Marshall University College of Science. The murder of Mickey Bryan, a quiet fourth-grade teacher, stunned her small Texas town. Pages S93-S98. 2004. About 95 percent of criminal cases are resolved with plea bargains, and in such cases, forensic work often goes unchallenged. Proceedings of the Institution of Engineering and Technology Conference on Crime and Security. That is all she can muster about the worst night of her life. Feb. 19, 2008. “I have seen nothing to indicate that this area was studied for that purpose, and data collected, comparisons made, and some sort of a conclusion or hypothesis drawn,” Moses said, referring to the T-shirt. She got a German shepherd that she took with her nearly everywhere. “I don’t know what to do.”. Over and over again, Rea has wished that she had awoken sooner on the night Joel was murdered. "Bloodstain Pattern Analysis & Other Course(s) (Fall 2015)." SIAK-Journal — Journal for Police Science and Practice. https://www.theiai.org/, International Association of Bloodstain Pattern Analysts. 1994. Englert admitted under cross-examination that he had never requested measurements of Joel’s hands for comparison. "Murder 2: The Second Casebook of Forensic Detection." Who was right and who was wrong was left to jurors to sort out. “Jurors don’t understand when an expert is overstating findings or going beyond what can be tested and replicated.”, This fact has been laid bare in cases around the country in which bloodstain-pattern analysis has figured prominently — most recently that of Joe Bryan, a former high school principal who was convicted of the 1985 murder of his wife in Clifton, Texas. “There is no scientific basis for making such a claim.”. (For example, “yesterday” can be changed to “last week,” and “Portland, Ore.” to “Portland” or “here.”), You cannot republish our photographs or illustrations without specific permission. Mr.Film Official. She looked frantic, and she was speaking so rapidly that she was hard to understand. You consent to our cookies if you continue to use our website. The prosecution called two bloodstain-pattern analysts who asserted that there had been no intruder. The murder weapon — a steak knife pulled from a butcher block in Rea’s kitchen — did not yield any fingerprints. In the wake of the murder, she could not bear to be alone. Please contact. The expert whose testimony was key to Bryan’s conviction for his wife’s 1985 murder says he now believes that some of his techniques were incorrect. Struggling with PTSD and reeling from abuse she endured behind bars, she continues to suffer in ways both unbearably public and excruciatingly private. The story remains, still, almost unspeakable. (Oct. 14, 2015) http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/chamberlain/chamberlaintranscript.html, Murray, Elizabeth. As she tries to say more, she breaks down. Four years later, Rea was acquitted at a retrial, after a legal team assembled by the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law in Chicago mounted a vigorous defense that challenged the state’s forensic testimony. Bryan’s and Rea’s cases are not the only ones in which a bloodstain-pattern analyst has delivered testimony that was later called into question. It Came With Unusually Good Terms, Too. Investigators had little to go on, having failed to do basic police work that might have pinpointed the identity of an intruder. A judge recently recommended that Bryan’s conviction stand, finding that “Thorman’s testimony was not important to the case.”. Bloodstain-pattern analysis is rooted in the belief that the drops, spatters and trails of blood at a crime scene are rich repositories of information that can be used to reverse engineer and even reconstruct crimes. "The Forensic Casebook: The Science of Crime Scene Investigation." Like Rea, these exonerees have had years of their lives stolen, and many have struggled to find their place in the world after surviving the crucible of incarceration. "Toward Automatic Blood Spatter Analysis in Crime Scenes." Being branded a child killer “separated me from society,” Rea said. But the most significant reform efforts that are currently underway have been brought about by the Texas Forensic Science Commission, whose decisions often prompt other states to follow suit. James, Stewart H. et al. If you share republished stories on social media, we’d appreciate being tagged in your posts. We use cookies to personalise content and ads, to provide social media features and to analyse our traffic. "Why that 'Dingo's Got My Baby' Line isn't Funny." Meanwhile, defendants convicted on the strength of dubious forensic testimony languish in prison, while those who have won their freedom, like Rea, try to put their lives back together. “An expert who says, ‘This is what the physical evidence shows,’ is extremely persuasive, especially in a circumstantial case,” said Judy Royal, a staff attorney with the Center on Wrongful Convictions who began working on Rea’s case in 2003. Bloodstain Analysis Convinced a Jury She Stabbed Her 10-Year-Old Son. Nothing will ever make that go away.”