Closely on the heels of the FBI admitting that it regularly overstated DNA matches to that favored the prosecution in 95% of cases… now the FBI is discontinuing the use of bullet-lead matching, a forensic technique used for at least the last 25 years that has been heavily criticized as inaccurate and misleading. According to the LA Times’ coverage:
“The [National Research Council]’s finding called into question FBI testimony in hundreds of cases involving murder and other serious crimes.”
Again, the FBI is going to alert the courts and prosecutors which have used the flawed “science” but sadly I’m sure the FBI probably trained loads of state bullet-lead matching “experts” who used the same techniques. This is a rabbit hole that probably leads to a lot of very questionable (and surely some wrongful) convictions.
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