Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: The Innocent's Project is a well known, not for profit
Speaker 2: legal organization committed to investigating and exonerating individuals who have
Speaker 2: been wrongly convicted through all sorts of different scientific approaches,
Speaker 2: often but includes other methods as well. M. Chris Fabricant
Speaker 2: joins us, the author of Junk Science and the American
Speaker 2: Criminal Justice System. I feel like my introduction to you
Speaker 2: is anemic, because you've got all sorts of other rewards,
Speaker 2: and you all have done great work over the years.
Speaker 2: What do you think of as your proudest achievement?
Speaker 3: No, I think that probably my private achievement. There are
Speaker 3: the generations of the three people that I wrote about
Speaker 3: in Junk Science, Keith Harrow or Stephen Cheney and Ai
Speaker 3: Lee Howard. You apart from you know, raising my two.
Speaker 4: Kids, right, I was going to put that in there too.
Speaker 3: I agree.
Speaker 2: But you all literally get, you know, like a mail
Speaker 2: truck full of applications or cries for help every week.
Speaker 2: How do you begin to determine who is going to
Speaker 2: get the muscle, who's going to get the eyeballs of
Speaker 2: the Innocence Project?
Speaker 3: You know, it's really you know, when you talked about
Speaker 3: the impacts of the Innocence Project on the criminal justice system,
Speaker 3: I think it's a good way to look at our
Speaker 3: intake process is an important touchdown, and you know, relating
Speaker 3: to your question and that when Barry Scheck and Peter
Speaker 3: Neufeld opened the Innocence Project doors thirty one years ago,
Speaker 3: one of the really important decisions that they made was
Speaker 3: about who was going to get the the help of
Speaker 3: the Innocence Projects. And what they decided to do was
Speaker 3: make no subjective judgments about guilt or innocence of anybody
Speaker 3: that had written for our help. The only criteria was
Speaker 3: going to be if you could find and test DNA
Speaker 3: evidence in this case, would that prove innocence? If so,
Speaker 3: it would take the case. Didn't matter. If there is
Speaker 3: a confession, didn't matter, If there are forensic sciences pointing
Speaker 3: to guilt, didn't matter, if their eyewitnesses that were certain
Speaker 3: that it was the defendant. That was the only criteria.
Speaker 3: And as a result of that decision, we learned that
Speaker 3: junk science plays a role in over half of a
Speaker 3: known wrongful convictions. Over half. It is astonishing because up
Speaker 3: until that point we felt that they were essentially infallible,
Speaker 3: and they're still presented that way in the media.
Speaker 2: And we'll get back to that concept of junk science
Speaker 2: and what it means moving forward. But going backward, how
Speaker 2: long ago was it when DNA and it's use in
Speaker 2: a courtroom was considered junk science.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, DNA is not junk science. In nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty time was the first DNA exoneration, and you know,
Speaker 3: somewhat telling ly, in that first DNA exoneration, junk science
Speaker 3: was used microscopic hair comparison of it than something that
Speaker 3: I write a fair amount about. DNA allowed, you know,
Speaker 3: scientific certainty of facts which had never been available before.
Speaker 3: You know, up until that time, we believed that the
Speaker 3: American criminal justice system was the best in the world,
Speaker 3: that wrongful convictions were banishingly rare occurrence, and that all
Speaker 3: of our rights and privileges that it was really nearly impossible.
Speaker 3: And DNA put the lid to that.
Speaker 2: You tell these stories really well, and you tell them
Speaker 2: using a narrative form that most people would have associate
Speaker 2: with true crime before you start to kind of unpack
Speaker 2: the very story that you just presented, and you follow
Speaker 2: the cases as you were involved in repositioning the reader's
Speaker 2: view as to what they had just thought they had understood.
Speaker 2: What's interesting about that to me? I wrote a part
Speaker 2: of my dissertation was about the narratology of true crime,
Speaker 2: and it's called Toward a Theory of True Crime. And
Speaker 2: one of the things that we explored in that in
Speaker 2: them in my research was that frequently true crime was
Speaker 2: used as a narrative form to point out the false
Speaker 2: conclusions of police, not as often as being you know,
Speaker 2: you know, pro law enforcement, but from the very beginning
Speaker 2: it was sort of a burr under the saddle of
Speaker 2: these police departments, and they began to challenge a lot
Speaker 2: of the convictions on the basis of either they were
Speaker 2: trying the wrong person or they had convicted the wrong person.
