In 1984, a Montana court sentenced Bernard Pease to 110 years in prison for the murder of Maria Philbrick, a 23-year-old found dead in a Billings alley the previous year. The state’s case against Pease, whose family owned a nearby store, relied on since-debunked science such as microscopic hair analysis, which examines the color, thickness and texture of hair strands to find a match.
The practice has been discredited for years, with the FBI announcing in 2015 that 90 percent of its cases involving microscopic hair analysis were erroneous. This is just one reason the Montana Innocence Project stepped in seven years ago to help Pease gain justice. In early 2023, MTIP played a key role in winning his release from prison, after nearly four decades.
Now a Billings court is set to review the conviction and decide whether Pease deserves legal relief. The judge has requested findings and conclusions reports from MTIP and the state by Jan. 16. Boulder resident Brady Minow Smith, MTIP’s legal director, explained the key elements of the case, the focus of her work so far, and the possibility of Pease’s exoneration.
