September 25, 2023 • 37 mins
Built on a foundation of conjecture and best guesses that were never adequately tested according to any valid scientific principles, arson evidence experts have been telling juries for decades that one can definitively determine that a fire was intentionally set is completely wrong.
But why, after generations of experts have all been proven wrong, is there still an unwillingness to change? Barry Scheck, Co-Founder of the Innocence Project, discusses Arson Evidence with Josh.
Kate Judson, Executive Director of the Center for Integrity in Forensic Sciences, updates Josh Dubin's Wrongful Conviction: Junk Science.
To learn more and get involved, please visit:
https://cifsjustice.org/donate/
2009 Article in The New Yorker by David Grann
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/09/07/trial-by-fire
https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/junk-science
Wrongful Conviction: Junk Science is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey, folks, Kate Judson here. I'm a lawyer and the
executive director of the Center for Integrity and Forensic Sciences.
We're back with another episode of Junk Science, a series
we first released in twenty twenty, but these stories are
just as relevant as ever. This week is all about
arson evidence, the faulty forensic science that was used to
(00:24):
convict Cameron Willingham, whose story you're about to hear. Since
Cameron Willingham was convicted, we're realizing more and more that
this type of evidence cannot be relied on. But the
lessons of this case don't go far enough. We still
have cases today where the only evidence presented is an
(00:47):
expert opinion. The problem is that the jury doesn't always
understand that what they're hearing is opinion, not indisputable fact,
and deciding someone's fate based on one person's opinion is
a recipe for disaster.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
It's December twenty third. Last night, you decorated a Christmas
tree with your family. You put your two year old
on your shoulder so she could hang her favorite ornament
way up high on the tree. Your twin babies gazed
up at you from the living room floor, taking the
scene in with giggles and excited kicks of their little legs.
(01:27):
Later on, your wife put the kids to bed, and
then you both stayed up late, finishing the tree and
cleaning up. In the morning, your wife leaves the house
early for some last minute chopping for the girls. The
babies hear the door slam and start to cry, as
they typically do. You take them out of their cribs,
give them eat a bottle, and put them on the
(01:47):
soft play mat on the floor so they can keep
each other company. You head back to your room and
as you lay down, you hear them cooing from across
the hall. You drift off to sleep, sleep long. You
wake up to your two year old daughter screaming, Daddy, Daddy.
You're groggy, startled, but the terror in her voice snaps
(02:12):
you awake like a blaring alarm. And then it hits you.
The room is a dense cloud of gray and black.
You can barely see. You smell charcoal, ash, smoke. Oh no,
your girls. Get the girls out of the house. It's loud.
(02:34):
It sounds like an angry windstorm. The entire house is crackling, popping.
You make your way to the baby's room and feel
around on the floor, groping in the darkness. You think
you grab one of the twins, but it's just a
baby doll. Your hair is on fire. You stand up
and pat it out and frantically get on the ground again.
(02:59):
Then a loud crash. Something is falling from somewhere in
the house. It must be the caving in a part
of the roof or a wall, but you can't see anything.
It's so hot you can't breathe. You need to catch
your breath before you pass out. You finally make your
way outside to get help. You'll come back for them.
(03:21):
You see your neighbor on her front lawn and scream
for her to call the fire department. She sees a
hysterical man covered in soot, and she yells back, they're
on the way. You try to get back inside, breaking
the window of the baby's room with a stick you
find in the yard. Flames explode from the opening. Oh God,
(03:41):
you can't get in. You're crying out for your children. Someone, anyone,
please help. The fire department finally arrives and they have
to hold you back. They find your two year old
in the bedroom on the floor. You didn't realize she
had been there, right there, Your babies are on the
(04:03):
floor of their room where you had left them with
their bottles. You had been so close to finding them.
They try to do CPR, but it's too late. You're
escorted away from the house, and once the fires are
under control, investigators in protective gear head inside. There's no
(04:25):
sense of urgency anymore. They walk through the remains and
disappear into the black and living room where you had
spent your last night together as a family. You are
dumbfounded when they arrest you for arson murder. This was
your family. You would never lay a finger on your children.
(04:51):
At your trial, the prosecutors call expert witnesses who tell
the jury that the proven signs of fire tells the
story of how you who committed this crime. You poured
lighter fluid, which they referred to as an accelerant, under
your baby's beds in the hallway by the front door.
The burn marks seared into the floor indicate where that
(05:13):
lighter fluid was puddled on the carpet. They say, there's
no way you tried to save your girls. If you had,
your feet would have been burned. Dripstains proved that you
poured accelerant up and down the hallway, the melted metal
door frame, the shattered glass. It all proves the fire
was so unnaturally hot that it produced temperatures that could
(05:36):
only have been created by chemicals that you intentionally poured
all over your home and your motive. Prosecutors argued this,
you love heavy metal music, and that indicates that you
have a dark side. You have posters on the walls
of your home, one of which depicts a grim reaper
(05:57):
that proves you're obsessed with death. You have a tattoo
of a skull and snake on your arm that indicates
that you're a violent person. You have psychiatric problems, perhaps
a demonic disposition. You couldn't afford to hire a lawyer,
so the court appointed you an attorney. He too, suspects
(06:18):
that you killed your children. He tells you to plead guilty.
If you do, they'll give you life in prison instead
of the death sentence. You can't do this. This was
an accident. There was no crime here. You're not going
to confess to killing your three beautiful children. You didn't
do anything wrong here. You were convicted and sentenced to
(06:43):
death on death row. The events of that day haunt you.
You look at the photos of your children, your wife
to remember the man you were, the life you once had.
Time seems to stand still on death row, and the
whole experience is nothing short of paralyzing. But the date
(07:06):
of your execution eventually closes in. You write a letter
to your parents, telling them to never stop fighting to
clear your name, even if it's after they put you
to death. The last words of your fellow inmates, the
ones who were executed before you, one by one, were
often apologies. Sometimes they were confessions. But before you're strapped
(07:31):
into the gurney and given a lethal injection, you say,
I am an innocent person convicted of a crime I
did not commit. I've been persecuted for twelve years for
something I did not do. From God's dust I came,
and to dust I will return, so the earth shall
(07:54):
become my throne. Your parents scatter your ashes over the
graves of your children. The story you just heard is
based on the wrongful conviction of Cameron Todd Willingham, who
(08:18):
was wrongfully convicted and executed in two thousand and four.
