This article comes from “citizens.news”
If ever there was a federal agency that simply needed to go away, it’s the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) – one of the most corrupt, unconstitutional, self-serving agencies ever created in our country.
When the bureau isn’t busy conducting false flag attacks on our nation’s Capitol to ensnare supporters of a president the bosses could not stand, they are working to entrap Americans in ridiculous “plots” like “kidnapping” a Democratic governor.
And now, according to the Daily Beast, one of the bureau’s top lawyers has been outed citing bogus “science” in order to win more anti-gun convictions.
“Late last year, a forensic firearms analyst in Wisconsin emailed a remarkable document to more than 200 of her colleagues across the country. It was a handout from an online lecture given by Jim Agar, the assistant general counsel for the FBI Crime Lab,” the news outlet reported.
“For years, forensic firearms analysts have claimed the ability to examine the marks on a bullet found at a crime scene and match it to the gun that fired it—to the exclusion of all other guns. It can be powerfully persuasive to juries. But over the last decade or so, some scientists have cast doubt on the claim.”
The alleged technique is part of a subcategory of forensics that is known as “pattern matching,” where an FBI analyst looks at some evidence gathered at a crime scene and then compares it with some evidence that is associated with a suspect.
But the most powerful criticism of the technique was contained in a 2016 report written by the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology, or PCAST, which noted that “firearms analysis currently falls short of the criteria for foundational validity,” and that studies often cited by those using the technique to support their work and findings are poorly set up and and “seriously underestimate the false positive rate.”
In other words, the science is junk. But the FBI is using it anyway, because the bureau has to have convictions at any cost, even at the price of innocence. Gotta pad those numbers.
Fortunately, there is an emerging pushback from courts.
“After decades of deferring to these forensic analysts, a handful of judges started to heed the warnings from scientists and put limits on what some forensic witnesses can say in court,” the Daily Beast noted. “Those decisions have sparked a defensive backlash in the forensics community, along with rebukes from law enforcement officials and prosecutors.”
The handout based on Agar’s lecture has become part of the backlash. In the two-page document, he instructs firearms analysts about how to get around any restrictions placed by judges regarding unscientific testimony. Agar even suggests language prosecutors and analysts can use if they are challenged by the court.
And “most controversially,” the Daily Beast noted, “Agar advises analysts to tell judges that any effort to restrict their testimony to claims backed by scientific research is tantamount to asking them to commit perjury.”
Translated: They are lying when they admonish judges not to force them to “lie.”
In fact, Agar’s “advice” was so extreme that it was lambasted by the Texas Forensic Science Commission (TFSC), a one-of-a-kind agency formed after revelations that false “expert” testimony likely led to the conviction of an innocent man. The agency is responsible for ensuring that any expert testimony provided in state courtrooms is proven scientifically valid.
An official with the TFSC called Agar’s recommendations to firearms analysts “incredibly faulty” while adding that it “runs counter to core principles in science.”
“This is just really unbelievable,” Ellen Yaroshefsky, a professor of legal ethics at Hofstra University, told the Daily Beast after examining the memo.
“He’s encouraging false testimony and he’s undermining respect for the judiciary. I mean, he’s saying that if a judge says you can’t give unscientific testimony, you’re being forced to commit perjury? It’s just absurd,” Yaroshefsky added.
The Daily Beast added: In 2015, the agency was forced to cop to an even bigger scandal: For decades, its analysts had claimed an ability to match hair and carpet fibers that just isn’t scientifically feasible. One review found FBI analysts had made statements unsupported by science in 95 percent of the cases in which they testified. Such testimony sent hundreds of people to prison, including to death row. Those analysts also trained dozens – perhaps hundreds – of state and local analysts in the same dubious methods, potentially corrupting thousands more cases.
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