Speaker 1: It's Valentine's Day. You don't usually observe the greeting card holidays.
Speaker 1: You think they're kind of silly, and besides, most of
Speaker 1: the time, you and your partner are both busy working.
Speaker 1: You're always buried in your client's cases, and your partner
Speaker 1: is off and on call, running back and forth to
Speaker 1: the hospital to treat patients. Your friends are always remarking
Speaker 1: that you're the classic power couple, but sometimes it seems
Speaker 1: like it's all power and not so much couple. So
Speaker 1: this year, you make dinner, put out a tablecloth, and
Speaker 1: even light a candle. At the end of dinner, you
Speaker 1: do the dishes and your partner takes out the trash.
Speaker 1: The TV is on low in the background, but something
Speaker 1: makes your ears perk up. You glance over and see
Speaker 1: the newswoman reporting from a parking lot not too far
Speaker 1: away from your house. She says, an explosion went off
Speaker 1: not long ago. A man was hitting his leg by
Speaker 1: shrapnel that exploded off a pipe bomb. It detonated thirty
Speaker 1: yards away from where the man was walking. Listening to this,
Speaker 1: you slowly shake your head. It's not uncommon in Grand Junction, Colorado,
Speaker 1: for people to mess around with explosives. After all, it's
Speaker 1: a mining town and people know how to use dynamite.
Speaker 1: The reporter says, the man that was hit will probably
Speaker 1: be Okay, you hope this is just some kid's joke
Speaker 1: gone wrong. But then a few weeks later there's another
Speaker 1: news report. A twelve year old girl named Maria gets
Speaker 1: into a van with her parents to go shopping, and
Speaker 1: as the family sets out for the mall, a bomb
Speaker 1: hidden near one of the rear tires explodes. Shrapnel is
Speaker 1: flung through the back of the van seat and into
Speaker 1: Maria's body. It wedges into her heart. Her parents frantically
Speaker 1: pull her out of the car, but she dies right there.
Speaker 1: Three months after that, husband and wife Henry and Suzanne,
Speaker 1: finished general at a local restaurant. They drive by a
Speaker 1: strange looking object. Henry slows the car down and reaches
Speaker 1: out to see what it is. His arms are blown
Speaker 1: off his body and he dies instantly. After that third
Speaker 1: bomb goes off, everyone in Grand Junction is extremely anxious.
Speaker 1: You check under your car every single time before you
Speaker 1: get in, and you continue to follow the news coverage
Speaker 1: as it unfolds. The police department declares that out of
Speaker 1: thirty initial suspects for the bombs. They've narrowed it down
Speaker 1: to just one person. They don't announce who it is,
Speaker 1: but a camera crew must have gotten tipped off because
Speaker 1: they start following around a young man with big glasses.
Speaker 1: Then you get a phone call from a man who
Speaker 1: identifies himself as Jimmy. He tells you he is the
Speaker 1: suspect in these bombing cases. His words come quickly and
Speaker 1: in fragments of sentences, he sounds scared. He says he
Speaker 1: hasn't done anything wrong, and he hasn't been arrested yet,
Speaker 1: but with cameras following him, he thinks it's a good
Speaker 1: idea to get an attorney. He asks, will you help me?
Speaker 1: You take all of this in and think, do I
Speaker 1: really want to be involved offending someone who might have
Speaker 1: done something so horrific? But then again, what if he's
Speaker 1: actually innocent? Everyone deserves an opportunity to defend themselves. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: you agree to take on his case. Soon after you
Speaker 1: become Jimmy's attorney, he gets a knock at his door.
Speaker 1: The police enter his house with a warrant. They turn
Speaker 1: his place inside out, Detectives vacuum the couch and carpet
Speaker 1: to see if they can pick up any gunpowder nothing
Speaker 1: all they found, or some everyday tools suppliers, wire strippers.
Speaker 1: The tools that are taken from Jimmy's house are brought
Speaker 1: down to the police station and tested in the forensics lab,
Speaker 1: and the results come back. Police arrest Jimmy and he
Speaker 1: gets charged with murder. Of all the people to open
Speaker 1: this on, you do understand why they're targeting Jimmy. He's
Speaker 1: somewhat of a loner, definitely an oddball. He often goes
Speaker 1: on late night walks by himself. He can be found
Speaker 1: sitting alone at bars and getting pretty drunk. Prior to
Speaker 1: the trial, the prosecution discloses the evidence they intend to
Speaker 1: use against Jimmy to prove their case, and it looks
Speaker 1: pretty bad. You spend countless days pouring over the main
Speaker 1: piece of evidence, the conclusion of a tool mark examiner.
