October 23, 2023 • 35 mins
Of all the many faulty forensic sciences, Gunshot Residue certainly has some truly startling and scary issues that began almost a century ago.
Josh Dubin explores Gunshot Residue Evidence with Joanna Sanchez, Managing Counsel from the Wrongful Conviction Project at the Office of the Ohio Public Defender.
Kate Judson, Executive Director of the Center for Integrity in Forensic Sciences, updates Josh Dubin's Wrongful Conviction: Junk Science.
To learn more and get involved, please visit:
https://cifsjustice.org/donate/
https://opd.ohio.gov/law-library/innocence/wrongful-conviction-project
https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/junk-science
Wrongful Conviction: Junk Science is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey, folks, Kate Judson here. I'm a lawyer and the
executive director of the Center for Integrity and Forensic Sciences.
We're back with another episode of Junk Science, a series
we first released in twenty twenty, but these stories are
just as relevant as ever. This week's episode focuses on
gunshot residue, a form of forensic science that is still
(00:23):
used today. The techniques have improved slightly since the case
in this episode, but they're still pretty unreliable. One of
the biggest problems with gunshot residue evidence, or GSR, is
that we don't know how long it sticks around. Sometimes
analysts talk about GSR as though if you weren't at
a firing range in the last four hours, there's no
(00:44):
reason for GSR to be found on you. But that's
not the case, especially in a country like ours where
firearms are ubiquitous. We don't know enough about transfer to
be confident that if you have GSR on your clothing
or body, that you got that residue from actually using
a firearm. Maybe you got it when you were arrested
(01:07):
because the police officer had it on him, or maybe
you shook hands with someone earlier who'd recently been to
a range. There are too many questions about persistence and
transfer for much of our historical testimony about GSR to
be trustworthy.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
It's Saturday night. You're in your front yard working on
your moped. Your dad is sitting on the picnic bench,
chatting with you as you install a new starter. You
and your friend Alan saved up all year so you
could each buy a bike. Neither one of them is
in great condition, but now that school is out you
have all summer to fix them up. After a little while,
(01:49):
your friend Chante arrives at your house and he says, hey,
Alan's bike has a flat. He wants us to come
help him fix it. And you're thinking, again, his bike
is always breaking down. It's always got some kind of problem.
At first, you were a little jealous of Alan's red
raz but that guy keeps getting flats. You pat the
seat on your brown moped. It's pretty ugly, but at
(02:12):
least it's faithful. You ask your dad if it's cool
if you go over to Alan's grandmother's to get the bike.
He looks at his watch and says, well, it's pretty late,
but hurry up, go get it and you can bring
it back here to work on it. When you and
Chante get to Alan's, Chante heads inside to help Alan
with the bike. Another flat, you say. When Alan comes
(02:34):
out of his house, don't even start, Alan says, tossing
you a can of soda. You hang out for a bit,
and then the three of you start walking Alan's bike
towards your house. You're teasing Alan about how often his
mopeed has problems when a green sedan coming from the
opposite direction stops right next to you. The man driving
(02:54):
the car leans out the window and says, hey, you
guys have any dope Nah, and says we don't mess
with that shit. Yell at the guy, Hey, man, get
out of here, and the green car speeds off. You
walk a bit further down the block, and then you
hear shots ring out. Oh shit. All three of you
(03:15):
start frantically running down the street and don't look back.
You don't stop running until you get back to your house.
You look around, making sure no one's shooting at you,
(03:38):
and then you catch your breath. You, Shanta and Allen
talk about the gunshots for a few minutes. It's not
that out of the ordinary in this neighborhood, but still
it's totally scariest shit when it happens. The adrenaline finally
wears off and you start working on Allen's bike. There's
a nail in the tread of the tire. You pull
(03:58):
it out, plug the hole, and let the glue set.
After pumping up the tire and giving it a few
good pushes, Alan grabs his bike and begins to walk
it back down the street toward his grandmother's house. Once
Alan gets to his street, he sees the green car
that stopped to ask for drugs, but now its front
end is just demolished. It's smashed into the side of
(04:21):
a house a few doors down from his grandmother's. There's
smoke and chaos and police just everywhere. Over the next
few days, you expect to see Alan riding his red
raz after all the tire is fixed, but you don't
see him around the neighborhood. A week passes, you knock
(04:41):
on his door and his grandmother tells you that the
man in the green car had been shot. The cops
asked Alan to come to the police station to help
with the investigation. She expected Alan to be home that
same night, but he's being held in jail. She's afraid
and confused, and suddenly so are you. A few weeks later,
(05:04):
you're in your backyard, throwing a tennis ball against the
side of your house, worrying about Alan, wondering if he's okay.
