November 8: Forensic psychiatrist Martin Blinder: Obituary Writer Clay Risen's obituary on the forensic scientists recent death is aptly headed, "Martin Blinder Has Died. He Was Blamed for the ‘Twinkie Defense,' and sub-headed, "A forensic psychiatrist, he testified that consuming sugary foods could cause antisocial behavior. To his dismay, a catchphrase was born. He was 89." Who could believe that he would be haunted by for the rest of his life by a few out of context words, as a photo caption tells us: "Martin Blinder in 1983. He distanced himself from what reporters called the Twinkie defense, saying, “Dr. Blinder found the whole experience infuriating. “There never was a Twinkie defense,” he told The San Francisco Examiner in 1983. “Because it’s so preposterous, it’s made me the object of derision.” so preposterous, it’s made me the object of derision.”

 WIKIPEDIA ENTRY: "White's defense was that he suffered diminished capacity as a result of his depression, a symptom of which was a change in diet from healthy food to Twinkies and other sugary foods. Contrary to common belief, White's attorneys did not argue that the Twinkies were the cause of White's actions, but that their consumption was symptomatic of his underlying depression. The product itself was only mentioned in passing during the trial. White was convicted of voluntary manslaughter rather than first-degree murder, and served five years in prison."......"In stories covering the trial, satirist Paul Krassner had played up the angle of the Twinkie, and he would later claim credit for coining the term "Twinkie defense". The day after the verdict, columnist Herb Caen wrote in the San Francisco Chronicleabout the police support for White, himself a former policeman, and their "dislike of homosexuals" and mentioned "the Twinkie insanity defense" in passing.  News stories published after the trial, however, frequently reported the defense arguments inaccurately, claiming that the defense had presented junk food as the cause of White's depression and/or diminished capacity, instead of having been symptomatic of an existing depression.  Dan White committed suicide seven years later. As a result of negative publicity from the White case and others, the term diminished capacity was abolished in 1982 by Proposition 8 and the California legislature and was replaced by the term diminished actuality, referring not to the capacity to have a specific intent, but to whether the defendant actually had the required intent to commit the crime.  Additionally, California's statutory definitions of premeditation and malice required for murder were eliminated by the state's legislature, with the return to common law definitions. By this time, the "Twinkie defense" had become such a common term that one lawmaker had waved a Twinkie in the air while making his point during a debate."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twinkie_defense?shem=aimgspe,

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QUOTE  OF THE DAY: "Dr. Blinder remained a highly sought-after forensic psychiatrist long after the White case receded into history. But he never stopped trying to live down the moment that made him famous. If I found a cure for cancer,” he told the news website SF Gate in 2003, “they’d still say I was the guy who invented the ‘Twinkie defense.’”

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OBITUARY: "Martin Blinder Has Died. He Was Blamed for the ‘Twinkie Defense,' by Clay Risen, published by The New York Times, on November 6, 2026. Clay Risen is on the New York Times  'Obituary Desk.' As he describes his work: "I write about all manner of fascinating lives — a pioneering oyster farmer in Louisiana, a French pianist still recording albums in her 100s and one of the last victims of the Red Scare, to name a few. Obviously, the reason for writing an obituary is the recent death of its subject. But to me they are really about people’s lives, how they lived them and why they mattered. Each is a brick in a wall that together constitutes our shared history."

SUB-HEADING: "A forensic psychiatrist, he testified that consuming sugary foods could cause antisocial behavior. To his dismay, a catchphrase was born. He was 89."

PHOTO CAPTION: "Martin Blinder in 1983. He distanced himself from what reporters called the Twinkie defense, saying, “It’s so preposterous, it’s made me the object of derision.”

GEST: "This much was clear: On Nov. 27, 1978, a disgruntled San Francisco politician named Dan White walked into the office of Mayor George Moscone and shot him to death.

He then walked down the hall to find Harvey Milk, a member of the city’s board of supervisors and the first openly gay man elected to public office in California. Mr. White shot and killed him, too.

Mr. White was immediately arrested, and he confessed. But at his murder trial the next year, his lawyers claimed that his mental capacities had been diminished by stress and depression, a claim they supported by calling the forensic psychiatrist Martin Blinder to the stand.

Dr. Blinder testified for more than four hours. But it was a passing reference to junk food that earned him a place in history.

Mr. White was a fit, healthy man, Dr. Blinder said. But he struggled with depression, and when he was depressed, he turned to sugary foods to cope.

“Whenever he felt things were not going right, he would abandon his usual program of exercise and good nutrition, and start gorging himself on junk foods — Twinkies, Coca-Cola,” Dr. Blinder testified. “The more junk food he con­sumed, the worse he’d feel. The worse he’d feel, the more he’d gorge himself, and so on, in a vicious circle.”

And several studies, Dr. Blinder noted, showed that “high-sugar-content food with lots of preservatives can precipitate antisocial and even violent behavior.”

He never claimed that junk food like Twinkies had caused Mr. White’s diminished capacity; he offered a much more nuanced analysis. But after the jury found Mr. White guilty of voluntary manslaughter rather than first-degree murder, reporters looking for an explanation blamed Dr. Blinder and what came to be known as the Twinkie defense — namely, that eating too much junk food made a person temporarily irrational.

Dr. Blinder, a highly regarded forensic psychiatrist who spent the rest of his career trying to correct the record, died on Oct. 30 at his home in San Anselmo, Calif. He was 89.

His wife, Mary Mahima Daily Blinder, said the death was from pancreatic cancer.

The Twinkie defense became a pop-culture buzz phrase in the early 1980s, and a popular target for victims’ rights advocates, who saw it as evidence of a legal system run amok. In 1982, California voters abolished the diminished-capacity defense, and several states placed restrictions on the use of expert witnesses in felony trials.

Dr. Blinder found the whole experience infuriating.

“There never was a Twinkie defense,” he told The San Francisco Examiner in 1983. “Because it’s so preposterous, it’s made me the object of derision.”

Martin George Blinder was born on Feb. 22, 1937, in the Bronx. His father, Harry, was a cardiologist, and his mother, Regina (Schwartz) Blinder, managed the home.

He graduated from Cornell in 1958 and received an M.D. from the Chicago Medical School in 1962.

Dr. Blinder settled in San Anselmo, north of San Francisco, where he practiced medicine and taught at nearby universities. He also got into politics: In 1972, he was elected to the Town Council, where he oversaw the passage of one of the country’s first restrictions on smoking in public places, and served as mayor from 1975 to 1976.

He was married three times. His first marriage, to Dorothy Braco, ended in divorce in 1976. His second wife, Elizabeth Doney, died by suicide in 1986.

In 2000, Ms. Braco attacked him in his home, stabbing him multiple times before fleeing. He managed to call 911 before collapsing from blood loss. Ms. Braco’s car was later found near the San Francisco entrance to the Golden Gate Bridge; her body washed up on the shore nearby.

He married Mary Mahima Daily in 2010. Along with her, Dr. Blinder is survived by two children, two grandchildren and a sister, Phoebe Blinder.

Dr. Blinder wrote several books for academic and popular audiences, including “Psychiatry in the Everyday Practice of Law” (1972) and “Lovers, Killers, Husbands and Wives” (1985), about the reasons people kill intimate partners.

Mr. White received parole in 1984 and died by suicide in 1985.

Dr. Blinder remained a highly sought-after forensic psychiatrist long after the White case receded into history. But he never stopped trying to live down the moment that made him famous.

“If I found a cure for cancer,” he told the news website SF Gate in 2003, “they’d still say I was the guy who invented the ‘Twinkie defense.’”

If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.

NYTimes: Martin Blinder Has Died. He Was Blamed for the ‘Twinkie Defense.’ 

