Pamela Geller and her billboard message

The article below is the work of Prof. Lawrence Davidson, who teaches history at West Chester University.

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Back on 1 August 2012 I posted a piece entitled History on a Billboard. It reported on the placement, in the northern suburbs of New York City, of informational billboards with maps of Palestine showing the steady growth of Israeli confiscated territory and the corresponding shrinkage of territory available to the indigenous Palestinians. It also told the observer that “4.7 million Palestinians are classified by the UN as Refugees.” Although Zionists labelled the billboard as “anti-Semitic,” it was nothing of the kind. It was wholly informational, and completely accurate.


As it turns out that informational effort is now part of a growing number of ads, signs and messages which collectively make up what I call the “billboard wars.” From San Francisco to Washington D.C. and New York City, both Zionists and pro-Palestinian groups have launched competing billboard efforts. This is going on mostly in publicly owned spaces because Zionist pressure often results in private billboard companies refusing to display pro-Palestinian messages. Now, depending on how you want to read the message of the latest Zionist effort, the billboard wars battleground has widened beyond the issue of Palestine to encompass a worldwide clash between the “civilized” and the “savage.” It is to be noted that this was the sort of language used by imperial colonizers, including the U.S. in its conquest of the American Indians, to compare themselves to the indigenous populations they oppressed.

This is what has happened. There is a Zionist group calling itself “American Freedom Defense Initiative” (AFDI) led by the infamous American Islamophobe Pamela Geller. This organization has produced a sign that reads,

"In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad."

Geller and AFDI aimed at placing this message on buses, subways, and in other public venues but initially had difficulty because most transportation agencies saw it as discriminatory and provocative. However, AFDI went to court and a federal judge found that their sign was an act of “free speech” protected by the First Amendment. Therefore, in late September, those people of New York City who ride the buses and subways found Pamela Gelller’s message in their faces. Most, of course, will pay it little mind. Yet, we should not ignore it. It is part of a propaganda effort with potentially damaging consequences.

Part II - Analyzing the Message

The AFDI and Geller juxtapose Israel on the one side and Jihadists on the other. My experience with over a thousand college students since 9/11 is that, for Americans, the term Jihadists means Al-Qaeda operatives. Most Americans do not associate this term with Palestinians. And, believe it or not, while those associated with Al Qaeda have badmouthed Israel, they have yet to make war on that country. So, what are these Zionists talking about? Well, they are probably trying to broaden out the definition of a Jihadist to include not only Palestinians, but the entire Muslim world. That would be consistent with their Islamaphobe worldview. In addition, they are saying that Israel represents “the civilized man” who has declared war on the same enemy that has made war on the United States. By asking Americans to “support Israel” they are reinforcing the notion that the U.S. and Israel are allies.

Second - Is the AFDI correct in telling us that Israel is the “civilized man?” Only in their own ahistorical fantasy. If you care to live in a world driven by the facts then Israel is rendered “the savage.” There is a lot of evidence for this.

1. On 10 October 2012 the Harvard researcher Sara Roy gave a devastating critique of what Israel, backed up by the United States, has done in the Gaza Strip. Gaza, with its population approaching two million Palestinians, is now the most densely populated place on earth. It is also the world’s most crowded open air prison. The Israeli blockade, illegal under international law, has slowly but surely destroyed the water supply, the sewage systems, the economic structure as a whole. The Israelis will tell you that Hamas, which governs Gaza, wants to destroy Israel. But that is only wishful thinking on the part of Hamas for they haven’t the ability to destroy anything. Israel, on the other hand, wishes to destroy the Palestinian people and they do have that capacity. In Gaza, as well as the West Bank, they are slowly doing so. This is genocide in slow motion.

2. Sara Roy is an extremely knowledgable American Jewish academic, but there are plenty of other sources, some of them Israeli, that will back up and expand on her critique. Here are a few of them:

-- B’tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights
-- Rabbis For Human Rights
-- Palestine Center for Human Rights-- Jewish Voices for Peace

Looking at the websites of these organizations reveals a litany of on-going barbaric policies and actions perpetrated upon mostly unarmed Palestinians who have nothing at all to do with Jihadists. Indeed, to act as Israel does in this regard is to qualify a good number of its citizens (though not all) as savages. So to be true to the facts AFDI’s sign should really read as follows,

"In any war between savage one (Israel) and savage two (Al Qaeda), AFDI urges Americans to support savage number one. This is so even though Israel is not fighting Jihadists but rather genocidally destroying Palestinians."
That would be historically accurate, although it would put the situation in a distinctly different light than does Ms Geller’s propaganda.

The end of the billboard wars is not yet in sight. AFDI’s message is aimed at an American audience and thus can also be read as an attempt to promote Islamophobia just before a presidential election.
To counter the racist aspect of this message, the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has placed sixteen foot signs in the metro stations of Washington D.C. that are designed to “promote mutual understanding and challenge hate.” Their signs quote from the Quran: “show forgiveness, speak for justice and avoid the ignorant.”

Part III -- Conclusion

The unfortunate thing is that, in these sort of confrontations, Geller and her ilk have the odds on their side. This is because all the peace seekers are ultimately at the mercy of the violent and hateful extremists on both sides. However, in the U.S. the media will only tell you about the Jihadists. Therefore, all it takes is one Al-Qaeda attack on an American target to send the CAIR message into oblivion. On the other hand the Israeli government and its settler allies can act out the Zionist version of ethnic cleansing daily and the American public will rarely, if ever, hear about it.

The truth is there are fewer civilized men and women than we like to believe. The ones in power, regardless of the nationstate, only rarely behave in civilized ways. The bulk of the citizens either give support to or are indifferent toward their leader’s actions. The small remainder, who are indeed candidates for the category of civilized people, are left to struggle against a strong and consistent counter-current. This is nowhere more true than in the state of Israel.

Such then, for all of us, is the heart of darkness.

Waiting for Lefty

By William Fisher

OK, Obama won. Clearly. Unequivocally. He displayed the tightly controlled anger and frustration at Romney's many falsehoods (though he owed one victory assist to CNN's moderator, Candy Crowley.

It was Candy who verified that when Governor Romney accused the President in the Rose Garden ascribing the US diplomatic deaths in Benghazi to "a demonstration" and not to a terrorist attack, he was plainly lying and he knew it.

But, unlike his previous appearance, Obama bounced into the ring raring to fight, to demonstrate his presidentialness and his knowledge of the critical issues. He did that. He won.

Now it's still early the next morning and I haven't had enough coffee to do a complete Lexis-Nexus word search, but the debate notes I made in real time may be just as good.

Those notes tell me there was not a single mention of the key words being so attentively awaited by the people who've been called "the professional left."

