Speaker 1: Washington, d C. A muggy summer day finally starts to
Speaker 1: cool as night falls. Street lights turn on, Crickets chirp,
Speaker 1: there's the soft jingle of the tags on a dog caller.
Speaker 1: A black poodle walks up someone's porch steps, sniffs around.
Speaker 1: The dog leaps back down the stairs when its owner
Speaker 1: calls its name. A few hours later, on those same
Speaker 1: porch steps, the man who lives there slowly walks up,
Speaker 1: and a masked figure walks up behind him. There's a gunshot.
Speaker 1: Someone screams. The shooter makes a run for it, ripping
Speaker 1: a stocking mass from his face. It lands on a
Speaker 1: porch step as he disappears down the street into the night.
Speaker 1: You live down the street from where the gunshot went off.
Speaker 1: Three days later, you're hanging out with your girlfriend and
Speaker 1: your mom's basement, sitting on the couch watching TV. Your
Speaker 1: mom is upstairs cleaning up after dinner, and then there's
Speaker 1: a knock at the door. You hear someone introduced themselves
Speaker 1: as an officer, officers something or other, and damn it,
Speaker 1: you think, and your teenage mind you figure he must
Speaker 1: be there about the parking ticket you got a few
Speaker 1: weeks ago, and didn't bay yet. Your mom's gonna be pissed.
Speaker 1: You head upstairs, but they cuff you and take you away.
Speaker 1: You're brought down to the station and put in a cell,
Speaker 1: and they tell you that you'll be tried for the
Speaker 1: murder of your neighbor. The next day you're transferred to
Speaker 1: the county jail, and you're beginning to absorb the shock
Speaker 1: of it all. The one thing that you can't get
Speaker 1: past is the filth. It's just terrible in there, everything
Speaker 1: from the bugs to the food, to the living conditions,
Speaker 1: and the noise. The noise is unbearable. You can hardly sleep.
Speaker 1: You begin to miss out on things. Your family's summer
Speaker 1: vacation comes and goes. Six months pass. You would have
Speaker 1: had your g D by now. The year slips by,
Speaker 1: and then a year turns into a year and a half.
Speaker 1: Your nieces and nephews, the ones that you helped raise
Speaker 1: or growing up. You've spoken to them a few times,
Speaker 1: but they haven't come to visit. Are they thinking that
Speaker 1: their uncle may have done this? You miss out on
Speaker 1: the final years of being a care free team. It
Speaker 1: seems as though everything's moving on without you. Finally, after
Speaker 1: two agonizing years, your case goes to trial. You want
Speaker 1: to get your life back. You didn't kill anyone. You
Speaker 1: were in that same basement all night when someone else
Speaker 1: climbed your neighbor steps and ended his life with a
Speaker 1: single gunshop blasts of the head. A few weeks ago,
Speaker 1: an officer came to your cell and cut some of
Speaker 1: your hair. Of course, you willingly let them take it
Speaker 1: because you were sure to help prove your innocence. As
Speaker 1: you sit in the courtroom at your trial, the prosecutor
Speaker 1: says that there was a nylon stocking mass found at
Speaker 1: the scene of the crime. An FBI agent takes the
Speaker 1: stand for the prosecution and tells the jury, I compare
Speaker 1: the defendant's hair to the thirteen hairs found on the mask.
Speaker 1: This agent tells the jury that the defendant's hair is
Speaker 1: indistinguishable from one of those thirteen hairs. The prosecutor says,
Speaker 1: there's one chance, perhaps for all we know, in ten million,
Speaker 1: that it could be someone else's hair. This single hair
Speaker 1: proves critical because it's the only physical evidence that ties
Speaker 1: you to the homicide. You're told the jurys reached a verdict.
Speaker 1: The shuffle back into the courtroom, and none of them
Speaker 1: will look at you. When you hear the word guilty,
Speaker 1: there's the sudden eruption of uncontrolled sobbing, like the turning
Speaker 1: on of a spigot. There's the unraveling of your mother
Speaker 1: and whales. Not my baby, my baby didn't do it.