I'm Josh Dubin, civil rights and criminal defense attorney, an
innocent ambassador to the Innocence Project in New York Today
on wrongful conviction junk science, we examine arson evidence. In
(08:49):
nineteen seventy three, the Nixon administration published a report entitled
America Burning. It was all about damage the fires caused
in America, both in terms of physical distrutuction and the
billions of dollars spent to repair and rebuild. But unfortunately,
much of what was considered fire signs in America Burning
(09:10):
was merely a set of core assumptions that were never
subjected to the rigors of the scientific method. That is,
develop a hypothesis, test it, confirm it, reconfirm it, and
repeat until you know you have something sound and verifiable.
As a result of this study, fire investigators were given
(09:31):
a handbook, A Guide to Reading fire damage like a
psychic reads tea leaves. An investigator, having learned from this handbook,
starts his investigation at the exterior of a burnt down house.
He sees a V shaped burn on what's left of
the walls of the living room. He notes this is
the room where the fire started. He walks through the home,
(09:53):
keeping an eye out for the telltale signs of arson.
First crazed glass when windows shattered into irregular pieces with
light smoke deposits that indicate a rapid buildup of heat
that can only be caused by an accelerant. Second alligatoring,
large shiny blisters on burnt wood. Fast hot fires produced
(10:16):
by accelerants create this pattern. Third, puddle formations and burns
that look like drip trails. These are caused by the
spreading of accelerant like gasoline or paint thinner throughout a
house before it is intentionally set on fire. The investigator
checks all of these signs off the list. He knows
(10:38):
this must be arson. It turns out the investigator only
had a fifty percent chance of being right at best,
because fire science was built on a foundation of conjecture
and best guesses that were never adequately tested and confirmed
(10:59):
according to valid scientific principles. What experts and prosecutors had
been telling juries for decades about how you can definitively
determine that a fire was intentionally set was completely wrong.
In fact, signs that indicated to investigators that they were
dealing with arson, crazed glass, alligator patterns, burn marks indicating
(11:23):
drips or puddles of accelerant were actually the same things
left in the wake of an accidental fire. So the
evidence that was used to convict Cameron Todd Willingham and
so many others was deeply, deeply flawed.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
It turns out that there was no evidence whatsoever that
this had been a fire that was set by Todd
Willingham running up and down his home, you know, just
before Christmas, spreading in all the different rooms and down
the hallway, and killing his three children. It was clear
(12:06):
that this was junk science. And unfortunately, by this point
in my career, I was familiar enough with the phenomenon
of junk science not to be surprised.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Joining us today to tell us about arson evidence and
how it relates to cases like Cameron Todd Willingham's is
Barry Sheck, co founder of the Innocence Project and famed
civil rights and criminal defense attorney. So Barry, first, thanks
for being here and for our listeners. Barry is one
of my personal heroes, and I'm just ecstatic that we're
(12:39):
able to get you to enlighten us about arson evidence. Now,
you worked to get Cameron Todd Willingham's case overturned after
he was executed, and this might seem like somewhat of
a pointless fight to some people, since mister Willingham was
already put to death in two thousand and four. But
(13:01):
you are fighting for mister Willingham's final wish for his
name to be cleared and him to be declared an
innocent man by a court. I think that it's well
accepted that he's an innocent man at this point. But
you're also fighting so that the kind of evidence that
was used against mister Willingham doesn't get used to convict
(13:22):
another innocent person. And so, to start off, Barry, if
some of the clues used an arson investigation or indeed
junk science, how did Cameron Todd Willingham get convicted in
the first place?
Speaker 3 (13:37):
What the fire scientists, the arson investigators in Willingham, what
they did in that case. They would go to the
scene of a fire and they would look at all
these visual cues. And if they saw what was called alligatoring,
which was like the scales of an alligator on wood.
If they saw what was known as craze glass, that's
(14:00):
it's like a spider type cracking of the glass. If
they saw spawling of concrete that's like little chips coming
off the concrete at the scene of the fire, if
they saw scouring on the floor, poor patterns, they immediately
assumed that all of these visual cues meant that somebody
(14:22):
had spread accelerant around the house and lit it and
that was the cause of the fire. And they literally
said to the jury, we look at the fire, the
fire talks to us. The fire doesn't lie. That's very
powerful to a jury. So what happened, Josh, is that
when we at the Innocence Project saw what happened in
(14:46):
the Willingham case, we had just been involved in setting
up what's known as the Texas Forensic Science Commission. They
reviewed all the crime scene evidence in the Willingham case
and they said was clear and that is this is
junk science. This had been discredited by National Fire Protection
(15:07):
nine twenty one, ten years ago. The science was completely flawed, unreliable, ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
So even after all of that, the state of Texas
still refused to free Cameron Todd Willingham. And to show
just how flawed this evidence was, there was a man
named Ernest Willis who was convicted of a similar crime
with similar evidence than was used in the Willingham case.
But while Cameron Todd Willingham was put to death in
(15:37):
two thousand and four. Willis was declared innocent that very
same year. So how is that possible, Barry, that one
man Willingham is executed based on this junk science, while
another man, Willis, whose case was very similar, gets to
go free.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
Ernest Willis went to trial, he had a completely incompetent
lawyer who was sparred for all kinds of reasons. Willis
was so upset by the fire that killed family members
that he was literally on psychotropic medication in the witness chair. Right.
He was lucky because his lawyer was so incompetent, and
(16:18):
on his death penalty appeal he got a patent lawyer
from LEITHA Ben Watkins in New York who dove into
the case and was able to get the federal courts
to vacate that conviction. And when the conviction was remanded
on exactly the same evidence, just like the Willingham case,
(16:38):
Willis was not only exonerated. There was a prosecutor in
Pakos County, Texas took one look at this and said,
oh my god, this was an accidental fire. This was
not an arson murder. And he not only dismissed the
case against Ernest Willis. Ernest Willis was compensated as actually
(16:59):
innocent by the State of Texas, while within the same
time period, Cameron Todd Willingham was executed.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
It's just really hard to hear this stuff right because
right away this indicates some sort of double standard, or
at least some confusion within the justice system about what
arson evidence really means and how much it can be trusted.
