Speaker 1: If you're gonna place your left hand on the Bible
Speaker 1: and raise your right hand, and please repeat after me,
Speaker 1: I do solemnly swear you haven't titled action. Find the
Speaker 1: defendant guilty of the prime. It makes no sense, it
Speaker 1: doesn't fit. If it doesn't fit, you must equit. We
Speaker 1: all took the same of of office. We're all bound
Speaker 1: by that common commitment to support and defend the Constitution,
Speaker 1: to bear true faith in allegiance to the same that
Speaker 1: you faithfully discharge the duties of our office. Do you
Speaker 1: solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony you're about to
Speaker 1: give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
Speaker 1: but the truth. From Tenderfoot TV and I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: this is sworn. I'm your host, Philip Holloway. You know
Speaker 1: the term the c S I fact he changed everything.
Speaker 1: Everybody believed that what you saw on TV was for real.
Speaker 1: You don't use forty two lasers of the crime scene
Speaker 1: leasures cost about five. So that was preposterous, right, and
Speaker 1: nothing gets done today n c S. Another show, My
Speaker 1: wife watches out that a crow pecks out someone's hypohol
Speaker 1: and then carries it off. And when they found the eyeball.
Speaker 1: They found a fingerprint on the eyeball. Preposterous at best.
Speaker 1: It's not like that. See, they get lost in the
Speaker 1: fact that it was just TV show. They started having
Speaker 1: to explain to the juries, do you believe things that
Speaker 1: you see? Oh yeah, if it's on TV, it's it's no,
Speaker 1: that's not how it is. M That was Chris Robinson,
Speaker 1: a forensic consultant I've worked with on many of my cases.
Speaker 1: In this episode, we're going to look at that c
Speaker 1: s I effect he was talking about, and we're going
Speaker 1: to hear the story of another man who was locked
Speaker 1: up for twenty three years in a case that involved
Speaker 1: police corruption and junk science. Before we hear about Bill,
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk with my colleague, Ashley Merchant. She's
Speaker 1: a lawyer I've worked with many times in the past,
Speaker 1: and I know that she's had to educate herself on
Speaker 1: forensic science, particularly bad forensic science, and how it's used
Speaker 1: in our legal system. Junk science is very difficult to
Speaker 1: deal with when the government offers something and they put
Speaker 1: a fancy name on it, like the you know, FBI
Speaker 1: or the crime Lab, and you know, they bring in
Speaker 1: all these these fancy acronyms and stuff juries just eat
Speaker 1: it up hook line and saying are a lot of
Speaker 1: defense attorneys aren't very good at shedding light on the
Speaker 1: junkiness factor of it, because you know, we're lawyers. Like
Speaker 1: I've never shot a gun. You know, I don't understand ballistics,
Speaker 1: but I had to go learn it. How to go
Speaker 1: learn blood spatter, how to go learn DNA, how to
Speaker 1: learn about fingerprints. I had a case probably fifteen years
Speaker 1: ago with a handwriting expert, and then you know, a
Speaker 1: couple of years later, boom, handwriting experts are it's junk
Speaker 1: science and it's not admissible. We have this evidence that
Speaker 1: the state presents handwriting for example, blood spatter for example,
Speaker 1: and we're arguing, as defense lawyers, this is crazy. This
Speaker 1: is a junk you know. And then finally, years down
Speaker 1: the road, you get exoneration and the exonerations are linked
Speaker 1: to this junk science, and finally, retrospectively the government saying, oh,
Speaker 1: you know what, you're right, that handwriting stuff was, that
Speaker 1: was crazy, but the people are still in jail. As
Speaker 1: defense lawyers, I think we don't challenge it enough. I
Speaker 1: think that we don't question already enough because it's science
Speaker 1: we believe that the government is doing the right thing
Speaker 1: and doing their job, which to me as a defense lawyer,
Speaker 1: scary because if I don't question the blood spatter, why
Speaker 1: would I expect the jury to question the bloods better.
Speaker 1: So you see a lot of times in trials where
Speaker 1: the defense lawyer has no question for the blood spatter expert.
Speaker 1: It's like they just rubber stamp this stuff just because
Speaker 1: some scientists in a lab says that it is. They
Speaker 1: don't really question it, and juries don't question it, and
Speaker 1: defense lawyers don't question it. And I understand why because
Speaker 1: we're Hamstrong. We're not scientists. We're not given funding for experts.
Speaker 1: I mean, half the time we're still trying to get paid,
Speaker 1: you know, let alone asking our clients family for ten
Speaker 1: grand for an expert to fly in who's got a
Speaker 1: pH d and d n A. They barely have the
Speaker 1: money for their defense. We don't challenge that evidence, but
Speaker 1: I think we need to. Jurors want actual physical touch evidence,
Speaker 1: evidence they can put their hands on, they can see.
Speaker 1: You see a huge pull for the prosecution and to
Speaker 1: get this type of science, you know, junk science, whatever
Speaker 1: it is, to try and admit that it's fallible because
Speaker 1: it's a scientist determining if it's a fingerprint match, you know,
Speaker 1: where the next scientists might not determine it's a fingerprint match.