Speaker 1: The report of this examiner says that the impressions taken
Speaker 1: from the tools they found in Jimmy's apartment can be
Speaker 1: scientifically linked to the tool marks left on all three
Speaker 1: of the bombs. In all your years as a criminal
Speaker 1: defense attorney, you've never heard of this type of forensic analysis.
Speaker 1: You didn't even know it existed, But you studied science
Speaker 1: and undergrad before you decided to become a lawyer, so
Speaker 1: you know how to analyze these scientific documents. You dig
Speaker 1: up everything you can find on tool mark evidence, data, statistics, studies, experiments.
Speaker 1: You find nothing. How are you supposed to defend against this?
Speaker 1: If someone has a standard set of needle nose players,
Speaker 1: aren't they likely to match up with the impressions made
Speaker 1: by other needle nose players. At trial, the jury has
Speaker 1: shown a video by the prosecution. A tool mark expert
Speaker 1: walks the jurors through it. He tells them each tool
Speaker 1: has you nique microscopic characteristics. You can see how the
Speaker 1: tools we found in the defendant's home aligned perfectly with
Speaker 1: marks found on fragments of the exploded bombs. The jury
Speaker 1: is mesmerized by the videotape shown by the tool mark examiner.
Speaker 1: After closing arguments, when they begin their deliberations, the first
Speaker 1: note they send out his request to see that video.
Speaker 1: They view it over and over and over again, and
Speaker 1: then the bailiff informs you that the jury has done deliberating.
Speaker 1: Jimmy is brought back into the courtroom from a holding cell.
Speaker 1: You see the trepidation in his face as he takes
Speaker 1: his seat, and you can actually hear him take a
Speaker 1: big nervous swallow. The jury files into the courtroom, and
Speaker 1: a vein on your temple begins to pulsatean twitch. Jimmy
Speaker 1: is convicted of multiple counts of murder. He is sentenced
Speaker 1: to life in prison. The story you just heard is
Speaker 1: based on the true events of the bombings and Grand Junction,
Speaker 1: Colorado and the subsequent trial of Jimmy Genrich. Jimmy has
Speaker 1: been imprisoned for more than twenty five years, serving a
Speaker 1: life sentence. His latest appeal has been taken up by
Speaker 1: the Innocence Project. I'm Josh Dubin, civil rights and criminal
Speaker 1: defense attorney, an innocence ambassador to the Innocence Project in
Speaker 1: New York. Today, on wrongful Conviction junk Science, we examine
Speaker 1: tool mark analysis. It turns out the crime that popularized
Speaker 1: tool mark analysis was also committed on Valentine's Day over
Speaker 1: ninety years ago, when three dozen former Brooklyn Navy yard
Speaker 1: workers found themselves irreparably poisoned by the asbestos they used
Speaker 1: in the construction of the battleships that won World War Two.
Speaker 1: Perry Whites and Arthur Luxembourg literally putting everything on the
Speaker 1: line to successfully represent them. Since then, they've championed the
Speaker 1: rights of over fifty thousand regular Americans injured through the
Speaker 1: negligence and malfeasance of mainly large corporations. Their ability to
Speaker 1: level the playing field against seemingly insurmountable odds has led
Speaker 1: them to litigate against opponents as diverse as Big Pharma
Speaker 1: all the way to those responsible for rendering the water
Speaker 1: of Flint, Michigan undrinkable. Whites and Luxembourg ticket personally when
Speaker 1: there's a miscarriage of justice anywhere, and therefore they feel
Speaker 1: a sense of responsibility to support bronqul conviction podcasts. You
Speaker 1: can learn more about them by visiting whites lux dot com.
Speaker 1: That's w E I t Z l u x dot com.
Speaker 1: You've all heard of the legendary mobster Al Capone. During
Speaker 1: the Roaring twenties, he was the leader of the Chicago Mafia.
