WEBVTT - #147 Wrongful Conviction: Junk Science - Bloodstain Pattern Evidence 0:00:00.840 --> 0:00:04.240 It's five pm, and you call your spouse. You say, 0:00:04.320 --> 0:00:07.160 don't wait up, I'm gonna be working late. I love you, 0:00:07.480 --> 0:00:10.319 I'll see when I get home. You've been married for 0:00:10.360 --> 0:00:13.720 seven years and you have a good relationship. You bick 0:00:13.760 --> 0:00:16.640 her from time to time. It's not perfect, but what 0:00:16.720 --> 0:00:20.360 marriage is. You get home around eleven o'clock at night 0:00:20.480 --> 0:00:23.960 and the front door is open, which is strange. It's 0:00:24.000 --> 0:00:27.040 always locked when you come home late from work. You 0:00:27.080 --> 0:00:29.560 walk in, toss your keys on the kitchen table, and 0:00:29.640 --> 0:00:34.879 call out for your spouse. No response. You walk through 0:00:34.880 --> 0:00:37.800 the living room towards your bedroom and you notice that 0:00:37.840 --> 0:00:41.839 the lamp has been knocked over, the power cord has 0:00:41.880 --> 0:00:46.479 been pulled from its socket. You walk down the hall 0:00:47.159 --> 0:00:50.000 and shove your bedroom door open, and you're greeted by 0:00:50.040 --> 0:00:54.520 a scene that is so horrific your mind can barely 0:00:54.600 --> 0:01:00.960 comprehend what your eyes are taking in. There's blood everywhere. 0:01:02.560 --> 0:01:06.040 It's on the carpet, the bed, on the wall, above 0:01:06.080 --> 0:01:12.199 the dresser. Your spouse is on the floor, mouth open. 0:01:14.000 --> 0:01:16.440 There's a large pool of blood coming from their head. 0:01:16.520 --> 0:01:20.560 It's dark and thick, and as you move closer you 0:01:20.600 --> 0:01:24.360 see that it's still pooling. The blood is still flowing 0:01:24.400 --> 0:01:29.440 from somewhere. At this point, your body has gone into 0:01:29.480 --> 0:01:34.640 some state of shock. You're drifting between consciousness and some paralyzing, 0:01:34.800 --> 0:01:40.480 dreamlike state. You manage to call nine one one. You plead, 0:01:40.640 --> 0:01:43.839 you scream, you cry for them to come right away. 0:01:45.040 --> 0:01:48.320 You reach down and touch your spouse. You feel for 0:01:48.400 --> 0:01:52.280 a pulse. You put your ear to their chest. There's 0:01:52.360 --> 0:01:57.000 no movement, there's no sign of life. You lean down 0:01:57.080 --> 0:01:59.680 and try to give them CPR. You don't even know 0:01:59.720 --> 0:02:02.480 how long you've been doing it. You lose sense of time, 0:02:03.120 --> 0:02:06.560 but eventually you hear sirens. They're blaring, and all of 0:02:06.600 --> 0:02:10.360 a sudden, there's chaos. The room is filled with people. 0:02:12.000 --> 0:02:14.320 A paramedic puts a hand on your shoulder and says, 0:02:14.760 --> 0:02:17.880 let us start working here, and pulls you into another room. 0:02:19.400 --> 0:02:21.280 Then they tell you what you already know but don't 0:02:21.280 --> 0:02:28.440 want to admit. Your spouse is dead. You're not crying, 0:02:28.560 --> 0:02:33.239 You're heaving, trying to catch your breath. The police try 0:02:33.240 --> 0:02:36.240 to console you. They tell you they're sorry, but that 0:02:36.320 --> 0:02:38.840 you have to try to calm down. They need to 0:02:38.880 --> 0:02:43.239 figure out what happened, and they need your help. You're 0:02:43.240 --> 0:02:46.359 in no state to drive, you're put into the back 0:02:46.360 --> 0:02:49.519 of a police car. When you get to the police station, 0:02:49.880 --> 0:02:53.800 a detective comes in with a sweatshirt and sweatpants, and 0:02:53.840 --> 0:02:56.720 he says, take off your clothes and put these on. 0:02:57.560 --> 0:02:59.799 You're somewhat relieved to get out of your clothes, which 0:02:59.840 --> 0:03:03.880 are soaked with your spouse's blood. A different detective comes 0:03:03.880 --> 0:03:06.799 in and she asks you how you got blood on 0:03:06.840 --> 0:03:09.960 the backside of your pants. Where were you standing when 0:03:10.000 --> 0:03:12.240 you got blood on the cuff of your shirt, on 0:03:12.280 --> 0:03:15.560 your sock. You don't know the answer to these questions. 