Out of the corner of your eye, you see some
people walking towards you, and it's four police officers. At
first you freeze, overcome with fear, and then you take off.
(05:25):
They took Alan for no reason. What's going to stop
them from grabbing you and doing the same thing. But
you're fourteen years old. They're bigger than you, faster, and
there's more of them. They catch up, grab you and
put you in handcuffs. Your first thought is I'm going
to disappear, just like Alan. You're putting an interrogation room.
(05:50):
You tell the officers what happened that night, the night
the guy in the green car got shot, how you
and Alan told him to go away. But they don't
want to hear the truth. They don't want to hear
anything you're telling them. One of the detectives, Scoots, is
seat closer to you. We know Alan did this. His
hands tested positive for gunpowder residue. You know what that is, son,
(06:13):
We know he was involved. You're gonna tell us what
Alan did. You're gonna tell us that Alan had the gun,
that you saw that gun, and that what he did
is he went up to that car that stopped and
he talked to the guy in the car, and the
next thing you knew was you heard gunshots and you
saw Alan running. And I'm gonna tell you something you
(06:36):
don't tell us exactly that. Here's what's gonna happen. You're
gonna get charged with murder. You got that. You know
how much power these guys have. They already have Alan.
Who knows what they're gonna do to you. You're petrified.
The walls feel like they're closing in on you. You figure,
I should just tell these guys what they want to hear.
(06:58):
Then my parents can help sort this out later. So
you do what they say. You make up a story,
one that sounds like what they want to hear, and
they record it. You'll tell them anything just to get
out of that room. Before letting you go, the cops
tell you you're going to have to testify at Alan's trial.
(07:19):
We'll see you. Then. A few weeks pass, and you're
relieved when school starts again, maybe this will distract you
from thinking about Alan, from the feeling that it's your fault.
He's still sitting in jail. The day of Alan's trial,
you and Chante decide you're not going to show up.
You're not going to testify against your friend, lie again
(07:41):
and dig a deeper hole for Alan. But the cops
show up at your school and they bring you both
to court. At Alan's trial, an officer takes the stand
and says that he personally collected samples from Alan's hands.
He swabbed the front and back of them with Q
tips and then tested those Q tips to see if
(08:02):
there was gunpowdered residue present. The officer testifies the defendant's
right hand tested positive for antimony and bury them two
chemical elements that are present in gunpowder residue. There is
no doubt in my mind that the defendant shot the
gun that was used in this homicide. This is insane.
(08:24):
You think you know Alan didn't have a gun. He
was with you when those shots rang out. How can
they just make this stuff up? When you're on the
witness stand, you glance over at the jury. They're all
sitting forward, staring right at you. Through you. It seems.
(08:45):
The prosecutors start asking you all of these questions. Your
answers are all over the place. They barely make sense.
You were told to tell lies, but it's hard to
keep it all straight because none of what you're testifying
to actually happened. But at seventeen years old, Allan is
convicted of murder and sentenced to fifteen years to life
(09:08):
in prison. The gunshot residue that the police and prosecutor's
claim was found on Alan's hand is the only physical
evidence linking him to the crime. The story you just
heard is based on the true events of Raymond Carl
Allan Warren's trial. He was convicted of murder based on
(09:30):
faulty gunshot residue evidence. The police also chorused his two friends,
Shanta and Antonio, into giving false testimony saying that Allan
committed the crime. Alan is now in his forties and
he is still in prison. He's been there for over
twenty five years, serving a sentence of fifteen to life
(09:52):
for a murder he did not commit. I'm Josh Duben,
civil Rights It's in criminal defense attorney and innocent ambassador
to the Innocence Project in New York Today on wrongful
conviction junk science. We examine gunshot residue evidence. As listeners
to the show, you've probably heard how coerse confessions are
(10:15):
used to convict innocent people on another podcast in our
feed wrongful Conviction, false Confessions. Now, the coerse confessions of
Chanta and Antonio were certainly factors in convicting Allan at
his trial, but today our focus is on faulty forensic science,
and gunshot residue certainly has its issues that began almost
(10:37):
a century ago.