Speaker 2: And that kind of gave true crime and the narrative
Speaker 2: forms that you use in there this status as being
Speaker 2: sort of a de facto arm of our American judicial
Speaker 2: system that we need to hear the story, not just
Speaker 2: see the facts. And I think you did that really
Speaker 2: well in the book.
Speaker 3: Oh thank you very much. I wanted to, you know,
Speaker 3: I wanted to write a page churner, because really what
Speaker 3: my goal was was to entertain and to educate, you know,
Speaker 3: I mean, and to dispel the myth of insoluble forensics.
Speaker 3: But nobody wants to read a textbook, you know, I mean.
Speaker 3: And the stories of you know, the incredible crimes that
Speaker 3: my clients were wrongfully convicted of and the struggles for
Speaker 3: freedom are really some of the most compelling human interest
Speaker 3: stories that have come across and I felt very sure
Speaker 3: privileged to be you know, a close observer and a
Speaker 3: participant in them. And you know, and really it's an
Speaker 3: effort to create a new true crime genre. On true crime,
Speaker 3: that's really fundamentally what we're talking about.
Speaker 2: But just you know, there's a strong route for that.
Speaker 2: There's a if you go back even to the true
Speaker 2: crime magazines of the nineteen thirties, all the way into
Speaker 2: when true crime became a popular book genre, it was
Speaker 2: often it was considered to be insubordinate, as it didn't
Speaker 2: it no longer. It was a interrogated the very interrogators
Speaker 2: who had gotten what many considered to be, you know,
Speaker 2: to the convictions were too easy. And then the you know,
Speaker 2: mainstream journalism is done with this. They don't the maybe
Speaker 2: the defense attorney continues to lobby the case, but they
Speaker 2: frequently move on and so what do you have? And
Speaker 2: that's often you just have as writings like this, But
Speaker 2: there is a there's a bit of a history on
Speaker 2: that which I think you tapped into really well.
Speaker 3: Thank you. You know, it's it's funny the way you
Speaker 3: know I mean, And we need true crime for that
Speaker 3: reason because most criminal procedurals that we see on television,
Speaker 3: in particularly you know SI, are Law and Order and
Speaker 3: frantic rials and all these other shows you know there
Speaker 3: neatly ston't happened one hour. The frantic that are always
Speaker 3: depicted as infallible, objective, conclusive, right and right, and the
Speaker 3: cops are always the good guys and the criminals get
Speaker 3: what they're have coming. And you know, we know that
Speaker 3: true life true crime is not that way.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: I had there was a murder in my family and
Speaker 2: I wrote about it in a book and I covered
Speaker 2: the trial from the transcript that still exists of the
Speaker 2: trial from nineteen thirty seven. And one of the things
Speaker 2: that the defense attorneys were saying was that, oh, you
Speaker 2: can't trust this thing about ballistics.
Speaker 1: You know, there was they.
Speaker 2: Were challenging crime science even at what now we consider
Speaker 2: to be a very acceptable level. There wasn't anything, you know,
Speaker 2: and they called it voodoo and they made a big
Speaker 2: deal out of that, and it took a long time
Speaker 2: before that I think was seen differently by the mainstream
Speaker 2: American public. And that's why I was asking about the
Speaker 2: other thing about how long ago before you know, DNA
Speaker 2: was accepted and people were like, oh, well, it's DNA evidence,
Speaker 2: and that was all you needed to hear.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I mean there's such a fundamental difference
Speaker 3: between DNA and all the other forentic techniques because you know,
Speaker 3: almost you know, every other forentic discipline is only useful
Speaker 3: in the criminal justice system, and DNA has applications far
Speaker 3: beyond you know, criminal justice matter.
Speaker 1: It's true, So it was.