0:03:15.600 --> 0:03:20.080 It was all such a blur. Over the next several weeks, 0:03:20.440 --> 0:03:22.840 you're asked to come down to the police station over 0:03:23.040 --> 0:03:28.160 and over again. The detective's questions become more aggressive, and 0:03:28.200 --> 0:03:32.200 it's becoming quite obvious that they suspect you did this. 0:03:34.600 --> 0:03:37.640 You were eventually charged with the first degree murder of 0:03:37.640 --> 0:03:42.480 your spouse. At your trial, the prosecution calls to the 0:03:42.560 --> 0:03:46.680 stand a blood stained pattern analyst. That expert gets on 0:03:46.720 --> 0:03:49.840 the stand and tells the jury that the story of 0:03:49.880 --> 0:03:52.920 the murder of your spouse is soaked into the blood 0:03:52.920 --> 0:03:55.040 of the clothes you were wearing when the night the 0:03:55.120 --> 0:03:59.960 crime was committed. The blood stain pattern analyst walks into 0:04:00.080 --> 0:04:04.120 jury through each and every stain on your clothing. Droplet 0:04:04.360 --> 0:04:08.720 by droplet, you see that stain. The defendant swung the 0:04:08.720 --> 0:04:12.560 weapon at a ninety degree angle twice right into the 0:04:12.640 --> 0:04:16.080 victim's head, which created the splatter pattern you see here 0:04:16.160 --> 0:04:20.360 on his shirt, high velocity projected spatter. They tell the 0:04:20.440 --> 0:04:24.479 jury no other explanation for it. They say that the 0:04:24.520 --> 0:04:26.880 stain on your sock was dropped from your bloody hand 0:04:26.920 --> 0:04:29.560 as you held the murder weapon. They never tell the 0:04:29.640 --> 0:04:32.640 jury what the murder weapon actually was, and they never 0:04:32.680 --> 0:04:35.920 recovered that object. They just tell the jury that you 0:04:36.000 --> 0:04:38.640 must have gotten rid of it right before you stage 0:04:38.680 --> 0:04:41.560 the nine to one one call. The expert says that 0:04:41.600 --> 0:04:45.719 they've examined the blood drops, the stains, the puddles, the pools, 0:04:46.520 --> 0:04:50.280 and they're able to reconstruct precisely how you committed this murder, 0:04:50.920 --> 0:04:53.919 the angle at which you swung the weapon, the force 0:04:54.000 --> 0:04:57.080 with which you inflicted the blows, and where your spouse 0:04:57.160 --> 0:05:00.760 was standing when they were beaten to death. The stains 0:05:00.800 --> 0:05:04.039 proved that you did not perform CPR. You did not 0:05:04.200 --> 0:05:07.240 check for a pulse, because if you had, there would 0:05:07.320 --> 0:05:11.480 not be this spray pattern. That's projected onto your shirt. 0:05:11.680 --> 0:05:15.800 These stains all indicate that you committed this murder. You 0:05:15.880 --> 0:05:19.560 glance over at the jury. Most are taking rigorous notes. 0:05:20.480 --> 0:05:24.120 One is so taken, so wrapped that he stopped taking 0:05:24.120 --> 0:05:28.000 notes altogether and just sits staring at the expert, covering 0:05:28.000 --> 0:05:31.360 his mouth with his hand. You look over at your 0:05:31.400 --> 0:05:36.520 defense attorney and think, how in the world is this happening. 0:05:42.720 --> 0:05:46.279 I'm Josh dubin civil rights and criminal defense attorney and 0:05:46.400 --> 0:05:50.279 Innocent Ambassadors in the Innocence Project in New York. Today 0:05:50.600 --> 0:05:55.040 on wrongful conviction junk science, We're going to explore bloodstained 0:05:55.040 --> 0:05:58.960 pattern evidence. Like other forms of junk science used in 0:05:59.000 --> 0:06:03.440 criminal trials, bloodstained pattern evidence falsely claims that it can 0:06:03.520 --> 0:06:07.640 identify the culprit of violent crimes. But blood stained pattern 0:06:07.680 --> 0:06:12.160 evidence has no grounding in any verifiable science. So how 0:06:12.200 --> 0:06:16.080 did this kind of junk science become admissible? It turns 0:06:16.080 --> 0:06:20.080 out that blood stained pattern analysis was born in the 0:06:20.120 --> 0:06:24.839 basement of one man's home in a small town named Corning, 0:06:25.000 --> 0:06:36.599 New York. When I think of Herbert MacDonnell, I wonder 0:06:36.640 --> 0:06:40.279 what his neighbors must have thought of him. I imagine 0:06:40.279 --> 0:06:43.279 one of his curious neighbors startled by the sound she's 0:06:43.279 --> 0:06:46.560 hearing from next door, tiptoeing over to his red house. 