Guantanamo, indefinite detention, military commissions, due process, rule of law, the Obama "kill list" of those -- including citizens -- who can be snuffed out by a drone strike "authorized" by the President, years of military solitary confinement for "the leaker," Bradley Manning, torture of prisoners in the slammer at Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan, death in that country's notorious detention center known as the "salt pit," "extraordinary renditions" still being planned and executed, AT&T off the legal hook for invading privacy by collaborating with the Intelligence Community in spying on the phones and emails of people exercising plain vanilla Constitutional rights. No prosecutions of the CIA lawyers and interrogators who fashioned the legal rationale for torture and implemented what the world now calls "enhanced interrogation" methods.

In addition, here were the thousands of actions under the predatory talons of the FBI, the NSA, and so forth, plus a long litany of other violations of our own constitutional laws and those of other countries.

As far as I can calculate, neither candidate addressed even a single issue from this panoply of fear shown above.

I found this both predictable and scary. Predictable because the President, and even less his challenger, has ever been accused of being a "liberal," heaven forfend.
(You needn't be a Liberal, or even a Democrat, to be worried about all the liberties you have lost since the terrorist attacks of 9/11. I offer as "Exhibit A" a lawyer who worked for Ronald Reagan and whose ideas are about as conservative as his former bosses. His name is Brice Fein and he has been speaking out against human rights and legal abuses since long before 9/11. He belongs to a Republican Party that barely exists today. I hope Bruce will keep sounding off and that eventually he and others like him will restore the GOP to its former rational self.

Obama started out in 2010 with the electoral wind at his back. On his first day in office he vowed to close the military prison at Guantnamo Bay, where detainees slated to have been released months -- years -- ago are still there, exactly where they started and no closer to freedom for the innocent.

Scary because they weren't released. Except the ones who committed suicide. They're back home now.

When the electoral air was all filled with "hope and change" and "yes, we can, "Was Obama simply pandering to the Left -- whose votes were a big help in getting him elected? After all, if he threw them all under a bus at this stage, where could they go? Vote for Romney? No way. Not vote at all? A possibility.

More disenchanted bodies widening the enthusiasm gap -- and that could cost the president his job in a close election. And if he beats Romney, he will have to contend, in his second term, with a large and growing gaggle of organizations that have only one overarching interest -- the restoration of human rights and the return to the rule of law.

But in a second Obama term, I would not expect hundreds of groups like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty, and Human Rights First -- and thousands of individual human rights defenders -- to be quite so patient and seemingly understand as their first-term counterparts.

I expect a lot of yelling.

I hope I'm right

The Military-Industrial Migraine

By William Fisher

When armed conflict breaks out in one of the world’s developing nations, members of the UN Security Council often sit late into the night searching for solutions. They rarely find them.

The Council members appear to be – or pretend to be — unaware that their problem has been self-inflicted. The irony they miss is that the conflict likely began with military hardware sold to the warring factions by members of the same Security Council – with the enthusiastic government support of the sales campaign.

We can infer all this because of a report prepared annually by the Congressional Research Service to provide Congress with official, unclassified, quantitative data on conventional arms transfers to developing nations by the United States and foreign countries for the preceding eight calendar years for use in its policy oversight functions.

Ordinarily quasi-confidential, we can study this report thanks to the Federation of American Scientists, which made it available. The principal focus is the level of arms transfers by major weapons suppliers to nations in the developing world.
What do we learn from the CRS Report?

In 2011, the United States ranked first in arms transfer agreements with developing nations with over $56.3 billion or 78.7% of these agreements. We learn from the authors, Richard F. Grimmett and Paul K. Kerr of CRS, that in 2011, the United States ranked first in arms transfer agreements with developing nations with over $56.3 billion or 78.7% of these agreements, an extraordinary increase in market share from 2010, when the United States held a 43.6% market share. In second place was Russia with $4.1 billion or 5.7% of such agreements.

We learn that in 2011, the United States ranked first in the value of arms deliveries to developing nations at $10.5 billion, or 37.6% of all such deliveries. Russia ranked second in these deliveries at $7.5 billion or 26.8%.

We learn that “developing nations continue to be the primary focus of foreign arms sales activity by weapons suppliers.” And we learn that, during the years 2004-2011, “the value of arms transfer agreements with developing nations comprised 68.6% of all such agreements worldwide.”

More recently, CRS reports that “arms transfer agreements with developing nations constituted 79.2% of all such agreements globally from 2008-2011, and 83.9% of these agreements in 2011.”

CRS added, “The value of all arms transfer agreements with developing nations in 2011 was over $71.5 billion. This was a substantial increase from $32.7 billion in 2010. In 2011, the value of all arms deliveries to developing nations was $28 billion, the highest total in these deliveries values since 2004.”

Recently, from 2008 to 2011, the United States and Russia have dominated the arms market in the developing world, with both nations either ranking first or second for each of these four years in the value of arms transfer agreements.

From 2008 to 2011, the United States made nearly $113 billion in such agreements, 54.5% of all these agreements (expressed in current dollars). Russia made $31.1 billion, 15% of these agreements. During this same period, collectively, the United States and Russia made 69.5% of all arms transfer agreements with developing nations, ($207.3 billion in current dollars) during this four-year period.

In worldwide arms transfer agreements in 2011-to both developed and developing nations-the United States dominated, ranking first with $66.3 billion in such agreements or 77.7% of all such agreements. This is the highest single year agreements total in the history of the U.S. arms export program. Russia ranked second in worldwide arms transfer agreements in 2011 with $4.8 billion in such global agreements or 5.6%. The value of all arms transfer agreements worldwide in 2011 was $85.3 billion, a substantial increase over the 2010 total of $44.5 billion, and the highest worldwide arms agreements total since 2004.

In 2011, Saudi Arabia ranked first in the value of arms transfer agreements among all developing nations weapons purchasers, concluding $33.7 billion in such agreements. The Saudis concluded $33.4 billion of these agreements with the United States (99%). India ranked second with $6.9 billion in such agreements. The United Arab Emirates (U.A.E) ranked third with $4.5 billion.

The authors point out that “data in this report provides a means for Congress to identify existing supplier-purchaser relationships in conventional weapons acquisitions. Use of these data can assist Congress in its oversight role of assessing how the current nature of the international weapons trade might affect U.S. national interests.”

For most of recent American history, maintaining regional stability and ensuring the security of U.S. allies and friendly nations throughout the world have been important elements of U.S. foreign policy.
For most of recent American history, maintaining regional stability and ensuring the security of U.S. allies and friendly nations throughout the world have been important elements of U.S. foreign policy. Knowing the extent to which individual arms suppliers are transferring arms to individual nations or regions provides Congress with a context for evaluating policy questions it may confront. The nations of the Middle East are America’s largest customers, particularly Saudi Arabia.

