DNA Testing Reveals Crucial FBI Errors In Another Murder Conviction

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/05/09/1987691/dna-testing-reveals-crucial-fbi-errors-in-another-murder-conviction/

By Nicole Flatow posted from ThinkProgress Justice on May 9, 2013

Earlier this week, a Mississippi man escaped death by just a few hours when the state Supreme Court agreed to block his execution, scheduled for that Tuesday evening. Although hair sample evidence was available for testing, and Willie Manning’s conviction had hinged on unreliable jailhouse informant testimony, the court had just a week earlier refused to order DNA testing, and was prepared to allow the execution to go forward. It was only after the FBI revealed that its own analysis of key evidence was unscientific and invalid just days before Manning’s conviction that a court agreed, without comment, to block his execution.

Now, in another murder case involving similar FBI error, a man who spent 32 years in prison for a Maryland murder has been granted a new trial after DNA testing performed in March discredited key FBI statements that linked him to hair samples at the crime scene, and refuted statements about the origins of both the bullets and the gun used at the crime scene. The Washington Post reports:

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Huffington’s case is one of potentially hundreds of cases in which prosecutors relied upon flawed evidence, according to a 2012 Washington Post investigation. Even in those cases in which the Department of Justice had already determined the FBI analysis was flawed, it only disclosed that fact to the defendants in 30 of 137 cases. Following the Washington Post report, the DOJ expanded the scope of its review to thousands of FBI analyses, and revealed the critically flawed evidence in Manning’s and Huffington’s cases. Only after the DOJ’s review did the FBI commit to testing Huffington’s DNA evidence. It is still unknown whether Manning’s DNA evidence will be tested.