September 19: Curtis Ryan Morris: Maryland: "A baby died in his care: He has spent years trying to clear his name," The Washington Post (Reporter Jasmine Golden) reports, noting that: Morris has proclaimed his innocence for more than a decade. And a legal team now representing him says the proof lies in a critical piece of evidence that never made it in front of a jury. At a court proceeding in late August, Morris’s attorneys pointed to a postmortem CT scan of the child’s head they said shows she suffered from preexisting medical complications, including blood clotting in her brain. The scan, the attorneys said, contradicts the state’s claim that the infant suffered fresh injuries while in Morris’s care. They’re asking a judge to set aside the verdict, or grant him a new trial."

QUOTE OF  THE DAY: "The challenge for Morris and his attorneys isn’t just convincing the judge that specific medical evidence casts doubt on his conviction. It’s convincing the judge his original attorney never knew about it. “There are two tragedies here: the loss of a child and the wrongful conviction of the person who loved her,” Jimmy Moody, legal director of the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project, which is representing Morris, said in a statement."

STORY: "A baby died in his care. He has spent years trying to clear his name," by Reporter Jasmine Golden. published on September 17, 2026; (Jasmine Golden is a reporter covering crime and courts on the Metro desk at The Washington Post. She has interned at NBC News Washington and Politico Magazine.Honors and Awards: First Place, Best College Feature Writing, Ohio Society of Professional Journalists Professional Affiliations: National Association of Black Journalists, Investigative Reporters and Editors.")

SUB-HEADING: "A judge is weighing Curtis Ryan Morris’s case years after his conviction in the killing of a 3-month-old infant in his care."

PHOTO CAPTION: "Curtis Ryan Morris, shown here with his dog, Artemis, in 2014, was convicted that same year and sentenced to 40 years in prison."

GIST: "On a Sunday in June 2012, Curtis Ryan Morris explained to investigators how his evening caring for the 3-month-old girl he was raising as his own ended in tragedy.

He had just fed her a bottle inside his Maryland apartment when she began to choke and stopped breathing.

Morris called 911 and performed CPR. The baby girl was rushed to the hospital, where she died.

As Anne Arundel County police investigated, an assistant medical examiner determined the girl died of blunt force head trauma, court filings show. Morris, then 20, was arrested and a jury later convicted him of murder.

Morris has proclaimed his innocence for more than a decade. And a legal team now representing him says the proof lies in a critical piece of evidence that never made it in front of a jury.

At a court proceeding in late August, Morris’s attorneys pointed to a postmortem CT scan of the child’s head they said shows she suffered from preexisting medical complications, including blood clotting in her brain.

The scan, the attorneys said, contradicts the state’s claim that the infant suffered fresh injuries while in Morris’s care. They’re asking a judge to set aside the verdict, or grant him a new trial.

The challenge for Morris and his attorneys isn’t just convincing the judge that specific medical evidence casts doubt on his conviction. It’s convincing the judge his original attorney never knew about it.

“There are two tragedies here: the loss of a child and the wrongful conviction of the person who loved her,” Jimmy Moody, legal director of the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project, which is representing Morris, said in a statement.

The Anne Arundel County State’s Attorney’s Office argues that the CT scan existed from the beginning, but that Morris’s trial counsel made flawed attempts at getting it.

The office also said that the medical examiner’s findings on the cause and manner of death had been confirmed by other experts.

“I believe that the medical evidence was clear and this conviction was just,” State’s Attorney Anne Colt Leitess said in a statement.

After two years worth of testimony, Morris’s case now rests with Circuit Court Associate Judge Pamela K. Alban. She previously led the special victims unit in the Anne Arundel County State’s Attorney’s Office, which included prosecuting child abuse cases.

The case

Morris was excited to be a father, his attorneys said.

He started dating his girlfriend while she was expecting and was in the delivery room when the baby girl was born, court filings detail. The couple got an apartment and were raising the girl together.

Morris’s family, who declined to comment for this story, said in an article posted to the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project website that he is “very loving, caring, sincere.”

The family of the girl declined to comment for the story.




On June 10, 2012, according to charging documents, county police arrived at University of Maryland Baltimore Washington Medical Center in response to the 3-month-old’s death.


Morris was there alongside his girlfriend, who had been at work. Police and investigators from the medical examiner’s office took their statements and ordered an autopsy, court filings detail.


Months later, Morris was arrested. Police charged him with second-degree murder and first-degree child abuse among other counts. He denied harming the girl.


The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner had ruled the infant’s death a homicide. Medical professionals found she had suffered a head injury within six hours of her death, a time in which she was with Morris, police said in the charging documents.


A jury convicted Morris in 2014 and he was sentenced to 40 years in prison.


He’d spend the next decade trying to clear his name.


Morris argued his trial attorney had erred in using a medically censured expert, hurting his case. He lost that appeal of his conviction, and subsequent attempts for a new trial.


According to court filings, the trial attorney testified during a postconviction proceeding that Morris and his family were aware of the censure and had agreed to go ahead with the expert, who countered the state’s theory of the cause of death.



In 2019, with a new attorney, Morris won an appeal to reopen a postconviction proceeding on claims that both his trial and former postconviction counsel had not found a credible expert to discredit the state’s theory, according to court filings. Prosecutors have said those attorneys were effective.

The arguments

Attorneys for the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project, which has helped free dozens of people in D.C., Maryland and Virginia, took up Morris’s case in 2022 after his new attorney found multiple medical experts who questioned the medical examiner’s testimony.

Another major firm — Latham & Watkins LLP — also joined the case.

In Maryland, a defense team must meet two prongs for a writ of actual innocence petition. First, they must show there is newly discovered evidence that could not have been discovered through due diligence in time to move for a new trial, said Rachel Marblestone Kamins, director of the Decarceration and Re-entry Clinic at the American University Washington College of Law.

They also must show that the evidence creates a substantial or significant possibility that the outcome may have been different.

Morris’s attorneys maintain they’ve met the legal standard — pointing to testimony given in 2024 by the medical examiner who had ruled the girl’s death a homicide.

During a cross-examination that year, court filings show, the examiner said a CT scan had been taken of the girl.

“That was news to everyone in the courtroom,” Richard Frohlichstein, an associate with Latham & Watkins, told the court during Morris’s hearing in August.

Morris’s defense team had experts review the CT scan. They determined that clotting in the girl’s brain — which could have caused oxygen deprivation and stop it from functioning — would have taken days to weeks to develop, not hours, Frohlichstein said.



One of the defense’s experts, according to court filings, found that blunt force trauma could be the cause of the girl’s death, but that the trauma was not recent. It may have dated back to her birth and led to “a series of delayed complications,” including the clotting and a healing skull fracture.


“Had the jury heard this, there is a real possibility at least one juror would have reasonable doubt,” Frohlichstein said at the August hearing.


Assistant State’s Attorney David Russell picked apart the defense’s claims.


He said in court that the CT scan is not new evidence and also questioned efforts made by Morris’s previous counsel to obtain it.


According to court filings, Morris’s trial counsel requested a CT scan from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner before trial, but withdrew the request “despite the fact that the CT scan had not been provided.”



Russell wrote in a court filing that “a subpoena of the OCME file does not generally result in the disclosure of all evidence held by the office.”

At court last month, Russell said all that needed to be done was to ask the assistant medical examiner for the scan. As soon as the examiner was questioned about it during the 2024 cross-examination, Morris’s current counsel had the scan within days, Russell said.


“It certainly could have been discovered due to due diligence,” Russell said in court.


Morris’s trial counsel is now a judge. A spokesperson for the Maryland Judiciary declined a request for an interview, saying it “generally cannot comment on pending or impending legal matters.”


In a 2025 declaration, however, Morris’s trial counsel wrote to the court that he had withdrawn his records request because he believed all records had been provided. No one told him, he said, that a CT scan existed.

Russell said in court that no one told the trial counsel there wasn’t a scan, either.


Russell also disagreed with defense counsel over what the scan showed. He said the state’s expert, a forensic radiologist, found the alleged blood clot identified on the girl’s scan is common after death.


He also argued that the state experts were stronger than the defense’s and included the only expert who performed the autopsy.

Beyond that, Russell said, the jury heard testimony from a neighborwho recalled Morris slamming the door in their face and being agitated and hearing excessive crying during a video game. Morris’s attorneys rebutted that sounds like a household with a newborn.

