July 29, 2020 • 39 mins
William Richards came home to find his wife murdered. A call to the police made him the number one suspect. Phil and his team catch up with Bill after 23 years in prison.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
If you're gonna place your left hand on the Bible
and raise your right hand, and please repeat after me,
I do solemnly swear you haven't titled action. Find the
defendant guilty of the prime. It makes no sense, it
doesn't fit. If it doesn't fit, you must equit. We
all took the same of of office. We're all bound
(00:23):
by that common commitment to support and defend the Constitution,
to bear true faith in allegiance to the same that
you faithfully discharge the duties of our office. Do you
solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony you're about to
give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth. From Tenderfoot TV and I Heart Radio,
this is sworn. I'm your host, Philip Holloway. You know
(00:54):
the term the c S I fact he changed everything.
Everybody believed that what you saw on TV was for real.
You don't use forty two lasers of the crime scene
leasures cost about five. So that was preposterous, right, and
nothing gets done today n c S. Another show, My
(01:19):
wife watches out that a crow pecks out someone's hypohol
and then carries it off. And when they found the eyeball.
They found a fingerprint on the eyeball. Preposterous at best.
It's not like that. See, they get lost in the
(01:40):
fact that it was just TV show. They started having
to explain to the juries, do you believe things that
you see? Oh yeah, if it's on TV, it's it's no,
that's not how it is. M That was Chris Robinson,
(02:05):
a forensic consultant I've worked with on many of my cases.
In this episode, we're going to look at that c
s I effect he was talking about, and we're going
to hear the story of another man who was locked
up for twenty three years in a case that involved
police corruption and junk science. Before we hear about Bill,
(02:25):
I wanted to talk with my colleague, Ashley Merchant. She's
a lawyer I've worked with many times in the past,
and I know that she's had to educate herself on
forensic science, particularly bad forensic science, and how it's used
in our legal system. Junk science is very difficult to
(02:47):
deal with when the government offers something and they put
a fancy name on it, like the you know, FBI
or the crime Lab, and you know, they bring in
all these these fancy acronyms and stuff juries just eat
it up hook line and saying are a lot of
defense attorneys aren't very good at shedding light on the
junkiness factor of it, because you know, we're lawyers. Like
(03:09):
I've never shot a gun. You know, I don't understand ballistics,
but I had to go learn it. How to go
learn blood spatter, how to go learn DNA, how to
learn about fingerprints. I had a case probably fifteen years
ago with a handwriting expert, and then you know, a
couple of years later, boom, handwriting experts are it's junk
science and it's not admissible. We have this evidence that
(03:30):
the state presents handwriting for example, blood spatter for example,
and we're arguing, as defense lawyers, this is crazy. This
is a junk you know. And then finally, years down
the road, you get exoneration and the exonerations are linked
to this junk science, and finally, retrospectively the government saying, oh,
you know what, you're right, that handwriting stuff was, that
was crazy, but the people are still in jail. As
(03:55):
defense lawyers, I think we don't challenge it enough. I
think that we don't question already enough because it's science
we believe that the government is doing the right thing
and doing their job, which to me as a defense lawyer,
scary because if I don't question the blood spatter, why
would I expect the jury to question the bloods better.
So you see a lot of times in trials where
(04:16):
the defense lawyer has no question for the blood spatter expert.
It's like they just rubber stamp this stuff just because
some scientists in a lab says that it is. They
don't really question it, and juries don't question it, and
defense lawyers don't question it. And I understand why because
we're Hamstrong. We're not scientists. We're not given funding for experts.
I mean, half the time we're still trying to get paid,
(04:37):
you know, let alone asking our clients family for ten
grand for an expert to fly in who's got a
pH d and d n A. They barely have the
money for their defense. We don't challenge that evidence, but
I think we need to. Jurors want actual physical touch evidence,
evidence they can put their hands on, they can see.
You see a huge pull for the prosecution and to
(05:00):
get this type of science, you know, junk science, whatever
it is, to try and admit that it's fallible because
it's a scientist determining if it's a fingerprint match, you know,
where the next scientists might not determine it's a fingerprint match.
We do have standards. We do have certain standards that
have to be met. We have Fry and Dowberd. Those
(05:21):
are the standards in federal court. Anytime you're gonna admit
a certain type of evidence, it's got to meet a
certain level of scientific or reliability. One of those things
that it has to be subject to peer review. Other
scientists have to be able to go and check your work.
That's a huge one. In state court in Georgia, for example,
we have a standard called Harper standard, which is lower.
(05:45):
It's ironic to me and I always use my husband
as an example. He was a civil litigator before he
joined my law firm, and now he does criminal difference
with me. He did, you know, a lot of these
massive litigations that had all these fancy scientists and things.
He did as Best Jos litigation, a lot of it.
When he came on as criminal defense, He's like, when
you're taking someone's life, it's a lower standard for admitting evidence.
(06:10):
It's harder to get evidence in there's higher standard of
reliability to get evidence in a civil case we're you're
shooting over money than it is in a criminal case
where someone can go to jail. It's insane people, I mean,
they just they want guilty people to be locked up.
People are scared of letting guilty people out. And a
lot of times the state argues, need, we can't meet
(06:31):
the Fried standard, it can't be verified, but we need
this evidence. I mean, I hear that argument all the
time from the state, but I really need this evidence,
so the judge lets it in. I think that you
should have a higher standard when you're dealing with people's
lives first, as you're dealing with people's money. Just makes
common sense to me. One man who had that c
(06:52):
s I effect work against him is our next Exonoye
Bill Richards. Our system in California here is probably one
of the biggest prison systems in the world. We have
more people in prison here than most countries. It's hell
on every level, especially for somebody who live normal life
(07:15):
and working man. You know, honest person. I mean, my
criminal career consisted of a couple of traffic tickets spread
over twenty years of speeding on the freeway. But everything
is terrible, and Menico was terrible. Now in my late
sixties with advanced cancer because they didn't treat me in prison,
had years I knew I had it, didn't even tell me,
(07:35):
and now it's too late. I mean, I can't think
of anything that isn't terrible. I don't know how to
describe it. I could go on for a week and
never scratched the surface. It is so abnormal for human
being to put under those conditions. My name is William Richards.
(07:57):
I'm an exnerie. I served twenty three years for rum.
I didn't commit, and I have been out for a
post of three now at my age and just trying
to live on my retirement and put a life together.
I came home and I found my wife dead. She
had been murdered. I called the police three times, actually
(08:18):
because I was a little bit upset, as you can imagine,
and they would take a long time getting there. First
top on the crime scene was just a patrolman. Everything
man said was proven to be all I not only
that night, but everything he says any time. He's a
strange felt But he turned around in the sidewalk. He's
Columbo he's got the guy right here. He said, my
(08:41):
actions are strange. Well, as you come home and find
your wife killed like I did, what are your actions
supposed to be? So he decided I was guilty, he
told the detective. They decided that by the time they
got to the crime scene, they never investigated, They never
collected DNA fingerprints or anything from the crime scene, and
just proceeded to start a case against me. Every top
(09:05):
understand lied a sign of evidence, destroyed exculpatory evidence when
the process of digging it up now for civil actions.
But they just set on a course to get the
easy suspects, and that was it. I was just profiled,
and the husband is always guilty. At the time she died,
(09:28):
that were forty six miles away in another city, in
another county, and I was in a building with thirty people.