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(11:04):
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Speaker 4 (11:29):
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Speaker 2 (11:47):
In nineteen thirty three, a group of American police officers
from several departments gathered in a lab at the police
headquarters of Mexico City. They were there to observe Tiodoro
Gonzales demonstrate his new tech for testing gunpowder residue. The
test became known by many names, the dermal nitrate tests,
the glove tests, but my favorite might be the paraffin
(12:10):
gauntlet test. The officers watched as Gonzales poured white, hot
liquid paraffin wax over the fingers, hands, and wrists of
his lab assistant. A glimmer of discomfort flashed across the
assistant's eyes as the hot wax coated his skin. Next,
Gonzales delicately wrapped the layer of cotton around the assistant's
(12:33):
fingers and hands. Layer after layer of wax then cotton
were added, until gloves began to form while the paraffin cooled.
Gonzales explained that after a suspect fires a gun, the
gunpowder residue becomes embedded deep in the pores of the skin.
Even weeks after a gun is fired, the hot melted
(12:55):
paraffin will open up the pores, mix with the oils
in the skin, and caused the porest to discharge the
gunpowder residue trapped within them. Part of this experiment included
Gonzalez's assistant firing a gun and then washing his hands
prior to them being wrapped. The American officers noted the
(13:16):
advantage of this technique. Suspects couldn't simply wash their hands
and avoid detection. Gonzales delicately peeled the gloves from the
hands of his assistant and then took them over to
the lab table and gently laid them down. He measured
a small beaker of a chemical solution that contained sulfuric acid.
(13:39):
Drop by drop, he coated the interior of the gloves
with the mixture. Minutes later, dark blue specks the size
of pinpoints began to form, and Gonzales explained that these
blue dots indicated the presence of dermal nitrates from gunpowder residue.
The police officers huddled around the paraffine gloves to see
(14:02):
for themselves. After that, it took only a few years
for the paraffin test to become widely used in police
departments across the United States. Within three years of Gonzalez's demonstration,
it was used as forensic evidence in the murder trial
of James L. Westwood in Pennsylvania. At his trial, the
(14:23):
state called expert witnesses who testified that gunpowder residue was
present on Westwood's hands, indicating that it was he who
shot and killed his wife. But Westwood's defense attorney called
his own expert witness, a chemist who had conducted his
own study and found that thirteen different substances could also
(14:46):
cause the blue dots to appear on the paraffin gloves.
He cited things like ordinary soot, certain brands of toothpaste,
tobacco cigars, cigarette ashes, and different types of matches, but
none of that evidence mattered for the jury. Westwood was
convicted of the first degree murder of his wife and
(15:08):
sentenced to life in prison. By nineteen sixty seven, a
wider study concluded that rust colored fingernail polish and residue
from evaporated urine, soap, and tapwater would all test positive.
Contact with any of these objects would create blue dots
to appear on the gloves in a paraffin test. The
(15:31):
paraffine test is no longer being used today, and the
science behind testing gunshot residue has changed. By the time
Allan was arrested in nineteen ninety four at sixteen years old,
officers used a new version of the test. It's called
the atomic absorption test, but that test has many of
the same reliability problems as the paraffin glove.
Speaker 4 (15:57):
None of the evidence that was used to convict it
Alan has withstood the test of time. The test used
to indicate that he had gunshot residue on his hands
is no longer considered reliable.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
So joining us today is Joanna Sanchez and she's from
the Wrongful Conviction Project at the Office of the Ohio
Public Defender and we're super excited to have her today.
She's currently representing Alan, whose story we talked about at
the beginning of this episode. Now, Alan's full name is
Raymond Carl Allan Warren, and Joanna might refer to him
(16:32):
as either Allan or Raymond, but don't get confused, okay,
because Raymond and Alan are the same person. So Joanna,
it's great to have you here today, and I'd like
you to start by telling us a little bit about Alan.
What was he like as a sixteen year old living
in Dayton, Ohio.
