The Innocence Project
March 2, 2016
Mecklenburg County District Attorney
Andrew Murray filed legal papers on February 16th dismissing the
indictments against Timothy Bridges, who wrongly served over 25 years
for a rape and burglary, based in large part on the erroneous testimony
of an FBI-trained state hair analyst who claimed that Bridges’s hair
linked him to two hairs found at the scene. Bridges was released on
October 1, 2015, after prosecutors consented to vacating Bridges’s 1991
convictions. Bridges’s legal team, which included lawyers from the
Innocence Project and North Carolina Prisoner Legal Services, also
uncovered evidence that police failed to turn over to the district
attorney’s office before trial. Post-conviction discovery materials
showed that police paid informants and made other threats or promises to
the informants, which was contrary to their testimony at trial.
Subsequent DNA testing on crime scene evidence also excluded Bridges.
In 2013, after three men were exonerated by DNA evidence in separate
cases where an FBI analyst had provided improper evidence at trial
regarding hair analysis, the Innocence Project and the National
Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers persuaded the FBI to conduct an
audit of cases where FBI agents provided testimony or reports regarding
microscopic hair analysis. Initial findings of that review, which were
released in 2015, revealed that of 268 cases where agents used
microscopic hair analysis to link a defendant to a crime, the agents’
testimony was scientifically invalid in 257 or 96% of the cases.
Twenty-seven of twenty-nine analysts provided either erroneous testimony
or submitted erroneous reports. The audit does not cover cases, like
Bridges’s, where the erroneous testimony was offered by a state hair
examiner rather than by the FBI.
Bridges’s case “is one of the first cases to be litigated involving
erroneous microscopic hair testimony proffered by an FBI-trained state
examiner,” said Chris Fabricant, Director of Strategic Litigation for
the Innocence Project, which is affiliated with Cardozo School of Law.
“We would like to commend District Attorney Andrew Murray for seeking
to restore justice for Mr. Bridges, and we hope other prosecutors around
the nation will follow D.A. Murray’s lead in how to handle the many
cases where errors have been identified, including in those cases which a
state analyst, rather than FBI analyst, testified. D.A. Murray fully
appreciated the significance of the erroneous scientific evidence and
agreed that introduction of the hair evidence was a due process
violation and vacated the convictions even before the DNA testing
supported Mr. Bridges’s innocence.”
Modine Wise of North Charlotte was the victim of a burglary and
assault sometime between the afternoon of May 14, 1989 and the afternoon
of May 15, 1989 when her daughter-in-law found her badly beaten in her
home. The victim, who was elderly, in poor health and could not see,
passed away 13 months later without giving a reliable description of her
attacker. Although the victim denied that she was raped, the treating
physician testified there was bruising consistent with a rape. The
crime went unsolved for several months until three informants with prior
criminal records claimed that Bridges confessed to them.
At trial, the prosecution relied on the testimony of the three
informants as well as the testimony of Elinos Whitlock III, an employee
of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department Crime Lab who had been
trained by the FBI in how to conduct microscopic hair analysis. He
claimed that he could make a “strong identification” that a hair
recovered the crime scene was Bridges’s hair. He further stated that
there was only a 1 in 1000 chance that two Caucasian people (Bridges is
white) would have indistinguishable head hair.
Bridges has always maintained his innocence. His defense rested on
the testimony of a former State Bureau of Investigation (SBI)
fingerprint analyst. A bloody palm print was found on the crime scene
wall that two state analysts agreed did not match to Bridges. Despite a
compelling argument by his lawyer that the bloody print must have come
from the real perpetrator, Bridges was convicted and sentenced to life
in prison.
“Given that the analyst in Mr. Bridges case received training from
FBI agents who provided scientifically unsound testimony in nearly every
case they handled, there is a very good chance that other people in
North Carolina and throughout the nation have been wrongly convicted
based on the erroneous testimony of analysts trained by the FBI,” said
Dana Delger, a staff attorney with the Innocence Project’s Strategic
Litigation Unit. “Other states should follow the lead of North
Carolina, Texas and Massachusetts and order thorough and independent
review of all the cases where this evidence was used.”
Since his release, Bridges has been living with family members. He
recently earned his first drivers license, and his uncle helped him
purchase a car. He is working and eager to find his own living space
and to become more independent. He is hoping that with the dismissal
this will all become easier. He has been working with the Innocence
Project Social Work Department and some local organizations, including
Healing Justice, based in Chapel Hill and the Independent Resource
Center in Greensboro, to adjust to life outside of prison. One of the
most special things he has done since his release was attending a UNC
basketball game in Chapel Hill.
Bridges was represented by Lauren Miller of North Carolina Prisoner
Legal Services, Inc., and Fabricant and Delger of the Innocence
Project.
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