Forensic Hair Analysis Faulty
Flawed Expert Testimony has Convicted Many Innocent People
Barry Gaudette was a forensic scientist working for the RCMP in the 1970s. He carried out a study on hair comparison. He said a trained specialist could match hairs under a microscope. The probability of a false match, said Mr. Gaudette, was one in 4,500 times.
James Driskell Wrongfully Convicted
A Winnipeg, Manitoba man ran into terrible trouble because of Gaudette’s claim for the near-certainty of being able to match hair samples. In 1991, James Driskell was convicted of murdering a friend, Peter Harder, a small-time Winnipeg thief.
Police found three hairs in Mr. Driskell’s van that an expert said matched those taken from Mr. Harder’s body. But, it turns out that hair analysis is not a very reliable tool in determining guilt or innocence.
Here’s what Margaret Berger of the Brooklyn Law School wrote about microscopic hair matching in the Seton Hall University Law Review in 2003: “This mode of examination, however, has come under a good deal of attack since the advent of DNA testing…It is now known that evidence obtained through microscopic hair analysis was admitted in a considerable percentage of the cases in which courts vacated convictions on the basis of post-conviction DNA testing.”
Hair Matching is Junk Science
It turns out Gaudette’s study in the 1970s wasn’t all that scientific. Far from delivering that 4,500-to-one probability, hair comparison can sometimes give results that are no better than 50:50.
Later DNA analysis found the hairs in Driskell’s truck had not come from Harder. In fact, they had come from three different people.
James Driskell spent 12 years in prison and is seeking to clear his name. As Allison Dunfield reported in The Globe and Mail (March 3, 2005), “He was released on bail in late 2003 after new evidence came forward, prompting the federal Justice Department to undertake the review of the case…” In a statement, Federal Justice Minister Irwin Cotler said he concluded “that a miscarriage of justice likely occurred in Mr. Driskell’s case.”
How many others Wrongfully Convicted?
The Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted has a long and growing list of people who have served sentences for crimes they didn’t commit. Another victim, in part because of hair-matching, of this so-called science was Guy Paul Morin. In the article “How to be Wrongfully Convicted,” in the February 15, 2007 issue of The National Post Joseph Brean explained “Hair analysis under a microscope, on the other hand, which played a crucial role in the conviction of Mr. Morin, among several others, has been largely undermined.”
British Columbia Searching for Victims
The James Driskell case has raised alarms on Canada’s West Coast. On August 23, 2008 the Vancouver Sun reported “The overturning of a murder conviction in Manitoba has prompted the B.C. criminal justice branch to launch a massive search dating back 25 years for cases in which microscopic hair analysis played an important role in obtaining a conviction.”
In the article “Wrongful Conviction Triggers B.C. Review” the newspaper reported, “A commission of inquiry report into the Manitoba case concluded that ‘microscopic hair comparison evidence should be received with great caution’ and recommended jurors ‘be warned of the inherent frailties of such evidence.’ ”
The RCMP Says Hair Analysis No Longer Used
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