Speaker 4 (16:50):
Alan was, by all accounts, a normal teenager. He had
a few brothers and he's very close with them. He's
close with his mother, very close to his great and
mother had lots of friends in the neighborhood, would spend
time with them. Alan loves working on cars, so that
was something he spent a lot of time doing, both
(17:10):
fixing cars and painting them, playing basketball. And now you know,
I've known him now for six years. He's a very engaging,
caring person, very talkative, has strong relationships with his family
and friends. Still, okay, So.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
I want to get into the details of the crime
a little bit. So police officers arrive on Allen Street
the night when he had been fixing his moped and
this green car had crashed into the side of a
house and the driver is shot. So what makes them
even decide to go after Allan as a suspect in
the first place?
Speaker 4 (17:47):
So I think it's a matter of circumstance, the boys
they worked on their scooters for a period of time
after they heard the gunshots, and then in order to
go home, Alan had to essentially go through the crime
scene because it happened on the street he was living
on with his grandma's. So Alan that night told the
police about this encounter with the victim, and the police
(18:08):
asked him if he was willing to come down to
the police station to give a statement. So he voluntarily
went to the police station and also voluntarily submitted to
a gunshot residue test. And the result of that gunshot
residue test was that Allen tested negative on his left
hand even though he's left handed, and the palm of
(18:30):
his right hand, though tested positive for two elements that
are known to be in gunshot residue. And I honestly
think once that gunshot residue test came back, they just
became laser focused on Alan.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
So tell us a little bit about that test. What
exactly did gunshot residue testing entail at the time when
Alan went down to that police station.
Speaker 4 (18:52):
So, gunshot residue testing, the idea behind it is that
one person shoots a firearm, particles will be admitted that
will land on their clothing or their hands or their face,
and that those particles can then be tested. You can't
see them, but they can be tested and tell to
please something about whether the person being tested might have
(19:13):
shot a firearm. All gunshot residue testing is not a
simple yes or no test. This is gunshot residue or
it's not. What it's really testing for is the elements
that are known to make up gunshot residue. So specifically,
they test for three elements in most circumstances, and that's lead, barium,
and antimony. In Raymond's case, they actually only tested for
(19:36):
two of those elements, and what they used was an
atomic absorption test, which is now largely out of use,
and that's because it has a high risk of producing
false positives. So the reason the AA test is unreliable
is because it tests for elements that are also present
in items that are completely unrelated to guns. So as
(19:57):
a result, a person who's never touched or been near
a gun could falsely test positive.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
So Joanna, give us an example. What are some things
that Alan might have touched that would make him test
positive for gunshot residue.
Speaker 4 (20:12):
Brake linings are one example of an item that has
the same elements as gunshot residue, and on the night
of the shooting, as we know, Raymond, who frequently was
working on cars, had contact with brake linings while he
fixed his motorized scooter. So the AA test as used
in Raymond's case is problematic because we can't know if
(20:35):
those two elements came from gunshot residue or if they
came from brake linings or some other substance that has
those same elements as gunshot residue.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
So you mentioned that the AA test, the atomic absorption
test that was used on Allen, is not really considered
any more to be dependable, but they're still using gunshot
residue as a form of evidence. With new tests, has
signs progressed in any significant way since the AA test.
Speaker 4 (21:06):
Gunshot residue testing generally has progressed somewhat. The AA test
is no longer really in favor because of its limitations,
and there was a switch over in the mid two
thousands to a test called sem EDS, and that test
was better in that it not only would tell an
(21:26):
analyst whether those elements were present, but also could tell
them the shape and size of the elements and sort
of how they functioned together, whether they were fused, whether
they were the shape of a sphere, all things that
would be important for distinguishing between gunshot residue and let's
say another substance. And so in order for an analyst
to have any confidence that something is actually gunshot resume,
(21:50):
they'd need to do that sort of morphological analysis and
also compare all of the elements in that gunshot resduce
sample with all of the elements and other substances so
that they can actually eliminate other items.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Okay, So that sounds like it does have the potential
to be a more accurate test because you're able to
look at the residue under microscope and tell that the
molecules actually come from a gun and can't be from
anywhere else. But is this a perfect fix?
Speaker 4 (22:20):
Even if that's done properly, there's still a second issue
with gunshot rescue testing, and that's the reason why the
scientific community has really pulled back from this testing, and
that issue is contamination. So gunshot residue is incredibly transferable.
