The Rights of the People by David K. Shipler

Author:David K. Shipler [Shipler, David K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-59550-8
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-04-19T04:00:00+00:00

As erroneous as it was, the fingerprint identification became indisputable fact in the agents’ minds, the fulcrum of their analysis. Everything pivoted on that error. The overwhelming lack of evidence from the extensive surveillance and searches seemed to carry no weight—and for understandable reason, according to Mayfield’s lawyers. The lab had already bet its reputation on the supposed match, insisting after repeated queries that it was a “100% identification.”

Not only professionals’ careers but future confidence in the fingerprinting technique itself were at stake. So by the climax of the case, his lawyers wrote in a brief, “The FBI was willing to subject Mr. Mayfield and his family to his public branding as a mass murderer, and an international terrorist, and subject Mr. Mayfield to the ultimate penalty of death, in order to save their own jobs, the reputation of the FBI, and in order to secure the admissibility of the alleged science of fingerprint [analysis] in the courts.”41 In the end, he was just barely saved by the solid competence and expertise of the Spanish National Police. It is frightening to think what might have happened to him if there had been no other law enforcement agency to contradict the FBI.

FISA warrants have time limits of ninety days, and although judges can extend them, they cannot be used indefinitely. The FBI figured that by the end of May it would turn off the surveillance, analyze the results thoroughly, and then attempt to interview Mayfield in June to see what he knew about the Madrid bombings. Somewhere along the line, though, Mayfield stopped being a “cool customer” and started getting suspicious.

He had no inkling of the fantastic web of conjecture being spun by the FBI, of course, but he started checking to see if he was being followed. He “began an attempt to make surveillance, as apparent from his driving,” one FBI document reported. “He engaged in pulling into driveways and cul-de-sacs, only to quickly turn around. He would drive into parking lots, sit for a few moments, and then pull out. He circled his residence several times and drove slowly. When he eventually pulled into the driveway, he sat in the car for an extended period.”42 Mayfield confirmed this for me, saying that he “sometimes took various routes to verify the presence of the surveillance and watched for unusual vehicles out front or across the street from our house.”

The FBI began to get nervous that he might flee or destroy some imagined evidence. The anxiety was compounded when leaks, possibly from Interpol, started appearing in the press that an American’s fingerprint had been discovered in the Madrid case.

The timetable was then accelerated. The FBI applied for ordinary criminal search warrants of Mayfield’s home and office, and, because there was “not enough evidence to arrest him on a criminal charge,” an FBI official in Portland conceded,43 a warrant was issued to seize him as a “material witness.”

Intending to interview him, agents went to his office May 6 armed with the arrest warrant in case he wouldn’t cooperate.

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