July 31: Junk Science; Nick Flannery: Ohio: Robert Roberson: Texas: Josh Burns: MI: Andrew Roark: Texas; MI); Questions of the day: What happened when two scholars - one conservative George W. Bush appointee David Safavian) and one liberal (former Barack Obama advisor Van Jones) exchange views on junk science. The answer, according to the DPIC), (spoiler alert) is, not surprisingly, in their words: “To work, our jus­tice sys­tem should depend on reli­able, val­i­dat­ed evi­dence rather than unproven the­o­ries and junk sci­ence. Wrongful con­vic­tions rob inno­cent peo­ple of free­dom, drain mil­lions in tax­pay­er dol­lars through pro­tract­ed lit­i­ga­tion and unnec­es­sary incar­cer­a­tion, and force the gov­ern­ment to pay for the sub­stan­tial set­tle­ments required to redress when those con­vic­tions are overturned.” VAN JONES AND DAVID SAFAVIAN ON THE USE OF JUNK SCI­ENCE IN CRIMINAL CASES.

PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Mr. Jones and Mr. Safavian note that “[i]n ​‘Law & Order,’ the right per­son is usu­al­ly found guilty. In real life, that’s not always the case. If we are to have true jus­tice, judges must be empow­ered to set a high bar to screen out junk sci­ence and pro­tect the inno­cent.”  They argue this would let judges screen out unre­li­able foren­sic tes­ti­mo­ny before it reach­es jurors and frame the reform as essen­tial to pre­serv­ing pub­lic con­fi­dence in the justice system."

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

PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "Citing Kentucky Innocence Project data find­ing that junk sci­ence con­tributed to a major­i­ty of the wrong­ful con­vic­tions it has reviewed, and to rough­ly a quar­ter of wrong­ful con­vic­tions nation­al­ly, the authors call on state courts to adopt stan­dards mir­ror­ing Federal Rule of Evidence 702, which requires foren­sic tes­ti­mo­ny to rest on reli­able sci­en­tif­ic prin­ci­ples and meth­ods."

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

STORY: "Article of Interest: Conservative and Liberal Authors Highlight Junk Science’s Role in Wrongful Convictions," by Hayley Bedard, published by The Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) on July 27, 2026.

GIST: "In a July 17, 2026, op-ed, for­mer Barack Obama advi­sor Van Jones and for­mer George W. Bush appointee David Safavian joint­ly argue that courts con­tin­ue to accept dis­cred­it­ed foren­sic tech­niques as reli­able evi­dence, con­tribut­ing to wrong­ful con­vic­tions across the coun­try.

 The authors con­trast the con­fi­dent foren­sic experts seen on tele­vi­sion crime dra­mas with real-world court­rooms where they say, ​“pho­ny foren­sics” meth­ods—micro­scop­ic hair com­par­i­son, bite mark analy­sis, and blood-stain pat­tern inter­pre­ta­tion — are too often pre­sent­ed to juries as ​“so-called evidence.”

“To work, our jus­tice sys­tem should depend on reli­able, val­i­dat­ed evi­dence rather than unproven the­o­ries and junk sci­ence. Wrongful con­vic­tions rob inno­cent peo­ple of free­dom, drain mil­lions in tax­pay­er dol­lars through pro­tract­ed lit­i­ga­tion and unnec­es­sary incar­cer­a­tion, and force the gov­ern­ment to pay for the sub­stan­tial set­tle­ments required to redress when those con­vic­tions are overturned.”

The op-ed high­lights the case of Nick Flannery, an Ohio father charged with assault and child endan­ger­ment after his infant son was hos­pi­tal­ized with brain bleed­ing.

Medical experts who lat­er reviewed Mr. Flannery’s case point­ed to a pre­ex­ist­ing con­di­tion rather than abuse, yet pros­e­cu­tors intend to pro­ceed to tri­al rely­ing on a Shaken Baby Syndrome diag­no­sis, a the­o­ry the authors con­sid­er ​“long-dis­put­ed.”

The authors also point to the case of Robert Roberson, a Texas death row pris­on­er who was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death for the death of his young daugh­ter based on Shaken Baby Syndrome evi­dence.

Mr. Roberson’s exe­cu­tion was most recent­ly halt­ed in 2025 by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals under Article 11.073, the state’s law that allows con­vic­tions to be recon­sid­ered when under­ly­ing foren­sic evi­dence is out­dat­ed or sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly dis­cred­it­ed.

Mr. Jones and Mr. Safavian note that the lead detec­tive in Mr. Roberson’s case is expect­ed to tes­ti­fy about the unre­li­a­bil­i­ty of the evi­dence if Mr. Roberson receives a new tri­al.

They also note that, because of the junk sci­ence in Mr. Roberson’s case, he came with­in a week of exe­cu­tion and “[t]hat’s how close the jus­tice sys­tem came to an irre­versible mis­take.”

The authors also ref­er­ence Josh Burns (MI) and Andrew Roark (TX) as men whose con­vic­tions in sim­i­lar cas­es were lat­er over­turned on appeals.

Citing Kentucky Innocence Project data find­ing that junk sci­ence con­tributed to a major­i­ty of the wrong­ful con­vic­tions it has reviewed, and to rough­ly a quar­ter of wrong­ful con­vic­tions nation­al­ly, the authors call on state courts to adopt stan­dards mir­ror­ing Federal Rule of Evidence 702, which requires foren­sic tes­ti­mo­ny to rest on reli­able sci­en­tif­ic prin­ci­ples and meth­ods.

Mr. Jones and Mr. Safavian note that “[i]n ​‘Law & Order,’ the right per­son is usu­al­ly found guilty. In real life, that’s not always the case. If we are to have true jus­tice, judges must be empow­ered to set a high bar to screen out junk sci­ence and pro­tect the inno­cent.”

They argue this would let judges screen out unre­li­able foren­sic tes­ti­mo­ny before it reach­es jurors and frame the reform as essen­tial to pre­serv­ing pub­lic con­fi­dence in the justice system."


The entire story can be read at:


https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/article-of-interest-conservative-and-liberal-authors-highlight-junk-sciences-role-in-wrongful-convictions




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;

July 31: Jimmie "Chris" Duncan; Louisiana: The Truth will out...Junk Bite-Mark 'Science'; Medical Examiner Steven Hayne and Dentist Michael West; Link to the extraordinary NBC News video that helped free Jimmie Duncan after nearly 30 years on death row for a murder that multiple judges say didn't happen...HL: (The jury did not see this video; The network says it has not been broadcast until now; Filmed by West, while conducting his post-mortem examination, and buried out of sight by court order for years, the video is proof that occasionally - even in Texas - the truth will out: (Ugly as it may be): The desecration of the body of a 23-month old child by the prosecutor's expert witnesses. The on-going persecution of an innocent man by Louisiana prosecutors. Bravo to NBC News and Investigative Reporter Dan Slepian for their superb reporting on this hugely important criminal justice story. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;)

LINK: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kPBeCQ_QJY

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

LINK TO THE EXTRAORDINARY NBC NEWS VIDEO THAT HELPED FREE JIMMY DUNCAN AFTER NEARLY THREE DECADES ON DEATH ROW FOR A MURDER THAT MULTIPLE JUDGES SAY DIDN'T  HAPPEN. 

THE JURY DID NOT SEE IT: THE NETWORK  SAYS IT HAS NOT BEEN BROADCAST UNTIL NOW:

FILMED BY WEST, WHILE  CONDUCTING HIS POST-MORTEM   EXAMINATION, AND BURIED OUT OF SIGHT BY COURT ORDER  FOR  YEARS,  THE  VIDEO IS PROOF THAT OCCASIONALLY  'THE TRUTH WILL OUT:  UGLY AS IT MAY BE;  THE DESECRATION  OF THE BODY OF A 23-MONTH-OLD CHILD BY THE PROSECUTOR'S EXPERT WITNESSES. THE  ON-GOING PERSECUTION BY LOUISIANA PROSECUTORS OF AN INNOCENT MAN;

BRAVO TO NBC NEWS AND INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER DAN SLEPIAN ,  FOR THEIR  SUPERB REPORTING ON THIS  HUGELY   IMPORTANT CRIMINAL JUSTICE STORY.  

