PUBLISHER'S NOTE: Kudos to Journal Sentinel Legal Affairs
Reporter Bruce Vielmetti for one of the best pieces of trial
reporting I have ever seen. He caught the tragedy of an innocent man
losing almost half of his life life to quack science, the systemic
bias of the entire justice system that was
likely also at work when a poor, young African American male is on trial
for the sexual assault and murder of a white woman, the failure of the
State to preserve potentially exculpatory evidence, and the difficult
decisions that had to be made along the way by the judge, prosecutor and
defence lawyer - all while explaining the intricacies of the law in a
clear, intelligent way. Kodos as well to the Journal Sentinel for the
attention it has devoted to this case - and above all to the Innocence
Project and its lawyers, without whom might still be behind bars.
Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.
-----------------------------------------------------------
QUOTE OF THE DAY: "The trial judge in the
case, now-retired Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Janine Geske, told
Vox earlier this year that she feels bad, but had no reason at the time
to block the expert testimony. "I'm grateful we don't have the death penalty," she said
."
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PASSAGE ONE OF THE DAY: Stinson, 54, was convicted
in 1985 in the November 1984 beating death of his older female neighbor,
Ione Cychosz, based on the dentists' expert opinions that only he could
have made the bite marks on the victim's body. He was sentenced to
life in prison. The dentists, Marquette University
professor Lowell Thomas Johnson and Raymond Rawson, of Las Vegas,
strongly believed that everyone's dentition is unique and could be
matched to human bite wounds, a theory that was unproven and subject to
much debate within forensic dentistry at the time. Stinson's case, and
its affirmation on appeal, helped persuade more courts to admit similar
bite-mark evidence. In
2009, the Innocence Project of Wisconsin won Stinson's release after a
panel of experts concluded Johnson and Rawson's opinions were badly
flawed, even for that time, and that Stinson's teeth did not make the
bites. Male DNA from Cychosz's clothing did not match Stinson either. A
different man, Moses Price, matched the DNA and confessed to killing
Cychosz in 2012. His teeth didn't match the victim's bite marks either.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "There were other initial
suspects — basically, anyone in jail on a sexual assault charge who was
missing a tooth — but Johnson only examined Stinson. No
one raised the systemic bias of the entire justice system that was
likely also at work when a poor, young African American male is on trial
for the sexual assault and murder of a white woman. An
error in preserving semen collected from the victim prevented testing,
which meant prosecutors couldn't charge sexual assault. The testing
would have shown the person's blood type, which might have excluded
Stinson. Though the process by which Stinson was
singled out as a suspect and linked conclusively to bite marks on the
victim seems shockingly flawed now, it was accepted in 1985 and upheld
on appeal. The prosecutor on the case at the time
said his gut feeling after meeting and talking with Stinson was that he couldn't be the perpetrator, but was convinced by the dentists' work. Stinson's
trial attorney, Steve Kohn, now retired, hired his own dental expert
but didn't call him as a witness because he agreed that Johnson's
evidence pointed to Stinson."
PASSAGE THREE OF THE DAY:
" Stinson
is just one of dozens of people who were convicted on false-bite mark
evidence in the 1980s and 1990s when forensic dentistry proponents like
Johnson were pushing bite-mark evidence as a scientific way to connect
someone to a crime. It was one of several pattern
comparison fields in forensics, such as shoe prints, fingerprints, tire
tracks, handwriting and ballistics. But despite the ardor of its
believers, it was never scientifically validated and has fallen out of
favor. Though the process by which Stinson was
singled out as a suspect and linked conclusively to bite marks on the
victim seems shockingly inept now, it was accepted in 1985 and upheld on
appeal — a ruling that led to more courts approving similar evidence.
Dozens of those also resulted in wrongful convictions that the Innocence
Project helped overturn. Seven
years after Stinson's conviction, the U.S. Supreme Court set a new
standard meant to give judges the authority to rein in what critics
called junk science, and require expert's testimony be based on reliable
principles and methods. Bite-mark evidence has
largely not done well under the new scrutiny. Many scientists disagree
that human tissue can record bites well enough to allow precise
comparison since skin stretches and marks vary depending on where they
are made on a body."
-------------------------------------------------------------------
PASSAGE FOUR OF THE DAY: "Stinson
testified about being taunted and harassed in prison as "an old lady
killer," his constant fear, how he lost hope and became depressed. He
said he had always dreamed of having a family, children, "home with a
fence and a pool and all that." Byron Lichstein,
one of the Innocence Project lawyers, said the day Stinson was released
from prison he seemed disoriented, dealing with both jubilation and
shock. He said he remained in touch and saw Stinson make "a wonderful
effort" to reintegrate with the outside world, but "he remains haunted
by the (prison) experience."