Speaker 1: We do have standards. We do have certain standards that
Speaker 1: have to be met. We have Fry and Dowberd. Those
Speaker 1: are the standards in federal court. Anytime you're gonna admit
Speaker 1: a certain type of evidence, it's got to meet a
Speaker 1: certain level of scientific or reliability. One of those things
Speaker 1: that it has to be subject to peer review. Other
Speaker 1: scientists have to be able to go and check your work.
Speaker 1: That's a huge one. In state court in Georgia, for example,
Speaker 1: we have a standard called Harper standard, which is lower.
Speaker 1: It's ironic to me and I always use my husband
Speaker 1: as an example. He was a civil litigator before he
Speaker 1: joined my law firm, and now he does criminal difference
Speaker 1: with me. He did, you know, a lot of these
Speaker 1: massive litigations that had all these fancy scientists and things.
Speaker 1: He did as Best Jos litigation, a lot of it.
Speaker 1: When he came on as criminal defense, He's like, when
Speaker 1: you're taking someone's life, it's a lower standard for admitting evidence.
Speaker 1: It's harder to get evidence in there's higher standard of
Speaker 1: reliability to get evidence in a civil case we're you're
Speaker 1: shooting over money than it is in a criminal case
Speaker 1: where someone can go to jail. It's insane people, I mean,
Speaker 1: they just they want guilty people to be locked up.
Speaker 1: People are scared of letting guilty people out. And a
Speaker 1: lot of times the state argues, need, we can't meet
Speaker 1: the Fried standard, it can't be verified, but we need
Speaker 1: this evidence. I mean, I hear that argument all the
Speaker 1: time from the state, but I really need this evidence,
Speaker 1: so the judge lets it in. I think that you
Speaker 1: should have a higher standard when you're dealing with people's
Speaker 1: lives first, as you're dealing with people's money. Just makes
Speaker 1: common sense to me. One man who had that c
Speaker 1: s I effect work against him is our next Exonoye
Speaker 1: Bill Richards. Our system in California here is probably one
Speaker 1: of the biggest prison systems in the world. We have
Speaker 1: more people in prison here than most countries. It's hell
Speaker 1: on every level, especially for somebody who live normal life
Speaker 1: and working man. You know, honest person. I mean, my
Speaker 1: criminal career consisted of a couple of traffic tickets spread
Speaker 1: over twenty years of speeding on the freeway. But everything
Speaker 1: is terrible, and Menico was terrible. Now in my late
Speaker 1: sixties with advanced cancer because they didn't treat me in prison,
Speaker 1: had years I knew I had it, didn't even tell me,
Speaker 1: and now it's too late. I mean, I can't think
Speaker 1: of anything that isn't terrible. I don't know how to
Speaker 1: describe it. I could go on for a week and
Speaker 1: never scratched the surface. It is so abnormal for human
Speaker 1: being to put under those conditions. My name is William Richards.
Speaker 1: I'm an exnerie. I served twenty three years for rum.
Speaker 1: I didn't commit, and I have been out for a
Speaker 1: post of three now at my age and just trying
Speaker 1: to live on my retirement and put a life together.
Speaker 1: I came home and I found my wife dead. She
Speaker 1: had been murdered. I called the police three times, actually
Speaker 1: because I was a little bit upset, as you can imagine,
Speaker 1: and they would take a long time getting there. First
Speaker 1: top on the crime scene was just a patrolman. Everything
Speaker 1: man said was proven to be all I not only
Speaker 1: that night, but everything he says any time. He's a
Speaker 1: strange felt But he turned around in the sidewalk. He's
Speaker 1: Columbo he's got the guy right here. He said, my
Speaker 1: actions are strange. Well, as you come home and find
Speaker 1: your wife killed like I did, what are your actions
Speaker 1: supposed to be? So he decided I was guilty, he
Speaker 1: told the detective. They decided that by the time they
Speaker 1: got to the crime scene, they never investigated, They never
Speaker 1: collected DNA fingerprints or anything from the crime scene, and
Speaker 1: just proceeded to start a case against me. Every top
Speaker 1: understand lied a sign of evidence, destroyed exculpatory evidence when
Speaker 1: the process of digging it up now for civil actions.
Speaker 1: But they just set on a course to get the
Speaker 1: easy suspects, and that was it. I was just profiled,
Speaker 1: and the husband is always guilty. At the time she died,
Speaker 1: that were forty six miles away in another city, in
Speaker 1: another county, and I was in a building with thirty people.