Speaker 3: Developed in a scientific laboratory, you know, I mean in
Speaker 3: the most forensics were developed by law enforcement for law
Speaker 3: enforcement purposes, and if they were admissible in court and
Speaker 3: they were useful for getting convictions, that was good enough
Speaker 3: for government work. And that's been true for you know,
Speaker 3: a century, you know what I mean, it's still through today,
Speaker 3: you know, I mean, it's you know, much of my
Speaker 3: job is trying to combat to continued introduction of junk
Speaker 3: science and our justice system.
Speaker 2: Well, and I love that, And we'll get to more
Speaker 2: specifics on junk science coming up. But that reminds me
Speaker 2: of a previous guest or two that we've had on
Speaker 2: who have said all of that, what you they would
Speaker 2: say if they were here. Everything you just said is
Speaker 2: true as long as the lab itself is not corrupt,
Speaker 2: that the lab can exonerate or convict on the basis
Speaker 2: of the quality of the science being conducted in the lab.
Speaker 2: Even if the science itself is accepted that it still
Speaker 2: has to be practiced in a way which makes it useful.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, you know what I mean. They I mean there's
Speaker 3: always bad actors, you know what I mean that you know,
Speaker 3: can take an otherwise void technique and turn it into
Speaker 3: you know, a a tool for you know, miscarriages of justice.
Speaker 3: You know Eddie the Howard's case. You know, you talk
Speaker 3: about Michael West and doctor Michael West who's a friend
Speaker 3: of goodontologist and doctor Stephen Hayne, who's a friends of
Speaker 3: pathologist or two of the most notorious Charlatan's you know,
Speaker 3: in the annals of junk science. You know, I mean,
Speaker 3: and you know one was working in you know, largely
Speaker 3: valid field pathology and one was working in you know,
Speaker 3: probably the junkiest field out there. But between the two
Speaker 3: of them, they're responsible for, you know, hundreds of years
Speaker 3: of wrongful incarceration and.
Speaker 2: Into the probably into their own mind too. They thought
Speaker 2: of themselves as pioneers, and the fact that they were
Speaker 2: getting paid you know, tens of thousands of dollars every year,
Speaker 2: if not you know, considerably more to testify, to pick
Speaker 2: up to do a kind of a cursory investigation. And
Speaker 2: you talk about that in the book, where they yeah,
Speaker 2: they looked at it enough to be able to tell
Speaker 2: a jury that they did, but they weren't. Ever, there's
Speaker 2: a lot of these professional witnesses, expert witnesses, who are
Speaker 2: less about the truth and more about how much they're
Speaker 2: going to make doing it.
Speaker 3: Oh, one hundred percent, you know what I mean. And
Speaker 3: it's funny that you call them and they referred to
Speaker 3: them as pioneers of itself, to pioneers, you know, and
Speaker 3: they you know, like you I quoted you know a
Speaker 3: lot from the transcripts of these cases, and you know,
Speaker 3: the prosecutor and maybe the Howard's case called Michael West,
Speaker 3: you compared him to Galileo said that you were attached
Speaker 3: for his groundbreaking youth. Right, it's just the same, and
Speaker 3: it was really astonishing when I read that.
Speaker 4: I just yeah, you couldn't believe it well, And I'm
Speaker 4: afraid if we just get started with that particular case,
Speaker 4: we'll get interrupted at the bottom of the hour break,
Speaker 4: so we'll wait till after that, and then I really
Speaker 4: want you to just tell that story.
Speaker 2: But I had so how did you know this was
Speaker 2: a guy who had the first case we're going to
Speaker 2: talk about sort of parallels the another case that was
Speaker 2: on the on the Netflix series on the Innocence Project
Speaker 2: called the Innocence Files, and they both Some of that
Speaker 2: was focused on the uh forensic ontology, the study of
Speaker 2: of bite marks, and that was I mean, it sure
Speaker 2: looks good. I mean look, I mean just as an
Speaker 2: outside observer, it's like, AH, got them because they you know,
Speaker 2: there are people that believe that there are no two
Speaker 2: bite marks the same. It's like fingerprinting, it's like a
Speaker 2: lot of things. And so if we got bite marks,
Speaker 2: then we're going to lead. We are going to end
Speaker 2: up with the actual killer. And I think that was
Speaker 2: interesting that you started both the book and then The
Speaker 2: The Innocence Project Netflix series kind of started with that
Speaker 2: same premise about bite marks not a coincidence.
