PASSAGE ONE OF THE DAY: " During the initial investigation, the district attorney had ordered the bodies of Pool and Brady to be exhumed and examined by Dr. Harrell Gill-King, a forensic anthropologist. At trial, Gill-King testified that he observed bruising under the skin on the right side of Brady’s head and on the back left side near the ear. They were “fresh injuries,” he testified, “inflicted while the person was alive.” “You have fresh blood under the skin,” Gill-King testified. “You have a fresh hematoma of this area underneath the skin. Both of these were fresh injuries. And death freezes the picture for us. The other thing that you might consider is, if you’ll give me a little latitude, is that when the heart stops, bleeding stops for the most part, there can be some oozing. But when the heart stops, there is no force behind the blood to force it out. You will think back to that first image we looked at with this damage, there is bleeding going on there. That was an injury inflicted while the person was alive.” The prosecutor asked Gill-King if “blunt force trauma” was an accurate description, and Gill-King responded that it was an “apt term.” Gill-King also testified that Brady’s death was suspicious because he was found on his back, rather than prone as would be expected from a person fleeing a fire."
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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "After the evidentiary hearing, on October 27, 2022, Gill-King submitted an affidavit that said his trial testimony had been “incomplete” and could have been misinterpreted by the jury. “I am certain that my testimony unintentionally left the jury with the false impression that I concluded Brady had suffered a strike with a good deal of force by someone else above his right eye and around his left ear,” Gill-King said. “This is neither the meaning of ‘blunt force injury’ nor what I was trying to convey by my testimony.” He also expressed concern that his use of terms such as “consistent with” and “compatible with” could have confused the jury. They were “terms of art” in his field and didn’t mean that Brady’s injuries were necessarily caused by blunt force trauma. In late October 2022, the state and Martin’s attorneys submitted a joint recommendation to Judge Rogers, agreeing that Martin should be granted relief based on the erroneous testimony related to the forensic evidence on the arson investigation and the injuries received by Pool and Brady.
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PASSAGE THREE OF THE DAY: "John Lentini, an arson investigator and expert in debris analysis, testified that the carbon-strip testing used by investigators at the time of the Martin fire was highly sensitive but indiscriminate in recording whether there was a lot or a little of a particular chemical substance in the sample. “In the old days, if people found Norpar or Isopar, they would attribute it to lamp oil or charcoal lighter fluid because that’s where you could find a lot of it,” Lentini said. “But it’s built into a lot of other substances.” Lentini was asked how a fire analyst would evaluate a situation where testing results found isoparaffinic hydrocarbons. “Would a chemist today take that test and conclude that there is charcoal lighter fluid present? Lentini answered, “No.”
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NATIOAL REGISTRY OF EXONERATIONS: Recent entry. By Ken Otterbourg; Posted on September 11, 2024. Contributing factors: "False or Misleading Forensic Evidence, Official Misconduct;
| GIST: "At about 7 p.m. on February 25, 1998, a fire destroyed a house on the outskirts of Midland, Texas, killing 24-year-old Marcia Stephens Pool, her 3-year-old son, Michael Brady Stephens, and her 18-month-old daughter, Kristen Martin. The bodies of Pool and Brady were found in the living room. Kristen’s body was found in a back bedroom. While firefighters battled the blaze, Pool’s common-law husband, 35-year-old Garland “Butch” Martin, returned home. He threw a ladder through a window in an apparent effort to rescue his family. This created additional ventilation that strengthened the fire. Later that night, Martin was taken to a psychiatric hospital in San Angelo. His father told the local newspaper that Martin tried to get inside but the door was locked. He received burns and suffered from smoke inhalation. “I can’t imagine what he is going through right now. That was his wife, his son and his only little girl,” the father said. “I would lose my damn mind.” Fire investigators examined the house, trying to determine how the fire began. In early March, Martin was subpoenaed to appear before a Midland County grand jury. At the time, the district attorney said that Martin wasn’t necessarily a suspect. On April 15, 1998, Martin was indicted on a single count of arson related to Brady’s death. (Brady was Martin’s stepson.) Officials didn’t say why charges weren’t filed at the time in the other two deaths. On December 16, 1998, Martin was indicted on three counts of capital murder. The state did not seek the death penalty. Martin’s trial in Midland County Circuit Court began in mid-April 1999. By all accounts, Martin was 20 minutes across town when the fire was reported. In addition, autopsies of the victims showed the presence of soot and carbon monoxide in their deep lung tissue, indicating they were alive when the fire started and died of smoke inhalation and carbon monoxide poisoning. To account for this timeline, the state’s theory was that Martin had knocked his stepson and wife unconscious, (his daughter