Speaker 1: Anything corrupt or illegal. He controlled it, from bootlegging to speakeasies,
Speaker 1: gambling to prostitution. Capone owned it all. But there was
Speaker 1: one rival gang that Capone couldn't quite shake, the Irish
Speaker 1: Mafia led by George bugs Moran. They were manufacturing and
Speaker 1: selling alcohol, stepping on Capone's business. Now Capone wasn't gonna
Speaker 1: have it. He got ahold of some police uniforms, and
Speaker 1: on February fourteenth, Valentine's Day, four of Capone's men, dressed
Speaker 1: as police officers, went over to the garage where bugs
Speaker 1: Moran's gang was producing and selling alcohol. Capone's crew took
Speaker 1: the Irish mob by surprise. They started screaming with their
Speaker 1: guns drawn, line up against the wall, hands where I
Speaker 1: can see him. You're all under arrest. All seven of
Speaker 1: the Irish gangsters lined up against the wall, hands on
Speaker 1: their heads while Capone's crew shot them all dead in
Speaker 1: broad daylight. By the time the real police arrived, Capone's
Speaker 1: gang was long gone. The cops had more than a
Speaker 1: hunch about who was responsible for this, but they needed
Speaker 1: the hard evidence to prove it, so they rated the
Speaker 1: home of one of Compone's top guys, who went by
Speaker 1: the name of Frank Killer Burke. They took his gun
Speaker 1: and sent it off to what was one of the
Speaker 1: first crime labs in the country. They're an examiner named
Speaker 1: Calvin Goddard shot some test bullets out of the confiscated gun.
Speaker 1: He put one of the test bullets and one of
Speaker 1: the bullets found at the massacre under a special microscope
Speaker 1: that allowed him to compare two images at once. This
Speaker 1: examiner actually invented this technique of comparing bullets. He claimed
Speaker 1: that no two revolvers leave the same mark, and that
Speaker 1: by examining the grooves on the bullets he cleaned, he
Speaker 1: could identify the gun that shot them. According to Goddard,
Speaker 1: the bullets of the confiscated gun indeed match the bullets
Speaker 1: found at the scene of the crime, but the police
Speaker 1: couldn't do much with that evidence. They could improve that
Speaker 1: the owner of the gun, Frank Killer Burke, had been
Speaker 1: at the scene of the crime, and so no one
Speaker 1: was ever charged for what became known as the Valentine's
Speaker 1: Day massacre. The analysis that Calvin Goddard invented is now
Speaker 1: known as tool mark and firearm analysis. Forensic analysts had
Speaker 1: follow in his footsteps believe that just as each gun
Speaker 1: leaves a unique mark on every bullet that it shoots,
Speaker 1: each tool leaves unique mark on the surface that's used on.
Speaker 1: But no one had closely examined the false assumptions behind
Speaker 1: to a mark identification. What was being presented to juries
Speaker 1: was this notion that a tool will leave a unique
Speaker 1: mark on a surface. But it turns out that not
Speaker 1: necessarily the case. If two people own a similar wrench,
Speaker 1: for instance, both wrenches will leave behind a similar mark,
Speaker 1: So matching a mark to a tool owned by a
Speaker 1: suspect has very limited value. Nevertheless, these experts were claiming
Speaker 1: that a tool found at the home of a suspect
Speaker 1: was the precise tool that was used, for example, to
Speaker 1: cut wires during the construction of a bomb. This kind
Speaker 1: of flawed evidence continued to be presented in courtrooms across
Speaker 1: the country to link suspects to crimes, leading to several
Speaker 1: wrongful convictions, including that of Jimmy gin rich In. It
Speaker 1: was just so obvious to me that this was not,
Speaker 1: you know, this was not a foundationally strong field, and
Speaker 1: I was absolutely stunned because the consequences of this stuff
Speaker 1: can't be higher. You know, people go to prison for
Speaker 1: for years there, their sentenced to death. I mean, essentially
Speaker 1: for this to be totally unproven science, I just absolutely
Speaker 1: could not believe it. Today we're talking to Tim Riquarth.
Speaker 1: Tim is a freelance journalist who often writes about the
Speaker 1: intersection between science and criminal justice. He's also a lecturer
Speaker 1: in science and writing at n y U. We're particularly
Speaker 1: excited to talk to him today because he wrote about
Speaker 1: Jimmy Genrich's case for an article published by The Nation.
Speaker 1: He and his co author extensively researched the case, along
Speaker 1: with the tool mark evidence that was used to convict Jimmy. Now,
Speaker 1: a lot of this episode is based on this article
Speaker 1: that Tim wrote, So after listening to this episode, if
Speaker 1: you want to learn more about tool mark evidence in
Speaker 1: Jimmy's case, you can find the article on our show notes. So, Tim,
Speaker 1: tell us about your background. How did you get into
Speaker 1: writing about science? Except for undergraduate I studied literature and writing,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't until after I had graduated UM. I
Speaker 1: happened to be living across the street from a medical
Speaker 1: school in Chicago, and at the same time, my father
Speaker 1: was suffering from dementia and the books and articles that
Speaker 1: I was reading on dementia didn't quite satisfy me, and
Speaker 1: so I decided to volunteer in a lab that studied dementia.
