Not My Fingerprint
HISTORY This Week
The HISTORY® Channel | Back Pocket Studios
4.5 • 4.2K Ratings
🗓️ 17 May 2021
⏱️ 29 minutes
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Summary
May 20, 2004. A lawyer named Brandon Mayfield walks out of a Portland, Oregon courtroom a free man. About two weeks earlier, Mayfield was arrested by the FBI because they thought they had his fingerprint on a key piece of evidence in the investigation of a terrorist train bombing in Madrid, Spain earlier that year. But by this afternoon in May, that key evidence has completely fallen apart. Today: a case of mistaken identity. Why did the FBI arrest the wrong man? And how did this case change forensic science for good?
Thank you to our guests, Professor Simon Cole from UC Irvine, Steven Wax, author of Kafka Comes to America: Fighting for Justice in the War on Terror - A Public Defender's Inside Account, and Brandon Mayfield.
Thank you also to Judge Jones and former FBI agent Robert Jordan for speaking with us.
If you're interested in reading the Inspector General's Report cited, you can find it here: https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/archive/special/s0601/PDF_list.htm
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The History Channel, original podcast. |
| 0:04.6 | History this week, May 20, 2004. |
| 0:09.0 | I'm Sally Helm. |
| 0:10.2 | Around 3pm, Brandon Mayfield walks out of a courtroom in Portland, Oregon. |
| 0:19.3 | He's a lawyer, so this is something he's done plenty of times before. |
| 0:23.2 | But today is different. |
| 0:26.2 | About two weeks earlier, Mayfield was arrested by the FBI because they thought they had |
| 0:32.5 | his fingerprint on a key piece of evidence in a terrorism investigation. |
| 0:38.0 | Back in March, almost 200 people were killed in a series of train bombings in Madrid. |
| 0:46.4 | Fingerprint |
| 0:47.4 | That might sound to you like damning evidence that Mayfield was involved in this attack. |
| 0:52.4 | By this afternoon in May, that key evidence has fallen apart. |
| 0:57.6 | The Spanish authorities now say that the fingerprint belongs to someone else. |
| 1:03.6 | And so, after sitting in a detention center for about two weeks, Mayfield is free. |
| 1:09.9 | Someone brings his civilian clothes to the courtroom, slacks, belts, a blue button |
| 1:13.8 | down shirt. |
| 1:14.8 | He gets to walk out the regular courtroom door, down the public elevator, and into the |
| 1:18.9 | building's foyer, where sunlight is streaming in from the street. |
| 1:23.1 | On the steps, Mayfield is greeted by his family, who have been desperately trying to get him |
| 1:27.8 | released, telling anyone who will listen that Mayfield's fingerprint can't be on that |
| 1:31.8 | piece of evidence. |
| 1:32.8 | He hasn't even been out of the country in the past decade. |
... |
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