PUBLISHER'S NOTE: A recent post (link below) shed light on Tennessee Chief Medical Examiner Charles Harlan, now deceased, who left a nightmarish trail of wrongful convictions behind him. The post, entered around the wrongful Chris Burgess prosecution, raised a very serious concern over Harlan's conduct and ability. Indeed, the article it was based on was headed: "‘Disgraced doc’s evidence sent man to prison. No one knows how many others are like him," - and it referred to "the recent exoneration of a Nashville couple imprisoned for decades in the death of a young relative," who were also victims of Charles Harlan. That couple is Joyce Watkins and Charley Dunn. A 'Main Street Nashville' story - subject of this post - fills in some of the gaps in our knowledge of Charles Harlan and the untold harm he caused - some of it still out there and crying out to be corrected - and on the harm caused by his discredited assistant chief examiner: His wife Gretel. Harlan's cases - indeed both Harlan's - clearly cry out for review. (And not just the cases of those individuals who are still behind bars.)
Harold Levy: Publisher. The Charles Smith Blog
Previous post: (Chris Burgess);
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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "In a 1994 hearing on Watkins’ and Dunn’s innocence, Gretel Harlan said her medical terminology used in the trial was wrong but still placed the time of the injuries within the time frame the girl was with Watkins and Dunn. Now, the TIP (Tennessee Innocence Project) and CRU have new scientific evidence about pediatric head trauma backed by the current state medical examiner that shows that the girl’s injuries could have occurred days before she was with Watkins and Dunn. “If Judge Wyatt knew in 1994 what we know now through new scientific evidence and discovery of the investigative report on the bedsheet, Ms. Watkins and Mr. Dunn would not have spent the next two decades in prison,” the TIP filing said. Wednesday’s filings were made under state law that allows post-conviction hearings of actual innocence when new scientific evidence has arrived."
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STORY: 'Prosecutor': Couple convicted of 1987 rape and murder are innocent, Main Street Nashville (Reporter Ashley Penham) reports, on November 15, 2022.
GIST: "In 2015, Joyce Watkins was released from a life prison sentence on parole. That same year, Charles Dunn died in prison from cancer while serving a life sentence for the same crime.
Watkins and Dunn had spent 27 years imprisoned for the 1987 murder and rape of a 4-year-old girl in Nashville.
Now, the Tennessee Innocence Project and prosecutors from the Conviction Review Unit say that faulty medical testimony and a misrepresentation of evidence to the jury caused Dunn and Watkins to be wrongfully convicted.
They are innocent, court documents filed Wednesday show.
In May 1987, 4-year-old Brandy Brooks from Georgia was visiting family in Fort Campbell with her mother. She asked if she could stay with her great-aunt Rose Williams for a few weeks. She ended up staying until June 26.
While staying with Williams, Brandy started experiencing medical problems such as random vomiting, urinary incontinence and even going unconscious after choking on peanut butter. She was never taken to get medical attention.
At one point, an anonymous call was made to Kentucky Social Services after someone at a Bible camp saw welts on her back and a swollen hand. Williams told an investigator that Brandy was back in Georgia. She also called a week later to say that she had been taken to the doctor and was fine.
Both of these statements were false.
The last week of June 1987, Williams began calling Watkins, her sister, to come take Brandy. Her calls became more frantic so finally Watkins and her boyfriend Dunn drove to Fort Campbell late Friday night to bring the girl to Nashville.
When Dunn and Watkins arrived home around 1:30 a.m., Watkins noticed blood in Brandy’s underwear and her black eye. She called Brandy’s mother in Georgia, and the family collectively decided to wait for the morning to figure out what action to take.
The next morning, after noticing Brandy was acting strange, Watkins decided to immediately take the girl to Memorial General Hospital.
That afternoon, she was transferred to Vanderbilt University Medical Center and put on life support.
Sunday morning, she died.
While the investigation initially focused on what happened to Brandy in Kentucky, it shifted to Dunn and Watkins after the medical examiner said the head trauma occurred while Brandy was in their care.
The next year, Dunn and Watkins were on trial.
The main evidence at trial linking the couple to the crime was from Dr. Gretel Harlan, assistant medical examiner.
Harlan testified that Brandy’s injuries had to have occurred in the nine hours she spent with Watkins and Dunn.
Harlan had initially said these injuries occurred within 24-48 hours of Brandy’s death. Yet in the hallway before testifying at the trial, she changed her opinion to say they had to have occurred while the girl was in the care of Watkins and Dunn, court documents say.
Harlan’s husband, Dr. Charles Harlan, was the state’s chief medical examiner at the time. He approved the autopsy report.
It was the opinions of the Harlans that made up the case against Watkins and Dunn, the Tennessee Innocence Project wrote.
Yet the Harlans were later subject to professional discipline for serious misconduct, including Charles Harlan’s falsifying of an autopsy report.
Charles Harlan’s medical license was permanently revoked in 2005, and Gretel Harlan was reprimanded and fined. She retired her Tennessee license in 2005.
There are ongoing appeals with two other men on death row who were convicted by faulty testimony from Charles Harlan, the CRU report said.
Court documents show other issues such as minimal investigative efforts by Fort Campbell investigators, false evidence that Watkins washed Brandy’s sheets and inflammatory statements by the prosecution.
In a 1994 hearing on Watkins’ and Dunn’s innocence, Gretel Harlan said her medical terminology used in the trial was wrong but still placed the time of the injuries within the time frame the girl was with Watkins and Dunn.
