WEBVTT - #390 Wrongful Conviction: Junk Science - Bloodstain Pattern Evidence 0:00:01.840 --> 0:00:04.520 Hey, folks, Kate Judson here, I'm a lawyer and the 0:00:04.559 --> 0:00:08.080 executive director of the Center for Integrity and Forensic Sciences. 0:00:09.360 --> 0:00:12.520 We're back with another episode of Junk Science, a series 0:00:12.560 --> 0:00:15.840 we first released in twenty twenty, but these stories are 0:00:16.000 --> 0:00:19.159 just as relevant as ever. The episode you're about to 0:00:19.280 --> 0:00:23.520 listen to is about bloodstain evidence, the inexact art of 0:00:23.600 --> 0:00:26.600 figuring out where the source of blood came from and 0:00:26.640 --> 0:00:29.840 how it got there. The key phrase here is art, 0:00:29.920 --> 0:00:33.600 because it is far from being a science, and that 0:00:33.800 --> 0:00:35.720 is something that is true of a lot of the 0:00:35.720 --> 0:00:40.080 so called forensic sciences. Bloodstain patter analysis, in particular, is 0:00:40.159 --> 0:00:44.440 so open to interpretation and guesswork that oftentimes the same 0:00:44.520 --> 0:00:47.760 evidence can be analyzed a dozen times by a dozen 0:00:47.880 --> 0:00:51.720 people and they'll reach a dozen different conclusions. And that 0:00:51.880 --> 0:00:56.440 simply is not reliable science. In twenty twenty two, Jane 0:00:56.440 --> 0:00:59.960 Derodic of San Diego, California, was exonerated of the two 0:01:00.000 --> 0:01:03.040 two thousand and one murder of her husband. The original 0:01:03.040 --> 0:01:06.520 analyst of the evidence, a man named Charles Merritt, claimed 0:01:06.520 --> 0:01:08.679 to be an expert in this type of forensics, but 0:01:09.000 --> 0:01:12.160 his abilities and his findings were called into question in 0:01:12.200 --> 0:01:17.319 twenty twenty one, an expert who reviewed Merritt's work remarked 0:01:17.360 --> 0:01:20.560 on his lack of basic blood stain knowledge, which was 0:01:20.600 --> 0:01:24.440 apparent in his report and testimony. In fact, some of 0:01:24.440 --> 0:01:27.720 the bloodstains that Merit attributed to the murder victim were 0:01:27.760 --> 0:01:31.840 not blood at all, while other stains were not human blood, 0:01:31.959 --> 0:01:36.679 having been caused long before by the family's dogs. This 0:01:36.840 --> 0:01:39.119 case and the one you'll hear in the episode are 0:01:39.240 --> 0:01:42.680 just two examples of bad forensic analysis and should lead 0:01:42.760 --> 0:01:50.960 us all to question the reliability of this forensic art. 0:01:52.880 --> 0:01:56.200 It's five PM and you call your spouse. You say, 0:01:56.320 --> 0:01:58.720 don't wait up, I'm going to be working late. I 0:01:58.760 --> 0:02:01.720 love you, I'll see you when I get home. You've 0:02:01.760 --> 0:02:04.680 been married for seven years and you have a good relationship. 0:02:05.400 --> 0:02:08.240 You bicker from time to time. It's not perfect, but 0:02:08.480 --> 0:02:12.040 what marriage is. You get home around eleven o'clock at 0:02:12.160 --> 0:02:15.240 night and the front door is open, which is strange. 0:02:15.840 --> 0:02:18.000 It's always locked when you come home late from work. 0:02:18.919 --> 0:02:21.480 You walk in, toss your keys on the kitchen table, 0:02:21.520 --> 0:02:26.679 and call out for your spouse. No response. You walk 0:02:26.720 --> 0:02:29.720 through the living room towards your bedroom and you notice 0:02:29.720 --> 0:02:33.640 that the lamp has been knocked over. The power cord 0:02:33.680 --> 0:02:38.160 has been pulled from its socket. You walk down the 0:02:38.200 --> 0:02:41.880 hall and shove your bedroom door open, and you're greeted 0:02:41.880 --> 0:02:46.079 by a scene that is so horrific your mind can 0:02:46.120 --> 0:02:53.000 barely comprehend what your eyes are taking in. There's blood everywhere. 