Speaker 1: Hey, folks, Kate Judson here. I'm a lawyer and the
Speaker 1: executive director of the Center for Integrity and Forensic Sciences.
Speaker 1: We're back with another episode of Junk Science, a series
Speaker 1: we first released in twenty twenty, but these stories are
Speaker 1: just as relevant as ever. This week is all about
Speaker 1: arson evidence, the faulty forensic science that was used to
Speaker 1: convict Cameron Willingham, whose story you're about to hear. Since
Speaker 1: Cameron Willingham was convicted, we're realizing more and more that
Speaker 1: this type of evidence cannot be relied on. But the
Speaker 1: lessons of this case don't go far enough. We still
Speaker 1: have cases today where the only evidence presented is an
Speaker 1: expert opinion. The problem is that the jury doesn't always
Speaker 1: understand that what they're hearing is opinion, not indisputable fact,
Speaker 1: and deciding someone's fate based on one person's opinion is
Speaker 1: a recipe for disaster.
Speaker 2: It's December twenty third. Last night, you decorated a Christmas
Speaker 2: tree with your family. You put your two year old
Speaker 2: on your shoulder so she could hang her favorite ornament
Speaker 2: way up high on the tree. Your twin babies gazed
Speaker 2: up at you from the living room floor, taking the
Speaker 2: scene in with giggles and excited kicks of their little legs.
Speaker 2: Later on, your wife put the kids to bed, and
Speaker 2: then you both stayed up late, finishing the tree and
Speaker 2: cleaning up. In the morning, your wife leaves the house
Speaker 2: early for some last minute chopping for the girls. The
Speaker 2: babies hear the door slam and start to cry, as
Speaker 2: they typically do. You take them out of their cribs,
Speaker 2: give them eat a bottle, and put them on the
Speaker 2: soft play mat on the floor so they can keep
Speaker 2: each other company. You head back to your room and
Speaker 2: as you lay down, you hear them cooing from across
Speaker 2: the hall. You drift off to sleep, sleep long. You
Speaker 2: wake up to your two year old daughter screaming, Daddy, Daddy.
Speaker 2: You're groggy, startled, but the terror in her voice snaps
Speaker 2: you awake like a blaring alarm. And then it hits you.
Speaker 2: The room is a dense cloud of gray and black.
Speaker 2: You can barely see. You smell charcoal, ash, smoke. Oh no,
Speaker 2: your girls. Gefted girls out of the house. It's loud.
Speaker 2: It sounds like an angry windstorm. The entire house is crackling, popping.
Speaker 2: You make your way to the baby's room and feel
Speaker 2: around on the floor, groping in the darkness. You think
Speaker 2: you grab one of the twins, but it's just a
Speaker 2: baby doll. Your hair is on fire. You stand up
Speaker 2: and pat it out and frantically get on the ground again.
Speaker 2: Then a loud crash. Something is falling from somewhere in
Speaker 2: the house. It must be the caving in a part
Speaker 2: of the roof or a wall, but you can't see anything.
Speaker 2: It's so hot you can't breathe. You need to catch
Speaker 2: your breath before you pass out. You finally make your
Speaker 2: way outside to get help. You'll come back for them.
Speaker 2: You see your neighbor on her front lawn and scream
Speaker 2: for her to call the fire department. She sees a
Speaker 2: hysterical man covered in soot, and she yells back, they're
Speaker 2: on the way. You try to get back inside, breaking
Speaker 2: the window of the baby's room with a stick you
Speaker 2: find in the yard. Flames explode from the opening. Oh God,
Speaker 2: you can't get in. You're crying out for your children. Someone, anyone,
Speaker 2: please help. The fire department finally arrives and they have
Speaker 2: to hold you back. They find your two year old
Speaker 2: in the bedroom on the floor. You didn't realize she
Speaker 2: had been there, right there. Your babies are on the
Speaker 2: floor of their room where you had left them with
Speaker 2: their bottles. You had been so close to finding them.