HAROLD LEVY PUBLISHER: THE CHARLES SMITH BLOG:

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QUOTES  ON LEARNING ABOUT THE EXISTENCE OF THE EXPLOSIVE VIDEO: (From the NBC News production);

JIMMIE DUNCAN: "Duncan saw the tape for the first time that day in court, more than 30 years after his arrest,"I couldn't believe that all these people knew that video existed - and they still let this happen to me. 

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

ALLISON LAYTON: "Allison Layton is Hayley's mother.  Allison was in court too. She could only bear to watch a short clip of the video. But she was furious with what she saw. "I found out my daughter wasn't murdered. It never happened."... The tape wasn't the only evidence not presented to Duncan's jury. The hearing also revealed that Hayley had a history of seizures and had been rushed to the hospital several times in the months before her death. Months after the hearingJudge Sharp issued his ruling. He threw out Duncan's conviction, concluding that Hayley drowned in the bathtub as a result of a seizure and found no evidence that Hayley had been sexually abused. Alison now believes that Duncan was framed. It's kind of a big deal I think that Haley's mom  supports the guy that was convicted of killing her.  'Well. Let's get this straight. He was convicted because they lied. They railroaded this man. They fabricated evidence. They desecrated my daughter. And videotaped it."

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

ALVIN SHARP:  The presiding Judge  over the hearing at which the video was played:  "As you sit on the bench watching that video what is going through your mind? I was aghast I'm left in a state of consternation -total consternation. Is it fair to say that Dr. West is manufacturing and creating the evidence on this child's body? He's absolutely creating marks on that babies body. Do you think that what you saw by Dr. West on that tape was a crime by him. "There very well could be."But West has said he wasn't creating any marks - that the tape shows what he calls his direct comparison technique where he is simply comparing Duncan's dental mode to marks he claimed were already there. Marks, he says, that a layman might not see. There is no scientific support for his method- and it's been discredited by forensic experts.

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

INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST RADLEY BALKO: " I started watching the video and immediately I'm floored." Balko got his hands on the tape 2 decades ago. Back then he wrote an article about it that says. "no one seems to care.: "I'm waiting for the fallout - I'm waiting for the Attorney General and, I don't know, to say something about it. And nothing happens." Balko continued to investigate Hayne and West, co-authoring a book about their work. "

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

STEV TEW: "The district attorney is Steve Tew, who at the time of Duncan's trial was a prosecutor in the same office. We called emailed dropped by to speak to Kew but he declines to talk to us. In court the DA argued that Duncan was still guilty... "We don't need bite-mark evidence to put Mr. Duncan in the apartment alone with this child."

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

NBC INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST DAN SLEPIAN:"When this video showed up in my mailbox a couple of months ago. I was floored. I couldn't believe it.You hear about stuff like this happening but rarely do you actually see it on videotape."

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

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;

July 30: David Black: District of Columbia: He served 26 years in prison and then a key witness (Larry Johnson) recanted, Courts and Crime Staff Writer Dan Simon reports in the Washington Post,, noting that: "In 1997, the man’s testimony helped send David Black to prison for 26 years. Last summer, inside the same Washington courthouse, Black listened as the witness recanted one key claim after another. No, the man said, he never saw Black fire a gun. No, he never saw him flee. No, he never saw Black kill anyone. “I had to leave the courtroom,” Black recalled in an interview this week. “My emotions wouldn’t hold.” The recanted testimony is now central to Black’s legal fight to wipe out his murder conviction stemming from a shooting that shocked residents near D.C.’s Chinatown neighborhood:

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: What do police informants have to do with forensic science? (I'm glad you asked). Investigative  Reporter Pamela Colloff give us  a clue when she writes - at the link below -  "I’ve wanted to write about jailhouse informants for a long time because they often appear in troubled cases in which the other evidence is weak." That's my experience as  will as a criminal lawyer and an observer of criminal justice. Given the reality that jurors - thanks to the CSI effect - are becoming more and more insistent on the need for there to be forensic evidence, it is becoming more and more common for police to rely on shady tactics such as use of police snitches, staging lineups, coercing, inducing, or creating false confessions out of thin air, procuring false eyewitness testimony or concealing exculpatory evidence. 

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

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Johnson (recanter) said that in 1997, he couldn’t testify how he wanted to. “I tried to tell the truth,” he said, “and they wouldn’t let me.”

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

PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "The case rested largely on two witnesses, Johnson and Barbara Marshall, who testified they saw Black fire the gun. Black’s attorney at the trial, Thomas Farquhar, was able to chip away at Marshall’s credibility, according to court filings. An investigator from his office testified in front of jurors that on the eve of the trial, Marshall provided him a signed statement recanting what she’d earlier told police.:

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

PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY:  The attorneys arranged to have Johnson testify via video on July 28, 2025. He described Chow as a good friend of the whole neighborhood. “A very kind lady and good lady,” he recalled. He had less glowing words for Black.  “We never liked each other,” he said. “He know it and I know it.”  But his testimony that Black shot Chow, he said, was a lie he felt forced to say because a police officer threatened to lock him up. And this time, from the start, his recollections were different. Rather than being in a third-floor apartment, with a view of K Street, at the time of the shooting, he was in a courtyard behind the high-rise. “Being honest, we was out there drinking beer, and some of my friends was smoking marijuana. And we were just sitting out there kicking it, well, talking, as you would say,” he said."

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

PASSAGE THREE OF THE DAY: "Johnson said they heard people arguing on K Street, followed by two booms, and he and his friends walked there to investigate. “What did you see on K Street?” Black’s attorney Amelia Maxfield asked “A bunch of polices,” he said. Johnson said he also saw Chow on the ground. Asked if he ever saw anyone fire a gun, Johnson said no.  Under cross-examination, Assistant U.S. Attorney Shehzad Akhtar got Johnson to acknowledge that when he initially testified, he had agreed under oath to tell the truth, and that his memory about what happened was better in 1997 than in 2025. “Sir, it’s been 30 years. I can barely remember my name now,” Johnson said, according to a transcript. Johnson said that in 1997, he couldn’t testify how he wanted to.
“I tried to tell the truth,” he said, “and they wouldn’t let me.”

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

STORY: "He served 26 years in prison. Then a key witness recanted," by Reporter Dan Simon, published by The Washington Post,  on July. 25, 2026. (Washington Post staff writer Dan Morse covers courts and crime in Montgomery County, Md. He arrived at the paper in 2005, after reporting stops at the Wall Street Journal, Baltimore Sun and Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser, where he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. He is the author of "The Yoga Store Murder," published by Penguin. Honors and Awards: Pulitzer Prize finalist Books by Dan Morse: The Yoga Store MurderBuy this book)

SUB-HEADING: "David Black was 21 when he was charged with the murder of a beloved community member in D.C.’s Chinatown area. Now free, he is seeking exoneration."

GIST: "In 1997, the man’s testimony helped send David Black to prison for 26 years.

Last summer, inside the same Washington courthouse, Black listened as the witness recanted one key claim after another.

No, the man said, he never saw Black fire a gun. No, he never saw him flee. No, he never saw Black kill anyone.

“I had to leave the courtroom,” Black recalled in an interview this week. “My emotions wouldn’t hold.”

