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Dogs used for questionable scent line-ups

The interrogation room inside the Victoria County Sheriff's Office is sterile and cold. There's a table in the middle, a one-way mirror and a hidden video camera that lets investigators watch suspects.
The Innocence Project of Texas has raised questions about using sniffer dogs to single out potential suspects.

The Innocence Project of Texas has raised questions about using sniffer dogs to single out potential suspects.

Michael Buchanek knows the room well. He was part of countless investigations. Buchanek spent more than 25 years with the Sheriff's Office as a commander of operations.

But on March 16, 2006, Buchanek found himself sitting in the interrogation room. This time, he was on the other side of the table. The day before, his neighbor and friend, Sally Blackwell, was found strangled to death with a rope. Her body was left in a field five miles from her home....CLICK LINK TO READ FULL ARTICLE
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Posted By: onemiamibum
10/05/09 11:12 AM

I had never even heard of this before. I don't see how it could be considered anything more than an investigative tool AT BEST. Definitely has no evidentiary value on its own. I have seen search dogs walk right by subjects without 'hitting' on them. Granted that's different than the 'scent' technique shown here, but in my experience the dogs make mistakes.
Posted By: JennyJM
10/05/09 11:14 AM

Are there any studies that prove this method may prove useful in nabbing guilty parties involved in crimes?
Posted By: onemiamibum
10/05/09 11:21 AM

Doug Lowry, the president of the National Police Bloodhound Association, a nonprofit group that holds seminars on using bloodhounds in police work, said in an affidavit that he watched video of Pikett's lineups and found them "disturbing." Pikett's dogs appeared to be "just taking a walk in the park instead of conducting scent lineups."

The association stopped training police to do scent lineups several years ago because "very few bloodhound teams were found to be consistently proficient" and there were "too many variables involved," Lowry said.

In the lawsuits, the plaintiffs accuse Pikett of manufacturing evidence and say his scent lineups are merely an "elaborate performance." Pikett denies the allegations.

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The lawsuits aren't the first time someone took action against Pikett. In 2008, a now former Harris County assistant prosecutor e-mailed his colleagues to warn them about the "unreliable evidence" that came from Pikett's work with Houston police, according to an affidavit.

Dr. Alejandro del Carmen, the chairman of the University of Texas at Arlington's criminology and criminal justice department, compared scent identification to primitive criminology theories that identified suspects by body type. The once-accepted theory was that skinny people were too shy and heavy people too lazy to commit crimes.

"As a trained criminologist and a Ph.D., I find it nerve-racking that the justice system would rely on the ability of a dog to predict someone's guilt or innocence," del Carmen said.

FROM A DIFFERENT ARTICLE

Posted By: JennyJM
10/05/09 11:41 AM

I feel bad for the falsely accused.