And to be clear, by two thousand and four, there
shouldn't have been any confusion about this type of evidence
(17:27):
because in the early nineties there were two incidents that
I'm going to ask you about that really proved that
the kind of arson evidence used in the Cameron Todd
Willingham case was bogus. The first was the Lime Street
case in nineteen ninety, which was the case of Gerald
Wayne Lewis. Mister Lewis was accused of killing his pregnant wife,
(17:49):
his sister, and his sister's four children by arson. Now
Gerald always maintained his innocence, but it was actually a
prosecution expert named John Lentini who was the moving force
improving gerald innocence.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
John Lentini was an arson investigator and he went along
with a colleague of his, John Dehan, to investigate an
allegation of arson at a home on Lime Street in Jacksonville, Florida.
And they examined the crime scene, and they were all ready,
by their own admission, to make a recommendation that it
(18:27):
was an intentional arson. But they realized that right next
to the house that burned down was another house that
was abandoned, but it was the same construction. So they
rebuilt the house right next door to be identical to
the Lime Street house that burned down, and then they
(18:50):
basically put a cigarette on a couch. They began the
fire in a way that would be completely accidental. The
whole place burned down, and they saw all the clues,
all the visual clues from the craze glass, alligatoring, burning
under furniture, a completely compartmentalized fire. They saw all these cues,
(19:13):
and they knew that it was an accidental fire, not
a deliberate one, and so that began to change everything.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
So again, this is very ironic and rare because Lentini's
a fire investigator that's working for the prosecution, and he's
actually trying to prove that this Lime Street case was
in fact arson, and that Gerald Wayne Lewis had actually
done it. But he realizes that there was some serious
(19:42):
issues with his assumptions because this accidental fire actually resembled
an arson, and it resembled it in very critical ways.
And what was most shocking to me about this was
that Lentini saw puddlestains and trailmar that looked identical to
what he had been taught and so many other investigators
(20:05):
had been taught, or the telltale signs of someone dripping
gasoline or another accelerant throughout a house. But that definitely
was not the case here. And they knew that because
they set the fire themselves with a cigarette exactly.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
And they'd say, well, that really can't happen unless it's
an intentionally set fire. But it turns out with this
phenomenon of flashover, which is you get this hot combustible
object in a small space, ordinarily a room, right, and
then it begins to cause this huge burst of heat
and fire in that room, and the whole place becomes engulfed.
(20:45):
So that's what creates the intense heat that arson investigators
had hypothesized must come from the deliberate use of accelerants.
It turns out that it could all happen in a
completely accidental fire.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
So Linini the investigator, realizes that accidental fires can look
just like arson, and he does something that is actually
quite remarkable. But it shouldn't be, because whether you're working
for the prosecution or the defense, when the science tells
you something, you should not have a bias in its application.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
Right.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
He doesn't say, Oh, this is just some weird coincidence.
I'm going to keep working for prosecutors to convict people
in arson cases based on this evidence that I now
know is clearly faulty. It's wrong. Instead, he's pretty shocked,
appalled by what he sees, and he feels like he's
been misled by this evidence for years. Right, And he
(22:02):
gets an opportunity to examine a bunch more accidental fires
to make sure that his findings in the Lime Street
case were consistent with other accidental fires.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
I don't know if people remember, but these homes on
in the hills in Oakland, California, began to burn down,
you know, in what was plainly a series of accidental fires.
And after all these homes were burned down, the fire
scientists went at and examined each and every one of them,
and they realized, once again, here were plainly accidental fires.
(22:35):
But all these visual cues that arson experts had been
relying on demonstrated that it was an accident. It was
not an intentionally set fire. So take just the craze glass.
That's a simple thing to understand. You know, you look
at the glass, it's sort of spider glass, and that
supposedly an indication of suddenly intense heat that comes from
(23:01):
an accelerant induced fire. In fact, you found craze glass
all over in Oakland in the Lime Street fire. Because
craize glass happens when people come to put out the
fire and they put cold water on it and the
glass cracks. That's how you get crazed glass.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
So these arson investigators have been testifying for years and
years that the reason you see crazed glass and it's
no pun intent. That it's actually a crazy notion that
they're testifying to one thing, and it turns out to
be the exact opposite. All right, So crazed glass was
caused by the cooling of the glass when they're putting
the fire out. What were some other things that were wrong.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
About They would say, oh, we're looking at mattress springs
in a bed or something and they're melted. That can
only happen if it's an intentionally set fire. But when
they went to the hills of Oakland and looked at
these homes, they saw the same thing, and the same
thing at the Lime Street fire.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
I mean, you would think that would be the end
of people trying to use this kind of junk science,
this kind of false evidence, but that isn't the case.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
What is really upsetting is that you see over the
next few decades, nonetheless, lots of people who were convicted
because they never did scientific validation in the first place.
You actually have to conduct experiments, you have to have hypotheses,
(24:35):
and you have to prove that they're true, instead of
just having you know, really you know, sort of law
enforcement people in lab coats, so to speak, or people
that have expertise by way of quote unquote experience going
to crime scenes and looking at fire scenes and really
(24:55):
coming up with their own hypotheses that were never demonstrated
to be true by science. That's what's so shocking about
this whole area. In other words, if you believe all
these different visual cues demonstrate that an accelerant has been used,
you should do experiments to prove the point.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Now, Barry, this isn't the case where these investigators were
out to harm people. This is just how they were trained.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
I have some sympathy for a whole group of people
who had, many of them just high school graduates who
were trained in arson investigation, to believe all these different
visual cues were a sign of the use of an
(25:43):
accelerant and intentionally set fire that was never empirically demonstrated,
and yet they were doing it, and that's how they
made a living. That's true, and they thought that they
had expertise. It's imagine how horrendous it is to believe,
as a prosecutor or as a so called you know,
(26:06):
arson investigator, that you were wrong and you destroyed people's lives.
People don't get up in the morning and say let's
do that, right, but it happens, and it's very hard
to admit to it.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
All right, So why do you think it is that?
You know, generations of experts have all been proven to
be wrong. The assumptions they rely on turn out to
be incorrect, But there's this unwillingness to change.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
Once you have invested yourself in this belief and all
these very weighty consequences follow. It's very hard to admit
that you were wrong, even when there's scientific proof that
you're wrong. John Lintini and John de Haan and all
these various experts, you know, they started off as regular
(26:59):
are and investigators that were taught to believe these things.
