analysis and voice identification tech as the new face of criminal investigation -- reliability and accuracy concerns aside.

The NGI program is also reported to include rolled and latent finger and palm prints.

A pilot scheme is currently being run by the agency compiles all of this information for different purposes. As an example, one test matches up headshots in crowd photos which are then compared with database-stored images from security footage.

Through the NGI, an algorithm would conduct an automatic search and return potential 'hits' to officers. In an additional advancement, a database will store visuals of scars, tattoos and other physical marks.

The FBI has collected this kind of information for a long time. For example, voice recognition can be matched when a recording is sent from another group, as can facial images. However, the new scheme is being rolled out nationwide -- a first for the organization.

In addition, the FBI plans to provide access to the new databases to state law enforcement agencies. In an age of security systems like Trapwire and torrent swarm poisoning, perhaps privacy advocacy groups have a right to be worried -- as the database may also capture and store images of the general public. However, it may also streamline services and make criminal investigations easier for the FBI to conduct.

It is expected to be implemented nationwide by 2014.

Full article can be found here.

What Happens to all the DNA Collected in Courtrooms?

Twenty-eight states and federal courts have laws allowing for the collection of DNA after conviction as well as allowing for pre-conviction DNA collection for certain offenses. What exactly happens to all that DNA? How is it used? The National Institute of Justice answers that question in a new article that includes interviews with state and federal crime lab representatives. Article available here.

DNA Training Resources One Stop Shopping

The National Institute of Justice has gathered all of the animations and videos from the training courses on DNA.gov. The NIJ encourages people to use these as resources in teaching or other work and ask only that acknowledgment is given to DNA.gov and NIJ as the source. Here is a link to everything that is available. A list of topics include: Forensic DNA for Officers of the Court; DNA: A Prosecutor's Practice Notebook; Collecting DNA Evidence at Property Crime Scenes; Laboratory Orientation and Testing of Body Fluids and Tissues for Forensic Analysis; DNA Amplification for Forensic Analysts; Amplified DNA Product Separation for Forensic Analysts; STR Data Analysis and Interpretation for Forensic Analysts; Population Genetics and Statistics for the Forensic Analysts; Communication Skills, Report Writing and Courtroom Testimony for Forensic Analysts; and Advanced and Emerging DNA Technologies and Techniques.

DNA Evidence Clears Dallas Man After 27 Years

He said he didn’t commit the crime, and DNA proof set him free.

Johnny Pinchback was released from prison after 27 years. He’s the 22nd person cleared by DNA in Dallas County.

With a roar of applause from friends and family, Johnny Pinchback is a free man. But his story starts 27 years ago, on Illinois Street in Oak Cliff.

Two girls were adbucted and raped. Because the girls picked Pinchback out of a photo line-up, he was put away for 99 years.

But Pinchback won’t complete that sentence. Thanks to DNA evidence, he was cleared of the crime, and with the simple words from the judge he can start to get his life back to normal.

“Mr. Pinchback, you’re free to go,” said Judge Don Adams.

“I’m feeling love. I feel good,” said Pinchback.

In 2007, the Innocence Project of Texas received a letter from Pinchback claiming he didn’t do the crime.

“He went on our waiting list, just like every other individual that applies to our organization,” said Natalie Roetzel, Chief Staff Attorney.

There were over 1,000 people on that waiting list ahead of him, and two years later, the project launched a formal investigation.

“We finally got to it, we realized it was perfect for DNA testing,” said Roetzel.

There was little evidence in the case and there was a possibility the DNA testing wouldn’t even clear his name. But Pinchback never gave up, especially when he witnessed other prisoners being released for crimes they didn’t commit.

Full article at KDAF can be found here.

Texas Man Exonerated by DNA

A Texas man was freed Thursday after DNA exoneration in the latest Innocence Project victory and highlights the dangers of eyewitness misidentification. In 1984, two girls under the age of sixteen were on their way home from a store in their Dallas neighborhood when they were approached by a man wielding a gun. He took the girls to a nearby field and said he would shoot them if they did not comply and proceeded to tie them up and rape them. After the rape, the girls went to a nearby house where they called police. They were taken to the hospital and were later shown photo montages where they picked Johnny Pinchback out of the photos. Mr. Pinchback insisted he was innocent, however he was convicted in trial and was sentenced to 99 years imprisonment.

