🚀 go-pugleaf

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59014-2004May26.html

The FBI has graciously, and properly, apologized to Oregon lawyer Brandon 
Mayfield. Mr. Mayfield, a convert to Islam, was detained for two weeks as a 
material witness in connection with the March 11 Madrid bombings. He was 
released and exonerated when the FBI conceded that a fingerprint analysis 
linking him to a bag of detonators found by Spanish authorities was wrong.

In complex investigations, mistakes happen, and in this case not only the 
FBI erred. Court records released this week indicate that a court-appointed 
fingerprint expert paid for by the defense concurred with the bureau's 
judgment that Mr. Mayfield's prints matched the one on the bag. It also is 
clear that the FBI did not initially take seriously enough the reservations 
of Spanish police about its analysis. It has announced that it is 
reexamining its procedures -- as it should.

But neither the bureau's apology nor its self-examination speak to the 
fundamental issue of how the government is using the material-witness law. 
Mr. Mayfield was never charged with a crime, nor would any reasonable 
prosecutor have brought charges based on what the government knew -- or 
thought it knew -- about him. Rather, like many people since Sept. 11, 
2001, he was held under a law that permits the detention, under court 
supervision, of people with evidence relevant to a court proceeding or 
grand jury inquiry who might flee if left at large. The law is not new, but 
its aggressive use at the investigative stage of high-profile cases is. In 
some instances, the Justice Department's use of it has smacked of 
preventive detention. The secrecy surrounding these cases makes a thorough 
assessment impossible. In Mr. Mayfield's case, the government's use of the 
law allowed the detention and public smearing of a man against whom the 
government was not prepared to make a case and whom it now concedes to be 
innocent.