was in a crib) doused areas of the house with chemical accelerants, lit a match, and then left. Several witnesses testified about the volatile relationship between Martin and Pool. Mary Stephens, Pool’s mother, said that Martin beat her daughter so badly in July 1997 that she had to be taken to the hospital. Stephens said that Martin later apologized and said it would never happen again. Stephens said she visited her daughter and Martin on the day of the fire. She said she heard the couple argue and Pool tell Martin that she might leave him. She said that Martin threatened Pool and said he would harm her if she tried something like that. Dana Hendry, a friend, said that Pool came to her on February 24 and said she wanted to leave Martin. According to Hendry, Pool said that Martin threatened her. Stacy Carr testified that he had stopped by Martin’s house sometime after 6 p.m. on the night of the fire to take Martin to a job site for some prep work. Carr said that Martin exited his house in a strange fashion. “He came out the door backwards with his back to me. He opened the door eight, 10 inches, squeezed through, and then shut the door.” Carr said they went to the job site, took a few measurements, and then headed back to Martin’s house. On the drive home, a State Highway Patrol vehicle overtook them. According to Carr’s testimony, Martin said, “I hope they are not going to my house.” When they neared the Martin home, Carr testified, Martin said he hoped it wasn’t his house on fire. Carr said it was then that he saw the flames. One of the ambulance attendants who took Martin to the psychiatric hospital said that Martin didn’t smell like fire; he had an odor more akin to paint thinner or charcoal lighter fluid. John Corn, a director at the Armstrong Forensic Laboratories in Arlington, Texas, testified about the chemical analysis of the burn debris, which he said detected the presence of Norpar and Isopar. He said that lamp oil was the only common household substance that contained Norpar. Isopar, also known as deparaffinated kerosene, was the principal substance in charcoal lighter fluid. Corn was asked if he could think of any substance other than lighter fluid where it was used. He said he couldn’t. Dale Little, the Midland County Fire Marshal, testified that the investigation found “pour patterns” for two different fluids on the concrete floor of the house. “It’s kind of like something poured and run on the floor, and it had a very intense burning in that area,” he testified. Dr. David Hoblit, the chief medical examiner in Lubbock County, performed the autopsies on Pool and Brady. He was a pathologist, although not a board-certified forensic pathologist. Hoblit testified that Pool and her son died from carbon monoxide poisoning. Although his autopsy made no mention of head injuries, he testified that Pool had “severe swelling of her brain or severe global edema, which means that there was—the effect was that her brain had swollen from—in all probability—traumatic injuries that led to the swelling of the brain.” Similarly, Hoblit testified that Brady had an injury “compatible” with blunt-force trauma. This, too, wasn’t mentioned in the autopsy, and Hoblit said his finding came after viewing a photograph of the boy that appeared to show blood and swelling on his head. He testified that this injury was inflicted before Brady died. During the initial investigation, the district attorney had ordered the bodies of Pool and Brady to be exhumed and examined by Dr. Harrell Gill-King, a forensic anthropologist. At trial, Gill-King testified that he observed bruising under the skin on the right side of Brady’s head and on the back left side near the ear. They were “fresh injuries,” he testified, “inflicted while the person was alive.” “You have fresh blood under the skin,” Gill-King testified. “You have a fresh hematoma of this area underneath the skin. Both of these were fresh injuries. And death freezes the picture for us. The other thing that you might consider is, if you’ll give me a little latitude, is that when the heart stops, bleeding stops for the most part, there can be some oozing. But when the heart stops, there is no force behind the blood to force it out. You will think back to that first image we looked at with this damage, there is bleeding going on there. That was an injury inflicted while the person was alive.” The prosecutor asked Gill-King if “blunt force trauma” was an accurate description, and Gill-King responded that it was an “apt term.” Gill-King also testified that Brady’s death was suspicious because he was found on his back, rather than prone as would be expected from a person fleeing a fire. Martin did not testify, but his attorneys presented a defense that asserted that the fire began on the back porch, caused by a faulty extension cord running to a refrigerator. A chemist hired by the defense testified that Norpar was found in a wide range of household products, not just lamp oil. In addition, Dr. Lloyd White, the Nueces County Medical Examiner, testified that he could not come to a conclusion that Pool and Brady had suffered blunt force trauma before the fire started. Two deputies had testified early in the trial that they were near Martin while his house burned, and they overheard Martin refer crudely to how he would never have sex with his wife again. Martin’s father testified that he didn't hear that but heard his son say he would miss his family, using an expletive in his grief. During closing arguments, a prosecutor told jurors that Gill-King “says there are—I would submit to you—too many