The CRS report says ”the value of all arms transfer agreements worldwide (to both developed and developing nations) in 2011 was $85.3 billion. This was an extraordinary increase in arms agreements values (91.7%) over the 2010 total of $44.5 billion. This total in 2011 is by far the highest worldwide arms agreements total since 2004.”

In 2011, “the United States led in arms transfer agreements worldwide, making agreements valued at $66.3 billion (77.7% of all such agreements), an extraordinary increase from $21.4 billion in 2010. The United States worldwide agreements total in 2011 is the largest for a single year in the history of the U.S. arms export program. Russia ranked second with $4.8 billion in agreements (5.6% of these agreements globally), down significantly from $8.9 billion in 2010. The United States and Russia collectively made agreements in 2011 valued at over $71 billion, 83.3% of all international arms transfer agreements made by all suppliers,” the Report says.

For the period 2008-2011, the total value of all international arms transfer agreements ($261.8 billion in current dollars) was higher than the worldwide value during 2004-2007 ($206.1 billion in current dollars). During the period 2004-2007, developing world nations accounted for 66.7% of the value of all arms transfer agreements made worldwide. During 2008-2011, developing world nations accounted for 79.2% of all arms transfer agreements made globally. In 2011, developing nations accounted for 83.9% of all arms transfer agreements made worldwide,

In 2011, CRS ranks the United States first in the value of all arms deliveries worldwide, making nearly $16.2 billion in such deliveries or 36.5%. This is the eighth year in a row that the United States has led in global arms deliveries. Russia ranked second in worldwide arms deliveries in 2011, making $8.7 billion in such deliveries. The United Kingdom ranked third in 2011.
So the bottom line is that international arms sales are big, very big business and, rather than doing anything to discourage it, the richer nations of the world are doubling down to increase the volume and type.

So why should we have been surprised when, during the Egyptian Revolution last Spring, a teargas canister marked “made in USA” turned up in the hands of Mubarak loyalists in Tahrir Square.

OK, it’s time now for Ike. Dwight David Eisenhower tends to be remembered for three things only.

He was a Republican, yet an unbending champion of Social Security. In 1952, he said: “Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history.”

In the same year, Ike became the father of the Federal Interstate Highway Program.
And in his 1961 Farewell Address, he delivered a stern message unusual for a plain vanilla politician, much less a 5-star general. Here’s what he said: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

Well, our politicians got it pretty much right on Social Security, despite the privatizing efforts of George W. Bush and Republican vice presidential contender Paul Ryan.
But they all got it wrong on international arms sales. How could they resist? Manufacturing military hardware would create jobs in Congressional Districts. Abroad, military capability could help developing nations to discourage aggressors, perhaps even push them back. They could also use their shiny new toys to slaughter innocent demonstrators in Tahir Square, exactly the way Mubarak and his henchmen did.

The National Rifle Association is fond of repeating its favorite mantra, “Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.”

Geopolitically, they’re right. From a Washington DC perspective — or Moscow or Tehran, or Jerusalem or Pyongyang – arms sales become a matter of survival. That’s when people kill people.

With the guns and tanks and planes and rockets we sold them.

Little Homeland Insecurity

When most of Congress, still frightened and reeling from the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 – but desperate to be seen to be doing something – created the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) back in 2002, there were those who said it couldn’t – and shouldn’t– be done.


Merging 200,000 personnel from 22 widely disparate agencies, cultures and accounting systems, plus a smorgasbord of bureaus, offices and services, into a single agency would be a management nightmare.

The mission of the DHS was and is to protect the country from threats emanating or to be executed from within. Its stated goal is to prepare for, prevent, and respond to domestic emergencies, particularly terrorism. To fulfill that mandate, DSH bundled together enough people and agencies to become the third largest Cabinet department – behind only Defense and Veterans Affairs.

The variety of merged agencies is breathtaking, as demonstrated in a ground-breaking report prepared by CREW – Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a not-for-profit organization supported by private contributions.

CREW reports on The Immigration and Naturalization Service, now divided into two separate and new agencies: ICE — Immigration and Customs Enforcement — and Citizenship and Immigration Services. ICE operates its own nationwide network of detention centers – prisons – to hold the millions set to be deported or have a hearing before an Immigration Judge.

Then there are other siblings that seem to have little to do with one another: FEMA – the Federal Emergency Management Agency – and the TSA – and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), those curious folks who make you take your shoes off and examine your “junk.”

Then there is a small army of intelligence analysts who are meant to work closely with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Department of Justice (DOJ), and the Terrorist Screening Center, where intelligence community analysts are meant to collaborate under the aegis of the FBI.

The Department of Homeland Security estimates that it has spent somewhere between $289 million and $1.4 billion in public funds to support state and local fusion centers since 2003.

According to the Homeland Security Research Corporation, (HSRC) a San Jose, CA-based research organization dedicated to studying, analyzing and reporting about the homeland security industry, the combined financial year 2010 state and local homeland security markets (HLS), which employ more than 2.2 million first responders, totaled $16.5 billion, whereas the DHS HLS market totaled $13 billion. According to the Washington Post, “DHS has given $31 billion in grants since 2003 to state and local governments for homeland security and to improve their ability to find and protect against terrorists, including $3.8 billion in 2010.”

According to Peter Andreas, a border theorist, the creation of DHS constituted the most significant government reorganization since the Cold War, and the most substantial reorganization of federal agencies since the National Security Act of 1947, which placed the different military departments under a secretary of defense and created the National Security Council and Central Intelligence Agency.

The DHS has endured a painful history of heavy-handed program implementation. We are all too familiar with the performance of FEMA during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Many of us know that in the wake of the January 2011 shootings in Tucson that killed six and wounded others, including then Representative Gabrielle Giffords, an Arizona center issued a report filled with inaccurate information about the gunman’s alleged connections to an anti-Semitic and antigovernment group.

We have learned that a number of Fusion Centers don’t actually exist. We now know that there may be as few as one analyst at the DHS who monitors right-wing homegrown hate-mongers. We know that a large number of law enforcement officers have refused to participate in a DHS program known as 287(g), which allows a state and local law enforcement entity to enter into a partnership with ICE, in which local police and sheriffs find themselves interpreting and enforcing Federal immigration law. And we know that DHS’s immigration detention centers – some belonging to private, for-profit corporations – have become the nation’s poster children for disease, death, family break-up, and mistaken deportation – America’s Gulag.

Finally, last week the US Senate took up the cudgels. A blistering report following a two-year bipartisan investigation by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has triggered charges from two of the Senate’s most powerful members, who found that Department of Homeland Security efforts to engage state and local intelligence “fusion centers” had not yielded significant useful information to support federal counter-terrorism intelligence efforts.

“It’s troubling that the very ‘fusion’ centers that were designed to share information in a post-9/11 world have become part of the problem. Instead of strengthening our counterterrorism efforts, they have too often wasted money and stepped on Americans’ civil liberties,” said Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, the Subcommittee’s ranking member who initiated the investigation.