The recanted testimony is now central to Black’s legal fight to wipe out his murder conviction stemming from a shooting that shocked residents near D.C.’s Chinatown neighborhood. 

A beloved resident there, 78-year-old Alice Chow, was hit by a stray bullet as she walked home from church along K Street NW, dropping to the ground in the middle of a Sunday afternoon.

Black, 21 at the time, was arrested and went to trial. He did not testify, was found guilty by a jury and was imprisoned until he was 47.

“I just want to get exonerated and move on with my life,” the 50-year-old said.

His attorneys filed a 68-page motion last month seeking to vacate the conviction. “Mr. Black can finally prove what he has always maintained: that someone else fired the shot,” they wrote.

Their key witness in the effort was also a key witness for prosecutors in 1997: Larry Johnson. On July 28, 2025 — in the throes of Stage 4 lung cancer — Johnson recanted his earlier testimony, saying that police coerced him into giving false testimony.

Johnson died on Feb. 1, according to court filings and his obituary.

Black’s case illustrates how early-release programs enacted to help people convicted at a young age can offer only so much relief, especially if that person, as Black and his attorneys say, was innocent. 

Black was originally sentenced to 52 years in prison. 

In 2023, he used a law allowing people sentenced as young adults to seek early release. 

He prevailed and was released after serving half his sentence. 

But because his conviction remains, he said he struggles to find work and still carries the label of a murderer.

“The damage can never be undone,” he said. “Once I get exonerated, that’ll give me the opportunity to actually breathe.”

D.C. police said they do not discuss active legal disputes.

Officials at the U.S. attorney’s office in D.C., which prosecuted the case, declined to comment.

 They are scheduled to file a legal response to Black’s request by Sept. 1. In earlier filings regarding Black’s early prison release, prosecutors wrote that he had failed to “to accept responsibility for his actions.”

Four law enforcement officers involved in the case in 1997 — two detectives, a police officer and a line prosecutor — declined to comment or could not be reached.

It was not clear from Johnson’s new testimony why he waited so long to recant his original testimony.

The victim, Chow, was a Washington-area native who spoke Cantonese, Mandarin and English.

 She volunteered at a Chinese community center, translated documents for Chinese immigrants and delivered groceries to disabled neighbors.

 Her murder occurred “at a time of increasing violence in D.C., resulting in tremendous pressure to solve her murder,” Black’s attorneys wrote in recent court papers.

Family and friends of Chow could not be reached. In court filings related to Black’s early-release request, in 2023, prosecutors said they were unable to reach Chow’s relatives.

At Black’s trial, prosecutors told jurors that he recklessly fired two gunshots as he chased a man they identified as James “June Bug” Smith down K Street after an argument. 

Neither round hit the target, they said, but one struck Chow. T

The case rested largely on two witnesses, Johnson and Barbara Marshall, who testified they saw Black fire the gun.

Black’s attorney at the trial, Thomas Farquhar, was able to chip away at Marshall’s credibility, according to court filings. An investigator from his office testified in front of jurors that on the eve of the trial, Marshall provided him a signed statement recanting what she’d earlier told police.

Johnson testified that on the day of Chow’s murder, he was in a third-floor apartment drinking a beer and getting ready to watch the Pro Bowl when he heard a “ruckus outside.”

 Johnson said he went to a hallway window for a better view and saw June Bug running away as Black fired two shots.

Farquhar argued that both witnesses were mistaken and that forensic evidence contradicted prosecutors’ claims of where the shots originated.

“This case is a nightmare,” he told jurors, “because he’s charged primarily on the basis of testimony of two witnesses that no reasonable person would believe.”

Jurors struggled in their deliberations, asking for explanations on reasonable doubt and witness credibility, and at one point said they were deadlocked, according to court records.

 They came back for a second day of deliberations before reaching their decision.

Black remembered thinking their struggles were a good sign as he prepared to hear the verdict. “My knees buckled and I almost had a heart attack in the courtroom,” he recalled. “I could not believe it when I got convicted.”

In 2023 court filings, Black’s attorneys argued that understanding their client meant first understanding a childhood defined by trauma, chaos and heartbreak.

He grew up in D.C.’s Sursum Corda neighborhood amid violence fueled by Washington’s crack epidemic of the late 1980s and 1990s. 

Black was robbed at knifepoint when he was 10. 

Five years later, his mother was killed after being shot nine times at a house party.Ask The Post AIDive deeper

“In this kind of environment, David really stood out as a calm guy,” Black’s attorney from the D.C. Public Defender Service wrote, citing a childhood friend.

The new legal filing is not Black’s first effort to get his conviction vacated. 

Early in his prison sentence, he appealed the conviction to the D.C. Court of Appeals but failed to get it overturned. 

The new effort, led by attorneys from the Exoneration Project, cites D.C.’s Innocence Protection Act, which requires a party to identify the “specific new evidence” to demonstrate they are “actually innocent despite having been convicted at trial.” 

A judge can then order a conviction and the original charges be wiped out, thus ending the case, or grant a new trial.

The attorneys say previously undisclosed prosecution records point to an alternative suspect and undermine the eyewitness testimony. 

They also tried to track down Johnson and Marshall, the two witnesses who said they saw Black fire the gun.

Marshall died in January 2025. But the signed statement she gave to the defense attorney investigator in 1997, according to court records, also amounts to a recanting of her claims against Black.

In the statement, Marshall said she was inside her apartment, heard two people arguing and looked out window, but only saw blurry images. “I was not wearing my glasses,” she said in the statement attached to court filings. “I couldn’t see who they were.”

She also said in the statement that she never saw a shooting but was harassed by the police into saying so: “All I wanted to do was go home.”

The attorneys arranged to have Johnson testify via video on July 28, 2025. He described Chow as a good friend of the whole neighborhood. “A very kind lady and good lady,” he recalled.

He had less glowing words for Black.

“We never liked each other,” he said. “He know it and I know it.”

But his testimony that Black shot Chow, he said, was a lie he felt forced to say because a police officer threatened to lock him up.

And this time, from the start, his recollections were different. Rather than being in a third-floor apartment, with a view of K Street, at the time of the shooting, he was in a courtyard behind the high-rise.

“Being honest, we was out there drinking beer, and some of my friends was smoking marijuana. And we were just sitting out there kicking it, well, talking, as you would say,” he said.

Johnson said they heard people arguing on K Street, followed by two booms, and he and his friends walked there to investigate.

“What did you see on K Street?” Black’s attorney Amelia Maxfield asked.

“A bunch of polices,” he said.

Johnson said he also saw Chow on the ground. Asked if he ever saw anyone fire a gun, Johnson said no.

Under cross-examination, Assistant U.S. Attorney Shehzad Akhtar got Johnson to acknowledge that when he initially testified, he had agreed under oath to tell the truth, and that his memory about what happened was better in 1997 than in 2025.

“Sir, it’s been 30 years. I can barely remember my name now,” Johnson said, according to a transcript.

Johnson said that in 1997, he couldn’t testify how he wanted to.

“I tried to tell the truth,” he said, “and they wouldn’t let me.”

The entire story can be read at:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2026/07/25/he-served-26-years-prison-then-key-witness-recanted/

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;

July 29: Michael Stone UK: Major Development: For almost 30 years he ahas been behind bars for Murders he has denied committing from the outset: Now, his solicitor says new witnesses have come forward to name another man, Raymond Buck, as a possible suspect. Mr Buck has since died - Kent Police say they are supporting an ongoing review by the UK's CCRC (Criminal Case Review Commission) and his lawyer says these developments 'could finally clear him', ITV reports, noting that: "One of the new witnesses, Ross Shields, 39, was a child at the time of the murders. He told the Sunday Times newspaper that he overheard Buck confess to a family member on the day of the attacks: “I’ve done something unforgivable. I’ve killed three people.” According to the report, Buck was a carpenter, had a history of violence and killed himself aged 46 in 2000."