The entire obituary can be read at:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/06/us/martin-blinder-twinkie-defense-dead.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog. FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."Lawyer Radha Natarajan: Executive Director: New England Innocence Project; FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true;

November 8: Fake (junk) Science: (National Public Radio): Transcript of Emily Kwong's enlightening interview with Chris Fabricant on the topic," Is your favourite crime show rooted in fake science: Fabricant: "FABRICANT: Over half of all known wrongful convictions are attributable to the use of junk science. KWONG: And Chris says that is a problem. Today on the show, the junk science keeping people in jail. We're diving into the forensic techniques that have been completely debunked, the ones that should be examined more carefully, and the systems that have kept them alive in criminal courts for so long. I'm Emily Kwong. And you're listening to Short Wave, the science podcast from NPR."

PASSAGE  OF THE DAY: "KWONG: Of the methods we've described, have any fallen out of favor in a way that you're like, this is good? It's the method that's the problem. Or is it actually the whole field that's the problem? FABRICANT: I get asked that question a fair amount. People say that, you know, we're not using hair microscopy anymore, and we're not using bite marks, or what have you. And the reality is that we are, in that I get a call all the time from defense attorneys that are seeking to resist the introduction of those techniques. But new junk science emerges every day. Let's talk about ShotSpotter evidence, right? This is supposed to be a digital, acoustic, forensic technique that allows police officers to detect gunshots and separate those sounds from all other loud noises, and then direct police resources to the sound of gunshots. KWONG: Wow. FABRICANT: And that sounds reasonable, right? KWONG: Yeah. FABRICANT: But actually, it's worse than flipping a coin as to whether or not there are actual gunshots. You know, without real scientific scrutiny, the chance of a forensic technique being introduced at trial and being wrong or exaggerated is overwhelming.

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PRODUCTION: "National Public Radio (NPR) production: "Short Wave." 'Is your favourite crime show rooted in fake science?' Published on October 30, 2026. (Chris Fabricant is the director of strategic litigation (Joseph Flom Special Counsel) at the Innocence Project. In this role, he leads the Innocence Project’s strategic litigation department, whose attorneys develop and execute national litigation and public policy strategies to address the leading causes of wrongful conviction.  Chris is one of the United States’s leading experts on forensic sciences and scientific litigation. Prior to joining the Innocence Project, he was a longtime public defender and law professor. He frequently serves as a public speaker on law reform issues, and is widely published in both legal scholarship and in mainstream media. In his new book, Junk Science and the American Criminal Justice System, Chris examines the role that faulty scientific evidence has in continuing and strengthening an unjust and racial biased criminal legal system."..."Emily Kwong is the founding reporter and now co-host for Short Wave - and she is also the host and co-creator of Inheriting."

GIST: "[MUSIC PLAYING]

ANNOUNCER: You're listening to Short Wave from NPR.

[AUDIO PLAYBACK]

[BACKGROUND CHATTER, DOG BARKING]

SPEAKER 1: I could speak volumes about Conrad Ecklie, but I have a crime scene to process, so you'll have to-- you'll have to excuse me. (Conrad Ecklie, for those who do not know, is a character in CSI "Crime Scene Investigation." I used to love that show!  HL); 

[END PLAYBACK]

EMILY KWONG: You've seen it. I've seen it-- crime scene investigators doing what they do best-- making perfect TV.

[AUDIO PLAYBACK]

SPEAKER 2: Kind of light.

SPEAKER 3: What, are you working for OSHA now? [SCOFFS] This is a Lady Macbeth.

[END PLAYBACK]

CHRIS FABRICANT: Forensic evidence in those shows is presented as conclusive, objective, infallible. They get the bad guy in a half hour and wrap it up.

KWONG: That's Chris Fabricant, the Director of Strategic Litigation at the Innocence Project. He started out as a public defender in New York City, in the Bronx. And he told us, in the early 2000s, forensic evidence came up all the time in court, the kind presented on TV and widely used by law enforcement in the real world.

FABRICANT: DNA evidence, blood-spatter evidence, what your listeners will think of as ballistics evidence, psychological evidence-- the heavier the cases are, the more forensics that are involved in the case.

KWONG: Over the years, Chris watched law enforcement and forensic experts present this evidence as a silver bullet.

FABRICANT: It's almost always admitted by the court, no matter how vigorous of a challenge beforehand. And it's almost always accepted by lay jurors as providing an objective, scientific truth that they wouldn't be able to glean for themselves.

KWONG: But then a watershed report came out in 2009 from the National Academy of Sciences.

FABRICANT: That examined 13 of the most commonly used forensic techniques and found the conclusions that were being accepted in criminal courts were scientifically indefensible.

KWONG: Chris has a simpler term for these techniques. He calls them "junk science." Anyway, later that year, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy created a subcommittee on forensic science to address problems and strengthen forensics overall. And then, a few years later, the Innocence Project partnered with criminal defense lawyers, the FBI, and the DOJ to review more than 2,000 criminal cases involving the debunked technique of microscopic hair analysis. It's progress. But as any true crime enthusiast will tell you, forensic science has not fallen by the wayside-- far from it.

FABRICANT: Over half of all known wrongful convictions are attributable to the use of junk science.

KWONG: And Chris says that is a problem. Today on the show, the junk science keeping people in jail. We're diving into the forensic techniques that have been completely debunked, the ones that should be examined more carefully, and the systems that have kept them alive in criminal courts for so long. I'm Emily Kwong. And you're listening to Short Wave, the science podcast from NPR.

KWONG: OK, Chris, I'm going to start us off with your words. You have called certain forensic techniques "junk science" and said they don't come from the world of science.

FABRICANT: Yes.

KWONG: So where do they come from?

FABRICANT: Forensic sciences are often created by law enforcement for law enforcement purposes, often to solve a particular crime. That's not the scientific method. That's expedient to get a conviction. And once a forensic technique has been admitted in a criminal court, it's forever thereafter accepted by other courts. Legal precedent reigns supreme in criminal law. The first time that something is introduced in court and accepted by court, there's a legal precedent is established. And it's very, very difficult to get any other court to exclude that evidence.

KWONG: So there's a lot of forensic science that appears in courtrooms as evidence in TV courtrooms, but also, some courtrooms around the country. There's so many different tools that have been used in this way. We can't cover all of them, so let's just focus on three.

FABRICANT: OK.

KWONG: I want to start with hair microscopy. What is that?

FABRICANT: Hair microscopy is a discredited technique that was used to match suspects to hairs found at crime scenes, fundamentally. So a hair was found in a probative place at a crime scene. A suspect is developed. You pluck some hairs from the suspect, and you examine the questioned hair and the known hair side by side under a microscope and declare a match. But it was dressed up as very sciencey by the FBI, primarily. They claimed that there was a match. Often, they would make a probabilistic statement, like that it's very, very likely that it came from this suspect, or something along those lines. But what they didn't know, in reality, was, it could be 1 in 10 people might also match that hair, or 1 in 10 million, right?

KWONG: Whoa.

FABRICANT: They really had no idea. And it was-- it took nearly 70 wrongful convictions-- 70-- before the FBI and the Department of Justice came to the Innocence Project and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and admitted that their agents had been overstating the significance of this evidence.



KWONG: And comparing bite marks, I suppose, made by people's teeth has also been used as evidence. What do you think about that?

FABRICANT: Bite marks are garbage. They should never have been used.

KWONG: Tell me how you really feel. OK.

FABRICANT: There's nothing probative that could ever come from a so-called bite mark comparison. Eyeballing an injury and determining that it's a so-called bite mark, the research shows, and anecdotally, from wrongful convictions, forensic dentists are no better than you and me at diagnosing an injury as an adult human bite mark. And beyond that is that these dentists were taking photographs of these injuries at a moment in time. A decomposing body changes hour to hour, day to day, week to week. So a so-called match, you know, could be a match one day and not--

KWONG: Yeah.

FABRICANT: --match the next.

KWONG: One of the most widespread techniques that the FBI has also supported is blood spatter analysis. And what's interesting about this one-- I did a little reading-- ProPublica has a really good article about it-- that this method was created by a scientist, someone with a chemistry degree who--

FABRICANT: Right.

KWONG: --kind of got into forensics. What do you think of blood spatter work in forensics today?