--------------------------------------------------------------------
STORY: "Bogus bite-mark evidence and a 10-year lawsuit. The
surprising end to Robert Lee Stinson's road to justice," by reporter
Bruce Vielmetti, published by The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on June 27,
2019.
GIST: "Robert Lee Stinson's long slog for justice is finally over. But it's unclear whether he got it, or any further compensation for spending 24 years in prison on a wrongful conviction. The
trial over his claims that detectives and dentists conspired to frame
him with bogus bite-mark evidence ended in a surprise settlement
Thursday shortly before the case would have gone to the federal court
jury 10 years after it was filed. There were
handshakes all around among lawyers, and a hug for Stinson and his lead
attorney for U.S. District Judge Pamela Pepper, but not a word about the
terms of the settlement. Lawyers for all the parties said only, "No
comment at this time." Stinson, 54, was convicted
in 1985 in the November 1984 beating death of his older female neighbor,
Ione Cychosz, based on the dentists' expert opinions that only he could
have made the bite marks on the victim's body. He was sentenced to
life in prison. The dentists, Marquette University
professor Lowell Thomas Johnson and Raymond Rawson, of Las Vegas,
strongly believed that everyone's dentition is unique and could be
matched to human bite wounds, a theory that was unproven and subject to
much debate within forensic dentistry at the time. Stinson's case, and
its affirmation on appeal, helped persuade more courts to admit similar
bite-mark evidence. In
2009, the Innocence Project of Wisconsin won Stinson's release after a
panel of experts concluded Johnson and Rawson's opinions were badly
flawed, even for that time, and that Stinson's teeth did not make the
bites. Male DNA from Cychosz's clothing did not match Stinson either. A
different man, Moses Price, matched the DNA and confessed to killing
Cychosz in 2012. His teeth didn't match the victim's bite marks either.
Stinson eventually got $115,000 from the State of Wisconsin. He also
filed his civil rights lawsuit the year he was released.
After a decade of pretrial litigation and appeals, the case finally got to trial in federal court last week.
Defendants now elderly: The
defendants are all retired and elderly now. The detective, James
Gauger, 83, and Rawson, 78, move slowly with canes, but testified
clearly about some things and cited the passage of 35 years when they
couldn't be sure of others. Johnson,
88, was not present at trial because his health is so poor. He had
given trial testimony over two days earlier in June, and video of some
it was played in court, or read in from a transcript. All
three denied conspiring in any way to frame Stinson. The dentists said
they only knew each other professionally, and didn't discuss each
other's analyses in the case, and that they didn't take orders from the
detectives. Their conclusions were honest, good-faith opinions based on
what they knew at the time, they said. If
the methods were a bit novel or unproven, they said, that was because
the field was constantly developing and the American Board of Forensic
Odontology didn't have standards on bite-mark evidence yet for fear it
would stifle that evolution. Stinson's lawyers
focused on the fact Gauger and his now-deceased partner, Thomas
Jackelen, thought Stinson and his friends were responsible for a fatal
shooting two years earlier, in 1982. Jurors heard from one of the
friends, who testified about finally signing a false confession Gauger
gave him after seven hours of interrogation when he was 17. They
made extensive references to Gauger's 2010 memoir, "The Memo Book," in
which he wrote that they knew who killed Ricky Johnson, but just
couldn't prove it. After the lawsuit, and before his deposition in the
case, Gauger destroyed the original memo books and notes he used for the
book. They
asked Johnson about bias that may have come from looking at just one
real suspect brought to him by the detectives. There were other initial
suspects — basically, anyone in jail on a sexual assault charge who was
missing a tooth — but Johnson only examined Stinson. No
one raised the systemic bias of the entire justice system that was
likely also at work when a poor, young African American male is on trial
for the sexual assault and murder of a white woman. An
error in preserving semen collected from the victim prevented testing,
which meant prosecutors couldn't charge sexual assault. The testing
would have shown the person's blood type, which might have excluded
Stinson. Though the process by which Stinson was
singled out as a suspect and linked conclusively to bite marks on the
victim seems shockingly flawed now, it was accepted in 1985 and upheld
on appeal. The prosecutor on the case at the time
said his gut feeling after meeting and talking with Stinson was that he couldn't be the perpetrator, but was convinced by the dentists' work. Stinson's
trial attorney, Steve Kohn, now retired, hired his own dental expert
but didn't call him as a witness because he agreed that Johnson's
evidence pointed to Stinson. The trial judge in the
case, now-retired Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Janine Geske, told
Vox earlier this year that she feels bad, but had no reason at the time
to block the expert testimony. "I'm grateful we don't have the death penalty," she said.