0:02:54.560 --> 0:02:58.079 It's on the carpet, the bed, on the wall, above 0:02:58.080 --> 0:03:04.200 the dresser. Your spouse is on the floor, mouth open. 0:03:06.000 --> 0:03:08.480 There's a large pool of blood coming from their head. 0:03:08.560 --> 0:03:12.560 It's dark and thick, and as you move closer you 0:03:12.639 --> 0:03:16.400 see that it's still pooling. The blood is still flowing 0:03:16.440 --> 0:03:21.440 from somewhere. At this point, your body has gone into 0:03:21.480 --> 0:03:25.560 some state of shock. You're drifting between consciousness and some 0:03:25.880 --> 0:03:31.600 paralyzing dreamlike state. You manage to call nine one one. 0:03:31.800 --> 0:03:35.080 You plead, you scream, You cry for them to come 0:03:35.240 --> 0:03:39.880 right away. You reach down and touch your spouse. You 0:03:39.920 --> 0:03:43.760 feel for a pulse. You put your ear to their chest. 0:03:44.040 --> 0:03:48.839 There's no movement, there's no sign of life. You lean 0:03:48.880 --> 0:03:51.520 down and try to give them CPR. You don't even 0:03:51.600 --> 0:03:53.920 know how long you've been doing it. You lose sense 0:03:53.960 --> 0:03:58.360 of time, but eventually you hear sirens there blaring, and 0:03:58.400 --> 0:04:02.400 all of a sudden, chaos the room is filled with people. 0:04:04.040 --> 0:04:06.360 A paramedic puts a hand on your shoulder and says, 0:04:06.760 --> 0:04:09.880 let us start working here, and pulls you into another room. 0:04:11.440 --> 0:04:13.320 Then they tell you what you already know but don't 0:04:13.320 --> 0:04:20.479 want to admit. Your spouse is dead. You're not crying, 0:04:20.600 --> 0:04:25.240 You're heaving, trying to catch your breath. The police try 0:04:25.279 --> 0:04:28.280 to console you. They tell you they're sorry, but that 0:04:28.320 --> 0:04:30.880 you have to try to calm down. They need to 0:04:30.920 --> 0:04:35.240 figure out what happened and they need your help. You're 0:04:35.279 --> 0:04:38.360 in no state to drive. You're put into the back 0:04:38.400 --> 0:04:41.520 of a police car. When you get to the police station, 0:04:41.880 --> 0:04:45.800 a detective comes in with a sweatshirt and sweatpants, and 0:04:45.839 --> 0:04:48.760 he says, take off your clothes and put these on. 0:04:49.560 --> 0:04:51.920 You're somewhat relieved to get out of your clothes, which 0:04:51.960 --> 0:04:55.880 are soaked with your spouse's blood. A different detective comes 0:04:55.920 --> 0:04:58.839 in and she asks you how you got blood on 0:04:58.880 --> 0:05:01.839 the back side of your pants. Where were you standing 0:05:01.839 --> 0:05:03.599 when you got blood on the cuff of your shirt 0:05:04.120 --> 0:05:07.600 on your sock. You don't know the answer to these questions. 0:05:07.600 --> 0:05:12.120 It was all such a blur. Over the next several weeks, 0:05:12.440 --> 0:05:14.880 you're asked to come down to the police station. Over 0:05:15.080 --> 0:05:20.159 and over again. The detective's questions become more aggressive, and 0:05:20.200 --> 0:05:24.200 it's becoming quite obvious that they suspect you did this. 0:05:26.600 --> 0:05:29.640 You were eventually charged with the first degree murder of 0:05:29.680 --> 0:05:34.479 your spouse. At your trial, the prosecution calls to the 0:05:34.560 --> 0:05:38.680 stand a blood stain pattern analyst. That expert gets on 0:05:38.720 --> 0:05:41.880 the stand and tells the jury that the story of 0:05:41.920 --> 0:05:44.960 the murder of your spouse is soaked into the blood 0:05:44.960 --> 0:05:47.080 of the clothes you were wearing when the night the 0:05:47.120 --> 0:05:51.960 crime was committed. The blood stain pattern analyst walks the 0:05:52.040 --> 0:05:56.200 jury through each and every stain on your clothing, droplet 0:05:56.400 --> 0:06:00.719 by droplet, you see that stain. The defendant swung the 0:06:00.760 --> 0:06:04.599 weapon at a ninety degree angle twice right into the 0:06:04.640 --> 0:06:08.080 victim's head, which created the splatter pattern you see here 0:06:08.200 --> 0:06:12.400 on his shirt high velocity projected spatter. They tell the 0:06:12.480 --> 0:06:16.479 jury no other explanation for it. They say that the 0:06:16.520 --> 0:06:18.920 stain on your sock was dropped from your bloody hand 0:06:18.960 --> 0:06:21.600 as you held the murder weapon. They never tell the 0:06:21.640 --> 0:06:24.680 jury what the murder weapon