Prelims.qxd 11/14/07 2:28 PM Page i Forensics under Fire Prelims.qxd 11/14/07 2:28 PM Page ii Prelims.qxd 11/14/07 2:28 PM Page iii ≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈ Forensics under Fire Are Bad Science and Dueling Experts Corrupting Criminal Justice? JIM FISHER ≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈ RUTGERS UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW BRUNSWICK, NEW JERSEY, AND LONDON Prelims.qxd 11/14/07 2:28 PM Page iv LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Fisher, Jim, – Forensics under fire : are bad science and dueling experts corrupting criminal justice? / Jim Fisher. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN ‒‒‒‒ (hardcover : alk. paper) . Criminal investigation—United States. Crime scene searches—United States. Forensic sciences—United States. Evidence, Criminal—United States I. Title. HV.F .—dc CIP A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British Library. Copyright © by Jim Fisher All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, Joyce Kilmer Avenue, Piscataway, NJ –. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law. Visit our Web site: http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu Manufactured in the United States of America Prelims.qxd 11/14/07 2:28 PM Page v It is through clues that we form our opinion about the facts of a case. There is only one alternative: to catch the culprit red-handed. —Theodore Reik, The Compulsion to Confess, 1959 Clues are tangible signs which prove—or seem to prove—that no crime can be committed by thought only and that we live in a world regulated by mechanical laws. The dead man was not killed by a ghostly hand but by a murderer of flesh and blood. —Theodore Reik, The Unknown Murderer, 1945 Prelims.qxd 11/14/07 2:28 PM Page vi Prelims.qxd 11/14/07 2:28 PM Page vii CONTENTS Preface ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 PART ONE Diagnosing Death: Problems in the Science and Practice of Forensic Pathology 9 1 Forensic Pathologists from Hell: Bungled Autopsies, Bad Calls, and Blown Cases 13 2 A Question of Credibility: Bad Reputations and the Politics of Death 29 3 The Sudden Infant Death Debate: Dr. Roy Meadow, Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, and Meadow’s Law 47 4 Infants Who Can’t Breathe: Illness or Suffocation? 67 5 Swollen Brains and Broken Bones: Disease or Infanticide? 79 PART TWO Crime-Scene Impression Identification: Forensic Science or Subjective Analysis? 101 6 Fingerprint Identification: Trouble in Paradise 103 7 Fingerprints Never Lie: Except in Scotland 123 8 Shoe-Print Identification and Foot Morphology: The Lay Witness and the Cinderella Analysis 139 9 Bite-Mark Identification: Do Teeth Leave Prints? 153 vii Prelims.qxd 11/14/07 2:28 PM Page viii viii CONTENTS 10 Ear-Mark Identification: Emerging Science or Bad Evidence? 169 PART THREE Hired Guns, Smoke Blowers, and Phonies: The Expert Witness Problem 179 11 Expert versus Expert: The Handwriting Wars in the Ramsey Case 182 12 John Mark Karr: DNA Trumps the Graphologists in the Ramsey Case 206 13 Hair and Fiber Identification: An Inexact Science 218 14 DNA Analysis: Backlogs, Sloppy Work, and Unqualified People 231 15 Bullet Identification, FBI Style: Overselling the Science 244 16 The Celebrity Expert: Dr. Henry Lee 253 Conclusion 275 Notes 287 Sources 291 Index 317 Prelims.qxd 11/14/07 2:28 PM Page ix PREFACE I’ve spent most of my adult life investigating crime, teaching criminal inves- tigation, writing about the subject, and trying to figure out why so many seri- ous crimes in the United States either go unsolved or lead to wrongful convictions. I’ve concluded that the law enforcement wars on drugs and ter- rorism have militarized the police and marginalized criminal investigation as a law enforcement function. Since forensic science is mainly in service to criminal investigation, scientific crime detection is not being fully utilized and so hasn’t lived up to its full criminal justice potential. In the 1920s forensic science pioneers and their supporters believed that one day scientific criminal investigation would significantly increase crime solution rates and at the same time reduce the dependence on the unreliable evidence produced by the third degree, eyewitness testimony, and jailhouse informants. This has not happened, at least not to a great enough extent, and to that degree, forensic science is a failed promise. While the failure of forensic science to fully achieve its potential involves many realities beyond its control, there are problems within the profession that can be fixed by the practitioners