FBI Doesn't Tell Courts About Bogus Evidence
dprovine writes "According to a joint investigation by The Washington Post and 60 Minutes, a forensic test used by the FBI for decades is known to be invalid. The National Academy of Science issued a report in 2004 that FBI investigators had given "problematic" testimony to juries. The FBI later stopped using "bullet lead analysis", but sent a letter to law enforcement officials saying that they still fully supported the science behind it. Hundreds of criminal
defendants — some already convicted in part on the testimony of FBI experts — were not informed about the problems with the evidence used against them in court."
I seem to recall reading something about something similar in the case of Alger Hiss. The FBI testified that a letter among their evidence matched Hiss's typewriter. They knew that with modification, a typewriter could be "fixed" after the fact to match any given document, but neglected to mention this to Hiss's defense attorneys.