Speaker 1: It was a secure bullet the traffic for troll and
Speaker 1: was allowed to testify the time at death based on
Speaker 1: his vast experience with their bodies, which of course we've
Speaker 1: now proven his alfuls. Real doctors said their injuries on
Speaker 1: my wife as are two hours old prior to death,
Speaker 1: determined she had been dead for several hours. Who I
Speaker 1: got home. Police have total control over the cranching and
Speaker 1: in the corners investigator whose job the crime scene is
Speaker 1: the body, did not have an opportunity to examine the
Speaker 1: body and collect the information that would have made it
Speaker 1: easy to determine time of death. The two doctors who
Speaker 1: did look at the case independently for the defense had
Speaker 1: to look at poor feel stuff, you know, things like
Speaker 1: photographs of injuries and said, well, injuries over two hours
Speaker 1: prior to death, But they didn't get the body temperatures
Speaker 1: and things like that that would probably be taking I
Speaker 1: think it's a huge mistake for the police in Bill's
Speaker 1: case to have handled the crime scene the way they did,
Speaker 1: But I also know that as a defense lawyer, I
Speaker 1: have to build a case off of reports and photographs
Speaker 1: long after the alleged crime has been committed. I spoke
Speaker 1: with Chris Robinson, the forensic consultant you heard at the
Speaker 1: beginning of the episode, about what kinds of things he
Speaker 1: looks at in the files that he gets and the
Speaker 1: reliability of the forensics that he works with. My name
Speaker 1: is Christopher Robbins, and I'm a forensic consultant. I generally
Speaker 1: examine reports, evidence, documents, photographs, and I report my findings
Speaker 1: back to the attorneys who have hired me. I'm certified
Speaker 1: there as of crime scene reconstruction, ballistics and fires analysis,
Speaker 1: gunshot wounds, blood spatter analysis, shooting reconstruction. See the beautiful
Speaker 1: thing with what I do? Now, they give me the
Speaker 1: entire case file and they say, read this, here's the statements.
Speaker 1: Tell us is our client li? Is he telling the truth?
Speaker 1: Do you think it's validated by what you see? And
Speaker 1: then I'll report that I'm working a case where an
Speaker 1: individual supposedly shot at his mother down the hallway, and
Speaker 1: she's given all these statements. She said she heard the
Speaker 1: bullet go by your ear. No, you didn't hear the
Speaker 1: bullet go by your hear because it's a forty five,
Speaker 1: so it's not breaking the sound beard. And then the
Speaker 1: holes in the wall are not lined up with her heads.
Speaker 1: I'm saying, you didn't hear the bullet go by your head.
Speaker 1: The fast of the bullet, the sound way just begin
Speaker 1: to spread out perpendicular to the bullet as it moves
Speaker 1: through the air. A slower bullet, they moved with the bullets,
Speaker 1: so the bullet had to almost touch your leg being
Speaker 1: you feel it. Now you hear the concussion from the gun.
Speaker 1: You know you're jerking is a hundred sixty death was
Speaker 1: slow like a chainsaw, an airliner right beside your head. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm already thinking, ma'am, I don't like your story because
Speaker 1: you're telling me what you believe you heard. And that's fine.
Speaker 1: I'm not calling your liar. I'm just saying, that's why
Speaker 1: I like the evidence. The evidence doesn't lie. It's simple.
Speaker 1: When you look at the evidence, you pull trajectory rides
Speaker 1: through the holes of the shot, you triangulate back the
Speaker 1: path of the bullets, how the gun injects, the cartridge cases,
Speaker 1: and when you put all these things together, I'm giving
Speaker 1: the statement and I'm saying, no, ma'am, see, it can't
Speaker 1: happen this way because this is the evidence. One of
Speaker 1: the things Amelia brought up in the last episode was
Speaker 1: how for six science needs to change and evolve with
Speaker 1: new technology. Blood spatter is very expeclative. You have three
Speaker 1: or four people look at the same blood spatter and
Speaker 1: they'll give you a different variation of what they see.
Speaker 1: You have to be careful because at a crime scene
Speaker 1: where there's massive amounts of blood spatter, you have transverse things,
Speaker 1: you have cast off stains. You have high velocity meaning velocity,
Speaker 1: low velocity which you might call medium, I might looking good.
Speaker 1: I think it's more like a low velocity. I do
Speaker 1: get into that a lot where they'll call in their
Speaker 1: expert and I'll go up against them, and it's just
Speaker 1: the jury has to listen to us and they make
Speaker 1: the decision. The biggest problem is when the forensics is
Speaker 1: not tested by an outside source. One of the things
Speaker 1: I admire about Chris, and one of the reasons I've
Speaker 1: used him in my own cases, is that he doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily draw his own unreasonable conclusions, but he lets the
Speaker 1: evidence speak for itself. I mean, I can give my
Speaker 1: opinion what I believe happened, how I believe it happened.