It was a secure bullet the traffic for troll and
was allowed to testify the time at death based on
his vast experience with their bodies, which of course we've
now proven his alfuls. Real doctors said their injuries on
(09:48):
my wife as are two hours old prior to death,
determined she had been dead for several hours. Who I
got home. Police have total control over the cranching and
in the corners investigator whose job the crime scene is
the body, did not have an opportunity to examine the
body and collect the information that would have made it
(10:10):
easy to determine time of death. The two doctors who
did look at the case independently for the defense had
to look at poor feel stuff, you know, things like
photographs of injuries and said, well, injuries over two hours
prior to death, But they didn't get the body temperatures
and things like that that would probably be taking I
think it's a huge mistake for the police in Bill's
(10:32):
case to have handled the crime scene the way they did,
But I also know that as a defense lawyer, I
have to build a case off of reports and photographs
long after the alleged crime has been committed. I spoke
with Chris Robinson, the forensic consultant you heard at the
beginning of the episode, about what kinds of things he
looks at in the files that he gets and the
(10:54):
reliability of the forensics that he works with. My name
is Christopher Robbins, and I'm a forensic consultant. I generally
examine reports, evidence, documents, photographs, and I report my findings
back to the attorneys who have hired me. I'm certified
there as of crime scene reconstruction, ballistics and fires analysis,
(11:17):
gunshot wounds, blood spatter analysis, shooting reconstruction. See the beautiful
thing with what I do? Now, they give me the
entire case file and they say, read this, here's the statements.
Tell us is our client li? Is he telling the truth?
Do you think it's validated by what you see? And
then I'll report that I'm working a case where an
(11:39):
individual supposedly shot at his mother down the hallway, and
she's given all these statements. She said she heard the
bullet go by your ear. No, you didn't hear the
bullet go by your hear because it's a forty five,
so it's not breaking the sound beard. And then the
holes in the wall are not lined up with her heads.
I'm saying, you didn't hear the bullet go by your head.
The fast of the bullet, the sound way just begin
(12:00):
to spread out perpendicular to the bullet as it moves
through the air. A slower bullet, they moved with the bullets,
so the bullet had to almost touch your leg being
you feel it. Now you hear the concussion from the gun.
You know you're jerking is a hundred sixty death was
slow like a chainsaw, an airliner right beside your head. Now,
I'm already thinking, ma'am, I don't like your story because
(12:22):
you're telling me what you believe you heard. And that's fine.
I'm not calling your liar. I'm just saying, that's why
I like the evidence. The evidence doesn't lie. It's simple.
When you look at the evidence, you pull trajectory rides
through the holes of the shot, you triangulate back the
path of the bullets, how the gun injects, the cartridge cases,
(12:43):
and when you put all these things together, I'm giving
the statement and I'm saying, no, ma'am, see, it can't
happen this way because this is the evidence. One of
the things Amelia brought up in the last episode was
how for six science needs to change and evolve with
new technology. Blood spatter is very expeclative. You have three
(13:09):
or four people look at the same blood spatter and
they'll give you a different variation of what they see.
You have to be careful because at a crime scene
where there's massive amounts of blood spatter, you have transverse things,
you have cast off stains. You have high velocity meaning velocity,
low velocity which you might call medium, I might looking good.
(13:32):
I think it's more like a low velocity. I do
get into that a lot where they'll call in their
expert and I'll go up against them, and it's just
the jury has to listen to us and they make
the decision. The biggest problem is when the forensics is
not tested by an outside source. One of the things
I admire about Chris, and one of the reasons I've
(13:52):
used him in my own cases, is that he doesn't
necessarily draw his own unreasonable conclusions, but he lets the
evidence speak for itself. I mean, I can give my
opinion what I believe happened, how I believe it happened.
I can't speak to someone's intentions. The gun accidentally went off. Okay,
First of all, I'm gonna look at the gun and
(14:13):
I'm gonna say, this gun is functioning as it was
designed to function. This gun is perfect. Did you actually
mean to squeeze this trigger with three pounds, five pounds,
eight pounds, I said, Once we get the ten or
twelve pounds, which is a double action trigger, pull a
heavy trigger pull, which means you have to pull the
trigger all the way to the rear. I'm gonna look
at you and go you didn't accidentally pull with twelve pounds. Now,
(14:35):
when you have a gun, it's a two or three
pound trigger pool. What were the circumstances. I took my
gun down off the counter. You came in and grabbed
the gun, and then what's your instinct. I'm gonna pull
away from you. So if you grab the gun and
pull towards you and I pull away from you, we
start to divide that way to the trigger pull. I
better look at your body though. You better have gunpowder
(14:58):
all over your clothing. You better have stiff knowing your
skin because she better be within three feet and they
better have powder all over you for you to reach
out and grab that gun. When he's brought in to testify,
his role is to satisfy the jury's desire for that physical,
hands on type of evidence. Sometimes that can even mean
(15:21):
putting on something of a show for the jury. When
you go in there and I'm rolling around on the
floor in front of the jury, they're amazed. I'm always
told when I come in, the jury perks up I'm
talking about guns. I'm not talking about d NA where
god forbid, you're talking about wanting the quadri and the
low sign. They get glaze over when I talk about guns.
(15:45):
Everybody's seen again a bullet my cartridge case. They really
get up. And then I get off the stand and
they say, show us how this happened. And I'm rolling
around the floor where I get out the dummy. These
people go, what is this guy doing? Now? I tell
people you play to the strengths. If you can do
a recreation, I say, you want me to get a
Then the jury starts to think, now I understand, this
(16:06):
is how it happened. Photograph is great, pictures worth a
thousand words, But a recreation in front of the court,
it's it's amazing. I've seen Chris work. I've seen him
in court. I've seen him out of court. I've seen
him test firing unloaded firearms. I've seen him wrestling with
dummies in a courtroom. It's a strong visual. It grabs
(16:28):
the jury's attention and it keeps them interested. In any time.
As a lawyer, you get the opportunity to educate a
jury and keep their attention and have them learn something
that they did not know about before. I'm going to
take advantage of that opportunity. I found my wife at midnight,
(16:58):
so I've been up since about seven that morning, and
they let me go five or six and next afternoon,
so I've been up thirty some hours without sleep, probably
twenty some hours without food, and under intense interrogation, you know,
trying to get me to confess. I came down again
trying to help them. I thought they would actually start
(17:19):
looking for the real killer, which of course was my
mistake because they didn't. So I was actually in the
police station for another fifteen hours of intense interrogation, which
is not what I came down there for. Then they
just finally said, well, if you want admit you did it,
you're under arrest. I always thought, okay, what if I
did admitted I've been at all. It was such a
stupid thing to say. That's why you get so many
(17:43):
false confessions. I can tell you happens. Been through these things,
I could see why people just give up the crack
of the same thing you watch, it's only your own
I listened to tape. There's an edit tape that they
claimed this was interrogation, but of course, there's only thirty
hours of interrogation. They have a two hour tape. But
even on that I hear myself giving them things that
I didn't want to say because I didn't remember or
(18:05):
didn't think they were true. But I assureman have said
I did anything wrong. The first lawyer was very good,
but he was a public defender. I had considerable equity
in my land and stuff. I could have hired a
big name lawyer. I had one lined up, and that's
when I found out that froze my assets. They had
(18:26):
not arrested me the first night, which surprised everybody that
they did a few weeks later. But in that period
of time they filed papers to freeze my assets. Oh,
I had a good name attorney, he would have walked
up and they're told the court, look, there's no evidence,
let him go. And it makes all the difference in
the world. Now we have such a fast amount of
advience of innocence, and we have DNA, we have hair,
(18:48):
we have all signs of things that proved I'm not
the killer. But when you sit there and trial and
you had no investigation and so forth to help you,
it's kind of a one side it's system like the
other auxonorees this season. I asked Bill what he thought
the biggest factor was in the jury finding him guilty
this time. It was something all of our forensic experts
(19:11):
have brought up time and again, fight evidence. There's a
bite on her hand that I saw at the funeral.