actually was, and they never 0:06:24.720 --> 0:06:27.960 recovered that object. They just tell the jury that you 0:06:28.040 --> 0:06:30.640 must have gotten rid of it right before you stage 0:06:30.680 --> 0:06:33.599 the nine to one one call. The expert says that 0:06:33.640 --> 0:06:37.760 they've examined the blood drops, the stains, the puddles, the pools, 0:06:38.520 --> 0:06:42.320 and they're able to reconstruct precisely how you committed this murder, 0:06:42.960 --> 0:06:45.919 the angle at which you swung the weapon, the force 0:06:46.000 --> 0:06:49.080 with which you inflicted the blows, and where your spouse 0:06:49.160 --> 0:06:52.760 was standing when they were beaten to death. The stains 0:06:52.839 --> 0:06:56.039 proved that you did not perform CPR. You did not 0:06:56.240 --> 0:06:59.280 check for a pulse, because if you had, there would 0:06:59.320 --> 0:07:02.560 not be this bray pattern that's projected onto your shirt. 0:07:03.720 --> 0:07:07.839 These stains all indicate that you committed this murder. You 0:07:07.920 --> 0:07:11.560 glance over at the jury. Most are taking rigorous notes. 0:07:12.480 --> 0:07:16.119 One is so taken so wrapped that he stopped taking 0:07:16.160 --> 0:07:20.000 notes altogether and just sits staring at the expert, covering 0:07:20.040 --> 0:07:23.400 his mouth with his hand. You look over at your 0:07:23.400 --> 0:07:28.520 defense attorney and think, how in the world is this happening. 0:07:34.720 --> 0:07:38.320 I'm Josh Dubin civil rights and criminal defense attorney and 0:07:38.400 --> 0:07:42.320 Innocent Ambassadors to the Innocence Project in New York today 0:07:42.600 --> 0:07:46.679 on wrongful conviction junk science. We're going to explore blood 0:07:46.680 --> 0:07:50.920 stained pattern evidence. Like other forms of junk science used 0:07:50.920 --> 0:07:55.160 in criminal trials. Blood stained pattern evidence falsely claims that 0:07:55.200 --> 0:07:58.880 it can identify the culprit of violent crimes. But blood 0:07:58.920 --> 0:08:03.120 stained pattern evidence has no grounding in any verifiable science. 0:08:03.680 --> 0:08:06.840 So how did this kind of junk science become admissible? 0:08:07.560 --> 0:08:11.680 It turns out that blood stain pattern analysis was born 0:08:11.800 --> 0:08:15.520 in the basement of one man's home in a small 0:08:15.560 --> 0:08:27.720 town named Corning, New York. When I think of Herbert MacDonell, 0:08:28.200 --> 0:08:31.040 I wonder what his neighbors must have thought of him. 0:08:31.720 --> 0:08:34.760 I imagine one of his curious neighbors, startled by the 0:08:34.800 --> 0:08:37.920 sound she's hearing from next door, tiptoeing over to his 0:08:38.040 --> 0:08:41.679 red house. I imagine the neighbor crawling on her hands 0:08:41.720 --> 0:08:44.560 and knees to peer into Herb's basement through a small 0:08:44.600 --> 0:08:48.800 window that peeks out from underground. She finds herself going 0:08:48.840 --> 0:08:53.160 over there day after day, half horrified, half intrigued by 0:08:53.160 --> 0:08:58.040 what she sees. One day, she sees Herb aiming a 0:08:58.080 --> 0:09:02.240 gun at a dog, pulls the trigger, then walks over 0:09:02.280 --> 0:09:06.280 to examine the blood sprayed onto the wall. Another day, 0:09:06.320 --> 0:09:09.520 Herb isn't alone. There are some young women in lab 0:09:09.520 --> 0:09:12.520 coats in the basement. They dip their hair into a 0:09:12.559 --> 0:09:16.160 thick red substance. Then they swing their heads around to 0:09:16.200 --> 0:09:20.440 make Jackson Pollock esque splatters onto the paper covered walls. 