Speaker 1: I can't speak to someone's intentions. The gun accidentally went off. Okay,
Speaker 1: First of all, I'm gonna look at the gun and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say, this gun is functioning as it was
Speaker 1: designed to function. This gun is perfect. Did you actually
Speaker 1: mean to squeeze this trigger with three pounds, five pounds,
Speaker 1: eight pounds, I said, Once we get the ten or
Speaker 1: twelve pounds, which is a double action trigger, pull a
Speaker 1: heavy trigger pull, which means you have to pull the
Speaker 1: trigger all the way to the rear. I'm gonna look
Speaker 1: at you and go you didn't accidentally pull with twelve pounds. Now,
Speaker 1: when you have a gun, it's a two or three
Speaker 1: pound trigger pool. What were the circumstances. I took my
Speaker 1: gun down off the counter. You came in and grabbed
Speaker 1: the gun, and then what's your instinct. I'm gonna pull
Speaker 1: away from you. So if you grab the gun and
Speaker 1: pull towards you and I pull away from you, we
Speaker 1: start to divide that way to the trigger pull. I
Speaker 1: better look at your body though. You better have gunpowder
Speaker 1: all over your clothing. You better have stiff knowing your
Speaker 1: skin because she better be within three feet and they
Speaker 1: better have powder all over you for you to reach
Speaker 1: out and grab that gun. When he's brought in to testify,
Speaker 1: his role is to satisfy the jury's desire for that physical,
Speaker 1: hands on type of evidence. Sometimes that can even mean
Speaker 1: putting on something of a show for the jury. When
Speaker 1: you go in there and I'm rolling around on the
Speaker 1: floor in front of the jury, they're amazed. I'm always
Speaker 1: told when I come in, the jury perks up I'm
Speaker 1: talking about guns. I'm not talking about d NA where
Speaker 1: god forbid, you're talking about wanting the quadri and the
Speaker 1: low sign. They get glaze over when I talk about guns.
Speaker 1: Everybody's seen again a bullet my cartridge case. They really
Speaker 1: get up. And then I get off the stand and
Speaker 1: they say, show us how this happened. And I'm rolling
Speaker 1: around the floor where I get out the dummy. These
Speaker 1: people go, what is this guy doing? Now? I tell
Speaker 1: people you play to the strengths. If you can do
Speaker 1: a recreation, I say, you want me to get a
Speaker 1: Then the jury starts to think, now I understand, this
Speaker 1: is how it happened. Photograph is great, pictures worth a
Speaker 1: thousand words, But a recreation in front of the court,
Speaker 1: it's it's amazing. I've seen Chris work. I've seen him
Speaker 1: in court. I've seen him out of court. I've seen
Speaker 1: him test firing unloaded firearms. I've seen him wrestling with
Speaker 1: dummies in a courtroom. It's a strong visual. It grabs
Speaker 1: the jury's attention and it keeps them interested. In any time.
Speaker 1: As a lawyer, you get the opportunity to educate a
Speaker 1: jury and keep their attention and have them learn something
Speaker 1: that they did not know about before. I'm going to
Speaker 1: take advantage of that opportunity. I found my wife at midnight,
Speaker 1: so I've been up since about seven that morning, and
Speaker 1: they let me go five or six and next afternoon,
Speaker 1: so I've been up thirty some hours without sleep, probably
Speaker 1: twenty some hours without food, and under intense interrogation, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to get me to confess. I came down again
Speaker 1: trying to help them. I thought they would actually start
Speaker 1: looking for the real killer, which of course was my
Speaker 1: mistake because they didn't. So I was actually in the
Speaker 1: police station for another fifteen hours of intense interrogation, which
Speaker 1: is not what I came down there for. Then they
Speaker 1: just finally said, well, if you want admit you did it,
Speaker 1: you're under arrest. I always thought, okay, what if I
Speaker 1: did admitted I've been at all. It was such a
Speaker 1: stupid thing to say. That's why you get so many
Speaker 1: false confessions. I can tell you happens. Been through these things,
Speaker 1: I could see why people just give up the crack
Speaker 1: of the same thing you watch, it's only your own
Speaker 1: I listened to tape. There's an edit tape that they
Speaker 1: claimed this was interrogation, but of course, there's only thirty
Speaker 1: hours of interrogation. They have a two hour tape. But
Speaker 1: even on that I hear myself giving them things that
Speaker 1: I didn't want to say because I didn't remember or
Speaker 1: didn't think they were true. But I assureman have said
Speaker 1: I did anything wrong. The first lawyer was very good,
Speaker 1: but he was a public defender. I had considerable equity
Speaker 1: in my land and stuff. I could have hired a
Speaker 1: big name lawyer. I had one lined up, and that's
Speaker 1: when I found out that froze my assets. They had
Speaker 1: not arrested me the first night, which surprised everybody that
Speaker 1: they did a few weeks later. But in that period
Speaker 1: of time they filed papers to freeze my assets. Oh,
Speaker 1: I had a good name attorney, he would have walked
Speaker 1: up and they're told the court, look, there's no evidence,
Speaker 1: let him go. And it makes all the difference in
Speaker 1: the world. Now we have such a fast amount of
Speaker 1: advience of innocence, and we have DNA, we have hair,
Speaker 1: we have all signs of things that proved I'm not
Speaker 1: the killer. But when you sit there and trial and
Speaker 1: you had no investigation and so forth to help you,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a one side it's system like the
Speaker 1: other auxonorees this season. I asked Bill what he thought
Speaker 1: the biggest factor was in the jury finding him guilty
Speaker 1: this time. It was something all of our forensic experts
Speaker 1: have brought up time and again, fight evidence. There's a
Speaker 1: bite on her hand that I saw at the funeral.