Mr. Pinchback never gave up and thanks to DNA evidence and the Innocence Project of Texas, he was determined to be innocent and will be released. Dallas County District Attorney had this to say:

"Thanks to the thorough investigation by our Conviction Integrity Unit and the continuous advances in DNA technology, Johnny Pinchback will regain his freedom as we have concluded that he did not commit this crime," Watkins says in a prepared statement. "As always, we seek justice on legitimate post-conviction claims of innocence to ensure we get to the truth, and when the truth reveals that an individual was wrongfully convicted, we take action to correct that injustice."

Pinchback, who is now 55, will become the 26th wrongfully imprisoned Dallas County man given his freedom in the past decade -- and the 22nd cleared by DNA evidence since 2001.

Full story here

More on SBI Crime Lab in North Carolina: Flawed Evidence used in Death Penalty Cases

Earlier this month we blogged on the news of flawed forensic science developing out of the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigations Crime Lab. News to surface from the lab has included falsely reported evidence, flawed "testing" procedures, and false testimony in some cases. The Government ordered an investigation into the SBI lab after a recent case in which information involving falsified reports surfaced. The latest indicates that the SBI lab's findings may have been involved in death penalty cases that have resulted in executions. Full story from the Boston Herald here:

Analysts at North Carolina’s crime lab omitted, overstated or falsely reported blood evidence in dozens of cases, including three that ended in executions and another where two men were convicted of killing Michael Jordan’s father, according to a scathing independent review released Wednesday.

The government-ordered inquest by two former FBI officials found that agents of the State Bureau of Investigation repeatedly aided prosecutors in obtaining convictions over a 16-year period, mostly by misrepresenting blood evidence and keeping critical notes from defense attorneys. The Associated Press obtained the review of blood evidence in cases from 1987 to 2003 in advance of the report’s release.

It calls for a thorough examination of 190 criminal cases, stating that, at times, "information that may have been material and even favorable to the defense of an accused defendant was withheld or misrepresented."

Root Causes of Wrongful Convictions: Interview with Peter Neufeld

On August 17, 2010, Peter Neufeld, co-founder of the Innocence Project along with Barry Scheck, was interviewed by Slate about the causes of wrongful convictions and where reform is needed. Here in an excerpt (full article here):

How do most wrongful convictions come about?

The primary cause is mistaken identification. Actually, I wouldn't call it mistaken identification; I'd call it misidentification, because you often find that there was some sort of misconduct by the police. In a lot of cases, the victim initially wasn't so sure. And then the police say, "Oh, no, you got the right guy. In fact, we think he's done two others that we just couldn't get him for." Or: "Yup, that's who we thought it was all along, great call."

It's disturbing that misidentifications still play such a large role in wrongful convictions, given that we've known about the fallibility of eyewitness testimony for over a century.

In terms of empirical studies, that's right. And 30 or 40 years ago, the Supreme Court acknowledged that eyewitness identification is problematic and can lead to wrongful convictions. The trouble is, it instructed lower courts to determine the validity of eyewitness testimony based on a lot of factors that are irrelevant, like the certainty of the witness. But the certainty you express [in court] a year and half later has nothing to do with how certain you felt two days after the event when you picked the photograph out of the array or picked the guy out of the lineup. You become more certain over time; that's just the way the mind works. With the passage of time, your story becomes your reality. You get wedded to your own version.

And the police participate in this. They show the victim the same picture again and again to prepare her for the trial. So at a certain point you're no longer remembering the event; you're just remembering this picture that you keep seeing.

Other than misidentifications, what other factors play a role in wrongful convictions?

The second most common cause is the misuse of forensic science other than DNA. In most of our cases, DNA [identification] didn't exist at the time of the conviction, so prosecutors relied on other types of forensic science. It could be serology, which was the old A/B/O blood typing. It could be bite marks. It could be fingerprints. It could be other forensic disciplines: tire marks, shoe print comparisons, fiber comparisons. None of these is bulletproof—some of them aren't even credible—so we see a lot of wrongful convictions stemming from those.