0:09:21.720 --> 0:09:24.560 The next week, the neighbor sees what appear to be 0:09:24.600 --> 0:09:28.640 dead bodies and she's got to be mistaken, But then 0:09:28.679 --> 0:09:32.400 she sees Herb take aim shoot the lifeless body, and 0:09:32.480 --> 0:09:38.040 blood slowly oozes onto the basement floor. Herbert McDonnell actually 0:09:38.120 --> 0:09:41.720 used these techniques in his basement, giving birth to the 0:09:41.720 --> 0:09:47.000 forensic science a bloodstained pattern analysis. Herb was a chemist 0:09:47.080 --> 0:09:51.760 who worked for Corning Glassworks, which makes Corning wear casserole dishes, 0:09:52.480 --> 0:09:56.240 but his passion was crime scenes, and so he doubled 0:09:56.280 --> 0:10:00.920 as a forensic professor at a local community college. For Herb, 0:10:01.400 --> 0:10:05.200 every crime scene, and particularly the blood stains left behind, 0:10:05.240 --> 0:10:08.920 told a story. Not only did he believe the bloodstains 0:10:08.920 --> 0:10:12.440 provide clues, he took it much further than that. He 0:10:12.559 --> 0:10:15.120 believed that he could re engineer the choreography of the 0:10:15.160 --> 0:10:19.920 crime just from analyzing the blood stains. Herb styled himself 0:10:19.960 --> 0:10:23.040 as a sort of modern day Sherlock Holmes. He even 0:10:23.080 --> 0:10:25.000 posed for the cover of one of his books and 0:10:25.040 --> 0:10:28.959 the trademark deer Stalker hat and a pipe. In nineteen 0:10:29.040 --> 0:10:33.200 seventy three, Herb started an unaccredited school right out of 0:10:33.200 --> 0:10:38.280 his basement. He named it the Blood Stain Evidence Institute. 0:10:38.480 --> 0:10:41.040 It took twelve years for Herb to get his moment 0:10:41.120 --> 0:10:45.160 to shine. In January nineteen eighty five, four people were 0:10:45.160 --> 0:10:48.200 found dead in their home. Twenty one year old Reginald 0:10:48.240 --> 0:10:51.480 Lewis was accused of shooting his older brother, his younger 0:10:51.520 --> 0:10:55.320 thirteen year old brother, and his parents. Reginald's father was 0:10:55.360 --> 0:10:59.080 discovered on fire in a hallway, having been shot and 0:10:59.160 --> 0:11:03.199 strangled before being set ablaze. The Sherlock Holmes of Corney 0:11:03.200 --> 0:11:06.040 to New York her MacDonald testified as an expert witness 0:11:06.120 --> 0:11:09.400 in this case. He claimed that dozens of tiny specks 0:11:09.440 --> 0:11:12.040 of blood on Reginald's clothing placed him at the scene 0:11:12.040 --> 0:11:15.880 of the crime. Reginald Lewis was convicted and sentenced to 0:11:16.000 --> 0:11:20.800 four ninety nine year sentences. Herb's recognition continued to grow. 0:11:21.440 --> 0:11:24.200 In nineteen ninety five, even testified for the defense at 0:11:24.200 --> 0:11:28.400 the oj Simpson trial. But bloodstained pattern analysis was never 0:11:28.520 --> 0:11:32.080 proven to be a reliable scientific method, and yet it 0:11:32.160 --> 0:11:36.080 continued to be admitted in case after case after case, 0:11:36.600 --> 0:11:40.560 spreading its tentacles into the criminal justice system in our country. 0:11:45.320 --> 0:11:54.720 This is an entirely interpretive form of forensics. This involves 0:11:54.760 --> 0:12:02.119 somebody viewing a pattern and then stating that with their training, 0:12:02.559 --> 0:12:05.680 that they are able to tell you how that pattern 0:12:05.840 --> 0:12:11.000 was created, what the trajectory was of the blood, where 0:12:11.240 --> 0:12:16.280 the wound was, where the bullet or knife was in 0:12:16.440 --> 0:12:20.040 the room, and therefore who was wielding it and how, 0:12:21.320 --> 0:12:26.080 which is a pretty incredible claim if you think about it. 0:12:26.840 --> 0:12:30.160 Joining us today is Pamela Koloff. And Pam's a senior 0:12:30.200 --> 0:12:32.880 reporter at Pro Publica and a staff writer from New 0:12:32.960 --> 0:12:38.080 York Magazine. So, Pam, when you really look into these 0:12:38.120 --> 0:12:42.800 forensic sciences and see how they originated, I have to 0:12:42.840 --> 0:12:46.960 say that in all of my work and researching various 0:12:47.000 --> 0:12:51.960 disciplines of forensic science, blood spatter analysis has easily the 0:12:52.320 --> 0:12:56.760 craziest story of them all. And you've researched this intensely. 0:12:57.840 --> 0:13:00.600 I want you to tell us more about her. MacDonell, 0:13:01.080 --> 0:13:05.120 the so called grandfather of blood spatter analysis. 