Speaker 1: Because at the time I believe that these strengths of
Speaker 1: sciences are real, I've now learned that they're mostly jumped.
Speaker 1: The jury was told this is mine, and it turns
Speaker 1: out that when they did computer comparisons after conviction, none
Speaker 1: of that was true. And that was the only thing
Speaker 1: that really changed in the last trial was fite evidence.
Speaker 1: That's pretty damning when you come in here and to
Speaker 1: throwing all his garbage at the wall. Oh, he had
Speaker 1: arguments every couple as argument. They beat you up with
Speaker 1: all this stuff that kids anybody shaft they make it
Speaker 1: must sound much worse. But when you sit there and say, look,
Speaker 1: there's a bite on her body from the fight and
Speaker 1: it's his, how could they let me go? I wanted
Speaker 1: to know more about bite mark science, or as it's
Speaker 1: more formally known, forensic odontology. This is dr Adam Freeman.
Speaker 1: I'm a forensic odontologist located out of Westport, Connecticut, and
Speaker 1: I am the current chair of the Odontology Section of
Speaker 1: the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. My office Westport, Connecticut
Speaker 1: is very close to New York City, where about a
Speaker 1: forty five minute drive, and in the aftermath of nine eleven,
Speaker 1: we lost several patients. As part of that process, it
Speaker 1: became very apparent that there was not enough people involved
Speaker 1: at a very granular level that really knew forensics. So
Speaker 1: my example would be there were some dentists that had
Speaker 1: done some identification work, but really no formal education in
Speaker 1: the totality of forensics, and they typically were the leaders
Speaker 1: of these operations. And I'm one of those people that
Speaker 1: I don't like to be a little bit educated in something.
Speaker 1: If I'm gonna do something, I really want to be
Speaker 1: the guy or one of the guys that knows the
Speaker 1: most about it. So there really are three areas that
Speaker 1: brensic Good ontology are used in criminal cases. One and
Speaker 1: probably the one that I am most proud of in
Speaker 1: our field is dental identification. Often people are found dead
Speaker 1: and they need to be scientifically identified, and very often
Speaker 1: teeth are used as that identification. Also as an outshoot
Speaker 1: of that is where there's a mass disaster like Hurricane
Speaker 1: Katrino or nine eleven or Hurricane I, where dentists are
Speaker 1: called in to do identifications on lots of people, you
Speaker 1: are giving back a person the dignity of dying with
Speaker 1: a name. Another area is bite mark identify accation, and
Speaker 1: that is much more controversial today, and I have testified
Speaker 1: in several of those cases. And then there's dental age estimation,
Speaker 1: which is becoming much more controversial because of the way
Speaker 1: it's being applied versus the way I believe it was
Speaker 1: originally designed to be applied. Bite mark identification of a
Speaker 1: perpetrator has at its space several hypotheses. The first one
Speaker 1: is that teeth are unique to an individual. Only a
Speaker 1: individual has teeth of a certain shape, size, and arrangement.
Speaker 1: That hypothesis has never been proven. The second hypothesis is
Speaker 1: skin can accurately record a bite. That also has never
Speaker 1: been proven. The scientific research currently doesn't even suggest that
Speaker 1: experts can even identify with some real liability what a
Speaker 1: bite mark looks like. As an example of that, myself
Speaker 1: and a colleague of mine, dr Ian Pretty out of
Speaker 1: Manchester England. We sent every board certified forensic dennis a
Speaker 1: hundred different cases where there were several photographs and said,
Speaker 1: is this a bite mark? Very similar to what happens
Speaker 1: when I'm presented a case. When I'm presented a case,
Speaker 1: typically law enforcement will send some images of a suspected
Speaker 1: injury that they think might be a bite mark, and
Speaker 1: my job is to opine as to whether or not
Speaker 1: that injury is or is not a bite mark. What
Speaker 1: we did is we did that same sort of experiment
Speaker 1: and there was widespread disagreement as to whether or not
Speaker 1: an injury that they were looking at was in fact
Speaker 1: a bite mark. So the ground science that predisposes us
Speaker 1: the ability to do this bite mark work isn't there.
