Speaker 1: It's December. Last night you decorated a Christmas tree with
Speaker 1: your family. You put your two year old on your
Speaker 1: shoulders so she could hang her favorite ornament way up
Speaker 1: high on the tree. Your twin babies gazed up at
Speaker 1: you from the living room floor, taking the scene in
Speaker 1: with giggles and excited kicks of their little legs. Later on,
Speaker 1: your wife put the kids to bed, and then you
Speaker 1: both stayed up late, finishing the tree and cleaning up.
Speaker 1: In the morning, your wife leaves the house early for
Speaker 1: some last minute shopping for the girls. The babies here
Speaker 1: at the door slam and start to cry, as they
Speaker 1: typically do. You take them out of their cribs, give
Speaker 1: them each a bottle, and put them on the soft
Speaker 1: play out on the floor so they can keep each
Speaker 1: other company. You head back to your room, and as
Speaker 1: you lay down, you hear them cooing from across the hall.
Speaker 1: You drift off to sleep. You aren't asleep long. You
Speaker 1: wake up to your two year old daughter screaming, Daddy, Daddy.
Speaker 1: You're groggy, startled, but the terror in her voice snaps
Speaker 1: you awake like a plaring alarm, and then it hits you.
Speaker 1: The room is a dense cloud of gray and black.
Speaker 1: You can barely see. You smell charcoal, ash, smoke. Oh no,
Speaker 1: your girls gifted girls out of the house. It's loud.
Speaker 1: It sounds like an angry windstorm. The entire house is crackling, popping.
Speaker 1: You make your way to the baby's rooms and feel
Speaker 1: around on the floor, groping in the darkness. You think
Speaker 1: you grab one of the twins, but it's just a
Speaker 1: baby doll. Your hair is on fire. You stand up
Speaker 1: and pat it out and frantically get on the ground again.
Speaker 1: Then there's a loud crash. Something is falling from somewhere
Speaker 1: in the house. It must be the caving in a
Speaker 1: part of the room for a wall, but you can't
Speaker 1: see anything. It's so hot you can't breathe. You need
Speaker 1: to catch your breath before you pass out. You finally
Speaker 1: make your way outside to get help. You'll come back
Speaker 1: for them. You see your neighbor on her front lawn
Speaker 1: and scream for her to call the fire department. She
Speaker 1: sees a hysterical man covered in soot, and she yells
Speaker 1: back there. On the way. You try to get back inside,
Speaker 1: breaking the window of the baby's room with the stick
Speaker 1: you find in the yard flames explode from the opening.
Speaker 1: Oh God, you can't get in. You're crying out for
Speaker 1: your children. Someone, anyone, please help. The fire department finally
Speaker 1: arrives and they have to hold you back. They find
Speaker 1: your two year old in the bedroom on the floor.
Speaker 1: You didn't realize she had been right there, right there.
Speaker 1: Your babies are on the floor of their room where
Speaker 1: you had left them with their bottle. You've been so
Speaker 1: close to finding them. They try to do CPR, but
Speaker 1: it's too late. You're escorted away from the house, and
Speaker 1: once the fires under control, investigators in protective gear head inside.
Speaker 1: There's no sense of urgency anymore. They walk through the
Speaker 1: remains and disappear into the black and living room where
Speaker 1: you had spent your last night together as a family.
Speaker 1: You are dumbfounded when they arrest you for arson murder.
Speaker 1: This was your family. You would never lay a finger
Speaker 1: on your children. At your trial, the prosecutors call expert
Speaker 1: witnesses who tell the jury that the proven signs of
Speaker 1: fire tells the story of how you committed this crime.
Speaker 1: You pour lighter fluid, which they referred to as an accelerant,
Speaker 1: under your bay beast beds in the hallway by the
Speaker 1: front door. The burn marks seared into the floor indicate
Speaker 1: where that lighter fluid was puddled on the carpet. They say,
Speaker 1: there's no way you tried to save your girls. If
Speaker 1: you had, your feet would have been burned. Drip stains
Speaker 1: proved that you poured accelerant up and down the hallway.