FABRICANT: Well, there is a there-there with blood spatter evidence, if it's done by an expert who understands trigonometry, understands the effect of gravity on blood spatter, and understands fluid dynamics, which is an area of research that's highly technical and highly scientific, and beyond the ken, certainly, of your average crime scene technician. So if it's done in a way that it can be relatively rigorous and modest in what it can and cannot say, it could be used. The trouble is, blood spatter evidence is often used by under-trained police officers who don't have a background in mathematics or real science. And it's used to explain an entire crime scene, how everything unfolded, and way overstated and has led to wrongful conviction.

KWONG: Yeah. I want to talk about the people who are presenting this evidence. You describe them as they're forensic experts. And they're presented as having significant backgrounds in science. And that's a key part of why juries should believe them. What do you think about the people who are the ones taking the stand to share this evidence in trial?

FABRICANT: Well, forensic experts, I should say, are well-intentioned, smart, dedicated, well-trained in their fields, and are trying to do the right thing. You know, they believe that they're participating in a civic responsibility. Troublingly, many of them look at themselves as crime-fighters or crime-solvers, which is, of course, not a scientist's role, which is to provide objective, scientific information. The trouble with most forensic experts and in their fields, is that there are less formal training. They don't have degrees in science. And they're not required to have degrees in science. And they've accepted at face value the overstated and exaggerated claims that their mentors have taught them.

KWONG: Of the methods we've described, have any fallen out of favor in a way that you're like, this is good? It's the method that's the problem. Or is it actually the whole field that's the problem?

FABRICANT: I get asked that question a fair amount. People say that, you know, we're not using hair microscopy anymore, and we're not using bite marks, or what have you. And the reality is that we are, in that I get a call all the time from defense attorneys that are seeking to resist the introduction of those techniques. But new junk science emerges every day. Let's talk about ShotSpotter evidence, right? This is supposed to be a digital, acoustic, forensic technique that allows police officers to detect gunshots and separate those sounds from all other loud noises, and then direct police resources to the sound of gunshots.

KWONG: Wow.

FABRICANT: And that sounds reasonable, right?

KWONG: Yeah.

FABRICANT: But actually, it's worse than flipping a coin as to whether or not there are actual gunshots. You know, without real scientific scrutiny, the chance of a forensic technique being introduced at trial and being wrong or exaggerated is overwhelming.

KWONG: What you're describing, the way that forensic science is widely used in courtrooms across the country, of course, has consequences. Your colleagues and you have found that when this happens, it leads to false convictions. How often is that happening, and to whom?

FABRICANT: Well, the "to whom" question is overwhelmingly poor people and disproportionately Black and Brown people. That's true with everything about the criminal legal system in the United States. This is happening all over. Before I got to the Innocence Project, I had never litigated a capital case. And I naively assumed that in capital litigation, that the science would be much more rigorous, that the evidence would be much more rigorously tested, that the evidence would be more carefully scrutinized, that courts would exclude unreliable evidence because the stakes are literally life and death. But what I have found is the opposite-- the higher profile, the higher the stakes, the more capital litigation that I've done, the more junk science that I've seen.

KWONG: Yeah. And I understand that's in part because of something called the CSI effect, where jurors are biased towards forensic evidence because of TV, because of how science is portrayed on CSI or Dexter.

FABRICANT: So there are two versions, or two points of view, on the CSI effect. There's a prosecutor's point of view, and there's the defense attorney's. Prosecutors argue that CSI effect requires them to introduce scientific evidence, because all these crime shows always have scientific evidence, and that jurors are going to expect scientific evidence. And if they don't get it, they won't get their convictions.

KWONG: Wow.

FABRICANT: And what the defense attorneys will tell you is that the CSI effect makes jurors credulous about any scientific evidence that's presented, because as we talked about earlier, crime television and regular news presents forensic science as infallible.

KWONG: Yeah.

FABRICANT: Always catches the bad guy--

KWONG: Interesting.

FABRICANT: --right?

KWONG: What a pickle.

FABRICANT: I've got an easy solution.

KWONG: What is it?

FABRICANT: Well, one is that we need to have something like the FDA for forensics. We have to have a government agency that's testing the validity and reliability of forensic techniques before they're ever introduced to make life-and-liberty decisions. And the other thing, the easiest free fix that you could have is to blind the experts from biasing information.

KWONG: To make them more like scientists, where there's--

FABRICANT: Right.

KWONG: --double-blind studies involving the participants.

FABRICANT: Right. Every other area of science goes through--

KWONG: Yeah.

FABRICANT: --hoops to avoid bias improperly influencing a subjective decision. Nothing like that is done in forensics.

KWONG: And you're saying that forensic experts, whoever's presenting this evidence should be far more explicit about the uncertainty involved.

FABRICANT: 100%. That's a good way to put it. You know, I mean, much of these techniques and much of this testimony is presented as though there is no error rate, literally. No such thing. The other is the limitations, you know, appropriate limitation as to what, you know, a, quote unquote, "match" means. You know, it's that bullet was fired by that gun, that fingerprint was left by that person, and that shoeprint could only have been made by that shoe, and on and on, called individualization testimony. Does this mean that there couldn't be somebody else in the universe who might also match this? If you eliminate the possibility of mistake and you make claims of individualization, when the science doesn't support that, you invite wrongful conviction.

KWONG: Chris, if I may, it doesn't sound like you're saying, science should not be allowed in the courtroom at all. You want good science to be allowed in the courtroom.

FABRICANT: Absolutely.

KWONG: And what you're advocating for is that before the trial happens, there is far higher standards for what is allowed into that courtroom.

FABRICANT: Yes. I mean, we have to have upstream fixes on it. You have to have a separate entity determining what an error rate for the field is, and what the personal error rate for the examiner is, and the validity of the technique outside of the courtroom. Because once you get in the courtroom, the gloves are off.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

KWONG: Well, Chris, thank you so much for sharing a slice of your world with us. I know you're, by day, a lawyer, but you've thought deeply about how science shows up in your world. And I thank you so much for your time.

FABRICANT: Thank you for having me.

KWONG: Chris's book is called Junk Science and the American Justice System. This episode was produced by Hannah Chinn. It was edited by our showrunner, Rebecca Ramirez, and fact-checked by Tyler Jones. The audio engineer was Jimmy Keeley. I'm Emily Kwong. Thank you for listening to Short Wave from NPR."

MUSIC PLAYING

The entire transcript can be read at:

https://www.npr.org/transcripts/nx-s1-6012302

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog. FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."Lawyer Radha Natarajan: Executive Director: New England Innocence Project; FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true;

November 7: From our 'Crime labs from hell' department: 'Hoodline' (a neighbourhood publication) (Reporter Marcus Taylor) reports on a (October 30) Detroit Free Press article by ReporterAndrea May Sahouri which I could not access) in which Detroit police forensic technicians say the conditions they work in — a garage beside the department's tow yard, vans reused across multiple crime scenes, and gloves too thin to avoid leaving fingerprints — are putting both their health and the integrity of criminal investigations at risk, noting that: Detroit forensic technicians processed evidence from more than 5,000 crime scenes last year alone, according to the newspaper's reporting. Defense attorneys, forensic experts, and Michigan's state crime lab have said they cannot know whether evidence they receive has already been compromised, the Free Press reported, and a defense lawyer cited two recent criminal cases involving problems with the department's evidence chain-of-custody."

PASSAGE ONE OF THE DAY: Forensic failures elsewhere: Detroit's troubles echo a wider pattern Forensic services nationwide face limited regulatory oversight.  Some forensic standards and accreditation remain voluntary. Other jurisdictions have faced their own breakdowns. A Colorado Bureau of Investigation analyst manipulated hundreds of DNA test results, including those tied to the 2017 killings of Kathy Eppler's family."

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PASSAGE TWO  OF THE DAY: A stalled push for statewide reform: "Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer created a statewide forensic science task force in 2021.  The task force found that, as of 2022, no one tracked the number of forensic providers operating in Michigan and that many smaller units were not accredited; it also reported that some providers prioritized speed over quality while public lab managers said demand had risen without matching funding. The task force proposed an independent statewide forensic science body operating outside the state police, which would require agencies — including Detroit Crime Scene Services — to become accredited within three years, allow employees, attorneys, and the public to file complaints about negligence or misconduct, and require labs to report their own problems."