Speaker 1: Your ants are crying, your relatives are trying to console
Speaker 1: each other. There's just a medley of weeping and misery.
Speaker 1: You feel like you're going to pass out. The room
Speaker 1: is sideways, and then it's upside down, and then you're
Speaker 1: all white. All you can hear, all you can see.
Speaker 1: Everything turns white, and you go numb. You're sentenced to
Speaker 1: twenty years to life and stay prison, and then there
Speaker 1: is nothing. Everything goes blank. You do everything you can
Speaker 1: to prove your innocence. You write letters, study the law.
Speaker 1: Your father comes to busy you just about every single Saturday.
Speaker 1: But he dies four years after your arrest. Your mom
Speaker 1: dies two years after that, and you can't go to
Speaker 1: either of their funerals. You can't help but to think,
Speaker 1: did this kill them? My wrongful conviction. You sit in
Speaker 1: your cell, numb most days, and you try to recall
Speaker 1: little things that will bring some comfort. To smell your
Speaker 1: mother's cooking, sitting around, playing cards with your friends, holding
Speaker 1: hands with your girlfriend, and your mother's basement watching TV.
Speaker 1: You live a lifetime in that prison, thirty three long years.
Speaker 1: It takes all of that time for the district attorney
Speaker 1: to finally agree to test the DNA contained in the
Speaker 1: hair that was found on that stocking mass that dropped
Speaker 1: to the steps of that porch. It turns out the
Speaker 1: way you knew it would. Your DNA does not match
Speaker 1: any of those thirteen hairs. But they do figure out
Speaker 1: who one of the hairs belongs to, and it's not
Speaker 1: a person. Turns out that one of the hairs they
Speaker 1: found on that stock and mask and argue to the
Speaker 1: jury was a human hair belonged to that poodle. When
Speaker 1: you re enter the world, they say you're free, but
Speaker 1: are you really. You went in as an eighteen year
Speaker 1: old boy and came out a fifty one year old man,
Speaker 1: and you've aged beyond your years. You're fighting an illness
Speaker 1: caused by the burden of carrying around your innocence for
Speaker 1: your entire adult life. You die at the age of
Speaker 1: fifty nine, enjoying only eight free years with what's left
Speaker 1: of your family, But your death you're suffering is not
Speaker 1: in vain. After you were found to be innocent, the
Speaker 1: FBI starts to re examine over three thousand cases where
Speaker 1: similar evidence was used. They're looking for other people who,
Speaker 1: like you, were wrongfully convicted of crimes they didn't commit,
Speaker 1: people whose lives were destroyed by the junk science of
Speaker 1: hair comparison analysis. The story you just heard is based
Speaker 1: on true events of Sante Treble's life. He was wrongfully
Speaker 1: convicted in and exonerated in two thousand twelve. He passed
Speaker 1: away in July. This episode is dedicated to him. I'm
Speaker 1: Josh Duman, civil rights and criminal defense attorney and innocence
Speaker 1: ambassador to the Innocence Project in New York. Even when
Speaker 1: examined under a microscope, the similarities that can be observed
Speaker 1: between two hairs are open to wide interpretation. In other words,
Speaker 1: there are no definitive traits that can prove with any
Speaker 1: scientific certainty that a suspect's hair matches a hair found
Speaker 1: in a crime scene. Yet hair comparison analysis was still
Speaker 1: being used to falsely identify and convict innocent people up
Speaker 1: until the year two thousand and Today, there are still
Speaker 1: people who are incarcerated that were convicted based on this
Speaker 1: false evidence. So how did this evidence get admitted into
Speaker 1: courts in the first place. Turns out, hair my Croscoby
Speaker 1: was born in the eighteen hundreds, and the methods used
Speaker 1: to analyze and compare human hairs haven't changed much since.
