After spending nearly four decades wrongfully convicted, progress was made for Montana Innocence Project client Bernard Pease Jr.’s case when he appeared before the Yellowstone County District Judge Thomas Pardy for an evidentiary hearing in July of 2023.
One piece of evidence that was central to the hearing was a hair found on a condom at the Pease residence. At Bernard’s trial in 1984, testimony about this evidence relied on false and outdated sciences that sent Bernard to prison for nearly 40 years. State and then-Montana Crime Lab Director Arnold Melnikoff argued that the hair was the victim’s pubic hair. This conclusion was determined in the result of a microscopic hair comparison analysis, which is largely considered a junk science.
At Bernard’s most recent hearing, analyst Katherine Korecki testified that hair contained a geometric pattern that is not found in human hairs. She testified that any experienced hair analyst should have known it was non-human. Korecki also identified the hair as being white in color, contradicting Melnikoff’s trial testimony that it was red and brown in color.
Once the hair was confirmed to be non-human, DNA analyst Gloria Dimick tested for the specific origin of the hair. She testified that “the sample was determined to have a 100% match for the felis species,” meaning it belonged to a cat. She similarly found the hair to be “very thin, pale, and translucent.” These findings strongly contradicted Melnikoff’s testimony at the 1984 trial.
Bernard’s case however was not the only flawed testimony to come from Melnikoff.
The DNA-based exonerations of Jimmy Ray Bromgard, Paul Kordonowy, and Chester Bauer were all Montana cases in which Melnikoff’s microscopic hair analysis and expert testimony were used to convict the three men during the 1980s, near the time of Bernard’s wrongful conviction.
Forensic Science in the Courtroom
Forensic science is commonly used in courtrooms across the U.S. as a way for expert witnesses to testify to scientific conclusions based on evidence from crime scenes. Some of these sciences however have become increasingly discredited, including: fire investigation, bite mark comparisons, and lead bullet analysis.
According to the National Registry of Exonerations, false or misleading forensic evidence has contributed to nearly a quarter of the 3,463 exonerations in the U.S.
Prior to the advent of mitochondrial DNA testing, the forensic science of microscopic hair comparison analysis was a routinely used technique to link a criminal defendant to a crime in more than 20,000 cases before the year 2000.
Microscopic hair comparison analysis involves an examiner to use a high powered microscope to compare an unknown hair from a crime scene to several strands of a known hair sample in order to determine if they have similar characteristics. If enough characteristics are the same, the examiner will then deem the hair a “match.”
This process however has been under scrutiny by scientists for decades, as they have noted its unreliability based on the unknown pool of subjects that have the same hair characteristics.
The Impacts of False or Misleading Forensic Evidence
In 2015, the FBI, the United States Department of Defense, The Innocence Project, and The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers published a report disqualifying microscopic hair comparison analysis as scientifically valid. In 268 cases, expert witnesses provided testimony in which hair evidence was used to inculpate the defendant at trial. They found that erroneous statements were given in 96% of the cases. Thirty-three of the cases involved people who had been sentenced to death, nine were executed for their crimes, and five died of other causes while incarcerated.
A new report from the National Registry of Exonerations found 129 cases in which people were falsely convicted based at least in part because of flawed microscopic hair comparison analysis. Fifteen of those exonerees were sentenced to death. In total, the 125 exonerees analyzed in the report lost a total of 1,918 years in prison.
The report highlights dozens of cases where microscopic hair comparison analysis was used in combination with false confessions, evidence of racial bias, deceptive testimony from jailhouse snitches, and mistaken witness identification to wrongfully convict the innocent.
Melnikoff was mentioned in the report for his false testimony in the three Montana exoneration cases of Jimmy Ray Bromgard, Paul Kordonowy, and Chester Bauer.
The report argued that, “Melnikoff simply conjured up a probability (1 in 100) of the defendant not being the source of a questioned head hair. To compound this error, Melnikoff then assigned the same figure to the probability of 1 in 10,000. Even if the probabilities were not simply made up, head hair characteristics and pubic hair characteristics are not statistically independent and therefore cannot simply be multiplied.”
The report noted his flawed testimony as an “Error Type 2” which is identified as, “testimony that attempts to solve the problem of the near- valuelessness of MHCA evidence by assigning a probability to the association between the questioned hairs and the known hairs.”
This type of testimony is problematic because according to the report, “there are no defensible probabilities to assign to a microscopic hair comparison analysis association.”
The impact of flawed forensic science can lead juries to believe expert opinion as foolproof. Expert testimony is held to a higher regard and is rarely challenged, as jurors often lack the expertise to correctly interpret or question the findings.
Melnikoff’s flawed forensic testimony is a stark example of how inaccurate forensic science, or “junk science,” perpetuates wrongful convictions by leading juries and judges to see guilt and render a verdict based on false premises.
Therefore, it is crucial that forensic science is accurate. There is no room for error. Scientific and statistical integrity must be improved in courtrooms by making the initiative to educate juries and judges on the standards of that type of evidence in order to prevent the wrongful conviction and imprisonment of innocent people.