0:13:06.200 --> 0:13:10.719 His belief was, and what he sort of told generations 0:13:10.800 --> 0:13:16.000 of police officers was that yes, bloodstain pattern analysis was 0:13:16.040 --> 0:13:21.439 based on highly complex trigonometry and fluid dynamics, but that 0:13:21.520 --> 0:13:25.600 they could master the skills to this in as little 0:13:25.640 --> 0:13:30.640 as a forty hour class. And he began to teach 0:13:30.720 --> 0:13:36.320 these classes all over America at local police departments and 0:13:36.360 --> 0:13:41.520 did so for decades, and in turn turned police officers 0:13:41.559 --> 0:13:45.839 with no training in physics or high level of mathematics 0:13:46.440 --> 0:13:48.480 into quote unquote experts. 0:13:48.880 --> 0:13:53.359 So he turns these people with no training in physics 0:13:53.440 --> 0:13:56.679 or mathematics into experts. You don't have any training in 0:13:56.679 --> 0:13:59.720 physics or mathematics, and you took the class and became 0:13:59.760 --> 0:14:01.080 an expert. Right. 0:14:02.240 --> 0:14:06.560 I went to Yukon, Oklahoma, where the police department was 0:14:06.640 --> 0:14:10.000 offering a week long class. I took it with about 0:14:10.000 --> 0:14:16.960 twenty law enforcement officers, and I was stunned at what 0:14:17.040 --> 0:14:20.360 I saw. We were sort of rubber stamped through just 0:14:20.440 --> 0:14:25.680 the most basic basic concepts of blood stain pattern analysis, 0:14:25.720 --> 0:14:28.840 and we would have to identify stains according to this 0:14:29.000 --> 0:14:34.080 taxonomy that the discipline has these particular kinds of spatters 0:14:34.120 --> 0:14:37.280 and drips and spurts and swipes and smears. They have 0:14:37.280 --> 0:14:40.440 all these different names for things. The final day of 0:14:40.480 --> 0:14:45.800 the course where our instructor set up these sort of 0:14:45.920 --> 0:14:52.440 mock crime scenes, and he used blood to on sort 0:14:52.480 --> 0:14:56.680 of like butcher paper to show us what blood stains 0:14:56.800 --> 0:14:59.600 would look like at a crime scene. And then our 0:15:00.760 --> 0:15:03.400 and this is part of our final grade, was to 0:15:03.440 --> 0:15:08.280 come in and just by looking at that, no other clues, 0:15:08.440 --> 0:15:13.720 no other context clues, use that to say what had 0:15:13.800 --> 0:15:18.160 happened at the crime scene, and then to learn how 0:15:18.200 --> 0:15:21.400 to say it on the stand in a way that 0:15:21.600 --> 0:15:25.760 sounded like a scientist and like someone with scientific certainty. 0:15:26.480 --> 0:15:29.119 And that to me was extremely disturbing. 0:15:29.400 --> 0:15:32.360 Aside from what you witness in the class. Tell me, like, 0:15:32.440 --> 0:15:34.880 what is one thing that stood out to you as 0:15:34.920 --> 0:15:38.400 something that seemed off about you know, what he did 0:15:38.560 --> 0:15:39.760 or what he had students do. 0:15:40.680 --> 0:15:46.240 I know of several students who have shot cadavers and 0:15:46.320 --> 0:15:51.880 controlled situations to look at the way that blood moves. Now, 0:15:52.040 --> 0:15:55.880 think about the way that blood operates within a cadaver 0:15:56.160 --> 0:15:59.080 versus a living person with a beating heart. I mean, 0:15:59.280 --> 0:16:02.560 there's so many things about that that don't make sense. 0:16:02.560 --> 0:16:06.320 Right, So with a dead body or cadaver, it should 0:16:06.320 --> 0:16:09.680 be common sense. There's no more blood flown through the veins, right, 0:16:09.760 --> 0:16:14.239 the person isn't moving anymore, and there's a different viscosity 0:16:14.320 --> 0:16:17.440 or thickness to the blood when someone is dead. So 0:16:17.840 --> 0:16:20.440 all of this makes a difference in first how the 0:16:20.480 --> 0:16:23.200 blood travels once the body is hit with an object, 0:16:23.240 --> 0:16:26.200 whether it be a bullet or a bat, and then 0:16:26.280 --> 0:16:29.440 the blood will also look different once it lands, doesn't 0:16:29.480 --> 0:16:31.360 It all come down to there are a lot of 0:16:31.360 --> 0:16:33.720 different ways that blood can get on a surface, and 0:16:33.760 --> 0:16:36.680 you can't say definitively which way it happened. 