Are you seriously asserting there are no experienced homicide detectives in the FBI or is this just worded awkwardly?
I don't like to have a definite opinion about the FBI because, frankly, I don't know enough about it. I was surprised to read that Hoover of the FBI used to say that the Mafia didn't exist. Some FBI agents seem to have done some excellent undercover work in the past, and they have even come down on the side of integrity.
Corruption does exist in the police. Their main fault is perjury. What one policeman says is probably true, what two policemen say may be true, but what three policemen say is never true.
I get the impression that the FBI are mostly political intelligence agents, rather like the NSA, and yet they still try to take all the glory of brilliant detection of homicides and terrorism when really they had nothing to do with it. This is so as to attract massive funds from Congress for computer systems which don't include sexual offenses.
I remember reading a book from the public library once in which an FBI man suggested that there should be more professional criminal investigators in the FBI. I remember also reading a quote by a New York homicide detective in which he said FBI murder profiling was a scam. The FBI seem to be able to shoot anybody dead with legal impunity.
Judge Carnes was quite critical of the FBI police work in the Ramsey case. I think the FBI work for the Warren Commission with regard to the death of President Kennedy was misleading.
In the UK many years ago if there was a difficult murder in a remote location, or colony, then a couple of specialist and experienced detectives from the old Scotland Yard Murder Squad would be called in to investigate. Those cases were not always solved. I don't know the names of any genius FBI homicide detectives, but if there were any they were not on the MacDonald case.
There is an interesting article on the internet about forensics in murder cases called crime labs in crisis: Shoddy Forensics used to secure convictions, which I think applies to the FBI lab and the MacDonald case:
"Crime Labs in Crisis: Shoddy Forensics Used to Secure Convictions
by Matt Clarke
To millions of people whose knowledge of crime labs comes from television shows such as CSI, Bones, Crossing Jordan and the venerable Quincy M.E., the forensic experts who work at such labs seem to be infallible scientists who use validated scientific techniques to follow the evidence to the truth, regardless of where it leads. Sadly, that is far from accurate.
“The CSI effect has caused jurors to expect crime lab results far beyond the capacity of forensic science,” wrote Jim Fisher, a former FBI agent and retired criminalistics professor who taught forensic science at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, in his 2008 book titled Forensics Under Fire: Are Bad Science and Dueling Experts Corrupting Criminal Justice?
Fisher notes that problems in forensics “have kept scientific crime detection from living up to its full potential.” His conclusion is that “bad science, misadventures of forensic experts [and] human error” exemplify “the inability of our 21st century judicial system to properly differentiate between valid research and junk science.”
Crime lab workers are not necessarily scientists. In fact, sometimes only a high school diploma is required for employment as a forensic technician or arson investigator. Nor are lab examiners and their supervisors always the unbiased investigators portrayed on TV; in fact, many crime labs are run by or affiliated with police departments, which have a vested interest in clearing unsolved crimes and securing convictions.
Police often share their suspicions regarding suspects with lab workers before forensic examinations are performed. This has been shown to prejudice lab personnel in areas as diverse as fingerprint examination and chemical testing for accelerants in arson investigations. Further, some lab examiners feel they are part of the prosecution team, helping the police and prosecutors convict suspects regardless of the results of forensic testing. In such cases, forensic experts and other lab personnel may lie about test results, be misleading about the reliability of their methods, and/or cover up test outcomes when they are beneficial to the defendant.
Some forensic examiners “dry-lab” their tests, writing down results for tests they never performed. They may be motivated by understaffing and excessive workloads, a belief that tests required by lab protocols are unnecessary, an inability to perform the tests due to a lack of training, education and experience, or even the belief that the police have already arrested the right person, so evidence testing would be superfluous.
Then there are the forensic “experts” who lie about their academic credentials or accreditation, either on their résumés or in perjurious testimony. They initially may have been motivated to pad their résumé to secure employment, but might also seek to discourage defense attorneys from questioning their test results and conclusions by presenting overwhelming evidence of expertise they do not actually possess. This often works. Giving a bite of truth to the old adage that lawyers went to law school because they couldn’t do math, few judges, prosecutors or defense attorneys can keep up with complicated developments in the field of forensic science."