Speaker 1: In eighteen sixty nine, a man named John Dorsey was
Speaker 1: accused of killing his wife by beating her over the
Speaker 1: head with a club in his own yard in Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: During the trial, two men claim that they had seen
Speaker 1: hairs attached to the alleged murder weapon, and that the
Speaker 1: hair appeared to be brunette human hair that was the
Speaker 1: color of Mr Dorsey's wife's hair. Mr Dorsey was shocked
Speaker 1: his wife was brunette, but so were his horses. According
Speaker 1: to Mr Dorsey, the club wasn't a murder weapon, it
Speaker 1: was just one of many pieces of wood that was
Speaker 1: set out by the horse stables. The hair on the
Speaker 1: clubs didn't belong to his wife, but was the hair
Speaker 1: that had fallen from his horse's tail. But the court
Speaker 1: ruled that Mr Dorsey couldn't present this account about the horsehair. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the testimony from the men claiming that hair was Mr
Speaker 1: Dorsey's wife's was permitted. Mr Dorsey was eventually convicted of
Speaker 1: killing his wife. This was the first time ACCORD admitted
Speaker 1: hair comparison analysis as evidence in our legal system, and
Speaker 1: it definitely wouldn't be the last. Over a century later,
Speaker 1: animal hair and human hair would again be an issue
Speaker 1: and the Sante triple case. That case was just an
Speaker 1: example of the overconfidence in overreaching and what it could
Speaker 1: do two different individuals. The idea that not only could
Speaker 1: they be wrong about linking a hair to a person,
Speaker 1: which they can because you can't do that at all,
Speaker 1: but that they can't even identify what is human hair
Speaker 1: and what isn't. Not only did it occur in that case,
Speaker 1: but it continued to occur unchecked. That was just outrageous,
Speaker 1: all right. So joining us today is Vanessa Antone and
Speaker 1: Vanessa is a member of the National Association of Criminal
Speaker 1: Defense Lawyers. I think will refer to them as the
Speaker 1: n a c d L. And this is just a wonderful,
Speaker 1: wonderful group. Um. I'm a member of the n a
Speaker 1: c d L. And it is a policy and advocacy
Speaker 1: organization that really is on the ground working for reforms
Speaker 1: and improvements in the criminal justice system. You're gonna learn
Speaker 1: about a really remarkable project that they have been involved
Speaker 1: in with the FBI, and Vanessa is a key member
Speaker 1: of this project. And what they are doing is reading
Speaker 1: hundreds of transcripts from old cases and cases where defendants
Speaker 1: and the accused were convicted and in many cases wrongfully
Speaker 1: convicted based on hair comparison analysis. So to start, Vanessa,
Speaker 1: hair comparison analysis is also called hair microscopy, and we'll
Speaker 1: use these terms interchangeably, but tell us a little bit
Speaker 1: about what hair my crosscopy or or hair comparison analysis
Speaker 1: is exactly. It's looking at hair under a microscope, as
Speaker 1: as you would think from the title. But what a
Speaker 1: well trained hair examiner was supposed to be able to
Speaker 1: do is look at different characteristics and hair and try
Speaker 1: to make an association from those characteristics. They look at
Speaker 1: characteristics like the color and the thickness, whether it looks wavy,
Speaker 1: if it has what they call scales on the cuticle,
Speaker 1: whether it's smooth or bagged. They also look at the
Speaker 1: part of the hair that's the medulla, which is the
Speaker 1: middle of the hair, and they look at the shape
Speaker 1: of that, the thickness, the color. They also look at
Speaker 1: the cortex, which is the main part of the hair,
Speaker 1: and that gives the hair characteristics like the pigment. And
Speaker 1: when they do the examination, they make note of all
Speaker 1: these characteristics in like a known sample of hair, and
Speaker 1: then they seek to compare that to the evidentiary hair.
