Tag: fibre evidence

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Another Forensic Fraud: Bernard Spillsbury

And another.

Another so-called “expert” on forensic science is unmasked as a fraud and a charlatan. Why is there no outcry for reform of the criminal justice system? Because they are not you and I?

It begins to sink in. All this forensic “science” is mainly about theatre. It’s intended to dazzle the average uninformed jurist with the illusion of scientific certainty, unassailable facts, the immutable truth: he did it.

Of course some forensic science is sound, but only when performed soundly. When blood samples have not been contaminated, witnesses uninfluenced (and even then…), records undoctored. In most real cases against real criminals there is no need for Dr. Blowhard to sit on the stand and state with categorical certainty that no other sweater could have provided this fiber to the exclusion of all other sweaters that I never tested.

This man died of excited delirium. Excited delirium, or ED (the acronym proves it is widely accepted as truth) was the only cause of death. The splatter pattern of the blood indicates that only a 5 foot 7 Polish electrician with a moustache could have committed this murder. Oh, what the hell, let’s just give his name and address to Dexter.

Can you be a fan of the show Dexter without being a serial killer and torturer yourself? But I didn’t do anything! It’s my favorite show! And they deserved it!

They always do.

“Some confidently assert that the government has the power to arrest and detain or restrict American citizens for months on end, in sometimes primitive conditions, not because there is evidence that they have committed a crime but merely because the government wishes to investigate them for possible wrongdoing,” Judge Milan D. Smith Jr. wrote in 2009 for a divided three-judge panel.

From NY Times, Feb 18, 2011;

You could reasonably debate the value of Obama’s compromises on many issues, but this is one that I do not wish to forget: he has instructed his Justice Department to defend exactly this power: to arbitrarily arrest and detain anyone they please.

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Not This Evidence

After all the news coverage of the wrongful convictions that have been overturned with DNA evidence and the incompetent or malicious police investigators and forensic “experts” responsible, you would think the police might think twice before pulling something like this:

Michigan State Police fiber expert Guy Nutter testified Wednesday fibers found on Dickinson’s body and the pillow covering her face were consistent with those taken from a 100-percent acrylic sweatshirt police discovered at Taylor’s home in Southfield.

Graham noted Nutter’s report said no individual source of the fibers could be determined because his sweatshirt would be indistinguishable from others just like it. She used prosecution photos of Dickinson’s closet to point out a dark blue or black-hooded sweatshirt, which Nutter admitted was not tested for fiber comparisons. From Grand Rapids Press, April 2, 2008

Wow. Here we go. A “fiber expert”! Do you know what that is? Did you think that there was a college somewhere where you could go to study for four years so you could become a “fiber expert”? Or do you think this might just be some science major with a big ego and a microscope? What constitutes a “match”, do you think, of two fibers? Do you think there is some objective criteria involved, or just a lot of verbiage and charts and graphs and power point slides? How many “points” of similarity should there be? How many different chemicals used in the formulation of the material?

It turns out that the fibers– of course– were not tested until after the police had their suspect. There’s no point in testing before you have a suspect, ha ha, since you don’t use fiber evidence to find a suspect. If you did, it would find too many suspects. Think about that.

The only purpose of fiber comparisons is to prove that the suspect you already have– it could be anybody– is guilty. Since there are any number of fibers available at any given crime scene and any number of fibers available in any given suspect’s closet at any given time– this is a snap. Why don’t juries laugh this kind of evidence out of court?

Then we have this:

Michael Arntz, a former EMU police officer, testified for a second time this week about video images he pieced together during a two-week review of footage from campus surveillance cameras.

The images, played repeatedly on a projector screen Wednesday, show a man identified by several people as Taylor leaving Buell Hall shortly after 4 a.m. Dec. 13.

So Michael Arntz, an Eastern Michigan University police officer, took it upon himself to “piece together” some video footage that he and some others claim shows the suspect, Orange Taylor, leaving the residence in which Laura Dickinson’s body was later found. That is worrying. One hopes the defense team– public defenders, of course– is astute enough to demand that the district attorney either provide a single, intact continuous tape, or exclude the evidence altogether.