. That same year, an Illinois appellate court overturned Rea’s conviction because of a legal error and ordered a new trial. Rea, who shared custody of Joel with her ex-husband, Leonard Kirkpatrick, had fought for more time with their son. A plodding investigation followed, with few leads. A working group of forensic scientists and bloodstain-pattern practitioners, which is overseen by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, has recently called for stronger standards and drafted new guidelines for bloodstain-pattern analysts. If you use canonical metadata, please use the ProPublica URL. She managed to hold down a teaching position at the university but was plagued by panic attacks and debilitating anxiety. The retired biochemist and forensic scientist Robert Shaler, one of the authors of the 2009 National Academy of Sciences report and the founding director of Pennsylvania State University’s Forensic Science Program, testified for the defense in the Camm case that experts on both sides were incorrect; specks of blood, he argued, was too little information from which to draw any meaningful conclusion. You can’t sell our material separately or syndicate it. Pamela Colloff is a senior reporter at ProPublica and a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine. “People see what they want to see,” he said of bloodstain-pattern analysis. She tried a number of ventures, including opening a bed-and-breakfast, but none came to fruition. Rea hardly fit the profile of a woman who would drive a knife into her child’s heart. “The experts couldn’t even agree on the type of pattern they were looking at,” he said in an interview. He had been stabbed 12 times, twice through his aorta. Terrified of the dark, she rarely slept. “He’s never seen a day of it. Lindy and Michael Chamberlain outside the court in Sydney, Akin, Louis. She is reluctant to discuss the physical and emotional abuse she endured during the nearly four years she spent behind bars except to say that she was reviled by both inmates and guards. "Vindication at Last for a Woman Scorned by Australia's News Outlets." The Texas Forensic Science Commission, a national leader in criminal justice reform, found in July that the conclusions of the prosecution’s bloodstain-pattern expert, Robert Thorman, were “not accurate or scientifically supported.” In September, Thorman conceded in an affidavit that some of his conclusions were wrong. Nov. 16, 2014. Academic Press. Famous Trials. The source of the blood, he said, could only have been “Joel’s bloodied hands.” His testimony suggesting a horrifying scenario: that Joel had tried to push his mother away as she plunged a knife into him. “Forensic science should be treated like any other consumer product,” said M. Chris Fabricant, director of strategic litigation at the Innocence Project in New York City. ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. “I thought everything would be better,” Rea said. Julie Rea was convicted of killing her son largely on the testimony of bloodstain-pattern analysts. Did a dingo take the baby? Hueske, Edward E. "Practical Analysis and Reconstruction of Shooting Incidents." She stayed in an apartment an hour-and-a-half’s drive away, in Bloomington, Indiana, where she had been commuting to Indiana University’s Ph.D. program. These claims went largely unchallenged because Rea’s attorney didn’t put her on the stand. The mild-mannered daughter of missionaries, Rea had devoted herself to her bright, inquisitive son. I know within a range that this can be done this way.’ There was no attempt to do that.”. "Principles of Bloodstain Pattern Analysis: Theory and Practice." The investigation sputtered along until 2000, when the Illinois State’s Attorneys Appellate Prosecutor’s Office, which routinely handles complex prosecutions for rural counties, took the case to a grand jury. At the time of the murder, Rea was a single mother working toward a doctorate in educational psychology. Weird & Wacky, Copyright © 2020 HowStuffWorks, a division of InfoSpace Holdings, LLC, a System1 Company. They never dusted Joel’s bedroom, or the butcher block that the knife was pulled from, for fingerprints and did not preserve critical trace evidence on Joel’s bedspread. Bad science also affects defendants whose cases never go to trial. 0:34. CLB STYLE. It was with this imprimatur of legitimacy that Englert delivered his findings. In 2011, Rea moved to Tennessee, where her parents live, hoping for a fresh start.

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