Russell said justice “requires finality.”

“This has been going on for more than a decade,” Russell said.

The wait


Since 1989, only one person has been exonerated in Anne Arundel County, according to the National Exoneration Registry.

“Postconviction relief is structurally built to be difficult,” said Mary Kelly Tate, a law professor and founding director of the Institute of Actual Innocence at the University of Richmond School of Law. “The criminal justice system puts a premium on finality.”

As the Aug. 26 hearing concluded, Alban, the judge, said she would work to get Morris an answer on the innocence petition — as well as the postconviction proceeding focused on the ineffective assistance of counsel claims — in the coming weeks.

Morris offered a smile when his friends waved at him from the gallery.

His father, Curt Morris, said in the article on the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project website that the family’s “daily lives revolve around his schedule.”

They visit Morris twice a week and call him at least once a day.

“We’re his sanity,” Curt Morris said in the article. “And it’s been that way since day one.”

The entite story can be read at:

0


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!

September 18, 2026: Chris Duncan: Louisiana: Read this and shiver. As Radley Balko, an outstanding American author, scholar, investigative journalist and much more writes: "Yesterday afternoon I received a frantic phone call from Allison Statham. She said a detective and patrol officer from the West Monroe Police Department were outside her home in Louisiana. They were demanding a DNA sample. When she refused, she says they threatened to arrest her. Statham’s partner, Mark Dellingham, told the officers that Statham wouldn’t be giving a sample without a warrant. They said they would return the next day with a court order. I can’t begin to describe how nuts this is. But I’m going to try." (Read on!)

PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Statham says the officers told her that District Attorney Robert Tew has opened a new investigation into the 1993 death of her two-year-old daughter, Haley Oliveaux. Chris Duncan, Statham’s live-in boyfriend at the time, was accused of brutally raping and murdering the child. He was convicted and sent to Louisiana’s death row. After three decades insisting he’d been wrongfully convicted, he was declared innocent by a state judge and released from prison last November."

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

PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "I’m in the midst of publishing a three-part series about Duncan’s case. You can read the backstory in Part One here, and Part Two here. Although the Louisiana Supreme Court unanimously upheld the innocence finding in June, effectively exonerating Duncan, the state has continued to defend its case. Tew immediately vowed to put Duncan on trial again."


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

PASSAGE THREE OF THE DAY: "This was always farfetched. There is video footage of forensic “expert” Michael West manufacturing the evidence used to convict Duncan. There is ample evidence that Steven Hayne, the medical examiner who performed the autopsy on Haley, lied on the witness stand and gave testimony wholly unsupported by science. Hayne and West were the only two forensic experts who examined Haley’s body. Hayne is now dead and discredited. West is alive, but even more discredited. Most of the other witnesses at Duncan’s trial have died too. And the evidence that Haley was not murdered but, in fact, drowned in the bathtub after having a seizure is even stronger now than it was at Duncan’s trial."


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

PASSAGE FOUR OF THE DAY: "But it gets weirder. According to Statham, the officers also said that the state plans to exhume Haley as early as today. She says they told her that a lab in Shreveport is ready to receive and examine her remains. I don’t really have words to convey how crazy and unusual this is."

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

COMMENTARY: "Breaking: DA demands DNA from Chris Duncan and Haley Oliveaux mother, by Radley Balko, published by The Watch', on September 17, 2026. (Investigative journalist. Proprietor of The Watch newsletter. Ex-Washington Post. Author of Rise of the Warrior Cop, co-author of The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist.")

PHOTO CAPTION: "Allison Statham and Chris Duncan, at the premiere of a documentary about his case."

GIST: "Yesterday afternoon I received a frantic phone call from Allison Statham. She said a detective and patrol officer from the West Monroe Police Department were outside her home in Louisiana. They were demanding a DNA sample. When she refused, she says they threatened to arrest her.

Statham’s partner, Mark Dellingham, told the officers that Statham wouldn’t be giving a sample without a warrant. They said they would return the next day with a court order.

I can’t begin to describe how nuts this is. But I’m going to try.

Statham says the officers told her that District Attorney Robert Tew has opened a new investigation into the 1993 death of her two-year-old daughter, Haley Oliveaux. Chris Duncan, Statham’s live-in boyfriend at the time, was accused of brutally raping and murdering the child. He was convicted and sent to Louisiana’s death row. After three decades insisting he’d been wrongfully convicted, he was declared innocent by a state judge and released from prison last November.

I’m in the midst of publishing a three-part series about Duncan’s case. You can read the backstory in Part One here, and Part Two here. Although the Louisiana Supreme Court unanimously upheld the innocence finding in June, effectively exonerating Duncan, the state has continued to defend its case. Tew immediately vowed to put Duncan on trial again.

This was always farfetched. There is video footage of forensic “expert” Michael West manufacturing the evidence used to convict Duncan. There is ample evidence that Steven Hayne, the medical examiner who performed the autopsy on Haley, lied on the witness stand and gave testimony wholly unsupported by science. Hayne and West were the only two forensic experts who examined Haley’s body. Hayne is now dead and discredited. West is alive, but even more discredited.

Most of the other witnesses at Duncan’s trial have died too. And the evidence that Haley was not murdered but, in fact, drowned in the bathtub after having a seizure is even stronger now than it was at Duncan’s trial.

Statham says the officers who came to her home yesterday told her they have “new evidence,” and that this new evidence requires her to give a DNA sample. They told her they would also be obtaining DNA from Duncan. The new evidence has apparently been sitting at the West Monroe police department for 33 years. Statham says one officer told her that it was a piece of clothing.

Needless to say, I’m extremely dubious of this claim. The state has insisted for decades that all the biological evidence in the case was destroyed. Setting aside why this evidence would suddenly be found now, it’s hard to fathom anything that would (a) implicate Duncan to the point of meriting a new investigation, or (b) require a DNA sample from both Duncan and Statham.

Duncan’s DNA profile should already be on file. He was convicted of murdering a child and sentenced to death. But also, Duncan and Statham lived with Haley. Duncan made her breakfast and gave her a bath on the morning she died. The only possible evidence that would incriminate him at this point would be semen or blood. But the investigating detective said in sworn statements decades ago — including at Duncan’s trial — that police found no blood anywhere at the crime scene. They also found no blood in the apartment, on Duncan’s clothes, on Haley, or on a towel Duncan wrapped around her after finding her in the tub. They also found no evidence of anything used to clean up a murder or sexual assault. Hayne testified that he ran a rape kit on Haley and found no semen or pubic hairs.

To explain all of this away at trial, the state claimed that Duncan furiously scrubbed Haley clean after raping and killing her.

But it gets weirder. According to Statham, the officers also said that the state plans to exhume Haley as early as today. She says they told her that a lab in Shreveport is ready to receive and examine her remains.

I don’t really have words to convey how crazy and unusual this is. If you read Part Two of my series, you know Duncan’s defense team wanted Haley exhumed before his trial. They wanted to have their own expert review Hayne’s claim that she had been abused. They also wanted to run toxicology tests on her blood. Hayne had failed to order those tests, and the state crime lab then inadvertently destroyed her sample. But the DA’s office pushed back, and the trial judge sided with them. Haley was not exhumed.

A proper exhumation and exam would only further vindicate Duncan at this point. But given everything the state has already done in this case, there’s little reason to trust that any of this would be done correctly — or in good faith. This is a case in which the state already used manufactured evidence to send a man to death row — and continued to defend that evidence even I exposed It’s not hard to imagine that they could try again.

As for why Tew might be doing this, there is some context worth mentioning. Tew is retiring at the end of this year. One of the candidates running to replace him is the judge who declared Duncan innocent. The other is a prosecutor who worked for Tew’s predecessor — the man who sent Duncan to death row in 1998. Although that candidate has yet to say anything about the case in public, those who know him have told me they think he’d be reluctant to re-try Duncan. So perhaps Tew thinks he only has until the end of the year to re-indict Duncan.

For most of the last 30 years, Allison Statham has kept quiet about Duncan’s conviction. She has told me she always had doubts about his guilt, but the evidence seemed overwhelming and prosecutors assured her that he was guilty. But two years ago, she heard for the first time about the video of West creating bite marks on Haley’s body that he claimed were a match to Duncan, along with other details about his conviction that had been kept from her.