Speaker 2: They try to do CPR, but it's too late. You're
Speaker 2: escorted away from the house, and once the fires are
Speaker 2: under control, investigators in protective gear head inside. There's no
Speaker 2: sense of urgency anymore. They walk through the remains and
Speaker 2: disappear into the black and living room where you had
Speaker 2: spent your last night together as a family. You are
Speaker 2: dumbfounded when they arrest you for arson murder. This was
Speaker 2: your family. You would never lay a finger on your children.
Speaker 2: At your trial, the prosecutors call expert witnesses who tell
Speaker 2: the jury that the proven signs of fire tells the
Speaker 2: story of how you who committed this crime. You poured
Speaker 2: lighter fluid, which they referred to as an accelerant, under
Speaker 2: your baby's beds in the hallway by the front door.
Speaker 2: The burn marks seared into the floor indicate where that
Speaker 2: lighter fluid was puddled on the carpet. They say, there's
Speaker 2: no way you tried to save your girls. If you had,
Speaker 2: your feet would have been burned. Dripstains proved that you
Speaker 2: poured accelerant up and down the hallway, the melted metal
Speaker 2: door frame, the shattered glass. It all proves the fire
Speaker 2: was so unnaturally hot that it produced temperatures that could
Speaker 2: only have been created by chemicals that you intentionally poured
Speaker 2: all over your home and your motive. Prosecutors argued this,
Speaker 2: you love heavy metal music, and that indicates that you
Speaker 2: have a dark side. You have posters on the walls
Speaker 2: of your home, one of which depicts a grim reaper
Speaker 2: that proves you're obsessed with death. You have a tattoo
Speaker 2: of a skull and snake on your arm that indicates
Speaker 2: that you're a violent person. You have psychiatric problems, perhaps
Speaker 2: a demonic disposition. You couldn't afford to hire a lawyer,
Speaker 2: so the court appointed you an attorney. He too, suspects
Speaker 2: that you killed your children. He tells you to plead guilty.
Speaker 2: If you do, they'll give you life in prison instead
Speaker 2: of the death sentence. You can't do this. This was
Speaker 2: an accident. There was no crime here. You're not going
Speaker 2: to confess to killing your three beautiful children. You didn't
Speaker 2: do anything wrong here. You were convicted and sentenced to
Speaker 2: death on death row. The events of that day haunt you.
Speaker 2: You look at the photos of your children, your wife
Speaker 2: to remember the man you were, the life you once had.
Speaker 2: Time seems to stand still on death row, and the
Speaker 2: whole experience is nothing short of paralyzing. But the date
Speaker 2: of your execution eventually closes in. You write a letter
Speaker 2: to your parents, telling them to never stop fighting to
Speaker 2: clear your name, even if it's after they put you
Speaker 2: to death. The last words of your fellow inmates, the
Speaker 2: ones who were executed before you, one by one, were
Speaker 2: often apologies. Sometimes they were confessions. But before you're strapped
Speaker 2: into the gurney and given a lethal injection, you say,
Speaker 2: I am an innocent person convicted of a crime I
Speaker 2: did not commit. I've been persecuted for twelve years for
Speaker 2: something I did not do. From God's dust I came,
Speaker 2: and to dust I will return, so the earth shall
Speaker 2: become my throne. Your parents scatter your ashes over the
Speaker 2: graves of your children. The story you just heard is
Speaker 2: based on the wrongful conviction of Cameron Todd Willingham, who
Speaker 2: was wrongfully convicted and executed in two thousand and four.
Speaker 2: I'm Josh Dubin, civil rights and criminal defense attorney, an
Speaker 2: innocent ambassador to the Innocence Project in New York Today
Speaker 2: on wrongful conviction junk science, we examine arson evidence. In
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy three, the Nixon administration published a report entitled
Speaker 2: America Burning. It was all about damage the fires caused
Speaker 2: in America, both in terms of physical distrutuction and the
Speaker 2: billions of dollars spent to repair and rebuild. But unfortunately,
Speaker 2: much of what was considered fire signs in America Burning
Speaker 2: was merely a set of core assumptions that were never
Speaker 2: subjected to the rigors of the scientific method. That is,
Speaker 2: develop a hypothesis, test it, confirm it, reconfirm it, and
Speaker 2: repeat until you know you have something sound and verifiable.