Now, the TIP and CRU have new scientific evidence about pediatric head trauma backed by the current state medical examiner that shows that the girl’s injuries could have occurred days before she was with Watkins and Dunn.
“If Judge Wyatt knew in 1994 what we know now through new scientific evidence and discovery of the investigative report on the bedsheet, Ms. Watkins and Mr. Dunn would not have spent the next two decades in prison,” the TIP filing said.
Wednesday’s filings were made under state law that allows post-conviction hearings of actual innocence when new scientific evidence has arrived.
Watkins, now 74, is still living with the consequences of this conviction as a registered sex offender. Her parole officer said she was within the “top five percent of offenders” for her willingness to comply with supervision.
Now, Judge Angelita Blackshear Dalton will decide whether to vacate the convictions. A hearing is expected in December.
”What is clear is that Joyce Watkins and Charles Dunn neither committed and Aggravated Rape of Brandy, nor did they take any actions that caused her death,” the CRU report says. “The case against them was purely circumstantial and failed to exclude other reasonable theories or possible perpetrators.”"
The entire story can be read at:
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National Registry of Exonerations: (Lengthy entry by Maurice Possley. Published on January 1, 2022, Contributing factors include 'false or misleading forensic evidence.'
"The CRU (Conviction Review Unit) report also said that the credibility of both Dr. Gretel Harlan and her husband, Dr. Charles Harlan, was in question.
“Despite Gretel Harlan's chief assignment to the case and it being her who testified in front of the jury, the autopsy report indicates Charles Harlan was present and he himself conducted the autopsy. There are numerous references throughout Gretel Harlan's testimony referring to what ‘he’ did or what ‘we’ did in performing the autopsy. Clearly the two doctors Harlan collaborated in the autopsy and assessment of [B.B.’s] injuries,” the report said.
The report noted that since the convictions, Drs. Charles and Gretel Harlan have been the subject of “intense investigative scrutiny and disciplinary hearings that yielded truly bizarre and unsettling findings.”
In May 2005, following two years of hearings, Tennessee permanently revoked Charles Harlan's medical license, citing 20 counts of misconduct while serving as medical examiner.
“The facts of these transgressions border on ghoulish: Charles Harlan once replied to a bank's request for proof of a client 's death that ‘M.L. is dead. She is green and has maggots crawling on her.’ In another case, a tenant renting a house from the Harlans discovered body parts in a jar and tissue samples in a chocolate box. Gretel, for her part, once explained while testifying that the tissue samples belonged to her two pet dogs upon whom she had performed an autopsy,” the CRU said.
In 1993, Davidson County Medical Examiner Dr. Julia Goodin prohibited the Harlans from conducting private autopsies on the side, which had caused a backlog of county autopsy cases. “Dr. Harlan violated this policy and performed private autopsies without permission, for which he was suspended without pay,” the CRU report said.
In 1995, Dr. Charles Harlan was barred from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation crime laboratory, and his contract as state medical examiner was terminated, although he retained private contracts with various Tennessee counties. “Dr. Harlan falsified an autopsy report in the 2001 case of James Suttle, accused of first-degree murder. Suttle claimed his cousin, Stevie Hobbs, had suffered a seizure and fallen through a glass table, but Dr. Harlan insisted that Hobbs had been stabbed to death, opining that the stab wounds had occurred shortly before death,” the CRU report said. Suttle was acquitted after a defense forensic expert demonstrated the instrument would have had to tum along a right angle inside Hobbs's body, a medical impossibility.
The CRU report said the Suttle case sparked a review of Dr. Charles Harlan's cases that revealed serious misconduct.
--Dr. Harlan had falsely identified a body as belonging to an escaped convict, Bruce Allen Littleton, who was discovered alive two years later in connection with another crime.
--Dr. Harlan also determined that two children had died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome when, in fact, a parent had murdered them.
--Dr. Harlan listed a 10-year-old's cause of death as natural when the child weighed only 18 pounds, a clear case of neglect.
--Dr. Harlan also allowed his dog into the autopsy room on one occasion; the dog consumed some of the remains of a murder victim.
-- Harlan's testimony in the death penalty cases of James Dellinger and Gary Sutton “proved definitive when he testified that rigor mortis could persist 72 hours after death, a crucial fact that, if false, would have cleared the defendants. The testimony established their guilt and placed them on Death Row, but subsequent medical experts have weighed in and established that Dr. Harlan's testimony regarding rigor mortis was entirely unfounded and impossible. Dellinger and Sutton's appeals are ongoing.”
The CRU report said that an “Ohio State Medical Board investigation found that anatomical samples from the Davidson County Medical Examiner's Office were discovered inside the Harlans' home. The renters found autopsy files containing graphic crime scene photos, as well as blood smears from Nashville Memorial Hospital that should have been discarded. The Tennessee Department of Health initiated formal proceedings against Dr. Gretel Harlan for these infractions, offering a settlement agreement documenting 48 violations and proposing a fine of $2,400 plus costs. Following this reprimand, Dr. Gretel Harlan retired her Tennessee license in 2005 and moved to Ohio, whose medical board initiated a parallel investigation. The Board described the Tennessee reprimand as ‘very unusual’ and noted that while Dr. Charles Harlan bore some responsibility for the material found in the home, Dr. Gretel Harlan was also culpable.”
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resurce. 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/
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/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;
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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!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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