Speaker 1: So it sounds scientific, I guess in a way. The
Speaker 1: examiner takes some hair from the suspect's head and they
Speaker 1: know where that's coming from because it's the person that's
Speaker 1: accused of the crime right in front of them, sitting
Speaker 1: in a jail cell. So they take that hair and
Speaker 1: put it in a little bag and label it, and
Speaker 1: they take that hair sample compare it to what you
Speaker 1: refer to as the evidentiary hair or the unknown sample
Speaker 1: that was found at the scene of a crime. And
Speaker 1: so they're looking at characteristics of the hair found at
Speaker 1: the crime scene and then seeing if the person that
Speaker 1: they claim committed this crime has hair that matches these characteristics.
Speaker 1: But the problem seems to be that there are so
Speaker 1: many different characteristics and variables and hair that matching one
Speaker 1: hair to another, and you know, doing that to try
Speaker 1: to find out whether it came from the same person
Speaker 1: isn't as easy as some might think in reading all
Speaker 1: of these transcripts from hair examiners, you know, throughout decades
Speaker 1: until two thousand, they would tell you that there's a range,
Speaker 1: even in a person's own head of hair. They don't
Speaker 1: all look identical. So where does hair my cross copy
Speaker 1: really run into trouble? Why isn't it reliable? Microscopic hair
Speaker 1: comparison doesn't rely on a chemical analysis or a set
Speaker 1: of concrete standards to associate or to make a comparison.
Speaker 1: It's what is known as a pattern and matching discipline.
Speaker 1: So it's basically eyeballing it. It's a subjective forensic discipline.
Speaker 1: In fact, in the words of one of the FBI
Speaker 1: hair examiners, it's the most subjective of the forensic disciplines.
Speaker 1: As another microscopic hair examiner said, you just, um, you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes you get a feeling about a hair and you know,
Speaker 1: it just bowls you over and you just look at it.
Speaker 1: And so that's why there won't be a database. You
Speaker 1: can't make a database of that type of subjective feeling
Speaker 1: about hair. Yeah, I get it. I mean you could
Speaker 1: make a database of people's subjective feelings about hair, but
Speaker 1: it's not going to tell you very much. But it
Speaker 1: really begs the question why we're prosecutors using this to
Speaker 1: try to get convictions. If it's so subjective and so speculative,
Speaker 1: why were they using it at all. Generally they would
Speaker 1: start out operating on the you know, the transfer principle
Speaker 1: that if your hair falls out and you're in a
Speaker 1: location or you're near someone, hair can transfer to another
Speaker 1: person or to the place that you're in close proximity to,
Speaker 1: So it could give evidence of someone's presence in a
Speaker 1: certain location or with a certain person. When that is
Speaker 1: one of the few pieces of evidence you have, obviously
Speaker 1: you want to pursue that. And a lot of these cases, um,
Speaker 1: not all, but a lot of them were in pre
Speaker 1: DNA times, so this would be very powerful evidence when
Speaker 1: you can't just DNA test something. So what you had
Speaker 1: is the hair. But DNA testing could come out in
Speaker 1: the nineties, So why wasn't it being used on hair evidence?
Speaker 1: Why were prosecutors still an FBI examiners for that matter,
Speaker 1: still using this hair comparison analysis. When we think of
Speaker 1: DNA testing, that's nuclear DNA testing, And the problem with
Speaker 1: hair and why this happened was because unless there was
Speaker 1: tissue at the root of the hair. Like if you
Speaker 1: yank your hair out and it may or may not
Speaker 1: have some tissue at the root. Unless there was tissue
Speaker 1: there that could be tested with nuclear DNA, you couldn't
Speaker 1: do a DNA test on hair. All you could do
Speaker 1: is eyeballowed under a microscope until mitochondrial DNA, you know,
Speaker 1: different type of DNA testing allowed testing of the hair
Speaker 1: shaft to give a result. So in all those decades
Speaker 1: that was not there, that technology wasn't being used, and
Speaker 1: it wasn't until around two thousand that even you know,
Speaker 1: the FBI lab started using that in all the cases,
Speaker 1: and that is when they could actually look at the
Speaker 1: hair and say conclusively, no, it wasn't from this individual.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about three cases that all occurred
Speaker 1: around the Washington, d c. Area. One was Sante Tribble,
Speaker 1: who we mentioned earlier, where a dog hair was mistaken
Speaker 1: for a human hair. Now, another case was the case
Speaker 1: of Donald Eugene Gates. And Donald Gates was accused of
Speaker 1: raping and killing a girl in a park. Now, during
Speaker 1: his trial, an FBI special agent testified that Donald's hair
Speaker 1: was quote microscopically indistinguishable end quote from hair is found
Speaker 1: on the victim's body, and based on that that the
Speaker 1: hair from the crime scene probably belonged to Donald Gates.