It's very easy to pick it up by touching a
surface that's contaminated with gunshot residue. So if I were
(22:43):
to shoot a gun and shake your hand, you could
very likely test positive for gunshot residue. And with that
that creates just too big of a risk for environmental contamination.
And what it means is that, you know, people who
touch the back of police cars, handcuffs, police officers, police stations,
there's a good chance they could pick up gunshot residue
(23:05):
from those surfaces, even though they themselves never touched a gun.
And we know that happened to Raymond's case because he
was transported to the police station in the back of
a police car and then held in an interrogation room
for several hours before he was actually tested. If on
the call before that police officer had taken somebody who
shot a gun down to the police station, that person
(23:27):
could have left gunshot residue there and then Alan gets
in the car and picks it up. And there have
been studies across the country that show that kind of
thing occurs. So there was a study in Colorado where
they tested I think forty police cars excuse me, twenty
six police cars, and they found gunshot residue particles and
fourteen of them. So this kind of transference is very
(23:49):
common unfortunately, So and.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
You know, in hearing this, I got to tell you
this is like it's startling, it's scary, and you initially
start to see think, well, how many people might have
been wrongfully convicted when the evidence in their case was
just gunshot residue on their hands. I mean, you have
to admit it's pretty compelling evidence for people that don't
(24:14):
know otherwise. And I mean what I mean for people
that don't know otherwise, I'm talking about jurors. So with
that in mind, how big of a role did faulty
gunshot residue evidence plane Allen's case?
Speaker 4 (24:27):
The gunshot residue evidence here was critical in Alan's trial.
The examiner when he testified, what he said was that
this positive test means one of three things. Either Alan
shot a gun, Alan was a victim of a shooting,
or Alan handled ammunition. But we know he wasn't a victim,
and both of the other options still implicate him, whether
(24:49):
he's shooting a gun or handling ammunition. What the examiner
left out is the fourth possibility that this is contamination
and the fifth possibility, which is that it's not gone
shot residue at all. It could just be barium and
antimony on Alan's hands as a result of him having
contact with Brake Linings earlier that night, and that is
(25:11):
the entire scope of the physical evidence in this trial.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
So as a result of this bogus gunshot residue evidence,
Allan gets sentenced to fifteen years to life. He's only
seventeen years old. I mean, what options did he have
to seek recourse? How would one go about proving that
gunshot residue evidence is false.
Speaker 4 (25:44):
It's incredibly difficult for anybody who's incarcerated to collect the
evidence or knowledge necessary to file a new trial motion
or raise a claim that they are wrongfully convicted. So
part of that is he's locked inside, can't go out
and conduct any sort of investigation. He lacks the funds,
(26:04):
so he doesn't have the ability to hire an attorney
or an investigator or an expert witness to go get
this evidence. Alan was challenged and that he couldn't even
get the records in his case, So if he wanted
to write a motion for a few years, he did
not even have a copy of his transcript that would
have helped him to do that. So there are so
many barriers. He's a smart guy, but he's not an attorney.
(26:27):
I mean, that's why we say people should have attorneys.
To litigate these complex issues is incredibly difficult, and it's
all the more so for somebody who's a teenager and
they're incarcerated. They don't have access to these things. And
so he fought on his own for years and years
to try to challenge his conviction. The kind of changes
(26:49):
and evolution with gunshot residue was happening, but he did
not really know that. He didn't have access to forensic
science articles or expert witnesses, so he wasn't even aware
that that was necessarily an issue in his case. And eventually,
in nineteen ninety nine, Chante Hunt gave a statement and said,
(27:11):
I lied because I was scared. Alan was with us
when we heard the shots, so he could not have
shot the victim. And in two thousand and eight, Antonio
gave a very similar statement saying, again, I was scared
and this is a lie, and I did not come
forward for all these years because I was scared of
perjury charges.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Now the Innocence Project has become involved in Allen's case,
and you and your co counsel are fighting to get
allan justice. But as our listeners know by now, as
I'm sure you and I can agree, this problem is
so much bigger than Alan's case. What needs to happen,
in your opinion, to make sure things like gunshot residue
evidence stopped being used to convict innocent people so that
(27:55):
this doesn't happen again and again and again.