Speaker 1: The melted metal door frame, the shattered glass, it all
Speaker 1: proves the fire was so unnaturally hot that it produced
Speaker 1: temperatures that could only have been created by chemicals that
Speaker 1: you intentionally poured all over your home and your motive.
Speaker 1: Prosecutors argued this, you love heavy metal music, and that
Speaker 1: indicates that you have a dark side. You have posters
Speaker 1: on the walls of your home, one of which depicts
Speaker 1: a grim reaper that proves you're obsessed with death. You
Speaker 1: have a tattoo of a skull and snake on your
Speaker 1: arm that indicates you're a violent person. You have psychiatric problems,
Speaker 1: perhaps a demonic disposition. You couldn't afford to hire a lawyer,
Speaker 1: so the court appointed you an attorney. He too, suspects
Speaker 1: that you killed your children. He tells you to plead guilty.
Speaker 1: If you do, they'll give you life in prison instead.
Speaker 1: Of the death sentence. You can't do this. This was
Speaker 1: an accident. There was no crime here. You're not going
Speaker 1: to confess to killing your three beautiful children. You didn't
Speaker 1: do anything wrong here. You were convicted and sentenced to
Speaker 1: death on death row, the events of that day haunt you.
Speaker 1: You look at the photos of your children, your wife
Speaker 1: to remember the man you were, the life you once had.
Speaker 1: Time seems to stand still on death row, and the
Speaker 1: whole experience is nothing short of paralyzing. But the date
Speaker 1: of your execution eventually closes in. You write a letter
Speaker 1: to your parents, telling them to never stop fighting to
Speaker 1: clear your name, even if it's after they put you
Speaker 1: to death. The last words of your fellow inmates, the
Speaker 1: ones who are executed before you, one by one, were
Speaker 1: often apologies. Sometimes they were confessions. But before you're strapped
Speaker 1: into the gurney and given a lethal injection, you say,
Speaker 1: I am an innocent person convicted of a crime I
Speaker 1: did not commit. I've been persecuted for twelve years for
Speaker 1: something I did not do. From God's dust, I came
Speaker 1: into dust. I will return so the earth shall become
Speaker 1: my throne. Your parents scatter your ashes over the graves
Speaker 1: of your children. The story you just heard is based
Speaker 1: on the wrongful conviction of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was
Speaker 1: wrongfully convicted and executed in two thousand four. I'm Josh Dubin,
Speaker 1: civil rights and criminal defense attorney and Innocent's Ambassador to
Speaker 1: the Innocence Project in New York. Today, on wrongful conviction
Speaker 1: junk science, we examine arson evidence. In three the Nixon
Speaker 1: administration published a report entitled America Burning. It was all
Speaker 1: about damage the fires caused in America, both in terms
Speaker 1: of physical destruction and the billions of dollars spent to
Speaker 1: repair and rebuild. But unfortunately, much of what was considered
Speaker 1: fire signs and America Burning was merely a set of
Speaker 1: core assumptions that were never subjected to the rigors of
Speaker 1: the scientific method that is developed hypothesis, Test it, confirm it, reconfirment,
Speaker 1: and repeat until you know you have something sound and verifiable.
Speaker 1: As a result of this study, fire investigators were given
Speaker 1: a handbook, A Guide to reading fire damage like a
Speaker 1: psychic reads tea leaves. An investigator, having learned from this handbook,
Speaker 1: starts his investigation at the exterior of a burnt down house.