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STORY: Detroit forensic techs describe maggots, feces-filled bags at crime lab garage," by Reporter Marcus Taylor, published by Hoodline, on October 31, 2026.

GIST: "Detroit police forensic technicians say the conditions they work in — a garage beside the department's tow yard, vans reused across multiple crime scenes, and gloves too thin to avoid leaving fingerprints — are putting both their health and the integrity of criminal investigations at risk.

Current and former staffers describe a unit so strained that evidence meant to help convict the guilty or clear the innocent may already be compromised by the time it reaches a lab.

The technicians, who handle scene photography, evidence documentation and collection, sketches, reports, and coordination with investigators, told the Detroit Free Press that dysfunction within Crime Scene Services has become a daily hazard. 

Detroit forensic technicians processed evidence from more than 5,000 crime scenes last year alone, according to the newspaper's reporting. 

Defense attorneys, forensic experts, and Michigan's state crime lab have said they cannot know whether evidence they receive has already been compromised, the Free Press reported, and a defense lawyer cited two recent criminal cases involving problems with the department's evidence chain-of-custody.

A Garage Beside the Tow Yard

The department's forensic facility sits in a garage at 11631 Mt. Elliott, next to the department's tow yard, where current and former employees describe potential contamination, no sterile space for packaging evidence, frequent maggot infestations, and cats and rabbits breeding inside, per the Free Press's reporting. 

Technicians still report daily to the Mt. Elliott garage for equipment and supplies, and current staffers say evidence is still processed in unsterile settings including that garage, their own cars, and a second office.

Technicians say they processed evidence at the Mt. Elliott location and sometimes still do. 

They provided photos and videos documenting pooling water, thick dust, an unclean shower used to dry wet evidence, and non-sterile cotton swabs.

One technician shared photos showing underwear stained with feces left in a bag for weeks at the garage because red biohazard bags were rarely collected.

 Evidence from different scenes, technicians said, was routinely packaged in the same often-filthy forensic vans.

Former Staffers Describe the Toll

Three former technicians — Cecilia Leskun, Margaret Lovallo, and Teron Haynes — were identified in the Free Press's reporting alongside six additional technicians interviewed by the paper, five of whom were current staffers. 

Leskun left the department in 2023 after a little over a year, saying her mental health declined to the gutter. 

Lovallo, who left in 2024 after about six years, said technicians were told their job was to pick things up and not ask questions.

Haynes, who left in January after about four years, said he worked that entire stretch as a technician without ever receiving a mask, and said there was no reason for the conditions.

Technicians reported several respiratory attacks after responding to teargas scenes, saying the department lacked gas masks for scenes involving teargas during home raids. 

Kermit Channell, reacting to the described conditions, said they sounded very helter-skelter.

Chain-of-Custody Concerns at Scenes

Nine technicians described detectives allowing civilians to walk and drive through active crime scenes over evidence, and said officers routinely violated evidence chain-of-custody procedures. 

Department policy states that if an officer collects evidence, it cannot be returned to the scene for a technician to collect — the officer must record and process it instead. 

Leskun said she was once told to collect a firearm that had already been handled by detectives, and current and former employees said officers handled suspects' guns at crime scenes with bare hands.

The forensic unit has consistently depleted supplies, with technicians borrowing hospital gloves and often using thin food-handling gloves that leave fingerprints, according to the Free Press.

 Nine technicians said these failures could jeopardize serious criminal investigations and deprive victims and families of justice. 

Detroit police did not answer the paper's questions about supplies, training, maggots, safety hazards, or retaliation, and declined to make Chief Todd Bettison or any police leader available for an interview about the allegations.

State Citations and a Disputed Fine

One state workplace-safety inspection resulted in citations to the department. MIOSHA cited the department for issues involving bloodborne-pathogens training, protective gear, and leakproof blood-specimen containers.

 The department was fined $10,000 over inadequate training, protective gear, and leakproof blood-specimen containers.

According to an appeal letter cited by the Free Press, the department argued the state improperly applied healthcare rules to the practice of preserving bloody evidence in breathable packaging needed for prosecutions. 

The department also used ChatGPT to write its bloodborne infectious disease plan after the complaints surfaced, the paper reported.

Detroit police disputed claims about missing protective gear and training, and said remaining record-keeping and supply issues had been fixed. 

The department said technicians moved in August to a new facility that better supports operational needs — a room in an old school on Sherwood Street — and said no criminal cases or evidence were impacted because evidence was not processed at the former location, except for vehicles.

 Before the Sherwood assignment, the department provided no showers for technicians despite their contact with biohazardous substances, technicians said.

A Unit Still Recovering From a 2008 Collapse

This is not the first time Detroit's forensic work has come under scrutiny. The Michigan State Police lab took over the Detroit Police Department's crime lab in 2008 after widespread problems, including high firearms-testing error rates. 

Events leading to the lab's closure began in spring 2008, amid those problems, according to a Michigan Senate report from senate.michigan.gov.

Earlier this year, former forensic technicians also came forward to describe conditions within Crime Scene Services at Board of Police Commissioners meetings, as WDETreported, around the same time the department was pursuing accreditation from the Michigan Association of Chiefs of Police. 

That reporting came as Detroit's homicide rate in 2025 hit its lowest point since 1965 and carjackings dropped by nearly half — a trend that makes the reliability of the evidence now being collected all the more consequential.

Forensic Failures Elsewhere

Detroit's troubles echo a wider pattern

Forensic services nationwide face limited regulatory oversight. 

Some forensic standards and accreditation remain voluntary.

Other jurisdictions have faced their own breakdowns. A Colorado Bureau of Investigation analyst manipulated hundreds of DNA test results, including those tied to the 2017 killings of Kathy Eppler's family.

A Stalled Push for Statewide Reform

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer created a statewide forensic science task force in 2021. 

The task force found that, as of 2022, no one tracked the number of forensic providers operating in Michigan and that many smaller units were not accredited; it also reported that some providers prioritized speed over quality while public lab managers said demand had risen without matching funding.

The task force proposed an independent statewide forensic science body operating outside the state police, which would require agencies — including Detroit Crime Scene Services — to become accredited within three years, allow employees, attorneys, and the public to file complaints about negligence or misconduct, and require labs to report their own problems. 

Prosecutors and the state police lab director have argued the proposed body should advise rather than investigate complaints, saying existing accreditation already provides enough oversight. 

Chu countered that when labs pay for their own accreditation, it gives accreditors reason to be lenient. 

Jonathan Sacks, an attorney who served on the task force, said none of its recommendations had been adopted and that legislative action was needed, adding that he did not know whether the recommendation would advance.

Houston offers one example of what independence can look like. 

The city transferred management of its crime lab from the police department to the newly established Houston Forensic Science Center in 2014, a government corporation that could hire out its services elsewhere, giving it financial independence, according to Houstonia Magazine.

 The center's CEO at the time said colleagues around the country were watching it as a model. 

Whether Michigan or Detroit moves toward anything similar remains an open question, with the task force's recommendations still sitting unadopted years after they were proposed.

Source: Hoodline Detroit Forensic Techs Allege Unsafe Crime Scene Conditions 

The entire story can be read at:

https://share.google/eGhWFMX20CFLRNfKn

PUBLISHER'S NOTE:  I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system.  Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com.  Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog. FINAL WORD:  (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases):  "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."Lawyer Radha Natarajan: Executive Director: New England Innocence Project; FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions.   They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true;

November 6: Christa Pike: Tennessee: From our 'Read this and weep' department' (and abolish the death penalty once and for all - as have numerous countries - wherever it may still exist): Her unedited statement was dictated to her defence team: (Yes. Read this and weep); "There hasn't been a moment since that night when I haven't been in pain. My body hurts. My arms hurt. My hands hurt. My throat hurts. I still struggle to speak. And the pain isn't just physical. There is pain in my mind and in my soul. I had not contemplated life beyond that night, and I’m deeply hurt by the incompetence that has put so many people in this terrible position. I continue to think about my victim’s family and the terrible pain and loss they have endured."

