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Prosecutor's Best Friend? People Convicted in 'Scent Lineups' Fight Back
Via this post on the ABA Journal's Criminal Justice page, I came across this New York Times article about several people who are doing hard time because of "scent lineups," in which a dog chose them and their smell out of a group of other, um, smells. It turns out that sometimes these dogs fail to sniff out the real criminal.
Curvis Bickham, for example, was tied to a triple homicide when a dog identified him in a scent lineup. In a scent lineup, a dog is "exposed to the scent from items found at crime scene, and are then walked by a series of containers with samples swabbed from a suspect and from others not involved in the crime. If the dog finds a can with a matching scent, it signals -- stiffening, barking or giving some other alert its handler recognizes." Clue, one of the dogs used to carry out scent lineups, can be seen in the photo to the left.
Because of the high possibility of "cross-contamination of scent" some courts have rejected scent lineups altogether. Other problems include possibly inept dog handlers. In a case in Texas, a lawyer for a man accused by police of murdering a neighbor says the police dog handler in question is a "charlatan" who “devised an unreliable dog trick to justify local police
agencies’ suspicions” for producing search warrants and arrests.
Indeed, an "animal investigation expert" who reviewed a video of the Texas police deputy's scent lineup "responded with incredulity" and stated, “If it was not for the fact that this is a
serious matter, I could have been watching a comedy.”
Despite these issues, scent lineups are still allowed in states including Alaska, Florida, New York and Texas, however. A 2004 FBI report warned that dog scent work “should not be used as primary evidence,” but only to corroborate other evidence. Bickham and another man who claims he was falsely sniffed out by the dogs have now filed civil lawsuits over their treatment in federal court.
Posted by Bruce Carton on November 5, 2009 at 12:35 PM | Permalink
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