Because at the time I believe that these strengths of
sciences are real, I've now learned that they're mostly jumped.
The jury was told this is mine, and it turns
out that when they did computer comparisons after conviction, none
(19:31):
of that was true. And that was the only thing
that really changed in the last trial was fite evidence.
That's pretty damning when you come in here and to
throwing all his garbage at the wall. Oh, he had
arguments every couple as argument. They beat you up with
all this stuff that kids anybody shaft they make it
must sound much worse. But when you sit there and say, look,
(19:53):
there's a bite on her body from the fight and
it's his, how could they let me go? I wanted
to know more about bite mark science, or as it's
more formally known, forensic odontology. This is dr Adam Freeman.
I'm a forensic odontologist located out of Westport, Connecticut, and
(20:17):
I am the current chair of the Odontology Section of
the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. My office Westport, Connecticut
is very close to New York City, where about a
forty five minute drive, and in the aftermath of nine eleven,
we lost several patients. As part of that process, it
(20:39):
became very apparent that there was not enough people involved
at a very granular level that really knew forensics. So
my example would be there were some dentists that had
done some identification work, but really no formal education in
(21:00):
the totality of forensics, and they typically were the leaders
of these operations. And I'm one of those people that
I don't like to be a little bit educated in something.
If I'm gonna do something, I really want to be
the guy or one of the guys that knows the
most about it. So there really are three areas that
brensic Good ontology are used in criminal cases. One and
(21:22):
probably the one that I am most proud of in
our field is dental identification. Often people are found dead
and they need to be scientifically identified, and very often
teeth are used as that identification. Also as an outshoot
of that is where there's a mass disaster like Hurricane
(21:43):
Katrino or nine eleven or Hurricane I, where dentists are
called in to do identifications on lots of people, you
are giving back a person the dignity of dying with
a name. Another area is bite mark identify accation, and
that is much more controversial today, and I have testified
(22:05):
in several of those cases. And then there's dental age estimation,
which is becoming much more controversial because of the way
it's being applied versus the way I believe it was
originally designed to be applied. Bite mark identification of a
perpetrator has at its space several hypotheses. The first one
(22:29):
is that teeth are unique to an individual. Only a
individual has teeth of a certain shape, size, and arrangement.
That hypothesis has never been proven. The second hypothesis is
skin can accurately record a bite. That also has never
(22:50):
been proven. The scientific research currently doesn't even suggest that
experts can even identify with some real liability what a
bite mark looks like. As an example of that, myself
and a colleague of mine, dr Ian Pretty out of
Manchester England. We sent every board certified forensic dennis a
(23:12):
hundred different cases where there were several photographs and said,
is this a bite mark? Very similar to what happens
when I'm presented a case. When I'm presented a case,
typically law enforcement will send some images of a suspected
injury that they think might be a bite mark, and
my job is to opine as to whether or not
(23:35):
that injury is or is not a bite mark. What
we did is we did that same sort of experiment
and there was widespread disagreement as to whether or not
an injury that they were looking at was in fact
a bite mark. So the ground science that predisposes us
the ability to do this bite mark work isn't there.
(23:55):
Yet the work continues to be done. There are those
who have to me, I believe that this is possible,
And my response typically is when issues of life and
liberty are at state, your belief as to whether or
not something can be done is not important. It's whether
or not you can scientifically support your opinions. And the
(24:19):
science is not there for bite marks. It is my
opinion that bite marks shouldn't be used in courts of
law at all until we produce some science that suggests
that forensico and ontologists can agree generally on what a
bite mark is. I think actually, in Bill Richards case,
and looking at that bite mark, I'm not sure that
(24:40):
that's even a bite mark. Dr Freeman has seen the
evidence in Bill's case firsthand, so I asked him for
his professional opinion on the evidence left on Bill's wife's hand. So,
in that particular case, what you're looking at is there's
a very diffuse bruise of the bite mark, or what
(25:02):
I would call the patterned injury. I didn't see anything
on the other side of the hand. For a bite
to happen, tissue has to be crushed between the upper
and lower teeth to leave a bruise. And that's really
one of the problems with bite marks. When somebody has bitten,
how you bruise versus how I bruise could be very different,
(25:23):
the type of skin you have, the coloration of your skin.
All of the listeners here, I'm sure have had situations
where they bump into something and they bruise and other
people don't. And then clearly when you look at the
injury on Mrs Richard's hand, it's a very wide bruise
teeth are very narrow. That surely isn't individual teeth you're
(25:44):
looking at, and I surely would have swabbed it for
DNA and suggested it be swabbed for salivary amilais that
injury surely does not belong in a criminal court. I
think that the place that bite marks have, and probably
the strongest piece we have for them, is that if
you see something that looks like a suspected bite mark,
(26:05):
what a good friends to go to ontologists should do
is instruct the police in the medical examiner's office to
swab that area for both DNA and salivary emilies. So
salivary amilies is an enzyme that is in human saliva,
so that would show that it is human and secondly DNA.
(26:26):
That is a great purpose for human bite marks. I
don't think a lot of the people who did bite
mark cases early on went into it with some malicious attitude.
I think that they went into it thinking they were
doing what was cutting edge science. Where I find it
(26:47):
reprehensible is that when science has presented itself showing that
what they believed isn't in fact true, they typically don't
accept the science itself. What they do is they say, well,
let's not throw the baby out with the bath water.
I absolutely believe that it is morally wrong to use
questionable forensics in criminal trials where there's issues of life
(27:11):
and liberty, and it should not be done by anybody
until the science supports it. And when people fight so
hard to keep a modality that has not been scientifically supported,
it makes me question their motives. I also question those motives,
and I wonder why someone would be more interested in
(27:33):
validating a belief than in finding the actual truth. But
I think this happens more than people know. I can
understand that people feel pride in their work, and on
some level they might not want it question. But like
Dr Freeman said, when it comes to something as precious
as one's life or their liberty, someone's personal ego just
(27:54):
should not get in the way. Yeah, first trial was deadlocked,
I think offishally they say six to six. Second one
(28:18):
was declared to mistrial because the judge was talking to
somebody connected with one of the jurors. And then it
went to a bird trial which was also deadlocked. And
the last trial, even with the bite evidence, came back deadlocked,
but the judge was used to accept it and ordered
them to find the British. She said, I'm going to
keep you here and see you do. I've had so
(28:39):
many she would have to let me go. One of
the jurors come in and wanted to talk to my team,
basically to say she had been bullied in the jury room,
but the same judge trial judge wouldn't let us talk
to her. Given that he had so many trials, I
was curious as to what kinds of deals might have
been offered to build behind the scenes. They offered deals
(29:02):
mostly after the first draw they took a real beating.
They started offering the time served. Actually, by that time
I've been in less than two years. So they said,
did two year low deal, low term man sladder. But
I couldn't do that. I didn't do this, you know.
I took my gamble and fought it all the way.
As a defense attorney, it's in my interest to get
(29:24):
the best outcome possible for my clients, and sometimes that
means making a deal. In fact, the vast majority of
criminal cases are resolved through some type of negotiated agreement.