Speaker 1: He sees a v shape burn on what's left of
Speaker 1: the walls of the living room. He notes this is
Speaker 1: the room where the fire started. He walks through the home,
Speaker 1: keeping an eye out for the telltale signs of arson. First,
Speaker 1: crazed glass windows shattered into irregular pieces with light smoke
Speaker 1: deposits that indicate a rapid build up of heat that
Speaker 1: can only be caused by an accelerant. Second, alligatoring large
Speaker 1: shiny blisters on burntwood. Fast hot fires produced by accelerants
Speaker 1: create this pattern. Third, puddle formations and burns that look
Speaker 1: like drip trails. These are caused by the spreading of
Speaker 1: accelerant like gasoline or paint thinner throughout a house before
Speaker 1: it is intentionally set on fire. The investigator checks all
Speaker 1: of these signs off the list. He knows this must
Speaker 1: be arson. It turns out the investigator only had a
Speaker 1: fifty percent chance of being right at best, because fire
Speaker 1: science was built on a foundation of conjecture and best
Speaker 1: guesses that were never adequately tested and confirmed according to
Speaker 1: valid scientific principles. What experts and prosecutors had been telling
Speaker 1: juries for decades aids about how you can definitively determine
Speaker 1: that a fire was intentionally set was completely wrong. In fact,
Speaker 1: signs that indicated to investigators that they were dealing with arson,
Speaker 1: crazed glass, alligator patterns, burn marks indicating drips or puddles
Speaker 1: of accelerant, We're actually the same things left in the
Speaker 1: wake of an accidental fire. So the evidence that was
Speaker 1: used to convict Cameron, Todd Willingham, and so many others
Speaker 1: was deeply, deeply flawed. It turns out that there was
Speaker 1: no evidence whatsoever uh that this had been a fire
Speaker 1: that was set by Todd Willingham running up and down
Speaker 1: his home, you know, just before Christmas, spreading accelerant in
Speaker 1: all the different rooms and down the hallway and killing
Speaker 1: his three children. It was clear that this was junk science.
Speaker 1: And unfortunately, by this point in my career I was
Speaker 1: familiar enough with the phenomenon of junk science not to
Speaker 1: be surprised. Joining us today to tell us about arson
Speaker 1: evidence and how it relates to cases like Cameron Todd
Speaker 1: Willingham's is Barry Scheck, co founder of the Innocence Project
Speaker 1: and famed civil rights and criminal defense attorney. So Barry, first,
Speaker 1: thanks for being here and for our listeners. Barry is
Speaker 1: one of my personal heroes, and I'm just ecstatic, Um
Speaker 1: that we're able to get you to enlighten us about
Speaker 1: arson evidence. Now, you worked to get Cameron Todd Willingham's
Speaker 1: case overturned after he was executed. And this might seem
Speaker 1: like somewhat of a pointless fight to some people since
Speaker 1: Mr Willingham was already put to death in two thousand four.
Speaker 1: But you are fighting for Mr Willingham's final wish for
Speaker 1: his name to cleared and him to be declared an
Speaker 1: innocent man by a court. I think that it's um
Speaker 1: well accepted that he's an innocent man at this point,
Speaker 1: But you're also fighting so that the kind of evidence
Speaker 1: that was used against Mr Willingham doesn't get used to
Speaker 1: convict another innocent person. And so to start off, Barry, Um,
Speaker 1: if some of the clues used an arson investigation or
Speaker 1: indeed junk science, how did Cameron Todd Willingham get convicted
Speaker 1: in the first place? What the fire scientists, the arson
Speaker 1: investigators in Willingham, But they did in that case. They
Speaker 1: would go to the scene of a fire and they
Speaker 1: would look at all these visual cues and if they
Speaker 1: saw what was called alligatoring, which was you know, like
Speaker 1: the scales of an alligator on wood. If they saw
Speaker 1: what was known as craze glass that's like a spider
Speaker 1: type cracking of the glass. If they saw spawling of
Speaker 1: concrete that's like little chips coming off the concrete at
Speaker 1: the scene of the fire. If they saw scouring on
Speaker 1: the floor, poor patterns, they immediately assumed that all of
Speaker 1: these visual cues meant that somebody had spread accelerant around
Speaker 1: the house and lit it and that was the cause
Speaker 1: of the fire. And they literally said to the jury,
Speaker 1: we look at the fire, the fire talks to us.
Speaker 1: The fire doesn't lie. That's very powerful to a jury.