BACKGROUND:  (Wikipedia); Michael Stone (born Michael John Goodban, 7 June 1960) was convicted of the 1996 murders of Lin and Megan Russell and the attempted murder of Josie Russell. He was sentenced to three life sentences with a tariff of 25 years for the Russell killings.^[1] Stone maintains his innocence and continues to contest his conviction. His legal team argues that the serial killer Levi Bellfield could possibly be the true perpetrator of the attack.^[2] In February 2022, Stone's solicitor said that Bellfield had confessed to the murder of both Lin and Megan, although the truthfulness of the confession remained in doubt and Bellfield later claimed that he had confessed for a cash payment.^[3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Stone_(criminal)

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

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "She Michael Stone's lawyer)  told ITV Meridian: "Two witnesses have come forward. Both have given, what I believe, to be credible evidence that the perpetrator is a man by the name of Raymond Buck, who in fact took his own life in 2000.  "One of the witnesses had a number of contemporaneous documents...from the summer of 1996 which totally supported what was being said. As well as psychiatric reports and such. These really support everything that I was being told about what went on that summer.""

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

QUOTE TWO  OF THE DAY: "A CCRC spokesperson said: “A review into this application is ongoing. This is the fourth time the CCRC has investigated Mr Stone’s case. His 2003 application was ineligible because an appeal was still live. The 2006 application was closed in 2010 and wasn’t referred. The 2017 application was closed in July 2023 and wasn’t referred. "This fresh review commenced in November 2023, and we are exploring all of the possibilities the application raises to determine whether Mr Stone may have suffered a miscarriage of justice. "

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

QUOTE THREE OF THE DAY: (Referring to the recent  taking of a new DNA sample from Michael Stone):  "A decision was made in May of this year to collect a new DNA sample from Mr Stone, and this will take place on Thursday 9 July. "

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

STORY: "Investigation into 'new suspect' in Lin and Megan Russell murders, published on July 26, 2026.

GIST: "It is one of Kent's most notorious killings. Lin Russell and her 6-year-old daughter Megan were attacked on a country lane in Chillenden, Kent. Megan's sister Josie, who was 9, survived.

Michael Stone has spent almost thirty years behind bars for the murders. A crime he says he didn't commit.

His solicitor says new witnesses have come forward to name another man, Raymond Buck, as a possible suspect. Mr Buck has since died.

One of the new witnesses, Ross Shields, 39, was a child at the time of the murders.

He told the Sunday Times newspaper that he overheard Buck confess to a family member on the day of the attacks: “I’ve done something unforgivable. I’ve killed three people.”

According to the report, Buck was a carpenter, had a history of violence and killed himself aged 46 in 2000.

Kent Police say they're supporting the Criminal Cases Review Commission's ongoing review. Stone's lawyer Karen Todner says it could finally clear him.

She told ITV Meridian: "Two witnesses have come forward. Both have given, what I believe, to be credible evidence that the perpetrator is a man by the name of Raymond Buck, who in fact took his own life in 2000.

"One of the witnesses had a number of contemporaneous documents...from the summer of 1996 which totally supported what was being said. As well as psychiatric reports and such. These really support everything that I was being told about what went on that summer."

The Criminal Cases Review Commission, which looks into miscarriages of justice is assessing this claim.

A CCRC spokesperson said: “A review into this application is ongoing. This is the fourth time the CCRC has investigated Mr Stone’s case. His 2003 application was ineligible because an appeal was still live. The 2006 application was closed in 2010 and wasn’t referred. The 2017 application was closed in July 2023 and wasn’t referred.

"This fresh review commenced in November 2023, and we are exploring all of the possibilities the application raises to determine whether Mr Stone may have suffered a miscarriage of justice.

"Considerable work has been done not only on forensic aspects of the application but on the several other aspects of the application which Mr Stone's lawyers wished to be investigated.

"A decision was made in May of this year to collect a new DNA sample from Mr Stone, and this will take place on Thursday 9 July.

"Our test for referring a case is that there is a real possibility that the Court of Appeal would overturn his conviction, a test which was not met in any of the earlier applications.

"It would be inappropriate for us to make any further comment while the application is being reviewed."

Detective Chief Inspector Neil Kimber, of Kent Police, said: "During the investigation into the murders of Lin and Megan Russell and the attempted murder of Josie Russell in 1996, numerous members of public contacted the police with the names of people they thought may have been responsible.

"Each piece of information was reviewed and, in some cases, led to further enquiries into some individuals. This included contact with a relative of a man with connections to the Folkestone and London areas during the original investigation and, in 2017, discussions with another of his relatives.

"The information provided in each case was comprehensively examined in full by the investigation team.

"Following two trials at which Michael Stone was found guilty by a jury on both occasions, and an appeal to the High Court, he remains convicted of the murders of Lin and Megan Russell and the attempted murder of Josie Russell in 1996.

"Stone made an application to apply for a Judicial Review in respect of his conviction in September 2012. The Honourable Mr Justice Blake ordered that permission for the application should be refused.

"Kent Police has supported the Criminal Cases Review Commission by providing all the relevant information required throughout its ongoing review of Stone’s conviction and will continue to do so.""

The entire story can be read at:

https://www.itv.com/news/meridian/2026-07-25/new-suspect-being-investigated-over-the-murders-of-lin-and-megan-russell

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;

July 28: James Duckett: Florida: As Orlando Sentinel Reporters Martin E. Comas and Intern Rylan Digiacomo-Rapp reported earlier today , former police officer James Duckett, who long maintained his innocence in the horrific rape and drowning of an 11-year-old Lake County girl nearly four decades ago, was executed Tuesday afternoon. (As James Duckett was being executed, Florida was preparing to execute Dominick Occhicone at 6.00 PM, about to become the oldest prisoner executed in modern Florida history)... "Hours before his execution, Duckett’s team of lawyers filed last-minute appeals with the U.S. Supreme Court for a stay of execution to allow several items of clothing that young Teresa McAbee was wearing on the night of her death in May 1987 be tested for DNA, along with vaginal swabs and scrapings from under her fingernails. They’d unsuccessfully appealed to lower courts previously. Justice Clarence Thomas denied the appeals without comment just moments before Duckett’s death. Duckett’s execution, scheduled for noon, was delayed by more than an hour as prison officials awaited word from the nation’s top court. A federal judge in Jacksonville on Monday also denied requests by Duckett’s legal team to halt the execution. The Florida Supreme Court refused to issue a stay in Duckett’s execution last week." All to no avail. To their utter shame, judge after judge, from the lower levels of court to the highest, rejected his bid for a stay of execution that would allow the up-to-date scientific testing that might show that Florida would be killing an innocent man. When all was said and done, the quest to prove through science that James Duckett was innocent of these terrible crimes would ultimately not be allowed to get in the way of Florida's shameful, inexcusable rush to kill. Too late now! Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.

WORDS TO HEED: FROM OUR POST ON KEVIN COOPER'S  APPLICATION FOR POST-CONVICTION DNA TESTING; CALIFORNIA: (Applicable wherever a state resists DNA testing): "Blogger/extraordinaire Jeff Gamso's blunt, unequivocal, unforgettable message to the powers that be in California: "JUST TEST THE FUCKING DNA." (Oh yes, Gamso raises, as he does in many of his posts, an important philosophical question: This post is headed: "What is truth, said jesting Pilate."...Says Gamso: "So what's the harm? What, exactly, are they scared of? Don't we want the truth?" 

 https://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2018/06/kevin-cooper-2-california-application.html

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STORY: "Former Lake cop, James Duckett, executed for rape, drowning of 11-year-old,by Reporters Martin E. Comas and Rylan Digiacomo-Rapp, published by The Orlando Sentinel. on July 28, 2026. (Martin E. Comas covers Seminole County and its seven cities for the Orlando Sentinel. Martin is a University of Central Florida graduate with degrees in journalism and business administration. He is fluent in Spanish.)