Speaker 1: And so Donald was convict did and sentenced to twenty
Speaker 1: years to life in prison. And then there's yet a
Speaker 1: third case, and that is the case of an eighteen
Speaker 1: year old named kirk Odom. Now this one was, you know,
Speaker 1: another sort of mind bending example of this junk science
Speaker 1: being applied, because you you have Mr Odom just walking
Speaker 1: down the street one day. He's on his way to
Speaker 1: go see his infant daughter at his house, and a
Speaker 1: cops stops him on the street and says, you know,
Speaker 1: you look like the guy in this picture. And the
Speaker 1: picture was a sketch that had been drawn based on
Speaker 1: a description given by a woman that had been attacked,
Speaker 1: blindfolded and raped by a stranger with a gun. And
Speaker 1: the victim only got a brief look at her attacker,
Speaker 1: but the officers drew the sketch based on what she described,
Speaker 1: which was basically a young black man. Based on that,
Speaker 1: the officer arrests kirk Odom. And you have another exam
Speaker 1: uple of an FBI agent testifying at a trial. And
Speaker 1: here the agent gets on the stand and says kirk
Speaker 1: Odom's hair matches essentially hair found on the victim's nightgown,
Speaker 1: and they used the same sort of language that it's
Speaker 1: indistinguishable from Kirk's hair. Kirk spent over twenty two years
Speaker 1: in prison. So what happens next is mitochondrial DNA testing
Speaker 1: finally becomes available, right, that's the DNA testing of hair.
Speaker 1: And all three of these men's hair was tested and
Speaker 1: what do you know, none of their DNA matched any
Speaker 1: of the hairs that were found at the scenes of
Speaker 1: these crimes. And at this point, the FBI couldn't hide
Speaker 1: behind this anymore. So tell us, Vanessa, what happens next. Well,
Speaker 1: I was lucky enough to be working with n A
Speaker 1: c DL when um an A c d L joined
Speaker 1: in work in a partnership with the FBI, the Department
Speaker 1: of Justice, and the Innocence Project to conduct a review
Speaker 1: of the FBI Hair Examiner's cases from you know, whenever
Speaker 1: they started, when the earliest we could find up to
Speaker 1: about two thousand. And that came about for a couple
Speaker 1: of reasons, one of which was the National Academy of
Speaker 1: Sciences Report on Strengthening Forensic Science, which looked at pattern
Speaker 1: and matching disciplines, including specifically hair comparison, and said, you know,
Speaker 1: it just doesn't have a sufficient foundation to be used
Speaker 1: for identifying people. So the n A c d L
Speaker 1: Is working with FBI, and you start going through all
Speaker 1: of these old cases. You're reading the transcripts, and these
Speaker 1: are trials where hair evidence was used to get a conviction.