Statham began to believe Duncan really could be innocent. And the more she saw and read, the more certain she was. She finally went public last year, telling Mississippi Today that she supported both his exoneration and his release.

Since then, she says, she has been harassed by law enforcement. At first, I wasn’t sure what to make of her accounts, which at times sounded paranoid and conspiratorial. But the more I have talked to her, the more plausible it all seems.

So when Statham called me yesterday to say that there were cops outside her door demanding her DNA, I was worried for her. And she herself was terrified.

I do have independent confirmation that Tew has reopened his investigation and has requested DNA samples from both Statham and Duncan . So far, I only have what Statham and Dellingham told me about the rest — that the alleged new evidence is an article of clothing, and that the state plans to exhume Haley as soon as today.

Tew’s office has not responded to my request for comment. But I’m submitting an open records request for the body camera footage from the officers’ visit to Statham’s home. I suppose it’s always possible that the cops were messing with her, or got something wrong, or that there was some miscommunication.

Whatever is happening right now, it’s one of the most bonkers attempts to save a bad conviction I’ve ever seen. It’s also needlessly cruel, both to Duncan and to the mother of the little girl they continue to insist was murdered.""

The entire commentary can be read at:

breaking-da-demands-dna-from-chris

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!

September 18: William Whateley: Michigan: National Registry of Exonerations: Anatomy of a flawed arson investigation: Author Ken Otterbourg notes that: While in prison, Whateley shared a cell with Larry Smith Jr., who was exonerated in 2021. After Smith’s release, he brought Whateley’s case to the attention of Life After Justice, which then partnered with the Exoneration Project. "..."The motion included reports from two fire experts who said that Wojtowicz’s investigation was incomplete and unreliable. Michael Higgins, the founder of K-Chem Labs, said that Wojtowicz failed to interview Woodward and her boyfriend, both smokers and the last known people in the trailer, about their activities before they left. He also said that the lack of testing on materials in the trailer made Wojtowicz’s testimony suspect. “Wojtowicz stated that gasoline was poured on the kitchen floor and ignited, without any evidence to substantiate this conclusion,” Higgins wrote. “Wojtowicz did not examine the scene, which would require the investigator to remove the debris from the floor, document with photos and drawings of what he observed, and collect samples that are sent to the laboratory for analysis … Wojtowicz’s statement to the jury was totally fictitious. He had no factual or scientific evidence that there was any flammable liquid in the fire scene.”

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “William lost nearly a decade of his life because the system failed to apply sound science,” said Jarrett Adams, cofounder of Life After Justice. “This moment is about more than one case—it’s about accountability and ensuring that truth, not flawed assumptions, determines a person’s freedom.” Also in August, after the dismissal, Whateley filed a lawsuit in the Michigan Court of Claims, seeking state compensation for his wrongful conviction."


PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Higgins also said that the presence of a pour pattern was not scientifically valid evidence of the use of an accelerant. Neither was Riki’s alert. “Without laboratory results indicating accelerant, any potential hit by a K-9 is scientifically meaningless,” he wrote. Robert Trenkle, the founder of Certified Investigations International, wrote in his report that the investigation was tainted by tunnel vision. He wrote: “The Fire Marshal, in his assessment of the fire scene, formulated a hypothesis regarding the cause of the fire as an arson, partially based on his belief there were no contents in the living room. The daughter of the tenant was moving items from the trailer throughout the day preceding the fire, [and was] last there an hour or two before the alarm. She is a smoker. "


----------------------------------------
ENTRY: National Registry of Exoneration: William Whateley: Michigan: By Ken Otterbourg; Posted on August 28, 2026; False or misleading forensic evidence; Inadequate forensic defence;

GIST: "Just after 7:30 p.m. on January 23, 2017, firefighters were dispatched to a trailer fire at the Mohawk Mobile Home Park in Westland, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit.


At the time of the fire, the trailer had been vacant for about a month. While firefighters put out the blaze and secured the site, Sergeant Brian Humphrey of the Westland Police Department interviewed people in the crowd.


He spoke with Sharon Mitchell, who also lived at the park.


Mitchell said she did not know the woman who owned the trailer but that the woman’s daughter also lived at the park and had told Mitchell that the woman was in the process of moving out because of problems with her former boyfriend.


According to a request for a search warrant Humphrey later filed, Mitchell said she had heard that the former boyfriend had threatened to burn the trailer down.

Humphrey spoke with the daughter, Heather Woodward, and then with her mother, Elisa Maldonado. They said that Maldonado’s former boyfriend, 51-year-old William Whateley, had been harassing them.

Maldonado and Whateley dated for two years but ended their relationship in November 2016. Maldonado and Woodward said he constantly called and texted them.


Woodward told Humphrey that Whateley had sent her a message through Facebook Messenger threatening to burn down the trailer. She couldn’t find the message and then said Whateley might have made the threat in a phone call.

Also on January 23, prior to the fire, Maldonado had filed a police report about items missing from her trailer.


Humphrey later executed a search warrant at Whateley’s home in Detroit and found several items belonging to Maldonado, including her Social Security card, but none of the items listed on the police report.

Battalion Chief Joseph Wojtowicz, the assistant fire marshal in Westland, visited the trailer park on the night of the fire and then returned the next day.


In his report, he said that he didn’t enter the trailer because of “structure instability.” Instead, Wojtowicz relied on photographs of the interior. He wrote that the fire was caused by arson. “The fire patterns and location indicate [a] pour pattern on the living room floor,” he wrote.


In addition, he said that an arson dog from the Michigan State Police, named Riki, alerted on the front porch of the trailer, signaling the presence of an accelerant.

Police arrested Whateley on January 31, 2017, and charged him with second-degree arson. He was also separately charged with aggravated stalking, based in part on the hundreds of text messages he sent Maldonado.

Officers searched Whateley’s green minivan and found a cigarette lighter and small, empty gas can.

During an interview with Humphrey, Whateley admitted sending inappropriate texts to Maldonado but denied setting her trailer on fire.

Humphrey suggested to Whateley that the fire was an accident, perhaps caused by his carelessness.

“Here’s what I think, okay, cause I’m not saying that you, uh, intentionally started the fire but I am, I am thinking that maybe that you were there and, uh, who knows, maybe you were drinking in the trailer, waiting, just waiting to talk to [Elisa] and I think maybe you fell asleep with a cigarette, because I know you smoke, and maybe the fire got started and you just took off,” Humphrey said.

Whateley continued to deny any role in the fire. “If I knew who did it or why they did … I don’t know. If I knew I would tell you,” Whateley said.

Whateley pled guilty to aggravated stalking on May 10, 2017, and received a sentence of 3 years and 10 months in prison.

The arson trial began on June 1, 2017, in Wayne County Circuit Court.


Attorney Wendy Barnwell represented Whateley. Prior to the start, Judge Michael Hathaway appeared to urge Whateley to accept a plea, which had the possibility of parole after seven years in prison, and not risk a guilty verdict, which could mean a sentence of up to 50 years in prison.


“You’re 51 years old,” Judge Hathaway said. “If you’re convicted … you’ll never see the light of day … the arson sentence could be very, very catastrophic.”

Whateley held firm. “No, sir,” he said. “I didn’t burn the trailer down.”

Mitchell testified that she knew Whateley from seeing him around the mobile home park.


She said that the day of the fire she saw a green van she had seen before, driven by “Heather’s Mom’s boyfriend.”


Mitchell said she saw the van drive past while the fire was burning, and that the driver was smiling and laughing. Mitchell was unable to make a courtroom identification of Whateley because she said she was legally blind and had no peripheral vision.

Maldonado testified that Whateley sent her nearly 600 text messages after she ended their relationship.


She also read 20 of these text messages to the jury. Barnwell had objected to the introduction of these messages, but Judge Hathaway allowed them as “evidence of the relationship between the parties.”


Woodward also testified about Whateley sending her messages, including one where Whateley threatened to set the trailer on fire. (She could not produce that message.)

The state introduced a recorded telephone call from the Wayne County Jail between Whateley and a friend.


On the call, Whateley expressed concern about being forced to take a guilty plea and said that if he did plead guilty, he would say that Maldonado asked him to set the fire.


On the call, Whateley also said that at the time of the fire, he was at a pool hall across the street from the trailer park.

Wojtowicz testified as an expert about the investigation. He said that he spent a year attending the Michigan State Police Fire Investigation School.