Speaker 1: And it was at that point that I was first
Speaker 1: introduced to research and I was hooked. So I went
Speaker 1: back to school, took all of the basic science classes
Speaker 1: that I hadn't taken in undergrad and eventually rolled in
Speaker 1: a masters. And you know, ten years later I found
Speaker 1: myself and probably with a PhD in neuroscience. The sort
Speaker 1: of breadth of questions and material that you could really
Speaker 1: dive into as a journalist or a writer just felt
Speaker 1: so much more expansive than what I could do as
Speaker 1: a as a scientist. And so I sort of had
Speaker 1: the realization later on in my PhD that research, heavy,
Speaker 1: investigative type of pieces where really good fit for somebody
Speaker 1: who's trained in answering big questions. So before writing this
Speaker 1: story about tool mark evidence, what did you know about
Speaker 1: any forensic signs? Before that the first story I did
Speaker 1: about forensic science, I didn't know a lot about it
Speaker 1: at the time. Then, you know, anybody might from watching
Speaker 1: Law and Order or cs I. We profiled the specific
Speaker 1: case and it involved tool mark evidence, and we looked
Speaker 1: at all of the research in the forensic journals. I mean,
Speaker 1: we went through and found every single study, and most
Speaker 1: of them were very small sample sizes, very theoretical, or
Speaker 1: had all kinds of methodological design problems. And I was
Speaker 1: absolutely stunned because this is like a solved problem. Like
Speaker 1: we know how to do strong empirical scientific studies to
Speaker 1: see if something works or not. Like take a medical study,
Speaker 1: which if you want to see if a drug has
Speaker 1: an effect, you randomly select two groups of people and
Speaker 1: you assign one of them to get the drug and
Speaker 1: another one to get a placebo which has no effect.
Speaker 1: You blind both the people so they don't know that
Speaker 1: they're getting the drug, and you also blind the researchers
Speaker 1: so they don't know who is getting the drug. You
Speaker 1: decide ahead of time what analysis you're gonna do, what
Speaker 1: outcomes you're going to look for, and then you test
Speaker 1: those using rigorous hypothesis testing and statistics to see what happens.
Speaker 1: And in forensic sciences that just it doesn't exist. The
Speaker 1: practitioners doing them are often not blinded, the sample sizes
Speaker 1: are very low, there's conflicts of interest, so it it's
Speaker 1: not following some of the most basic tenants that you
Speaker 1: know would be reflexive to your typical scientists in the university,
Speaker 1: I mean most people, especially lay people on a jury.
Speaker 1: Here the words forensic science, and you know they imagine
Speaker 1: this very pristine process in which things are tested and retested,
Speaker 1: because you know, we all think of the scientific method
Speaker 1: that we learn about in school, and it's kind of
Speaker 1: startling to know that that's not actually the case. So
Speaker 1: what you said really underscores what we've been saying throughout
Speaker 1: the show and how big of a problem it can
Speaker 1: be when jurors confuse what's really junk science presented in
Speaker 1: courtrooms with traditional science that's used to develop medicines, for example.
Speaker 1: And I'm not sure that our listeners are aware of this,
Speaker 1: but I want you to think about this for a
Speaker 1: for a moment. In cases where people were later proven
Speaker 1: to be innocent based on DNA, um, of those wrongful
Speaker 1: convictions are based on some misapplication of forensic science. Imagine
Speaker 1: if this were the f d A right. Imagine if
Speaker 1: a drug didn't work fifty at a time and had
Speaker 1: horrible side effects, they wouldn't just say, well, you know,
Speaker 1: we already approved it, so let's just leave it on
Speaker 1: the market. That's not how it works in medicine, but
Speaker 1: that is how it works in the law. So let's
Speaker 1: get into Jimmy's case. I want you to tell us
Speaker 1: about the crime that led to his arrest and the
Speaker 1: town that had happened, and why did they even decide
Speaker 1: to zero went on Jimmy in the first place. Grand
Speaker 1: Junction is a sort of mining town of about thirty
Speaker 1: thousand people at the time, and there was a series
Speaker 1: of pipe bombs that went off in the town. There
Speaker 1: were three of them, and one of them killed a
Speaker 1: twelve year old girl. It was it was very tragic,
Speaker 1: and they had they were seemingly random and they had
Speaker 1: no no suspect, And so the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco
Speaker 1: and Firearms was called in and they helped the local
Speaker 1: police force to a bomb investigation to try to figure
Speaker 1: out who this was. They had a list of, you know,
Speaker 1: something like thirty suspects. There was this guy, Jimmy, who
Speaker 1: was sort of a loner. Lived in a in a
Speaker 1: boarding house near downtown, in a twelve by twelve room.