Speaker 1: So what did you find. Part of the frustration that
Speaker 1: the lawyers had and that we all had reading these
Speaker 1: transcripts back to back was the continued nature of the
Speaker 1: same states that were unscientific, and so we called them
Speaker 1: error type one, two and three. And in Layman's terms,
Speaker 1: air type one is basically where they're making a one
Speaker 1: to one association between a person and a hair, which
Speaker 1: can never be done with microscopic hair comparison. So that's
Speaker 1: when an examiner either states or implies that the evidentiary
Speaker 1: hair can be associated to a specific individual to the
Speaker 1: exclusion of all others, and that would include statements indicating
Speaker 1: that hair is unique. Sometimes an analogy of a fingerprint
Speaker 1: was used in testimony. Well, it's not exactly like a fingerprint,
Speaker 1: but it kind of is. And that's why we can
Speaker 1: say that this hair came from this person, So that's
Speaker 1: that one to one association, and that is absolutely incorrect.
Speaker 1: You can't say hair is unique and use it to
Speaker 1: associate people. You know, you shouldn't have to say it's
Speaker 1: like this, sort's like that. You should just say what
Speaker 1: it is, and if what it is isn't enough, then
Speaker 1: it shouldn't be used to connect the hair to a person.
Speaker 1: That wasn't really the most common type of error or
Speaker 1: scientifically invalid statement we saw. It was usually what we
Speaker 1: call error to and what I'm talking about. There are
Speaker 1: statements like, well, it would be rare if two hairs
Speaker 1: that looked this similar came from two different individuals, And
Speaker 1: those were the things we were looking for in the review,
Speaker 1: and unfortunately found that in the majority, the vast majority
Speaker 1: over n of cases where FBI examiners gave testimony, the
Speaker 1: conclusions were exaggerated and there were scientifically unsupported statements in
Speaker 1: the testimony. Look, I always knew this was bad, but
Speaker 1: of the cases, I mean, that's just an insane statistic.
Speaker 1: And you know, our listeners really need to remember that
Speaker 1: these weren't just any experts coming in to give testimony.
Speaker 1: This is the FBI. This is you know, an organization
Speaker 1: that has a reputation for having attained higher knowledge, you know,
Speaker 1: knowing more than just everyday people. When an FBI examiner
Speaker 1: comes in, especially in a state case, great weight is
Speaker 1: given to what they say. It is very impressive to
Speaker 1: have the FBI show up and explain a discipline and
Speaker 1: tell you what something means in their experience. And that's
Speaker 1: what happened in some cases. And the FBI was asked
Speaker 1: to do hair examination when the local examiners couldn't make
Speaker 1: an association, which makes the whole thing even more questionable
Speaker 1: because the inquiry should end there. You shouldn't be able
Speaker 1: to try to find someone else who will give you
Speaker 1: the answer that you want. Also, they found that the
Speaker 1: FBI hair examiners kept their identity as law enforcement agents
Speaker 1: first and foremost. And they found the instead of acting
Speaker 1: like impartial scientists, the FBI lab culture at the time
Speaker 1: embraced the agent examiners acting like more like detectives, and
Speaker 1: that that approach should have been pulled back. And remember, no,
Speaker 1: you're independent. This is scientific. You're not part of the
Speaker 1: law enforcement investigative team. You're a scientist. So Vanessa, you
Speaker 1: read transcripts from a ton of cases a lot of testimony.
Speaker 1: Were there any that really stood out to you where
Speaker 1: you sat back and said, Wow, this is really bad.
Speaker 1: A couple of things where I thought I could not believe.