But engaging in real science and doing these experiments, they
realized it was all wrong, and they had an enormous
amount of trouble persuading the forensic science community to stop,
and they're still fighting about it even to this day.
(27:22):
I mean, I think that the Willingham case and all
these other exonerations have exposed the community to it, and
you literally can see fewer arson convictions since that happened.
But Josh, you're absolutely right. It's mystifying. It's so upsetting
that it is taking so long to change.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
It, and meanwhile, these convictions based on this false arson
science or there's fire evidence just keep on coming.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
Hantak Lee, whose daughter who suffered from mental illness, was
found yeah, literally burnt to death, incinerated, you know, in
a small community in Pennsylvania. He gets convicted of killing
his daughter intentionally in a fire which did not happen.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
Right, The case of Hantok Lee is just it's really
really troubling. I mean, here's a guy that spent fifteen
years in prison for a murder he did not commit.
And there's a quote that always stuck with me from
an opinion written by a judge during Hantok Lee's appeal,
and it was this quote. Much of what was presented
(28:33):
to Lee's jury as science is now conceded to be
little more than superstition end quote. I mean, that's so remarkable,
isn't it. And you know, again, the fact that this
is still used in the face of quotes like that
is just it's hard to understand. You know. He was
granted a new trial and finally exonerated, thankfully, in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
Another was a Sonia Casey, who is convicted of burning
down a house and killing I guess it was her uncle,
Bill Richardson. And and of course it turned out that
Bill Richardson was actually a heavy smoker and had probably
fallen asleep with a burning cigarette. But plainly she did
not start this fire. All the same kind of junk
(29:19):
science was used in that case. And that's the great
tragedy when you look at the arson cases, so many
people like Ernest Willis or Cameron Todd Willingham or a
Hantock League, you know, they're all convicted of killing with
intentionally set fires. They're loved ones. That to me is,
(29:41):
you know, the horrible, horrible irony of these junk science cases.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
Now for our listeners, I know Barry, you know twenty
years and I've seen you get emotional before and passionate
about a lot of cases. I want to go back
to the Cameron Todd Willingham case for a moment because
it seems to me that this is one that really
stuck with you, and it seems to me like one
(30:10):
of the two or three cases that has really haunted
you in all your innocence work.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
How can it not haunt you? It should haunt everyone
in this country. I mean, this is a case that
ought to change the way the people look at capital
punishment and forensic science. I think we look we've made
a lot of progress, but we still haven't corrected the
biggest injustice of all, and that is the wrongful execution
(30:40):
of Cameron Todd Willingham. Do you see the suffering up
to the very very end and the execution of an
innocent man. How could it not haunt you? There's so
much importance attached with the state finally admitting that it
was wrong and that an innocent person is executed, and
(31:01):
that will happen in Texas. It will.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
Something we keep returning back to in this podcast is
the two thousand and nine National Academy of Sciences Report,
which is a report published by rigorous scientists that is
very critical of forensic sciences like arson investigation. In fact,
the only one that it's not really critical of is DNA.
(31:40):
And you've done a lot to try to push the
lessons of this report to overturn convictions based on junk science.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
Truth is the two thousand and nine and National Academy
of Science Report recommended that there be an independent entity
in the federal government that would be dedicated to providing
a scientific basis and oversight to all these forensic science disciplines.
(32:12):
And independent entity, the National Commission on Forensic Science was
put into place, which had independent experts from lots of
different scientific communities. When Trump was elected, he abolished the
National Commission on Forensic Science.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
Look, it's really inspiring to see that despite all that's
gone wrong and all that hasn't worked that you're still
hopeful because something else that's so shocking is that this
issue about what kind of evidence should be considered scientific facts,
something that can literally determine whether or not someone should
live or die based on a crime they may not
(32:52):
have committed. It's all still being treated like a political issue,
and you have personal experience with these political barrier Yet
you're still hopeful despite all of the harm that's been
done and continues to be done by political officials, by presidents,
by judges who, unlike Lentini, refuse to see the light,
(33:15):
so to speak.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
You know, it becomes this big echo chamber. Junk science
is admitted by one court, right, and all the experts
can then testify again and again and again, even though
it was never properly validated in the first place. And
we've had a lot of that, and judges really have
to be rigorous on dealing with it. And the problem
(33:36):
with judges is that we all went to law school
and not medical school. The judges really do have to
be better in terms of getting into the nuts and
bolts of the science. It's intimidating to them, just as
it's intimidating to a lot of lawyers.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
You might be listening to this what you can do
to help. I want every listener to consider that even
those who were wrongly convicted and are lucky enough to
be released from prison, their lives are just never the same.
Let's take the example of Sonya Casey. She's the woman
Barry Shek mentioned who was accused of murdering her uncle
(34:19):
by arson. We know that miss Casey was innocent because,
amongst other evidence, it was later found during the autopsy
of her uncle that he most likely died from a
heart attack. There was no soot in his lungs, which
would have been there if he had in fact died
in the fire. Instead, there was fluid in his lungs,
(34:40):
so the evidence supported the conclusion that he was dead
before the fire had even spread. Nevertheless, Casey was sentenced
to ninety nine years in prison. Sonya Casey was eventually exonerated,
but the stain of her wrongful conviction meant that on
every job application or when she try to rent an apartment,
(35:01):
she would either have to check a box saying that
she had been convicted of a crime, or it would
be revealed on a background check that made it nearly
impossible for her to find work or a place to live. So,
if you own a business, or you're a landlord, or
you're just in a position to either approve or reject
(35:22):
someone for work or a place to live, and someone
checks the box that they had previously been convicted of
a crime, please talk to them. Learn about the circumstances
of their arrest, the accusations against them, who they are
now as a human being. Perhaps you'll find that they
were the victim, yes, the victim of a wrongful conviction.
(35:43):
Or maybe it's just that they've done something in their
past and are no longer that person. The great civil
rights attorney Brian Stevenson said it best. Each one of
us is more than the worst thing we've ever done.
The true measure of our character is how we treat
the poor, the disfavored, the accused, the incarcerated, and the condemned.
(36:07):
I think we can all learn something from that. Next
week will analyze hair microscopy, the profoundly flawed junk science
that attempts to use human hair to accuse and convict
(36:27):
people of crimes they did not commit. Wrongful conviction junk
science is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and
association with Signal Company Number One. Thanks to our executive
producer Jason Flahm and the team at Signal Company Number
One executive producer Kevin Wardis and senior producers Karen Kornhaber
(36:47):
and Britz Spangler. Our music was composed by Jay Ralph.