Speaker 1: I think he was a bus boy in a restaurant,
Speaker 1: but was on and off of jobs. His mother would
Speaker 1: bring him, you know, meals in a in a cooler,
Speaker 1: and he was a little bit um. You know, he
Speaker 1: had some problems with with mental illness. There was one
Speaker 1: event in particular that put him on the police's radar.
Speaker 1: Which was he walked into a bookstore one day and
Speaker 1: asked them to order a copy of the Anarchist Cookbook,
Speaker 1: which contains a diagram of a pipe bomb, and the
Speaker 1: bookstore owners had called the police, and once they sort
Speaker 1: of pieced all of this together, that put him at
Speaker 1: the top of the suspect list. They then rated his
Speaker 1: boarding room and found some electronic parts, some wire strippers
Speaker 1: and pliers that could conceivably have been used to construct
Speaker 1: a bomb. And at that point they worked to link
Speaker 1: him to the bomb, and they didn't find any other
Speaker 1: physical evidence, never found an Anarchist cookbook. They painted a
Speaker 1: picture of him as the kind of person who would
Speaker 1: do this. But you have to have physical evidence that
Speaker 1: links people to crimes in you know, very the objective ways,
Speaker 1: and they didn't have that in this case other than
Speaker 1: the tool mark analysis, which both the prosecutor and the
Speaker 1: judge acknowledged in the trial transcript. They both acknowledged that
Speaker 1: the entire case hinged on the tool mark analysis, and
Speaker 1: if it were thrown out, there would be no case.
Speaker 1: So how do they claim to identify Jimmy's tools as
Speaker 1: the tools that were used on these bombs? They look
Speaker 1: at these microscopic scratches or striations on the bomb parts,
Speaker 1: and then they look at the suspects tools and they
Speaker 1: make a mark on some other piece of metal using
Speaker 1: a microscope. They compare the marks on the metal like
Speaker 1: there test marks, to the marks on the actual evidence,
Speaker 1: and if those line up in the examiner's you know,
Speaker 1: subjective judgment, they declared a match, and they say that
Speaker 1: this was you know, the only tools that could have
Speaker 1: made these marks, and therefore the owner of these tools
Speaker 1: must have been the person who built the bombs. You know,
Speaker 1: they use the word certainty, and that's very compelling to jurors,
Speaker 1: but the truth is they don't know how certain it is.
Speaker 1: These aren't exotic bomb making tools. Their three dollar pair
Speaker 1: of pliers that you know, we're sold at the local
Speaker 1: hardware store. Perhaps, so you could imagine that, you know,
Speaker 1: a tool mark examiner could say something like, oh, it
Speaker 1: was a really large pair of pliers versus a small one,
Speaker 1: or you know, it's consistent or something like that, but
Speaker 1: they don't say that they individualize it. They say that
Speaker 1: this is an exact match. And this isn't really a
Speaker 1: possible conclusion to come to, because you'd either have to
Speaker 1: a test every other tool in the world and see
Speaker 1: if this indeed was a unique mark that was being made,
Speaker 1: or you would have to know the kinds of variations
Speaker 1: that we see in tools, Like how common is it
Speaker 1: that two tools can look about the same but aren't
Speaker 1: the same? Is it you know, two tools that are
Speaker 1: made by the same brand. Is it two tools that
Speaker 1: come off the same you know, a lot in a
Speaker 1: in a factory. So there's all of these things that
Speaker 1: you need to quantify, And even if you did do that,
Speaker 1: you'd have to say, you know, there's a one in
Speaker 1: a hundred chance that this is a different tool. There's
Speaker 1: a one in two d chance, right, something like that. Right,
Speaker 1: So you're saying that one issue is how many tools
Speaker 1: can be said to match a mark left behind? And
Speaker 1: we really don't know the answer to that. But I
Speaker 1: guess another issue is the examiners doing the matching. And
Speaker 1: the fact of the matter is that these examiners never
Speaker 1: really have to prove whether or not they can effectively
Speaker 1: match a tool to its mark. And there are possible
Speaker 1: ways to test this, right, I mean, if a lab
Speaker 1: wants to test how good someone is that this kind
Speaker 1: of tool matching, they would send a tool mark examiner
Speaker 1: some tools along with some wires or pieces of metal
Speaker 1: tool marks on them, and the examiners would then be
Speaker 1: asked to match the correct tool to the marks, and
Speaker 1: the lab would have all of the correct answers, so
Speaker 1: they'd be able to tell how good these examiners actually are.