Speaker 1: This was the case where the examiner said that he
Speaker 1: had significant experience, you know, examining pubic hares from people
Speaker 1: from Mexico, and therefore he could exclude people from Mexico
Speaker 1: from having concier We did the pubic hare in the
Speaker 1: case at hand. Obviously that was because the alternate suspects
Speaker 1: other than the defendant were from Mexico. So that was
Speaker 1: entirely made up. I mean, I can't even there's there's
Speaker 1: no point trying to be nice about it. That's not
Speaker 1: a thing anybody can ever say, and it was just
Speaker 1: made up. You can't say that a hair came from
Speaker 1: an individual of a particular racial group. They can look
Speaker 1: at the hair and talk about some of the ancestral
Speaker 1: origins and some of the classifications into groups at a
Speaker 1: huge broad level, which really wouldn't have value and you know,
Speaker 1: clime investigation, but they absolutely can't say that it did
Speaker 1: or did not come from a person from a certain country. Um,
Speaker 1: so that's you know, that's pretty ridiculous. So after you
Speaker 1: review the transcripts from a case, and let's say you
Speaker 1: determine that you know, an expert or a so called
Speaker 1: expert came in and gave testimony and said things that
Speaker 1: were just outside the bounds of science. UM, and there
Speaker 1: was a conviction. What happened next? What were the next
Speaker 1: steps of the review? I seek to assist folks in
Speaker 1: finding counsel and um hooking them up with lawyers who
Speaker 1: could assist them to pursue any claims they might have.
Speaker 1: If that type of evidence was used in their case,
Speaker 1: they would do the DNA testing on the hair, or
Speaker 1: if no hair could be found after all these years,
Speaker 1: because these are old cases, they would do testing on
Speaker 1: other biological evidence as long as a chain of custody
Speaker 1: could be established. So look, I just have to say, UM,
Speaker 1: and if this is a shameless plug, so be it.
Speaker 1: The N A C d L is just it's a
Speaker 1: remarkable organization because you're not only exposing problems which you
Speaker 1: certainly did hear, but it goes that extra step to
Speaker 1: helping people that you know, have been the victim of
Speaker 1: a wrongful conviction or the victim of you know, testimony
Speaker 1: that goes outside the bounds of science and getting them
Speaker 1: help and hooking them up with lawyers. So you must, Vanessa,
Speaker 1: have had an interesting experience from all these cases. What
Speaker 1: is your biggest takeaway from this work? No matter how
Speaker 1: much you want a conviction or how much other evidence
Speaker 1: you think you have of guilt, it's never appropriate to
Speaker 1: admit unsupported science in the idea that using certain techniques
Speaker 1: are needed as tools to quote unquote catch the bad
Speaker 1: guys um, which is still a conversation that's going on
Speaker 1: with forensic science today. That's the fear that law enforcement
Speaker 1: won't have the tools they need to catch people or
Speaker 1: to convict people. And the appropriate response should be, well,
Speaker 1: those tools have to be scientifically valid and they have
Speaker 1: to be scientifically sound. So can't this model that the
Speaker 1: n A, c, d L and the FBI employed here,
Speaker 1: which is re reviewing cases and exposing problems and helping
Speaker 1: right these wrongs. Can't this model be applied to other
Speaker 1: disciplines of junk science. It just seems so effective and
Speaker 1: you're able to help so many people. As a result
Speaker 1: of the FBI Hair Review and other movements to make
Speaker 1: sure forensic science was more reliable for the court room,
Speaker 1: there were plans in the Department of Justice in the
Speaker 1: last administration to do similar reviews of other pattern and
Speaker 1: matching disciplines, to take a historical look back and see
Speaker 1: if in some other disciplines in the FBI lab that
Speaker 1: were susceptible to similar errors, if similar errors had occurred,
Speaker 1: and like the hair of view to find those and
Speaker 1: identify them and provide notification and give a means for
Speaker 1: folks to address those um potential scientific overstatements. All right,
Speaker 1: So the way you say van s h when you
Speaker 1: say there are war plans in the Department of Justice,
Speaker 1: um to do this historical look back makes me have
Speaker 1: the sinking suspicion that maybe it didn't pan out. What
Speaker 1: happened that, along with several other plans, was rolled back
Speaker 1: by then Attorney General Sessions. Under the new administration, it
Speaker 1: has become a little harder. We have to be extra
Speaker 1: vigilant when you're dealing with a situation where plans for
Speaker 1: progress were abandoned. So while a lot of progress has
Speaker 1: been made, there's a lot to be done. You know,
Speaker 1: cases are still litigation, cases still need to be litigated. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: the struggle continues. You might be listening to this wondering
Speaker 1: what you can do to help. Thanks to the work
Speaker 1: that Vanessa is doing with the n A c d L,
Speaker 1: many individuals have been exonerated. But being exonerated means moving
Speaker 1: from a life of injustice and hardship in prison to
Speaker 1: another kind of very difficult life outside of prison. Take
Speaker 1: for example, Drew Whitley, in the manager of McDonald's, was
Speaker 1: murdered in Pennsylvania. Another McDonald's employee was there when the
Speaker 1: crime occurred. The witness could not see the face of
Speaker 1: the perpetrator because he was wearing a ski mask, but
Speaker 1: he claimed nonetheless that the person that committed the crime
Speaker 1: had been Drew Whitley, his neighbor. Investigators found a hair
Speaker 1: on a ski mask which was found near the crime scene.
