FBI Laboratory

Dr. Frederic Whitehurst, who joined the FBI in 1982 and served as a Supervisory Special Agent at the Lab from 1986 to 1998, blew the whistle on scientific misconduct at the Lab. As a result of Whitehurst's whistleblowing, the FBI Lab implemented forty major reforms, including undergoing an accreditation process. Reforms took place under FBI chief Louis Freeh, who served from 1993 to 2001.

Whitehurst's whistleblowing in the 1990s and the adverse publicity trials, in which FBI Lab employees were revealed as incompetent or disingenuous, led to major changes. According to John F. Kelly & Phillip K. Wearne's book Tainting Evidence: Inside the Scandals at the FBI Crime Lab (1998), the FBI Crime Lab had been hurt by a lack of funding and an institutional entropy rooted in Lab employees' belief that they were the best forensic experts in the country, if not the world. Some Lab employees failed to keep abreast of developments in forensic science.

The two authors concluded that the worst problem was that the Lab employees were FBI agents rather than pure forensic scientists. The investigative paradigm of the detective was antithetical to the investigative paradigm of the scientist. Lab employees began to work backwards, from a conclusion preordained by the prosecutors they served, and sought to justify that conclusion rather than using more scientific research paradigms.

The scientific reliability of FBI hair analysis has been questioned as DNA testing has exonerated persons convicted where the only physical evidence was hair analysis. In addition, in a high percentage of cases, the FBI has learned that its expert witnesses overstated the reliability of hair analysis in testimony in court cases.[5] In 2013 the Department of Justice began a review of thousands of cases from 1982 through 1999 referred to the FBI for hair analysis. By 2015 it found that these included 32 death penalty convictions, of which 14 people had died in prison or been executed, and narrowed its review to cases that went to court.[6] It has focused on cases in which hair analysis played a part in convictions, in order to follow up with defendants.[7]

In a subsequent investigation in 2012, the DOJ found that evidence related to hair analysis had been falsified, altered, or suppressed, or that FBI agents had overstated the scientific basis of their testimony, to the detriment of defendants. In 2013, the Department of Justice began a review of cases referred to them for hair analysis from 1982 through 1999, as many as 10,000 cases, to determine whether their agents' testimony resulted in wrongful convictions. DNA testing has revealed some convicted inmates to be innocent of violent crime charges against them. In 2015 the FBI reported that their expert witnesses overstated the reliability of hair analysis in matching suspects 96 percent of the time, likely influencing conviction of some defendants.[4]

Cases are still being overturned as a result of incorrect hair analysis testimony.[8] In 2012 DNA testing revealed the innocence of three inmates from the District of Columbia who had been convicted to life and served years in prison based on hair analysis evidence and testimony by FBI experts. They have received large settlements from the city because of wrongful convictions and damages of the lost years.

Bullet and gun analysis is another forensic discipline that has been identified in recent studies as being less scientifically reliable than thought. The Bureau established an interdisciplinary commission in 2013 to establish the highest scientific standards in forensic testing and to understand the limits of these tests, and how they may be properly used in court.

With a heightened attention to scientific rigor in its forensic testing, the FBI lab in 2005 abandoned its four-decade-long practice of tracing bullets to a specific manufacturer's batch through chemical analysis, after its methods were scientifically debunked.[9] A blue-ribbon panel of the National Academy of Sciences raised concerns about the FBI's reliance on forensic testing in a 2009 report that "found nearly every familiar staple of forensic science to be scientifically unsound" and highly subjective.

In 2016 a man was exonerated and freed in Virginia, based on DNA evidence, after serving 33 years in prison. He had been convicted of rape and murder and sentenced to life in part based on several FBI experts testifying to identification of him by bite-mark patterns, to a "medical certainty." Scientists say that such certainty is impossible to gain by this test.[9] The DNA testing showed that he was not the perpetrator of the crime. As the Washington Post reported, "No court in the United States has barred bite-mark evidence, despite 21 known wrongful convictions, a proposed moratorium in Texas and research showing that experts cannot consistently agree even on whether injuries are caused by human teeth."[9] This forensic test has been highly suspect for some years, but prosecutors and police continue to rely on it, and FBI agents make claims about it.