He said that he took photographs of the trailer on the night of the fire and returned the next day. He said the investigators saw a “considerable pour pattern in the living room floor.”

He said, “We would usually go in and take samples to send out to Michigan State Police for verification but due to the roof collapse and the instability of the building, we weren’t able to actually go inside and do a complete process of taking samples out and testing them.”

He said he concluded the fire was “ignited by somebody” because there was no furniture, electronics, or other material to ignite a fire in the living room. (Woodward would testify that there were couches in the living room at the time of the fire.)


He also said there was no indication that the fire was caused by a gas or electrical problem, because “there was nothing that showed that any power consumption was being used.”

Wojtowicz testified that a fire with a pour pattern burned down instead of up, and that the pour pattern in the trailer led from the living room toward the main door.

“Where there was liquid poured on in that exact spot it was completely burned down to the floor joists,” he said. “No plywood, no carpet, no anything.”

Wojtowicz also testified about the arson dog’s visit to the trailer. He said that after Riki arrived, the dog sat down by the front porch of the trailer and the driveway, which Wojtowicz said indicated that the dog smelled an accelerant. The dog’s handler did not testify.

Early in the investigation, the police had seized Whateley’s cellphone, which was sent to the state police for analysis.


The state police downloaded the data, including GPS coordinates for the phone’s location, and sent the data to the Westland police.


An officer testified that the coordinates showed that Whateley’s cellphone had been near the fire’s location, but he was unable to determine when that occurred.

In his closing argument, the prosecutor said, “The pour patterns and the accelerants and the canine dog led the investigator to believe that gasoline was poured into the living room floor, and lit.” He also said that Wojtowicz had been “doing this for years” and was “good at it.”

Barnwell said in her closing argument that the state had not proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the fire was arson.


She said Woodward was a smoker, there were no photographs introduced of the pour pattern, the dog never entered the trailer, and Wojtowicz was not a trained dog handler. She said he “ might be a good man but he didn’t do a thorough investigation.”

The jury convicted Whateley of second-degree arson on June 6, 2017, and he later received a sentence of 18-30 years in prison.

Whateley appealed, arguing that Judge Hathaway erred in allowing the jury to hear the jail recordings, in allowing the use of his text messages, and in letting the officer testify about the phone records, because the GPS analysis was done by another person.


He also said there had been insufficient evidence to sustain the conviction.

The Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction on December 11, 2018.


It did say that the judge erred in allowing the officer to testify about the cellphone records, because the testimony violated Whateley’s right under the Sixth Amendment’s Confrontation Clause, but that the error was harmless.

On April 13, 2021, Whateley moved for a new trial. He said that Barnwell had provided ineffective representation because she failed to object to the introduction of “uncorroborated canine alert evidence.”


His argument was based on the 2017 version of the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) Guide, which was in use at the time of the trial, and said, “Any canine alert not confirmed by laboratory analysis should not be considered validated.”


Whateley also said his appellate attorney had been ineffective for not litigating this claim on appeal.

A trial court judge denied his motion, and the Court of Appeals declined to hear his appeal.

On August 17, 2023, Whateley filed a pro se petition for a writ of habeas corpus in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan.


The petition asserted many of the claims he had made in his previous appeals. Whateley later sought to hold the petition in abeyance, but a judge denied the request.

While in prison, Whateley shared a cell with Larry Smith Jr., who was exonerated in 2021. After Smith’s release, he brought Whateley’s case to the attention of Life After Justice, which then partnered with the Exoneration Project.

Megan Richardson, now with the Wisconsin Innocence Project, represented Whateley through the Exoneration Project. Charlotte Whitmore, now with the Boston College Innocence Project, and Sarah Elkin represented Whateley through Life After Justice.


Wolf Mueller, a defense attorney in Michigan, also represented Whateley.

On October 1, 2025, the attorneys filed a motion for a new trial.

The motion included reports from two fire experts who said that Wojtowicz’s investigation was incomplete and unreliable.

Michael Higgins, the founder of K-Chem Labs, said that Wojtowicz failed to interview Woodward and her boyfriend, both smokers and the last known people in the trailer, about their activities before they left.


He also said that the lack of testing on materials in the trailer made Wojtowicz’s testimony suspect.

“Wojtowicz stated that gasoline was poured on the kitchen floor and ignited, without any evidence to substantiate this conclusion,” Higgins wrote.


“Wojtowicz did not examine the scene, which would require the investigator to remove the debris from the floor, document with photos and drawings of what he observed, and collect samples that are sent to the laboratory for analysis … Wojtowicz’s statement to the jury was totally fictitious.


He had no factual or scientific evidence that there was any flammable liquid in the fire scene.”

Higgins also said that the presence of a pour pattern was not scientifically valid evidence of the use of an accelerant. Neither was Riki’s alert. “Without laboratory results indicating accelerant, any potential hit by a K-9 is scientifically meaningless,” he wrote.

Robert Trenkle, the founder of Certified Investigations International, wrote in his report that the investigation was tainted by tunnel vision.

He wrote: “The Fire Marshal, in his assessment of the fire scene, formulated a hypothesis regarding the cause of the fire as an arson, partially based on his belief there were no contents in the living room.


The daughter of the tenant was moving items from the trailer throughout the day preceding the fire, [and was] last there an hour or two before the alarm.


She is a smoker.


She clearly stated she had two couches in the living room near the entry door, the area of the burned-through floor.


This fire could have been caused by carelessly discarded smoking materials or through an electrical malfunction. There was no scientifically valid evidence of any accelerant use because no samples were taken.”

This motion built on Whateley’s earlier motion that Barnwell provided ineffective representation but added more details and arguments about the harm it had caused to Whateley’s defense.

Barnwell hadn’t consulted with a fire expert, hadn’t challenged the state’s use of Wojtowicz as an expert witness, and hadn’t adequately cross-examined Wojtowicz about his testimony, the motion said. At the time of the trial, the NFPA guide said that neither canine alerts nor burn patterns were indicators of the use of accelerants without a confirmatory laboratory analysis.

Whitmore and Elkins interviewed Barnwell, who said she did not remember many details of the case, but that for her the key question was not whether the fire was set, but rather who set it.


While Barnwell’s closing argument pointed out the holes in the state’s case, it fell short because it was not buttressed by expert testimony on the flaws in the investigation, the motion said.

The motion also said Whateley’s initial appellate attorney, Robert Tomak, was ineffective, because he failed to raise questions about Barnwell’s trial performance. Tomak agreed.


In an affidavit, he wrote, “I failed to perceive the existence of any appealable issue related to the scientific aspects of the arson investigation that took place in this case.”

The motion said that updated NFPA guides, based on new research, had further restricted the use of pour patterns and canine alerts as proof of arson.


“This shift in science since 2017 would create a reasonable probability of a different outcome on retrial because of the prosecution’s reliance on now invalidated science to prove that the fire was intentionally set,” the motion said.

In a response filed on February 27, 2026, the state agreed that Whateley’s conviction should be vacated, based on ineffective assistance of counsel. The response said that the expert reports in Whateley’s motion did not constitute new evidence of innocence, because Barnwell could have discovered most of the information in the reports.

On March 10, 2026, Judge Chandra Baker-Robinson granted Whateley’s motion for a new trial. Whateley was released from prison on March 27, 2026.

The case was dismissed on August 4, 2026.

“William lost nearly a decade of his life because the system failed to apply sound science,” said Jarrett Adams, cofounder of Life After Justice.


“This moment is about more than one case—it’s about accountability and ensuring that truth, not flawed assumptions, determines a person’s freedom.”

Also in August, after the dismissal, Whateley filed a lawsuit in the Michigan Court of Claims, seeking state compensation for his wrongful conviction."

The entire post can be read at:

https://exonerationregistry.org/cases/20180





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;

September 17: Technology (Gone Wrong!): When even the police unions are worried about the use of Flock, you know there must be something really wrong with it as is evident from this story by Reporters Juan Benn Jr. and Ben Conarck, headed, "D.C. police union, Alexandria leaders voice concerns over Flock technology," and sub-headed, "The AI-powered license-plate readers can track vehicles across vast geographical areas in real time."... "Gregg Pemberton, president of the D.C. police union, said Friday the city’s department has used license plate readers for many years and is a powerful investigative tool. But he noted Flock’s technology can also create detailed files on people not suspected of any crimes. “We have a lot of concerns about whether or not there’s a constitutional question that needs to be addressed there,” Pemberton said. Pemberton’s skepticism of the technology also comes as the union said it learned the police force’s internal affairs department had used the technology to investigate sworn officers. The union filed misconduct complaints and a grievance about what it said was improper use of the technology, but Pemberton saiddepartment leadership has so far declined to investigate. The department has since restricted access to the system, according to the union."