0:06:47.560 --> 0:06:50.200 I imagine the neighbor crawling on her hands and knees 0:06:50.240 --> 0:06:53.279 to peer into Herb's basement through a small window that 0:06:53.320 --> 0:06:57.200 peeks out from underground. She finds herself going over there 0:06:57.279 --> 0:07:01.800 day after day, half horrified, half intrigued by what she sees. 0:07:04.000 --> 0:07:06.880 One day, she sees Herb aiming a gun at a dog. 0:07:07.839 --> 0:07:10.880 He pulls the trigger, then walks over to examine the 0:07:10.920 --> 0:07:15.160 blood sprayed onto the wall. Another day, Herb isn't alone. 0:07:16.120 --> 0:07:18.440 There are some young women in lab coats in the basement. 0:07:19.240 --> 0:07:22.520 They dip their hair into a thick red substance, then 0:07:22.560 --> 0:07:25.840 they swing their heads around to make Jackson Pollock esque 0:07:25.920 --> 0:07:31.200 splatters onto the paper covered walls. The next week, the 0:07:31.240 --> 0:07:34.240 neighbor sees what appear to be dead bodies, and she's 0:07:34.280 --> 0:07:37.680 got to be mistaken, But then she sees HERB take 0:07:37.720 --> 0:07:42.120 aim shoot the lifeless body and blood slowly oozes onto 0:07:42.160 --> 0:07:47.600 the basement floor. Herbert McDonnell actually used these techniques in 0:07:47.640 --> 0:07:51.520 his basement, giving birth to the forensic science a bloodstained 0:07:51.520 --> 0:07:56.920 pattern analysis. Herb was a chemist who worked for Corning Glassworks, 0:07:57.400 --> 0:08:01.720 which makes corning wear casserole dishes. But his passion was 0:08:01.800 --> 0:08:05.600 crime scenes, and so he doubled as a forensic professor 0:08:05.640 --> 0:08:10.360 at a local community college. For Herb, every crime scene, 0:08:10.680 --> 0:08:15.040 and particularly the blood stains left behind, told a story. 0:08:15.200 --> 0:08:17.720 Not only did he believe the blood stains provide clues, 0:08:18.240 --> 0:08:21.000 he took it much further than that. He believed that 0:08:21.040 --> 0:08:24.280 he could re engineer the choreography of the crime just 0:08:24.360 --> 0:08:28.160 from analyzing the blood stains. Herb styled himself as a 0:08:28.200 --> 0:08:31.440 sort of modern day Sherlock Holmes. He even posed for 0:08:31.480 --> 0:08:33.679 the cover of one of his books and the trademark 0:08:33.760 --> 0:08:38.040 deer Stalker Hat and a Pipe. In nineteen seventy three, 0:08:38.080 --> 0:08:41.800 Herbs started an unaccredited school right out of his basement. 0:08:42.440 --> 0:08:46.880 He named it the Blood Stain Evidence Institute. It took 0:08:47.000 --> 0:08:49.560 twelve years for Herb to get his moment to shine. 0:08:50.320 --> 0:08:53.600 In January nineteen eighty five, four people were found dead 0:08:53.640 --> 0:08:56.720 in their home. Twenty one year old Reginald Lewis was 0:08:56.760 --> 0:09:00.600 accused of shooting his older brother, his younger thirteen years brother, 0:09:00.679 --> 0:09:04.880 and his parents. Reginald's father was discovered on fire in 0:09:04.920 --> 0:09:09.720 a hallway, having been shot and strangled. Before being set ablaze. 0:09:09.800 --> 0:09:12.479 The Sherlock Holmes of Corney to New York. Herb MacDonald 0:09:12.559 --> 0:09:16.000 testified as an expert witness in this case. He claimed 0:09:16.040 --> 0:09:18.959 that dozens of tiny specks of blood on Reginald's clothing 0:09:19.120 --> 0:09:22.160 placed him at the scene of the crime. Reginald Lewis 0:09:22.240 --> 0:09:26.160 was convicted and sentenced to four ninety nine year sentences. 0:09:26.880 --> 0:09:30.800 Herb's recognition continued to grow. In nineteen ninety five, even 0:09:30.840 --> 0:09:34.160 testified for the defense of the oj Simpson trial. But 0:09:34.240 --> 0:09:37.640 bloodstained pattern analysis was never proven to be a reliable 0:09:37.679 --> 0:09:41.880 scientific method, and yet it continued to be admitted in 0:09:42.040 --> 0:09:46.320 case after case after case, spreading its tentacles into the 0:09:46.320 --> 0:09:48.520 criminal justice system in our country. 