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "I also want to thank the first responders, doctors, nurses and everyone at the hospital who cared for me. They treated me with compassion, dignity and respect. I will never forget their kindness. I also want to thank my attorneys and everyone who has fought for me, stood beside me and refused to give up on me. I don't know why I survived that night. I don't know what comes next."

----------------------------------------------

STATEMENT:  From Christa Pike as dictated to her legal team on October 26, 2026). and reposted from Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty; and Jeff Gamso, Publisher of 'Gamso - for the Defence: Commentary by an Ohio Criminal Defence Lawyer', a Blog which has fought the death penalty fiercely (influencing many of his readers, including myself for many years.)

GIST: One month ago on September 30, I walked into the execution chamber at Riverbend men’s prison prepared to die. I had made my peace. I had told the people who loved me, supported me and stood by me through the years I was grateful for them. I had also told the people in the room and who were there to witness my execution that I was leaving them in loving kindness. Several days later I woke up alone in a hospital confused and in pain.

There hasn't been a moment since that night when I haven't been in pain. My body hurts. My arms hurt. My hands hurt. My throat hurts. I still struggle to speak. And the pain isn't just physical. There is pain in my mind and in my soul. I had not contemplated life beyond that night, and I’m deeply hurt by the incompetence that has put so many people in this terrible position. I continue to think about my victim’s family and the terrible pain and loss they have endured.

I am recovering, and I know that I am getting stronger. But healing is not the same as being okay. Since that night, I have been largely isolated in the prison’s medical ward, away from other people and the human connections that mean so much to me. That isolation brings its own kind of pain. I spent 28 years in solitary confinement and much of what I am experiencing today is a repeat of that condition

I also want to thank the first responders, doctors, nurses and everyone at the hospital who cared for me. They treated me with compassion, dignity and respect. I will never forget their kindness. I also want to thank my attorneys and everyone who has fought for me, stood beside me and refused to give up on me.

I don't know why I survived that night. I don't know what comes next. Some days, finding hope is harder than others. For now, I am trying to heal, one day at a time. And I am holding on to the love and kindness of so many people who have reminded me that I am not alone.

The entire post can be read at: 

November 5: Technology: Flock cameras come under fire in US elections, as voters in several U.S. communities approved measures restricting or rejecting automated license plate readers (ALPR), including cameras manufactured by Flock Safety, amid growing concerns about government surveillance and privacy, Criminal Justice Journalists reports, noting that " Although law enforcement officials argue that automated license plate readers help solve crimes and locate suspects, the election results demonstrate growing bipartisan demands for transparency, stronger privacy protections and greater public control over surveillance practices."

PASSAGE  ONE OF THE DAY:  "In York, Maine, residents passed a citizen-led initiative immediately banning automated license plate readers in the town of 14,000 and requiring voter approval before any future deployment of surveillance technology." 

---------------------------------------------

PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY;  "In League City, Texas, a Houston-area community of nearly 120,000 residents, voters rejected a nonbinding measure supporting the police department’s use of 84 automated license plate readers. Republican Mayor Nick Long, who won reelection with more than 66% of the vote, pledged to honor the referendum by covering or disabling the cameras within 72 hours of the election’s certification.'

----------------------------------------------

 

POST: 'Texas, ME Voters Push Back Against Flock Surveillance Cameras', published by Criminal Justice Journalists, on November 5, 2026.

GIST; Voters in several U.S. communities approved measures restricting or rejecting automated license plate readers, including cameras manufactured by Flock Safety, amid growing concerns about government surveillance and privacy, reports Reason.

In York, Maine, residents passed a citizen-led initiative immediately banning automated license plate readers in the town of 14,000 and requiring voter approval before any future deployment of surveillance technology. 

York’s four Flock cameras had already been covered in plastic since September amid concerns about data security and reports of law enforcement officers misusing similar systems to track acquaintances or former romantic partners. 

The Institute for Justice documented 300 incidents of alleged misuse or abuse of automated license plate readers by law enforcement nationwide.

 The election results reflect growing public resistance to surveillance systems that collect and store vehicle location information, often without drivers’ knowledge or individualized suspicion.

In League City, Texas, a Houston-area community of nearly 120,000 residents, voters rejected a nonbinding measure supporting the police department’s use of 84 automated license plate readers.

 Republican Mayor Nick Long, who won reelection with more than 66% of the vote, pledged to honor the referendum by covering or disabling the cameras within 72 hours of the election’s certification. 

The city spends $175,000 annually on its contract with Flock Safety, raising questions about the agreement’s future.

 Voters in Pflugerville, Texas, approved Proposition B, requiring the city council to establish safeguards governing the collection, retention, use and oversight of surveillance data, facial recognition and related technologies. 

The measure followed the council’s unanimous approval of new surveillance oversight policies, including citizen review of proposed technologies.

 Although law enforcement officials argue that automated license plate readers help solve crimes and locate suspects, the election results demonstrate growing bipartisan demands for transparency, stronger privacy protections and greater public control over surveillance practices."

The entire post  can be read at:

https://crimjj.wordpress.com/2026/11/05/tx-me-voters-push-back-against-flock-surveillance-cameras/

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog. FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."Lawyer Radha Natarajan: Executive Director: New England Innocence Project; FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true;

November 5: Jordan Coleman: (National Registry of Exoneration) - Posted on October 16, 2026; From our 'Rape prosecution from hell,' department: (If there was a Guiness Book of Records for evidence withheld by prosecutors, this would be right up there at the top. As NRE scribe Maurice Possley (a superb criminal justice scribe) reports, the withheld evidence included the fact that: "On September 20, 2023, Judge Lawler granted the motion and dismissed the case...Altogether the withheld evidence would have assisted the defense in challenging the testimony of nearly every State’s witness,” Judge Lawler said. “This includes the complainant, her mother, the Lewis County Sheriff’s Deputy responsible for investigating and referring the case for prosecution, the Lewis County Sheriff’s Deputy [Yocom], the nurse that examined the complainant, and the Washington State Patrol Crime Laboratory Analyst that served as the State's DNA expert.”

PASSAGE ONE OF THE DAY: After the verdict, Coleman retained attorney Kimberly Gordon as his post-conviction attorney. On August 25, 2022, the day before Coleman was scheduled to be sentenced, Gordon filed a motion for a new trial.  The motion contended that the prosecution had failed to disclose exculpatory evidence and that Coleman’s trial defense attorney had provided ineffective assistance of counsel.  The motion said that the prosecution had failed to disclose reports from Child Protective Services (CPS) showing that in the past, M.J.J.M. had accused two family members, including her father, of sexually assaulting her. 
-------------------------------------------

PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "The prosecution, the motion said, had failed to disclose that Deputy Yocom had been disciplined previously for making false representations in a search warrant application that resulted in the arrest of an innocent man."

-------------------------------------------

PASSAGE THREE OF THE DAY: "The motion also said the prosecution had allowed Schouten to testify falsely and made arguments to the jury that were not based on the evidence and misstated the evidence, in particular the argument that Coleman’s DNA was a “match.” 

--------------------------------------------

PASSAGE FOUR OF THE DAY: "The motion included a declaration from Dr. Jennifer L’Hommedieu, an emergency physician for the Madigan Army Medical Center at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Pierce County, Washington. Stankus said she was prepared to testify about numerous inaccuracies and deficiencies in McLeod’s examination of M.M.J.M. and in McLeod’s testimony at the trial.  (Heather McLeod, the SANE (Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner) who had examined M.J.J.M. at the hospital when the rape kit was taken, testified that she checked boxes for “no acute physical trauma observed.” McLeod also testified about the neurobiology of memory formation, the rates of delayed reporting by sexual assault victims, and the reasons for delayed reporting.  McLeod also testified that she saw petechiae on M.J.J.M’s chest, which McLeod said confirmed M.J.J.M’s testimony that Coleman had choked her during the March 11, 2021 rape.")