PHOTO CAPTION: "James Aren Duckett, a former police officer convicted of the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl in 1987, was put to death at Florida State Prison on Tuesday, July 28, 2026. "

GIST: "James Aren Duckett, who long maintained his innocence in the horrific rape and drowning of an 11-year-old Lake County girl nearly four decades ago, was executed Tuesday afternoon.

While restrained onto a gurney at Florida State Prison in Raiford — his hands and fingers secured to the side — Duckett declined to say any final words before he was put to death at 1:19 p.m., according to the Florida Department of Corrections.

He was then injected with a three-drug cocktail that put the 68-year-old inmate to sleep, paralyzed him and stopped his heart.

It was the first of two executions scheduled on the same day. Dominick Anthony Occhicone, 80, is slated to be put to death at 6 p.m., becoming the oldest prisoner executed in modern Florida history. Occhicone was convicted of the 1986 killings of his ex-girlfriend’s parents in Pasco County.

If Occhicone was put to death as planned, it would be the first time since 1964 that Florida executed two inmates on the same day.

Hours before his execution, Duckett’s team of lawyers filed last-minute appeals with the U.S. Supreme Court for a stay of execution to allow several items of clothing that young Teresa McAbee was wearing on the night of her death in May 1987 be tested for DNA, along with vaginal swabs and scrapings from under her fingernails. They’d unsuccessfully appealed to lower courts previously.

Justice Clarence Thomas denied the appeals without comment just moments before Duckett’s death. Duckett’s execution, scheduled for noon, was delayed by more than an hour as prison officials awaited word from the nation’s top court.

A federal judge in Jacksonville on Monday also denied requests by Duckett’s legal team to halt the execution. The Florida Supreme Court refused to issue a stay in Duckett’s execution last week.""

The entire story can be read at: 

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2026/07/28/former-lake-cop-james-duckett-executed-for-rape-drowning-of-11-year-old/?utm_email=44C8F44C94051526B5D963E1D6&lctg=44C8F44C94051526B5D963E1D6&g2i_eui=f1wRAFNORTqRpdkcuL3EZnhMN1cC22%2bb&g2i_source=newsletter&active=no&utm_source=listrak&utm_medium=email&utm_term=https%3a%2f%2fwww.orlandosentinel.com%2f2026%2f07%2f28%2fformer-lake-cop-james-duckett-executed-for-rape-drowning-of-11-year-old%2f&utm_campaign=trib-orlando_sentinel-breaking_news-nl&utm_content=alert

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;

July 28: James Scott: Missouri: Thirty years after being convicted for causing "the great flood of 1993" - under a 1979 Missouri law that makes it a crime to purposefully cause a catastrophe - he maintains his innocence, he has supporters who remain convinced that he is not guilty, and he is waiting for a decision on parole. Question of the day: Is James Scott's story finished yet?

PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Scott was 24 when he was sentenced to life in prison in 1993 after the flood left Hannibal submerged in water and destroyed at least 14,000 acres of surrounding farmland. The flood ultimately inundated 20 million acres across nine Midwestern states and is considered one of the most devastating and costliest floods in modern U.S. history. Scott was working with a sandbag crew in 1993 to try to stop the rising floodwaters in Hannibal. On July 16, while he was loading several bags onto a levee, he noticed a breach. He threw several more bags onto the levee, notified the National Guard and walked away. Later that day, the levee failed, the Mississippi River burst through the barrier and the town was flooded."

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PASSAGE TWO  OF THE DAY: "Meanwhile, a feature film inspired by Pitluk’s book is currently in the works, to be called “An Act of God.” Produced by Third Coast Film in Nashville, it is in the early stages of development, producer Blake Babson said. He said the film company is currently working on the script and casting. He hopes to begin filming in the spring of 2027, and the movie could be released as soon as the end of 2027. “In many ways, James’ story isn’t finished yet,” Babson said.

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

PASSAGE THREE OF THE DAY: "Pitluk, who graduated from the University of Missouri and is now a professor in South Carolina, wrote the 2007 book “Damned to Eternity: The Story of the Man They Say Caused the Flood,” which explores the case and its legal proceedings. On Wednesday, he and Scott both attended the parole hearing, along with a representative of the prison and members of the Parole Board. Scott remained steady and calm throughout the hearing, Pitluk said. He said Scott, now 56, was questioned about his actions during the flood and about previous charges of arson and burglary. Members of the board also reviewed Scott’s conduct in prison."

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

STORY: "Friends are hopeful for a positive parole decision for James Scott, by  Reporter Annie Goodykoontz, published by The  Columbia Missourian, on July 23, 2026.

PHOTO CAPTION: "Scott was convicted of tampering with the West Quincy levee, causing a breach that led to flooding in 1993."

GIST: "After a parole hearing was held Wednesday for James Scott, who was convicted of causing the Great Flood of 1993 more than 30 years ago, a family friend said he was optimistic about the outcome.

The Missouri Board of Probation and Parole met Wednesday morning to consider whether Scott should be released after spending three decades in the Jefferson City Correctional Center.

The board spent at least an hour questioning Scott about his role in the flood, the time he spent in prison and his future plans if he were to be released, said Adam Pitluk, the friend who represented Scott’s family during the hearing.

Scott was 24 when he was sentenced to life in prison in 1993 after the flood left Hannibal submerged in water and destroyed at least 14,000 acres of surrounding farmland. The flood ultimately inundated 20 million acres across nine Midwestern states and is considered one of the most devastating and costliest floods in modern U.S. history.

Scott was working with a sandbag crew in 1993 to try to stop the rising floodwaters in Hannibal. On July 16, while he was loading several bags onto a levee, he noticed a breach. He threw several more bags onto the levee, notified the National Guard and walked away.

Later that day, the levee failed, the Mississippi River burst through the barrier and the town was flooded.

Scott was accused of tampering with the levee infrastructure and prosecuted under a 1979 Missouri law that makes it a crime to purposefully cause a catastrophe.

He has since maintained his innocence, and he has supporters who remain convinced that he is not guilty.

Pitluk, who graduated from the University of Missouri and is now a professor in South Carolina, wrote the 2007 book “Damned to Eternity: The Story of the Man They Say Caused the Flood,” which explores the case and its legal proceedings.

On Wednesday, he and Scott both attended the parole hearing, along with a representative of the prison and members of the Parole Board. Scott remained steady and calm throughout the hearing, Pitluk said.

He said Scott, now 56, was questioned about his actions during the flood and about previous charges of arson and burglary. Members of the board also reviewed Scott’s conduct in prison.



Pitluk said the board shared a file of his record, with 42 certificates acknowledging his positive behavior and four violations of prison policies about feeding the birds, where he dried his clothes and other matters.

The board also covered Scott’s plans to reenter society should he be granted parole. Pitluk said he told the board that Scott could become a carpenter or handyman, given his experience making furniture for schools and government offices during his time in prison.

A decision about Scott’s possible release is not expected for several weeks, but Pitluk said he was hopeful.

Meanwhile, a feature film inspired by Pitluk’s book is currently in the works, to be called “An Act of God.” Produced by Third Coast Film in Nashville, it is in the early stages of development, producer Blake Babson said.

He said the film company is currently working on the script and casting. He hopes to begin filming in the spring of 2027, and the movie could be released as soon as the end of 2027.

“In many ways, James’ story isn’t finished yet,” Babson said."

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

Columbia Missourian
The Columbia Missourian is a community news organization managed by professional editors and staffed by Missouri School of Journalism students who do the reporting, design, copy editing, information graphics, photography and multimedia."