Speaker 1: So what happened, Josh, is that when we at the
Speaker 1: Innocence Projects saw what happened in the willing Ham case,
Speaker 1: we had just been involved in setting up what's known
Speaker 1: as the Texas Forensic Science Commission. They reviewed all the
Speaker 1: crime scene evidence in the willing Ham case and they
Speaker 1: said what was clear, uh, and that is this is
Speaker 1: junk science. This had been discredited by No Fire Protection
Speaker 1: one ten years ago. The science was completely flawed, unreliable, ridiculous.
Speaker 1: So even after all of that, the state of Texas
Speaker 1: still refused to free Cameron Todd Willingham. And to show
Speaker 1: just how flawed this evidence was, there was a man
Speaker 1: name Ernest Willis who was convicted of a similar crime
Speaker 1: with similar evidence than was used in the Willingham case.
Speaker 1: But while Cameron Todd Willingham was put to death in
Speaker 1: two thousand four, Willis was declared innocent that very same year.
Speaker 1: So how is that possible, very that one man Willingham
Speaker 1: is executed based on this junk science, while another man, Willis,
Speaker 1: whose case was very similar, it gets to go free.
Speaker 1: Ernest Willis went to trial, he had a completely incompetent
Speaker 1: lawyer who was disbarred for all kinds of reasons. Willis
Speaker 1: was so upset by the fire that you know, killed
Speaker 1: family members that he was literally on psychotropic medication. Uh
Speaker 1: in the witness chair, right. He was lucky because his
Speaker 1: lawyer was so incompetent, and on his death penalty appeal
Speaker 1: he got a patent lawyer from Lath of Ben Watkins
Speaker 1: in New York who dove into the case and was
Speaker 1: able to get the federal courts to vacate that conviction.
Speaker 1: And when the conviction was remanded on exactly the same evidence,
Speaker 1: just like the Willingham case, Willis was not only exonerated,
Speaker 1: there was a prosecutor in Pacos County, Texas, took one
Speaker 1: look at this and said, oh my god, this was
Speaker 1: an accidental fire. This was not an arson murder. Uh,
Speaker 1: And he not only dismissed the case against Ernest Willis,
Speaker 1: Ernest Willis was compensated as actually innocent by the state
Speaker 1: of Texas, while within the same time period, Cameron Todd
Speaker 1: Willingham was executed. It's just really hard to hear this
Speaker 1: stuff right because right away this indicates some sort of
Speaker 1: double standard, or at least some confusion within the justice
Speaker 1: system about what arson evidence really means and how much
Speaker 1: it can be trusted. And to be clear, by two
Speaker 1: thousand four, there shouldn't have been any confusion about this
Speaker 1: type of evidence, because in the early nineties there were
Speaker 1: two incidents that I'm going to ask you about that
Speaker 1: really proved that the kind of arson evidence used in
Speaker 1: the Cameron Todd Willingham case was bogus. The first was
Speaker 1: the Lime Street case, in which was the case of
Speaker 1: Gerald Wayne Lewis. Mr. Lewis was accused of killing his
Speaker 1: pregnant wife, his sister, and his sister's four children by
Speaker 1: arson now, Gerald always maintained his innocence, but it was
Speaker 1: actually a prosecution expert named John Lentini who was the
Speaker 1: moving force improving Gerald's innocence. John Lentini was an arson investigator,
Speaker 1: and he went along with a colleague of his UH,
Speaker 1: John de Haand to investigate an allegation of arson at
Speaker 1: a home on Lime Street in Jacksonville, Florida. UH. And
Speaker 1: they examined the crime scene and they were already by
Speaker 1: their own admission, to make a recommendation that it was
Speaker 1: an intentional arson. But they realized that right next to
Speaker 1: the house that burned down was another house that was abandoned,
Speaker 1: but it was the same construction. So they rebuilt the
Speaker 1: house right next door to be identical to the Lime