You can follow me on Instagram at dubin Josh. Follow
the Wrongful Conviction podcast on Facebook and on Instagram at
Wrongful Conviction and on Twitter at wrong Conviction
Hey, folks, Kate Judson here. I'm a lawyer and the
executive director of the Center for Integrity and Forensic Sciences.
We're back with another episode of Junk Science, a series
we first released in twenty twenty, but these stories are
just as relevant as ever. This week is all about
arson evidence, the faulty forensic science that was used to
(00:24):
convict Cameron Willingham, whose story you're about to hear. Since
Cameron Willingham was convicted, we're realizing more and more that
this type of evidence cannot be relied on. But the
lessons of this case don't go far enough. We still
have cases today where the only evidence presented is an
(00:47):
expert opinion. The problem is that the jury doesn't always
understand that what they're hearing is opinion, not indisputable fact,
and deciding someone's fate based on one person's opinion is
a recipe for disaster.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
It's December twenty third. Last night, you decorated a Christmas
tree with your family. You put your two year old
on your shoulder so she could hang her favorite ornament
way up high on the tree. Your twin babies gazed
up at you from the living room floor, taking the
scene in with giggles and excited kicks of their little legs.
(01:27):
Later on, your wife put the kids to bed, and
then you both stayed up late, finishing the tree and
cleaning up. In the morning, your wife leaves the house
early for some last minute chopping for the girls. The
babies hear the door slam and start to cry, as
they typically do. You take them out of their cribs,
give them eat a bottle, and put them on the
(01:47):
soft play mat on the floor so they can keep
each other company. You head back to your room and
as you lay down, you hear them cooing from across
the hall. You drift off to sleep, sleep long. You
wake up to your two year old daughter screaming, Daddy, Daddy.
You're groggy, startled, but the terror in her voice snaps
(02:12):
you awake like a blaring alarm. And then it hits you.
The room is a dense cloud of gray and black.
You can barely see. You smell charcoal, ash, smoke. Oh no,
your girls. Get the girls out of the house. It's loud.
(02:34):
It sounds like an angry windstorm. The entire house is crackling, popping.
You make your way to the baby's room and feel
around on the floor, groping in the darkness. You think
you grab one of the twins, but it's just a
baby doll. Your hair is on fire. You stand up
and pat it out and frantically get on the ground again.
(02:59):
Then a loud crash. Something is falling from somewhere in
the house. It must be the caving in a part
of the roof or a wall, but you can't see anything.
It's so hot you can't breathe. You need to catch
your breath before you pass out. You finally make your
way outside to get help. You'll come back for them.
(03:21):
You see your neighbor on her front lawn and scream
for her to call the fire department. She sees a
hysterical man covered in soot, and she yells back, they're
on the way. You try to get back inside, breaking
the window of the baby's room with a stick you
find in the yard. Flames explode from the opening. Oh God,
(03:41):
you can't get in. You're crying out for your children. Someone, anyone,
please help. The fire department finally arrives and they have
to hold you back. They find your two year old
in the bedroom on the floor. You didn't realize she
had been there, right there, Your babies are on the
(04:03):
floor of their room where you had left them with
their bottles. You had been so close to finding them.
They try to do CPR, but it's too late. You're
escorted away from the house, and once the fires are
under control, investigators in protective gear head inside. There's no
(04:25):
sense of urgency anymore. They walk through the remains and
disappear into the black and living room where you had
spent your last night together as a family. You are
dumbfounded when they arrest you for arson murder. This was
your family. You would never lay a finger on your children.
(04:51):
At your trial, the prosecutors call expert witnesses who tell
the jury that the proven signs of fire tells the
story of how you who committed this crime. You poured
lighter fluid, which they referred to as an accelerant, under
your baby's beds in the hallway by the front door.
The burn marks seared into the floor indicate where that
(05:13):
lighter fluid was puddled on the carpet. They say, there's
no way you tried to save your girls. If you had,
your feet would have been burned. Dripstains proved that you
poured accelerant up and down the hallway, the melted metal
door frame, the shattered glass. It all proves the fire
was so unnaturally hot that it produced temperatures that could
(05:36):
only have been created by chemicals that you intentionally poured
all over your home and your motive. Prosecutors argued this,
you love heavy metal music, and that indicates that you
have a dark side. You have posters on the walls
of your home, one of which depicts a grim reaper
(05:57):
that proves you're obsessed with death. You have a tattoo
of a skull and snake on your arm that indicates
that you're a violent person. You have psychiatric problems, perhaps
a demonic disposition. You couldn't afford to hire a lawyer,
so the court appointed you an attorney. He too, suspects
(06:18):
that you killed your children. He tells you to plead guilty.
If you do, they'll give you life in prison instead
of the death sentence. You can't do this. This was
an accident. There was no crime here. You're not going
to confess to killing your three beautiful children. You didn't
do anything wrong here. You were convicted and sentenced to
(06:43):
death on death row. The events of that day haunt you.
You look at the photos of your children, your wife
to remember the man you were, the life you once had.
Time seems to stand still on death row, and the
whole experience is nothing short of paralyzing. But the date
(07:06):
of your execution eventually closes in. You write a letter
to your parents, telling them to never stop fighting to
clear your name, even if it's after they put you
to death. The last words of your fellow inmates, the
ones who were executed before you, one by one, were
often apologies. Sometimes they were confessions. But before you're strapped
(07:31):
into the gurney and given a lethal injection, you say,
I am an innocent person convicted of a crime I
did not commit. I've been persecuted for twelve years for
something I did not do. From God's dust I came,
and to dust I will return, so the earth shall
(07:54):
become my throne. Your parents scatter your ashes over the
graves of your children. The story you just heard is
based on the wrongful conviction of Cameron Todd Willingham, who
(08:18):
was wrongfully convicted and executed in two thousand and four.