0:09:53.320 --> 0:10:01.920 This is an entirely interpretive form of forensics. This involves 0:10:02.720 --> 0:10:10.119 somebody viewing a pattern and then stating that, with their training, 0:10:10.559 --> 0:10:13.640 that they are able to tell you how that pattern 0:10:13.800 --> 0:10:19.000 was created, what the trajectory was of the blood, where 0:10:19.200 --> 0:10:24.280 the wound was, where the bullet or knife was in 0:10:24.400 --> 0:10:28.880 the room, and therefore who was wielding it and how, 0:10:29.280 --> 0:10:34.080 which is a pretty incredible claim if you think about it. 0:10:34.840 --> 0:10:38.160 Joining us today is Pamela Koloff, and Pam's a senior 0:10:38.200 --> 0:10:40.840 reporter at Pro Publica and a staff writer from New 0:10:40.920 --> 0:10:46.040 York magazine. So, Pam, when you really look into these 0:10:46.120 --> 0:10:50.800 forensic sciences and see how they originated, I have to 0:10:50.840 --> 0:10:54.959 say that in all of my work and researching various 0:10:54.960 --> 0:11:00.160 disciplines of forensic science, blood spatter analysis has easily the 0:11:00.320 --> 0:11:04.720 craziest story of them all. And you've researched this intensely. 0:11:05.800 --> 0:11:08.559 I want you to tell us more about her. MacDonell, 0:11:09.080 --> 0:11:13.280 the so called grandfather of blood spatter analysis. 0:11:14.200 --> 0:11:18.720 His belief was, and what he sort of told generations 0:11:18.760 --> 0:11:23.960 of police officers was that yes, bloodstain pattern analysis was 0:11:24.040 --> 0:11:29.400 based on highly complex trigonometry and fluid dynamics, but that 0:11:29.480 --> 0:11:33.600 they could master the skills to this in as little 0:11:33.640 --> 0:11:38.600 as a forty hour class. And he began to teach 0:11:38.720 --> 0:11:44.320 these classes all over America at local police departments and 0:11:44.320 --> 0:11:49.520 did so for decades and in turn turned police officers 0:11:49.520 --> 0:11:54.400 with no training in physics or high level of mathematics 0:11:54.400 --> 0:11:56.439 into quote unquote experts. 0:11:56.880 --> 0:12:01.319 So he turns these people with no training in physics 0:12:01.440 --> 0:12:04.640 or mathematics into experts. You don't have any training in 0:12:04.679 --> 0:12:07.760 physics or mathematics, and you took the class and became 0:12:07.800 --> 0:12:09.040 an expert right. 0:12:10.240 --> 0:12:14.520 I went to Yukon, Oklahoma, where the police department was 0:12:14.600 --> 0:12:17.960 offering a week long class. I took it with about 0:12:18.000 --> 0:12:24.920 twenty law enforcement officers, and I was stunned at what 0:12:25.000 --> 0:12:28.360 I saw. We were sort of rubber stamped through just 0:12:28.400 --> 0:12:33.800 the most basic basic concepts of bloodstained pattern analysis, and 0:12:33.840 --> 0:12:37.720 we would have to identify stains according to this taxonomy 0:12:37.800 --> 0:12:42.160 that the discipline has these particular kinds of spatters and 0:12:42.240 --> 0:12:45.400 drips and spurts and swipes and smears. They have all 0:12:45.400 --> 0:12:48.560 these different names for things. The final day of the 0:12:48.679 --> 0:12:54.160 course where our instructor set up these sort of mock 0:12:54.360 --> 0:13:00.560 crime scenes and he used blood to on sort of 0:13:00.600 --> 0:13:05.320 like butcher paper to show us what bloodstains would look 0:13:05.480 --> 0:13:08.840 like at a crime scene. And then our job, and 0:13:08.880 --> 0:13:11.640 this is part of our final grade, was to come 0:13:11.679 --> 0:13:16.240 in and just by looking at that no other clues, 0:13:16.400 --> 0:13:21.680 no other context clues, use that to say what had 0:13:21.760 --> 0:13:26.160 happened at the crime scene, and then to learn how 0:13:26.200 --> 0:13:29.360 to say it on the stand in a way that 0:13:29.600 --> 0:13:33.720 sounded like a scientist and like someone with scientific certainty. 0:13:34.440 --> 0:13:37.079 And that to me was extremely disturbing. 