I completely understand Bill's hesitation here to plead guilty to
a crime he did not commit. I see people every
day who were asked to make compromises, and sometimes they're
(29:45):
compromises that people just can't make. Bill Richards was convicted
of first degree murder and served twenty three years of
a life sentence. You go in there, You've got to
learn a hole new language, a whole new packing order
thin and there's such strange conditions. You have all the
different gangs, and you have all the different factions in
(30:05):
each game. You have to adapt, you have to you
have to survive, and that's not easy. I kind of
described it like being in the bottom of a well.
You're looking up at this You know you're innocent, you
know what their sayings lie, but you can't get any representation.
NET would stand up and present this. Got a description
(30:26):
be jumping out of airplane a lot of parachute. You
know you're gonna die, but you just keep lapping around. Anyway,
My assets were gone. I've lost everything I had. In
the prison. They put me to work a couple of
times in shops for the number of years where I
was teaching the staff. I was teaching the other inmates
how to do all these things, designing and building things
(30:48):
for them. They had all these things that need to
be done, and nobody had a crew how to do it.
You know, I had to over twenty years background and
uh I was teaching them how to do all these things,
how to build things, how to design is under structural strength,
how power would have to run, and so on. You'd
make thirty two cents an hour, and they take back
(31:10):
made fourteen tents an hour, and that doesn't go real
far because prices in the canteen, you know, the prison
stores are expensive. I was very angry for a long time,
but eventually I think you just rejectedn't go on. You
can't stay angry for twenty five years. They'll burn you out.
(31:32):
If you do, You're gonna be one miserable person. I'm
very very unhappy, but that anger. Anger is a reactionary emotion,
and you just can't maintain that for so many years.
Bill was exonerated and eventually released in two thousand sixteen.
Unlike our other exonorees, his case was so personal. He
(31:54):
lost everything, including his wife. So I asked him if
at the very least they caught the person who murdered
his wife. No, because personally, I don't believe the police
ever looked. I know they didn't look. It's all comes
back to the police. They decided the first night I
was the guy they told the friends of people who
worked under them, and that was it. Everything just went down,
(32:18):
Like I feel like falling out of an airplane. You're
going to die. It's gone down because everybody is working
against you. Before we wrap up forensic science, I wanted
to bring back Justin Brooks from the California Innocence Project.
He sees cases like bills all the time. We've got
(32:39):
an innocence organization in Holland, and when I go over there,
there's so much more scrutiny given there's so many more resources,
and they still have wrongful convictions. So all we can
do is is minimize the number of wrongful convictions. And
the best way to minimize it is through education and training.
Like one of the things that's always made me crazy
(32:59):
is it. See, the defense has a lot more trouble
getting scientific resources than the government has. So when a
defense attorney wants to get testing done, wants access to
the labs, wants to get the same kind of ability
to develop evidence as the government has, they don't have
the same resources there's just a lot of pseudo science
(33:20):
out there. But the problem is a lot of times
these jurors treat all these sciences the same, if you
have an expert saying it's a science. We've seen the
same thing in the area of arson that in the
past a lot of the arson experts were actually just
board firemen who loves C. S I and had a
lot of time on their hands. So you have a
(33:40):
bunch of people who are sitting in prison on bad
fire science. So I think we have a real problem
with expertise in these areas and jurors when they hear
this stuff, they're convicting because an expert stands up and says,
in my expert opinion, this person is guilty. Here's why
you get convictions. One of the things that's important to
(34:09):
me in my work and in this show is making
sure that we cover everything from as many sides as possible.
I've seen the work of Chris Robinson and Tracy Sergeant
in action, but I also know that many people have
been wrongfully convicted because of forensic science, or perhaps more accurately,
because of the misapplication of science or of junk science.
(34:30):
I think all of the forensic professionals we spoke to
were right when they said that forensic science should just
be one of many tools in an investigative toolbox. It's
important to keep in mind, if you're ever sitting on
a jury, or if you're just hearing about a trial
in the news, that science is not perfect, and that
includes forensic science. There's often more to the story than
(34:50):
what one piece of information might suggest. Having people like
Chris or Dr Freeman testifying a courtroom about what their
discipline can and cannot do is bidely important to getting
to the true facts of a case. I know how
important it is to explain all aspects of a case
to a jury, and the best way I've seen that done,
(35:12):
especially in cases involving science, is to bring in experts.
These experts can explain this stuff in a way that
it's not so complicated and so that a juror who
is not a scientist can understand the subject matter. As
forensic science progresses and changes, expert witnesses are becoming increasingly
vital as a part of a complete and fair trial.
(35:36):
In my opinion, funds for experts should be available to
all people, just as the right to counsel is available
to all people and all stages of the criminal process,
and that includes a trial. I also want to reiterate
what Amelia and Dr Freeman both said that one of
the most important aspects of any science is for the
(35:58):
disciplines to evolve as new research comes in. We are
in an incredible age of technology where more and more
information is available than ever before. As we've become more
and more dependent on science, it is vitally important that
we use science responsibly and that we do so accurately.
A big part of my job is staying up to
(36:19):
date with new laws and changes in the legal system.
Scientists are no different. A big part of their job
is to make sure they are current with the latest science.
Everyone in the criminal justice system, lawyers, police officers, judges,
medical examiners, forensic chemists, all these people owe it to
defendants on trial to be as accurate as possible. As
(36:41):
Dr Freeman said, a mere belief that something might work
is not enough. You must base it on science, especially
when life and liberty are on the line. And the
next episode will focus on a particular problem that all
of the Axonorees we've spoken to have brought up. Interrogation
techniques and false confessions next time on Sworn. This is
(37:08):
a study published just a few years ago out of Canada.
With the power of suggestion, they convinced ordinary people that
as a teenager they committed a crime and the police
actually came to an investigate, and you know, oftentimes these
people are trying to figure this out, and you know,
my mother told you this, It must have happened. I mean,
did I plan Forrafiti somewhere? And what was I with
(37:29):
my best friend when we did? And they pretty much
talked themselves into constructing something that never happened. Sworn is
a production of Tenderfoot TV and I Heart Radio. Our
lead producer is Christina Dana. Executive producers are Payne Lindsay
(37:51):
and Donald Albright for Tenderfoot TV, Matt Frederick and Alex
Williams for I Heart Radio, and myself Philip Holloway. Additional
product by Trevor Young, Mason Lindsay, Mike Rooney, Jamie Albright
and Halle Beadall Original music and sound designed by Makeup
and Vanity Set. Our theme song is Blood in the
(38:12):
Water by Layup. Show art and design is by Trevor Eisler.
Editing by Christina Dana. Mixing and mastering by Mike Rooney
and Cooper Skinner. Special thanks to the team at I
Heart Radio from U t a or In Rosenbound and
Grace Royer, Ryan Nord and Matthew Papa from the Nord
(38:34):
Group Back Media and Marketing and Station sixteen. I'd also
like to extend a very personal and special thanks to
all of our contributors and guests who have helped to
make all of these episodes possible. You can find Sworn
on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Sworn podcast and follow
me your host, Philip Holloway on Twitter at phil Holloway
(38:57):
e s Q. Our webs is sworn podcast dot com,
and you can check out other Tenderfoot TV podcasts at
www dot tenderfoot dot tv. If you have questions or comments,
you can email us at Sworn at tenderfoot dot tv
or leave us a voicemail at four zero four for
(39:20):
one zero zero four f one. As always, thanks for
listening through all of that. How were you able to
maintain your innocence in sort of your sense that this
could be fixed? Yeah? I don't you know. I've seen
other guys perfectly on this. I've seen other people in
(39:40):
a situation like mine is hunt themselves or something. It's
like that wasn't me. I wasn't doing that. Other people
just endure and sit there for a decade after decade
in prison innocence like I did. I'm just a stubb ambastard.