And there are several other very common causes as well. You have police and prosecutor misconduct. You have incompetent defense attorneys. You have jailhouse snitches, who as you can imagine are not the most reliable sources. And you have false confessions. Twenty-five percent of wrongful convictions involve false confessions. Most people can't imagine why anyone would ever confess to a crime they didn't commit, unless they were beaten into it. But these people weren't beaten. They wouldn't even meet the legal definition of coercion. It's just that the [interrogation] methods that are effective for getting confessions from guilty persons are so powerful that they net innocent people as well—particularly innocent people who are juveniles or have some kind of intellectual impairment or mental health problem.

I'm curious about police and prosecutor misconduct. I assume that most people in these jobs aren't actually trying to convict innocent people. So how does such misconduct come about?

I think what happens is that prosecutors and police think they've got the right guy, and consequently they think it's OK to cut corners or control the game a little bit to make sure he's convicted. The thinking goes, "God forbid a guilty guy go free because of smart lawyering by the defense" or what have you. They're so convinced that they are right that they feel exempt from behaving right. They don't realize that it's wrong to be unethical. And not just because it could convict an innocent person. It's simply wrong to be unethical.

This American Life

"This American Life", hosted by Ira Glass, appears on Showtime and may be heard on NPR. The show contains a series of true stories told by those who have experienced them. The show lasts approximately one hour and usually contain a prologue and three acts. Below are a few shows concerning crime, crime scenes, crime stories, and DNA evidence, which may be of interest. They may also be found in the "This American Life" archives.

135: Allure of Crime: We think of crime as a monolithic, menacing presence...Today, we hear from three different criminals and three different crimes.

164: Crime Scenes: Every crime scene hides a story. In this week's show, we hear about crime scenes and the stories they tell.

210: Perfect Evidence: After a decade in which DNA evidence has cleared over 100 people nationwide, it's become clear that DNA evidence isn't just proving wrongdoing by criminals, it's proving wrongdoing by police and prosecutors. In this show, we look at what DNA has revealed to us.

257: What I should have said: People return to the scene of a crime where they should have spoken clearly, plainly, and forcefully...to review what...went wrong, and in a few cases, to fix it. Jonathan Goldstein tries to stop time.

DNA Tests Vindicate Ohio Man Convicted of Rape

AP - An Ohio man who spent nearly 30 years in prison is being released after new DNA tests showed he didn't rape an 11-year-old girl.

Raymond Towler had been serving a life sentence for the rape of a girl in a Cleveland park in 1981. Cuyahoga (ky-uh-HOH'-guh) County Common Pleas Judge Eileen Gallagher choked back tears as she vacated the conviction on Wednesday and left the bench to shake Towler's hand at the defense table.

Prosecutors had asked the court to act immediately after receiving the test results Monday.

The Ohio Innocence Project, an organization that uses DNA evidence to clear people wrongfully convicted of crimes, says Towler has served the second-longest amount of time among prisoners in the U.S. who were eventually exonerated by DNA.

Familial DNA Software May Catch on in Catching Criminals

From the Denver Post:

Denver criminal investigators have connected a man to two car thefts through the DNA of a family member, a first in Denver and one of the only cases in the country solved using the controversial technique.

The Denver district attorney's office and Police Department used software that they designed to run DNA from the crime scenes through a DNA database of Denver felony convicts, Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey said.

The search found a man whose DNA was a close but not exact match to DNA recovered from blood found at an auto burglary. Further investigation identified the man's brother as the suspect, and he later pleaded guilty.

"This is the first case we've actually solved and been able to bring charges using the familial DNA software," Morrissey said. "Our hope is the message will go out that we have this software and we're willing to help people who have difficult cases."

Familial DNA has been used in Great Britain to solve a handful of murders and other crimes, but in the United States it has been slow to catch on because of technological obstacles and ethical concerns.