0:13:37.400 --> 0:13:40.120 Aside from what you witness in the class, tell me 0:13:40.240 --> 0:13:42.120 like what is one thing that stood out to you 0:13:42.679 --> 0:13:46.160 as something that seemed off about you know, what he 0:13:46.240 --> 0:13:47.200 did or what he had. 0:13:47.080 --> 0:13:52.600 Students do I know of several students who have shot 0:13:52.800 --> 0:13:58.240 cadavers and controlled situations to look at the way that 0:13:58.320 --> 0:14:03.040 blood moves. Now, think about the way that blood operates 0:14:03.040 --> 0:14:06.800 within a cadaver versus a living person with a beating heart. 0:14:06.840 --> 0:14:09.640 I mean, there's so many things about that that don't 0:14:09.679 --> 0:14:10.479 make sense. 0:14:10.520 --> 0:14:14.320 Right, So with a dead body or cadaver, it should 0:14:14.320 --> 0:14:17.640 be common sense. There's no more blood flown through the veins, right, 0:14:17.720 --> 0:14:22.200 the person isn't moving anymore, and there's a different viscosity 0:14:22.280 --> 0:14:25.400 or thickness to the blood when someone is dead. So 0:14:25.840 --> 0:14:28.440 all of this makes a difference in first how the 0:14:28.440 --> 0:14:31.120 blood travels once the body is hit with an object, 0:14:31.200 --> 0:14:34.160 whether it be a bullet or a bat, and then 0:14:34.280 --> 0:14:37.440 the blood will also look different once it lands, doesn't 0:14:37.440 --> 0:14:39.320 It all come down to there are a lot of 0:14:39.320 --> 0:14:41.720 different ways that blood can get on a surface, and 0:14:41.760 --> 0:14:44.640 you can't say definitively which way it happened. 0:14:45.400 --> 0:14:50.120 That's exactly right, that's exactly right. The surface that blood 0:14:50.560 --> 0:14:54.320 falls onto makes a tremendous difference in what you can 0:14:54.320 --> 0:15:01.400 tell if you had a white all linoleum or marb room, 0:15:01.680 --> 0:15:05.240 like a very controlled atmosphere like that, you might be 0:15:05.320 --> 0:15:10.040 able to make some determinations about some things possibly, But 0:15:10.120 --> 0:15:13.360 in real life, in a real crime scene, you usually 0:15:13.440 --> 0:15:20.120 have blood falling onto porous things, carpet, clothing, things where 0:15:20.720 --> 0:15:25.240 it becomes increasingly difficult to tell the angle that blood 0:15:25.280 --> 0:15:28.720 fell onto those services at because they're so diffused when 0:15:28.760 --> 0:15:30.400 they land on that material. 0:15:30.760 --> 0:15:34.080 Yeah, I mean, there are some cases where blood spatter 0:15:34.120 --> 0:15:37.680 analysts have been on video trying to recreate a stain 0:15:37.760 --> 0:15:40.560 pattern from a crime and it takes them ten or 0:15:40.640 --> 0:15:43.040 fifteen tries to get the stain to look similar to 0:15:43.080 --> 0:15:45.120 how it looks at the crime scene or on the 0:15:45.120 --> 0:15:47.960 close of the accuse. I mean, I saw one video 0:15:48.000 --> 0:15:51.080 where they finally get it right right, They get it 0:15:51.120 --> 0:15:53.080 to look like it did at the crime scene, after 0:15:53.720 --> 0:15:56.840 try after try after try, and they start cheering and 0:15:57.000 --> 0:16:01.040 high fiving. So if it's so hard to tell how 0:16:01.080 --> 0:16:04.360 a blood stain got where it did, then what kinds 0:16:04.360 --> 0:16:07.000 of consequences will that have for someone that's been accused 0:16:07.040 --> 0:16:07.920 of a violent crime. 0:16:09.160 --> 0:16:13.920 A common example I've seen this many times is there's 0:16:14.080 --> 0:16:22.680 a spouse who commits suicide, who shoots themselves, and the 0:16:23.120 --> 0:16:28.600 other spouse discovers the person who is shot, rushes over 0:16:28.640 --> 0:16:32.280 to the person, cradles them, tries to give them first aid, 0:16:32.360 --> 0:16:35.080 and in the process gets blood on them. And what 0:16:35.200 --> 0:16:39.120 I saw again and again is if someone who's injured 0:16:39.360 --> 0:16:44.560 expels blood from their mouth or their nose onto another 0:16:44.680 --> 0:16:51.680 person's clothing, right they're coughing, they're struggling to breathe, that 