Speaker 1: That kind of testing, which would show how good these
Speaker 1: tool mark examiners aren't. Their job seems like a simple
Speaker 1: thing to do, right, right, The real test is how
Speaker 1: well do you examiners actually do in reality? Um, And
Speaker 1: you would say, you know, tool mark examiners make a
Speaker 1: mistake one out of ten times, one out of a
Speaker 1: hundred times, one out of a thousand times. That's what
Speaker 1: you really want to know is how often do they
Speaker 1: make a mistake? So why don't they actually do these tests?
Speaker 1: If that comes back and it's really, really, it's not
Speaker 1: so good, right, you make an error of the time
Speaker 1: or at the time, you're out of a job. You know,
Speaker 1: what are these examiners going to do if this becomes
Speaker 1: a technique that is no longer a valid technique in court?
Speaker 1: And you know, I think that it's easy to have
Speaker 1: this narrative that you know, these are unscrupulous scientists who
Speaker 1: are manipulating data in a bloodthirsty way to get convictions.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a very cartoonish way to think
Speaker 1: about it. There are certainly cases of misconduct, and there
Speaker 1: are cases of uh, you know, bad motives, but in reality,
Speaker 1: these are people who really believed that that what they
Speaker 1: were doing is true. And you actually talked to the
Speaker 1: too Mark examiner in Jimmy's case while you were researching
Speaker 1: your article. So what impressions did you have after talking
Speaker 1: to someone that actually specializes in this stuff. I guess
Speaker 1: the thing that struck me the most as a scientist
Speaker 1: is that there was an extreme lack of humility. There's
Speaker 1: an extreme lack of acknowledging that these could not be
Speaker 1: as infallible as as they thought. They have a very
Speaker 1: strong interest improving that these techniques are very powerful. There's
Speaker 1: a very strong sense of justice. There's a very strong
Speaker 1: sense of righteousness. The posture of the forensic scientists and
Speaker 1: and prosecutors they spoke to is it was a bit defensive, right.
Speaker 1: The venue for these is a court of law, which
Speaker 1: is an adversarial system, and to admit any kind of
Speaker 1: fallibility or weakness is to weaken the case, and that's
Speaker 1: it's just so against the culture to do that. So
Speaker 1: in Jimmy's case, how does it all work? How did
Speaker 1: the examiner present this tool mark evidence to the jury,
Speaker 1: and how do you think they were able to convince
Speaker 1: the jury that the results were correct? You know, that
Speaker 1: that Jimmy's tools match the more on those bombs. The
Speaker 1: presentation of the tool mark evidence was a video presentation,
Speaker 1: and I believe it was the defense attorney that said
Speaker 1: she thought it was one of the first in the nation. Again,
Speaker 1: this was in the in the early nineties, so there
Speaker 1: this was the first sort of video presentation of this
Speaker 1: kind of evidence. Because the way that they do this
Speaker 1: again is looking under a microscope and they line up
Speaker 1: these little microscopic markings from the evidence with their little
Speaker 1: test cuts. You know, it looks really convincing. You pick
Speaker 1: a little part where they do line up and you're like, ah,
Speaker 1: that must be it, and then you ignore all the
Speaker 1: parts where they don't line up, you know, which is
Speaker 1: you know, part of the problem. During deliberations, the jury
Speaker 1: asked to watch that video, you know, I think dozens
Speaker 1: of times. So it was it was a very convincing presentation.