He added: “Unfortunately, DHS has resisted oversight of these centers. The Department opted not to inform Congress or the public of serious problems plaguing its fusion center and broader intelligence efforts. When this Subcommittee requested documents that would help it identify these issues, the Department initially resisted turning them over, arguing that they were protected by privilege, too sensitive to share, were protected by confidentiality agreements, or did not exist at all. The American people deserve better.”

Coburn pulled no punches. “Homeland Security is probably the most ineffective agency in the government besides Social Security…[The fusion centers] “are not accomplishing anything in terms of counter-terrorism,” he said.

”Fusion centers may provide valuable services in fields other than terrorism, such as contributions to traditional criminal investigations, public safety, or disaster response and recovery efforts,” said Democratic Senator Carl Levin, Subcommittee chairman from Michigan.

“This investigation focused on the federal return from investing in state and local fusion centers, using the counter-terrorism objectives established by law and DHS. The report recommends that Congress clarify the purpose of fusion centers and link their funding to their performance,” he said.

· The investigation determined that senior DHS officials were aware of the problems hampering effective counterterrorism work with the fusion centers, but did not always inform Congress of the issues, nor ensure the problems were fixed in a timely manner.

· The investigation found that DHS intelligence officers assigned to state and local fusion centers produced intelligence of “uneven quality – oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely, sometimes endangering citizens’ civil liberties and Privacy Act protections, occasionally taken from already-published public sources, and more often than not unrelated to terrorism.”

· DHS officials did not provide evidence to the Subcommittee showing unique contributions that state and local fusion centers made to assist federal counter terrorism intelligence efforts that resulted in the disruption or prevention of a terrorism plot.

· The investigation also found that DHS did not effectively monitor how federal funds provided to state and local fusion centers were used to strengthen federal counterterrorism efforts. A review of the expenditures of five fusion centers found that federal funds were used to purchase dozens of flat screen TVs, two sport utility vehicles, cell phone tracking devices and other surveillance equipment unrelated to the analytical mission of an intelligence center. Their mission is not to do active or covert collection of intelligence. In addition, the fusion centers making these questionable expenditures lacked basic, “must-have” intelligence capabilities, according to DHS assessments.

· The investigation found that DHS intelligence officers assigned to state and local fusion centers produced intelligence of “uneven quality – oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely, sometimes endangering citizens’ civil liberties and Privacy Act protections, occasionally taken from already-published public sources, and more often than not unrelated to terrorism.”

· DHS officials did not provide evidence to the Subcommittee showing unique contributions that state and local fusion centers made to assist federal counter terrorism intelligence efforts that resulted in the disruption or prevention of a terrorism plot.

· The investigation also found that DHS did not effectively monitor how federal funds provided to state and local fusion centers were used to strengthen federal counterterrorism efforts. A review of the expenditures of five fusion centers found that federal funds were used to purchase dozens of flat screen TVs, two sport utility vehicles, cell phone tracking devices and other surveillance equipment unrelated to the analytical mission of an intelligence center. Their mission is not to do active or covert collection of intelligence. In addition, the fusion centers making these questionable expenditures lacked basic, “must-have” intelligence capabilities, according to DHS assessments.

DHS is run by a former Arizona governor, Janet Napolitano. It is often said that she was a tough but fair head of a border state with a large and growing Latino population. But managing Arizona would have been a walk in the park compared with managing DHS.

Arizona is manageable. DHS is not.


This article originally appeared in Prism Magazine

Bahrain’s Cat and Mouse Games

By William Fisher
Even as Bahrain accepted many of the recommendations to end human rights violations made during a UN review this week at the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Bahraini human rights defenders reported threats against them as a result of their participation in the process.

At the upper levels of Bahraini Government, officials appeared to be using the rhetoric of statesmanship to convey their wish for sweeping reforms and maximum dialogue with citizens who have been demonstrating against the official repression that has kept the tiny country’s revolution alive for more than a year.

Bahrain, strategically positioned in the Arabian Gulf, is a kingdom ruled by Hamad bin Isa bin Salman Al Khalifa, the King of Bahrain, and the al Khalifa family. King Hamad is a Sunni Muslim while a large majority of the country’s population is Shia Muslim. Shia citizens complain against discrimination in landing top jobs, accessing credit and property ownership. The country is of particular concern to the US as it is the home of the Fifth Fleet and a close neighbor to US ally, Saudi Arabia. At least 50 Bahrainis have been killed in clashes with the country’s security forces and with Saudi troops, who were dispatched under the aegis of the Gulf Cooperation Council.

The King and his men have taken a number of bold moves to neutralize their opposition. He commissioned as blue-ribbon task force, headed by a distinguished Egyptian judge, to study the conflict from the very beginning and present findings and recommendations. He accepted the judge’s report personally and promised to begin immediately to implement its recommendations.

The report corroborated many of the people’s complaints, including the use of torture in the county’s prisons. The King made a number of appointments to correct that situation, including the appointment of John Timoney, former chief of police in Miami, Florida, as a senior consultant, and the naming of a new head of the Interior Ministry, which is in charge of police and prisoners. The King also approved the establishment of an Ombudsman to investigate and adjudicate complaints made by either government or citizens against authorities.

In his final remarks at Bahrain's UPR adoption, H.E. Mr. Shaikh Khalid Bin Ahmed Bin Mohamed Al Khalifa, Minister of Foreign Affairs, denied that anyone was kept in jail for exercising their free expression. He claimed all charges related to free expression had been dropped, and admitted “there may be some controversies” over certain cases.

Another major move by the government has been its attendance, along with several human rights groups, at the United Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of Bahrain, a United Nations process whereby states and NGOs contribute towards improving the human rights record of a country. Bahrain was presented with 176 recommendations, immediately accepted 145 of them, and promised to study others.

Yet another major idea put for by Bahrain was its proposal that the Arab League establish a Human Rights Tribunal. The League also announced two high level appointments it said would represent a greater involvement of Bahraini women in decision-making positions, as well as providing regional support and recognition for working women.

Arab League Secretary General Dr. Nabeel Al-Arabi reinforced the proposal by declaring that the Tribunal will contribute to the regional efforts of the Arab states in supporting respect for Human Rights.

In her oral intervention at the UN, Maryam Al-Khawaja, of the Bahrain Council of Human Rights, noted, "The situation of targeting human rights defenders and the use of reprisals has dramatically escalated. Human rights defenders are constantly arrested, mistreated and the government continues to use the judiciary system as a tool to lock them up. Most, if not all of their charges are based on freedom of expression."

Among those detained are her father Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja, a founder of BCHR, who was sentenced to life in prison for his role in peaceful protests last year, and BCHR's President Nabeel Rajab, sentenced in August to three years in prison for calling for "illegal gatherings." During its intervention at the UN, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) also noted that blogger Abduljalil Al-Singace had been sentenced to life and blogger Ali Abdulemam had been sentenced to 15 years in absentia - in violation of their right to free expression.