Speaker 1: Yet the work continues to be done. There are those
Speaker 1: who have to me, I believe that this is possible,
Speaker 1: And my response typically is when issues of life and
Speaker 1: liberty are at state, your belief as to whether or
Speaker 1: not something can be done is not important. It's whether
Speaker 1: or not you can scientifically support your opinions. And the
Speaker 1: science is not there for bite marks. It is my
Speaker 1: opinion that bite marks shouldn't be used in courts of
Speaker 1: law at all until we produce some science that suggests
Speaker 1: that forensico and ontologists can agree generally on what a
Speaker 1: bite mark is. I think actually, in Bill Richards case,
Speaker 1: and looking at that bite mark, I'm not sure that
Speaker 1: that's even a bite mark. Dr Freeman has seen the
Speaker 1: evidence in Bill's case firsthand, so I asked him for
Speaker 1: his professional opinion on the evidence left on Bill's wife's hand. So,
Speaker 1: in that particular case, what you're looking at is there's
Speaker 1: a very diffuse bruise of the bite mark, or what
Speaker 1: I would call the patterned injury. I didn't see anything
Speaker 1: on the other side of the hand. For a bite
Speaker 1: to happen, tissue has to be crushed between the upper
Speaker 1: and lower teeth to leave a bruise. And that's really
Speaker 1: one of the problems with bite marks. When somebody has bitten,
Speaker 1: how you bruise versus how I bruise could be very different,
Speaker 1: the type of skin you have, the coloration of your skin.
Speaker 1: All of the listeners here, I'm sure have had situations
Speaker 1: where they bump into something and they bruise and other
Speaker 1: people don't. And then clearly when you look at the
Speaker 1: injury on Mrs Richard's hand, it's a very wide bruise
Speaker 1: teeth are very narrow. That surely isn't individual teeth you're
Speaker 1: looking at, and I surely would have swabbed it for
Speaker 1: DNA and suggested it be swabbed for salivary amilais that
Speaker 1: injury surely does not belong in a criminal court. I
Speaker 1: think that the place that bite marks have, and probably
Speaker 1: the strongest piece we have for them, is that if
Speaker 1: you see something that looks like a suspected bite mark,
Speaker 1: what a good friends to go to ontologists should do
Speaker 1: is instruct the police in the medical examiner's office to
Speaker 1: swab that area for both DNA and salivary emilies. So
Speaker 1: salivary amilies is an enzyme that is in human saliva,
Speaker 1: so that would show that it is human and secondly DNA.
Speaker 1: That is a great purpose for human bite marks. I
Speaker 1: don't think a lot of the people who did bite
Speaker 1: mark cases early on went into it with some malicious attitude.
Speaker 1: I think that they went into it thinking they were
Speaker 1: doing what was cutting edge science. Where I find it
Speaker 1: reprehensible is that when science has presented itself showing that
Speaker 1: what they believed isn't in fact true, they typically don't
Speaker 1: accept the science itself. What they do is they say, well,
Speaker 1: let's not throw the baby out with the bath water.
Speaker 1: I absolutely believe that it is morally wrong to use
Speaker 1: questionable forensics in criminal trials where there's issues of life
Speaker 1: and liberty, and it should not be done by anybody
Speaker 1: until the science supports it. And when people fight so
Speaker 1: hard to keep a modality that has not been scientifically supported,
Speaker 1: it makes me question their motives. I also question those motives,
Speaker 1: and I wonder why someone would be more interested in
Speaker 1: validating a belief than in finding the actual truth. But
Speaker 1: I think this happens more than people know. I can
Speaker 1: understand that people feel pride in their work, and on
Speaker 1: some level they might not want it question. But like
Speaker 1: Dr Freeman said, when it comes to something as precious
Speaker 1: as one's life or their liberty, someone's personal ego just
Speaker 1: should not get in the way. Yeah, first trial was deadlocked,
Speaker 1: I think offishally they say six to six. Second one
Speaker 1: was declared to mistrial because the judge was talking to
Speaker 1: somebody connected with one of the jurors. And then it
Speaker 1: went to a bird trial which was also deadlocked. And
Speaker 1: the last trial, even with the bite evidence, came back deadlocked,
Speaker 1: but the judge was used to accept it and ordered
Speaker 1: them to find the British. She said, I'm going to
Speaker 1: keep you here and see you do. I've had so
Speaker 1: many she would have to let me go. One of
Speaker 1: the jurors come in and wanted to talk to my team,
Speaker 1: basically to say she had been bullied in the jury room,
Speaker 1: but the same judge trial judge wouldn't let us talk
Speaker 1: to her. Given that he had so many trials, I
Speaker 1: was curious as to what kinds of deals might have
Speaker 1: been offered to build behind the scenes. They offered deals
Speaker 1: mostly after the first draw they took a real beating.
Speaker 1: They started offering the time served. Actually, by that time
Speaker 1: I've been in less than two years. So they said,
Speaker 1: did two year low deal, low term man sladder. But
Speaker 1: I couldn't do that. I didn't do this, you know.
Speaker 1: I took my gamble and fought it all the way.
Speaker 1: As a defense attorney, it's in my interest to get
Speaker 1: the best outcome possible for my clients, and sometimes that
Speaker 1: means making a deal. In fact, the vast majority of
Speaker 1: criminal cases are resolved through some type of negotiated agreement.
Speaker 1: I completely understand Bill's hesitation here to plead guilty to
Speaker 1: a crime he did not commit. I see people every
Speaker 1: day who were asked to make compromises, and sometimes they're
Speaker 1: compromises that people just can't make. Bill Richards was convicted
Speaker 1: of first degree murder and served twenty three years of
Speaker 1: a life sentence. You go in there, You've got to
Speaker 1: learn a hole new language, a whole new packing order
Speaker 1: thin and there's such strange conditions. You have all the
Speaker 1: different gangs, and you have all the different factions in
Speaker 1: each game. You have to adapt, you have to you
Speaker 1: have to survive, and that's not easy. I kind of
Speaker 1: described it like being in the bottom of a well.