Speaker 2: As a result of this study, fire investigators were given
Speaker 2: a handbook, A Guide to Reading fire damage like a
Speaker 2: psychic reads tea leaves. An investigator, having learned from this handbook,
Speaker 2: starts his investigation at the exterior of a burnt down house.
Speaker 2: He sees a V shaped burn on what's left of
Speaker 2: the walls of the living room. He notes this is
Speaker 2: the room where the fire started. He walks through the home,
Speaker 2: keeping an eye out for the telltale signs of arson.
Speaker 2: First crazed glass when windows shattered into irregular pieces with
Speaker 2: light smoke deposits that indicate a rapid buildup of heat
Speaker 2: that can only be caused by an accelerant. Second alligatoring,
Speaker 2: large shiny blisters on burnt wood. Fast hot fires produced
Speaker 2: by accelerants create this pattern. Third, puddle formations and burns
Speaker 2: that look like drip trails. These are caused by the
Speaker 2: spreading of accelerant like gasoline or paint thinner throughout a
Speaker 2: house before it is intentionally set on fire. The investigator
Speaker 2: checks all of these signs off the list. He knows
Speaker 2: this must be arson. It turns out the investigator only
Speaker 2: had a fifty percent chance of being right at best,
Speaker 2: because fire science was built on a foundation of conjecture
Speaker 2: and best guesses that were never adequately tested and confirmed
Speaker 2: according to valid scientific principles. What experts and prosecutors had
Speaker 2: been telling juries for decades about how you can definitively
Speaker 2: determine that a fire was intentionally set was completely wrong.
Speaker 2: In fact, signs that indicated to investigators that they were
Speaker 2: dealing with arson, crazed glass, alligator patterns, burn marks indicating
Speaker 2: drips or puddles of accelerant were actually the same things
Speaker 2: left in the wake of an accidental fire. So the
Speaker 2: evidence that was used to convict Cameron Todd Willingham and
Speaker 2: so many others was deeply, deeply flawed.
Speaker 3: It turns out that there was no evidence whatsoever that
Speaker 3: this had been a fire that was set by Todd
Speaker 3: Willingham running up and down his home, you know, just
Speaker 3: before Christmas, spreading in all the different rooms and down
Speaker 3: the hallway, and killing his three children. It was clear
Speaker 3: that this was junk science. And unfortunately, by this point
Speaker 3: in my career, I was familiar enough with the phenomenon
Speaker 3: of junk science not to be surprised.
Speaker 2: Joining us today to tell us about arson evidence and
Speaker 2: how it relates to cases like Cameron Todd Willingham's is
Speaker 2: Barry Sheck, co founder of the Innocence Project and famed
Speaker 2: civil rights and criminal defense attorney. So Barry, first, thanks
Speaker 2: for being here and for our listeners. Barry is one
Speaker 2: of my personal heroes, and I'm just ecstatic that we're
Speaker 2: able to get you to enlighten us about arson evidence. Now,
Speaker 2: you worked to get Cameron Todd Willingham's case overturned after
Speaker 2: he was executed, and this might seem like somewhat of
Speaker 2: a pointless fight to some people, since mister Willingham was
Speaker 2: already put to death in two thousand and four. But
Speaker 2: you are fighting for mister Willingham's final wish for his
Speaker 2: name to be cleared and him to be declared an
Speaker 2: innocent man by a court. I think that it's well
Speaker 2: accepted that he's an innocent man at this point. But
Speaker 2: you're also fighting so that the kind of evidence that
Speaker 2: was used against mister Willingham doesn't get used to convict
Speaker 2: another innocent person. And so, to start off, Barry, if
Speaker 2: some of the clues used an arson investigation or indeed
Speaker 2: junk science, how did Cameron Todd Willingham get convicted in
Speaker 2: the first place?
Speaker 3: What the fire scientists, the arson investigators in Willingham, what
Speaker 3: they did in that case. They would go to the
Speaker 3: scene of a fire and they would look at all
Speaker 3: these visual cues. And if they saw what was called alligatoring,
Speaker 3: which was like the scales of an alligator on wood.