injuries, too many unexplained and inconsistent injuries on Brady for this to be from some kind of fall-down … they don’t add up except that he was injured before the fire. It’s the only way the pattern fits.” The prosecutor also said the fire investigation pointed to arson. “I would submit to you under the evidence, the only way the Norpar got there was the defendants poured it on that doorway when you take all the facts and circumstances. The same with the deparaffinated kerosene—or I think what—the way the chemist best said it, the charcoal lighter fluid. How did that get there?” The defense said in its closing argument that although Martin wasn’t a model citizen, there wasn’t any evidence he started a fire. “The state’s case is built on a house of cards, and the foundation of that house is the assaults and threats,” one of Martin’s attorneys said. “The state picked little bitty things to throw at Mr. Martin hoping that you’ll see those as evidence of guilt, but there is no evidence in this case, from top to bottom, that ties Butch Martin to arson. None at all." The jury convicted Martin on May 1, 1999, of three counts of capital murder. He later received three concurrent sentences of life in prison. Martin appealed, arguing there was insufficient evidence to support his conviction. He also asserted that the trial judge had erred in allowing Mary Stephens to testify about statements made by her daughter accusing Martin of violent behavior. He also said the judge improperly limited Little’s cross-examination to exclude his discussions with a neighbor who said she saw the fire start on the outside of the house and then flare up like a blow torch. The Texas Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction on December 7, 2000. It said the state’s case was entirely “circumstantial,” but “formidable.” The ruling said the trial judge ruled correctly in allowing Mary Stephens to testify about hearsay statements made by her daughter. It also said that although Martin’s attorney should have been allowed to cross-examine Little on his reasons for disregarding the neighbor’s observations, the error was harmless. Martin filed an application for a writ of habeas corpus in Midland County District Court in October 2002. For reasons not clearly explained in the record, the application was not forwarded to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals until October 19, 2021, nearly 20 years later. On February 22, 2022, the appellate court remanded the matter back to Midland County and ordered a judge to hold evidentiary hearings and make findings of fact. The evidentiary hearings were held in May 2022 before Judge David Rogers. At the hearing, Martin’s attorneys presented testimony challenging the state’s forensic evidence that said the fire was intentionally set and that Martin’s family members were harmed prior to the blaze. John Lentini, an arson investigator and expert in debris analysis, testified that the carbon-strip testing used by investigators at the time of the Martin fire was highly sensitive but indiscriminate in recording whether there was a lot or a little of a particular chemical substance in the sample. “In the old days, if people found Norpar or Isopar, they would attribute it to lamp oil or charcoal lighter fluid because that’s where you could find a lot of it,” Lentini said. “But it’s built into a lot of other substances.” Lentini was asked how a fire analyst would evaluate a situation where testing results found isoparaffinic hydrocarbons. “Would a chemist today take that test and conclude that there is charcoal lighter fluid present? Lentini answered, “No.” Martin’s attorneys with the Texas Innocence Project introduced several reports that undercut the conclusions of the state’s initial investigation into the fire. In 2017, the State Fire Marshal’s Office Scientific Advisory Workgroup evaluated the Martin fire. In a report issued September 26, 2017, the panel said the “fire origin and cause should be classified as undetermined based on the available information, and the conclusion that the fire was intentionally set using a flammable liquid cannot be substantiated with present-day science.” At the time of Martin’s trial, the National Fire Protection Association allowed investigators to use the term “pour pattern” if there was laboratory confirmation of an ignitable liquid. Later, in 2004, it discouraged this term, stating that fire patterns are not visually unique and should be referred to as “irregularly shaped.” The U.S. Department of Justice took this one step further in a 2014 study on what evidence flammable liquids leave behind. It said, “If you put flammable liquid on concrete and light it on fire, it won’t hurt the concrete.” At the evidentiary hearing, several experts testified that Gill-King’s expertise only extended to bones; he was not qualified to form opinions on soft-tissue bruising. Dr. Daniel Wescott, a forensic anthropologist, was asked: “Do you know of any reputable forensic anthropologists who would be competent to testify about soft tissue at all?” “Not unless they also have some kind of a medical degree and specialization in pathology.” Dr. Satish Chundru, a forensic pathologist, testified that Gill-King’s testimony that a photograph of Brady showed a “fresh hematoma” was not supported by the evidence. He said the photo quality was poor, making it impossible to know if the red in the photo was the actual color or indicative of lighting issues. If there was blood, Chundru said, it would not be the bright red found in the photo. “[It is] absurd that anyone, a forensic pathologist, anthropologist, law