Speaker 4 (27:59):
I think police officers and lab examiners should be careful
about when they do gunshot resdue testing and only do
it in the very optimal circumstances, if at all. I
think there are some police officers who feel that it's
just a piece of the puzzle and it's a helpful
tool and the investigation. But I think the risk with
that is that it leads to tunnel vision. You know,
(28:21):
once you have that piece of evidence, you become fixated
on a suspect, and our courts, our judges, need to
look at it critically as well. The court is the
gatekeeper of expert testimony and forensic evidence that comes in,
and what we're seeing is that some courts are limiting
what can be said about gunshot rescue evidence, but they're
(28:41):
still allowing it in. And I think at some point
we hit a breaking point where the risk of prejudice
for this evidence outweighs the benefit of it because it
is so unreliable in so many different aspects. That are
we risking swaying the jury with evidence that really isn't
reliable enough and shouldn't be presented at all.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
All Right, So that certainly addresses what people involved in
the justice system can do. But what can everyday people do.
We have a lot of our listeners asking us, you know,
what can I do to help? So please tell them
things they can do to make sure that this kind
of junk science stops being used and it gets out
(29:27):
of our criminal justice system once and for all.
Speaker 4 (29:30):
I think the biggest thing is people sharing this information
and sharing podcasts like this, sharing when somebody is exonerated
based on forensic evidence that we now know has been discredited.
Is the more people that know about this, I think
the more the system will improve. I think the impact
of sharing this podcast and sharing his story is that
(29:52):
more people hear about it, and then they take that
knowledge with them when they vote, and they take that
knowledge with them when they interact with public officials and
ask them, how do you approach wrongful convictions? How do
you approach forensic science. Are there laws in place that
allow for these convictions to be challenged appropriately? And I
(30:13):
think having the knowledge that's gained from listening to a
podcast like this equips people with the sort of the
talking points and the ability to ask those questions of
public officials.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
So tell us a little bit about where Alan is
now and what options are left for him at this point.
Speaker 4 (30:32):
Now, Alan had litigated emotion asking for a new trial,
and we stepped into that litigation on his behalf in
twenty fourteen, and it's kind of been up and down
through the courts over several years. But earlier this year
the Supreme Court of Ohio decided not to take his case.
So where we're at is we continue to fight for him,
(30:53):
and we believe strongly in his innocence and that he
was wrongfully convicted. And so we're moving forward. We're hoping
to find new evidence or hoping that a new avenue
of relief opens up that allows Alan to challenge his
conviction and hopefully one day go home.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
Look, Joanna, I my heart sort of you know, aches
for you and for Alan really, because I have been
there before. I know that when cases you know, don't
work out, you know, on our initial first try or
first fifteen tries, and go the way we need them
to go, because our clients are innocent, and we know
(31:32):
they're innocent. It can be so frustrating. What's your reaction
when you have setbacks like this. I know that I've
wept on my wife's shoulder before, I know that I
have punched walls. I've had the spectrum of emotions. But
you know, tell me a little bit about what it's
like for you when you know you're faced with setbacks
(31:55):
like this, and you know what it's like with Alan
still sitting in prison.
Speaker 4 (32:00):
I think the important thing we do is we kind
of keep moving forward and keep thinking about our clients,
keep thinking about Alan and what he's going through. And
it's so important that we stay in the fight and
continue to be a voice for those people. And I
hope one day it's not this way. But I know
for me, I look at all the two thousand plus
(32:22):
exonerations that we know about, and I see that those
are never easy, right. They come after setback, and people
have to try multiple different times, multiple different ways. And
so I hope that at some point in time it
doesn't have to be that way. But at least for now,
I know that it's absolutely worth it to keep fighting
for this person and to keep hoping that one day
(32:42):
something we do works and somebody pays attention and that
he gets the justice he's do.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
You know, I tell people all the time that these
wrongful convictions are super difficult. You have to fight tall odds,
you have to keep on fighting forward in the face
of constant rejection from appellate courts. And if you're not
willing to deal with sepacks, if you can't pick yourself
up and dust yourself off and keep charging up that
(33:15):
steep slope, you're really in the wrong business. And it
really does take a team effort. So the more you
can share these stories, the better off we're all going
to be, because there's power in numbers, and there's power
in a collective message. So I hope you will do
just that. Please share our podcast and take action, whether
(33:36):
it be writing your local judges as I often implore
you all to do, or ensuring that when you vote,
you are voting for those judges and the jurisdiction which
you live that actually have the qualifications and the temperament
to be open minded and thorough such that they won't
blindly accept that legal precedent equates to liability. Sometimes bad
(34:03):
science remains in our system of justice because it goes unchallenged.