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The entire story can be read at:

https://www.kbia.org/missouri-news-network/2026-07-23/friends-are-hopeful-for-a-positive-parole-decision-for-james-scott?_amp=true

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;

July 27: Devin Bennett: Mississippi: (A doctors Steven Hayne and Michael West (need I say more?) case): Question of the day: Asked on Reason by writer.historian James McWilliams: "Will This Mississippi Man on Death Row Get a Chance To Prove His Innocence?"..."Will This Mississippi Man on Death Row Get a Chance To Prove His Innocence?".. It was early in the morning on August 25, 2000. As Devin Bennett tells it, he put his 10-week-old son Brandon in a car seat and put the car seat on his bed—and then, as the father dozed in and out of sleep, Brandon fell. The baby didn't appear to be hurt in the immediate aftermath of the fall, Bennett says, but hours later he noticed the boy was having trouble breathing. He rushed him to a hospital in Rankin County, Mississippi, where Brandon's heart stopped beating and he stopped breathing. After being transferred to another hospital, Brandon died."

PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Two and a half years later, a jury found Bennett guilty of capital murder and felonious child abuse and sentenced him to death. The medical examiners responsible for Brandon's autopsy—doctors Steven Hayne and Michael West, a pathologist and an odontologist who often worked together—presented evidence that the fatal injuries resulted from a kind of nonaccidental trauma that, at the time, was considered a sound medical diagnosis. Their autopsy report, written by Hayne, cited "changes consistent with concurrent shaken baby syndrome." Hayne and West reached this conclusion because the classic "shaken baby syndrome triad"—bleeding around the brain, bleeding behind the eyes, and brain swelling—were evident in Brandon. At the time, the triad was considered solid evidence of shaken baby syndrome. Bennett has been fighting to prove his innocence since 2002."

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

STORY: "Will This Mississippi Man on Death Row Get a Chance To Prove His Innocence?, by James McWilliams, published by Reason, on July 24, 2026. (James McWilliams is a writer and historian who teaches at Texas State University. His 2025 book The Life and Poetry of Frank Stanford was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in biography.)

SUB-HEADING: "Recent court rulings in Louisiana and Texas give hope to Devin Bennett." 

GIST: "It was early in the morning on August 25, 2000. As Devin Bennett tells it, he put his 10-week-old son Brandon in a car seat and put the car seat on his bed—and then, as the father dozed in and out of sleep, Brandon fell.

The baby didn't appear to be hurt in the immediate aftermath of the fall, Bennett says, but hours later he noticed the boy was having trouble breathing. He rushed him to a hospital in Rankin County, Mississippi, where Brandon's heart stopped beating and he stopped breathing. After being transferred to another hospital, Brandon died.

Two and a half years later, a jury found Bennett guilty of capital murder and felonious child abuse and sentenced him to death. The medical examiners responsible for Brandon's autopsy—doctors Steven Hayne and Michael West, a pathologist and an odontologist who often worked together—presented evidence that the fatal injuries resulted from a kind of nonaccidental trauma that, at the time, was considered a sound medical diagnosis.


Their autopsy report, written by Hayne, cited "changes consistent with concurrent shaken baby syndrome."

Hayne and West reached this conclusion because the classic "shaken baby syndrome triad"—bleeding around the brain, bleeding behind the eyes, and brain swelling—were evident in Brandon. At the time, the triad was considered solid evidence of shaken baby syndrome.

Bennett has been fighting to prove his innocence since 2002. He and I speak frequently and frankly about his case, noting how it hinges on a flawed autopsy and the changing science around shaken baby syndrome. Fighting the state of Mississippi for decades to get an evidentiary hearing has generally left Bennett exhausted and frustrated.

But on June 30, he felt some hope.

The Case of Jimmie Duncan

On June 29, the Louisiana Supreme Court declared an inmate named Jimmie Duncan to be "factually innocent" after he spent 27 years on death row.

Duncan was convicted in 1998 of first-degree capital murder for sexually assaulting and drowning his girlfriend's 23-month-old toddler, Haley Oliveaux. Today he is free on bail—in part because, according to the Louisiana Supreme Court, "Duncan's conviction turned substantially on forensic evidence offered by experts whose reliability 'appears questionable at best.'"

When he read this decision, Devin Bennett took note. Those questionable experts were the same pathologist and odontologist who performed his son's autopsy: Hayne and West.

In the Duncan decision, the Louisiana Supreme Court cited "serious problems" with Haley's autopsy. Central to its concern was West's handling of alleged bite mark evidence on her body.

According to trial documents, West took a dental mold from Duncan and applied it to Haley's flesh—specifically over areas that he thought might have been bite marks—as part of his standard "comparative technique." A forensic expert later surmised that the bites West identified were not bites, but maybe bruises. The bite marks that West imprinted on Haley's body not only destroyed potential DNA evidence but were then identified by prosecutors as Duncan's actual bite marks.

The Louisiana court wrote that West's "'direct comparison technique' has been seriously questioned,' and that the [autopsy] video showed him 'forcibly thrusting' Duncan's dental molds into areas of Haley's face and body 'in a rather disturbing manner and to a rather disturbing degree.'"

A former head of the American Board of Forensic Odontology, Lowell Levine, testified that what West did was "a fraud, simply put." Even West himself later said of his own bite mark analysis in another case, "if I was asked to testify in this case again, I would say I don't believe it's a system that's reliable enough to be used in court."

The takeaway: Whatever passed for acceptable forensic science when Duncan was convicted in 1998 has since been "seriously undermined" by "new, reliable, and noncumulative evidence" that, had it been presented during the original trial, could have resulted in Duncan being found not guilty. Duncan is now out of prison.

As for Haley Oliveaux? Duncan's attorneys, relying on testimony from Haley's doctor, now suspect she drowned in a bathtub after suffering a seizure.

The Case of Hayne and West

Hayne and West didn't just reach questionable conclusions through questionable practices. There was also the matter of their basic competence.

Catherine Legge is a journalist who has researched Hayne and West for years for a documentary on Jimmie Duncan. Hayne and West, she says, worked within a context that "unfortunately allowed them to be shitty at their job."

Hayne (now dead) and West (retired) used dubious forensic practices in a legal system that permitted and maybe even encouraged it. Their autopsies—as documented in The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist, a 2018 book by Tucker Carrington and former Reason writer Radley Balko—raised suspicions among their peers that they were working in collusion with state prosecutors.

"Hayne and West were seen as tools for giving District Attorneys what they wanted," says Legge.


In its Duncan decision, the Louisiana Supreme Court wrote that Hayne and West's forensic work was "below the acceptable standard of care," "untruthful," "unreliable," "sloppy," and poorly documented. Forensic evidence they have produced in other cases has contributed to 9 convictions (8 in Mississippi) that were later overturned.

The sheer volume of their work encouraged sloppiness. Hayne worked on contract doing 8–9 autopsies a day, and anywhere from 1,000–1,600 a year. Medical forensic accreditation boards recommend a yearly total of around 250.

Under Hayne's contract, counties paid him by the body. Adding up the payments comes to a career total of around $10 million. At its height, his practice was doing 80 percent of Mississippi's autopsies. His practice was a factory.

Gradually—too slowly—the system took note of his sloppy work. In 2008, Mississippi prevented Hayne from doing autopsies. West was forced to leave the Board of Forensic Odontology in 2006. He often misidentified bite marks and, in one instance, claimed to have linked a suspect's teeth to a half-eaten sandwich. In another, he mistook crawfish bites on a body as human.

In The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist, Balko and Carrington write that Hayne and West "dominated the Mississippi death investigation system for twenty years. West testified in dozens of cases, Hayne in thousands."