Speaker 1: Street house that burned down, and then they basically put
Speaker 1: a cigarette on a couch. They began the fire UH
Speaker 1: in a way that would be completely accidental. The whole
Speaker 1: place burned down, and they saw all the clues, all
Speaker 1: the visual clues from the craze glass alligator burning under furniture,
Speaker 1: completely compartmentalized fire. They saw all these cues and they
Speaker 1: knew that it was an accidental fire, not a deliberate one,
Speaker 1: and so that began to change everything. So again, this
Speaker 1: is very ironic and rare because Lentini's a fire investigator
Speaker 1: that's working for the prosecution, and he's actually trying to
Speaker 1: prove that this Lime Street case was in fact arson
Speaker 1: and that Gerald Wayne Lewis had actually done it. But
Speaker 1: he realizes that there were some serious issues with his
Speaker 1: assumptions because this accidental fire actually resembled an arson, and
Speaker 1: it resembled it in very critical ways. And what was
Speaker 1: most shocking to me about this was that Lentini saw
Speaker 1: puddle stains and trail marks that looked identical to what
Speaker 1: he had been taught and so many other investigators had
Speaker 1: been taught it, or the telltale signs of someone dripping
Speaker 1: gasoline or another accelerant throughout a house. But that definitely
Speaker 1: was not the case here. And they knew that because
Speaker 1: they set the fire themselves with a cigarette exactly, and
Speaker 1: they'd say, well, that really can happen unless it's an
Speaker 1: intentionally set fire. But it turns out with this phenomenon
Speaker 1: of flash over, which is you get this hot combustible
Speaker 1: object in a small space ordinarily a room, right, and
Speaker 1: then it begins to cause this huge burst of heat
Speaker 1: and fire in that room, and the whole place becomes engulfed.
Speaker 1: So that's what creates uh, the intense heat that arson
Speaker 1: investigators had hypothesized must come from the deliberate use of accelerance.
Speaker 1: It turns out that it could all happen in a
Speaker 1: completely accidental fire. So Lentini the investigator realizes that accidental
Speaker 1: fighters can look just like arson, and he does something
Speaker 1: that is actually quite remarkable. But it shouldn't be, because
Speaker 1: whether you're working for the prosecution or the defense, when
Speaker 1: the science tells you something, you should not have a
Speaker 1: bias in its application. Right. He doesn't say, Oh, this
Speaker 1: is just some weird coincidence. I'm gonna keep working for
Speaker 1: prosecutors to convict people in arson cases based on this
Speaker 1: evidence that I now know is clearly faulty. It's wrong. Instead,
Speaker 1: he's pretty shocked, um appalled by what he sees, and
Speaker 1: he feels like he's been misled by this evidence for years. Right,
Speaker 1: And he gets an opportunity to examine um a bunch
Speaker 1: more more accidental fighters and make sure that his findings
Speaker 1: in the Limestreet case were consistent with other accidental fires.
Speaker 1: I don't know if people remember, but these homes on
Speaker 1: the in the hills in Oakland, California, began to burn down,
Speaker 1: uh you know, in what was plainly a series of
Speaker 1: accidental fires. And after all these homes were burned down,
Speaker 1: the fire scientists went at and examined each and every
Speaker 1: one of them and they realized, once again, here were
Speaker 1: plainly accidental fires. But all these visual cues that arson
Speaker 1: experts had been relying on demonstrated that it was an accident.
Speaker 1: It was not an intentionally set fire. So take just
Speaker 1: the craze glass. That's a simple thing to understand. Uh
Speaker 1: you know, you look at the glass. It's sort of
Speaker 1: spider glass, and that supposedly an indication of suddenly intense
Speaker 1: heat that comes from uh you know, an accelerant induced fire.