I would give up yourself
If you're gonna place your left hand on the Bible
and raise your right hand, and please repeat after me,
I do solemnly swear you haven't titled action. Find the
defendant guilty of the prime. It makes no sense, it
doesn't fit. If it doesn't fit, you must equit. We
all took the same of of office. We're all bound
(00:23):
by that common commitment to support and defend the Constitution,
to bear true faith in allegiance to the same that
you faithfully discharge the duties of our office. Do you
solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony you're about to
give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth. From Tenderfoot TV and I Heart Radio,
this is sworn. I'm your host, Philip Holloway. You know
(00:54):
the term the c S I fact he changed everything.
Everybody believed that what you saw on TV was for real.
You don't use forty two lasers of the crime scene
leasures cost about five. So that was preposterous, right, and
nothing gets done today n c S. Another show, My
(01:19):
wife watches out that a crow pecks out someone's hypohol
and then carries it off. And when they found the eyeball.
They found a fingerprint on the eyeball. Preposterous at best.
It's not like that. See, they get lost in the
(01:40):
fact that it was just TV show. They started having
to explain to the juries, do you believe things that
you see? Oh yeah, if it's on TV, it's it's no,
that's not how it is. M That was Chris Robinson,
(02:05):
a forensic consultant I've worked with on many of my cases.
In this episode, we're going to look at that c
s I effect he was talking about, and we're going
to hear the story of another man who was locked
up for twenty three years in a case that involved
police corruption and junk science. Before we hear about Bill,
(02:25):
I wanted to talk with my colleague, Ashley Merchant. She's
a lawyer I've worked with many times in the past,
and I know that she's had to educate herself on
forensic science, particularly bad forensic science, and how it's used
in our legal system. Junk science is very difficult to
(02:47):
deal with when the government offers something and they put
a fancy name on it, like the you know, FBI
or the crime Lab, and you know, they bring in
all these these fancy acronyms and stuff juries just eat
it up hook line and saying are a lot of
defense attorneys aren't very good at shedding light on the
junkiness factor of it, because you know, we're lawyers. Like
(03:09):
I've never shot a gun. You know, I don't understand ballistics,
but I had to go learn it. How to go
learn blood spatter, how to go learn DNA, how to
learn about fingerprints. I had a case probably fifteen years
ago with a handwriting expert, and then you know, a
couple of years later, boom, handwriting experts are it's junk
science and it's not admissible. We have this evidence that
(03:30):
the state presents handwriting for example, blood spatter for example,
and we're arguing, as defense lawyers, this is crazy. This
is a junk you know. And then finally, years down
the road, you get exoneration and the exonerations are linked
to this junk science, and finally, retrospectively the government saying, oh,
you know what, you're right, that handwriting stuff was, that
was crazy, but the people are still in jail. As
(03:55):
defense lawyers, I think we don't challenge it enough. I
think that we don't question already enough because it's science
we believe that the government is doing the right thing
and doing their job, which to me as a defense lawyer,
scary because if I don't question the blood spatter, why
would I expect the jury to question the bloods better.
So you see a lot of times in trials where
(04:16):
the defense lawyer has no question for the blood spatter expert.
It's like they just rubber stamp this stuff just because
some scientists in a lab says that it is. They
don't really question it, and juries don't question it, and
defense lawyers don't question it. And I understand why because
we're Hamstrong. We're not scientists. We're not given funding for experts.
I mean, half the time we're still trying to get paid,
(04:37):
you know, let alone asking our clients family for ten
grand for an expert to fly in who's got a
pH d and d n A. They barely have the
money for their defense. We don't challenge that evidence, but
I think we need to. Jurors want actual physical touch evidence,
evidence they can put their hands on, they can see.
You see a huge pull for the prosecution and to
(05:00):
get this type of science, you know, junk science, whatever
it is, to try and admit that it's fallible because
it's a scientist determining if it's a fingerprint match, you know,
where the next scientists might not determine it's a fingerprint match.
We do have standards. We do have certain standards that
have to be met. We have Fry and Dowberd. Those
(05:21):
are the standards in federal court. Anytime you're gonna admit
a certain type of evidence, it's got to meet a
certain level of scientific or reliability. One of those things
that it has to be subject to peer review. Other
scientists have to be able to go and check your work.
That's a huge one. In state court in Georgia, for example,
we have a standard called Harper standard, which is lower.
(05:45):
It's ironic to me and I always use my husband
as an example. He was a civil litigator before he
joined my law firm, and now he does criminal difference
with me. He did, you know, a lot of these
massive litigations that had all these fancy scientists and things.
He did as Best Jos litigation, a lot of it.
When he came on as criminal defense, He's like, when
you're taking someone's life, it's a lower standard for admitting evidence.
(06:10):
It's harder to get evidence in there's higher standard of
reliability to get evidence in a civil case we're you're
shooting over money than it is in a criminal case
where someone can go to jail. It's insane people, I mean,
they just they want guilty people to be locked up.
People are scared of letting guilty people out. And a
lot of times the state argues, need, we can't meet
(06:31):
the Fried standard, it can't be verified, but we need
this evidence. I mean, I hear that argument all the
time from the state, but I really need this evidence,
so the judge lets it in. I think that you
should have a higher standard when you're dealing with people's
lives first, as you're dealing with people's money. Just makes
common sense to me. One man who had that c
(06:52):
s I effect work against him is our next Exonoye
Bill Richards. Our system in California here is probably one
of the biggest prison systems in the world. We have
more people in prison here than most countries. It's hell
on every level, especially for somebody who live normal life
(07:15):
and working man. You know, honest person. I mean, my
criminal career consisted of a couple of traffic tickets spread
over twenty years of speeding on the freeway. But everything
is terrible, and Menico was terrible. Now in my late
sixties with advanced cancer because they didn't treat me in prison,
had years I knew I had it, didn't even tell me,
(07:35):
and now it's too late. I mean, I can't think
of anything that isn't terrible. I don't know how to
describe it. I could go on for a week and
never scratched the surface. It is so abnormal for human
being to put under those conditions. My name is William Richards.
(07:57):
I'm an exnerie. I served twenty three years for rum.
I didn't commit, and I have been out for a
post of three now at my age and just trying
to live on my retirement and put a life together.
I came home and I found my wife dead. She
had been murdered. I called the police three times, actually
(08:18):
because I was a little bit upset, as you can imagine,
and they would take a long time getting there. First
top on the crime scene was just a patrolman. Everything
man said was proven to be all I not only
that night, but everything he says any time. He's a
strange felt But he turned around in the sidewalk. He's
Columbo he's got the guy right here. He said, my
(08:41):
actions are strange. Well, as you come home and find
your wife killed like I did, what are your actions
supposed to be? So he decided I was guilty, he
told the detective. They decided that by the time they
got to the crime scene, they never investigated, They never
collected DNA fingerprints or anything from the crime scene, and
just proceeded to start a case against me. Every top
(09:05):
understand lied a sign of evidence, destroyed exculpatory evidence when
the process of digging it up now for civil actions.
But they just set on a course to get the
easy suspects, and that was it. I was just profiled,
and the husband is always guilty. At the time she died,
(09:28):
that were forty six miles away in another city, in
another county, and I was in a building with thirty people.
