Hey, Stuff Happens!


Maybe you render an innocent Canadian citizen for a years worth of torture in Syria...or perhaps it's just a couple of weeks detention (with death penalty threats) for a United States citizen who happens to be Muslim...and which also turns out to be a mistake:

The U.S. government has agreed to pay $2 million to an Oregon lawyer who was wrongfully arrested as a terrorism suspect because of a bungled fingerprint match and has issued an apology for the "suffering" inflicted on the attorney and his family...

On March 11, 2004, terrorists later linked to al-Qaeda detonated bombs on several commuter trains in Madrid, killing 191 people. The FBI assisted Spanish police by comparing latent prints found on a bag of detonators nearby against its massive fingerprint database, which includes prints from former U.S. soldiers.

On March 19, the FBI lab identified 20 possible matches for one of the prints; two FBI examiners and a unit chief narrowed the match down to Mayfield. Spanish police conducted their own fingerprint analysis and informed the FBI on April 13, 2004, that its result was negative for Mayfield. The FBI disputed that finding, even dispatching an examiner to Madrid to press its case.

[Justice Department Inspector General Glenn] Fine's report concluded that FBI examiners made a number of errors, including using "circular reasoning" to firm up their conclusion and ignoring rules that an identification must be ruled out if there is an unexplained discrepancy between the prints.

FBI examiners had no way of knowing Mayfield's religion or occupation when they first identified him as a suspect, Fine's report said, but those factors likely influenced their conclusions in the weeks that followed.

Interesting that the WaPo puts the word "suffering" in quotes, perhaps trying to imply that Mayfield's detention was, oh, I don't know, just sort of like a vacation, or maybe a reality TV show...well, except for the being in jail part, the being threatened with the death penalty part, and except for lord-knows-what might have been going on his his or his family's minds part. And while a $2 million dollar settlement might seem like a nice windfall, I sure as hell wouldn't trade places with the guy, particularly when you think of how he was presumably pressured to "confess" in the interests of getting some "break" like a life-sentence...and I'd be willing to bet if Mayfield HAD broken down, the government would use this as justification for continued detention, regardless of what Spain had by way of evidence.

Welcome to the future. It's like the past, but with fewer rights.