PASSAGE ONE OF THE DAY: "Sidney Perkowitz explains how understanding the physics behind the blood distribution could help uncover the truth. Joe Bryan, once a popular and respected high-school principal in a small Texas town, has been in prison for over 30 years. He is serving a 99-year sentence for the shooting and murder of his wife in 1985. The evidence incriminating him involved spots of the victim’s blood found on a hand-held torch. A witness, who was rated as expert in the forensic technique of blood pattern analysis (BPA), interpreted these spots as placing Bryan near his wife when she was shot – a testimony that was at the forefront of Bryan’s conviction. It overrode countervailing evidence that he was in fact at a conference 120 miles away – an alibi that made it nearly impossible for him to have shot his wife, as he would have had to leave the event, travel home, commit murder and return to the conference within a specific timeframe. Bryan maintains his innocence to this day."
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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "Unfortunately, widespread adoption of more rigorous BPA (blood pattern analysis) practice and training will not come quickly, or automatically erase past deficiencies that produced unreliable evidence and false accusations. Nor is it likely that the legal standards for acceptance of BPA evidence will change soon enough to affect Joe Bryan’s upcoming appeal for a new trial. That request was denied in 2018, but his lawyers are now preparing a last-ditch effort before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. However, Bryan is nearly 80. Even if a new trial is approved, it may not come in time to do him any good. Whatever that outcome, the extensive coverage of the Bryan case along with the NAS report and other evaluations of BPA have uncovered its problems and motivated progress toward a better physics of blood patterns. This may at least ensure that future blood evidence will be more effective in identifying the true perpetrators without unjustly condemning people who are innocent."
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: This is but a small portion of a larger story. It is well worth the read word for word.
Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.
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STORY: "The Physics of blood splatter, by Sidney Perkowitz, published by 'Biophysics ' on October 17, 2019. (Sidney Perkowitz is Charles Howard Candler Professor of Physics Emeritus at Emory University, US. His latest books are Frankenstein: How a Monster Became an Icon (2018) and (forthcoming in 2019) Physics: a Very Short Introduction and Real Scientists Don’t Wear Ties.)
GIST: Analysing the blood stains following a shooting can be key to
finding the perpetrator, but it’s a field of forensics that is being
called into question. Sidney Perkowitz explains how understanding the physics behind the blood distribution could help uncover the truth. Joe Bryan, once a popular and respected high-school
principal in a small Texas town, has been in prison for over 30 years.
He is serving a 99-year sentence
for the shooting and murder of his wife in 1985. The evidence
incriminating him involved spots of the victim’s blood found on a
hand-held torch. A witness, who was rated as expert in the forensic
technique of blood pattern analysis (BPA), interpreted these spots as
placing Bryan near his wife when she was shot – a testimony that was at
the forefront of Bryan’s conviction. It overrode countervailing evidence
that he was in fact at a conference 120 miles away – an alibi that made
it nearly impossible for him to have shot his wife, as he would have
had to leave the event, travel home, commit murder and return to the
conference within a specific timeframe. Bryan maintains his innocence to
this day. Evidence like this, based on the physical behaviour of the
blood generated at a crime scene, has roots in late 19th-century
Europe. It became prominent in the US during the famous Sam Sheppard
murder trial in 1955, and has played an important role in other murder
trials since – including those of football player and actor O J Simpson
(1994–1995, verdict of not guilty) and music producer Phil Spector
(2007–2009, retrial verdict of guilty). Police investigators use BPA to work
backwards from blood traces at a crime scene, allowing them to
reconstruct the locations and actions of the people and weapons
involved. The traces include drips, smears and spatters, which are
created when drops of blood radiate from the impact of a bullet or blunt
instrument until they encounter a surface and stain it. But according
to a startling 2009 report from the US National Academy of Sciences
(NAS) that still resonates today, BPA lacks scientific rigour and valid
accreditation for its practitioners. This is a serious concern because
BPA results have convicted people later shown to be innocent, as many
believe Bryan to be; and because lack of confidence in BPA analysis may
allow the guilty to go free. As a result, it has become essential to
re-assess the physics behind BPA................................. Unfortunately, widespread adoption of more rigorous BPA
practice and training will not come quickly, or automatically erase past
deficiencies that produced unreliable evidence and false accusations.
Nor is it likely that the legal standards for acceptance of BPA evidence
will change soon enough to affect Joe Bryan’s upcoming appeal for a new
trial. That request was denied in 2018, but his lawyers are now
preparing a last-ditch effort before the Texas Court of Criminal
Appeals. However, Bryan is nearly 80. Even if a new trial is approved,
it may not come in time to do him any good. Whatever that outcome, the extensive coverage of the Bryan
case along with the NAS report and other evaluations of BPA have
uncovered its problems and motivated progress toward a better physics of
blood patterns. This may at least ensure that future blood evidence
will be more effective in identifying the true perpetrators without
unjustly condemning people who are innocent."
https://physicsworld.com/a/the-physics-of-blood-spatter/?
