Comment on Retired FBI expert says he thinks police erroneously zeroed in on Sanborn as suspect

A retired FBI agent acting as expert witness for Anthony H. Sanborn Jr. testified Monday that he believes the police who investigated the murder of Jessica L. Briggs in 1989 suffered from tunnel vision and confirmation bias –– errors that led them back to Sanborn as the prime suspect. But some avenues of inquiry by Sanborn’s attorney, Amy Fairfield, were shut off from exploration by the state’s objections, when prosecutors argued that if a topic was not previously address in a written report by the expert, then he should not be able to testify about it on the witness stand. Sanborn, who was convicted in 1992 of the murder of 16-year-old Briggs, has been seeking to clear his name, claiming police investigators were guilty of misconduct and perjury during the investigation and trial. The court heard testimony from Gregg McCrary, who retired from the FBI in 1995 after 26 years at the bureau, including his final assignment at the behavioral science unit, where he performed research, taught FBI agents and police officers around the country, and assisted local agencies from around the country with active investigations into serious crimes. McCrary has also written about investigative failures, a field that began in 1980s after DNA evidence was used to win the exonerations of convicted people across the country, to determine how and why police help convict the wrong person, and how departments can work to avoid future mistakes. McCrary said he reviewed a portion of the documents related to the Briggs investigation, and said investigators identified Sanborn as a suspect early in the investigation. “Other suspects were looked at, but not investigated thoroughly, at least the ones I’ve seen,” said McCrary, who examined some of the case files involved in the Sanborn case.