Speaker 1: So in addition to tool mark examiners, you also talked
Speaker 1: to some of the prosecutors who used this type of
Speaker 1: analysis in their cases. What were their thoughts about using
Speaker 1: this kind of evidence. The same cognitive sentence that would
Speaker 1: exist for forensic examiners also exists for prosecutors. It's a
Speaker 1: lot to face that these tools that you've relied on
Speaker 1: for so many cases may not be as accurate as
Speaker 1: you thought they are, meaning some of the people that
Speaker 1: you convicted were maybe not guilty um, and that you
Speaker 1: shouldn't use them moving forward. It's a really hard it's
Speaker 1: a really hard pill to swallow. I think one of
Speaker 1: the things that I was most stunned by when we
Speaker 1: were interviewing prosecutors was the way in which they would
Speaker 1: rely on legal rulings as a substitute for scientific evidence.
Speaker 1: So what I mean by that is we would say,
Speaker 1: you know, look, we've looked at all of the evidence
Speaker 1: and like, they have not validated this in a scientifically
Speaker 1: rigorous way, and the prosecutors retort to that would be, well, yes,
Speaker 1: but we've used them, and we've convicted guilty people, and
Speaker 1: it's gotten lots of lots of legal rulings in our
Speaker 1: favor and so therefore it must be true. And so
Speaker 1: it's a very circular kind of read sitting. It's almost
Speaker 1: like an invasive species. You have this thing that's made
Speaker 1: its way into the courtroom and it gets locked in
Speaker 1: there by precedents, and it's really really hard to get
Speaker 1: it out. And so that's the reason that this stuff
Speaker 1: stays in courts. You know, science evolves. Even if you
Speaker 1: thought something was true thirty years ago and you decide
Speaker 1: it's not true today, you update, you know, you revise,
Speaker 1: and the courts just don't want to do that. They
Speaker 1: want to keep things the same. You know, we often
Speaker 1: ask our guests to tell our listeners what they can
Speaker 1: do to make sure this type of evidence stops being
Speaker 1: presented to juries in our criminal justice system. So what
Speaker 1: would you tell people, um a juror, for instance, who
Speaker 1: has to make a decision about someone's guilt or innocence
Speaker 1: when they are presented with forensic evidence. If I had
Speaker 1: any advice to adjure, you know, it's it's to realize
Speaker 1: that there have been major reports by scientific bodies that
Speaker 1: have found deep problems with these techniques. As convincing as
Speaker 1: it sounds, they're only telling you a partial picture, and
Speaker 1: yet the courts have been unable to bar them from
Speaker 1: being used. If you have a justice system where the
Speaker 1: ends justifies the means, right, uh, it's it's not going
Speaker 1: to function fairly. And so we should all be concerned
Speaker 1: when somebody is convicted by dubious means, because even if
Speaker 1: that person was guilty, somebody else isn't going to be
Speaker 1: and they're going to get convicted by those dubious methods
Speaker 1: as well. You know, it's easy to be pessimistic and
Speaker 1: almost fatalistic about the state of forensics in the courtroom,
Speaker 1: but there are some bright spots. You know, there are
Speaker 1: some rulings that seem really enlightened on the part of
Speaker 1: the judges who are acknowledging that maybe these things do
Speaker 1: need to be revisited. And this is even true with
Speaker 1: regard to Jimmy's case. Uh, the Innocence Project has picked
Speaker 1: up as appeal and are trying to set a new
Speaker 1: kind of precedent. They are going to have an evidentiary hearing,
Speaker 1: which means that they'll have some reevaluation of the quality
Speaker 1: of the tool mark evidence. So in that sense, you know,
Speaker 1: it's from a legal sense, it's it's progress whether you
Speaker 1: know this will pan out for for Jimmy, is you
Speaker 1: know that's still up in the air at this point.