 ----------------------------------------------

PASSAGE FIVE OF THE DAY: "In March 2023, the defense learned that the prosecution had failed to disclose that Dixon, the DNA analyst, had a prior conviction." "The judge rejected the prosecution argument that failing to disclose Dixon’s prior conviction would not have affected the case. “This was a ‘she said/he said’ case in which the DNA evidence, and the testimony of State’s DNA expert, was crucial,” Judge Lawler said. “This exculpatory evidence would have impacted all five counts, even those to which it did not directly apply. It was used to try to corroborate one of the complainant's allegations, thereby bolstering them all.” The judge said that a new trial was an “insufficient remedy” for the prosecution’s failure to disclose exculpatory evidence.  “Here, exculpatory evidence was withheld throughout the entirety of the first trial, sentencing, and litigation of a motion for a new trial,” the judge said. “Evidence was withheld even as the parties litigated the Motion to Dismiss.” 

------------------------------------------------

PASSAGE SIX OF THE DAY: "On September 18, 2026, Coleman filed a federal civil-rights lawsuit against Lewis County as well as Dixon, Schouten, Yocom, and other officers “Though the accusation was obviously false—[Coleman] had not raped a teenage girl—law enforcement officers elevated the false accusation into bogus criminal charges,” the lawsuit said. “In so doing, the Defendants wrote false documents, omitted materially exculpatory information, and suppressed evidence of Coleman’s innocence and other favorable information that would have undermined and completely precluded any prosecution.” 

GIST: On March 12, 2021, a 16-year-old girl, identified as M.J.J.M., reported that she had been raped by her uncle, 39-year-old Jordan Coleman, in Pe Ell, Washington. She went to the hospital where she was examined by a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE), and a rape kit was collected.

M.J.J.M. told a Lewis County sheriff’s deputy that she had been raped on March 11 in Coleman’s home and that he had raped her there on three other occasions in January 2021.

On March 14, 2021, Coleman was arrested. He was charged with one count of second-degree rape for the March 11 attack and four counts of third-degree rape for the other attacks.

Coleman denied raping M.J.J.M. He said that she had stayed with him occasionally when her parents were not getting along. Coleman said that he believed M.J.J.M. was seeking revenge because Coleman had been a witness for the prosecution in the summer of 2020 when 24-year-old Gene Anthony Carlos II was prosecuted for the statutory rape of M.J.J.M., who was then 15.

In September 2020, Carlos had been sentenced to nearly four years in prison. Coleman’s defense attorney, Thomas Keehan, learned that Coleman had caught M.J.J.M. and Carlos flirting, that Coleman had warned M.J.J.M. about having a relationship with Carlos, and that he had told Carlos about M.J.J.M.’s age and the illegality of any sexual relationship. Jordan had repeatedly helped M.J.J.M.’s parents find her when she ran away to be with Carlos. Coleman had caught M.J.J.M. sneaking out of Carlos’s house and had caught her using Coleman’s iPad to have clandestine communications with Carlos. Coleman’s efforts had led to the prosecution of Carlos after M.J.J.M. learned she was pregnant (she later had a miscarriage). Coleman had assisted law enforcement in their investigation by providing detailed interviews as well as screenshots of M.J.J.M.’s communications with Carlos.

Keehan prepared a report based on interviews with Coleman and family members and others that the defense contended showed that Coleman and M.J.J.M. were not in the same place at the same time during the month of January.

Subsequently, the Lewis County Prosecuting Attorney’s office amended the charges. Coleman remained charged with rape on March 11, 2021, but was charged with four counts of third-degree rape between October 28, 2020 and January 31, 2021.

The trial was scheduled to begin in Lewis County Superior Court on May 17, 2022. On May 12, Keehan and the Lewis County Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Joseph Bassetti appeared for a hearing to confirm that both sides were on track to go to trial. At that time, Bassetti presented a motion seeking to bar any evidence relating to the prosecution of Carlos under the rape shield law, which prohibits a defendant from introducing evidence of a complainant’s past sexual behavior.

Keehan would later concede that he was taken by surprise, and, because he had not done any research on the rape shield statute, he said he had no objection.

A jury was sworn in on May 17, 2022. During his opening statement, Bassetti told the jury that Coleman’s DNA “matched the DNA found in M.J.J.M.’s vagina and in her mouth.”

M.J.J.M. testified that Coleman had dragged her up the stairs of his house and raped her. She said that in the March 11, 2021 attack, he had ejaculated on her face and chest. She said that he kept her locked up in the house, and she could not leave.

Lewis County Sheriff’s Deputy Sam Schouten, who was the lead investigator on the case, was called to testify about the day that Coleman was arrested. During a hearing outside the presence of the jury, Schouten said, “I asked him if there was any truth to the allegation of sexual assault or any kind of sexual interaction. And his words were, ‘No, that’s disgusting. That’s my niece.’”

Schouten said, “And I said, ‘Okay. If there’s no truth to it, would there be’—I don’t remember the exact words, but it was ‘Would there be or why would there be your DNA—or would there be your DNA in her shorts or on her person—or in her clothes or on her person, something to that effect.’”

Coleman replied, “No. It’s disgusting. That’s my niece.”

Schouten said, “So at that point, I explained to Mr. Coleman I was going to ask for two things from him, a recorded statement and a voluntary buccal swab….[H]e asked what a buccal swab was, and I explained to him it’s a DNA swab of the inside of your mouth.”

Moments later, in front of the jury, Bassetti asked Schouten, “[D]id anyone tell [Coleman] or allude that his sperm or DNA was found anywhere prior to that?”

“No,” Schouten replied.

“Thank you,” Bassetti said. “Nothing further.”

Sheriff’s Deputy Andrew Yocom testified that he accompanied Schouten. In his report of the day Coleman was arrested, Yocom had written that at one point Coleman said that because M.J.J.M. had been in his house on multiple occasions, she would have had access to whatever was in the house, such as a “DNA bottle.” However, when Yocom testified, he said that Coleman called it a “sperm bottle,” and that it could have been the source of DNA on M.J.J.M.

Heather McLeod, the SANE who had examined M.J.J.M. at the hospital when the rape kit was taken, testified that she checked boxes for “no acute physical trauma observed.” McLeod also testified about the neurobiology of memory formation, the rates of delayed reporting by sexual assault victims, and the reasons for delayed reporting.

McLeod also testified that she saw petechiae on M.J.J.M’s chest, which McLeod said confirmed M.J.J.M’s testimony that Coleman had choked her during the March 11, 2021 rape.

Brad Dixon, a DNA analyst at the Washington State Police Crime Laboratory testified that prior to the trial, two rounds of DNA testing had been conducted. In the first report, dated April 14, 2021, Dixon stated that no male DNA was found in the swabs of M.J.J.M.’s vagina, mouth and breast. Dixon reported finding DNA from an unidentified third person—neither M.J.J.M. nor Coleman.

Dixon said Bassetti asked him to conduct a further microscopic analysis of swabs taken outside of the vagina and outside of M.J.J.M.’s mouth. In June 2021, Dixon reported finding a single sperm. He said that based on the finding of one sperm, he ran the data through STRmix, software that employs biological modeling and mathematical calculations to assign probabilities to the likelihood that a specific individual’s DNA profile is, or is not, included in a DNA mixture.

Dixon said the software program generated a response that suggested “very strong support” for Coleman’s “inclusion” as a “possible” source of the DNA.

Dixon said the DNA samples were subject to a differential DNA testing process that attempted to separate sperm cell fraction DNA from non-sperm cell fraction DNA, which comes from saliva, skin, or hair. He said the process was not completely efficient. Sometimes cells from non-sperm material still stay in the mixture that purports to be only cells from sperm.

Coleman testified and denied committing the crimes.

