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Bulletin: Timothy Bridges: Significant development: He becomes one of the first cases to be litigated involving erroneous microscopic hair testimony proffered by an FBI-trained state examiner. "The audit does not cover cases, like Bridges’s, where the erroneous testimony was offered by a state hair examiner rather than by the FBI. Bridges’s case “is one of the first cases to be litigated involving erroneous microscopic hair testimony proffered by an FBI-trained state examiner,” said Chris Fabricant, Director of Strategic Litigation for the Innocence Project, which is affiliated with Cardozo School of Law. “We would like to commend District Attorney Andrew Murray for seeking to restore justice for Mr. Bridges, and we hope other prosecutors around the nation will follow D.A. Murray’s lead in how to handle the many cases where errors have been identified, including in those cases which a state analyst, rather than FBI analyst, testified. D.A. Murray fully appreciated the significance of the erroneous scientific evidence and agreed that introduction of the hair evidence was a due process violation and vacated the convictions even before the DNA testing supported Mr. Bridges’s innocence.” The Innocence Project;
"Mecklenburg County District Attorney Andrew Murray filed legal papers on
February 16th dismissing the indictments against Timothy
Bridges, who wrongly served over 25 years for a rape and burglary, based in
large part on the erroneous testimony of an FBI-trained state hair analyst who
claimed that Bridges’s hair linked him to two hairs found at the scene. Bridges
was released on October 1, 2015, after prosecutors consented to vacating
Bridges’s 1991 convictions. Bridges’s legal team, which included lawyers
from the Innocence Project and North Carolina Prisoner Legal Services, also
uncovered evidence that police failed to turn over to the district attorney’s
office before trial. Post-conviction discovery materials showed that
police paid informants and made other threats or promises to the informants,
which was contrary to their testimony at trial. Subsequent DNA testing on crime
scene evidence also excluded Bridges. In 2013, after three men were
exonerated by DNA evidence in separate cases where an FBI analyst had provided
improper evidence at trial regarding hair analysis, the Innocence Project and
the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers persuaded the FBI to
conduct an audit of cases where FBI agents provided testimony or reports
regarding microscopic hair analysis. Initial findings of that review,
which were released in 2015 revealed that of 268 cases where agents used
microscopic hair analysis to link a defendant to a crime, the agents’ testimony
was scientifically invalid in 257 or 96% of the cases. Twenty-seven of
twenty-nine analysts provided either erroneous testimony or submitted erroneous
reports. The audit does not cover cases, like Bridges’s, where the
erroneous testimony was offered by a state hair examiner rather than by the
FBI. Bridges’s case “is one of the first
cases to be litigated involving erroneous microscopic hair testimony proffered
by an FBI-trained state examiner,” said Chris Fabricant, Director of Strategic
Litigation for the Innocence Project, which is affiliated with Cardozo School
of Law. “We would like to commend District Attorney Andrew Murray for
seeking to restore justice for Mr. Bridges, and we hope other prosecutors
around the nation will follow D.A. Murray’s lead in how to handle the many
cases where errors have been identified, including in those cases which a state
analyst, rather than FBI analyst, testified. D.A. Murray fully
appreciated the significance of the erroneous scientific evidence and agreed
that introduction of the hair evidence was a due process violation and vacated
the convictions even before the DNA testing supported Mr. Bridges’s innocence.”.........At trial, the prosecution relied on the
testimony of the three informants as well as the testimony of Elinos Whitlock
III, an employee of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department Crime Lab who
had been trained by the FBI in how to conduct microscopic hair analysis.
He claimed that he could make a “strong identification” that a hair recovered
the crime scene was Bridges’s hair. He further stated that there was only
a 1 in 1000 chance that two Caucasian people (Bridges is white) would have
indistinguishable head hair. Bridges has always maintained his
innocence. His defense rested on the testimony of a former State Bureau
of Investigation (SBI) fingerprint analyst. A bloody palm print was found
on the crime scene wall that two state analysts agreed did not match to
Bridges. Despite a compelling argument by his lawyer that the bloody
print must have come from the real perpetrator, Bridges was convicted and
sentenced to life in prison. “Given that the analyst in Mr. Bridges
case received training from FBI agents who provided scientifically unsound
testimony in nearly every case they handled, there is a very good chance that
other people in North Carolina and throughout the nation have been wrongly
convicted based on the erroneous testimony of analysts trained by the FBI,”
said Dana Delger, a staff attorney with the Innocence Project’s Strategic
Litigation Unit. . “Other states should follow the lead of Texas and
Massachusetts and order thorough and independent review of all the cases where
this evidence was used.”
http://www.innocenceproject.org/news-events-exonerations/north-carolina-man-convicted-based-on-erroneous-microscopic-hair-evidence-exonerated-after-wrongly-serving-25-years