It's up to all of us to shine a bright
light on these junk sciences and force a reckoning. Next week,
(34:23):
we'll explore the junk science of tool mark identification with
science journalist Tim Recorth. Wrongful Conviction Junk Science is a
production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal
Company Number One. Thanks to our executive producer Jason Flamm
and the team at Signal Company Number One executive producer
(34:43):
Kevin Wardis and senior producers Karen Kornhaber and Britz Spangler.
Our music was composed by Jay Ralph. You can follow
me on Instagram at dubin Josh. Follow the Wrongful Conviction
podcast on Facebook and on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction on
Twitter at wrong Conviction
Hey, folks, Kate Judson here. I'm a lawyer and the
executive director of the Center for Integrity and Forensic Sciences.
We're back with another episode of Junk Science, a series
we first released in twenty twenty, but these stories are
just as relevant as ever. This week's episode focuses on
gunshot residue, a form of forensic science that is still
(00:23):
used today. The techniques have improved slightly since the case
in this episode, but they're still pretty unreliable. One of
the biggest problems with gunshot residue evidence, or GSR, is
that we don't know how long it sticks around. Sometimes
analysts talk about GSR as though if you weren't at
a firing range in the last four hours, there's no
(00:44):
reason for GSR to be found on you. But that's
not the case, especially in a country like ours where
firearms are ubiquitous. We don't know enough about transfer to
be confident that if you have GSR on your clothing
or body, that you got that residue from actually using
a firearm. Maybe you got it when you were arrested
(01:07):
because the police officer had it on him, or maybe
you shook hands with someone earlier who'd recently been to
a range. There are too many questions about persistence and
transfer for much of our historical testimony about GSR to
be trustworthy.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
It's Saturday night. You're in your front yard working on
your moped. Your dad is sitting on the picnic bench,
chatting with you as you install a new starter. You
and your friend Alan saved up all year so you
could each buy a bike. Neither one of them is
in great condition, but now that school is out you
have all summer to fix them up. After a little while,
(01:49):
your friend Chante arrives at your house and he says, hey,
Alan's bike has a flat. He wants us to come
help him fix it. And you're thinking, again, his bike
is always breaking down. It's always got some kind of problem.
At first, you were a little jealous of Alan's red
raz but that guy keeps getting flats. You pat the
seat on your brown moped. It's pretty ugly, but at
(02:12):
least it's faithful. You ask your dad if it's cool
if you go over to Alan's grandmother's to get the bike.
He looks at his watch and says, well, it's pretty late,
but hurry up, go get it and you can bring
it back here to work on it. When you and
Chante get to Alan's, Chante heads inside to help Alan
with the bike. Another flat, you say. When Alan comes
(02:34):
out of his house, don't even start, Alan says, tossing
you a can of soda. You hang out for a bit,
and then the three of you start walking Alan's bike
towards your house. You're teasing Alan about how often his
mopeed has problems when a green sedan coming from the
opposite direction stops right next to you. The man driving
(02:54):
the car leans out the window and says, hey, you
guys have any dope Nah, and says we don't mess
with that shit. Yell at the guy, Hey, man, get
out of here, and the green car speeds off. You
walk a bit further down the block, and then you
hear shots ring out. Oh shit. All three of you
(03:15):
start frantically running down the street and don't look back.
You don't stop running until you get back to your house.
You look around, making sure no one's shooting at you,
(03:38):
and then you catch your breath. You, Shanta and Allen
talk about the gunshots for a few minutes. It's not
that out of the ordinary in this neighborhood, but still
it's totally scariest shit when it happens. The adrenaline finally
wears off and you start working on Allen's bike. There's
a nail in the tread of the tire. You pull
(03:58):
it out, plug the hole, and let the glue set.
