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Negroid Hair Evidence Essay

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3. Six facts The UVA Law Innocence Project is a yearlong program that provides students practical experience in the investigation and litigation of wrongful convictions of inmates throughout Virginia. Hair from someone with a mixed race may contain characteristics belonging to more than one racial group, therefore making the usage of hair as evidence slightly less reliable as misinterpretations may occur. During the 2000, there was a change in the FBI’s policy which required any hair analysis to supported with mitochondrial DNA testing. According to my sources, in April, the FBI stated that during the 20-plus year period prior to 2000, when FBI analysts were testifying to hair comparisons made microscopically, the analysts made erroneous statements in more than 90 percent of those cases. Currently, the federal government 's considers petitions if new evidence is introduced in cases that were finalized before 2000. Since 2004, The Virginia Department of Forensics Science has stopped doing microscopic hair comparisons due to the misleading and for “reporting purposes”. 4. Vocabulary Junk Science: science or evidence that is deemed inaccurate. Overturned: to repel, cancel, reverse, or overthrow something that was already previously decided. “Negroid hair”: a type of racial classification that has to due with the …show more content…

Questions While reading this article, various questions arose in my mind. For one, if it was known that the FBI standards for hair evidence was not as accurate for roughly a few decades, why blame and admit someone into prison based on alleged evidence from one single hair? I wonder how many more cases like Phillip’s are out there in which people were wrongfully accused due to inaccurate testing of physical evidence? Is there any new technology that has significantly improved the credibility of hair analysis? (if so, what are they?) What would happen to Darnell Phillips if he was proven innocent? How will he be compensated? 6.

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