They also quote a former police chief in Mississippi: "There's no question in my mind that there are innocent people doing time at Parchman Penitentiary due to the testimony of Dr. Hayne. There may even be some on death row." 
The Case of Devin Bennett

Devin Bennett is on death row at Parchman penitentiary primarily because of Hayne's testimony. He wants a jury to reconsider Brandon's autopsy in light of the fuller story we now have on Hayne and West.

In Bennett's case, several forensic experts have concluded that Hayne and West made critical interpretive errors in Brandon's autopsy. Most notably, they attributed over a dozen abrasions on Brandon's body to Devin's alleged abuse. Yet when Brandon arrived at the first hospital, a nurse found no unusual marks on Brandon's body and noticed no abnormalities on the head or rest of the body.

Had anyone explored Brandon's previous medical records (which were at the hospital) or checked with child protective services, they would have learned that Brandon never showed medical evidence of bruising. Bennett and his girlfriend never missed a pediatrician appointment. According to Bennett, the only potentially negative thing they had ever been accused of doing to Brandon was overfeeding him.

Between the initial emergency room visit and Brandon's transfer to another hospital, Brandon underwent more than one unsuccessful intubation, several resuscitation efforts, and organ harvesting. All cause bruising and abrasions.

Bennett's attorneys argue that what Hayne presented as evidence of shaken baby syndrome could have been bruising caused by medical professionals trying to save Brandon from the effects of a fall.

At one point at Bennett's trial, Hayne told the jury that Brandon had "two skull fractures," one on each side of his skull. The implication was that Bennett had inflicted them. But these fractures are nowhere to be found in Hayne's autopsy report. The only reference in that report to evidence of a fracture—"bilateral focal fractures"—were later determined by expert medical examiners to be "wormian bones," which are natural bone chips located in the sutures of the skull.

Hayne "just made shit up," one of Bennett's attorneys complained.
The Case of Robert Roberso

What Bennett needs for a new hearing is post-conviction scientific evidence so convincing that it would reasonably lead a jury to this different outcome. On this front, there is good news for Bennett.

In October 2025, the conservative Texas Court of Appeals halted the execution of Robert Roberson. They did so in part on the grounds that the scientific status of "shaken baby syndrome" has changed enough to stay his execution under Texas' "junk science law."

Roberson, who is autistic, was sentenced to death in 2003 for killing his 2-year-old daughter, Nikki Curtis, by shaken baby syndrome. But in the face of weakening evidence of shaken baby syndrome as a valid medical diagnosis, Texas not only halted Roberson's execution but is moving to provide him an evidentiary hearing.

New research reveals that the so-called triad of shaken baby symptoms—brain bleeding, bleeding behind the eyes, brain swelling—could have resulted from accidents, including birth-related subdural bleeds, adverse reactions to medications, medical preconditions, and, yes, a short fall from a bed.

Reflecting this shift, the American Academy of Pediatrics now officially recommends the term "abusive head trauma" over "shaken baby syndrome."

If Bennett's case was heard today, the most convincing explanation for Brandon's death might be a preexisting condition (a head injury from forceps at birth) combined with a short fall. (For Roberson's daughter, newer evidence suggests that Nikki died from a combination of pneumonia and a chronic precondition.)

In the wake of the Roberson and Duncan decisions, Bennett is seeking a new hearing for his case. It remains to be seen if Mississippi will give him that chance."

The entire story can be read at: 

james-mcwilliams

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;

July 26: Retired neonatal nurse Lucy Letby. UK: Question of the day: Why must we talk about Lucy Letby? The answer is made patently clear by teacher/writer/poet (and much else) Kate Clanchy, in her extraordinary Prospect Magazine commentary which deserves to be read by all - especially those who remain silent about Lucy Letby's plight. As Kate Clanchy reports: It took voices from abroad to interrupt the complacency: first an article by Rachel Aviv in the New Yorker shone a light into the darkness of the COCH neonatal ward; then, after Mark McDonald started acting for Letby, came an astonishing intervention from Dr Shoo Lee of Canada, the expert whose paper on air embolism had initially been relied upon by Evans and the consultants. Dr Lee thought Evans had misused his discoveries. Now he went on to reassess the full set of indictments with an international panel of neonatal experts, all, like McDonald, working pro bono. “We did not find any murders,” Dr Lee said, presenting that review. Just a hospital that “would be shut down” were it in Canada. Since that report, the Thirlwall Inquiry, despite its early interdictions, has published more and more documentation to support Dr Lee’s thesis—and it has become ever clearer, even to the Sun newspaper, that the convictions are not safe."

PASSAGE OF THE DAY:  "Only new evidence can count.  Letby’s team now believe they have that: new science over the insulin cases at the heart of the indictment, apparently overturning the tests at the time. Still, the CCRC will not say how many months or years Letby must wait. Meanwhile, the once-confident Thirlwall Inquiry is delaying its report.  Meanwhile, cases of babies who died a decade ago wait to be heard by the coroner, and all the parents of the children involved suffer torments.  Meanwhile, in Bronzefield Prison, Letby waits out the best years of her life, a very well-behaved prisoner, by all accounts, very tidy and constructive. Morris interviews several of her friends and colleagues and paints a picture of an ordinary, pleasant young woman, fond of cats and salsa dancing, dedicated to her job.  She was marked out as a scapegoat only by her tendency to report all accidents and mistakes, even by doctors, and by being, like Amanda Knox, conspicuously pretty."

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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY:  "We are lucky Letby is alive.   Lucia de Berk, a Dutch nurse indicted on very similar statistical mistakes to Letby, suffered a stroke while imprisoned and lived only 15 years after exoneration.  Sally Clark, the solicitor falsely convicted of killing her babies, drank herself to death four years after being freed.  Scapegoating, and I say this also for myself, is a deadly social force that has been much speeded up by digital information. We have to talk about it, and we have to talk about Lucy Letby, however hard it is to look at what we have done, however much noise it makes in the kitchen."

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COMMENTARY: "We need to talk about Lucy Letby," by writer  Kate Clanchy, published by Prospect Magazine, on June 25, 2026,

SUB-HEADING: "A new book highlights the inconsistencies behind the nurse’s conviction. When will the establishment give us doubters a hearing?"

GIST: "Let’s not talk about Lucy Letby, says my doctor friend.

 Not her trial and her 15 whole-life tariffs for murderous assaults on babies.

 Not in my kitchen. 

My psychiatrist friend bans the topic on her dog walk. 

Lady Justice Thirlwall, opening her 2024 inquiry into how Letby’s workplace failed to notice her crimes, dismissed questions about her guilt as “noise”.

My neonatologist friend Tariq, on the other hand, from the other side of the park, wants to talk of little else.

But he’s from South Africa, and it does tend to be outsiders like us who make a noise about Letby. 

This includes social upstarts such as the healthcare worker-turned-barrister Mark McDonald.

 Also people with deplorable politics: Nadine Dorries, David Davis, Peter Hitchens. 

Also scapegoats and jailbirds: Amanda Knox, who has recently produced an excellent podcast about Letby, vindicated Libor trader Tom Hayes… and me.

We’d just disagree, says my doctor friend. 

We’d get upset. 

It’s true the fight has been long and desperate. 

On social media, the camps defending and attacking Letby have acquired battle tags—Letby Truther, Guilter, Pitchforker—and are worn, ragged and defensive as any army at the end of a siege. 

Some individuals have been lost for months to hand-to-hand combat, their utterances so specialised they have become encoded.

Others, though, have been spurred to extraordinary efforts of clarification. 

Dr Phil Hammond of Private Eye, who began his reportage complacent about Letby’s guilt, has now written 38 lucid, thoughtful articles about her innocence.

The Brazilian journalist Cleuci de Oliveira has investigated, informed, persuaded and never once lost her temper in three years of taking abuse as @LucyLetbyTrials on X. 

