Law enforcement has relied on the use of dog’s smelling abilities to catch criminals for centuries. Dogs have been useful in smelling out bombs, drugs, even hidden persons. Even the FBI has said that the use of scent dogs can be an effective tool in establishing a connection to crime. Unfortunately, not all crime detection techniques involving dogs are accurate and one man wants to help clear the air about the questionable method of scent lineups that left him in jail for eight months on charges that were dropped when the real criminal confessed.
Curvis Bickham was connected to a homicide based on a scent lineup, where a dog was provided with scents from the crime scene and then walked by a series of containers holding swabbed samples of scents from the suspect and other persons not accused of the crime. If the dog finds a match, it barks or otherwise signals the handler to the container that matches the scent from the crime.
Critics of scent lineups say that the chances of cross contamination are very high in these types of tests, they also claim that the tests are usually not controlled very well. Many states will not allow scent lineups to be entered into evidence, but Texas is not one of those states.
The specific trainer of the dog in Mr. Bickham’s case, Deputy Keith A. Pikett, is now under fire and the subject of around six lawsuits. One of the attorneys filing suit against the trainer called him a “charlatan.” In many of these cases, the scent lineup served as the primary evidence, even when contradictory evidence readily pointed to the suspect’s innocence.
In Mr. Bickham’s case, he and his Houston criminal lawyer found the murder charges to be outrageous, as he suffers from bone spurs, diabetes and partial blindness. The main evidence linking him to the crime was the crime scent lineup conducted by Deputy Pikett. Since his arrest, Bickham lost his home and was forced to sell his car to afford his defense attorney. “I lost everything,” Mr. Bickham said, because of “a nothing case.”
To read more about these cases, see the article in the New York Times. Image Via ann-dabney.
Tags: crimes, dogs, evidence, junk science, police, scent lineups