Speaker 1: So we often make a plea at the end of
Speaker 1: every episode. Please write your local judges question the so
Speaker 1: called science. Don't try to get out of jury service,
Speaker 1: but rather serve as a conscientist juror, et cetera, and
Speaker 1: so on. Today, I'm going to ask you to do
Speaker 1: something different, So I'd like you to consider this. In
Speaker 1: the seventeen sixties, an English judge named William Blackstone wrote
Speaker 1: an article entitled Commentaries on the Laws of England. In it,
Speaker 1: he wrote something extraordinary. It is better that ten guilty
Speaker 1: person and escape than that one innocent suffer. This profound
Speaker 1: expression of humanity, of the recognition that the sacrificing of
Speaker 1: one innocent person should not be the cost of administering
Speaker 1: justice in any civilized society, is at least to me,
Speaker 1: the personification of empathy. This concept became known as Blackstone's ratio,
Speaker 1: and it's made its way into the criminal justice system
Speaker 1: virtually every Western society. William Blackstone somehow realized that because accusing, convicting,
Speaker 1: and condemning an innocent person to prison for a crime
Speaker 1: they did not commit is the height of human suffering,
Speaker 1: the most unimaginable nightmare that no man or woman should
Speaker 1: have to bear. You've heard stories on this podcast about
Speaker 1: terrible crimes and the junk signs that was used to
Speaker 1: convict innocent men and women, and we mentioned their names
Speaker 1: like Sante Tribble and Keith Allan Harwood and Jimmy gin
Speaker 1: Rich and many others. But I think they're suffering gets
Speaker 1: lost in the shoffle. Wrongful convictions often get discussed in
Speaker 1: pop culture. They certainly have a light shined on them,
Speaker 1: but we often hear about them when the person that
Speaker 1: was wrongfully convicted is getting out, when their nightmare is
Speaker 1: coming to an end. We don't talk much about what
Speaker 1: they have to endure in prison, everything from physical and
Speaker 1: sexual assaults, constant fear of losing their life, the unthinkable
Speaker 1: living conditions, the isolation from family, friends, alienation from the world,
Speaker 1: advances in technology, and even after they're exonerated, the pain
Speaker 1: never really goes away. I once wrote an article about
Speaker 1: an exonrere named Walter Swift in Detroit, and I tried
Speaker 1: to capture are in it some of that suffering, and
Speaker 1: I really don't think I can top it, so I'll
Speaker 1: just read to you what I wrote. The sad reality
Speaker 1: is that Walter has struggled terribly since his exoneration. He,
Speaker 1: as many of the wrongfully incarcerated to do, has battled
Speaker 1: substance abuse. He has had a difficult time holding down jobs,
Speaker 1: and has suffered from the type of profound psychological issues
Speaker 1: that are the product of the inhumane confinement of an
Speaker 1: innocent man to a cage for more than a quarter century.
Speaker 1: Be exonerated are often angry, paranoid, and suffer from debilitating depression.
Speaker 1: I've done this work for quite some time, and it
Speaker 1: still brings me to the edge of crying even to
Speaker 1: think about it. And I still don't get it, and
Speaker 1: I don't think I ever really will. They're suffering is
Speaker 1: on a level that is not meant to be comprehended.
Speaker 1: It is too raw to piercing, too much for the
Speaker 1: mind to process. Hopefully these stories, our words, will make
Speaker 1: a difference. My hope is always to get people to
Speaker 1: think about the presumption of innocence and its importance in
Speaker 1: the same way William Blackstone did. So today I'm going
Speaker 1: to ask you to do something a little different. I
Speaker 1: asked that if you ever find yourself picked to serve
Speaker 1: on a jury, whether you try to get out of
Speaker 1: it or not, that you really consider the consequences of
Speaker 1: your verdict. Think about what condemning an innocent person actually means.
Speaker 1: Think about the suffering of that individual. Try to even
Speaker 1: shut your eyes and picture the tearing away from their
Speaker 1: life spouses, children, grandparents, aunts, uncle's friends, the confinement, the fear,
Speaker 1: the loneliness, the slow bleed of time, months, years, decades,
Speaker 1: the absolute obliteration of a life. Maybe then we'll all
Speaker 1: realize that we better be sure, beyond all reasonable doubt,
Speaker 1: that we are getting it right, that indeed it is
Speaker 1: better that ten guilty people go free than have one
Speaker 1: innocent person suffer. We know the listeners of this show
Speaker 1: have already heard a lot about course confessions through another
Speaker 1: show in our stream, Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. On our
Speaker 1: show next week, we're going to take a deep dive
Speaker 1: into the psycho bology of course confessions to show how
Speaker 1: and why officers methods are so effective and pulling a
Speaker 1: false confession out of an innocent person. We'll explore the
Speaker 1: junk science of course confessions with David Rudolph civil rights
Speaker 1: lawyer and hosts of the podcast Abuse of Power. Wrongful
Speaker 1: Conviction Junk Science is a production of Lava for Good
Speaker 1: Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number One. Thanks to
Speaker 1: our executive producer Jason Flom and the team, it's Signal
Speaker 1: Company number One executive producer Kevin Wardis and senior producers
Speaker 1: Kara Cornaber and Brit Spangler. Our music was composed by
Speaker 1: j Ralph. You can follow me on Instagram at duban 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