Lawsuits Claim Texas Dog Scent Lineups Identified the Wrong People
Three men identified as suspects in Texas dog-scent lineups have filed a lawsuit saying the technique sent them to jail for crimes they didn’t commit.
The technique uses dogs to pick suspects out of a lineup based on a link between their smell and crime-scene evidence. Scent lineups have been used in several states, including Alaska, Florida, New York and Texas, the New York Times reports. Critics say the technique can go awry because of cross-contamination or dogs responding to unconscious signals by handlers or detectives.
Lawyer Jeff Blackburn, general counsel for the Innocence Project of Texas, represents the three plaintiffs in the new lawsuit, the Houston Chronicle reports. A report by his group calls scent lineups “junk science.”
The suit names the dog handler, Sheriff’s Deputy Keith Pikett of Fort Bend County. Two of the plaintiffs—Cedric Johnson and Curvis Bickham—were charged with a triple murder and jailed for 16 months and eight months respectively, until another man confessed to the killings. They were supposedly linked to the crime from a charred gas can found at the scene, according to the Chronicle.
Bickham told the New York Times there was no way he could have participated in the murders, since he is partially blind and suffers from bone spurs and diabetes. He sold his cars to hire lawyers and is struggling to get his barbecue stand running again. “I lost everything,” Bickham told the Times, because of “a nothing case.”
The third plaintiff, Ronald Curtis, was jailed after being accused of a string of burglaries. Charges were dropped when store videos later showed he did not resemble the burglar. The dog handler “is a fraud—there needs to be a federal investigation,” Curtis told the Chronicle.
Two other men have filed previous suits against Pikett, whose dogs were used in thousands of Texas cases, according to the Chronicle.