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “People who often are not on the same page on issues, who have all come together around being deeply angry about Flock” and surveillance technology, said Tess McEnery, a local organizer and human rights policy expert in Alexandria."

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

PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "The union’s grievance thrust it into an improbable alliance of groups — which ranges from conservative politicians to leftist activists and civil rights advocacy organizations — raising questions about the technology that can track vehicles across vast geographical areas in real time."

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

PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "The chorus of skepticism grew especially heated this summer in light of reporting, including an investigation by The Washington Post, that found scores of law enforcement officers have been charged with or accused of misusing the technology, including for spying on wives, girlfriends and exes. Other critics have raised concerned about the data being shared with other law enforcement agencies, including federal immigration authorities."

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

STORY: "D.C. police union, Alexandria leaders voice concerns over Flock technology, by Reporters Juan Benn Jr. and Ben Conarck, published by The Washington Post on September 12, 2026. (Juan Benn Jr. is a reporter covering criminal justice in Virginia.)

 SUB-HEADING: "D.C. police union, Alexandria leaders voice concerns over Flock technology,"  

GIST: "The national blowback against Flock license-plate readers is also hitting the Washington region, with D.C.’s police union and leaders in a Northern Virginia city raising concerns about the use of the technology in recent days.

Gregg Pemberton, president of the D.C. police union, said Friday the city’s department has used license plate readers for many years and is a powerful investigative tool. But he noted Flock’s technology can also create detailed files on people not suspected of any crimes.

“We have a lot of concerns about whether or not there’s a constitutional question that needs to be addressed there,” Pemberton said.

Pemberton’s skepticism of the technology also comes as the union said it learned the police force’s internal affairs department had used the technology to investigate sworn officers.

The union filed misconduct complaints and a grievance about what it said was improper use of the technology, but Pemberton saiddepartment leadership has so far declined to investigate. The department has since restricted access to the system, according to the union.Ask The Post AIDive deeper

Pemberton called for the D.C. Council to regulate how the tech is used in the nation’s capital.

“Once you start to understand the capabilities of this system, even the proponents of it say there needs to be more public discussion and probably more legislation on it,” he said.

The union’s grievance thrust it into an improbable alliance of groups — which ranges from conservative politicians to leftist activists and civil rights advocacy organizations — raising questions about the technology that can track vehicles across vast geographical areas in real time.

The chorus of skepticism grew especially heated this summer in light of reporting, including an investigation by The Washington Post, that found scores of law enforcement officers have been charged with or accused of misusing the technology, including for spying on wives, girlfriends and exes. Other critics have raised concerned about the data being shared with other law enforcement agencies, including federal immigration authorities.

“People who often are not on the same page on issues, who have all come together around being deeply angry about Flock” and surveillance technology, said Tess McEnery, a local organizer and human rights policy expert in Alexandria.

Use of — and resistance to — readers grows

Many law enforcement agencies across the D.C. region use various forms of license-plate readers. Police in Fairfax County said Flock cameras helped identify suspects connected to a fire this summer at a storage facility that caused upward of $1.3 million worth of damage.

In Maryland, the network of Flock cameras has been expanding, though some of the state’s largest law enforcement agencies — including Baltimore and Montgomery County — don’t contract with the company and use other vendors. 

The police department in Alexandria operates 61 fixed Flock cameras along busy public roads, with more used by private businesses and schools, including Northern Virginia Community College’s Alexandria campus, Police Chief Tarrick McGuire told city leaders at a meeting this week. The city also uses automatic license plate readers to enforce parking, speed and red-light violations.

The department has drawn scrutiny in recent weeks after reports of potential improper use of the technology, but the chief said an auditing unit found zero instances of “malicious misuse.” He also said the department may soon get additional oversight help from an outside criminologist.

As McGuire spoke to lawmakers, at least 10 people held signs protesting the readers. The chief told the mayor and city council that he has heard the community’s concerns.

“I am of the opinion [that] as leaders our responsibility is not to choose between public safety and civil liberties,” he said at the meeting Tuesday. “The constitution does not ask us to sacrifice one for another. It requires us to govern in a way that safeguards the rights of individuals while protecting all persons in our communities.”

An Alexandria police spokesperson said in a statement that Flock cameras have helped the department find missing people and have supported 35 criminal investigations, including two armed robberies. “These investigations involve real victims and real harm, from violent crime and its lasting trauma to the broader impact crime has on families and the community,” the statement said.

But some city officials signaled at Tuesday’s meeting that they want the technology gone.

“While I do think there’s a role for technology, and I do think we have seen the role that that has played and the benefit it has, I do not think there is a role for Flock in this community,” said Mayor Aliya Gaskins.

The police chief said the department is in talks with other companies with “stronger safeguards” to address community and policing needs. The department’s contract was signed with Flock in 2023 and can be terminated at any time, McGuire said, adding the cameras were paid for by grant and city funding.

Gaskins and some council members said they worried that, even with a different vendor, the same potential problems could arise.

“Eliminating Flock isn’t enough for me,” said councilwoman Sandy Marks. “Eliminating and moving to a new and similar technology isn’t enough for me without an extended conversation.”"

The entire story can be read at: 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2026/09/12/dc-police-union-alexandria-leaders-voice-concerns-over-flock-technology/

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;

September 16: Neonatal nurse Lucy Letby: UK: The Independent (Reporter Albert Toth, asks the questions of the day: "What is the ‘medical evidence’ against Lucy Letby’s convictions - and can she still re-appeal?," noting that: "An expert panel claimed Lucy Letby did not commit the murders of seven babies - with members’ evidence now being considered as part of an application for a fresh Court of Appeal hearing."

PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Letby’s legal team said it revealed “significant new medical evidence” based on findings from the expert panel which Dr Lee assembled. Lawyers claimed these findings show no evidence of deliberate harm in any of the 17 cases, but other varying reasons including natural causes and “bad medical care”. The expert panel also challenged the prosecution’s claim that Letby murdered seven babies by injecting air into their veins and causing an air embolism which blocks the blood supply. Their evidence was supported by Dr Lee’s 1989 paper on the topic, which Letby’s legal team said was based on a different kind of embolism. The professor also takes issue specifically with the prosecution’s claim that skin discolouration on the skin of several of the babies was evidence of an air embolism. He said there are several other reasons this could have occurred, adding discolouration is only a symptom in around 10 per cent of cases of air embolism – but it was present in nine of 17 babies harmed at the Countess of Chester Hospital. The professor added: “In summary, ladies and gentlemen, we did not find any murders. In all cases, death or injury were deemed to be natural causes or just bad medical care.”

STORY: "What is the ‘medical evidence’ against Lucy Letby’s convictions - and can she still re-appeal?, by Reporter Albert Toth, published by The Independent, on September 14, 2026. (Albert Toth is The Independent's Audience Reporter. He covers and commissions trending stories, topical features, and general news – with a special interest in social affairs and UK politics.")

SUB-HEADING: "An expert panel claimed Lucy Letby did not commit the murders of seven babies - with members’ evidence now being considered as part of an application for a fresh Court of Appeal hearing." 

SUB-HEADING: Experts claim they found 'no murders' in Lucy Letby case

GIST: "A panel of experts claimed that Lucy Letby did not commit murder after its chairman presented “significant new medical evidence” on her court case.

Evidence used to convict the killer nurse was newly challenged by Canadian professor Dr Shoo Lee who convened a panel of experts in London for a press conference last year.

Following a review by the 14 experts, he claimed there was no medical evidence to support the convictions and suggested the deaths and injuries were caused by natural causes or "bad medical care".

They were joined by Conservative MP David Davis.

Letby was convicted by a jury of murdering seven babies and attempting to kill another seven between 2015 and 2016. She is currently serving 15 whole-life orders for the crimes, which took place at the Countess of Chester Hospital where she worked as a neonatal nurse.

The two previous attempts to challenge Letby’s convictions have been unsuccessful. But her legal team has applied to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) to investigate her case as a potential miscarriage of justice, which could see the case brought to the Court of Appeal.