I'm Josh Dubin, civil rights and criminal defense attorney, an
innocent ambassador to the Innocence Project in New York Today
on wrongful conviction junk science, we examine arson evidence. In
(08:49):
nineteen seventy three, the Nixon administration published a report entitled
America Burning. It was all about damage the fires caused
in America, both in terms of physical distrutuction and the
billions of dollars spent to repair and rebuild. But unfortunately,
much of what was considered fire signs in America Burning
(09:10):
was merely a set of core assumptions that were never
subjected to the rigors of the scientific method. That is,
develop a hypothesis, test it, confirm it, reconfirm it, and
repeat until you know you have something sound and verifiable.
As a result of this study, fire investigators were given
(09:31):
a handbook, A Guide to Reading fire damage like a
psychic reads tea leaves. An investigator, having learned from this handbook,
starts his investigation at the exterior of a burnt down house.
He sees a V shaped burn on what's left of
the walls of the living room. He notes this is
the room where the fire started. He walks through the home,
(09:53):
keeping an eye out for the telltale signs of arson.
First crazed glass when windows shattered into irregular pieces with
light smoke deposits that indicate a rapid buildup of heat
that can only be caused by an accelerant. Second alligatoring,
large shiny blisters on burnt wood. Fast hot fires produced
(10:16):
by accelerants create this pattern. Third, puddle formations and burns
that look like drip trails. These are caused by the
spreading of accelerant like gasoline or paint thinner throughout a
house before it is intentionally set on fire. The investigator
checks all of these signs off the list. He knows
(10:38):
this must be arson. It turns out the investigator only
had a fifty percent chance of being right at best,
because fire science was built on a foundation of conjecture
and best guesses that were never adequately tested and confirmed
(10:59):
according to valid scientific principles. What experts and prosecutors had
been telling juries for decades about how you can definitively
determine that a fire was intentionally set was completely wrong.
In fact, signs that indicated to investigators that they were
dealing with arson, crazed glass, alligator patterns, burn marks indicating
(11:23):
drips or puddles of accelerant were actually the same things
left in the wake of an accidental fire. So the
evidence that was used to convict Cameron Todd Willingham and
so many others was deeply, deeply flawed.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
It turns out that there was no evidence whatsoever that
this had been a fire that was set by Todd
Willingham running up and down his home, you know, just
before Christmas, spreading in all the different rooms and down
the hallway, and killing his three children. It was clear
(12:06):
that this was junk science. And unfortunately, by this point
in my career, I was familiar enough with the phenomenon
of junk science not to be surprised.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Joining us today to tell us about arson evidence and
how it relates to cases like Cameron Todd Willingham's is
Barry Sheck, co founder of the Innocence Project and famed
civil rights and criminal defense attorney. So Barry, first, thanks
for being here and for our listeners. Barry is one
of my personal heroes, and I'm just ecstatic that we're
(12:39):
able to get you to enlighten us about arson evidence. Now,
you worked to get Cameron Todd Willingham's case overturned after
he was executed, and this might seem like somewhat of
a pointless fight to some people, since mister Willingham was
already put to death in two thousand and four. But
(13:01):
you are fighting for mister Willingham's final wish for his
name to be cleared and him to be declared an
innocent man by a court. I think that it's well
accepted that he's an innocent man at this point. But
you're also fighting so that the kind of evidence that
was used against mister Willingham doesn't get used to convict
(13:22):
another innocent person. And so, to start off, Barry, if
some of the clues used an arson investigation or indeed
junk science, how did Cameron Todd Willingham get convicted in
the first place?
Speaker 3 (13:37):
What the fire scientists, the arson investigators in Willingham, what
they did in that case. They would go to the
scene of a fire and they would look at all
these visual cues. And if they saw what was called alligatoring,
which was like the scales of an alligator on wood.
If they saw what was known as craze glass, that's
(14:00):
it's like a spider type cracking of the glass. If
they saw spawling of concrete that's like little chips coming
off the concrete at the scene of the fire, if
they saw scouring on the floor, poor patterns, they immediately
assumed that all of these visual cues meant that somebody
(14:22):
had spread accelerant around the house and lit it and
that was the cause of the fire. And they literally
said to the jury, we look at the fire, the
fire talks to us. The fire doesn't lie. That's very
powerful to a jury. So what happened, Josh, is that
when we at the Innocence Project saw what happened in
(14:46):
the Willingham case, we had just been involved in setting
up what's known as the Texas Forensic Science Commission. They
reviewed all the crime scene evidence in the Willingham case
and they said was clear and that is this is
junk science. This had been discredited by National Fire Protection
(15:07):
nine twenty one, ten years ago. The science was completely flawed, unreliable, ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
So even after all of that, the state of Texas
still refused to free Cameron Todd Willingham. And to show
just how flawed this evidence was, there was a man
named Ernest Willis who was convicted of a similar crime
with similar evidence than was used in the Willingham case.
But while Cameron Todd Willingham was put to death in
(15:37):
two thousand and four. Willis was declared innocent that very
same year. So how is that possible, Barry, that one
man Willingham is executed based on this junk science, while
another man, Willis, whose case was very similar, gets to
go free.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
Ernest Willis went to trial, he had a completely incompetent
lawyer who was sparred for all kinds of reasons. Willis
was so upset by the fire that killed family members
that he was literally on psychotropic medication in the witness chair. Right.
He was lucky because his lawyer was so incompetent, and
(16:18):
on his death penalty appeal he got a patent lawyer
from LEITHA Ben Watkins in New York who dove into
the case and was able to get the federal courts
to vacate that conviction. And when the conviction was remanded
on exactly the same evidence, just like the Willingham case,
(16:38):
Willis was not only exonerated. There was a prosecutor in
Pakos County, Texas took one look at this and said,
oh my god, this was an accidental fire. This was
not an arson murder. And he not only dismissed the
case against Ernest Willis. Ernest Willis was compensated as actually
(16:59):
innocent by the State of Texas, while within the same
time period, Cameron Todd Willingham was executed.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
It's just really hard to hear this stuff right because
right away this indicates some sort of double standard, or
at least some confusion within the justice system about what
arson evidence really means and how much it can be trusted.
And to be clear, by two thousand and four, there
shouldn't have been any confusion about this type of evidence
(17:27):
because in the early nineties there were two incidents that
I'm going to ask you about that really proved that
the kind of arson evidence used in the Cameron Todd
Willingham case was bogus. The first was the Lime Street
case in nineteen ninety, which was the case of Gerald
Wayne Lewis. Mister Lewis was accused of killing his pregnant wife,
(17:49):
his sister, and his sister's four children by arson. Now
Gerald always maintained his innocence, but it was actually a
prosecution expert named John Lentini who was the moving force
improving gerald innocence.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
John Lentini was an arson investigator and he went along
with a colleague of his, John Dehan, to investigate an
allegation of arson at a home on Lime Street in Jacksonville, Florida.