0:16:37.440 --> 0:16:42.160 That's exactly right, that's exactly right. The surface that blood 0:16:42.600 --> 0:16:46.600 falls onto makes a tremendous difference in what you can tell. 0:16:46.640 --> 0:16:53.480 If you had a white all linoleum or marble room, 0:16:53.720 --> 0:16:57.240 like a very controlled atmosphere like that, you might be 0:16:57.320 --> 0:17:02.040 able to make some determinations about some things possibly, But 0:17:02.160 --> 0:17:05.399 in real life, in a real crime scene, you usually 0:17:05.480 --> 0:17:12.160 have blood falling onto porous things, carpet, clothing, things where 0:17:12.760 --> 0:17:17.200 it becomes increasingly difficult to tell the angle that blood 0:17:17.280 --> 0:17:20.760 fell onto those services at because they're so diffused when 0:17:20.800 --> 0:17:22.400 they land on that material. 0:17:22.800 --> 0:17:26.040 Yeah, I mean, there are some cases where blood spatter 0:17:26.160 --> 0:17:29.680 analysts have been on video trying to recreate a stain 0:17:29.800 --> 0:17:32.600 pattern from a crime and it takes them ten or 0:17:32.640 --> 0:17:35.080 fifteen tries to get the stain to look similar to 0:17:35.080 --> 0:17:37.119 how it looks at the crime scene or on the 0:17:37.160 --> 0:17:40.000 close of the accuse. I mean, I saw one video 0:17:40.040 --> 0:17:43.119 where they finally get it right right, They get it 0:17:43.160 --> 0:17:45.120 to look like it did at the crime scene, after 0:17:45.760 --> 0:17:48.840 try after try after try, and they start cheering and 0:17:49.000 --> 0:17:53.080 high fiving. So if it's so hard to tell how 0:17:53.119 --> 0:17:56.360 a blood stain got where it did, then what kinds 0:17:56.400 --> 0:17:59.040 of consequences will that have for someone that's been accused 0:17:59.080 --> 0:17:59.960 of a violent crime. 0:18:01.200 --> 0:18:05.919 A common example I've seen this many times is there's 0:18:06.119 --> 0:18:14.679 a spouse who commits suicide, who shoots themselves, and the 0:18:15.119 --> 0:18:20.600 other spouse discovers the person who is shot, rushes over 0:18:20.680 --> 0:18:24.280 to the person, cradles them, tries to give them first aid, 0:18:24.400 --> 0:18:27.119 and in the process gets blood on them. And what 0:18:27.200 --> 0:18:31.160 I saw again and again is if someone who's injured 0:18:31.359 --> 0:18:36.600 expels blood from their mouth or their nose onto another 0:18:36.680 --> 0:18:43.680 person's clothing right they're coughing, they're struggling to breathe, that 0:18:43.920 --> 0:18:47.800 pattern of blood looks very similar to the kind of 0:18:47.840 --> 0:18:53.960 atomized blood that sprays when someone's shot. And then an 0:18:54.000 --> 0:18:57.320 analyst for the state will be brought in and will 0:18:57.359 --> 0:19:03.000 give this very convoluted life as to why that happened 0:19:03.040 --> 0:19:06.280 during the commission of the crime. And then there becomes 0:19:06.320 --> 0:19:10.959 this divergence of opinion of did the victim hold the 0:19:11.000 --> 0:19:15.520 gun and fire this upon him or herself or was 0:19:15.560 --> 0:19:18.640 it the spouse who fired the gun? And the claim 0:19:18.760 --> 0:19:21.359 is that by looking at the way that the blood 0:19:21.440 --> 0:19:24.720 is distributed at the crime scene, you know one hundred 0:19:24.760 --> 0:19:26.879 percent what the answer to that is. 0:19:37.560 --> 0:19:41.440 All right, Pam, you wrote a two part story entitled 0:19:41.520 --> 0:19:45.200 Blood Will Tell. And by the way, to our listeners, 0:19:45.280 --> 0:19:48.479 if you haven't read about this case, you absolutely should. 0:19:49.160 --> 0:19:52.119 Will link to the article in our show notes. It 0:19:52.240 --> 0:19:57.920 is a fascinating, fascinating piece that Pam wrote for Pro Publica. 