Speaker 3: If they saw what was known as craze glass, that's
Speaker 3: it's like a spider type cracking of the glass. If
Speaker 3: they saw spawling of concrete that's like little chips coming
Speaker 3: off the concrete at the scene of the fire, if
Speaker 3: they saw scouring on the floor, poor patterns, they immediately
Speaker 3: assumed that all of these visual cues meant that somebody
Speaker 3: had spread accelerant around the house and lit it and
Speaker 3: that was the cause of the fire. And they literally
Speaker 3: said to the jury, we look at the fire, the
Speaker 3: fire talks to us. The fire doesn't lie. That's very
Speaker 3: powerful to a jury. So what happened, Josh, is that
Speaker 3: when we at the Innocence Project saw what happened in
Speaker 3: the Willingham case, we had just been involved in setting
Speaker 3: up what's known as the Texas Forensic Science Commission. They
Speaker 3: reviewed all the crime scene evidence in the Willingham case
Speaker 3: and they said was clear and that is this is
Speaker 3: junk science. This had been discredited by National Fire Protection
Speaker 3: nine twenty one, ten years ago. The science was completely flawed, unreliable, ridiculous.
Speaker 2: So even after all of that, the state of Texas
Speaker 2: still refused to free Cameron Todd Willingham. And to show
Speaker 2: just how flawed this evidence was, there was a man
Speaker 2: named Ernest Willis who was convicted of a similar crime
Speaker 2: with similar evidence than was used in the Willingham case.
Speaker 2: But while Cameron Todd Willingham was put to death in
Speaker 2: two thousand and four. Willis was declared innocent that very
Speaker 2: same year. So how is that possible, Barry, that one
Speaker 2: man Willingham is executed based on this junk science, while
Speaker 2: another man, Willis, whose case was very similar, gets to
Speaker 2: go free.
Speaker 3: Ernest Willis went to trial, he had a completely incompetent
Speaker 3: lawyer who was sparred for all kinds of reasons. Willis
Speaker 3: was so upset by the fire that killed family members
Speaker 3: that he was literally on psychotropic medication in the witness chair. Right.
Speaker 3: He was lucky because his lawyer was so incompetent, and
Speaker 3: on his death penalty appeal he got a patent lawyer
Speaker 3: from LEITHA Ben Watkins in New York who dove into
Speaker 3: the case and was able to get the federal courts
Speaker 3: to vacate that conviction. And when the conviction was remanded
Speaker 3: on exactly the same evidence, just like the Willingham case,
Speaker 3: Willis was not only exonerated. There was a prosecutor in
Speaker 3: Pakos County, Texas took one look at this and said,
Speaker 3: oh my god, this was an accidental fire. This was
Speaker 3: not an arson murder. And he not only dismissed the
Speaker 3: case against Ernest Willis. Ernest Willis was compensated as actually
Speaker 3: innocent by the State of Texas, while within the same
Speaker 3: time period, Cameron Todd Willingham was executed.
Speaker 2: It's just really hard to hear this stuff right because
Speaker 2: right away this indicates some sort of double standard, or
Speaker 2: at least some confusion within the justice system about what
Speaker 2: arson evidence really means and how much it can be trusted.
Speaker 2: And to be clear, by two thousand and four, there
Speaker 2: shouldn't have been any confusion about this type of evidence
Speaker 2: because in the early nineties there were two incidents that
Speaker 2: I'm going to ask you about that really proved that
Speaker 2: the kind of arson evidence used in the Cameron Todd
Speaker 2: Willingham case was bogus. The first was the Lime Street
Speaker 2: case in nineteen ninety, which was the case of Gerald
Speaker 2: Wayne Lewis. Mister Lewis was accused of killing his pregnant wife,
Speaker 2: his sister, and his sister's four children by arson. Now
Speaker 2: Gerald always maintained his innocence, but it was actually a
Speaker 2: prosecution expert named John Lentini who was the moving force
Speaker 2: improving gerald innocence.
Speaker 3: John Lentini was an arson investigator and he went along
Speaker 3: with a colleague of his, John Dehan, to investigate an
Speaker 3: allegation of arson at a home on Lime Street in Jacksonville, Florida.