The Ione Cychosz case: Ione
Cychosz, 62, was found dead Nov. 3, 1984. She was mostly nude, and had
been beaten to death and stabbed. It was before DNA evidence was used
in criminal investigations. The medical
examiner
asked Johnson, who was involved in forensic dentistry, to take a look at
the victim. He said there were eight human bite marks on it, made by
someone missing an upper right tooth. A police
artist drew a sketch of how the perpetrator's teeth would appear, based
on Johnson's observations. It clearly shows a different tooth missing
than the one absent from Stinson's mouth. Gauger
disputes that he and Jackelen met with Johnson before they interviewed
Stinson. But when they did, just a few days later, they noticed he was
missing a front tooth. The prosecutor, Daniel
Blinka, wouldn't charge Stinson just because he was missing a tooth and
lived where the body was found. So he got a judge to hold a secret John
Doe hearing where Stinson could be compelled to allow a more detailed
examination of his teeth. Johnson looked in
Stinson's mouth for about 15 seconds, then told the John Doe judge the
dentition was "remarkably" like what he had sketched. This month,
Johnson said the sketch — it was never turned over to the defense and is
now missing — was just an approximation, a rough draft. Johnson
took impressions and extensive photos of Stinson's teeth. He used them,
and photos and molds of the wounds, to conclude that not a single one
of the more than 70 tooth marks were inconsistent with Stinson. Blinka
still wasn't convinced. He asked about a second opinion, and Johnson
suggested two names. Blinka picked Rawson. Gauger and Jackelen brought
Johnson's evidence to Nevada. Rawson looked it over for an hour, and
they reported back to Blinka that he confirmed Johnson's finding. Blinka
filed charges and Stinson was arrested in January 1985. He testified
this week that when he first met and spoke with Stinson
, he was certain he could not be the perpetrator, but was swayed by the experts. Rawson
testified this week that he later got the evidence back and did his own
analysis, using different methods than Johnson. But his final report to
Blinka was a mere two paragraphs, and his work product was never turned
over to the DA or the defense. Rawson said he
thinks some of the key parts of it were mistakenly thrown away by his
wife when she was suffering from Alzheimer's disease.
A discredited theory of evidence:
Stinson
is just one of dozens of people who were convicted on false-bite mark
evidence in the 1980s and 1990s when forensic dentistry proponents like
Johnson were pushing bite-mark evidence as a scientific way to connect
someone to a crime. It was one of several pattern
comparison fields in forensics, such as shoe prints, fingerprints, tire
tracks, handwriting and ballistics. But despite the ardor of its
believers, it was never scientifically validated and has fallen out of
favor. Though the process by which Stinson was
singled out as a suspect and linked conclusively to bite marks on the
victim seems shockingly inept now, it was accepted in 1985 and upheld on
appeal — a ruling that led to more courts approving similar evidence.
Dozens of those also resulted in wrongful convictions that the Innocence
Project helped overturn. Seven
years after Stinson's conviction, the U.S. Supreme Court set a new
standard meant to give judges the authority to rein in what critics
called junk science, and require expert's testimony be based on reliable
principles and methods. Bite-mark evidence has
largely not done well under the new scrutiny. Many scientists disagree
that human tissue can record bites well enough to allow precise
comparison since skin stretches and marks vary depending on where they
are made on a body.
Taunts at 'an old lady killer': Stinson
testified about being taunted and harassed in prison as "an old lady
killer," his constant fear, how he lost hope and became depressed. He
said he had always dreamed of having a family, children, "home with a
fence and a pool and all that." Byron Lichstein,
one of the Innocence Project lawyers, said the day Stinson was released
from prison he seemed disoriented, dealing with both jubilation and
shock. He said he remained in touch and saw Stinson make "a wonderful
effort" to reintegrate with the outside world, but "he remains haunted
by the (prison) experience." Stinson lives with his
sister in Milwaukee. Though he worked for a time in a plastics factory
after regaining his freedom, he is now a full-time caregiver for his
nephew, who is severely autistic. "He's scarred,
but resilient," attorney Gayle Horn told jurors in her opening
statement. "He seeks accountability, justice and closure and for you to
make this right.""
