Advertisement More wrongful convictions feared as state crime lab review underway George Perrot released from prison Wednesday Share Shares Copy Link Copy

Massachusetts State Police have embarked on a review of the same problematic forensic method that led to George Perrot's release from prison Wednesday after spending almost all of the last 30 years in prison for a crime a judge said he almost certainly didn't commit.Perrot's path to freedom began when the FBI in 2014 said their own analyst made mistakes over microscopic hair analysis used to tie him to the crime scene. It was a mistake that an ongoing FBI review has found was repeated hundreds of times in cases across the country.Download the WCVB appBut the FBI trained state crime lab analysts all over the country in the same way, and defense lawyers fear these state crime labs may have helped wrongfully convict people all over the country.Lisa Kavanaugh, director of the Committee for Public Counsel Services' Innocence Program, is among those who fear that state crime analysts committed the same mistake as the FBI's."Are there more George Perrot's locked up in Massachusetts because of bad science about hair analysis?" 5 Investigates' Karen Anderson asked her."Absolutely," Kavanaugh replied. "The findings of the FBI's national audit made clear that errors were rampant. And analysts were again and again... exceeding the limits of science and overstating the certainty. And I think there is no reason to think state analysts were any better given what we know about how they are trained."Kavanaugh was also part of Perrot's legal team, along with the New York-based Innocence Project and attorneys from Ropes & Gray. Attorneys from that firm have pledged to work with defendants identified by the state hair review.The review is being done by the Massachusetts State Police crime lab on cases from 1980 to 2000, when DNA testing became more prevalent. So far more than 4,000 cases have been reviewed, which represents cases from 1980 through a portion of 1982, according to Massachusetts State Police.The FBI is also trying to find out what years it trained Massachusetts analysts, according to Kavanaugh.State police couldn't say how many, if any, cases they have identified as being potentially problematic.But who would be able to see those findings is a source of some concern among defense lawyers. The State Police can't turn over their findings to defense lawyers without an agreement from prosecutors, and so far only the office of Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan has agreed to share the review."My hope is that other district attorneys will see this as an important opportunity to find and possibly correct unjust convictions," Kavanaugh said.David Capeless, the DA in Berkshire County who is president of the Massachusetts District Attorney's Association, said details have yet to be worked out."Any prosecutor would want to find out about any case in which an innocent person was convicted," he said. "That's the last thing we want to happen and the first thing we want to find out about."A spokesperson for Suffolk County District Attorney Dan Conley says Suffolk prosecutors have reviewed their files for cases built on hair analysis and testimony.Only one case has been found so far, a 1983 rape and murder where the defendant made a confession "consistent with the evidence and injuries at the scene."