Speaker 3: And they examined the crime scene, and they were all ready,
Speaker 3: by their own admission, to make a recommendation that it
Speaker 3: was an intentional arson. But they realized that right next
Speaker 3: to the house that burned down was another house that
Speaker 3: was abandoned, but it was the same construction. So they
Speaker 3: rebuilt the house right next door to be identical to
Speaker 3: the Lime Street house that burned down, and then they
Speaker 3: basically put a cigarette on a couch. They began the
Speaker 3: fire in a way that would be completely accidental. The
Speaker 3: whole place burned down, and they saw all the clues,
Speaker 3: all the visual clues from the craze glass, alligatoring, burning
Speaker 3: under furniture, a completely compartmentalized fire. They saw all these cues,
Speaker 3: and they knew that it was an accidental fire, not
Speaker 3: a deliberate one, and so that began to change everything.
Speaker 2: So again, this is very ironic and rare because Lentini's
Speaker 2: a fire investigator that's working for the prosecution, and he's
Speaker 2: actually trying to prove that this Lime Streek case was
Speaker 2: in fact arson and that Gerald Wayne Lewis had actually
Speaker 2: done it. But he realizes that there was some serious
Speaker 2: issues with his assumptions because this accidental fire actually resembled
Speaker 2: an arson, and it resembled it in very critical ways.
Speaker 2: And what was most shocking to me about this was
Speaker 2: that Lentini saw puddlestains and trailmar that looked identical to
Speaker 2: what he had been taught and so many other investigators
Speaker 2: had been taught, or the telltale signs of someone dripping
Speaker 2: gasoline or another accelerant throughout a house. But that definitely
Speaker 2: was not the case here. And they knew that because
Speaker 2: they set the fire themselves with a cigarette exactly.
Speaker 3: And they'd say, well, that really can't happen unless it's
Speaker 3: an intentionally set fire. But it turns out with this
Speaker 3: phenomenon of flashover, which is you get this hot combustible
Speaker 3: object in a small space, ordinarily a room, right, and
Speaker 3: then it begins to cause this huge burst of heat
Speaker 3: and fire in that room and the whole place becomes engulfed.
Speaker 3: So that's what creates the intense heat that arson investigators
Speaker 3: had hypothesized must come from the deliberate use of accelerants.
Speaker 3: It turns out that it could all happen in a
Speaker 3: completely accidental fire.
Speaker 2: So Linini the investigator, realizes that accidental fires can look
Speaker 2: just like arson, and he does something that is actually
Speaker 2: quite remarkable. But it shouldn't be, because whether you're working
Speaker 2: for the prosecution or the defense, when the science tells
Speaker 2: you something, you should not have a bias in its application.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: He doesn't say, Oh, this is just some weird coincidence.
Speaker 2: I'm going to keep working for prosecutors to convict people
Speaker 2: in arson cases based on this evidence that I now
Speaker 2: know is clearly faulty, it's wrong. Instead, he's pretty shocked,
Speaker 2: appalled by what he sees, and he feels like he's
Speaker 2: been misled by this evidence for years. Right, And he
Speaker 2: gets an opportunity to examine a bunch more accidental fires
Speaker 2: to make sure that his findings in the Lime Street
Speaker 2: case were consistent with other accidental fires.
Speaker 3: I don't know if people remember, but these homes on
Speaker 3: in the hills in Oakland, California, began to burn down,
Speaker 3: you know, in what was plainly a series of accidental fires.
Speaker 3: And after all these homes were burned down, the fire
Speaker 3: scientists went at and examined each and every one of them,
Speaker 3: and they realized, once again, here were plainly accidental fires.
Speaker 3: But all these visual cues that arson experts had been
Speaker 3: relying on demonstrated that it was an accident. It was
Speaker 3: not an intentionally set fire. So take just the craze glass.
Speaker 3: That's a simple thing to understand. You know, you look
Speaker 3: at the glass, it's sort of spider glass, and that
Speaker 3: supposedly an indication of suddenly intense heat that comes from
Speaker 3: an accelerant induced fire. In fact, you found craze glass
Speaker 3: all over in Oakland in the Lime Street fire. Because
Speaker 3: craize glass happens when people come to put out the
Speaker 3: fire and they put cold water on it and the
Speaker 3: glass cracks. That's how you get crazed glass.