Who are Dr Shoo Lee and the other experts? Dr Shoo Lee is a Canadian professor of paediatrics and founder of the Canadian Neonatal Foundation.
His 1989 research on air embolisms was used by the prosecution in its case against Letby at her trial between 2022 and 2023.

The respected professor now thinks his academic paper was misinterpreted by the prosecution and its lead expert witness, Dr Dewi Evans. Dr Lee explained to The Times: “I looked at [the court transcripts] and I wasn’t very happy because what they were interpreting wasn’t exactly what I said.”

Retired consultant paediatrician Dr Evans previously said concerns regarding his evidence were "unsubstantiated, unfounded, inaccurate".

Dr Lee however said he is challenging the evidence used against Letby to be entirely sure that the case against her was not based on faulty evidence.

The professor said that, upon learning the low chance of having her conviction overturned after a failed appeal, he remarked: “Well, this is not fair, because the evidence that was used to convict her, in my opinion, wasn’t quite right.”

Dr Lee told reporters he conferred with Letby’s legal team to assess whether the 35,000 pages of medical evidence was “faulty or good”. What followed was the assembly of 14 experts from six countries, organised by the professor, who presented their findings.

These experts were drawn from institutions around the world, including Canada, the US, Japan, Sweden, Germany, and the UK. They include ten neonatologists, one paediatric surgeon, one paediatric infectious disease specialist, one senior neonatal intensive care nurse, and another paediatric specialist.

What evidence did the panel present?

Letby’s legal team said it revealed “significant new medical evidence” based on findings from the expert panel which Dr Lee assembled. Lawyers claimed these findings show no evidence of deliberate harm in any of the 17 cases, but other varying reasons including natural causes and “bad medical care”.

The expert panel also challenged the prosecution’s claim that Letby murdered seven babies by injecting air into their veins and causing an air embolism which blocks the blood supply. Their evidence was supported by Dr Lee’s 1989 paper on the topic, which Letby’s legal team said was based on a different kind of embolism.

The professor also takes issue specifically with the prosecution’s claim that skin discolouration on the skin of several of the babies was evidence of an air embolism. He said there are several other reasons this could have occurred, adding discolouration is only a symptom in around 10 per cent of cases of air embolism – but it was present in nine of 17 babies harmed at the Countess of Chester Hospital.

The professor added: “In summary, ladies and gentlemen, we did not find any murders. In all cases, death or injury were deemed to be natural causes or just bad medical care.”

Did the panel discuss any specific cases?

During the conference, Dr Lee spoke about the specific cases of several of the babies. He began with the death of baby one, a pre-term boy who collapsed two days after being born, with skin discolouration noted and who did not respond to resuscitation.

The professor called into question the use of his paper to support the finding that Letby had injected air into the veins, causing the baby’s death. He indicated skin discolouration was not safe evidence of this, saying “the notion that these babies can be diagnosed with air embolism because they collapsed and had these skin discolourations has no evidence in fact”.

Likewise, Dr Lee said the panel claimed the death of baby four, also attributed to an air embolism, was actually caused by “systemic sepsis, pneumonia and disseminated intravascular coagulation” resulting from poor healthcare.

After a “prolonged, premature rupture of membranes” had caused an infection, he said “the mother did not receive antibiotics”, adding “there were important delays in the admission, diagnosis and treatment of the baby after the baby was born”.

He said: “This was not a stable baby, as alleged by the prosecution witness, and in fact, this baby continued to deteriorate for the next few days until final collapse with worsening symptoms of infection as we went along.”

Dr Lee said the panel had next looked at a girl identified only as baby nine. He said her death was preventable, suggesting she had been poorly cared for. He said there was no evidence of an air embolism, for which Letby has been blamed after claims she injected the child with air.

He said the child was born severely pre-term with chronic lung disease and needed to be resuscitated. Letby had been accused of injecting air into the child through a nasal-gastric tube into her stomach causing respiratory arrest, heart failure and death.

The former nurse was also accused of turning off a monitor alerting medics if the baby stopped breathing for longer than around 20 seconds, causing a delay in her treatment.

Dr Lee said the alarm was not switched off and the baby was “gasping” for air. He suggested the medics caring for her failed to respond timely to a bacterial infection with antibiotics, and he concluded the child died from respiratory complications with no evidence of air embolism.

The professor went on to discuss baby 11 (whose death Letby was not found guilty of), baby 15 and baby seven, finding fault with the allegations against the former nurse in each case.

Dr Lee, summarising his panel’s findings, cited what he claimed were flaws in the prosecution evidence.

He cited incomplete medical treatment, failure to consider medical histories, disregard for warnings about infections, misdiagnosis of babies, caring for very poorly babies beyond their medical competencies, delays in treatment of acutely poorly babies, poor medical skills in certain procedures and poor supervision of more junior medics and a lack of understanding of some basic procedures.

He also cited poor management of common medical conditions and lack of knowledge about commonly used equipment in the hospital unit, adding: “There was a lack of teamwork and trust between the health professions.”

Dr Lee also said there was evidence of inadequate numbers of staff, a lack of training, workload overload, and some poorly babies should have been treated at a “higher level” unit or hospital.

Could this change Letby’s convictions?

Following the previous unsuccessful attempts, Letby’s legal team can no longer challenge her convictions at the Court of Appeal without significant new evidence that was not available during her first trial.

Dr Lee had previously given counter-evidence concerning air embolisms during Letby’s appeal, but the judge said this was inadmissible as he was not called by her defence at the original trial. The professor claimed he was first contacted in October 2023, after Letby was convicted, and did not know his paper had been used in the trial.

The new file of evidence convened by him and his panel has been submitted to the CCRC. The body aims to complete most investigations within a year of application. If it finds a substantial possibility that judges could overturn the conviction, it has the power to send the case back to the Court of Appeal.

Last year, A CCRC spokesperson said: “It is for the CCRC to find, investigate and if appropriate, refer potential miscarriages of justice to the appellate courts when new evidence or new argument means there is a real possibility that a conviction will not be upheld, or a sentence reduced.

"At this stage it is not possible to determine how long it will take to review this application. A significant volume of complicated evidence was presented to the court in Ms Letby's trials.

"The CCRC is independent. We do not work for the government, courts, police, the prosecution or for anyone applying for a review of their case. This helps us investigate alleged miscarriages of justice impartially."

On Tuesday, the outcome of the the Thirwall Inquiry into how the nurse committed her crimes will be published.

The entire story can be read at:

https://www.independent.co.uk/author/albert-toth

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;

September 15: "Neonatal nurse Lucy Letby: Thirlwell Report released: The Guardian examines the report, released earlier today, and asks, "I've heard people say Letby may be innocent. What does the report say about that?" The Guardian's response: "Nothing. The inquiry was conducted entirely on the basis of Letby being found guilty of the offences for which she was convicted. All attempts by Letby to appeal against the convictions were dismissed. The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) is investigating her case to determine if there is a “real possibility” her convictions would not be upheld, which could trigger a referral back to the appeal courts. The chair of the CCRC, Vera Baird, told the BBC the miscarriages of justice watchdog would be looking at the conclusions drawn by the Thirlwall inquiry. She said: “We will be looking at the report with interest to assess whether it has any bearing on our review of the case."

 

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am very uncomfortable with much of the reporting on the Thirlwall report, issued earlier today - especially the stories which refer to her as "killer nurse". Yes, I know she has been convicted and has lost her appeals, But there is a mountain of   new evidence not previously available that she had an extremely unfair trial - at which she seemed more of a target than an accused -  and  she desperately needs the CRCC (Criminal Cases Review Commission)  to refer the case back to the appeal courts. Yes, I also know that two of the experts supporting her position have changed their minds -   affirming their initial opinions, but criticizing opinions of some of the other experts supporting her. Nor does this change my mind about the unfairness of her trial - especially when one considers the utterly biased evidence given by Dr. Dewi  Evans,  and some of the other so-called witnesses testifying for the prosecution:  Last point: As the Guardian reports, the main focus on the report  is on 'security' -  the need to protect babies from being harmed to protect newly born babies from being killed by future Lucy Letby's  by installing  cameras. This does not impress me. I have read enough about the terribly flawed treatment provided to newly born babies at the Countess of Chester hospital,  to believe that none of the  babies at Countess of Chester  were murdered. Their deaths were due to natural causes and bad medicine. Lucy Letby  is a scapegoat - as was Nurse Susan Nelles was in Ontario - the innocent  (exonerated) nurse who was convicted of murdering four babies at Toronto's Iconic Hospital for Sick Children in 1980-81;  It is the  Countess of Chester hospital - and the National Health Service - (not Lucy Letby)  that  must accept the blame - and prove to the world that they have taken all necessary steps to make sure this cannot happen again. 

Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog. 

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

PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Who is Lucy Letby and what is this new report about? Letby, 36, is serving 15 whole-life prison terms after being convicted of the murder of seven babies and attempted murder of seven other newborns at the Countess of Chester hospital in north-west England from June 2015 to June 2016. The former neonatal nurse says she is innocent and is fighting to overturn her convictions. The report published on Tuesday holds the findings of the Thirlwall inquiry, an independent public inquiry led by Lady Justice Kathryn Thirlwall, a senior court of appeal judge, which was first announced on 4 September 2023. It focused on events at the Countess of Chester hospital leading up to and during Letby’s offending. It aimed to get answers for the victims’ families and ensure lessons were learned. The inquiry also looked at the wider circumstances, including the response and conduct of the NHS, I ts staff and its regulators."

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

STORY: "Thirlwall report: what did it say about Lucy Letby case and what does it recommend?, by Senior News Reporter Jamie Grierson, published by The Guardian, on September 15, 2026.

SUB-HEADING: "Lady Justice Thirlwall’s wide ranging inquiry calls on NHS England to implement 14 changes by March next year

GIST: "Lady Justice Thirlwall has published the report on the findings of her inquiryinto events at the Countess of Chester hospital involving the actions of former neonatal nurse Lucy Letby, who was convicted over the murder and attempted murder of multiple babies.

Here we take a look at the report and its findings.

Who is Lucy Letby and what is this new report about?

Letby, 36, is serving 15 whole-life prison terms after being convicted of the murder of seven babies and attempted murder of seven other newborns at the Countess of Chester hospital in north-west England from June 2015 to June 2016. The former neonatal nurse says she is innocent and is fighting to overturn her convictions.

The report published on Tuesday holds the findings of the Thirlwall inquiry, an independent public inquiry led by Lady Justice Kathryn Thirlwall, a senior court of appeal judge, which was first announced on 4 September 2023.

It focused on events at the Countess of Chester hospital leading up to and during Letby’s offending. It aimed to get answers for the victims’ families and ensure lessons were learned. The inquiry also looked at the wider circumstances, including the response and conduct of the NHS, I ts staff and its regulators.

What was the main finding of the inquiry?

Thirlwall found a “complete failure” to protect babies on the neonatal unit at the hospital.

Delivering her report at Liverpool town hall on Tuesday, Thirlwall said the report described dysfunctional management and governance, a gulf between hospital leadership and clinicians, and failure to understand the fundamentals of safeguarding.

Could any of the babies have been saved?

Thirlwall concluded that three babies might have survived and seven others could have been protected if hospital bosses had taken action over concerns about Letby.

She said two newborn twins would not have died and five others would not have been harmed if Letby had been removed from the unit sooner, while a third baby, a two-month-old girl, and two others who suffered unexplained collapses might have been protected if a doctor had detected an earlier insulin poisoning on the unit.

One of those infants, now aged 11, suffered a lifelong brain injury and needs 24-hour care.

If doctors were worried, why did the hospital not stop her?

Senior doctors became increasingly concerned about Letby’s connection to the unusual rise in deaths and serious incidents over the following months and raised their fears with executives.

However, the Thirlwall inquiry found that senior nurses effectively dismissed the concerns about Letby and that there was a “prolonged delay” in calling the police.

Thirlwall said that rather than being believed, clinicians were themselves made the subject of investigation in a “deplorable” grievance process brought by Letby when she was finally removed from the neonatal unit in July 2016.

Did the families know what was happening at the time?

The inquiry found that parents were “kept in the dark” for years about what happened to their babies and the concerns they might have been deliberately harmed.

Thirlwall concluded this was “reprehensible”.

Experts quit Lucy Letby’s defence team over ‘scientific credibility’ as public inquiry reports

Read more

What needs to change to stop this from happening again?

A total of 14 recommendations have been made in the Thirlwall inquiry report – including the fitting of baby monitors in all cots and incubators in neonatal units and CCTV cameras focused on insulin storage fridges.

The recommendations follow the conclusions made by Thirlwall, the inquiry chair, who said the collapse and deaths of some babies could have been avoided if safeguarding practices had been followed.

She said baby monitors would ensure parents could observe their babies “remotely at any time” – adding that NHS England should “set out a roadmap” for how it could be implemented by 31 March next year.

I’ve heard people say Letby may be innocent. What does this report say about that?

Nothing. The inquiry was conducted entirely on the basis of Letby being found guilty of the offences for which she was convicted. All attempts by Letby to appeal against the convictions were dismissed.

The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) is investigating her case to determine if there is a “real possibility” her convictions would not be upheld, which could trigger a referral back to the appeal courts.

The chair of the CCRC, Vera Baird, told the BBC the miscarriages of justice watchdog would be looking at the conclusions drawn by the Thirlwall inquiry. She said: “We will be looking at the report with interest to assess whether it has any bearing on our review of the case.""

The entire story can be read at:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/sep/15/lucy-letby-public-inquiry-thirlwall-report

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

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;

September 15: Jimmy Duncan: Louisiana: Author, blogger Bill Kissinger, a battler against the death penalty gets to heart of the Jimmy Duncan case, in a commentary headed, "Jimmie Duncan Deserves His Life Back - and Science in Court Must Earn Our Trust,," and sub-headed, "When You Can No Longer Trust Science Or Experts In The Courtroom."... "As of September 12, Duncan is out of prison, but he still faces the possibility of another trial. His conviction is gone. The threat of another prosecution is not. "I believe Duncan deserves the chance to rebuild his life. I also believe we need to look closely at how scientific “evidence” helped take so much of that life away."

PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Duncan’s original appeal described a sharp disagreement at trial. The prosecution’s dental expert, Neal Riesner, connected marks on Haley’s body to Duncan’s teeth with varying levels of certainty. Defense experts disputed whether the injuries were bite marks at all. Original appeal Imagine being a juror hearing that testimony.  One expert says the marks connect the defendant to the child. Another says they are not even bite marks. How is someone without scientific training supposed to decide? The answer should not depend on which witness sounds more certain. The court needs to ask what research supports the method, how often it produces mistakes, and whether other qualified people can reach the same result. Those questions should be answered before a jury is asked to rely on the evidence."

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

COMMENTARY: "Jimmie Duncan Deserves His Life Back - and Science in Court Must Earn Our Trust," by Bill Kissinger, published on 'The Death Penalty Corner" on September 13, 2026. (Bill Kissinger recently celebrated his third “FreedomVersary” after serving 47 flat calendar years on a LWOP (Life Without Parole) sentence in Angola, one of the roughest prisons in America. He was released on a final court judgment on March 30,  2023, based on a Ramos v. Louisiana (2020) case, which he had been fighting for years. He is a published author, operates a website, and awaiting publication of his autobiography, “47 Winters”. He can be found on Substack where he has a column called “The Death Penalty Corner” at williamkissinger.substack.com.)...Nota bene:   (WIKIPEDIA): Ramos v. Louisiana, 590 U.S. 83 (2020), is a U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires that guilty verdicts be unanimous in criminal trials. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramos_v._Louisiana

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

SUB-HEADING: "When You Can No Longer Trust Science Or Experts In The Courtroom."

Jimmie “Chris” Duncan was convicted in 1998 of killing 23-month-old Haley Oliveaux, his girlfriend’s daughter, who drowned while in his care. He spent 27 years on Louisiana’s death row before his release in November 2025. On June 29, 2026, the Louisiana Supreme Court upheld the ruling that threw out his conviction and death sentence on factual-innocence grounds. Case background and release; Supreme Court decision.

As of September 12, Duncan is out of prison, but he still faces the possibility of another trial. His conviction is gone. The threat of another prosecution is not. Recent reporting

I believe Duncan deserves the chance to rebuild his life. I also believe we need to look closely at how scientific “evidence” helped take so much of that life away.

Most of us expect an expert witness to help a jury understand the facts. We expect that person to use sound methods, keep honest records, and admit what the evidence cannot tell us.