Maryam Al-Khawaja noted that there are approximately 1,400 political prisoners in Bahrain, 50 of whom are under 18.

As well, she reports, "The security forces are still using excessive force to repress all daily protests. Security forces continue the unprecedented use of tear gas during protests and inside residential areas. Also, arbitrary arrests using excessive force on the streets and during home raids by beating and insulting detainees are still ongoing and are not excluding minors. Many detainees are held in very bad conditions in the prisons and systematic torture is still ongoing in official and unofficial torture centers."

Dr. Nada Dhaif, of the Bahrain Rehabilitation & Anti Violence Organization (BRAVO), made an oral intervention highlighting the impact on families of having their loved ones detained, and mentioning that protesters are hurt by police, such as Zainab Al-Khawaja, currently detained with a broken leg. She also mentioned the reprisals against human rights defenders who travel to Geneva and forcefully called on the Foreign Minister to immediately release all political prisoners. “Activists are not criminals,” she said.

Among Bahraini human rights defenders lobbying in Geneva at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) who have been threatened or harassed was Mohammed Al-Maskati, president of the Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights, who received death threats over the past week. Pro-government newspaper Al-Watan published photos of the civil society activists who were in Geneva, and the threats continue.

However, the UN is taking the question of reprisals seriously, including at a panel session on the topic on 13 September. Maryam Al-Khawaja and Al-Maskati met with the UN HRC President Laura Dupuy Lasserre to discuss concerns about reprisals against Bahraini civil society. The President herself came under attack after she spoke out in the council against threats to Bahrain human rights defenders during Bahrain's UPR in May.

According to a statement by US-based Human Rights Watch, the recommendations accepted include "more than a dozen calling on the government to hold security forces accountable for rights abuses, including wrongful deaths and mistreatment of detainees in government custody." Other recommendations include immediately releasing prisoners who have been convicted solely for exercising their rights to peaceful assembly and free expression during pro-democracy demonstrations in February and March 2011.

The UPR "needs to be quickly followed by releasing leaders of peaceful protests, holding accountable high officials responsible for policies of torture, and adopting broader reforms to uphold human rights,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The government has been claiming for months that it accepts the recommendations of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI) but continues to stall on the core issues and to deny that political detainees are still in Bahraini jails.”

Adding to the schizophrenic flavor of seemingly contradictory actions taking place simultaneously, was the action of a Bahraini appeals court which upheld the convictions of nine medics who treated demonstrators in last year’s uprising. Human Rights First charged that “the verdicts are indicative of the human rights backslide” happening in the Kingdom.

“Today was another moment of truth for the Bahrain regime, one it again failed miserably,” said Human Rights First’s Brian Dooley, who was in one of the appeal court hearings with the medics in March 2012. “These medics are going to prison for treating the injured and for telling the world about the regime’s crackdown. This isn’t the kind of progress that the Kingdom keeps promising the world is under way.”

The appeal verdicts follow the original sentences given by the military court to the 20 medics in September 2011. The medics were arrested, detained and tortured into giving false confessions last year and were released from custody while their appeal was under way. In June 2012 some of the 20 were acquitted while nine had their convictions confirmed and were sentenced to jail terms of between one month and five years. It was an appeal against these convictions and jail terms that was rejected today.

The United States government sent observers to the medics’ trial, and has urged the Bahrain regime “to abide by its commitment to transparent judicial proceedings, including a fair trial, access to attorneys, and verdicts based on credible evidence conducted in full accordance with Bahraini law and Bahrain’s international legal obligations.” Dooley notes that this has clearly not happened today, and the U.S. government should say so clearly and publicly.

“September was a terrible month for human rights in Bahrain,” observed Dooley. “Thirteen leading dissidents had long prison sentences against them upheld by the courts, prominent human rights defenders Nabeel Rajab and Zainab al Khawaja lost appeal cases to release them from prison and a teenage boy was killed by the police. These verdicts open October in a similarly ominous style.”

In another case brought against 28 other medics, a verdict is expected shortly.

Turning its other cheek, on 19 September, Bahrain accepted 145 of the 176 recommendations made as part of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of Bahrain, a process whereby states and NGOs contribute towards improving the human rights record of a country. The process occurs every four years.

According to a statement by Human Rights Watch, the recommendations accepted include "more than a dozen calling on the government to hold security forces accountable for rights abuses, including wrongful deaths and mistreatment of detainees in government custody." Other recommendations include immediately
releasing prisoners who have been convicted solely for exercising their rights to peaceful assembly and free expression during pro-democracy demonstrations in February and March 2011.

A week before, Salah Ali, Bahrain's minister of state for human rights, said the government fully accepted 143 of the 176 recommendations in response to the report of the UN working group on Bahrain's UPR that was issued in July 2012.

The UPR "needs to be quickly followed by releasing leaders of peaceful protests, holding accountable high officials responsible for policies of torture, and adopting broader reforms to uphold human rights,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The government has been claiming for
months that it accepts the recommendations of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI) but continues to stall on the core issues and to deny that political detainees are still in Bahraini jails.”

Many UN member states have been using the BICI, Bahrain's own internal review of the human rights violations that occurred following peaceful pro-democracy protests that began in early 2011, as a benchmark for accountability. Following the oral intervention by the United States, Assistant Secretary Michael Posner
said, “progress is slowing down, and that's a concern." He noted, "everyone who is peacefully dissenting and expressing their views has the right to do that and shouldn't be prosecuted.”

The United Kingdom parliament's Foreign Affairs Select Committee is to launch an inquiry into human rights abuses in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, following a briefing organised by Index on Censorship with Maryam Al-Khawaja, Acting President of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights (BCHR).

In his final remarks at Bahrain's UPR adoption, H.E. Mr. Shaikh Khalid Bin Ahmed Bin Mohamed Al Khalifa, Minister of Foreign Affairs, denied that anyone was kept in jail for exercising their free expression. He claimed all charges related to free expression had been dropped, and admitted “there may be some controversies” over certain cases.

Yet in her oral intervention at the UN, BCHR's Maryam Al-Khawaja noted, "The situation of targeting human rights defenders and the use of reprisals has dramatically escalated. Human rights defenders are constantly arrested, mistreated and the government continues to use the judiciary system as a tool to
lock them up. Most, if not all of their charges are based on freedom of expression." Watch the video online here.

Among those detained are her father Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja, a founder of BCHR, who was sentenced to life in prison for his role in peaceful protests last year, and BCHR's President Nabeel Rajab, sentenced in August to three years in prison for calling for "illegal gatherings." During its intervention at the UN, Reporters
Without Borders (RSF) also noted that blogger Abduljalil Al-Singace had been sentenced to life and blogger Ali Abdulemam had been sentenced to 15 years in absentia - in violation of their right to free expression.