Speaker 1: You're looking up at this You know you're innocent, you
Speaker 1: know what their sayings lie, but you can't get any representation.
Speaker 1: NET would stand up and present this. Got a description
Speaker 1: be jumping out of airplane a lot of parachute. You
Speaker 1: know you're gonna die, but you just keep lapping around. Anyway,
Speaker 1: My assets were gone. I've lost everything I had. In
Speaker 1: the prison. They put me to work a couple of
Speaker 1: times in shops for the number of years where I
Speaker 1: was teaching the staff. I was teaching the other inmates
Speaker 1: how to do all these things, designing and building things
Speaker 1: for them. They had all these things that need to
Speaker 1: be done, and nobody had a crew how to do it.
Speaker 1: You know, I had to over twenty years background and
Speaker 1: uh I was teaching them how to do all these things,
Speaker 1: how to build things, how to design is under structural strength,
Speaker 1: how power would have to run, and so on. You'd
Speaker 1: make thirty two cents an hour, and they take back
Speaker 1: made fourteen tents an hour, and that doesn't go real
Speaker 1: far because prices in the canteen, you know, the prison
Speaker 1: stores are expensive. I was very angry for a long time,
Speaker 1: but eventually I think you just rejectedn't go on. You
Speaker 1: can't stay angry for twenty five years. They'll burn you out.
Speaker 1: If you do, You're gonna be one miserable person. I'm
Speaker 1: very very unhappy, but that anger. Anger is a reactionary emotion,
Speaker 1: and you just can't maintain that for so many years.
Speaker 1: Bill was exonerated and eventually released in two thousand sixteen.
Speaker 1: Unlike our other exonorees, his case was so personal. He
Speaker 1: lost everything, including his wife. So I asked him if
Speaker 1: at the very least they caught the person who murdered
Speaker 1: his wife. No, because personally, I don't believe the police
Speaker 1: ever looked. I know they didn't look. It's all comes
Speaker 1: back to the police. They decided the first night I
Speaker 1: was the guy they told the friends of people who
Speaker 1: worked under them, and that was it. Everything just went down,
Speaker 1: Like I feel like falling out of an airplane. You're
Speaker 1: going to die. It's gone down because everybody is working
Speaker 1: against you. Before we wrap up forensic science, I wanted
Speaker 1: to bring back Justin Brooks from the California Innocence Project.
Speaker 1: He sees cases like bills all the time. We've got
Speaker 1: an innocence organization in Holland, and when I go over there,
Speaker 1: there's so much more scrutiny given there's so many more resources,
Speaker 1: and they still have wrongful convictions. So all we can
Speaker 1: do is is minimize the number of wrongful convictions. And
Speaker 1: the best way to minimize it is through education and training.
Speaker 1: Like one of the things that's always made me crazy
Speaker 1: is it. See, the defense has a lot more trouble
Speaker 1: getting scientific resources than the government has. So when a
Speaker 1: defense attorney wants to get testing done, wants access to
Speaker 1: the labs, wants to get the same kind of ability
Speaker 1: to develop evidence as the government has, they don't have
Speaker 1: the same resources there's just a lot of pseudo science
Speaker 1: out there. But the problem is a lot of times
Speaker 1: these jurors treat all these sciences the same, if you
Speaker 1: have an expert saying it's a science. We've seen the
Speaker 1: same thing in the area of arson that in the
Speaker 1: past a lot of the arson experts were actually just
Speaker 1: board firemen who loves C. S I and had a
Speaker 1: lot of time on their hands. So you have a
Speaker 1: bunch of people who are sitting in prison on bad
Speaker 1: fire science. So I think we have a real problem
Speaker 1: with expertise in these areas and jurors when they hear
Speaker 1: this stuff, they're convicting because an expert stands up and says,
Speaker 1: in my expert opinion, this person is guilty. Here's why
Speaker 1: you get convictions. One of the things that's important to
Speaker 1: me in my work and in this show is making
Speaker 1: sure that we cover everything from as many sides as possible.
Speaker 1: I've seen the work of Chris Robinson and Tracy Sergeant
Speaker 1: in action, but I also know that many people have
Speaker 1: been wrongfully convicted because of forensic science, or perhaps more accurately,
Speaker 1: because of the misapplication of science or of junk science.