themselves. Thinking about the nature and severity of these problems, how they affect the criminal justice system, and how they might be solved led me to write this book. Jim Fisher February 13, 2007 ix Prelims.qxd 11/14/07 2:28 PM Page x Prelims.qxd 11/14/07 2:28 PM Page xi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am grateful for the help of Karl Kageff, who read an early draft of the manu- script and made helpful and important suggestions. At Rutgers University Press, Doreen Valentine’s strong editorial hand helped transform a flawed manuscript into a better book. Even experienced writers can learn from a truly outstanding editor. I am indebted to criminal investigator and author Robert L. Snow, whose review of the manuscript led to significant improvements. I would also like to thank Dr. James D. Fisher for his editorial suggestions. And finally, thanks to Veronica Fisher for her computer expertise. xi Prelims.qxd 11/14/07 2:28 PM Page xii Prelims.qxd 11/14/07 2:28 PM Page xiii Forensics under Fire Prelims.qxd 11/14/07 2:28 PM Page xiv Intro.qxd 11/9/07 11:34 AM Page 1 Introduction A crime-scene photographer is snapping shots of a dead woman lying face- down in her kitchen. The blood pooled on the floor has been tracked around the house by someone wearing a pair of men’s shoes. A detective is sketching the scene while a fingerprint technician examines the . caliber pistol lying next to the woman’s body. A second criminalist gathers up the shell casing and, from the kitchen table, the handwritten suicide note. Another investigator is placing paper lunch bags over the hands of the victim’s husband, who had made the call. At the request of this detective, this man—let’s call him Bill Smith—has changed out of his shoes, socks, and trousers. These items have been placed into separate evidence containers. Uniformed officers are sealing off the house and standing guard to keep unauthorized visitors from the site. At the police station someone from the crime laboratory using a wad of cotton and a special solution swabs Smith’s hands for traces of gunshot residue. Then the detectives who were at the crime scene question him. Smith says that his wife, Mary, had been depressed and threatening suicide. Also, she had been drinking heavily and taking sleeping pills. When he left for work that morning at eight she was still in bed. He had called her from the office at two in the afternoon, and other than sounding a little intoxicated, she seemed okay. The firearm, purchased two weeks earlier for home protec- tion, was his. He tells the detectives that he arrived home at five o’clock, entered the house through the front door, took a couple of steps and then spotted his wife’s body on the floor. He says he knew at once she was dead and did not approach her body or walk into the kitchen. Instead, he ran out of the house and called . A detective asks if he’d be willing to take a polygraph 1 Intro.qxd 11/9/07 11:34 AM Page 2 2 FORENSICS UNDER FIRE test. Smith says no, he doesn’t believe in lie detectors. He does agree to pro- vide samples of his handwriting and to be fingerprinted. He assures the detec- tives that he has nothing to hide and that he wants to help the police in their investigation. The autopsy reveals that Mary Smith had been shot once in the chest. The powder-burn pattern on her skin suggests that the shot came from between six and twelve inches away from her. Based on early signs of postmortem lividity— light purple discoloration on the anterior plane (front) of her body caused by the settling of her blood—the forensic pathologist believes that she has been dead much longer than three hours. This means that Bill Smith could not have talked to his wife that afternoon at two o’clock. Early stages of rigor mortis— body stiffening—also suggest a time of death inconsistent with Smith’s alibi that he was at work when she killed herself. The pathologist has also found, on the edge of Mary Smith’s right hand, a nick made by a bullet, trauma referred to as a defense wound, evidence that belies suicide. As far as the pathologist can determine without a full toxicological analysis, the victim had not been under the influence of alcohol or drugs when she died. The next day the crime lab issues the gunshot residue report, which reveals that Mary Smith’s hands tested negative for traces of gunpowder. But it’s a different story for her husband: his right hand tested positive, which means that he, not the victim, had recently fired a handgun. The serological analysis of his shoes, socks, and trousers reveals traces of AB negative blood, which happens to be his wife’s blood type.