For anyone who missed Lee Wayne Hunt on CBS 60 Minutes, I have posted a link to the CBS video called "Evidence Of Injustice".
Steve Kroft and The Washington Post's John Solomon report on a flawed forensic tool that has been used in hundreds of court cases, possibly landing innocent people behind bars.
The science, called bullet lead analysis, was used by the FBI for 40 years in thousands of cases, and some of the people it helped put in jail may be innocent.
As correspondent Steve Kroft reports, one of them is Lee Wayne Hunt, who is now serving a life sentence for murder in North Carolina.
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Lee Wayne Hunt says he's been behind bars for over 22 years and 6 months, and maintains he's an innocent man. "What I've said from the word get go that I ain't -- never killed nobody. I didn't have nothing to do with this," Hunt tells Kroft.
Hunt was convicted in 1986 of murdering two people in Fayetteville, N.C., based on the testimony of two questionable witnesses and what turned out to be erroneous ballistics testimony from the FBI lab.
For years, the FBI believed that lead in bullets had unique chemical signatures, and that by breaking them down and analyzing them, it was possible to match bullets, not only to a single batch of ammunition coming out of a factory, but to a single box of bullets. And that is what the FBI did in the case of Lee Wayne Hunt, tying a bullet fragment found where the murders took place to a box of bullets the prosecutors linked to Hunt.
"I put it exactly the way it sounded to me, and the way that I believe it to be," Hunt says. "He said that this box of bullets is the same box of bullets that was used to kill these people, made on, about the same time."
"I think everybody in the courtroom assumed that this was valid evidence," Richard Rosen, Hunt's attorney, says.
Asked how important he thinks this was to his client's conviction, Rosen says, "I thought it was very important to our client's conviction. It was the single piece of physical evidence corroborating their story. And it came from, you know, it came from the mountaintop."
The FBI first used bullet lead analysis while investigating the assassination of John F. Kennedy, trying to match pieces of bullets discovered at Dealey Plaza with bullets found in Lee Harvey Oswald's rifle. Read more Here
CBS 60 Minutes video called "Evidence Of Injustice".
Video URL
http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=3518353n
Copy the link above to share video.
Also on the video is Barry Scheck On The FBI
Barry Scheck, a director of the Innocence Project, talks about the FBI's duty to notify defendants.
The non-profit group The Innocence Project has helped free more than 200 people who were wrongly convicted -- some because of misleading "expert" testimony based on inadequate "science."
How many more innocent people are waiting to be rescued from prison.
Read More from Washington Post here
FBI's Forensic Test Full of Holes
Lee Wayne Hunt is one of hundreds of defendants whose convictions are in question now that FBI forensic evidence has been discredited.
By John Solomon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 18, 2007;
Hundreds of defendants sitting in prisons nationwide have been convicted with the help of an FBI forensic tool that was discarded more than two years ago. But the FBI lab has yet to take steps to alert the affected defendants or courts, even as the window for appealing convictions is closing, a joint investigation by The Washington Post and "60 Minutes" has found.
Update
Silent Injustice
Bullet-matching Science Debunked
John Solomon
Staff Writer, The Washington Post
Monday, November 19, 2007; 12:00 PM
At noon ET on Monday, Nov. 19 Washington Post staff writer John Solomon responded to reader questions and comments about "Silent Injustice" his 6-month investigation with 60 MINUTES correspondent Steve Kroft into a flawed science used in the convictions of thousands of defendants, scores of whom may be innocent.
To keep up to date on the latest investigation news and projects in the Post, read the Washington Post Investigations blog.
Showing posts with label evidence of injustice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label evidence of injustice. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Sunday, November 18, 2007
60 Minutes Evidence Of Injustice - Flawed Forensics and Wrongful Convictions.
Watch CBS 60 Minutes Sunday, at 7 p.m., for a special joint report from 60 Minutes’ Steve Kroft and the Washington Post’s John Solomon on a flawed forensic tool used to convict hundreds of defendants, dozens of whom may be innocent.
In their first joint investigation, 60 Minutes and The Washington Post on Sunday, Nov. 18, will examine the government's failure to notify defendants nationwide that they were convicted with the help of flawed forensic science or inaccurate testimony.
60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft, producer Ira Rosen and the Post's John Solomon report on scores of cases where defendants may not have received a fair trial because prosecution scientists overstated their conclusions or used faulty statistics.
What's more, none of those defendants has been informed that they may be entitled to have their cases reviewed. The results of their six-month investigation will appear Sunday, Nov. 18, in The Washington Post and on 60 Minutes, airing at 7 p.m. ET/PT. The case files and other information gathered during the joint investigation will also be posted on the Post's Web site.
Read more
CBS 60 Minutes web site .
Post Comments HERE
In their first joint investigation, 60 Minutes and The Washington Post on Sunday, Nov. 18, will examine the government's failure to notify defendants nationwide that they were convicted with the help of flawed forensic science or inaccurate testimony.
60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft, producer Ira Rosen and the Post's John Solomon report on scores of cases where defendants may not have received a fair trial because prosecution scientists overstated their conclusions or used faulty statistics.
What's more, none of those defendants has been informed that they may be entitled to have their cases reviewed. The results of their six-month investigation will appear Sunday, Nov. 18, in The Washington Post and on 60 Minutes, airing at 7 p.m. ET/PT. The case files and other information gathered during the joint investigation will also be posted on the Post's Web site.
Read more
CBS 60 Minutes web site .
Post Comments HERE
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