Speaker 1: They compared it to Drew's hair and claim that it
Speaker 1: matched Drew. Whitley was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
Speaker 1: After fighting for years, Drew was finally able to get
Speaker 1: the hairs from the crime scene tested for mitochondrial DNA.
Speaker 1: The hairs did not belong to him, and he was
Speaker 1: exonerated in two thousand and six. The trauma from his
Speaker 1: wrongful conviction remains. He's always looking over his shoulder with
Speaker 1: the constant and perhaps justified worry that a police officer
Speaker 1: will bring him back to prison for no good reason
Speaker 1: at all. Something that strikes me about a lot of
Speaker 1: these men who have been convicted based on hair comparison evidence,
Speaker 1: like Drew Whitley and Kirk Odom, is that many of
Speaker 1: them have shaved their heads after they're released. I can't
Speaker 1: help but to wonder if it's because of this fear
Speaker 1: that someone will find their hair where it shouldn't be
Speaker 1: and the nightmare will begin all over again. After serving
Speaker 1: seventeen years for a himy didn't commit, dru was finally released,
Speaker 1: but he didn't receive any compensation from the state. So
Speaker 1: here's someone that lives a literal nightmare, struggling behind bars
Speaker 1: to prove his innocence, and now he has to struggle
Speaker 1: to survive on the outside. Right now, fifteen states in
Speaker 1: this country don't offer any compensation to axonorees. The thirty
Speaker 1: five states that do differ widely in the amounts that
Speaker 1: they offer, and it's often difficult to satisfy all of
Speaker 1: the procedural requirements to qualify for the money. As you
Speaker 1: can imagine, there are always loopholes and the states often
Speaker 1: exploit them. Money can't give back the years of someone's
Speaker 1: life that they were robbed of, but compensation does help.
Speaker 1: It eases an axonore's path forward and healing and living
Speaker 1: a more comfortable life. The Innocence Project is fighting to
Speaker 1: hold states accountable for compensating wrongfully convicted individuals. Until all
Speaker 1: states in act legislatreation to compensate the wrongly convicted, that
Speaker 1: fight will continue. The Innocence Project has set up a
Speaker 1: fund to support axonorees. The fund is currently expanding to
Speaker 1: cover those axonorees who are facing job loss or economic
Speaker 1: hardships due to COVID nineteen. You can donate to this
Speaker 1: fund by going to Innocence Project dot org slash Axonoree
Speaker 1: dash fund dash. You can also support the amazing work
Speaker 1: that the n a c d L is doing by
Speaker 1: donating to the n A c d L Foundation for
Speaker 1: Criminal Justice. You could find out more about that at
Speaker 1: n A c d L dot org. Next week, we'll
Speaker 1: explore the junk science of shoeprint entire track evidence 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 Wardas and senior producers Karakorn
Speaker 1: Haber and Britt Spangler. Our music was composed by Jay Ralph.
Speaker 1: You can follow me on Instagram at Dubin dot Josh.
Speaker 1: Follow the Wrongful Conviction podcast on Facebook and on Instagram
Speaker 1: at Wrongful Conviction and on Twitter at wrong Conviction