It was a secure bullet the traffic for troll and
was allowed to testify the time at death based on
his vast experience with their bodies, which of course we've
now proven his alfuls. Real doctors said their injuries on
(09:48):
my wife as are two hours old prior to death,
determined she had been dead for several hours. Who I
got home. Police have total control over the cranching and
in the corners investigator whose job the crime scene is
the body, did not have an opportunity to examine the
body and collect the information that would have made it
(10:10):
easy to determine time of death. The two doctors who
did look at the case independently for the defense had
to look at poor feel stuff, you know, things like
photographs of injuries and said, well, injuries over two hours
prior to death, But they didn't get the body temperatures
and things like that that would probably be taking I
think it's a huge mistake for the police in Bill's
(10:32):
case to have handled the crime scene the way they did,
But I also know that as a defense lawyer, I
have to build a case off of reports and photographs
long after the alleged crime has been committed. I spoke
with Chris Robinson, the forensic consultant you heard at the
beginning of the episode, about what kinds of things he
looks at in the files that he gets and the
(10:54):
reliability of the forensics that he works with. My name
is Christopher Robbins, and I'm a forensic consultant. I generally
examine reports, evidence, documents, photographs, and I report my findings
back to the attorneys who have hired me. I'm certified
there as of crime scene reconstruction, ballistics and fires analysis,
(11:17):
gunshot wounds, blood spatter analysis, shooting reconstruction. See the beautiful
thing with what I do? Now, they give me the
entire case file and they say, read this, here's the statements.
Tell us is our client li? Is he telling the truth?
Do you think it's validated by what you see? And
then I'll report that I'm working a case where an
(11:39):
individual supposedly shot at his mother down the hallway, and
she's given all these statements. She said she heard the
bullet go by your ear. No, you didn't hear the
bullet go by your hear because it's a forty five,
so it's not breaking the sound beard. And then the
holes in the wall are not lined up with her heads.
I'm saying, you didn't hear the bullet go by your head.
The fast of the bullet, the sound way just begin
(12:00):
to spread out perpendicular to the bullet as it moves
through the air. A slower bullet, they moved with the bullets,
so the bullet had to almost touch your leg being
you feel it. Now you hear the concussion from the gun.
You know you're jerking is a hundred sixty death was
slow like a chainsaw, an airliner right beside your head. Now,
I'm already thinking, ma'am, I don't like your story because
(12:22):
you're telling me what you believe you heard. And that's fine.
I'm not calling your liar. I'm just saying, that's why
I like the evidence. The evidence doesn't lie. It's simple.
When you look at the evidence, you pull trajectory rides
through the holes of the shot, you triangulate back the
path of the bullets, how the gun injects, the cartridge cases,
(12:43):
and when you put all these things together, I'm giving
the statement and I'm saying, no, ma'am, see, it can't
happen this way because this is the evidence. One of
the things Amelia brought up in the last episode was
how for six science needs to change and evolve with
new technology. Blood spatter is very expeclative. You have three
(13:09):
or four people look at the same blood spatter and
they'll give you a different variation of what they see.
You have to be careful because at a crime scene
where there's massive amounts of blood spatter, you have transverse things,
you have cast off stains. You have high velocity meaning velocity,
low velocity which you might call medium, I might looking good.
(13:32):
I think it's more like a low velocity. I do
get into that a lot where they'll call in their
expert and I'll go up against them, and it's just
the jury has to listen to us and they make
the decision. The biggest problem is when the forensics is
not tested by an outside source. One of the things
I admire about Chris, and one of the reasons I've
(13:52):
used him in my own cases, is that he doesn't
necessarily draw his own unreasonable conclusions, but he lets the
evidence speak for itself. I mean, I can give my
opinion what I believe happened, how I believe it happened.
I can't speak to someone's intentions. The gun accidentally went off. Okay,
First of all, I'm gonna look at the gun and
(14:13):
I'm gonna say, this gun is functioning as it was
designed to function. This gun is perfect. Did you actually
mean to squeeze this trigger with three pounds, five pounds,
eight pounds, I said, Once we get the ten or
twelve pounds, which is a double action trigger, pull a
heavy trigger pull, which means you have to pull the
trigger all the way to the rear. I'm gonna look
at you and go you didn't accidentally pull with twelve pounds. Now,
(14:35):
when you have a gun, it's a two or three
pound trigger pool. What were the circumstances. I took my
gun down off the counter. You came in and grabbed
the gun, and then what's your instinct. I'm gonna pull
away from you. So if you grab the gun and
pull towards you and I pull away from you, we
start to divide that way to the trigger pull. I
better look at your body though. You better have gunpowder
(14:58):
all over your clothing. You better have stiff knowing your
skin because she better be within three feet and they
better have powder all over you for you to reach
out and grab that gun. When he's brought in to testify,
his role is to satisfy the jury's desire for that physical,
hands on type of evidence. Sometimes that can even mean
(15:21):
putting on something of a show for the jury. When
you go in there and I'm rolling around on the
floor in front of the jury, they're amazed. I'm always
told when I come in, the jury perks up I'm
talking about guns. I'm not talking about d NA where
god forbid, you're talking about wanting the quadri and the
low sign. They get glaze over when I talk about guns.
(15:45):
Everybody's seen again a bullet my cartridge case. They really
get up. And then I get off the stand and
they say, show us how this happened. And I'm rolling
around the floor where I get out the dummy. These
people go, what is this guy doing? Now? I tell
people you play to the strengths. If you can do
a recreation, I say, you want me to get a
Then the jury starts to think, now I understand, this
(16:06):
is how it happened. Photograph is great, pictures worth a
thousand words, But a recreation in front of the court,
it's it's amazing. I've seen Chris work. I've seen him
in court. I've seen him out of court. I've seen
him test firing unloaded firearms. I've seen him wrestling with
dummies in a courtroom. It's a strong visual. It grabs
(16:28):
the jury's attention and it keeps them interested. In any time.
As a lawyer, you get the opportunity to educate a
jury and keep their attention and have them learn something
that they did not know about before. I'm going to
take advantage of that opportunity. I found my wife at midnight,
(16:58):
so I've been up since about seven that morning, and
they let me go five or six and next afternoon,
so I've been up thirty some hours without sleep, probably
twenty some hours without food, and under intense interrogation, you know,
trying to get me to confess. I came down again
trying to help them. I thought they would actually start
(17:19):
looking for the real killer, which of course was my
mistake because they didn't. So I was actually in the
police station for another fifteen hours of intense interrogation, which
is not what I came down there for. Then they
just finally said, well, if you want admit you did it,
you're under arrest. I always thought, okay, what if I
did admitted I've been at all. It was such a
stupid thing to say. That's why you get so many
(17:43):
false confessions. I can tell you happens. Been through these things,
I could see why people just give up the crack
of the same thing you watch, it's only your own
I listened to tape. There's an edit tape that they
claimed this was interrogation, but of course, there's only thirty
hours of interrogation. They have a two hour tape. But
even on that I hear myself giving them things that
I didn't want to say because I didn't remember or
(18:05):
didn't think they were true. But I assureman have said
I did anything wrong. The first lawyer was very good,
but he was a public defender. I had considerable equity
in my land and stuff. I could have hired a
big name lawyer. I had one lined up, and that's
when I found out that froze my assets. They had
(18:26):
not arrested me the first night, which surprised everybody that
they did a few weeks later. But in that period
of time they filed papers to freeze my assets. Oh,
I had a good name attorney, he would have walked
up and they're told the court, look, there's no evidence,
let him go. And it makes all the difference in
the world. Now we have such a fast amount of
advience of innocence, and we have DNA, we have hair,
(18:48):
we have all signs of things that proved I'm not
the killer. But when you sit there and trial and
you had no investigation and so forth to help you,
it's kind of a one side it's system like the
other auxonorees this season. I asked Bill what he thought
the biggest factor was in the jury finding him guilty
this time. It was something all of our forensic experts
(19:11):
have brought up time and again, fight evidence. There's a
bite on her hand that I saw at the funeral.
