Stunning Admission About FBI Testimony
BERMAN: New today, a stunning admission from the FBI. "The Washington Post" reports that the agency says that, for more than two decades, one of its forensic units gave flawed testimony in almost every trial during which it offered evidence. This deals with errors in hair analysis. An admission that throws hundreds of convictions into question, including 32 death sentences and of those, 14 defendants have already been executed or died in prison.</s>BOLDUAN: The FBI is vowing to examine all cases telling CNN this: "The department and the FBI are committed to ensuring that the affected defendants are notified of past errors and that justice is done in every instance." So what does that mean? What does justice being done in every instance mean for all of those defendants? CNN legal analyst and criminal defense attorney Danny Cevallos is here. They are talking about 2,500 targeted cases. This is a huge deal. They say that 95 percent of the cases that these experts were in, they gave slanted testimony. They offered flawed testimony. What does this mean?</s>DANNY CEVALLOS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: We shouldn't be that surprised because this slanted testimony was in favor of the same DOJ that employed or had a relationship with the same examiners. They are hardly independent creatures. But basically, this is what happened. They treated this hair analysis evidence almost like the way we think of DNA, the idea that you can exclude somebody to a 99th percent chance, and hair analysis isn't that kind of science. They should never testify that they can exclude one hair or limit one hair to one person to the exclusion of all others. And at testimony in trial, it sounds like some people may have overreached a little bit and that's not applicable with this kind of science, with microscopic hair analysis.</s>BERMAN: I want you to reiterate that fact. Those of us who watch CSI on TV think, oh, there's a hair, they must be doing DNA analysis on that. How does this hair analysis differ from DNA analysis?</s>CEVALLOS: Hair analysis in conjunction with mitochondrial DNA analysis can give you some conclusive matches. But hair and fiber analysis alone can tell us whether we're dealing with a human or a wildebeest and can tell us relatively what kind of race and they use these terms, these are the terms they use, Mongoloid, Caucasoid, and Negroid, which, you know sound a little offensive, but that's the terms that they use. They can limit it to certain races and exclude certain people, especially if they have particular identities like disease or bleach in the hair, but to say that you can exclude all other human beings the way we do with DNA is simply overreaching. It looks like that's what a lot of these FBI analysts were doing in testimony.</s>BOLDUAN: Importantly, these FBI errors doesn't necessarily mean all of these people were wrongfully convicted. There could have been other evidence that worked with the conviction. However, what does this mean going forward? Clearly, there's going to be appeals upon appeal upon appeal.</s>CEVALLOS: This will be treated like newly discovered evidence, which is not a get out of jail free card by any stretch. If you're going to be a petitioner, you have to show that it's something that you couldn't have discovered and that it would have had a material affect on the outcome of the case. If there are reams and reams of other evidence showing that you did the deed, then you may not prevail in a newly discovered evidence claim. If this newly discovered evidence completely excludes you, now it provides an alibi, maybe it's the only evidence that was used to convict you, then that might be a hypothetical where a petitioner trying to get exonerated may prevail.</s>BERMAN: You have to believe every one of these defendant will at least take a look at their case and ask a lawyer if they have a shot.</s>BOLDUAN: Some of these people were executed or died in prison since this happened.</s>BERMAN: 14 dead.</s>CEVALLOS: Not a whole lot of remedies there.</s>BOLDUAN: Danny, thank you so much. Wild. Good reporting by "The Washington Post." Ahead for us AT THIS HOUR, this has gone too far. President Obama has blasted the Senate for holding up Loretta Lynch's nomination for months but now a possible breakthrough. What is the breakthrough? Could we be talking about a new attorney general going through the nomination process, the confirmation process finally?