Speaker 1: I think all of the forensic professionals we spoke to
Speaker 1: were right when they said that forensic science should just
Speaker 1: be one of many tools in an investigative toolbox. It's
Speaker 1: important to keep in mind, if you're ever sitting on
Speaker 1: a jury, or if you're just hearing about a trial
Speaker 1: in the news, that science is not perfect, and that
Speaker 1: includes forensic science. There's often more to the story than
Speaker 1: what one piece of information might suggest. Having people like
Speaker 1: Chris or Dr Freeman testifying a courtroom about what their
Speaker 1: discipline can and cannot do is bidely important to getting
Speaker 1: to the true facts of a case. I know how
Speaker 1: important it is to explain all aspects of a case
Speaker 1: to a jury, and the best way I've seen that done,
Speaker 1: especially in cases involving science, is to bring in experts.
Speaker 1: These experts can explain this stuff in a way that
Speaker 1: it's not so complicated and so that a juror who
Speaker 1: is not a scientist can understand the subject matter. As
Speaker 1: forensic science progresses and changes, expert witnesses are becoming increasingly
Speaker 1: vital as a part of a complete and fair trial.
Speaker 1: In my opinion, funds for experts should be available to
Speaker 1: all people, just as the right to counsel is available
Speaker 1: to all people and all stages of the criminal process,
Speaker 1: and that includes a trial. I also want to reiterate
Speaker 1: what Amelia and Dr Freeman both said that one of
Speaker 1: the most important aspects of any science is for the
Speaker 1: disciplines to evolve as new research comes in. We are
Speaker 1: in an incredible age of technology where more and more
Speaker 1: information is available than ever before. As we've become more
Speaker 1: and more dependent on science, it is vitally important that
Speaker 1: we use science responsibly and that we do so accurately.
Speaker 1: A big part of my job is staying up to
Speaker 1: date with new laws and changes in the legal system.
Speaker 1: Scientists are no different. A big part of their job
Speaker 1: is to make sure they are current with the latest science.
Speaker 1: Everyone in the criminal justice system, lawyers, police officers, judges,
Speaker 1: medical examiners, forensic chemists, all these people owe it to
Speaker 1: defendants on trial to be as accurate as possible. As
Speaker 1: Dr Freeman said, a mere belief that something might work
Speaker 1: is not enough. You must base it on science, especially
Speaker 1: when life and liberty are on the line. And the
Speaker 1: next episode will focus on a particular problem that all
Speaker 1: of the Axonorees we've spoken to have brought up. Interrogation
Speaker 1: techniques and false confessions next time on Sworn. This is
Speaker 1: a study published just a few years ago out of Canada.
Speaker 1: With the power of suggestion, they convinced ordinary people that
Speaker 1: as a teenager they committed a crime and the police
Speaker 1: actually came to an investigate, and you know, oftentimes these
Speaker 1: people are trying to figure this out, and you know,
Speaker 1: my mother told you this, It must have happened. I mean,
Speaker 1: did I plan Forrafiti somewhere? And what was I with
Speaker 1: my best friend when we did? And they pretty much
Speaker 1: talked themselves into constructing something that never happened. Sworn is
Speaker 1: a production of Tenderfoot TV and I Heart Radio. Our
Speaker 1: lead producer is Christina Dana. Executive producers are Payne Lindsay
Speaker 1: and Donald Albright for Tenderfoot TV, Matt Frederick and Alex
Speaker 1: Williams for I Heart Radio, and myself Philip Holloway. Additional
Speaker 1: product by Trevor Young, Mason Lindsay, Mike Rooney, Jamie Albright
Speaker 1: and Halle Beadall Original music and sound designed by Makeup
Speaker 1: and Vanity Set. Our theme song is Blood in the
Speaker 1: Water by Layup. Show art and design is by Trevor Eisler.
Speaker 1: Editing by Christina Dana. Mixing and mastering by Mike Rooney
Speaker 1: and Cooper Skinner. Special thanks to the team at I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio from U t a or In Rosenbound and
Speaker 1: Grace Royer, Ryan Nord and Matthew Papa from the Nord
Speaker 1: Group Back Media and Marketing and Station sixteen. I'd also
Speaker 1: like to extend a very personal and special thanks to
Speaker 1: all of our contributors and guests who have helped to
Speaker 1: make all of these episodes possible. You can find Sworn
Speaker 1: on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Sworn podcast and follow
Speaker 1: me your host, Philip Holloway on Twitter at phil Holloway
Speaker 1: e s Q. Our webs is sworn podcast dot com,
Speaker 1: and you can check out other Tenderfoot TV podcasts at
Speaker 1: www dot tenderfoot dot tv. If you have questions or comments,
Speaker 1: you can email us at Sworn at tenderfoot dot tv
Speaker 1: or leave us a voicemail at four zero four for
Speaker 1: one zero zero four f one. As always, thanks for
Speaker 1: listening through all of that. How were you able to
Speaker 1: maintain your innocence in sort of your sense that this
Speaker 1: could be fixed? Yeah? I don't you know. I've seen
Speaker 1: other guys perfectly on this. I've seen other people in
Speaker 1: a situation like mine is hunt themselves or something. It's
Speaker 1: like that wasn't me. I wasn't doing that. Other people
Speaker 1: just endure and sit there for a decade after decade
Speaker 1: in prison innocence like I did. I'm just a stubb ambastard.
Speaker 1: I would give up yourself