0:19:58.040 --> 0:20:01.000 And again it's entitled Blood will Tell the Joe Brian 0:20:01.119 --> 0:20:05.880 Story and it tells the story of various ways bloodstained 0:20:05.960 --> 0:20:10.080 pattern analysis can go off the rails. And I want 0:20:10.119 --> 0:20:11.800 to say that it has a happy ending, but it's 0:20:11.800 --> 0:20:14.840 a tragedy really right. I mean, you have a man 0:20:15.080 --> 0:20:18.840 that was loved by everybody. He's a high school principal, 0:20:18.920 --> 0:20:23.320 he spent thirty three years in prison for the murder 0:20:23.320 --> 0:20:27.679 of his wife. And you know your story, pain was 0:20:27.760 --> 0:20:31.919 like the driving force, if not the critical driving force 0:20:32.359 --> 0:20:34.800 behind getting him out of prison, So please tell us 0:20:34.800 --> 0:20:36.040 about the Joe Brian case. 0:20:36.880 --> 0:20:40.720 Joe Brian was a beloved high school principal in a 0:20:40.880 --> 0:20:46.040 little Texas town called Clifton, Texas. And in nineteen eighty five, 0:20:46.240 --> 0:20:49.159 when he was by all accounts out of town one 0:20:49.240 --> 0:20:52.879 hundred and twenty miles away in Austin at an educational conference, 0:20:53.680 --> 0:20:57.440 his wife was shot and killed in their home and 0:20:58.080 --> 0:21:03.320 this was initially investigated as a robbery gone wrong. And 0:21:03.680 --> 0:21:09.320 about a week after the murder, a flashlight was discovered 0:21:09.680 --> 0:21:14.159 in the trunk of Joe's car that had tiny, tiny 0:21:14.200 --> 0:21:18.280 specks of blood on it. And there was no blood 0:21:18.320 --> 0:21:22.680 found in the car or anything like that. And who 0:21:22.760 --> 0:21:26.480 this blood belonged to, whether it was even human blood, 0:21:26.600 --> 0:21:31.560 all of this was unknown, but the state took this 0:21:32.480 --> 0:21:35.840 and they brought in a bloodstained pattern analyst, a local 0:21:35.920 --> 0:21:41.280 cop who'd had forty hours of training, and he, through 0:21:41.359 --> 0:21:46.840 his testimony, connected that flashlight and the spatter pattern on 0:21:46.920 --> 0:21:50.080 the flashlight to the crime scene. He said this could 0:21:50.119 --> 0:21:54.560 only have happened at the crime scene, and his theory 0:21:54.600 --> 0:21:57.800 of the case was that Joe had held the flashlight 0:21:57.840 --> 0:22:01.520 in one hand a gun in the other. He'd shot 0:22:01.560 --> 0:22:05.840 his wife, Mickey. The blood had gotten onto the splashlight, 0:22:06.280 --> 0:22:09.840 and this was proof that he was guilty of murder. 0:22:10.520 --> 0:22:14.200 How this man, who would have been bloodied, how did 0:22:14.240 --> 0:22:17.720 he drive off in this car that was absolutely pristine 0:22:18.400 --> 0:22:21.239 was explained away by the expert who said things like 0:22:21.760 --> 0:22:24.919 after he killed her, he completely changed his clothes and 0:22:24.960 --> 0:22:28.919 he changed his shoes, and that's why the interior of 0:22:28.960 --> 0:22:32.119 the car was clean. But he made this error and 0:22:32.200 --> 0:22:35.960 put this in the truck, and that was enough. I mean, 0:22:35.960 --> 0:22:40.040 this is a man there was no motive, no physical evidence. 0:22:40.800 --> 0:22:43.479 He was many counties away, he was in a different 0:22:43.520 --> 0:22:47.680 place the night of the crime, but that expert testimony 0:22:47.720 --> 0:22:51.760 from that cop was enough to get a murder conviction 0:22:51.920 --> 0:22:52.840 in a life sentence. 0:22:53.680 --> 0:22:56.399 I mean, it's so difficult to listen to this, and 0:22:56.480 --> 0:23:00.520 I wish I could say that I'm sitting here, you know, shocked, 0:23:01.760 --> 0:23:04.200 and was able to tell you what. I've never heard 0:23:04.440 --> 0:23:07.399 of a case like that before, where you know, the 0:23:07.480 --> 0:23:10.840 accused is actually in a different town altogether. But unfortunately 0:23:10.960 --> 0:23:15.720 I've heard this before. This happens to many defendants or 0:23:15.840 --> 0:23:19.280 people that are accused of crimes they didn't commit. Was 0:23:19.359 --> 0:23:20.520 Joe ever exonerated? 