Because at the time I believe that these strengths of
sciences are real, I've now learned that they're mostly jumped.
The jury was told this is mine, and it turns
out that when they did computer comparisons after conviction, none
(19:31):
of that was true. And that was the only thing
that really changed in the last trial was fite evidence.
That's pretty damning when you come in here and to
throwing all his garbage at the wall. Oh, he had
arguments every couple as argument. They beat you up with
all this stuff that kids anybody shaft they make it
must sound much worse. But when you sit there and say, look,
(19:53):
there's a bite on her body from the fight and
it's his, how could they let me go? I wanted
to know more about bite mark science, or as it's
more formally known, forensic odontology. This is dr Adam Freeman.
I'm a forensic odontologist located out of Westport, Connecticut, and
(20:17):
I am the current chair of the Odontology Section of
the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. My office Westport, Connecticut
is very close to New York City, where about a
forty five minute drive, and in the aftermath of nine eleven,
we lost several patients. As part of that process, it
(20:39):
became very apparent that there was not enough people involved
at a very granular level that really knew forensics. So
my example would be there were some dentists that had
done some identification work, but really no formal education in
(21:00):
the totality of forensics, and they typically were the leaders
of these operations. And I'm one of those people that
I don't like to be a little bit educated in something.
If I'm gonna do something, I really want to be
the guy or one of the guys that knows the
most about it. So there really are three areas that
brensic Good ontology are used in criminal cases. One and
(21:22):
probably the one that I am most proud of in
our field is dental identification. Often people are found dead
and they need to be scientifically identified, and very often
teeth are used as that identification. Also as an outshoot
of that is where there's a mass disaster like Hurricane
(21:43):
Katrino or nine eleven or Hurricane I, where dentists are
called in to do identifications on lots of people, you
are giving back a person the dignity of dying with
a name. Another area is bite mark identify accation, and
that is much more controversial today, and I have testified
(22:05):
in several of those cases. And then there's dental age estimation,
which is becoming much more controversial because of the way
it's being applied versus the way I believe it was
originally designed to be applied. Bite mark identification of a
perpetrator has at its space several hypotheses. The first one
(22:29):
is that teeth are unique to an individual. Only a
individual has teeth of a certain shape, size, and arrangement.
That hypothesis has never been proven. The second hypothesis is
skin can accurately record a bite. That also has never
(22:50):
been proven. The scientific research currently doesn't even suggest that
experts can even identify with some real liability what a
bite mark looks like. As an example of that, myself
and a colleague of mine, dr Ian Pretty out of
Manchester England. We sent every board certified forensic dennis a
(23:12):
hundred different cases where there were several photographs and said,
is this a bite mark? Very similar to what happens
when I'm presented a case. When I'm presented a case,
typically law enforcement will send some images of a suspected
injury that they think might be a bite mark, and
my job is to opine as to whether or not
(23:35):
that injury is or is not a bite mark. What
we did is we did that same sort of experiment
and there was widespread disagreement as to whether or not
an injury that they were looking at was in fact
a bite mark. So the ground science that predisposes us
the ability to do this bite mark work isn't there.
(23:55):
Yet the work continues to be done. There are those
who have to me, I believe that this is possible,
And my response typically is when issues of life and
liberty are at state, your belief as to whether or
not something can be done is not important. It's whether
or not you can scientifically support your opinions. And the
(24:19):
science is not there for bite marks. It is my
opinion that bite marks shouldn't be used in courts of
law at all until we produce some science that suggests
that forensico and ontologists can agree generally on what a
bite mark is. I think actually, in Bill Richards case,
and looking at that bite mark, I'm not sure that
(24:40):
that's even a bite mark. Dr Freeman has seen the
evidence in Bill's case firsthand, so I asked him for
his professional opinion on the evidence left on Bill's wife's hand. So,
in that particular case, what you're looking at is there's
a very diffuse bruise of the bite mark, or what
(25:02):
I would call the patterned injury. I didn't see anything
on the other side of the hand. For a bite
to happen, tissue has to be crushed between the upper
and lower teeth to leave a bruise. And that's really
one of the problems with bite marks. When somebody has bitten,
how you bruise versus how I bruise could be very different,
(25:23):
the type of skin you have, the coloration of your skin.
All of the listeners here, I'm sure have had situations
where they bump into something and they bruise and other
people don't. And then clearly when you look at the
injury on Mrs Richard's hand, it's a very wide bruise
teeth are very narrow. That surely isn't individual teeth you're
(25:44):
looking at, and I surely would have swabbed it for
DNA and suggested it be swabbed for salivary amilais that
injury surely does not belong in a criminal court. I
think that the place that bite marks have, and probably
the strongest piece we have for them, is that if
you see something that looks like a suspected bite mark,
(26:05):
what a good friends to go to ontologists should do
is instruct the police in the medical examiner's office to
swab that area for both DNA and salivary emilies. So
salivary amilies is an enzyme that is in human saliva,
so that would show that it is human and secondly DNA.
(26:26):
That is a great purpose for human bite marks. I
don't think a lot of the people who did bite
mark cases early on went into it with some malicious attitude.
I think that they went into it thinking they were
doing what was cutting edge science. Where I find it
(26:47):
reprehensible is that when science has presented itself showing that
what they believed isn't in fact true, they typically don't
accept the science itself. What they do is they say, well,
let's not throw the baby out with the bath water.
I absolutely believe that it is morally wrong to use
questionable forensics in criminal trials where there's issues of life
(27:11):
and liberty, and it should not be done by anybody
until the science supports it. And when people fight so
hard to keep a modality that has not been scientifically supported,
it makes me question their motives. I also question those motives,
and I wonder why someone would be more interested in
(27:33):
validating a belief than in finding the actual truth. But
I think this happens more than people know. I can
understand that people feel pride in their work, and on
some level they might not want it question. But like
Dr Freeman said, when it comes to something as precious
as one's life or their liberty, someone's personal ego just
(27:54):
should not get in the way. Yeah, first trial was deadlocked,
I think offishally they say six to six. Second one
(28:18):
was declared to mistrial because the judge was talking to
somebody connected with one of the jurors. And then it
went to a bird trial which was also deadlocked. And
the last trial, even with the bite evidence, came back deadlocked,
but the judge was used to accept it and ordered
them to find the British. She said, I'm going to
keep you here and see you do. I've had so
(28:39):
many she would have to let me go. One of
the jurors come in and wanted to talk to my team,
basically to say she had been bullied in the jury room,
but the same judge trial judge wouldn't let us talk
to her. Given that he had so many trials, I
was curious as to what kinds of deals might have
been offered to build behind the scenes. They offered deals
(29:02):
mostly after the first draw they took a real beating.
They started offering the time served. Actually, by that time
I've been in less than two years. So they said,
did two year low deal, low term man sladder. But
I couldn't do that. I didn't do this, you know.
I took my gamble and fought it all the way.
As a defense attorney, it's in my interest to get
(29:24):
the best outcome possible for my clients, and sometimes that
means making a deal. In fact, the vast majority of
criminal cases are resolved through some type of negotiated agreement.
I completely understand Bill's hesitation here to plead guilty to
a crime he did not commit. I see people every
day who were asked to make compromises, and sometimes they're
(29:45):
compromises that people just can't make. Bill Richards was convicted
of first degree murder and served twenty three years of
a life sentence. You go in there, You've got to
learn a hole new language, a whole new packing order
thin and there's such strange conditions. You have all the
different gangs, and you have all the different factions in
(30:05):
each game. You have to adapt, you have to you
have to survive, and that's not easy. I kind of
described it like being in the bottom of a well.