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Investigative reporter Pamela Colloff's in-depth reporting on the Joe Bryan case became the subject of a New York Times editorial - 'Bad Blood': May 31, 2018 - which can be found at the link below: "Joe
Bryan, a former small-town high school principal from central Texas, is
serving 99 years in prison for the brutal murder of his wife, Mickey,
in 1985 — a crime he probably didn’t commit. Mr. Bryan has been locked
up for about 30 years. He has no clear prospects for release other than
periodic opportunities at parole, which he has been denied despite being
a model prisoner and having a spotless disciplinary record. Many of the
prison guards who know him best are convinced that he’s innocent. So
why is Mr. Bryan still behind bars? Because of some tiny specks of what
may or may not have been blood on a flashlight that may or may not have
been planted in the trunk of his car — a piece of evidence prosecutors
introduced at trial through the testimony of an expert witness who may
or may not have known what he was talking about. As a two-part series published by The New York Times Magazine
and ProPublica lays out in damning detail, there was essentially no
other physical evidence or motive tying Mr. Bryan to the crime. By all
accounts, the Bryans had a happy marriage. On the night of his wife’s
murder, Mr. Bryan was attending a principals’ conference 120 miles away.
Prosecutors dismissed or ignored many pieces of potentially exculpatory
evidence, like an unidentified palm print in the bedroom where Mrs.
Bryan was shot to death, a cigarette butt on the kitchen floor (neither
of the Bryans smoked) and the absence of any bloodstains in Mr. Bryan’s
car. Despite all this, Joe Bryan was
convicted on the word of a detective named Robert Thorman, who testified
before the jury as an expert in what is known as bloodstain-pattern
analysis. Drips, spatters, smears and sprays — the distribution of blood
at a crime scene — can provide possibly useful information about what
weapon was used, where a victim was positioned and whether he or she was
moved before or after being killed. In Mickey Bryan’s case, Detective
Thorman testified that the apparent blood specks on the flashlight were
“back spatter,” and showed that her killer had shot her at close range.
Through
the 1960s, analyzing bloodstain patterns was the province of forensic
scientists with years of training in fluid dynamics and high-level
mathematics. The practice came to national attention in 1966, when it helped to exonerate Sam Sheppard, a neurosurgeon who had been convicted of murdering his wife more than a decade earlier. But
in the 1970s and 1980s, this kind of analysis became popular among
members of law enforcement and others with little or no scientific
training. People like Detective Thorman got certified as
bloodstain-pattern analysts after taking a weeklong course that now
costs as little as a few hundred dollars. Pamela Colloff, who wrote the
articles on the Times Magazine/ProPublica investigation of Joe Bryan’s
case, enrolled in one of these courses, where the instructor told her,
“We’re not really going to focus on the math and physics; it just kind
of bogs things down.” Ms. Colloff passed the final exam, as did everyone
in the class.
Thanks in part to such
dubious standards, the interpretation of bloodstain evidence has become
notoriously ambiguous. The same patterns can, like a Rorschach test, be
read in very different ways; some trials feature two bloodstain
“experts,” one on each side, who testify to opposite conclusions. A 2009 report
by the National Academy of Sciences found that “the opinions of
bloodstain-pattern analysts are more subjective than scientific,” and,
“The uncertainties associated with bloodstain pattern analysis are
enormous.” And yet judges in many
states have accepted these experts’ testimony as scientifically valid —
not because of any concrete evidence that it is, but because other
courts have accepted it before. In other words, it’s a good bet that
there are other Joe Bryans sitting in prisons around the country because
of highly unreliable forensic testimony. That
unreliability is not unique to bloodstain-pattern analysis. As DNA
testing has revolutionized forensic science and helped to exonerate
hundreds of wrongfully convicted people, it has also shined a light on
the inadequacy of earlier methods. The National Academy of Sciences
report found significant problems with the analysis of bite marks, tire
treads, arson and hair samples. In 2015, the F.B.I. released an initial
review of hundreds of convictions it had won and found that over two
decades, the bureau’s “elite” forensic hair-sample analysts testified
wrongly in favor of the prosecution 96 percent of the time. Thirty-two of the defendants in those cases were sentenced to death, and 14 of those were executed or died in prison. The
scientific analysis of forensic evidence can be essential to solving
crimes, but as long as the process is controlled by the police and
prosecutors, and not scientists, there will never be adequate oversight.
Changing this was the goal of a national commission
established in the wake of the 2009 report. Unfortunately, Attorney
General Jeff Sessions, who has long sided with prosecutors and rejected
efforts to look more critically at forensic sciences, let the commission expire last year. For now, any hope for greater scrutiny of bloodstain-pattern analysis lies with the influential Texas Forensic Science Commission,
which agreed to examine Mr. Bryan’s case, along with another involving
the use of bloodstain-pattern evidence. The commission, whose
recommendations are watched nationally,
in February imposed on Texas a requirement that bloodstain-pattern
analysis be performed by an accredited organization, which should make
it harder for prosecutors to introduce testimony by analysts with
minimal training and qualifications. Meanwhile,
time is running out for Mr. Bryan. He’s 77 and suffers from congestive
heart failure. He is currently being considered for parole again, with a
decision expected within weeks. He should be released, and his
conviction should be re-examined in light of the shortcomings of the
evidence used to convict him. Because so much time has passed since
Mickey Bryan’s murder, and many people connected to the investigation
have since died, the identity of her killer may never be definitively
known. That uncertainty should be the state’s burden to carry, not Joe
Bryan’s."
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/31/opinion/blood-splatter-evidence.html
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. 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. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html 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;
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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:
https://www.providencejournal.com/news/20191210/da-drops-murder-charge-against-taunton-man-who-served-35-years-for-1979-slaying
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. 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. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html 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:
https://www.providencejournal.com/news/20191210/da-drops-murder-charge-against-taunton-man-who-served-35-years-for-1979-slaying
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