Speaker 2: So these arson investigators have been testifying for years and
Speaker 2: years that the reason you see crazed glass and it's
Speaker 2: no pun intent. That it's actually a crazy notion that
Speaker 2: they're testifying to one thing, and it turns out to
Speaker 2: be the exact opposite. All right, So crazed glass was
Speaker 2: caused by the cooling of the glass when they're putting
Speaker 2: the fire out. What were some other things that were wrong.
Speaker 3: About They would say, oh, we're looking at mattress springs
Speaker 3: in a bed or something and they're melted. That can
Speaker 3: only happen if it's an intentionally set fire. But when
Speaker 3: they went to the hills of Oakland and looked at
Speaker 3: these homes, they saw the same thing, and the same
Speaker 3: thing at the Lime Street fire.
Speaker 2: I mean, you would think that would be the end
Speaker 2: of people trying to use this kind of junk science,
Speaker 2: this kind of false evidence, but that isn't the case.
Speaker 3: What is really upsetting is that you see over the
Speaker 3: next few decades, nonetheless, lots of people who were convicted
Speaker 3: because they never did scientific validation in the first place.
Speaker 3: You actually have to conduct experiments, you have to have hypotheses,
Speaker 3: and you have to prove that they're true, instead of
Speaker 3: just having you know, really you know, sort of law
Speaker 3: enforcement people in lab coats, so to speak, or people
Speaker 3: that have expertise by way of quote unquote experience going
Speaker 3: to crime scenes and looking at fire scenes and really
Speaker 3: coming up with their own hypotheses that were never demonstrated
Speaker 3: to be true by science. That's what's so shocking about
Speaker 3: this whole area. In other words, if you believe all
Speaker 3: these different visual cues demonstrate that an accelerant has been used,
Speaker 3: you should do experiments to prove the point.
Speaker 2: Now, Barry, this isn't the case where these investigators were
Speaker 2: out to harm people. This is just how they were trained.
Speaker 3: I have some sympathy for a whole group of people
Speaker 3: who had, many of them just high school graduates who
Speaker 3: were trained in arson investigation, to believe all these different
Speaker 3: visual cues were a sign of the use of an
Speaker 3: accelerant and intentionally set fire that was never empirically demonstrated,
Speaker 3: and yet they were doing it, and that's how they
Speaker 3: made a living. That's true, and they thought that they
Speaker 3: had expertise. It's imagine how horrendous it is to believe,
Speaker 3: as a prosecutor or as a so called you know,
Speaker 3: arson investigator, that you were wrong and you destroyed people's lives.
Speaker 3: People don't get up in the morning and say let's
Speaker 3: do that, right, but it happens, and it's very hard
Speaker 3: to admit to it.
Speaker 2: All right, So why do you think it is that?
Speaker 2: You know, generations of experts have all been proven to
Speaker 2: be wrong. The assumptions they rely on turn out to
Speaker 2: be incorrect, But there's this unwillingness to change.
Speaker 3: Once you have invested yourself in this belief and all
Speaker 3: these very weighty consequences follow. It's very hard to admit
Speaker 3: that you were wrong, even when there's scientific proof that
Speaker 3: you're wrong. John Lintini and John de Haan and all
Speaker 3: these various experts, you know, they started off as regular
Speaker 3: are and investigators that were taught to believe these things.
Speaker 3: But engaging in real science and doing these experiments, they
Speaker 3: realized it was all wrong, and they had an enormous
Speaker 3: amount of trouble persuading the forensic science community to stop,
Speaker 3: and they're still fighting about it even to this day.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think that the Willingham case and all
Speaker 3: these other exonerations have exposed the community to it, and
Speaker 3: you literally can see fewer arson convictions since that happened.
Speaker 3: But Josh, you're absolutely right. It's mystifying. It's so upsetting
Speaker 3: that it is taking so long to change.
Speaker 2: It, and meanwhile, these convictions based on this false arson
Speaker 2: science or there's fire evidence just keep on coming.
