Innocence Blog

Editorial calls for new trial in conviction based on unreliable science

Posted: November 21, 2007 3:02 pm

Lee Wayne Hunt was convicted two decades ago in North Carolina of a murder he says he didn’t commit. The lone piece of physical evidence tying Hunt to the crime scene was the testimony of an FBI expert who said bullets in Hunt’s possession matched the bullets used to shoot the victims. Media reports this week revealed that the FBI has been providing unreliable bullet lead testimony for 40 years, and the FBI itself has said the testimony was false and misleading. The Innocence Network has helped create a new task force to assist and monitor the review of more than 2,500 cases in which faulty forensic played a part.

Editorials and blog posts have appeared around the country and the web this week, urging the FBI to act quickly to ensure that wrongful convictions caused by this unreliable science are overturned. An editorial in today’s Raleigh-Durham News & Obersver calls for a new trial for Lee Wayne Hunt.

America's tradition of justice requires not only a showing of guilt beyond reasonable doubt, but arriving at that determination through a fair process. In that light, Hunt deserves a hearing before a jury that can hear Hughes' relevant testimony but that cannot be swayed by the FBI's flawed, prejudicial bullet analysis.

Read the full editorial here. (News & Obersver, 11/21/07)

More editorials and and blogs:

Tacoma, Washington, News Tribune: FBI clammed up on bullet evidence (11/21/07)

Wichita, Kansas: Bullet evidence was full of holes (11/19/07)

Dozens of blogs around the country commented on this story this week. Read them here.

Read previous Innocence Blog posts for more.