And they examined the crime scene, and they were all ready,
by their own admission, to make a recommendation that it
(18:27):
was an intentional arson. But they realized that right next
to the house that burned down was another house that
was abandoned, but it was the same construction. So they
rebuilt the house right next door to be identical to
the Lime Street house that burned down, and then they
(18:50):
basically put a cigarette on a couch. They began the
fire in a way that would be completely accidental. The
whole place burned down, and they saw all the clues,
all the visual clues from the craze glass, alligatoring, burning
under furniture, a completely compartmentalized fire. They saw all these cues,
(19:13):
and they knew that it was an accidental fire, not
a deliberate one, and so that began to change everything.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
So again, this is very ironic and rare because Lentini's
a fire investigator that's working for the prosecution, and he's
actually trying to prove that this Lime Street case was
in fact arson, and that Gerald Wayne Lewis had actually
done it. But he realizes that there was some serious
(19:42):
issues with his assumptions because this accidental fire actually resembled
an arson, and it resembled it in very critical ways.
And what was most shocking to me about this was
that Lentini saw puddlestains and trailmar that looked identical to
what he had been taught and so many other investigators
(20:05):
had been taught, or the telltale signs of someone dripping
gasoline or another accelerant throughout a house. But that definitely
was not the case here. And they knew that because
they set the fire themselves with a cigarette exactly.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
And they'd say, well, that really can't happen unless it's
an intentionally set fire. But it turns out with this
phenomenon of flashover, which is you get this hot combustible
object in a small space, ordinarily a room, right, and
then it begins to cause this huge burst of heat
and fire in that room, and the whole place becomes engulfed.
(20:45):
So that's what creates the intense heat that arson investigators
had hypothesized must come from the deliberate use of accelerants.
It turns out that it could all happen in a
completely accidental fire.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
So Linini the investigator, realizes that accidental fires can look
just like arson, and he does something that is actually
quite remarkable. But it shouldn't be, because whether you're working
for the prosecution or the defense, when the science tells
you something, you should not have a bias in its application.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
Right.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
He doesn't say, Oh, this is just some weird coincidence.
I'm going to keep working for prosecutors to convict people
in arson cases based on this evidence that I now
know is clearly faulty. It's wrong. Instead, he's pretty shocked,
appalled by what he sees, and he feels like he's
been misled by this evidence for years. Right, And he
(22:02):
gets an opportunity to examine a bunch more accidental fires
to make sure that his findings in the Lime Street
case were consistent with other accidental fires.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
I don't know if people remember, but these homes on
in the hills in Oakland, California, began to burn down,
you know, in what was plainly a series of accidental fires.
And after all these homes were burned down, the fire
scientists went at and examined each and every one of them,
and they realized, once again, here were plainly accidental fires.
(22:35):
But all these visual cues that arson experts had been
relying on demonstrated that it was an accident. It was
not an intentionally set fire. So take just the craze glass.
That's a simple thing to understand. You know, you look
at the glass, it's sort of spider glass, and that
supposedly an indication of suddenly intense heat that comes from
(23:01):
an accelerant induced fire. In fact, you found craze glass
all over in Oakland in the Lime Street fire. Because
craize glass happens when people come to put out the
fire and they put cold water on it and the
glass cracks. That's how you get crazed glass.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
So these arson investigators have been testifying for years and
years that the reason you see crazed glass and it's
no pun intent. That it's actually a crazy notion that
they're testifying to one thing, and it turns out to
be the exact opposite. All right, So crazed glass was
caused by the cooling of the glass when they're putting
the fire out. What were some other things that were wrong.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
About They would say, oh, we're looking at mattress springs
in a bed or something and they're melted. That can
only happen if it's an intentionally set fire. But when
they went to the hills of Oakland and looked at
these homes, they saw the same thing, and the same
thing at the Lime Street fire.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
I mean, you would think that would be the end
of people trying to use this kind of junk science,
this kind of false evidence, but that isn't the case.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
What is really upsetting is that you see over the
next few decades, nonetheless, lots of people who were convicted
because they never did scientific validation in the first place.
You actually have to conduct experiments, you have to have hypotheses,
(24:35):
and you have to prove that they're true, instead of
just having you know, really you know, sort of law
enforcement people in lab coats, so to speak, or people
that have expertise by way of quote unquote experience going
to crime scenes and looking at fire scenes and really
(24:55):
coming up with their own hypotheses that were never demonstrated
to be true by science. That's what's so shocking about
this whole area. In other words, if you believe all
these different visual cues demonstrate that an accelerant has been used,
you should do experiments to prove the point.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Now, Barry, this isn't the case where these investigators were
out to harm people. This is just how they were trained.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
I have some sympathy for a whole group of people
who had, many of them just high school graduates who
were trained in arson investigation, to believe all these different
visual cues were a sign of the use of an
(25:43):
accelerant and intentionally set fire that was never empirically demonstrated,
and yet they were doing it, and that's how they
made a living. That's true, and they thought that they
had expertise. It's imagine how horrendous it is to believe,
as a prosecutor or as a so called you know,
(26:06):
arson investigator, that you were wrong and you destroyed people's lives.
People don't get up in the morning and say let's
do that, right, but it happens, and it's very hard
to admit to it.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
All right, So why do you think it is that?
You know, generations of experts have all been proven to
be wrong. The assumptions they rely on turn out to
be incorrect, But there's this unwillingness to change.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
Once you have invested yourself in this belief and all
these very weighty consequences follow. It's very hard to admit
that you were wrong, even when there's scientific proof that
you're wrong. John Lintini and John de Haan and all
these various experts, you know, they started off as regular
(26:59):
are and investigators that were taught to believe these things.
But engaging in real science and doing these experiments, they
realized it was all wrong, and they had an enormous
amount of trouble persuading the forensic science community to stop,
and they're still fighting about it even to this day.
(27:22):
I mean, I think that the Willingham case and all
these other exonerations have exposed the community to it, and
you literally can see fewer arson convictions since that happened.