Speaker 3: Hantak Lee, whose daughter who suffered from mental illness, was
Speaker 3: found yeah, literally burnt to death, incinerated, you know, in
Speaker 3: a small community in Pennsylvania. He gets convicted of killing
Speaker 3: his daughter intentionally in a fire which did not happen.
Speaker 2: Right, The case of Hantok Lee is just it's really
Speaker 2: really troubling. I mean, here's a guy that spent fifteen
Speaker 2: years in prison for a murder he did not commit.
Speaker 2: And there's a quote that always stuck with me from
Speaker 2: an opinion written by a judge during Hantok Lee's appeal,
Speaker 2: and it was this quote. Much of what was presented
Speaker 2: to Lee's jury as science is now conceded to be
Speaker 2: little more than superstition end quote. I mean, that's so remarkable,
Speaker 2: isn't it. And you know, again, the fact that this
Speaker 2: is still used in the face of quotes like that
Speaker 2: is just it's hard to understand. You know. He was
Speaker 2: granted a new trial and finally exonerated, thankfully, in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 3: Another was a Sonia Casey, who is convicted of burning
Speaker 3: down a house and killing I guess it was her uncle,
Speaker 3: Bill Richardson. And and of course it turned out that
Speaker 3: Bill Richardson was actually a heavy smoker and had probably
Speaker 3: fallen asleep with a burning cigarette. But plainly she did
Speaker 3: not start this fire. All the same kind of junk
Speaker 3: science was used in that case. And that's the great
Speaker 3: tragedy when you look at the arson cases, so many
Speaker 3: people like Ernest Willis or Cameron Todd Willingham or a
Speaker 3: Hantock League, you know, they're all convicted of killing with
Speaker 3: intentionally set fires. They're loved ones. That to me is,
Speaker 3: you know, the horrible, horrible irony of these junk science cases.
Speaker 2: Now for our listeners, I know Barry, you know twenty
Speaker 2: years and I've seen you get emotional before and passionate
Speaker 2: about a lot of cases. I want to go back
Speaker 2: to the Cameron Todd Willingham case for a moment because
Speaker 2: it seems to me that this is one that really
Speaker 2: stuck with you, and it seems to me like one
Speaker 2: of the two or three cases that has really haunted
Speaker 2: you in all your innocence work.
Speaker 3: How can it not haunt you? It should haunt everyone
Speaker 3: in this country. I mean, this is a case that
Speaker 3: ought to change the way the people look at capital
Speaker 3: punishment and forensic science. I think we look we've made
Speaker 3: a lot of progress, but we still haven't corrected the
Speaker 3: biggest injustice of all, and that is the wrongful execution
Speaker 3: of Cameron Todd Willingham. Do you see the suffering up
Speaker 3: to the very very end and the execution of an
Speaker 3: innocent man. How could it not haunt you? There's so
Speaker 3: much importance attached with the state finally admitting that it
Speaker 3: was wrong and that an innocent person is executed, and
Speaker 3: that will happen in Texas. It will.
Speaker 2: Something we keep returning back to in this podcast is
Speaker 2: the two thousand and nine National Academy of Sciences Report,
Speaker 2: which is a report published by rigorous scientists that is
Speaker 2: very critical of forensic sciences like arson investigation. In fact,
Speaker 2: the only one that it's not really critical of is DNA.
Speaker 2: And you've done a lot to try to push the
Speaker 2: lessons of this report to overturn convictions based on junk science.
Speaker 3: Truth is the two thousand and nine and National Academy
Speaker 3: of Science Report recommended that there be an independent entity
Speaker 3: in the federal government that would be dedicated to providing
Speaker 3: a scientific basis and oversight to all these forensic science disciplines.
Speaker 3: And independent entity, the National Commission on Forensic Science was
Speaker 3: put into place, which had independent experts from lots of
Speaker 3: different scientific communities. When Trump was elected, he abolished the
Speaker 3: National Commission on Forensic Science.