0:16:51.880 --> 0:16:55.760 pattern of blood looks very similar to the kind of 0:16:55.840 --> 0:17:01.880 atomized blood that sprays when someone shot. And then an 0:17:01.960 --> 0:17:05.320 analyst for the state will be brought in and we'll 0:17:05.320 --> 0:17:10.959 give this very convoluted logic as to why that happened 0:17:11.040 --> 0:17:14.240 during the commission of the crime. And then there becomes 0:17:14.280 --> 0:17:18.919 this divergence of opinion of did the victim hold the 0:17:18.960 --> 0:17:23.480 gun and fire this upon him or herself or was 0:17:23.520 --> 0:17:26.600 it the spouse who fired the gun? And the claim 0:17:26.760 --> 0:17:29.320 is that by looking at the way that the blood 0:17:29.400 --> 0:17:32.679 is distributed at the crime scene, you know one hundred 0:17:32.720 --> 0:17:34.840 percent what the answer to that is. 0:17:45.520 --> 0:17:49.440 All right, Pam, you wrote a two part story entitled 0:17:49.480 --> 0:17:53.159 Blood Will Tell And by the way, to our listeners, 0:17:53.240 --> 0:17:56.760 if you haven't read about this case, you absolutely should. 0:17:57.160 --> 0:18:00.159 We'll link to the article in our show notes. It 0:18:00.240 --> 0:18:05.080 is a fascinating, fascinating piece that Pam wrote for Pro 0:18:05.160 --> 0:18:08.680 Publica and again it's entitled blood will Tell the Joe 0:18:08.680 --> 0:18:13.000 Brian Story, and it tells the story of various ways 0:18:13.240 --> 0:18:17.720 bloodstained pattern analysis can go off the rails. And I 0:18:17.840 --> 0:18:19.560 want to say that it has a happy ending, but 0:18:19.600 --> 0:18:22.000 it's a tragedy really right. I mean, you have a 0:18:22.040 --> 0:18:26.800 man that was loved by everybody. He's a high school principal. 0:18:26.920 --> 0:18:31.280 He spent thirty three years in prison for the murder 0:18:31.280 --> 0:18:35.639 of his wife, and you know your story. Pam was 0:18:35.760 --> 0:18:39.879 like the driving force, if not the critical driving force 0:18:40.320 --> 0:18:42.800 behind getting him out of prison. So please tell us 0:18:42.800 --> 0:18:44.040 about the Joe Brian case. 0:18:44.840 --> 0:18:48.719 Joe Brian was a beloved high school principal in a 0:18:48.840 --> 0:18:54.000 little Texas town called Clifton, Texas. And in nineteen eighty five, 0:18:54.240 --> 0:18:57.119 when he was by all accounts out of town one 0:18:57.200 --> 0:19:00.840 hundred and twenty miles away in Austin at an education conference, 0:19:01.680 --> 0:19:05.560 his wife was shot and killed in their home and 0:19:06.040 --> 0:19:11.280 this was initially investigated as a robbery gone wrong. And 0:19:11.680 --> 0:19:17.280 about a week after the murder, a flashlight was discovered 0:19:17.640 --> 0:19:22.119 in the trunk of Joe's car that had tiny, tiny 0:19:22.160 --> 0:19:26.240 specks of blood on it, and there was no blood 0:19:26.280 --> 0:19:30.680 found in the car or anything like that. And who 0:19:30.760 --> 0:19:34.440 this blood belonged to, whether it was even human blood, 0:19:34.600 --> 0:19:39.439 all of this was unknown. But the state took this 0:19:40.480 --> 0:19:43.800 and they brought in a bloodstained pattern analyst, a local 0:19:43.880 --> 0:19:49.240 cop who'd had forty hours of training, and he, through 0:19:49.320 --> 0:19:54.800 his testimony, connected that flashlight and the spatter pattern on 0:19:54.880 --> 0:19:58.040 the flashlight to the crime scene. He said this could 0:19:58.119 --> 0:20:02.520 only have happened at the crime scene, and his theory 0:20:02.600 --> 0:20:05.760 of the case was that Joe had held the flashlight 0:20:05.840 --> 0:20:09.480 in one hand a gun in the other. He'd shot 0:20:09.520 --> 0:20:13.840 his wife, Mickey. The blood had gotten onto the splashlight, 0:20:14.240 --> 0:20:17.800 and this was proof that he was guilty of murder. 