Readers of The Washington Post found out this morning that the FBI and DOJ are launching the largest post-conviction case review in American history.
Readers of the Whistleblower Protection Blog know that this review should have begun twenty years ago when Dr. Frederic Whitehurst first exposed problems in the FBI crime lab.
This year, Dr. Whitehurst’s allegations have come back to haunt the DOJ in a big way. In my April blog post, I expanded on The Washington Post’s breaking story of how the DOJ withheld information for years about thousands of cases tainted by bad forensics.
Dr. Whitehurst has pointed out the possibility that innocent people have been wrongfully locked up, put on death row, or even executed. While the DOJ has promised justice for these victims before, it has kept the results of all investigations a secret and only went so far as to notify a tiny fraction of potential victims that their cases may have been affected.
The good news is that the DOJ has essentially admitted that its investigations thus far were botched, and it will now be involving outside groups like the Innocence Project in another investigation of Dr. Whitehurst’s allegations.
What will be uncovered this time around? Watch this space to find out.