Christopher Morris began as a garrulous but indefatigable author of YouTube explainer videos about Letby and has now produced this compendious, inelegant, shamelessly partisan, yet useful and admirable book.

Morris shows us the Letby case as a road trip through the largest, scariest mountains of unhappiness in Broken Britain, a tour of our national embarrassments. 

His relentless interviewing—70 individuals are included—produces mounds of detail, but also convinces us that the devil is in such details, and that the only way out, like going on a bear hunt, is through.

We start the tour with Our Holy NHS.  (National Health Service. HL)

The year is 2016, and we are in one of its most run-down hospitals, the Countess of Chester (COCH). 

The neonatal unit, as Morris meticulously details, has suffered a decade of austerity during which the typically cost-cutting, non-medical management had stripped the ward of many of its expensive, well-qualified nurses, leaving the 26-year-old Letby one of the most senior, often with responsibility for looking after the sickest babies. 

She was the nurse the others phoned to ask scarily basic questions about procedures.

That’s not all. 

The infrastructure of the unit has been allowed to deteriorate until sewage drips from the ceiling and comes up the pipes of the bathroom.

 Cots are crowded together, machines don’t work and nor do door-swipe mechanisms. 

Next door, the maternity unit is performing as badly as any of Britain’s scandalous maternity units, sending through babies already suffering injuries and infections. 

The whole is presided over by consultants apparently so nonchalant that they only take two ward rounds a week (two a day is best practice), so cackhanded that an inquest found that a baby died at the hospital after doctors misplaced his breathing tube, and seemingly so arrogant that they insist, despite everything, on the unit being registered at a high grade and accepting very unwell babies.

It was perhaps unsurprising that the number of baby deaths spiked. In 2016, the hospital management commissioned an inquiry from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health which pointed out many of the factors above. 

In the meantime, the management had downgraded the unit so it took in less unwell babies—and the death rates moderated at once.

Around that time, though, some consultants had started to scapegoat Letby. 

When the unit was downgraded, one of them remembered that more than a year previously he had caught Letby standing idly by a cot containing a desaturating baby—though a contemporaneous note he wrote gives a different account. 

When this story was merged with other consultants’ concerns, Letby was put on desk duty and another inquiry into the deaths was commissioned. It found no evidence of deliberate harm.

Letby took out a grievance against the consultants. She won comprehensively

By now, we were deep in another plague of modern Britain: the toxic, absorbing, quasi-judicial, witch-hunt-friendly HR procedure. 

Spurred on by her furious parents,  Letby took out a grievance against the consultants. 

She won comprehensively. 

The consultants were found to have bullied her with their allegations and ordered to apologise.

 HR actions against the consultants were due to begin on the day they took their concerns to Cheshire Police.

One reason my doctor friend won’t let me talk about Letby is that she believes that nurses, as a class, habitually make complaints against doctors and are favoured by management, which is also riddled with nurses. 

Could the two COCH consultants who went to the police have felt injured in a similar way?

At the station, they seem to have been treated as impressive, convincing gentlemen.

The police were unconvinced by the two investigations and the grievance.

 In time, in fact, they would arrest some of the management on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter.

Letby was arrested at dawn and put in handcuffs. 

Her garden was dug up. 

Her garage was done over and her computer searched and every hospital case followed up. 

The police found a Post-it note on which, apparently on the instruction of her counsellor, Letby had written down her darkest fears—“I am evil I did this”—some handover notes which she said she had taken home by accident, some Facebook searches of the babies’ parents.

 At the hospital, there was the testimony of the consultants and Letby’s attendance on the sickest babies, but no direct evidence. No one in that very crowded unit had ever seen her do anything untoward.

Experts were contacted. 

Professor Jane Hutton, a statistician, was dropped from the investigation after explaining that the figures about Letby were complex.

 Dr Dewi Evans, a retired paediatrician who said he suspected deliberate harm within 10 minutes of reviewing the clinical notes, was retained. 

That is one of the things the Letby case reveals to us: our expert-witness system favours professionals paid to be adversarial over disinterested specialists.

Another is the power of the presiding judge in a trial, especially, in a high-profile case, over the press. 

In 2022, Letby began a 10-month trial in a glare of media interest. 

Judge James Goss granted anonymity to an unprecedented number of witnesses: not just to the babies and their families, but to nine clinical witnesses, including the consultant involved in the misplaced-intubation death examined at inquest. 

The workplace reports were never shown to the jury either, so the entire HR story and the possible motives it gave to Letby’s accusers were not paid sufficient attention.

 Letby herself, heavily medicated by now, was left to swing in the media’s wind.

And swing she did, with not only the tabloids sweating ghoulishly over her condemnation but also the BBC and the broadsheets. 

Only a month after the trial, after Peter Hitchens had raised the first doubt, a retrial on a single count was announced and UK public comment was shut down again in the interest of justice. All was as silent as my doctor friend’s kitchen. Not a peep of rudeness to be heard.

It took voices from abroad to interrupt the complacency: first an article by Rachel Aviv in the New Yorker shone a light into the darkness of the COCH neonatal ward; then, after Mark McDonald started acting for Letby, came an astonishing intervention from Dr Shoo Lee of Canada, the expert whose paper on air embolism had initially been relied upon by Evans and the consultants. 

Dr Lee thought Evans had misused his discoveries. 

Now he went on to reassess the full set of indictments with an international panel of neonatal experts, all, like McDonald, working pro bono. 

“We did not find any murders,” Dr Lee said, presenting that review. Just a hospital that “would be shut down” were it in Canada.

Since that report, the Thirlwall Inquiry, despite its early interdictions, has published more and more documentation to support Dr Lee’s thesis—and it has become ever clearer, even to the Sun newspaper, that the convictions are not safe.

Only new evidence can count. Letby’s team now believe they have that

But that does not bring us any nearer to an appeal. 

If our hospitals are Oliver Twist’s workhouse and our courts foggy as Bleak House, the Criminal Cases Review Commission, set up in the wake of the Birmingham Six to assess miscarriages of justice, is the Circumlocution Office. 

The Court of Appeal was not interested in Dr Lee’s report because that evidence could, in theory, have been presented at the original trial.

 Only new evidence can count. 

Letby’s team now believe they have that: new science over the insulin cases at the heart of the indictment, apparently overturning the tests at the time. Still, the CCRC will not say how many months or years Letby must wait.

Meanwhile, the once-confident Thirlwall Inquiry is delaying its report. 

Meanwhile, cases of babies who died a decade ago wait to be heard by the coroner, and all the parents of the children involved suffer torments. 

Meanwhile, in Bronzefield Prison, Letby waits out the best years of her life, a very well-behaved prisoner, by all accounts, very tidy and constructive.

 Morris interviews several of her friends and colleagues and paints a picture of an ordinary, pleasant young woman, fond of cats and salsa dancing, dedicated to her job. 

She was marked out as a scapegoat only by her tendency to report all accidents and mistakes, even by doctors, and by being, like Amanda Knox, conspicuously pretty.

We are lucky Letby is alive. 

Lucia de Berk, a Dutch nurse indicted on very similar statistical mistakes to Letby, suffered a stroke while imprisoned and lived only 15 years after exoneration. 

Sally Clark, the solicitor falsely convicted of killing her babies, drank herself to death four years after being freed. 

Scapegoating, and I say this also for myself, is a deadly social force that has been much speeded up by digital information.

 We have to talk about it, and we have to talk about Lucy Letby, however hard it is to look at what we have done, however much noise it makes in the kitchen."

The entire story can be read at: 

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/culture/74218/kate-clanchy-review-of-christopher-morris-reasonable-doubt-examining-the-case-of-lucy-letby

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;