0:23:21.840 --> 0:23:26.040 So Joe was not exonerated, he was parolled, and the 0:23:26.720 --> 0:23:31.639 state of his case. He had an evidentiary hearing in 0:23:31.680 --> 0:23:38.600 twenty nineteen with some really really compelling testimony that suggested 0:23:38.680 --> 0:23:43.080 not only his innocence but a possible other perpetrator. In Texas, 0:23:43.119 --> 0:23:46.719 we have something called a junk science writ which is 0:23:46.720 --> 0:23:53.400 fairly unusual, but it allows somebody to take bad evidence, 0:23:53.520 --> 0:23:58.479 junk science that's been allowed into their case, and to 0:23:58.880 --> 0:24:01.000 try to get the courts to take a second look 0:24:01.000 --> 0:24:05.040 at their case because of that. And so he's been 0:24:05.119 --> 0:24:09.960 parolled and is still fighting to prove his innocence. Joe 0:24:10.160 --> 0:24:14.000 turns eighty later this year. He's had congestive heart failure 0:24:14.280 --> 0:24:17.840 for numerous years. His health is not good, and the 0:24:17.880 --> 0:24:21.880 Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles finally decided to release 0:24:21.960 --> 0:24:27.159 him in March, and he is now at home with 0:24:27.280 --> 0:24:30.280 his brother. He's got an ankle monitor for a couple 0:24:30.400 --> 0:24:34.119 more months and then he'll go back to life as 0:24:34.240 --> 0:24:37.159 much as it can be normal after thirty three years 0:24:37.200 --> 0:24:37.879 behind bars. 0:24:38.880 --> 0:24:41.840 I mean a lot of people always say they hear 0:24:41.840 --> 0:24:46.960 about this work of helping the wrongfully incarcerated, but they 0:24:47.000 --> 0:24:49.639 hear about it when it's too late, you know, after 0:24:49.680 --> 0:24:53.440 they have lost decades and decades of their lives. Oftentimes 0:24:53.480 --> 0:24:57.520 their lives have been utterly destroyed. I mean, you know, 0:24:57.560 --> 0:25:00.360 you read the stories about them getting out, but take 0:25:00.359 --> 0:25:06.200 it from me, having worked with scores of exoneries, not 0:25:06.240 --> 0:25:10.000 only my clients, but some of the innocence projects other clients, 0:25:10.040 --> 0:25:14.359 they're just never the same. The psychological damage of being 0:25:15.640 --> 0:25:18.760 confined to this narrow space and all of the horrors 0:25:18.760 --> 0:25:21.760 of prison that you hear about that happen to these people, 0:25:21.840 --> 0:25:25.160 and then on top of it, being in there for 0:25:25.320 --> 0:25:27.720 something you didn't do. I mean, there have been studies 0:25:27.720 --> 0:25:32.399 about how it inflicts even more psychological damage on people 0:25:32.480 --> 0:25:34.440 to be in there for something that you didn't do, 0:25:35.200 --> 0:25:39.119 and the lost years just can't be replaced. No amount 0:25:39.119 --> 0:25:41.080 of money is going to make that pain go away, 0:25:41.960 --> 0:25:45.800 no matter how much compensation they get. And yet these 0:25:45.800 --> 0:25:49.560 wrongful convictions just continue being propelled by junk science. It's 0:25:49.720 --> 0:25:52.400 just astounding, exactly. 0:25:53.359 --> 0:25:57.720 I was flabbergasted when working on this story and trying 0:25:57.760 --> 0:26:02.000 to find, well, where where is the research that backs 0:26:02.080 --> 0:26:04.960 up all these claims that people are making on the stand. 0:26:05.359 --> 0:26:11.400 Where's the academic work that's been done. Where is anything. 0:26:12.160 --> 0:26:16.680 This is a discipline that when you look at sort 0:26:16.680 --> 0:26:21.119 of the fundamentals of how do you prove reliability, no 0:26:21.160 --> 0:26:25.359 one can quote an error rate. There are no markers 0:26:25.440 --> 0:26:28.600 that show that this is something that holds up under 0:26:28.840 --> 0:26:33.080 any kind of scrutiny. And so this idea that we 0:26:33.200 --> 0:26:38.400 can not just look at blood as a clue as 0:26:38.400 --> 0:26:40.680 we would at many, many, many things in a crime 0:26:40.720 --> 0:26:44.360 scene to help us figure out what happened, but as 0:26:44.640 --> 0:26:48.560 something in which you can entirely, independent even of any 0:26:48.600 --> 0:26:53.920 other evidence, reconstruct the crime itself, quickly leads you into 0:26:53.960 --> 0:27:02.280 wrongful conviction territory. 0:27:07.320 --> 0:27:10.800 I want our listeners to be rest assured that we're 0:27:10.840 --> 0:27:16.479 not just throwing around this term junk science haphazardly. Just 0:27:16.560 --> 0:27:21.040