This story got a bit buried in all the other current news, but it's worth pointing out:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2004May24.html
Quote:
Lawyer Is Cleared Of Ties to Bombings
FBI Apologizes for Fingerprint Error
By Susan Schmidt and Blaine Harden
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, May 25, 2004; Page A02
A federal judge yesterday cleared Oregon lawyer Brandon Mayfield of any connection to the March terrorist bombings in Madrid, saying the FBI had erroneously matched his fingerprint to a latent print found on a bag of bomb detonators shortly after the attack.
The FBI apologized to Mayfield and his family "for the hardships that this matter has caused." It blamed the error on similarities between the fingerprints and the poor quality of digital fingerprint images provided by Spanish authorities.
According to the U.S. attorney in Portland, Ore., four FBI fingerprint examiners and an independent expert hired by Mayfield's lawyer had agreed that the print belonged to Mayfield, 37. But Spanish officials, who had been doubtful of the fingerprint match, announced last week that the print belongs to an Algerian man, prompting the FBI to review its findings and agree it had erred.
The FBI said it will review its guidelines for handling fingerprint images and will ask an international panel of fingerprint experts to examine its work in the case.
Mayfield, speaking to reporters in Portland, said that what happened to him "shouldn't happen to anybody, at least in the manner it happened to me."
"This has caused a lot of trauma to myself and to my family," he said. "I am two or three days out of the detention center, and I am just now starting to not shake."
Mayfield was arrested on a material witness warrant May 6 and jailed for two weeks. He was released from custody Thursday but remained a material witness until U.S. District Judge Robert Jones yesterday ordered all proceedings dropped. Jones instructed authorities to return Mayfield's seized property and destroy all copies of documents they took from him.
The March 11 train bombings in Madrid killed 191 people and injured 2,000. Spanish investigators have blamed the blasts on Islamic militants tied to al Qaeda.
The print was found on a bag left in a van near a train station where three of the four bombed trains originated. Spanish police sent copies of it to other law enforcement agencies, and the FBI, after making the apparent match, put Mayfield under surveillance. He was rushed into federal custody May 6 when word leaked to the media, prompting the federal court in Portland to issue a gag order on all parties in the case.
U.S. Attorney Karin Immergut said in a motion dropping the case that "facts developed during the preliminary stages of the investigation, when coupled with the fingerprint identification, suggested that Mayfield may have information relevant to the Madrid bombings." But without the fingerprint match, authorities concluded, there is no probable cause to believe Mayfield has any such information.
Mayfield's only known link to Islamic extremists involved his work in a child custody case for a Portland man convicted of attempting to get into Afghanistan to fight U.S. troops. Mayfield is a convert to Islam, but Immergut said at a news conference that his detention "was not based on his religious beliefs."
The FBI statement said two fingerprint examiners were dispatched to Madrid when Spanish authorities alerted the bureau to "additional information that cast doubt on our findings." There they compared the image the FBI had been given to the image Spanish police had.
They determined that the FBI identification was based "on an image of substandard quality," complicated by a "remarkable number of points of similarity" between Mayfield's prints and the latent print obtained by Spanish police.
Minutes of court proceedings unsealed yesterday show that last Wednesday, a fingerprint expert chosen by Mayfield's lawyers confirmed in his testimony the fingerprint match.
The next day, as the Spanish police issued their conclusions, Mayfield was ordered released from jail. The court said then that he remained a material witness; he was placed under court supervision and prevented from leaving the state.
Harden reported from Seattle.
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The bottom line: A lawyer who happened to be a convert to Islam was picked up and detained based on a couple of lousy fingerprint images. The FBI was ready to lock him up and throw away the key, but fortunately Spanish authorities weren't quite as sure, and they found the person who the fingers actually belonged too.
What's wrong with this case? The abuse of material witness warrants.
here's a good summary:
http://www.rcfp.org/secretjustice/te...alwitness.html
The "material witness" classification allows law enforcement to put someone away, without justification, for as long as the trial they claim they need the witness for lasts. Even if that takes years.
In this case, it's easy to see that the FBI actually thought that Mayfield was a criminal, his prints, after all, were on some of the bomb materials. But, by using the material witness classification they were able to skirt all the normal legal protections a criminal would have and just lock him up.
It's a sad abuse of a statute that was meant to allow the police to legally detain witnesses to a crime temporarily until they could question them. Now it is being used as an end-run around the justice system.
Another story about abuses:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...1438-2002Nov23