"PIKETT ASSERTS OUTLANDISH SUCCESS RATES FOR HIS DOGS, CLAIMING ONE OF THEM HAD ONLY MADE ONE ERROR IN 2,831 LINEUPS. "ACCORDING TO THE RESEARCH DONE BY THE DUTCH POLICE AND OTHER EXPERTS IN THE FIELD, THIS IS ABSURD. EVEN USING RIGOROUS TRAINING METHODS, EXPERTS BELIEVE THAT THE BEST DOGS WORKED IN PERFECTLY CONTROLLED CONDITIONS CAN ONLY BE RIGHT APPROXIMATELY 85% OF THE TIME."
ACCORDING TO THE REPORT, "PIKETT HAS ALSO CLAIMED THAT HIS DOGS CAN IDENTIFY SCENTS MORE THAN A DECADE OLD AND THAT THEY CAN FOLLOW SCENTS LEFT BY CARS - CLAIMS WHICH HAVE BEEN CRITICIZED BY EXPERTS IN THIS FIELD.""
GRITS FOR BREAKFAST;
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Background: This Blog has been delving into the havoc caused by the late John Preston and his magical dog who could purportedly trace scents across water. The focus now turns to Deputy Keith Pikett, another so-called dog-scent "specialist", a canine officer with the Fort Bend County Sheriff's Office, just southwest of Houston. Time Magazine has reported on two apparent miscarriages of Justice involving Pikett; The first case studied involves Calvin Lee Miller, who was charged with robbery and sexual assault after Pikett's bloodhounds alerted police to a scent on sheets that Pikett said matched a scent swipe from Miller's cheek. DNA evidence later cleared Miller, but only after he served 62 days in jail. In a second case, former Victoria County Sheriff's Department Captain Michael Buchanek was named as a "person of interest" in a murder case after Pikett's bloodhounds sped 5.5 miles from a crime scene, tracking a scent to Buchanek's home. Another man later confessed to the murder.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Grits for Breakfast," a quirky blog published out of Houston, Texas, which, by its own admission, "looks at the Texas criminal justice system, with a little politics and whatever else suits the author's fancy thrown in."
"All opinions are my own. The facts belong to everybody," says publisher Scott Henson, "a former journalist turned opposition researcher/political consultant, public policy researcher and blogger."
"Welcome to Texas justice," Grits for Breakfast warns the reader. "You might beat the rap, but you won't beat the ride."
A Grits for Breakfast post on September 22, 2009, gives readers the opportunity to download the entire recently released Innocence Project of Texas report into the miscarriages of justice and wrongful murder convictions caused by dog-scent "evidence" - and sheds some light on the report's contents.
"Yesterday the Innocence Project of Texas released its report criticizing "scent lineups" used by Fort Bend County Sheriff's Deputy Keith Pikett, who as regular readers know has seen his dogs' identification of suspects debunked in several recent, high-profile cases, including two capital murders," the post begins, under the heading, "Texas Innocence Project report discredits unscientific dog 'scent lineups".
"See a copy here (pdf) and initial coverage from the Houston Chronicle and the Victoria Advocate," it continues.
"The brief report, written by IPOT legal director Jeff Blackburn, is well worth a full read but I thought I'd point out a few highlights.
One new fact-bite in the report concerns the use of scent lineups in communist Cuba, where "secret police have amassed thousands of bottles of scents taken from anti-Castro slogans painted on walls and other such 'crime scenes' and are using them as 'proof' against dissidents." A footnote pointed out this recent Miami Herald story on the use of scent lineups in Cuba, where we get a glimpse of the totalitarian origins of this bizarre practice:
the use of 'criminal odorology' started in the Soviet Union in the 1960s, was developed by the former East Germany and in 1972 was established around Communist-ruled Europe.
After East Germany collapsed in 1989, West German investigators found a warehouse packed with tens of thousands of sealed jars containing bits of cloth impregnated with the odors of criminals and dissidents -- used to identify or track them.
(See an academic paper in Spanish on the use of scent lineups in Cuba.)
But the meat of the report related to Deputy Keith Pikett, who along with his wife undertook training pet bloodhounds as police dogs in the early '90s "on their own without using any known or established program."
The most extensive scientific testing of "scent lineup" methods has occurred in the Netherlands says IPOT, citing this 2002 New York Times story. They use elaborate methodologies which include controls that Deputy Pikett has not adopted.
When he gets into the courtroom, Pikett has sometimes misrepresented his credentials. In one of his first big cases he "testified that he had a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry degree from Syracuse University and a Master's degree in Chemistry from the University of Houston. This was a lie: Pikett has never received degrees from either institution." In the case where appellate courts formally affirmed his status as an expert witness, he also misrepresented himself as having a masters degree in Chemistry. Defense attorneys in that case did not challenge his testimony.
Pikett asserts outlandish success rates for his dogs, claiming one of them had only made one error in 2,831 lineups. "According to the research done by the Dutch police and other experts in the field, this is absurd. Even using rigorous training methods, experts believe that the best dogs worked in perfectly controlled conditions can only be right approximately 85% of the time."
According to the report, "Pikett has also claimed that his dogs can identify scents more than a decade old and that they can follow scents left by cars - claims which have been criticized by experts in this field."
The report quotes police dog experts from the around the country (including from the National Police Bloodhound Association) and from the UK harshly criticizing Pikett's methods. One called him an "unprofessional charlatan." Another concluded Pikett had "intentionally misspoke concerning the capabilities and expertise of his scent discriminating bloodhounds in given situations."
Finally, the report calls on police agencies and prosecutors to immediately stop using scent lineups by Deputy Pikett, and for the Attorney General to "conduct a full and complete investigation into every case in which scent lineups have been used, and to aid in the release of any person convicted on such testimony."
The recommendation about the AG vetting these old cases is particularly salient. Who knows how many false convictions have been obtained using this type of garbage evidence?"
You can access this article at:
http://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2009/09/texas-innocence-project-report.html
Harold Levy...hlevy15@gmail.com;