Among Bahraini human rights defenders lobbying in Geneva at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) who have been threatened or harassed was Mohammed Al-Maskati, president of the Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights, who received death threats over the past week. Pro-government newspaper Al-Watan published photos of the civil society activists who were in Geneva, and the threats continue.

However, the UN is taking the question of reprisals seriously, including at a panel session on the topic on 13 September. Maryam Al-Khawaja and Al-Maskati met with the UN HRC President Laura Dupuy Lasserre this week to discuss concerns about reprisals against Bahraini civil society. The President herself came under attack after she spoke out in the council against threats to Bahrain human rights defenders during Bahrain's UPR in May.
According to the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), during a 17 September event about human rights defenders in the Gulf region, “Several individuals who possessed badges from the Bahrain government mission began to harass and attempted to intimidate the speakers on the panel before the event
began. The organizers of the event then asked these representatives of the Bahrain Mission to kindly remove their video camera from the room.” Likewise, some of the same people turned up at an event organized by Civicus, CIHRS and other groups on 18 September, Bearing Witness: Bahrain and the UPR Process, to
try to intimidate the participants.

CIHRS, the Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR) and the International Service for Human Rights (ISHR) jointly called “on the government of Bahrain to abide by its commitments to provide security and protection for human rights defenders who co-operate with the UN.”

A Bahraini appeals court has upheld the convictions of nine medics who treated demonstrators in last year’s uprising. Human Rights First notes the verdicts are indicative of the human rights backslide happening in the Kingdom.

“Today was another moment of truth for the Bahrain regime, one it again failed miserably,” said Human Rights First’s Brian Dooley, who was in one of the appeal court hearings with the medics in March 2012. “These medics are going to prison for treating the injured and for telling the world about the regime’s crackdown. This isn’t the kind of progress that the Kingdom keeps promising the world is under way.”

Today’s appeal verdicts follow the original sentences given by the military court to the 20 medics in September 2011. The medics were arrested, detained and tortured into giving false confessions last year and were released from custody while their appeal was under way. In June 2012 some of the 20 were acquitted while nine had their convictions confirmed and were sentenced to jail terms of between one month and five years. It was an appeal against these convictions and jail terms that was rejected today.

The United States government sent observers to the medics’ trial, and has urged the Bahrain regime “to abide by its commitment to transparent judicial proceedings, including a fair trial, access to attorneys, and verdicts based on credible evidence conducted in full accordance with Bahraini law and Bahrain’s international legal obligations.” Dooley notes that this has clearly not happened today, and the U.S. government should say so clearly and publicly.

“September was a terrible month for human rights in Bahrain,” observed Dooley. “Thirteen leading dissidents had long prison sentences against them upheld by the courts, prominent human rights defenders Nabeel Rajab and Zainab al Khawaja lost appeal cases to release them from prison and a teenage boy was killed by the police. These verdicts open October in a similarly ominous style.”

A verdict is expected soon in another case brought against 28 other medics.

Last month, the Bahraini Government pledged to implement more than 140 of the 176 recommendations laid out in the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) conducted by the United National Human Rights Council. At the time, Human Rights First noted the pledge was welcome news, but cautioned that the Kingdom has reneged on similar promises in the past.

Meanwhile, the Minister of Justice, Islamic Affairs and Endowments, Sheikh Khalid bin Ali Al Khalifa, reaffirmed that the Kingdom continues to press forward in its comprehensive reforms and modernization through the national institutions and the rule of law, upholding and ensuring the respect and protection of the principles of pluralism, human rights and justice.

Whether the right words will add up to the right policies and practices remains to be seen.

For one lucky guy, Mardi Gras comes early!

By William Fisher

I told this story to a few friends last week. They were as blown away as I was. They called it the only "good news" story all week. Since "good news" stories are few and far between in my line of work, let me share it with you.

At one end, it's a story about corruption, cruelty, bad police work, and a criminal justice system that's broken beyond repair and grows more sclerotic by the day, and the rage triggered by injustice "in plain sight" being ignored by authorities.

So far, doesn't sound much like a good news story? Right? Stay with me.

The good news parts of the story are about the determination of the human spirit, the compassion to want to correct injustice, intimate knowledge of the law and all its hazardous potholes and alleys, and the toughness to never give up.

Fifteen years ago, in 1997, a 24-year-old Louisiana man was convicted of the rape and murder of his 14-year-old step cousin, Chrystal Champagne.

The case was had all the earmarks of a slam-dunk: The young man, Damon A. Thibodeaux , had confessed. He admitted his guilt after nine hours of non-stop interrogation by police. He later recanted that confession.

He was sentenced to death. He says he almost gave up hope. "But if you give up hope in here, you begin to die," he said.

He never gave up. And that's one of the main reasons this young man, now 38, walked out of Angola Prison last week, a free man, after an order by a Jefferson Parish court overturning the conviction and dismissing the indictment. Jefferson Parish includes most of the suburbs of New Orleans .

In walking out of what he had to call home after almost 15 years, Damon A. Thibodeaux became the 18th person to serve time on Louisiana's death row, only to be exonerated later by DNA evidence and a bunch of remarkable pro bono lawyers who refused to cave, even facing the entire panoply of prison officials, judges, and other officers of the court.

These brave men and women spent 12 years interviewing figures involved in the case, reading thousands of pages of testimony, and reviewing DNA tests that became more credible as the science itself matured.

Mr. Thibodeaux enjoyed one asset that's not very often present when the requirement is for a full post-mortem of a case: The District Attorney, U.S. District Attorney Paul Connick, Jr. Connick joined the Innocence Project and Thibodeaux's other counsel in agreeing to overturn Thibodeaux's conviction and death sentence after DNA and other evidence proved that he had not committed the crime for which he had been coerced into falsely confessing.

A more conventional scenario finds prosecutors unwilling to re-test DNA samples because of the cost involved, or saying they've been lost. Frequently, both statements are untrue. Fear of professional embarrassment -- and collateral career damage -- is the real reason for their opacity.
That opacity was not part of the Thibodeaux case. That fact and his release gave him the honor of being the 300th person to be exonerated by DNA evidence in the US.
Listen to Barry Scheck -- whom you may remember as the DNA wizard at the OJ Simpson trial: "Like the other 299 DNA exonerees, there is no question that Mr. Thibodeaux suffered terribly because of the faults in the criminal justice system," said Scheck, who is a founder and co-director of the Innocence Project, which is affiliated with the Cardozo School of Law.