The defendant, the colorfully named Orange Taylor, has a serious problem. His semen was found on the body. But the door to her room was left locked from the inside, and there was no evidence of foul play. In fact, the police and medical experts have no idea of how she died. They suggest she was suffocated with a pillow. This is the second trial for Orange Taylor — the first jury couldn’t reach a verdict.

Taylor’s attorneys argued that he entered Dickinson’s dorm room the night of Dec. 13, 2006, to steal items and masturbated over her body, not realizing she was dead. His DNA was found on her inner thigh.

From Here.

It’s hard to know what to make of this case. He might be guilty of murder. It’s very hard to explain his DNA on the body if he wasn’t there, and it’s very hard to explain why he was there if he wasn’t committing a crime– he and the victim were not acquainted– and it’s hard to explain why she died if the sex was consensual.  Not all prosecutions involving dubious evidence (the fibres) are of the wrong person.

The fiber evidence should be laughed out of court.

Update:  New York Times article on a forensic scientist who committed suicide shortly after it was revealed that he had not followed correct procedures in at least some cases.

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Skip Palenik: Microscoptist! Lies and Fake Evidence

In the May 2003 edition of mediocrity in verse, Reader’s Digest, tribute is paid to one Skip Palenik, “Micro Man”, a forensic microscoptist.

Listen carefully to that word: microscoptist. You are on a jury. True or False– a microscoptist is smarter than a lawyer?

True or false– “microscoptist” isn’t even a real word? My dictionary says no.

Judy Burgin was murdered in Alaska in April 1993. Her body was found in the woods, her head bashed in. She had a boyfriend named Carl Brown who allegedly dealt drugs. Police were stumped. Who could have murdered Judy Burgin? Who could have done it? Is there anybody out there we should investigate? Hmm. Anybody?

With the body, they found a strand of fibre.

That’s when Skip Palenik entered the picture. Skip analyzed the strand of fibre and then compared it to fragments of carpet found in Carl Brown’s house. He declared them a match. He told the jury: I am a microscoptist and with all the authority invested in that title, I proclaim that Brown is guilty. Brown was convicted.

His conviction was overturned on appeal because his lawyers had not been permitted to argue that other people had motivation and opportunity to murder Judy Burgin, who was, after all, a drug addict. In 1998, a second jury found him guilty after four days of deliberation.

There is almost no other information about this case on the Internet.

Now, I can’t swear to it, but I kind of doubt that there exists a sense of definitive standards and procedures that have been thoroughly researched and developed for the positive forensic identification of particular microfibres. That is, though we know there are all kinds of scientific procedures out there that can be applied to the analysis of microfibres and to the science of “comparison”, there probably is no text book that, for example, that lists almost every type of fibre, how they were manufactured, who made them, where they were sold, how many are in circulation, how they react to substances in the environment, how unique they are, etc., etc., etc.

I don’t believe such a body of knowledge exists.

Instead, we have Skip. Skip is given some material by the police and probably is aware of the fact that they need to match. The police don’t go to Skip and say, golly, we have no idea of who could possibly have committed this crime. Here are ten fibres and ten samples of carpets belonging to suspects. Can you match any of them?

We do know that that is not what happens. Skip will receive a couple of samples. Do they match, yes or no? I’ll bet that Skip knows which sample came from a suspect. I’ll bet Skip knows that the police think this is the guy who did it but need some evidence to show in court. It doesn’t matter.

And I’ll bet that there is no scientific definition of what a “match” is, in terms of synthetic fibres.

I don’t think Skip thinks he is giving the jury a distorted picture of the reliability of the evidence because the police seem sure that Mr. Brown did it. I don’t think the police feel that they are manipulating evidence because Skip doesn’t have to manipulate anything. He just has to present some “true” but relatively meaningless “scientific” evidence in a selective and suggestive manner. He never has to lie at any point, because the jury doesn’t understand science. They just understand the word “matches” and “same” and “microscoptist”.

I don’t know how compelling the other evidence was, but I fear that the carpet sample was the decisive evidence in this case. I don’t know if Brown killed Judy Burgin or not, but if the carpet was the most important piece of evidence at the trial and I had been on the jury, I know I wouldn’t have voted for ‘guilty’..