But Josh, you're absolutely right. It's mystifying. It's so upsetting
that it is taking so long to change.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
It, and meanwhile, these convictions based on this false arson
science or there's fire evidence just keep on coming.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
Hantak Lee, whose daughter who suffered from mental illness, was
found yeah, literally burnt to death, incinerated, you know, in
a small community in Pennsylvania. He gets convicted of killing
his daughter intentionally in a fire which did not happen.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
Right, The case of Hantok Lee is just it's really
really troubling. I mean, here's a guy that spent fifteen
years in prison for a murder he did not commit.
And there's a quote that always stuck with me from
an opinion written by a judge during Hantok Lee's appeal,
and it was this quote. Much of what was presented
(28:33):
to Lee's jury as science is now conceded to be
little more than superstition end quote. I mean, that's so remarkable,
isn't it. And you know, again, the fact that this
is still used in the face of quotes like that
is just it's hard to understand. You know. He was
granted a new trial and finally exonerated, thankfully, in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
Another was a Sonia Casey, who is convicted of burning
down a house and killing I guess it was her uncle,
Bill Richardson. And and of course it turned out that
Bill Richardson was actually a heavy smoker and had probably
fallen asleep with a burning cigarette. But plainly she did
not start this fire. All the same kind of junk
(29:19):
science was used in that case. And that's the great
tragedy when you look at the arson cases, so many
people like Ernest Willis or Cameron Todd Willingham or a
Hantock League, you know, they're all convicted of killing with
intentionally set fires. They're loved ones. That to me is,
(29:41):
you know, the horrible, horrible irony of these junk science cases.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
Now for our listeners, I know Barry, you know twenty
years and I've seen you get emotional before and passionate
about a lot of cases. I want to go back
to the Cameron Todd Willingham case for a moment because
it seems to me that this is one that really
stuck with you, and it seems to me like one
(30:10):
of the two or three cases that has really haunted
you in all your innocence work.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
How can it not haunt you? It should haunt everyone
in this country. I mean, this is a case that
ought to change the way the people look at capital
punishment and forensic science. I think we look we've made
a lot of progress, but we still haven't corrected the
biggest injustice of all, and that is the wrongful execution
(30:40):
of Cameron Todd Willingham. Do you see the suffering up
to the very very end and the execution of an
innocent man. How could it not haunt you? There's so
much importance attached with the state finally admitting that it
was wrong and that an innocent person is executed, and
(31:01):
that will happen in Texas. It will.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
Something we keep returning back to in this podcast is
the two thousand and nine National Academy of Sciences Report,
which is a report published by rigorous scientists that is
very critical of forensic sciences like arson investigation. In fact,
the only one that it's not really critical of is DNA.
(31:40):
And you've done a lot to try to push the
lessons of this report to overturn convictions based on junk science.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
Truth is the two thousand and nine and National Academy
of Science Report recommended that there be an independent entity
in the federal government that would be dedicated to providing
a scientific basis and oversight to all these forensic science disciplines.
(32:12):
And independent entity, the National Commission on Forensic Science was
put into place, which had independent experts from lots of
different scientific communities. When Trump was elected, he abolished the
National Commission on Forensic Science.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
Look, it's really inspiring to see that despite all that's
gone wrong and all that hasn't worked that you're still
hopeful because something else that's so shocking is that this
issue about what kind of evidence should be considered scientific facts,
something that can literally determine whether or not someone should
live or die based on a crime they may not
(32:52):
have committed. It's all still being treated like a political issue,
and you have personal experience with these political barrier Yet
you're still hopeful despite all of the harm that's been
done and continues to be done by political officials, by presidents,
by judges who, unlike Lentini, refuse to see the light,
(33:15):
so to speak.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
You know, it becomes this big echo chamber. Junk science
is admitted by one court, right, and all the experts
can then testify again and again and again, even though
it was never properly validated in the first place. And
we've had a lot of that, and judges really have
to be rigorous on dealing with it. And the problem
(33:36):
with judges is that we all went to law school
and not medical school. The judges really do have to
be better in terms of getting into the nuts and
bolts of the science. It's intimidating to them, just as
it's intimidating to a lot of lawyers.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
You might be listening to this what you can do
to help. I want every listener to consider that even
those who were wrongly convicted and are lucky enough to
be released from prison, their lives are just never the same.
Let's take the example of Sonya Casey. She's the woman
Barry Shek mentioned who was accused of murdering her uncle
(34:19):
by arson. We know that miss Casey was innocent because,
amongst other evidence, it was later found during the autopsy
of her uncle that he most likely died from a
heart attack. There was no soot in his lungs, which
would have been there if he had in fact died
in the fire. Instead, there was fluid in his lungs,
(34:40):
so the evidence supported the conclusion that he was dead
before the fire had even spread. Nevertheless, Casey was sentenced
to ninety nine years in prison. Sonya Casey was eventually exonerated,
but the stain of her wrongful conviction meant that on
every job application or when she try to rent an apartment,
(35:01):
she would either have to check a box saying that
she had been convicted of a crime, or it would
be revealed on a background check that made it nearly
impossible for her to find work or a place to live. So,
if you own a business, or you're a landlord, or
you're just in a position to either approve or reject
(35:22):
someone for work or a place to live, and someone
checks the box that they had previously been convicted of
a crime, please talk to them. Learn about the circumstances
of their arrest, the accusations against them, who they are
now as a human being. Perhaps you'll find that they
were the victim, yes, the victim of a wrongful conviction.
(35:43):
Or maybe it's just that they've done something in their
past and are no longer that person. The great civil
rights attorney Brian Stevenson said it best. Each one of
us is more than the worst thing we've ever done.
The true measure of our character is how we treat
the poor, the disfavored, the accused, the incarcerated, and the condemned.
(36:07):
I think we can all learn something from that. Next
week will analyze hair microscopy, the profoundly flawed junk science
that attempts to use human hair to accuse and convict
(36:27):
people of crimes they did not commit. Wrongful conviction junk
science is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and
association with Signal Company Number One. Thanks to our executive
producer Jason Flahm and the team at Signal Company Number
One executive producer Kevin Wardis and senior producers Karen Kornhaber
(36:47):
and Britz Spangler. Our music was composed by Jay Ralph.
You can follow me on Instagram at dubin Josh. Follow
the Wrongful Conviction podcast on Facebook and on Instagram at
Wrongful Conviction and on Twitter at wrong Conviction
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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