Speaker 1: In fact, you and craze glass all over in Oakland
Speaker 1: in the Lime Street fire. Because craze glass happens when
Speaker 1: people come to put out the fire and they put
Speaker 1: cold water on it and the glass cracks. That's how
Speaker 1: you get craze glass. So these arson investigators have been
Speaker 1: testifying for years and years that the reason you see
Speaker 1: craze glass, and it's no pun intended. It's actually a
Speaker 1: crazy notion that they're testifying to one thing and it
Speaker 1: turns out to be the exact opposite. Alright, so craze
Speaker 1: glass was caused by the cooling of the glass when
Speaker 1: they're putting the fire out. What were some other things
Speaker 1: they were wrong about? They would say, oh, we're looking
Speaker 1: at mattress springs, uh in a bed or something and
Speaker 1: they're melted. That can only happen that it's an intentionally
Speaker 1: set fire. But when they went to the hills of
Speaker 1: Oakland and looked at these homes, they saw the same thing,
Speaker 1: and the same thing at the Lime Street fire. I mean,
Speaker 1: you would think that would be the end of people
Speaker 1: trying to use this kind of junk science, this kind
Speaker 1: of false evidence, but that isn't the case. What is
Speaker 1: really upsetting is that you see over the next few decades, nonetheless,
Speaker 1: lots of people who are convicted because they never did
Speaker 1: uh scientific validation in the first place. You actually have
Speaker 1: to conduct experiments, you have to have hypotheses, and you
Speaker 1: have to prove that they're true, instead of just having
Speaker 1: you know, uh really you know, sort of law enforcement
Speaker 1: people in lab coats, so to speak, or people that
Speaker 1: have expertise by way of quote unquote experience going to
Speaker 1: crime scenes and looking at fire scenes and and really
Speaker 1: coming up with their own hypotheses that were never demonstrated
Speaker 1: to be true by science. That's what's so shocking about
Speaker 1: this whole area. In other words, if you believe all
Speaker 1: of these different visual cues demonstrate that an accelerant has
Speaker 1: been used, you should do experiments to prove the point. Now, Barry,
Speaker 1: this isn't the case where these investigators were out harm people.
Speaker 1: This is just how they were trained. I have some
Speaker 1: sympathy for a whole group of people who had, many
Speaker 1: of them just high school graduates who were trained in
Speaker 1: arson investigation to believe all these different visual cues were
Speaker 1: assigned of the use of an accelerant and intentionally set
Speaker 1: fire that was never empirically demonstrated, and yet they were
Speaker 1: doing it. Uh. And that's how they made a living,
Speaker 1: that's true, and they thought that they had expertise. It's
Speaker 1: it's imagine how horrendous it is to believe, as a
Speaker 1: prosecutor were as a so called arson investigator, that you
Speaker 1: were wrong and you destroyed people's lives. People don't get
Speaker 1: up in the morning and say let's do that, right. Uh.
Speaker 1: But it happens, and it's very hard to admit to it,
Speaker 1: all right, So why do you think it is that?
Speaker 1: You know, generations of experts have all been proven to
Speaker 1: be wrong. The assumptions they rely on turn out to
Speaker 1: be incorrect, but there's this unwillingness to change. Once you
Speaker 1: have invested yourself in this belief and all these very
Speaker 1: weighty consequences follow, it's very hard to admit that you
Speaker 1: were wrong, even when there's scientific proof that you're wrong.
Speaker 1: John Lentini and John Dohan and all these various experts,
Speaker 1: you know, they started off as regular arts and investigators,
Speaker 1: um that we're taught to believe these things, but engaging
Speaker 1: in real science and doing these experiments, they realized it
Speaker 1: was all wrong. And they had an enormous amount of
Speaker 1: trouble persuading the forensic science community to stop, and they're
Speaker 1: still fighting about it even to this day. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that the Willingham case and all these other
Speaker 1: exonerations have exposed the community to it, and you literally
Speaker 1: can see fewer Arson convictions since that happened. But Josh,
Speaker 1: you're you're you're absolutely right. It's it's mystifying, it's so
Speaker 1: upsetting that it is taking so long to change it.
Speaker 1: And meanwhile, these convictions based on this false arson science
Speaker 1: or this there's fire evidence, Um, just keep on coming.
Speaker 1: Han Tock Lee, whose daughter, who suffered from mental illness,
Speaker 1: was found uh literally burnt to death, incinerated, you know,
Speaker 1: in a small community in Pennsylvania, he gets convicted of
Speaker 1: killing his daughter intentionally in a fire which did not happen. Right.
