Innocence Project of Florida Files Amicus Brief with Supreme Court of Florida

Innocence Project of Florida, Inc.

1100 East Park Avenue

Tallahassee, FL 32301

Telephone 850.561.6767

Fax 850.561.5077

For Immediate Release

April 2, 2009

Contacts:Seth Miller, Esq.: 202.341.2127

Bobbi Madonna, Esq.: 513.594.3657

Innocence Project of Florida Files Amicus Brief with Supreme Court of Florida

IPF Urges Court to Allow Defendants to File for New Trial Based on FBI Junk Science

Yesterday the Innocence Project of Florida (IPF), along with The Innocence Network, filed an amicus curiae brief with the Florida Supreme Court in the case of Wyatt v. State of Florida.

IPF is urging the court to allow inmates, including Mr. Wyatt, the opportunity to present to the trial court recently received letters from the Federal Bureau of Investigation indicating that its agents gave false and misleading trial testimony regarding Comparative Bullet Lead Analysis (CBLA).

For over forty years, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) performed CBLA, which purported to be able to "match" bullets found at a crime scene to bullets linked in some way to criminal defendants (i.e., bullets found at a defendant's home). In its most egregious form, CBLA was used to show that the two sets of bullets were manufactured at the same time or even came from one particular box of bullets. In other cases, the FBI told juries that two bullets came from the same batch of lead at the same factory, without also telling them that as many as 35 million bullets may have also been made from that same batch of lead.

"When an FBI expert told a jury that they could link a bullet from a crime scene to a single box of bullets owned by a defendant, the jury surely believed it," said Bobbi Madonna, Staff Attorney for IPF. "What they weren't telling juries is that this conclusion was not at all based in science and should have never been allowed inside a courtroom."

The FBI in 2005 discontinued the use of this procedure. A 2007 exposé conducted by 60 Minutes and the Washington Post showed that FBI agents often grossly exaggerated the probative value of their CBLA conclusions at trial, which almost certainly misled juries and tainted verdicts.

"There had been some criticism and some skepticism developing about CBLA," noted Seth Miller, Executive Director of IPF. "But despite these criticisms, the FBI stood by their technique and their baseless conclusions until very recently.

"In 2008, the FBI partnered with a Joint CBLA Task Force with the purpose of investigating every case in which they provided CBLA testimony. They have so far identified roughly 1,500 cases nationwide where CBLA testimony was presented at trial and have analyzed 156. Of those 156, the FBI has admitted to providing misleading testimony to the jury in 96 of them. The FBI began issuing case-specific letters in mid-2008, admitting that its agents provided improper testimony that likely prejudiced the trial. A disproportionate number of those letters--20 of the 96 total letters sent thus far--were issued to Florida inmates.

Under Florida law, an inmate not on death row has two years from the time that "new evidence" comes to light to file for a new trial based on that evidence. For death-row inmates, that window shortens to just one year. IPF wants the court to find that an inmate's clock for presenting a CBLA-based claim should "start running" when they receive their individual letter from the FBI, rather than choosing an earlier time when generic criticisms of CBLA began surfacing.

"What the Joint Task Force is doing is tremendously important. These letters are the product of their work and they mark the first time the FBI has acknowledged that they gave false testimony in individual cases," said Miller. "The ongoing unprecedented collaborative efforts between the FBI and other innocence organizations around the country to right these wrongs will only have value if the court provides the recipients of these letters the chance to prove that the FBI's false testimony tainted their trials.

"The Innocence Project of Florida (IPF) is a 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to finding and freeing innocent people in Florida prisons.

The Innocence Network is an affiliation of organizations dedicated to providing pro bono legal and investigative services to individuals seeking to prove innocence of crimes for which they have been convicted and working to redress the causes of wrongful convictions.

The Innocence Network consists of 49 member organizations throughout the United States, Washington D.C., and abroad.

The Joint Comparative Bullet Lead Analysis Task Force consists of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the Innocence Network, The Innocence Project, the law firm of Winston and Strawn, law professors, and investigative journalists.

The Joint CBLA Task Force operates in cooperation with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Department of Justice and seeks to assure that cases in which FBI-conducted bullet lead analysis played a significant role in a conviction are reviewed properly since the FBI's disavowal of this technique.

IPF was appointed by the national Joint CBLA Task Force to oversee the review and litigation of CBLA cases in Florida.