"But the incredible cooperation that we have received from District Attorney Connick is a powerful illustration of how transformative DNA evidence has been to the criminal justice system. District Attorneys now recognize that the system doesn't always get it right, and many, like District Attorney Connick and his team, are committed to getting to the truth. This case can serve as a model to other district attorneys around the country who are interested in developing conviction integrity units to review old cases."
Thibodeaux echoed that sentiment, adding "I'm grateful to Mr. Connick and his people for studying my case and for their commitment to justice. I'm looking forward to life as a free man again, but I have great sympathy for the Champagne family that lost their daughter and sister. I sincerely hope that the person who murdered her is found and tried."
Crystal Champagne's family last saw her alive on the afternoon of July 19, 1996 when she left the family's Westwego Apartment for a Winn-Dixie at the nearby strip mall. After she did not return home when expected, her family, several friends, and law enforcement began a search for her that ended on the following evening with the discovery of her body along the levee in Bridge City.

That same evening, law enforcement began interrogating and interviewing potential witnesses, including Thibodeaux. After some nine hours of interrogation, he provided an apparent confession to raping and murdering the victim. That confession was virtually the sole basis for his conviction and death sentence in October 1997.

Thibodeaux's legal team included Denise LeBoeuf and Caroline Tillman of the Capital Post-Conviction Project of Louisiana (LeBoeuf is currently Director of the ACLU's Death Penalty Project and Tillman is now an attorney with the Capital Appeals Project in New Orleans); Barry Scheck and Vanessa Potkin of the Innocence Project; and Steve Kaplan and Richard H. Kyle, Jr., of the Fredrikson & Byron law firm in Minneapolis.

Assisted by several DNA and world-class forensic scientists, homicide and police interrogation methods expert Thomas Streed, PhD, and private investigators, they obtained evidence demonstrating that Thibodeaux was not the murderer, that the victim had not been raped, and that she had also not been murdered in the manner that Thibodeaux had described after some nine hours of interrogation.

In 2007, Thibodeaux's team approached Connick and his staff, and presented the then-known evidence of actual innocence to them. Both sides then began a cooperative process that was rigorous and transparent, including mutual exchanges of evidence and information. Connick was assisted primarily by Steve Wimberly, Esq., and Chief Investigator, Vince Lamia, who reviewed the evidence and actively participated in both the joint investigation and the District Attorney's own independent review of the case.

During the course of this joint investigation, the parties conducted multiple rounds of DNA and forensic evidence testing of the crime scene evidence and the other physical evidence and interviewed numerous fact witnesses. This additional evidence confirmed that the confession that Thibodeaux had given was false in every aspect. In addition, the joint investigation included a thorough examination of the reasons why Thibodeaux had falsely confessed. His lawyers have promised to make this information public at a later time.
The joint effort has also given rise to potential new leads and suspects. Because, however, the investigation into the murder is ongoing, this information cannot be disclosed at present.

"This is a tragic illustration of why law enforcement must record the entire interrogation of any witness or potential suspect in any investigation involving a serious crime," said one of Thibodeaux's legal team.

"When juries learn that the accused has apparently confessed, they invariably have a difficult time questioning the reliability and truthfulness of the confession--unless they can see the entire interrogation and determine whether it's truthful and reliable not only in light of the interrogation methods used in obtaining the confession, but also in light of other evidence that contradicts or disproves the confession."

Another of his attorneys noted, "This journey to freedom was a long time coming. The solitary conditions that Mr. Thibodeaux was forced to live under as a death row inmate were almost more than he could bear at times, but he never gave up hope that one day he would be free."

"The death penalty is a human rights violation in any case, for anyone. But, there can be no stronger argument against capital punishment than the condemnation of a truly innocent man," said Denise LeBoeuf of the Capital Post-Conviction Project of Louisiana (LeBoeuf is currently Director of the ACLU's Death Penalty Project.)

LeBoeuf added, "Louisiana came--to use Justice Blackmon's phrase--"perilously close to simple murder' and Louisiana citizens should demand a moratorium on executions until they can be assured that there are no more miscarriages of justice like the one that occurred in this case." Since 2000, six innocent people have been exonerated from Louisiana's death row, versus just three executions.

The 300 DNA exonerees have served a combined 4013 years in prison, with an average of 13 and a half years each. The real perpetrator was identified in nearly half of the cases, and at least 130 violent crimes could have been prevented if the true perpetrator was initially arrested instead of the wrongly convicted. More than a third of those cleared by DNA have not been compensated for the time they spent wrongly imprisoned.

While DNA testing has been widely available in criminal prosecutions since the late 90s, people convicted as late as 2008 have been cleared by DNA, indicating that this powerful tool will continue to be helpful in proving wrongful convictions for the foreseeable future.

The leading cause of wrongful convictions overturned by DNA is eyewitness misidentification, which has played a role in nearly 75 percent of the 300 exonerations. Unvalidated or improper forensic science played a role in approximately half (51 %) of wrongful convictions later overturned by DNA testing. False confessions and admissions lead to wrongful convictions in just over a quarter (27%). Informants contributed to wrongful convictions in 18 % of cases.

Thibodeaux is the 18th person who served time on death row to be exonerated by DNA in the U.S. The 18 death row exonerees were convicted in 11 states and served a combined 229 years in prison -- including 202 years on death row -- for crimes they didn't commit. Another 16 were charged with capital crimes but not sentenced to death. Seventeen people were threatened with the death penalty but not ultimately charged with a capital offense.
Louisiana has a well-established reputation as the prison capital of the world. Writing in the Louisiana Times-Picayune, Cindy Chang said, "The hidden engine behind the state's well-oiled prison machine is cold, hard cash. A majority of Louisiana inmates are housed in for-profit facilities, which must be supplied with a constant influx of human beings or a $182 million industry will go bankrupt."

She added, "Several homegrown private prison companies command a slice of the market. But in a uniquely Louisiana twist, most prison entrepreneurs are rural sheriffs, who hold tremendous sway in remote parishes like Madison, Avoyelles, East Carroll and Concordia. A good portion of Louisiana law enforcement is financed with dollars legally skimmed off the top of prison operations."

Giving Voice to the Voiceless

By William Fisher
Have you noticed? Aside from the dangerous mythology we’re fed on the various CSI television programs, we’re reading more and more real stories about innocent people being sent off to death row or serving long jail sentences for crimes they didn’t commit. And then being freed – usually years later – by new evidence or old evidence intentionally buried.

Here’s another:

Michael Keenan, now 62, spent close to a quarter century on death row. He is now free. He walked out of an Ohio courtroom after a judge determined that evidence that could have exonerated him in the 1988 stabbing death of a man found dead in a brook in a Cleveland park was withheld from his trial attorneys.

The judge dismissed the murder charge.

This is clearly a case of prosecutorial misconduct. There are many such cases, and we’re beginning to read about these as well. There is a panoply of groups working to clean up our criminal justice system.

But dishonest or overzealous prosecutors, while able to wield their enormous power to inflict lifetimes of pain on innocent people, are not in fact the major causes of wrongful imprisonment.