Speaker 1: The case of Han Tock Lee is just, um, it's
Speaker 1: really really troubling. I mean, here's a guy that's been
Speaker 1: fifteen years in prison for a murder he did not commit.
Speaker 1: And there's a quote that always stuck with me from
Speaker 1: an opinion written by a judge during Han Tok Lee's appeal,
Speaker 1: and it was this quote, much of what was presented
Speaker 1: to Lee's jury as science is now conceded to be
Speaker 1: little more than superstition end quote. I mean, that's so remarkable,
Speaker 1: isn't it. And you know, again, the fact that this
Speaker 1: is still used in the face of quotes like that,
Speaker 1: it's just it's hard to understand. You know. He was
Speaker 1: granted a new trial and finally exonerated, thankfully, in two
Speaker 1: thousand and fifteen. Another was a Sonja Casey, who was
Speaker 1: convicted of burning down a house and killing I guess
Speaker 1: that it was her uncle, Bill richards And and it,
Speaker 1: of course it turned out that Bill Richardson was actually
Speaker 1: a heavy smoker and had probably fallen asleep with a
Speaker 1: burning cigarette. But plainly she did not start this fire.
Speaker 1: All the same kind of junk science was used in
Speaker 1: that case. And that's the great tragedy. When you look
Speaker 1: at the arson cases, so many people like Ernest Willis
Speaker 1: or Cameron Todd Willingham, Rahn Tock League, you know, they're
Speaker 1: all convicted of killing with intentionally set fires their loved ones.
Speaker 1: That to me is, you know, the horrible, horrible irony
Speaker 1: of these junk science cases. Now, for our listeners, I
Speaker 1: know Barry, you know twenty years um, and I've seen
Speaker 1: you get emotional before and passionate about a lot of cases.
Speaker 1: But I want to go back to the Cameron Todd
Speaker 1: Willingham case for a moment because it seems to me
Speaker 1: that this is one that really stuck with you, um.
Speaker 1: And it seems to me like one of the two
Speaker 1: or three cases that has really haunted you in all
Speaker 1: your innocence work. How can it not haunt you? It
Speaker 1: should haunt everyone in this country. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: a case that ought to change the way the people
Speaker 1: look at capital punishment and forensic science. I think, look,
Speaker 1: we've made a lot of progress, but we still haven't
Speaker 1: corrected the biggest injustice of all, and that is uh
Speaker 1: the wrongful execution of Cameron Todd Willingham. Do you see
Speaker 1: the suffering up to the very very end and the
Speaker 1: execution of an innocent man? How could it not haunt you?
Speaker 1: There's so much importance attached with the state finally admitting
Speaker 1: that it was wrong and that an innocent person is executed,
Speaker 1: and that will happen in Texas. It will. Something we
Speaker 1: keep returning back to in this podcast is the two
Speaker 1: thousand nine National Academy of Science AS Report, which is
Speaker 1: a report published by rigorous scientists that is very critical
Speaker 1: of forensic sciences like Arson investigation. In fact, the only
Speaker 1: one that it's not really critical of his DNA. And
Speaker 1: you've done a lot to try to push um the
Speaker 1: lessons of this report to overturn convictions based on junk science.
Speaker 1: Truth is the two thousand nine UH and National Academy
Speaker 1: of Science Report recommended that there be an independent entity
Speaker 1: in the federal government Uh, that would be dedicated to
Speaker 1: providing a scientific basis and oversight to all these forensic
Speaker 1: science disciplines, and independent entity, the National Commission on Forensic
Speaker 1: Science was put into place, which had independent experts from
Speaker 1: lots of different scientific communities. When Trump was elected, uh,
Speaker 1: he abolished the National Commission on Forensic Science. Look, it's
Speaker 1: really inspiring to see that, despite all that's gone wrong
Speaker 1: and all that hasn't worked, that you're still hopeful. Because
Speaker 1: something else that's so shocking is that this issue about
Speaker 1: what kind of evidence should be considered, you know, scientific fact,
Speaker 1: something that can literally determine whether or not so much
Speaker 1: live or die based on a crime they may not
Speaker 1: have committed. It's all still being treated like a political issue,
Speaker 1: and you have personal experience with these political barriers. Yet
Speaker 1: you're still hopeful despite all of the harm that's been
Speaker 1: done and continues to be done, um by political officials,
Speaker 1: by presidents, by judges who, unlike Lentini, refused to see
Speaker 1: the light so to speak. You know, it becomes this
Speaker 1: big echo chamber. Junk science is admitted by one court, right,
Speaker 1: and all the experts can then testify again and again
Speaker 1: and again, even though it was never properly validated in
Speaker 1: the first place, and we've had a lot of that,
Speaker 1: and judges really have to be rigorous on dealing with it.
