Examples Of Mishandling The FBI

It is not common for the FBI, a well-known professional bureau, to make mistakes during serious investigations. However, in recent years, the FBI has been mislabeling, misplacing, not returning important evidence, and has had flaws in the process of their DNA analysis that affects multiple incidents. Although, policies exist for safeguarding evidence within the FBI, too often mishandling still occurs, leading to wrongful prosecutions, dismissal of cases, and a weakened reputation for the agency. The FBI’s responsibility is to collect evidence to solve crimes, but to prevent them from occurring in the first place. However, if the prevention of crime, corruption, and terrorism revolves around gathering and protecting evidence, why is mishandling

In Randall’s article, she gives a few examples of individuals who have been wrongly convicted, in the first example she says “Kirk L. Odom was wrongfully imprisoned for more than 22 years for a 1981 rape and murder. He completed his prison term in 2003, but it was not until July 2012 that DNA evidence exonerated him of the crimes.” (Randall 1) Randall states the fact that Odom even finished his sentence before the FBI figured out he was innocent, but what good is that if 22 years of his life were taken from him. And a similar case happened, in 1978 Santae A. Tribble was convicted for murder and was not exonerated until 2012. The fact the FBI had the power to take away over 20 years of these men’s lives for something they did not do is ridiculous. This happened because of flawed DNA analysis and human error. Yes, mistakes are made, but there needs to be coherence and certainty if years are going to be taken away from

In one case covering the death of prisoner Kenneth Michael Trentadue, the FBI’s handling of evidence was criticized, as stated, “The FBI's conduct is receiving renewed scrutiny after revelations” (“Internal Probes Found” 1) Anytime the FBI makes a consequential mistake they get hammered by the public and the media. In the same incident dealing with the former FBI agent Matthew Lowry’s corruption, Herman in his article states that “It also exposed weaknesses in the handling of drug evidence in the FBI’s Washington field office.” (Herman 1) What makes this worse is that the FBI’s reputation is being damaged by someone who is supposed to improve and maintain