enforcement, anybody looks at that photo and makes the determination that it’s anything,” Chundru said. In addition, Chundru and another pathologist testified that any blood found near Brady’s head could have been caused by fluid from the boy’s nose or mouth. The pathologists also took issue with Gill-King’s testimony that the boy’s death “freezes the picture” and stops the movement of blood. The pathologists also criticized Hoblit’s autopsy and testimony on his findings. First, they noted the discrepancy between the autopsy on Pool, which made no mention of any head trauma, and Hoblit’s testimony, which said she had “severe swelling of her brain.” Chundru said Hoblit’s testimony that Pool had a hemorrhage of the leptomeninges was nonsensical; the condition didn’t exist. (The meninges are the membranes that surround the brain and spinal cord.) He also said there was no way to conclude that the swelling of Pool’s head was caused by head trauma, because with all charred bodies, “every brain looks swollen.” By the time of the evidentiary hearing, Hoblit had lost his medical license, after pleading guilty in federal court in 2010 to illegal distribution of a controlled substance. The testimony from the evidentiary hearing was included in an amended writ application, filed on July 5, 2022. After the evidentiary hearing, on October 27, 2022, Gill-King submitted an affidavit that said his trial testimony had been “incomplete” and could have been misinterpreted by the jury. “I am certain that my testimony unintentionally left the jury with the false impression that I concluded Brady had suffered a strike with a good deal of force by someone else above his right eye and around his left ear,” Gill-King said. “This is neither the meaning of ‘blunt force injury’ nor what I was trying to convey by my testimony.” He also expressed concern that his use of terms such as “consistent with” and “compatible with” could have confused the jury. They were “terms of art” in his field and didn’t mean that Brady’s injuries were necessarily caused by blunt force trauma. In late October 2022, the state and Martin’s attorneys submitted a joint recommendation to Judge Rogers, agreeing that Martin should be granted relief based on the erroneous testimony related to the forensic evidence on the arson investigation and the injuries received by Pool and Brady. Martin’s application had also asserted that his trial attorneys were ineffective for failing to present a stronger challenge to the state’s chemical forensic evidence. It also said prosecutors had failed to disclose that Hendry had a misdemeanor theft conviction. On November 1, 2022, Judge Rogers issued his findings of fact, recommending that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals grant Martin’s writ application. In his 104-page ruling, Judge Rogers said, “Every single modern-day fire expert whose opinion is before the court has concluded the cause of the fire at the Martin house is ‘undetermined.’” Judge Rogers said that Gill-King was not qualified to interpret injuries to soft tissue. “The person to interpret soft tissue is the forensic pathologist,” he wrote. “And in the autopsy in this case, the pathologist did not observe any soft tissue damage indicative of blunt force trauma. Even if the pathologist had made such an observation, even in modern-day medicine, there is no known way to determine whether the trauma occurred immediately before or immediately after death.” Gill-King and Hoblit had given false testimony at the trial, the judge said, although neither man knew their testimony was false. Their intent and knowledge didn’t matter, he said, but the impact was devastating to Martin, leaving jurors with the impression that he had knocked his wife and son unconscious and then left them to die. Martin’s application also asserted a claim of actual innocence. Judge Rogers said that his findings of facts undermined confidence in the jury’s verdict, but Martin had “failed to establish by clear and convincing evidence that no reasonable jury would have convicted him of capital murder, murder, manslaughter, arson of the first degree, or any possible lesser included offenses, and that he is therefore actually innocent.” He also denied relief based on Martin’s claims that his attorneys were ineffective and that the state failed to disclose Hendry’s conviction, which was under a different name. Following Judge Rogers’s recommendations, Martin was released from prison on March 12, 2024. On May 22, 2024, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted Martin’s writ. The two-page ruling said: Applicant contends, among other things, that he is actually innocent. We agree. Relief is granted. In a dissent, Judge Kevin Yeary and Presiding Judge Sharon Keller said the new evidence presented at the hearings wasn’t sufficient to “rebut the very compelling historical-fact-based evidence showing that Applicant’s family died inside their home when it burned down, that Applicant had the motive, the intent, and the opportunity to kill his wife and children by burning down their house with them in it when they died, and that Applicant’s highly suspicious behavior and odor at and around the time of the fire demonstrated that he was indeed responsible for their deaths.” The state dismissed the charges on July 12, 2024. After the appellate court’s ruling, Martin said in a statement: “Thank you to everyone at the [Innocence Project of Texas] and everyone who helps support this work. I owe everything to you. I owe my life to you.” |
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