Speaker 1: And the problem with judges is that we all went
Speaker 1: to law school and not medical school. The judges really
Speaker 1: do have to be better in terms of getting into
Speaker 1: the nuts and bolts of the science. It's intimidating to them,
Speaker 1: just as it's intimidating to a lot of lawyers. You
Speaker 1: might be listening to this wondering what you can do
Speaker 1: to help. I want every listener to consider that even
Speaker 1: those who are wrong convicted and are lucky enough to
Speaker 1: be released from prison, their lives are just never the same.
Speaker 1: Let's take the example of Sonya Casey. She's the woman
Speaker 1: Barry Check mentioned who was accused of murdering her uncle
Speaker 1: by arson. We know that miss Casey was innocent because,
Speaker 1: amongst other evidence, it was later found during the autopsy
Speaker 1: of her uncle that he most likely died from a
Speaker 1: heart attack. There was no suit in his lungs, which
Speaker 1: would have been there if he had in fact died
Speaker 1: in the fire. Instead, there was fluidness lungs, so the
Speaker 1: evidence supported the conclusion that he was dead before the fire.
Speaker 1: Had even spread. Nevertheless, Casey was sentenced to nine nine
Speaker 1: years in prison. Sonya Casey was eventually exonerated, but the
Speaker 1: stain of her wrongful conviction meant that on every job
Speaker 1: application or when she would try to rent an apartment,
Speaker 1: she would either have to check a box saying that
Speaker 1: she had been convicted of a crime, or it would
Speaker 1: be revealed on a background check. That made it nearly
Speaker 1: impossible for her to find work or a place to live. So,
Speaker 1: if you own a business, or you're a landlord, or
Speaker 1: you're just in a position to either approve or reject
Speaker 1: someone for work or a place to live, and someone
Speaker 1: checks the box that they had previously been convicted of
Speaker 1: a crime, please talk to them, learn about the circumstances
Speaker 1: of their arrest, the accusations against them, who they are
Speaker 1: now as a human being. Perhaps you'll find that they
Speaker 1: were the victim, yes, the victim of a wrongful conviction.
Speaker 1: Or maybe it's just that they've done something in their
Speaker 1: past and are no longer that person. The great civil
Speaker 1: rights attorney Bryan Stevenson said it best. Each one of
Speaker 1: us is more than the worst thing we've ever done.
Speaker 1: The true measure of our character is how we treat
Speaker 1: the poor, the disfavored, the accused, the incarcerated, and the condemned.
Speaker 1: I think we can all learn something from that. Okay,
Speaker 1: next week will analyze hair microscopy, the profoundly flawed junk
Speaker 1: science that attempts to use human hair to accuse and
Speaker 1: convict people of crimes they did not commit. Wrongful Conviction
Speaker 1: Junk Science is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts
Speaker 1: in association with Signal Company Number One. Thanks to our
Speaker 1: executive producer Jason Flom and the team, it's Signal Company
Speaker 1: number One executive producer Kevin Wardis and senior producers Kara
Speaker 1: corn Heber and Brit Spangler. Our music was composed by
Speaker 1: j Ralph. You can follow me on Instagram at dubin dot.
Speaker 1: Josh followed the Wrongful Conviction podcast on Facebook and on
Speaker 1: Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Twitter at wrong Conviction
Speaker 1: foll