During closing argument, Bassetti told the jury that Dixon had testified that “the swabs that match DNA of Jordan Coleman were sperm fractions and they were present both on the perioral, meaning the mouth area swabs, and the vulvar, meaning the outer vaginal swabs of [M.J.J.M.].”

On May 23, 2022, the jury convicted Coleman of one count of second-degree rape and four counts of third-degree rape.

After the verdict, Coleman retained attorney Kimberly Gordon as his post-conviction attorney. On August 25, 2022, the day before Coleman was scheduled to be sentenced, Gordon filed a motion for a new trial.

The motion contended that the prosecution had failed to disclose exculpatory evidence and that Coleman’s trial defense attorney had provided ineffective assistance of counsel.

The motion said that the prosecution had failed to disclose reports from Child Protective Services (CPS) showing that in the past, M.J.J.M. had accused two family members, including her father, of sexually assaulting her. Moreover, the prosecution had failed to disclose that the day after M.J.J.M. reported she had been raped by Coleman, her mother said M.J.J.M. “seemed good” and that M.J.J.M. was “heartbroken” when Carlos was sentenced to prison.

The prosecution, the motion said, had failed to disclose that Deputy Yocom had been disciplined previously for making false representations in a search warrant application that resulted in the arrest of an innocent man.

Other withheld records included an email written by Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Karin Phomma who was the prosecutor assigned to the Carlos statutory rape case. Phomma also was a co-prosecutor of Coleman. The email said that even after Carlos was arrested for statutory rape of M.J.J.M., her attachment to Carlos remained strong. The email showed that M.J.J.M. repeatedly ran away from home and initiated contact with Carlos. In fact, her ongoing contact with Carlos had led to the revocation of his pretrial release. In another email, Phomma had written that M.J.J.M. was unhappy with the prosecution of Carlos and wanted “leniency” for him.

The motion also said the prosecution had allowed Schouten to testify falsely and made arguments to the jury that were not based on the evidence and misstated the evidence, in particular the argument that Coleman’s DNA was a “match.”

In addition, the motion said that the prosecution had stressed that M.J.J.M. had no motive to falsely accuse Coleman, despite the evidence about Coleman’s involvement in the prosecution of Carlos that had been excluded by the trial judge.

The motion said that Keehan, Coleman’s trial attorney, had failed to obtain home security video footage and telephone records that could have contradicted M.J.J.M.’s account. The motion said that Keehan had failed to obtain M.J.J.M.’s social media records.

“The records would have demonstrated that M.J.J.M. lied about her social media handles, lied about her use of social media, and hid alarmingly relevant posts that would have been consistent with the defense theory that M.J.J.M. fabricated the allegations out of revenge,” the motion said. “The records would also have been relevant to impeach M.J.J.M…. in this ‘she said/he said’ scenario that involved no other corroborating witnesses.”

Keehan had failed to subpoena CPS records and had failed to oppose the prosecution motion to preclude the evidence of the prosecution of Carlos based on the rape shield law. “The rape shield law cannot be used to exclude relevant evidence,” the motion said.

Had Keehan investigated Coleman’s home, he would have discovered that all the doors have locks that can be manually opened from the inside, contradicting M.J.J.M.’s claim that she was kept locked in the house.

The motion included a declaration from Dr. Jennifer L’Hommedieu, an emergency physician for the Madigan Army Medical Center at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Pierce County, Washington. Stankus said she was prepared to testify about numerous inaccuracies and deficiencies in McLeod’s examination of M.M.J.M. and in McLeod’s testimony at the trial.

The following day, Superior Court Judge James Lawler sentenced Coleman to an indeterminate sentence of up to 23 years and four months in prison. Judge Lawler ordered that Coleman be kept in the Lewis County Jail pending a resolution of the motion for a new trial.

In March 2023, the defense learned that the prosecution had failed to disclose that Dixon, the DNA analyst, had a prior conviction.

On March 27, 2023, the prosecution conceded that Coleman should get a new trial, and his convictions were vacated. Coleman was released to home confinement on March 28, 2023. The retrial was scheduled for September 11, 2023.

On August 28, 2023, Gordon filed a motion to dismiss the case, arguing that the prosecution had continued to withhold exculpatory evidence despite agreeing to a new trial.

On September 20, 2023, Judge Lawler granted the motion and dismissed the case.

“Altogether, the withheld evidence would have assisted the defense in challenging the testimony of nearly every State’s witness,” Judge Lawler said. “This includes the complainant, her mother, the Lewis County Sheriff’s Deputy responsible for investigating and referring the case for prosecution, the Lewis County Sheriff’s Deputy [Yocom], the nurse that examined the complainant, and the Washington State Patrol Crime Laboratory Analyst that served as the State's DNA expert.”

The judge noted that the Carlos prosecution was “on going. As such, exculpatory evidence continued to be created after Mr. Coleman was granted a new trial. The Court finds that, as new records were created, the State also withheld some of these from the defense. The State did so, despite telling the defense that all the records would be provided. The State continued to withhold some records even as it told this Court ‘there have been missteps by the State in this case that have been corrected and are sure to never be repeated[.]’”

The judge rejected the prosecution argument that failing to disclose Dixon’s prior conviction would not have affected the case. “This was a ‘she said/he said’ case in which the DNA evidence, and the testimony of State’s DNA expert, was crucial,” Judge Lawler said. “This exculpatory evidence would have impacted all five counts, even those to which it did not directly apply. It was used to try to corroborate one of the complainant's allegations, thereby bolstering them all.”

The judge said that a new trial was an “insufficient remedy” for the prosecution’s failure to disclose exculpatory evidence.

“Here, exculpatory evidence was withheld throughout the entirety of the first trial, sentencing, and litigation of a motion for a new trial,” the judge said. “Evidence was withheld even as the parties litigated the Motion to Dismiss.”

On September 18, 2026, Coleman filed a federal civil-rights lawsuit against Lewis County as well as Dixon, Schouten, Yocom, and other officers.

“Though the accusation was obviously false—[Coleman] had not raped a teenage girl—law enforcement officers elevated the false accusation into bogus criminal charges,” the lawsuit said. “In so doing, the Defendants wrote false documents, omitted materially exculpatory information, and suppressed evidence of Coleman’s innocence and other favorable information that would have undermined and completely precluded any prosecution.”

The entire post can be read at: 

https://exonerationregistry.org/cases/20452

PUBLISHER'S NOTE:  I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system.  Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com.  Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog. FINAL WORD:  (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases):  "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."Lawyer Radha Natarajan: Executive Director: New England Innocence Project; FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions.   They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true;

November 4: Shaken Baby Syndrome: The American Bar Association is to be applauded for publishing Jules Epstein's excellent analysis of the groundbreaking Nieves decision .(New Jersey Supreme Court..."For anyone who litigates, defends, or judges in criminal prosecutions, Nieves is a must-read first because it details the genesis of SBS. That historical exegesis is also essential reading for anyone interested in science, “fit for the forum,” i.e., forensic science. Read carefully, it is a tale of unjustified extrapolation from a handful of studies—not all of which involved infants—to a conclusion among certain members of the medical community that this was solid science. This is reflected in the language the court uses to trace that history:For anyone who litigates, defends, or judges in criminal prosecutions, Nieves is a must-read first because it details the genesis of SBS. That historical exegesis is also essential reading for anyone interested in science, “fit for the forum,” i.e., forensic science. Read carefully, it is a tale of unjustified extrapolation from a handful of studies—not all of which involved infants—to a conclusion among certain members of the medical community that this was solid science. This is reflected in the language the court uses to trace that history:

PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "New Jersey did not shut the door on SBS testimony in no-impact cases in the future if the science developed and could establish the reliability of its premises. But that day is not yet here. Nieves stands as a comprehensive assessment of SBS; as a cautionary tale of the dangers of extrapolating cause from inadequate or inapposite studies; and as a reminder of the importance of rigorous application of the standards for admitting expert proof, evidence that has special impact because of the witness’s “singular status in the courtroom … as having been deemed, by the court, sufficiently knowledgeable to offer testimony beyond the specifics of a particular case.” Id. at 1132 (internal quotations and citation omitted). In other words, jurors see the expert as approved by the court, so it is that institution’s responsibility to police such testimony."