Incorrect eyewitness identification is still the Number One cause.

But ranking a very close second is a faut discipline that sometimes appears to be less science and more Kabuki.

This was the case back in the 1980s when the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) laboratory – until that point considered to be the gold standard for forensics – got caught in a fraud – possibly a massive fraud.

A senior forensic agent falsified the result of a test performed on a single strand of human hair, testifying incorrectly that forensic science could identify the hair precisely, thus frequently placing the accused at the scene of the crime.

But this was not a one-trial mishap. It was the standard analysis for most crime labs. So this junk science statement was being introduced as evidence in courts across the country in as many as 10,000 trials simultaneously.

In the 1980s, a DOJ/FBI task force admitted the “error” and one of the agents responsible was fired. But now a different DOJ /FBI Task Force is re-investigating the incident. Sad to say, they have already corrupted the inquiry by advising only the attorneys for the convicted – not the actual prisoners themselves – of the lapse.
In Philadelphia, Frederic W. Whitehurst, a Ph.D. chemist and former supervisory special agent at the FBI, discussed a colleague’s false or misleading forensic testimony in multiple cases. He also described how scientists would “run dead flat into a sledgehammer” when their results didn’t agree with their supervisors’ thinking. Whitehurst’s whistle-blowing led to the 1995 Justice Department investigation of the FBI Lab.

DNA is the star who hit the ball out of the park. Since the late 1980s, DNA analysis has helped identify the guilty and exonerate the innocent nationwide. The Innocence Project (IP) affirms that while DNA testing was developed through extensive scientific research at top academic centers, many other forensic techniques -- including hair microscopy, bite mark comparisons, firearm tool mark analysis, and shoe print comparisons -- have never been subjected to rigorous scientific evaluation.

And the organization added, “forensic techniques that have been properly validated -- including serology, or blood typing -- are sometimes improperly conducted or inaccurately conveyed in trial testimony. In some cases, forensic analysts have fabricated results or engaged in other misconduct.”

Forensics go back a long way in the US. In the 19th century, forensic medicine was a recognized branch of medicine. By 1910, a French criminologist, formulated the basic forensic principle, "Every contact leaves a trace,” and established the world's first crime laboratory.

IP reveals that hair has become one of the most common types of trace evidence. It says hair can help rule out certain populations or help identify an unknown victim. The transfer of hair from a victim to a suspect can raise the probability that the victim and perpetrator came in contact. Like other forensic evidence, information from hair is expressed in terms of probabilities of a match.

But IP points out that hair is never used as definitive proof to indicate guilt because visual comparison is subjective. But when hair is used with DNA, it adds, it becomes a powerful tool for an investigator. Today, hair analysis is only done when DNA tests can also be done.

Still, IP cautions that results from hair analysis can be controversial. The factors that affect these results include where on the body the hair was removed, the person's age and race, and even the color. Because standards vary, a single lab can report different results from the same hair sample and false-positives for illegal drugs are not uncommon.

Because forensic science results can mean the difference between life and death in many cases, fraud and other types of misconduct in the field are particularly troubling. False testimony, exaggerated statistics and laboratory fraud have led to wrongful convictions in several states.

IP declares that, since forensic evidence is offered by "experts," jurors routinely give it much more weight than other evidence. But when misconduct occurs, the weight is misplaced. IP finds that, in some instances, labs or their personnel have allied themselves with police and prosecutors, rather than prioritizing the search for truth. Other times, IP says, criminalists lacking the requisite knowledge have embellished findings and eluded detection because judges and juries lacked background in the relevant sciences, themselves.

In some cases, critical evidence has been consumed or destroyed, so that re-testing to uncover misconduct has proven impossible. Evidence in these cases can never be tested again, preventing the truth from being revealed.

The identification, collection, testing, storage, handling and reporting of any piece of forensic evidence involves a number of people. Evidence can be deliberately or accidentally mishandled at any stage of this process.

The Innocence Project has seen forensic misconduct by scientists, experts and prosecutors lead to wrongful conviction in many states. Here is one of the more notorious:

Of the first 289 convictions overturned by DNA testing, 45% involved faulty forensics. One of those exonerations was Ray Krone. An honorably discharged veteran, Krone served 10 years “in a cell the size of most of y’all’s bathroom,” he said in Philadelphia, for a murder in Phoenix he did not commit.

An expert for the prosecution had testified that bite marks on the victim matched an impression Krone made for police on a Styrofoam cup. With help from the Innocence Project, DNA evidence cleared him in 2002. “I can’t tell you what it was like to be called a monster,” he said. “Thank God for DNA.”

But there were many faults revealed.

• A former director of the West Virginia state crime lab, Fred Zain, testified for the prosecution in 12 states over his career, including dozens of cases in West Virginia and Texas. DNA exonerations and new evidence in other cases have shown that Zain fabricated results, lied on the stand about results and willfully omitted evidence from his reports.

• Pamela Fish, a Chicago lab technician, testified for the prosecution about false matches and suspicious results in the trials of at least eight defendants who were convicted, then proven innocent years later by DNA testing.

• A two-year investigation of the Houston crime lab, completed in 2007, showed that evidence in that lab was mishandled and results were misreported.

Other forensic tests lag behind DNA in several ways, IP says. These tests include the bite-mark analysis from Krone’s trial. They cannot point to an individual, and little to no research has been conducted toward standardizing them or defining their error rates.

In an excellent article in the journal of the American Chemical Society, writer Carmen Drahl quotes attorney Josh D. Lee, co-chair of the Forensic Science section of ACS’s Division of Chemistry & the Law, as saying, “problems arise when attorneys, judges, or juries attach the same aura of reliability to all forensic sciences regardless of their scientific merit.”

IP has uncovered these kinds of abuses since 1992 and has developed recommendations for forensic labs, law enforcement agencies and courts to ensure that forensic science misconduct is prevented whenever possible. It is currently acting as a consultant to the DOJ and FBI in the second iteration of the task force investigating the errors made by the lab during the 1980s.

IP is calling on states to impose standards on the preservation and handling of evidence. When exonerations suggest that an analyst engaged in misconduct or that a facility lacked proper procedures or oversight, the Innocence Project advocates for independent audits of their work in other cases that may have also resulted in wrongful convictions.

And bills have been introduced in both the House and the Senate for Congress to play a far more active role in providing oversight, beginning with studies and hearings that, it is hoped, will establish credible standards for the forensics industry.

It’s unlikely that erroneous convictions or even many more exonerations are ever going to become a campaign issue in the presidential election. The U.S. has about 2.5 million people locked up in federal, state prisons and county and town jails. And another 5,000 are under some form of supervision by the prison system.

These people are invisible. They don’t vote. That’s why they’ll never rise to anywhere near the top of politicians’ priorities. That’s why we need groups like The Innocence Project.

To give voice to the voiceless.