"Because of the vastly uneven conviction rates in our country based on race and ethnicity, . . . you would be implicating a bunch of innocent people much more likely to be African-American and Hispanic. That should give us some pause," said David Lazer, an associate professor of public policy at Harvard who has written on the issue. "At the individual level, we should be concerned that those individuals who have relatives in the database who have no reason to be under enhanced surveillance based on their past behavior will become de facto a part of the database."

The suspect, Luis Jaimes-Tinajero, 21, pleaded guilty Sept. 10 to one count of criminal trespass for both thefts. He was sentenced to two years' probation and credited for the 54 days he had already served in Denver County Jail.

The case was part of a research project, Morrissey said. Investigators ran unidentified DNA samples from Denver crime scenes through a Denver convict database and found six potential familial matches. Five did not lead to suspects, but the sixth yielded the Jaimes-Tinajero case.

Investigators have run roughly 2,000 DNA samples through the state's database of 80,000 convicts, yielding 13 potential familial matches, including some of the same ones from the city database. They are still investigating those cases, Morrissey said.

Full artical at the Denver Post can be found here.

Debating DNA Collection

DNA helps law enforcement investigate and prosecute crime, but the new trend of preconviction DNA collection raises serious Fourth Amendment issues for the criminal justice community.

Policymakers are increasingly coming to grips with legal issues related to taking DNA samples from people who have not been convicted of crimes.

The practice of taking DNA samples from convicted criminals is now largely uncontroversial. The courts have routinely upheld laws that authorize DNA collection from both current and former convicts, and the resulting databases of DNA have become powerful tools to analyze forensic evidence collected from crime scenes. The databases help to clear innocent suspects and redirect law enforcement officials away from unproductive investigations. They also help to convict guilty criminals and clear the wrongfully convicted.

A trend that is causing significant debate is gathering DNA samples from people who are arrested but not convicted. About 20 states and the federal government have passed legislation that requires DNA collection upon arrest. This legislation has raised concerns that crime laboratories may be unable to manage an influx of samples from a new source and that preconviction DNA collection may violate Fourth Amendment privacy guarantees.

Some people worry that collecting DNA creates the potential for abuse of genetic information stored in databases. Others point out that the federal and state privacy laws and penalties that apply to crime labs are stringent — far more stringent than the rules governing private entities that collect blood and saliva for medical or insurance purposes. Additionally, crime labs process only the DNA that applies to human identification. They do not process DNA that identifies predisposition to diseases. Indeed, most crime labs are incapable of doing that kind of DNA processing.

Full article by Sarah B. Berson can be found here.

Prosecutors Justify (?) Blocking DNA Testing for Prisoners

This interesting (appalling?) article in the New York Times earlier this week regarding a movement to not allow DNA testing for inmates claiming innocence:

Louisiana, where Mr. Reed is in prison, is one of 46 states that have passed laws to enable inmates like him to get such a test. But in many jurisdictions, prosecutors are using new arguments to get around the intent of those laws, particularly in cases with multiple defendants, when it is not clear how many DNA profiles will be found in a sample.

The laws were enacted after DNA evidence exonerated a first wave of prisoners in the early 1990s, when law enforcement authorities strongly resisted reopening old cases. Continued resistance by prosecutors is causing years of delay and, in some cases, eliminating the chance to try other suspects because the statute of limitations has passed by the time the test is granted.

For an interesting and thoughtful analysis of this topic, see this post from Grits for Breakfast.

Constitutional Right to DNA Testing

From the Innocence Project:

Innocence Project client William Osborne was convicted in Alaska in 1993 for a crime that DNA testing could prove he didn't commit. Alaska has arbitrarily refused Osborne’s requests for DNA testing for years – even though the testing would be performed at no cost to the state, and the state now concedes that DNA testing could prove his innocence. On March 2, the Innocence Project argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that Osborne has a constitutional right to DNA testing that can prove his innocence. Below is the argument transcript, followed by briefs filed in the case by the Innocence Project and the State of Alaska, along with friend-of-the-court briefs and media coverage of the case.