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PASAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "There is one final note. The reason the court could issue such a comprehensive opinion was because the litigants included the statewide office of the New Jersey Public Defender. That office ensured that the litigation was well-resourced with an abundance of top-caliber experts. In a nation where indigent defense is often underfunded and where court-appointed and many retained lawyers lack the time and finances to put such a case together, Nieves is a poignant reminder that if the accuracy of science is going to be tested in the context of a criminal case, to get it right there is a need for expertise and money—and if courts confront such claims without those two essentials, they should pause and bring in amici or ensure funding before making decisions that can have long-lasting consequences."

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ARTICLE: "General Acceptance, Reliability and Disagreement: A case study of "Shaken Baby Syndrome,"  by Jules Epstein, published  on October 28, 2026 by The  American Bar Association, in its  Fall 2026, edition. (Julius Epstein: Temple University School of Law);

SUMMARY: "The New Jersey Supreme Court found that expert testimony on shaken baby syndrome in “no-impact” cases does not meet scientific reliability standards. The Court emphasized that such testimony is not generally accepted in the scientific community. The ruling underscores the importance of robust evidence and appropriate resources in handling these complex cases.

GIST: "Although Daubert remains the predominant test for the admissibility of expert opinions, a number of jurisdictions retain Frye and its general acceptance threshold as the standard. But the two strands—reliability and general acceptance—were intertwined in a late 2025 decision of the New Jersey Supreme Court addressing the admissibility of “shaken baby syndrome [SBS]” testimony in a “no-impact” case, one where the baby is shaken, but there is no banging of the child’s body against a wall, floor, crib, or similar hard object.

The case is State v. Nieves, 345 A.3d 1127 (N.J. 2025). And the New Jersey Court ruled on the claim of Mr. Nieves and another defendant as to whether the lower-court exclusion of expert testimony that shaking an infant, without more, could cause brain injuries. To determine whether to affirm the exclusion, the court detailed the history of SBS and the scientific challenges to the same and then reviewed how New Jersey’s Frye test incorporates “reliability.”

For anyone who litigates, defends, or judges in criminal prosecutions, Nieves is a must-read first because it details the genesis of SBS. That historical exegesis is also essential reading for anyone interested in science, “fit for the forum,” i.e., forensic science. Read carefully, it is a tale of unjustified extrapolation from a handful of studies—not all of which involved infants—to a conclusion among certain members of the medical community that this was solid science. This is reflected in the language the court uses to trace that history:


In the years following Dr. Caffey’s 1974 study, the theory of whiplash infant shaking syndrome, later referred to as shaken baby syndrome, began to gain traction in the medical community. That acceptance was based almost entirely on Dr. Guthkelch and Dr. Caffey’s case studies, both of which relied on Dr. Ommaya’s scientific study as the sole source of experimental scientific data behind the theory, notwithstanding the fact that Dr. Ommaya’s study had nothing to do with the shaking of infants.

345 A.3d at 1137 (emphasis added). The court emphasized that “Dr. Caffey did not conduct any biomechanical experiments of his own in support of that study and relied on the review of cases from other studies. …” Id. at 1135. Elsewhere, the court referenced the reliance on “purported direct evidence” that the researchers themselves admitted was “meager.” Id. at 1136.

What clearly impressed the court was the contrary research, that based on biomechanical studies. Also important were the analyses by researchers relied on by the supporters of SBS that called its hypothesis and research into question.


Regarding the biomechanics of retinal hemorrhages, Dr. Ommaya opined that “the levels of force required for retinal bleeding by shaking to damage the eye directly is biomechanically improbable,” given that small masses like the eye require levels of force even higher than larger masses like the brain.


Significantly, Dr. Ommaya critiqued the assumptions upon which theories about mechanisms of pediatric retinal and brain injuries in literature have been based. … Dr. Ommaya stated that “[t]hese assumptions individually and in concert are ambiguous or incorrect” even though those very assumptions had been used as the bases for the differential diagnoses of SBS, “usually without reference to available biomechanical analysis.”


A decade after Dr. Ommaya signaled that SBS lacked an underlying scientific foundation, Dr. Guthkelch, whose study relied on Dr. Ommaya’s whiplash experiment and was in turn cited by Dr. Caffey, also questioned the science behind SBS.

Id. at 1139. Put simply, the court seemed to weigh hard science against more conjectural approaches and found the latter to be wanting.

Beyond a lesson in how to weigh competing forensic claims, Nieves had to fit it into an evidence-law framework. Although New Jersy has shifted to a Daubert-like standard for expert evidence in criminal cases, the court returned to Frye because that is the legal regime Mr. Nieves’s case was tried under.

New Jersey’s framework, even under Frye, mandated a reliability determination. “Notwithstanding the Frye test’s emphasis on general acceptance in the relevant field(s), the science underlying the expertise must have a sufficient scientific basis to produce uniform and reasonably reliable results. …” Id. at 1160 (internal quotations and citations omitted).

The court set the reliability threshold as a high one, explaining that “[g]eneral acceptance entails the strict application of the scientific method, which requires an extraordinarily high level of proof based on prolonged, controlled, consistent, and validated experience.” Id. at 1161.

What proved critical to its ruling was then defining the relevant “community,” or here “communities.” Finding the roots of SBS theory in the work of biomechanical research, the court determined that “the relevant scientific communities for purposes of determining the reliability of SBS/AHT expert testimony are both the medical/pediatric community and the biomechanical engineering community.” Id. at 1366. Because the latter did not “generally” accept SBS in no-impact cases, Frye was not satisfied. [The court also reminded us that general acceptance is not forever—as science changes, so can the level of acceptance.]

On the reliability prong, the court found that independent of the acceptance determination, the research simply did not support the claim, doing so in an incisive review of decades of study:

[T]here was no test supporting a finding that humans can produce the physical force necessary to cause the symptoms associated with SBS/AHT in a child. The trial court further found SBS/AHT to be a theory not anchored in facts developed through reliable, scientific testing to confirm the diagnosis. This Court acknowledges that humans cannot be used as test subjects in potentially dangerous experiments regarding SBS/AHT, so there may never be a perfect scientific test. It is true that there are limitations to researching and understanding SBS/AHT and the forces necessary to result in the injuries associated with the diagnosis. But those limitations should not give way to assumptions in making an SBS/AHT diagnosis for which significant criminal liability follows when no other evidence of abuse is present.

Id. at 1168.

New Jersey did not shut the door on SBS testimony in no-impact cases in the future if the science developed and could establish the reliability of its premises. But that day is not yet here. Nieves stands as a comprehensive assessment of SBS; as a cautionary tale of the dangers of extrapolating cause from inadequate or inapposite studies; and as a reminder of the importance of rigorous application of the standards for admitting expert proof, evidence that has special impact because of the witness’s “singular status in the courtroom … as having been deemed, by the court, sufficiently knowledgeable to offer testimony beyond the specifics of a particular case.” Id. at 1132 (internal quotations and citation omitted). In other words, jurors see the expert as approved by the court, so it is that institution’s responsibility to police such testimony.

There is one final note. The reason the court could issue such a comprehensive opinion was because the litigants included the statewide office of the New Jersey Public Defender. That office ensured that the litigation was well-resourced with an abundance of top-caliber experts. In a nation where indigent defense is often underfunded and where court-appointed and many retained lawyers lack the time and finances to put such a case together, Nieves is a poignant reminder that if the accuracy of science is going to be tested in the context of a criminal case, to get it right there is a need for expertise and money—and if courts confront such claims without those two essentials, they should pause and bring in amici or ensure funding before making decisions that can have long-lasting consequences."

The entire story can be read at: 

https://www.americanbar.org/groups/criminal_justice/resources/magazine/2026-fall/general-acceptance-reliability-disagreement-shaken-baby-evidence/?shem=aimgspe,

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog. FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."Lawyer Radha Natarajan: Executive Director: New England Innocence Project; FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true