Speaker 2: Look, it's really inspiring to see that despite all that's
Speaker 2: gone wrong and all that hasn't worked that you're still
Speaker 2: hopeful because something else that's so shocking is that this
Speaker 2: issue about what kind of evidence should be considered scientific facts,
Speaker 2: something that can literally determine whether or not someone should
Speaker 2: live or die based on a crime they may not
Speaker 2: have committed. It's all still being treated like a political issue,
Speaker 2: and you have personal experience with these political barrier Yet
Speaker 2: you're still hopeful despite all of the harm that's been
Speaker 2: done and continues to be done by political officials, by presidents,
Speaker 2: by judges who, unlike Lentini, refuse to see the light,
Speaker 2: so to speak.
Speaker 3: You know, it becomes this big echo chamber. Junk science
Speaker 3: is admitted by one court, right, and all the experts
Speaker 3: can then testify again and again and again, even though
Speaker 3: it was never properly validated in the first place. And
Speaker 3: we've had a lot of that, and judges really have
Speaker 3: to be rigorous on dealing with it. And the problem
Speaker 3: with judges is that we all went to law school
Speaker 3: and not medical school. The judges really do have to
Speaker 3: be better in terms of getting into the nuts and
Speaker 3: bolts of the science. It's intimidating to them, just as
Speaker 3: it's intimidating to a lot of lawyers.
Speaker 2: You might be listening to this what you can do
Speaker 2: to help. I want every listener to consider that even
Speaker 2: those who were wrongly convicted and are lucky enough to
Speaker 2: be released from prison, their lives are just never the same.
Speaker 2: Let's take the example of Sonya Casey. She's the woman
Speaker 2: Barry Shek mentioned who was accused of murdering her uncle
Speaker 2: by arson. We know that miss Casey was innocent because,
Speaker 2: amongst other evidence, it was later found during the autopsy
Speaker 2: of her uncle that he most likely died from a
Speaker 2: heart attack. There was no soot in his lungs, which
Speaker 2: would have been there if he had in fact died
Speaker 2: in the fire. Instead, there was fluid in his lungs,
Speaker 2: so the evidence supported the conclusion that he was dead
Speaker 2: before the fire had even spread. Nevertheless, Casey was sentenced
Speaker 2: to ninety nine years in prison. Sonya Casey was eventually exonerated,
Speaker 2: but the stain of her wrongful conviction meant that on
Speaker 2: every job application or when she try to rent an apartment,
Speaker 2: she would either have to check a box saying that
Speaker 2: she had been convicted of a crime, or it would
Speaker 2: be revealed on a background check that made it nearly
Speaker 2: impossible for her to find work or a place to live. So,
Speaker 2: if you own a business, or you're a landlord, or
Speaker 2: you're just in a position to either approve or reject
Speaker 2: someone for work or a place to live, and someone
Speaker 2: checks the box that they had previously been convicted of
Speaker 2: a crime, please talk to them. Learn about the circumstances
Speaker 2: of their arrest, the accusations against them, who they are
Speaker 2: now as a human being. Perhaps you'll find that they
Speaker 2: were the victim, yes, the victim of a wrongful conviction.
Speaker 2: Or maybe it's just that they've done something in their
Speaker 2: past and are no longer that person. The great civil
Speaker 2: rights attorney Brian Stevenson said it best. Each one of
Speaker 2: us is more than the worst thing we've ever done.
Speaker 2: The true measure of our character is how we treat
Speaker 2: the poor, the disfavored, the accused, the incarcerated, and the condemned.
Speaker 2: I think we can all learn something from that. Next
Speaker 2: week will analyze hair microscopy, the profoundly flawed junk science
Speaker 2: that attempts to use human hair to accuse and convict
Speaker 2: people of crimes they did not commit.
Speaker 4: Wrongful conviction junk science is a production of Lava for
Speaker 4: Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number One. Thanks
Speaker 4: to our executive producer Jason Flahm and the team at
Speaker 4: Signal Company Number One executive producer Kevin Wardis and senior
Speaker 4: producers Karen Kornhaber and Britz Spangler.
Speaker 2: Our music was composed by Jay Ralph. You can follow
Speaker 2: me on Instagram at dubin Josh.
Speaker 4: Follow the Wrongful Conviction podcast on Facebook and on Instagram
Speaker 4: at Wrongful Conviction and on Twitter at wrong Conviction