0:20:18.480 --> 0:20:22.200 How this man, who would have been bloodied, how did 0:20:22.240 --> 0:20:25.720 he drive off in this car that was absolutely pristine, 0:20:26.359 --> 0:20:29.199 was explained away by the expert, who said things like, 0:20:29.720 --> 0:20:32.879 after he killed her, he completely changed his clothes and 0:20:32.920 --> 0:20:36.879 he changed his shoes, and that's why the interior of 0:20:36.960 --> 0:20:40.119 the car was clean. But he made this error and 0:20:40.160 --> 0:20:43.919 put this in the truck and that was enough. I mean, 0:20:43.960 --> 0:20:48.000 this is a man. There was no motive no physical evidence, 0:20:48.760 --> 0:20:51.439 he was many counties away, he was in a different 0:20:51.480 --> 0:20:55.639 place the night of the crime, but that expert testimony 0:20:55.720 --> 0:20:59.720 from that cop was enough to get a murder conviction 0:21:00.119 --> 0:21:00.800 life sentence. 0:21:01.640 --> 0:21:04.399 I mean, it's so difficult to listen to this, and 0:21:04.440 --> 0:21:08.480 I wish I could say that I'm sitting here, you know, shocked, 0:21:09.760 --> 0:21:12.120 and was able to tell you what. I've never heard 0:21:12.440 --> 0:21:15.359 of a case like that before, where you know, the 0:21:15.440 --> 0:21:18.800 accused is actually in a different town altogether. But unfortunately 0:21:18.920 --> 0:21:23.760 I've heard this before. This happens to many defendants or 0:21:23.800 --> 0:21:27.240 people that are accused of crimes they didn't commit. Was 0:21:27.320 --> 0:21:28.480 Joe ever exonerated? 0:21:29.840 --> 0:21:34.560 So Joe was not exonerated, He was parolled and the 0:21:34.720 --> 0:21:39.639 state of his case. He had an evidentiary hearing in 0:21:39.680 --> 0:21:46.560 twenty nineteen with some really really compelling testimony that suggested 0:21:46.640 --> 0:21:51.040 not only his innocence but a possible other perpetrator. In Texas, 0:21:51.080 --> 0:21:54.679 we have something called a junk science writ which is 0:21:54.720 --> 0:22:01.360 fairly unusual, but it allows somebody to take bad evidence, 0:22:01.520 --> 0:22:06.719 junk science that's been allowed into their case and to 0:22:06.840 --> 0:22:08.960 try to get the courts to take a second look 0:22:09.000 --> 0:22:13.000 at their case because of that. And so he's been 0:22:13.119 --> 0:22:17.920 parolled and is still fighting to prove his innocence. Joe 0:22:18.160 --> 0:22:21.960 turns eighty later this year. He's had congestive heart failure 0:22:22.280 --> 0:22:25.840 for numerous years. His health is not good, and the 0:22:25.880 --> 0:22:29.840 Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles finally decided to release 0:22:29.920 --> 0:22:35.119 him in March, and he is now at home with 0:22:35.240 --> 0:22:38.320 his brother. He's got an ankle monitor for a couple 0:22:38.359 --> 0:22:42.120 more months, and then he'll go back to life as 0:22:42.240 --> 0:22:45.159 much as it can be normal after thirty three years 0:22:45.160 --> 0:22:46.760 behind bars. 0:22:46.880 --> 0:22:49.800 I mean a lot of people always say they hear 0:22:49.840 --> 0:22:54.960 about this work of helping the wrongfully incarcerated, but they 0:22:55.000 --> 0:22:57.639 hear about it when it's too late, you know, after 0:22:57.680 --> 0:23:01.400 they have lost decades and decades of their lives. Oftentimes 0:23:01.480 --> 0:23:05.480 their lives have been utterly destroyed. I mean, you know, 0:23:05.520 --> 0:23:08.320 you read the stories about them getting out, but take 0:23:08.320 --> 0:23:14.159 it from me, having worked with scores of exoneries, not 0:23:14.200 --> 0:23:18.000 only my clients, but some of the innocence projects other clients, 0:23:18.000 --> 0:23:22.359 they're just never the same. The psychological damage of being 0:23:23.160 --> 0:23:26.000 you know, confined to this narrow space, and all of 0:23:26.000 --> 0:23:29.000 the horrors of prison that you hear about that happen 0:23:29.080 --> 0:23:32.040 to these people, and then on top of it being 0:23:32.119 --> 0:23:34.919 in there for something you didn't do. I mean, there 0:23:34.960 --> 0:23:39.400 have been studies about how it inflicts even more psychological 0:23:39.480 --> 0:23:41.720 damage on people to be in there for something that 0:23:41.760 --> 0:23:46.360 you didn't do, and the lost years just can't be replaced. 