How Much Is That Doggy In The Window?
(Richmond • Fort Bend County)
Nice.
Today the New York Times gives Richmond, Texas, its 15 minutes of fame. And it looks like our little town now will be known far and wide as the home of the fabricated bloodhound scent lineup:
In several of the cases that were based on Deputy Pikett’s dogs, however, the scent lineups appear to have provided the primary evidence, even when contradictory evidence was readily available. Mr. Bickham spent eight months in jail after being identified in a scent lineup by Deputy Pikett’s dogs, until another man confessed to the killings. In an interview, Mr. Bickham scoffed at the accusation that he had taken part in three murders, noting that he has been hobbled by bone spurs and diabetes and is partially blind.Ronald Curtis, another Houston man jailed on the basis of Deputy Pikett’s dogs, was released from jail nine months after being accused of a string of burglaries. Store videos showed that the burglar did not resemble him. “Nobody was listening,” Mr. Curtis said.
Both he and Mr. Bickham are filing civil lawsuits over their treatment in federal court on Wednesday.
It won’t be the first time.
Over the past two years, I’ve reported on lawsuits filed in Victoria against dog handler Keith Pikett and Fort Bend County – here, and here, and here and here.
In one of those cases, law enforcement records allegedly show Pikett’s dogs followed the scent of a murder suspect (a former police captain later proved innocent when someone else confessed to the crime) “while supposedly riding in a car over 5.5 miles of roadway from the murder scene to his home.”
Pickett isn’t talking to the Times or anyone else about these cases now, but last year the bloodhound handler told me trained dogs such as his “do that all the time.”
In fact, Pikett said at the time that his dogs were working a capital murder case in Harris County “where we trailed a car for 38 miles – and we’ve already got two convictions.”
In the other Victoria case, police arrested a 42-year-old man and threw him in jail on charges of robbery and sexual assault, based on a scent lineup using Pikett’s dogs. DNA evidence later proved they had the wrong guy.
A spokesperson for The Innocence Project thinks there are other “wrong guys” out there still behind bars. This morning he told the Times, “Our estimate right now is we’ve got 15 to 20 people who are in prison right now based on virtually nothing but Pikett’s testimony. That’s a big problem.”
I am not a dog expert and continue to withhold judgment of Pikett’s performance or that of his dogs – although it has to be said that at this point, with this many innocent people surfacing after having been picked out in scent lineups, it doesn’t look good.
But I am curious right now about how much, in County Attorney’s Office man-hours and related legal costs, Fort Bend County is paying to defend Pikett in these cases, and how long they’re going to continue that defense.
→ B.Dunn, Nov 04, 2009, 04 10 am