Those are reasonable expectations. When someone’s freedom - or life - is at stake, they should be firm requirements.

The FBI’s past laboratory problems and the recent prosecution of Colorado scientist Yvonne “Missy” Woods show why we cannot take those requirements for granted.

In 2004, former FBI employee Jacqueline Blake pleaded guilty after submitting more than 100 reports falsely stating that she had completed required checks during DNA testing. She received two years of probation and 100 hours of community service. The Justice Department reported that its review had not found a changed outcome in a criminal case where her results were used. It nevertheless acknowledged the damage to her work and the laboratory’s integrity. Justice Department report

The missing checks were meant to detect contamination. The inspector general found that skipping them made her analyses scientifically invalid. That distinction matters: a result might happen to be “right” even though the work needed to justify trusting it was not done. Inspector-general findings

The FBI also faced serious questions about experts making claims that went beyond what science could support, including examiner Michael Malone. A 2014 investigation criticized unreliable evidence and failures in reviewing affected cases. A broader FBI review later found errors in testimony in 257 of 268 reviewed cases where hair evidence pointed toward the defendant. That did not mean 96 percent of those defendants were innocent. It meant the testimony in that particular group of cases contained errors. 2014 investigation; FBI review

Then there is Woods.

On September 8, 2026, a Colorado judge sentenced the former Colorado Bureau of Investigation analyst to ten years in prison. She had pleaded guilty to cyber-crime, perjury, attempting to influence a public servant, and forgery. Prosecutors identified 52 false laboratory reports and another “misleading” report. Much of the conduct involved reporting that DNA was absent when testing had detected it, stopping opportunities for further investigation. Prosecutors said they had not established false DNA identifications or false-positive results. Colorado sentencing announcement

These cases are different. Lying about laboratory work is not the same as using a method that cannot support the conclusion being offered. Neither automatically proves what happened in Duncan’s case.

But they help us understand the same basic danger: people can place enormous trust in scientific evidence without seeing the problems beneath it.

There are three reasons Duncan’s case should change how we think about that trust.

First, an expert’s confidence is no substitute for proof that the method works.

A degree tells us someone has studied a subject. Experience tells us someone has done the work before. Neither guarantees that a particular method can answer the question being asked.

That is the problem with identifying someone from a supposed bite mark.

Before that identification can be trusted, we need to know that teeth leave useful differences, that skin records those differences accurately, and that examiners can reliably read the marks.

A 2023 review by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST, found that those basic claims lacked enough scientific support. Skin can stretch and distort a mark. The research did not establish the reliable identification process that confident courtroom testimony can suggest. NIST review

This problem exists even when an examiner believes every word he says. Being “sincere” cannot make an unreliable method dependable.

Duncan’s original appeal described a sharp disagreement at trial. The prosecution’s dental expert, Neal Riesner, connected marks on Haley’s body to Duncan’s teeth with varying levels of certainty. Defense experts disputed whether the injuries were bite marks at all. Original appeal

Imagine being a juror hearing that testimony.

One expert says the marks connect the defendant to the child.


Another says they are not even bite marks.

How is someone without scientific training supposed to decide?

The answer should not depend on which witness sounds more certain.

The court needs to ask what research supports the method, how often it produces mistakes, and whether other qualified people can reach the same result. Those questions should be answered before a jury is asked to rely on the evidence.

The FBI hair cases raise a similar concern. Finding that two things look alike does not automatically tell us how strong that connection is.

An expert can turn a limited observation into a powerful accusation by giving it more weight than the science allows.

Blake and Woods show a different weakness. Even a useful, well-tested form of science can be undermined by dishonest work.

That leaves three separate questions:


Does the method work?

Was the work done properly?

Did the witness describe the result fairly?

We should demand a sound and solid answer to all three. Duncan should not have to pay for our willingness to settle for the word “expert.”

Second, we must be able to check how
the evidence was handled.

A trustworthy examination should leave a clear record.

What did the evidence look like at the start?


What did the examiner do to it?


When were the photographs taken?


Could the examination itself have changed what later experts saw?

These are basic questions. In Duncan’s case, they became deeply troubling ones.

Experts at his later hearing testified that video showed Michael West pressing dental casts against Haley’s skin and compromising the evidence. The lack of a clear photographic timeline made it difficult to tell whether pictures were taken before or after that handling. A detective disputed that West created new marks. West performed the examination; Riesner gave the prosecution’s bite-mark testimony. Supreme Court’s account

That is a problem with the evidence itself. Before discussing what a mark means, we need to know how it got there and whether it changed.

If an examination alters an injury, a later expert may be studying the effects of the examination as well as the original injury. Without a clear record, it may be impossible to separate the two.

And having several experts agree does not necessarily solve the problem. They may all be looking at the same questionable photograph. Their agreement can sound like independent confirmation when it rests on the same unresolved concern.

Blake’s case helps explain why records matter so much. Her paperwork said required checks had been done. Anyone relying on that paperwork could believe the results had safeguards they did not actually have.

Woods’s case shows why a final report cannot be accepted simply because it comes from a respected laboratory. The report must accurately reflect the work behind it.

The same standard should apply to Duncan. We should be able to examine the steps that produced the evidence against him, rather than trusting the conclusion alone.

This is also why I think we need to be careful with the phrases “fake science” and “debunked science.” They describe different problems.

Someone may knowingly falsify a record. Someone else may use a method that research shows cannot do what was claimed. An examiner may also damage or change evidence during the work. These failures can overlap, but we should explain which one the record supports.

None of that weakens Duncan’s position. It makes the argument more honest.

He should not have to prove that an examiner committed a crime before a court recognizes that the evidence is too unreliable to justify punishment. The question is whether the evidence deserves the weight the state placed on it.

When the state asks to take someone’s freedom, it should be able to show its work.

Third, correcting a mistake must mean more than admitting there was a problem.

A new scientific report does little for someone sitting in prison unless that person can use it.

The defendant needs access to the records. A qualified expert must be able to review them. A court must be willing to hear what has changed and decide whether the conviction can still stand.

Without those steps, the correction remains on paper while the punishment continues.

The FBI’s history shows how that can happen. The 2014 inspector-general report criticized problems with reviewing cases, notifying affected defendants, and giving death-penalty cases the urgency they deserved. Finding unreliable work did not automatically get useful information to the people whose lives depended on it. Oversight report

Woods’s prison sentence cannot, by itself, repair every case she touched. Punishing the scientist and reviewing the evidence are separate responsibilities. Both matter.

Duncan’s case shows why a real review is so important. The Louisiana Supreme Court upheld relief after considering new evidence that undermined the main scientific and medical claims supporting the prosecution. It did not declare all bite-mark evidence invalid. It ruled on the evidence in Duncan’s case. Supreme Court decision

That should carry real weight.

Duncan is not simply asking the public to distrust an unpopular expert or a disputed field. He has obtained a court ruling in his favor on factual-innocence grounds.

His lawyers have warned that another prosecution remains possible and have promised to continue defending him. Statement from his legal team

Before that happens, the public deserves a clear answer to this question:


What reliable evidence would justify putting him through another trial?

A prosecutor’s ability to pursue a case does not settle whether doing so serves justice. The time already spent defending a conviction cannot become a reason to keepdefending it. An accusation does not become stronger because it has been repeated for decades.

There is a responsibility to Haley, too. Her death deserves a truthful account based on careful evidence. Holding the wrong person responsible would not honor her. Protecting Duncan from an unsupported prosecution does not diminish the value of her life.

The same commitment to truth should guide both.

I do not look at these cases and come to the conclusion that we should give up on science. I conclude that we should insist on the things that make science worthtrusting: methods that have been tested, honest records, independent review, and a willingness to correct mistakes.

Those safeguards protect everyone. They help prevent wrongful convictions. They also help keep dishonest or careless work from closing off investigations that could bring answers to victims and their families.

Duncan has already lost decades of his life waiting to be executed. The courts have now ruled in his favor. Unless new, reliable evidence justifies another course, Louisiana should end this prosecution and let him rebuild his life.

An expert should be willing to show the work. A court should be willing to question it. And when that work no longer supports a conviction, the justice system should have the courage to let go.

Jimmie Duncan deserves that much.

But, “science?”

And “experts?”

You have to earn our trust again."

The entire commentary can be read at: 

https://williamkissinger.substack.com/p/jimmie-duncan-deserves-his-life-back

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;