(Illinois Exoneree Jerry Miller discusses his 1982 wrongful conviction and the 24 years he was incarcerated for a crime DNA now proves he didn't commit. Jerry was the 200th person exonerated by DNA testing nationwide - learn more at www.innocenceproject.org)
Driver's licenses scanned in search for fugitives
In its search for fugitives, the FBI has begun using facial-recognition technology on millions of motorists, comparing driver's license photos with pictures of convicts in a high-tech analysis of chin widths and nose sizes.
The project in North Carolina has already helped nab at least one suspect. Agents are eager to look for more criminals and possibly to expand the effort nationwide. But privacy advocates worry that the method allows authorities to track people who have done nothing wrong.
"Everybody's participating, essentially, in a virtual lineup by getting a driver's license," said Christopher Calabrese, an attorney who focuses on privacy issues at the American Civil Liberties Union.
Earlier this year, investigators learned that a double-homicide suspect named Rodolfo Corrales had moved to North Carolina. The FBI took a 1991 booking photo from California and compared it with 30 million photos stored by the motor vehicle agency in Raleigh.
In seconds, the search returned dozens of drivers who resembled Corrales, and an FBI analyst reviewed a gallery of images before zeroing in on a man who called himself Jose Solis.
A week later, after corroborating Corrales' identity, agents arrested him in High Point, southwest of Greensboro, where they believe he had built a new life under the assumed name. Corrales is scheduled for a preliminary hearing in Los Angeles later this month.
"Running facial recognition is not very labor-intensive at all," analyst Michael Garcia said. "If I can probe a hundred fugitives and get one or two, that's a home run."
Law enforcement database?
Facial-recognition software is not entirely new, but the North Carolina project is the first major step for the FBI as it considers expanding use of the technology to find fugitives nationwide.
So-called biometric information that is unique to each person also includes fingerprints and DNA. More distant possibilities include iris patterns in the eye, voices, scent and even a person's gait.
FBI officials have organized a panel of authorities to study how best to increase use of the software. It will take at least a year to establish standards for license photos, and there's no timetable to roll out the program nationally.
Calabrese said Americans should be concerned about how their driver's licenses are being used.
Licenses "started as a permission to drive," he said. "Now you need them to open a bank account. You need them to be identified everywhere. And suddenly they're becoming the de facto law enforcement database."
State and federal laws allow driver's license agencies to release records for law enforcement, and local agencies have access to North Carolina's database, too. But the FBI is not authorized to collect and store the photos. That means the facial-recognition analysis must be done at the North Carolina Division of Motor Vehicles.
"Unless the person's a criminal, we would not have a need to have that information in the system," said Kim Del Greco, who oversees the FBI's biometrics division. "I think that would be a privacy concern. We're staying away from that."
Dan Roberts, assistant director of the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division, added: "We're not interested in housing a bunch of photos of people who have done absolutely nothing wrong."
Scanning for similarities
Gone are the days when states made drivers' licenses by snapping Polaroid photos and laminating them onto cards without recording copies.
Now states have quality photo machines and rules that prohibit drivers from smiling during the snapshot to improve the accuracy of computer comparisons.
North Carolina's lab scans an image and, within 10 seconds, compares the likeness with other photos based on an algorithm of factors such as the width of a chin or the structure of cheekbones. The search returns several hundred photos ranked by the similarities.
"We'll get some close hits, and we'll get some hits that are right on," said Stephen Lamm, who oversees the DMV lab.
The technology allowed the DMV to quickly highlight 28 different photos of one man who was apparently using many identities. It also identified one person who, as part of a sex change, came in with plucked eyebrows, long flowing hair and a new name — but the same radiant smile.
Mistaken for a terrorist?
The system is not always right. Investigators used one DMV photo of an Associated Press reporter to search for a second DMV photo, but the system first returned dozens of other people, including a North Carolina terrorism suspect who had some similar facial features.
The images from the reporter and terror suspect scored a likeness of 72 percent, below the mid-80s that officials consider a solid hit.
Facial-recognition experts believe the technology has improved drastically since 2002, when extremely high failure rates led authorities to scrap a program planned for the entrances to the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.
Lamm said investigators reviewing the galleries can almost always find the right photo, using a combination of the computer and the naked eye.
Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, questioned whether the facial-recognition systems that were pushed after the Sept. 11 attacks are accurate or even worthwhile.
"We don't have good photos of terrorists," Rotenberg said. "Most of the facial-recognition systems today are built on state DMV records because that's where the good photos are. It's not where the terrorists are."
DNA exonerates a second Forsyth Inmate
While Joseph Abbitt grew older in prison, forensic science grew more sophisticated, enough to prove the truth he'd been telling since 1991.
Abbitt walked out of jail Wednesday, 14 years after a jury found that he raped two teenage sisters in the early morning darkness as they dressed for school. He swore his innocence from the day police found him, which, at the time, sounded like hot air from a man who had seen plenty of trouble on the streets of Winston-Salem.
On Wednesday, new DNA tests on long-kept evidence proved that an unidentified man had violated the girls.
"We're here today not because of any wrongdoing by any one person," David Hall, a Forsyth County assistant district attorney, told the judge. "We're here because of the inexact science long ago. Science has marched on over the years."
Abbitt is the seventh man in North Carolina exonerated by DNA evidence years after being sentenced. Nationally, he joins 241 men exonerated by more sophisticated testing of DNA; three quarters of them, like Abbitt, had been wrongly identified by witnesses. An untold number of others never had the chance to prove their innocence because evidence from the crime was destroyed long before the state passed laws requiring that the pieces be kept forever.
As these things go, Abbitt, 49, was lucky. He was convicted in Forsyth County, where the exoneration of another man had weighed on the conscience of the district attorney.
Darryl Hunt was freed in 2003 after serving 18 years for the rape and murder of a Winston-Salem woman. His innocence was a sucker punch for Forsyth County District Attorney Tom Keith.
"We did not want another Darryl Hunt case," Keith said. "I couldn't take it."
Keith wanted to sleep through the night not wondering whether his office had banished other innocent men to prison. In 2005, his office compiled a list of every suspect from Forsyth County in prison -- 2,247 total. Keith mailed each a letter, advising the inmates that if they thought a new DNA test would help prove a claim of innocence, he'd make the test happen.
Only 150 inmates took him up on the offer. Of those, 80 were reviewed by the local bar association and students at Wake Forest University Law School, who looked for cases that had evidence that could be tested. Only Abbitt's case resulted in exoneration.
Abbitt appealed directly to the N.C. Center for Actual Innocence, a nonprofit group dedicated to helping prisoners who believe they were wrongly convicted. In 2008, Christine Mumma, the center's director, solicited the help of Keith and the Winston-Salem police department to look for any shred of evidence remaining in Abbitt's case.
In one of the department's six warehouses, Winston-Salem Capt. David Clayton hit pay dirt: the girls' two rape kit exams, undisturbed since the day the state lab sent them back with a report saying it couldn't get a positive read. Clayton immediately drove them to a state lab for more testing. The kits were eventually sent to a private lab for more sophisticated work.
A logical suspect
In 1995, Abbitt's conviction made sense. He'd been in trouble with the law before; he had even been charged in another sex crime years before. The girls, 15 and 13 at the time of the crime, knew him, and said, with certainty, that he was the man who snuck into their house and raped them at knife-point. They saw paint on his shoes and pant-legs; Abbitt had been working as a painter.
Abbitt always swore his innocence. His family believed him and never thought a jury would convict him.
"We all knew he didn't do it," his brother Thurmond Abbitt said Wednesday. "It hurt to watch that fall upon him."
A hulking man in a beige dress shirt and glasses, Joseph Abbitt wept as a judge granted his freedom. Abbitt hung his head and shook with sobs; Mumma rubbed his arm.
The judge offered an apology. Abbitt nodded.
When Abbitt finally spoke, he did not rant against the system that wronged him. Instead, he focused on the girls violated by someone years before.
"I pray for those two young victims every day," Abbitt told a judge. "I hope they catch the one who did this because these two young girls are still the victims of this awful crime."
Keith plans to do that. On Wednesday, a judge signed an order allowing $5,000 to pay for more DNA tests at a private lab, where they hope to decipher the signature of the real rapist.
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Sources: MSNBC, FBI, McClatchy Newspapers, News & Observer, Winston-Salem Journal, Innocence Project, Youtube, Google Maps
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