Speaker 3: Well, you know it's not. It was a coincidence. You know,
Speaker 3: I'm not sure. I am the it's really it's the
Speaker 3: paradigmatic example of junk science. So it's useful in terms
Speaker 3: of telling the story. And but really some of all
Speaker 3: the problems that are associated with by mark evidence are
Speaker 3: true for so many of the techniques that are still
Speaker 3: admissible today, you know what I mean? And you touch
Speaker 3: on something important about junk science and that it has
Speaker 3: good intuitive appeal, right, you know what I mean. It's
Speaker 3: that if you're not critically thinking about it, it makes sense.
Speaker 3: You think about blood, blood leedding you know was lasted,
Speaker 3: you know, made enough into a defense last two thousand years,
Speaker 3: you know, I mean, you know I'm sick. My blood
Speaker 3: is sick. You know, I get some new blood and
Speaker 3: I'll feel better. Sameous to with bite marks, right, you know, say, well,
Speaker 3: you know what, we've seen this bite mark on this corpse,
Speaker 3: you know, and if we found the teeth that matched
Speaker 3: that bite mark, we would have our killer. But there
Speaker 3: was never any research, There was never any proficiency testing.
Speaker 3: There was never any ability to diagnose a particular jury
Speaker 3: as a bite mark. It was a total guest work,
Speaker 3: and it totally invented, you know, field that had no
Speaker 3: basis in science. And one of the things that was
Speaker 3: astonishing to me is I never saw this in any
Speaker 3: cross examination of any of the cases that I took.
Speaker 3: Is that it should have blown it out of the
Speaker 3: water right from the beginning. And you say that, Okay,
Speaker 3: let's just say that you could diagnose this as a bitemark.
Speaker 3: A forensic odentologist comes in, sometimes days, sometimes weeks after
Speaker 3: a murder, takes a photograph, many many, many, very precise
Speaker 3: photographs of what he believes or she believes is a
Speaker 3: bite and then they take the suspect and they try
Speaker 3: to match it up to this pite mark. But skin
Speaker 3: changes in a decomposing corpse hour to hour, day to day,
Speaker 3: week to week. The same is true with the healing, right,
Speaker 3: and so somebody that might match one hour might not
Speaker 3: match the next hour.
Speaker 1: Or the next day.
Speaker 3: And I never saw a question about that, not once.
Speaker 3: Imagine you mentioned fingerprints. Imagine if few prints matched one
Speaker 3: day and then didn't match the next.
Speaker 2: Didn't match the next day, right, you know, so just
Speaker 2: to make the case too. There are also these really weird,
Speaker 2: rare exceptions. Strange, I would be a better use of
Speaker 2: the word, like the return of blood letting, which they're
Speaker 2: doing with leeches for people who have obese certain problems
Speaker 2: related to obesity. And it's just an experiment, but it's
Speaker 2: something that was in new scientists and they're actually looking
Speaker 2: at that. Again, it doesn't account for how it was
Speaker 2: you before. But as you say, there are all sorts
Speaker 2: of you know, they're on an hour by hour basis,
Speaker 2: our bodies being what they are, both living and dying.
Speaker 2: We would need almost like time lapse photography that's at
Speaker 2: all time to be able to see what's working and
Speaker 2: not working.
Speaker 3: It's true, you know what I mean. This is why
Speaker 3: we we have to, you know, go to the lab.
Speaker 3: We have to do the foundational research, you know. I mean,
Speaker 3: then we have to do the applied research. You know,
Speaker 3: otherwise we're going to end up with wrongful convictions and
Speaker 3: wrongful executions, you know. I mean, it's amazing to me
Speaker 3: that we don't have something like the FDA for forensics.
Speaker 3: You know that there's a government agency that doesn't do
Speaker 3: validation research before it's used in criminal justice, and we
Speaker 3: have that for toothpaste or mouthwash to the paper that
Speaker 3: does that. We care more about consumer products. We care
Speaker 3: more about toilet paper, and we write about the reliability
Speaker 3: of toilet paper than we do about the reliability of science.
Speaker 3: It used to condemn people in our justice system.
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