Download the oral argument transcript from March 2, 2009. (PDF)

FBI Agents Call for Release of "Norfolk Four"

A group of more than two dozen retired FBI agents have requested the state of Virginia to pardon four men who say they were wrongfully convicted of a murder of a nineteen year old woman in 1997. The "Norfolk Four" are four Navy men who say they falsely confessed to involvement in the rape and murder of the girl. Forensic evidence at the scene suggested the presence of just one man; a man named Omar Ballard confessed to the murder after the conviction of the four sailors; and most importantly, DNA evidence supports that Omar Ballard alone committed the crime. Nevertheless, three of the four "Norfolk Four" are still in prison. 

The FBI Agents sent a letter back in July requesting the Virginia Governor pardon the men; on November 10, 2008, the FBI men held a press conference after not receiving a response on the letter.

At the news conference, Cochran said the Richmond chapter of the retired FBI agents was approached by the lawyers for the Norfolk Four with a request to 

examine the case. They were not paid. He said that they brought a skepticism to the case that is natural for a group of men with 700 collective years in law enforcement and that "the best interests of justice demanded that we speak out."

Cochran said the agents did not meet or speak with the Norfolk prosecutors or investigators who handled the case. Those officials have maintained that all five men convicted in the case were properly prosecuted.

The confessions given by the four convicted sailors conflicted with the physical evidence, Cochran and the other agents said.

Retired agent Thomas O'Donnell said the confessions were obtained under duress by Detective Glen Ford and that Ford was later "disciplined and demoted for having elicited false confessions" in another case. He said this case caused Norfolk police to begin videotaping interrogations. Ford has denied coercing any confessions.

Full article here from The Washington Post

An evaluation done by Dr. Richard Ofshe is a useful primer in the problems that existed with the coercive interrogation techniques used in the case and can be a useful starting point for evaluating your own confession cases. Look also at The Innocence Project's materials on false confessions in the story of the Norfolk Four case.

Touch DNA

Something new to be aware of in the forensic science world is "touch" DNA. Touch DNA is DNA that is left behind on surfaces such as clothing or food to try to get enough microscopic cells to identify (or rule out) suspects. Touch DNA can be used on surfaces where there is no visible stain left behind but where microscopic material may have been left behind. Touch DNA has received it's biggest acclaim in the JonBenet Ramsey case...It was suspected that Ramsey's killer removed her clothing and redressed her. By scraping the clothes, investigators were able to retrieve enough cells to rule out Ramsey's family members-the DNA returned to an unidentified male attacker. Full story here.

Innocents in Prison

From The Atlantic:

As recently as 20 years ago, it was extraordinarily rare for a convicted prisoner to establish his or her innocence conclusively enough to get public attention. That changed with breakthroughs in DNA science.

The 205th DNA exoneration since 1989 was recorded earlier this month by the Innocence Project, a group of crack defense lawyers who have made such cases their mission. The exonerated prisoners—including 15 who had been sentenced to death—have been found innocent by courts, prosecutors, or governors based on post-conviction DNA testing.

But America has been too slow to appreciate that the DNA exonerations, and other evidence, suggest that many thousands of other wrongly convicted people are rotting in prisons and jails around the country. And our federal, state, and local governments and courts have done far too little to adopt proposed criminal justice reforms that could reduce the number of innocent people convicted while nailing more of the real criminals.

Full Story Here.

DNA Training

Reading Public Defender Dude, I came across a great post on DNA and an upcoming DNA Seminar. Put on by Forensic Bioinformatics, the seminar is entitled, "The Science of DNA Profiling" and is in Daytona, Florida from August 15-17, 2008. The seminar is designed for attorneys and experts familiar with DNA profiling to exchange information and insights. For those new to DNA, it will be an opportunity to learn what issues may be important in litigating a federal case and what experts and resources are best suited to particular cases. The seminar will cover key subjects in forensic DNA including evidence collection, laboratory procedures, transfer, identification, technical artifacts and error, juror comprehension, expert witness selection and due diligence.

The seminar looks to be geared to the DNA novice and expert alike, and it looks like there is plenty of interesting information for attorneys and investigators.