You're looking up at this You know you're innocent, you
know what their sayings lie, but you can't get any representation.
NET would stand up and present this. Got a description
(30:26):
be jumping out of airplane a lot of parachute. You
know you're gonna die, but you just keep lapping around. Anyway,
My assets were gone. I've lost everything I had. In
the prison. They put me to work a couple of
times in shops for the number of years where I
was teaching the staff. I was teaching the other inmates
how to do all these things, designing and building things
(30:48):
for them. They had all these things that need to
be done, and nobody had a crew how to do it.
You know, I had to over twenty years background and
uh I was teaching them how to do all these things,
how to build things, how to design is under structural strength,
how power would have to run, and so on. You'd
make thirty two cents an hour, and they take back
(31:10):
made fourteen tents an hour, and that doesn't go real
far because prices in the canteen, you know, the prison
stores are expensive. I was very angry for a long time,
but eventually I think you just rejectedn't go on. You
can't stay angry for twenty five years. They'll burn you out.
(31:32):
If you do, You're gonna be one miserable person. I'm
very very unhappy, but that anger. Anger is a reactionary emotion,
and you just can't maintain that for so many years.
Bill was exonerated and eventually released in two thousand sixteen.
Unlike our other exonorees, his case was so personal. He
(31:54):
lost everything, including his wife. So I asked him if
at the very least they caught the person who murdered
his wife. No, because personally, I don't believe the police
ever looked. I know they didn't look. It's all comes
back to the police. They decided the first night I
was the guy they told the friends of people who
worked under them, and that was it. Everything just went down,
(32:18):
Like I feel like falling out of an airplane. You're
going to die. It's gone down because everybody is working
against you. Before we wrap up forensic science, I wanted
to bring back Justin Brooks from the California Innocence Project.
He sees cases like bills all the time. We've got
(32:39):
an innocence organization in Holland, and when I go over there,
there's so much more scrutiny given there's so many more resources,
and they still have wrongful convictions. So all we can
do is is minimize the number of wrongful convictions. And
the best way to minimize it is through education and training.
Like one of the things that's always made me crazy
(32:59):
is it. See, the defense has a lot more trouble
getting scientific resources than the government has. So when a
defense attorney wants to get testing done, wants access to
the labs, wants to get the same kind of ability
to develop evidence as the government has, they don't have
the same resources there's just a lot of pseudo science
(33:20):
out there. But the problem is a lot of times
these jurors treat all these sciences the same, if you
have an expert saying it's a science. We've seen the
same thing in the area of arson that in the
past a lot of the arson experts were actually just
board firemen who loves C. S I and had a
lot of time on their hands. So you have a
(33:40):
bunch of people who are sitting in prison on bad
fire science. So I think we have a real problem
with expertise in these areas and jurors when they hear
this stuff, they're convicting because an expert stands up and says,
in my expert opinion, this person is guilty. Here's why
you get convictions. One of the things that's important to
(34:09):
me in my work and in this show is making
sure that we cover everything from as many sides as possible.
I've seen the work of Chris Robinson and Tracy Sergeant
in action, but I also know that many people have
been wrongfully convicted because of forensic science, or perhaps more accurately,
because of the misapplication of science or of junk science.
(34:30):
I think all of the forensic professionals we spoke to
were right when they said that forensic science should just
be one of many tools in an investigative toolbox. It's
important to keep in mind, if you're ever sitting on
a jury, or if you're just hearing about a trial
in the news, that science is not perfect, and that
includes forensic science. There's often more to the story than
(34:50):
what one piece of information might suggest. Having people like
Chris or Dr Freeman testifying a courtroom about what their
discipline can and cannot do is bidely important to getting
to the true facts of a case. I know how
important it is to explain all aspects of a case
to a jury, and the best way I've seen that done,
(35:12):
especially in cases involving science, is to bring in experts.
These experts can explain this stuff in a way that
it's not so complicated and so that a juror who
is not a scientist can understand the subject matter. As
forensic science progresses and changes, expert witnesses are becoming increasingly
vital as a part of a complete and fair trial.
(35:36):
In my opinion, funds for experts should be available to
all people, just as the right to counsel is available
to all people and all stages of the criminal process,
and that includes a trial. I also want to reiterate
what Amelia and Dr Freeman both said that one of
the most important aspects of any science is for the
(35:58):
disciplines to evolve as new research comes in. We are
in an incredible age of technology where more and more
information is available than ever before. As we've become more
and more dependent on science, it is vitally important that
we use science responsibly and that we do so accurately.
A big part of my job is staying up to
(36:19):
date with new laws and changes in the legal system.
Scientists are no different. A big part of their job
is to make sure they are current with the latest science.
Everyone in the criminal justice system, lawyers, police officers, judges,
medical examiners, forensic chemists, all these people owe it to
defendants on trial to be as accurate as possible. As
(36:41):
Dr Freeman said, a mere belief that something might work
is not enough. You must base it on science, especially
when life and liberty are on the line. And the
next episode will focus on a particular problem that all
of the Axonorees we've spoken to have brought up. Interrogation
techniques and false confessions next time on Sworn. This is
(37:08):
a study published just a few years ago out of Canada.
With the power of suggestion, they convinced ordinary people that
as a teenager they committed a crime and the police
actually came to an investigate, and you know, oftentimes these
people are trying to figure this out, and you know,
my mother told you this, It must have happened. I mean,
did I plan Forrafiti somewhere? And what was I with
(37:29):
my best friend when we did? And they pretty much
talked themselves into constructing something that never happened. Sworn is
a production of Tenderfoot TV and I Heart Radio. Our
lead producer is Christina Dana. Executive producers are Payne Lindsay
(37:51):
and Donald Albright for Tenderfoot TV, Matt Frederick and Alex
Williams for I Heart Radio, and myself Philip Holloway. Additional
product by Trevor Young, Mason Lindsay, Mike Rooney, Jamie Albright
and Halle Beadall Original music and sound designed by Makeup
and Vanity Set. Our theme song is Blood in the
(38:12):
Water by Layup. Show art and design is by Trevor Eisler.
Editing by Christina Dana. Mixing and mastering by Mike Rooney
and Cooper Skinner. Special thanks to the team at I
Heart Radio from U t a or In Rosenbound and
Grace Royer, Ryan Nord and Matthew Papa from the Nord
(38:34):
Group Back Media and Marketing and Station sixteen. I'd also
like to extend a very personal and special thanks to
all of our contributors and guests who have helped to
make all of these episodes possible. You can find Sworn
on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Sworn podcast and follow
me your host, Philip Holloway on Twitter at phil Holloway
(38:57):
e s Q. Our webs is sworn podcast dot com,
and you can check out other Tenderfoot TV podcasts at
www dot tenderfoot dot tv. If you have questions or comments,
you can email us at Sworn at tenderfoot dot tv
or leave us a voicemail at four zero four for
(39:20):
one zero zero four f one. As always, thanks for
listening through all of that. How were you able to
maintain your innocence in sort of your sense that this
could be fixed? Yeah? I don't you know. I've seen
other guys perfectly on this. I've seen other people in
(39:40):
a situation like mine is hunt themselves or something. It's
like that wasn't me. I wasn't doing that. Other people
just endure and sit there for a decade after decade
in prison innocence like I did. I'm just a stubb ambastard.
I would give up yourself
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