0:23:46.600 --> 0:23:48.480 No amount of money is going to make that pain 0:23:48.560 --> 0:23:53.160 go away, no matter how much compensation they get. And 0:23:53.280 --> 0:23:57.240 yet these wrongful convictions just continue being propelled by junk science. 0:23:57.320 --> 0:23:58.640 It's just astounding. 0:24:01.320 --> 0:24:05.679 I was flabbergasted when working on this story and trying 0:24:05.760 --> 0:24:09.959 to find, well, where where is the research that backs 0:24:10.040 --> 0:24:12.960 up all these claims that people are making on the stand, 0:24:13.320 --> 0:24:19.359 Where's the academic work that's been done, where is the anything. 0:24:20.160 --> 0:24:24.640 This is a discipline that when you look at sort 0:24:24.640 --> 0:24:29.119 of the fundamentals of how do you prove reliability, no 0:24:29.160 --> 0:24:33.359 one can quote an error rate, There are no markers 0:24:33.400 --> 0:24:36.560 that show that this is something that holds up under 0:24:36.840 --> 0:24:41.080 any kind of scrutiny. And so this idea that we 0:24:41.200 --> 0:24:46.360 can not just look at blood as a clue as 0:24:46.400 --> 0:24:48.639 we would at many, many, many things in a crime 0:24:48.680 --> 0:24:52.320 scene to help us figure out what happened, but as 0:24:52.640 --> 0:24:56.560 something in which you can entirely independent even of any 0:24:56.600 --> 0:25:01.840 other evidence, reconstruct the crime itself quickly leads you into 0:25:01.920 --> 0:25:10.439 wrongful conviction territory. 0:25:15.280 --> 0:25:18.800 I want our listeners to be rest assured that we're 0:25:18.800 --> 0:25:24.479 not just throwing around this term junk science haphazardly. Just 0:25:24.520 --> 0:25:29.000 to be crystal clear, there has been extensive research on 0:25:29.080 --> 0:25:34.680 the effectiveness and the accuracy of bloodstained pattern analysis, and 0:25:34.920 --> 0:25:38.160 this will become somewhat of a drum beat in our series. 0:25:38.600 --> 0:25:40.840 We're going to continue to go back to this study 0:25:40.840 --> 0:25:42.760 that was done in two thousand and nine by the 0:25:42.840 --> 0:25:47.119 National Academy of Sciences, and they issued a report after 0:25:47.200 --> 0:25:51.280 examining various disciplines of forensic science that are used in 0:25:51.320 --> 0:25:56.720 courtrooms across the country, everything from fingerprints to footwear impressions, 0:25:56.720 --> 0:25:59.560 to bite marks and of course bloodstains right PAM. 0:26:00.119 --> 0:26:03.360 The National Academy of Science is actually made up of 0:26:03.840 --> 0:26:10.359 scientists who publish peer reviewed work and who were involved 0:26:10.640 --> 0:26:16.439 in research with real scientific integrity, and they set the 0:26:16.480 --> 0:26:21.480 bar very, very high, and they have long been extremely 0:26:21.600 --> 0:26:29.640 critical of bloodstained pattern analysis and really cautioning courts to 0:26:29.680 --> 0:26:33.640 not consider this a science with the sort of accuracy 0:26:34.320 --> 0:26:40.040 as for example, some DNA testing or toxicology, where you 0:26:40.119 --> 0:26:44.080 really you have numbers and certainty to work. 0:26:43.880 --> 0:26:49.080 With, so outside of DNA, the NAS study was really 0:26:49.119 --> 0:26:53.400 critical of all of these other disciplines of forensic science. 0:26:53.600 --> 0:26:57.320 And what it's said about blood spatter analysis is this quote, 0:26:57.800 --> 0:27:03.159 the capable analysts must possess an understanding of applied mathematics, physics, 0:27:03.760 --> 0:27:08.280 fluid transfer, wound pathology, and that this blood spatter analysis 0:27:08.359 --> 0:27:13.359 is more subjective than substantive. So this report should have 0:27:13.440 --> 0:27:16.560 been a bombshell in the forensic science community, and it 0:27:16.600 --> 0:27:18.840 really should have changed our court system. I mean, why 0:27:18.880 --> 0:27:21.560 do you think it is that you have some of 0:27:21.560 --> 0:27:25.960 the leading scientists in the country so critically rebuking all 0:27:26.000 --> 0:27:29.760 of these forensic disciplines, but courts don't seem to pay 0:27:29.800 --> 0:27:30.800