After pumping up the tire and giving it a few
good pushes, Alan grabs his bike and begins to walk
it back down the street toward his grandmother's house. Once
Alan gets to his street, he sees the green car
that stopped to ask for drugs, but now its front
end is just demolished. It's smashed into the side of
(04:21):
a house a few doors down from his grandmother's. There's
smoke and chaos and police just everywhere. Over the next
few days, you expect to see Alan riding his red
raz after all the tire is fixed, but you don't
see him around the neighborhood. A week passes, you knock
(04:41):
on his door and his grandmother tells you that the
man in the green car had been shot. The cops
asked Alan to come to the police station to help
with the investigation. She expected Alan to be home that
same night, but he's being held in jail. She's afraid
and confused, and suddenly so are you. A few weeks later,
(05:04):
you're in your backyard, throwing a tennis ball against the
side of your house, worrying about Alan, wondering if he's okay.
Out of the corner of your eye, you see some
people walking towards you, and it's four police officers. At
first you freeze, overcome with fear, and then you take off.
(05:25):
They took Alan for no reason. What's going to stop
them from grabbing you and doing the same thing. But
you're fourteen years old. They're bigger than you, faster, and
there's more of them. They catch up, grab you and
put you in handcuffs. Your first thought is I'm going
to disappear, just like Alan. You're putting an interrogation room.
(05:50):
You tell the officers what happened that night, the night
the guy in the green car got shot, how you
and Alan told him to go away. But they don't
want to hear the truth. They don't want to hear
anything you're telling them. One of the detectives, Scoots, is
seat closer to you. We know Alan did this. His
hands tested positive for gunpowder residue. You know what that is, son,
(06:13):
We know he was involved. You're gonna tell us what
Alan did. You're gonna tell us that Alan had the gun,
that you saw that gun, and that what he did
is he went up to that car that stopped and
he talked to the guy in the car, and the
next thing you knew was you heard gunshots and you
saw Alan running. And I'm gonna tell you something you
(06:36):
don't tell us exactly that. Here's what's gonna happen. You're
gonna get charged with murder. You got that. You know
how much power these guys have. They already have Alan.
Who knows what they're gonna do to you. You're petrified.
The walls feel like they're closing in on you. You figure,
I should just tell these guys what they want to hear.
(06:58):
Then my parents can help sort this out later. So
you do what they say. You make up a story,
one that sounds like what they want to hear, and
they record it. You'll tell them anything just to get
out of that room. Before letting you go, the cops
tell you you're going to have to testify at Alan's trial.
(07:19):
We'll see you. Then. A few weeks pass, and you're
relieved when school starts again, maybe this will distract you
from thinking about Alan, from the feeling that it's your fault.
He's still sitting in jail. The day of Alan's trial,
you and Chante decide you're not going to show up.
You're not going to testify against your friend, lie again
(07:41):
and dig a deeper hole for Alan. But the cops
show up at your school and they bring you both
to court. At Alan's trial, an officer takes the stand
and says that he personally collected samples from Alan's hands.
He swabbed the front and back of them with Q
tips and then tested those Q tips to see if
(08:02):
there was gunpowdered residue present. The officer testifies the defendant's
right hand tested positive for antimony and bury them two
chemical elements that are present in gunpowder residue. There is
no doubt in my mind that the defendant shot the
gun that was used in this homicide. This is insane.
(08:24):
You think you know Alan didn't have a gun. He
was with you when those shots rang out. How can
they just make this stuff up? When you're on the
witness stand, you glance over at the jury. They're all
sitting forward, staring right at you. Through you. It seems.
(08:45):
The prosecutors start asking you all of these questions. Your
answers are all over the place. They barely make sense.
You were told to tell lies, but it's hard to
keep it all straight because none of what you're testifying
to actually happened. But at seventeen years old, Allan is
convicted of murder and sentenced to fifteen years to life
(09:08):
in prison. The gunshot residue that the police and prosecutor's
claim was found on Alan's hand is the only physical
evidence linking him to the crime. The story you just
heard is based on the true events of Raymond Carl
Allan Warren's trial. He was convicted of murder based on
(09:30):
faulty gunshot residue evidence. The police also chorused his two friends,
Shanta and Antonio, into giving false testimony saying that Allan
committed the crime. Alan is now in his forties and
he is still in prison. He's been there for over
twenty five years, serving a sentence of fifteen to life
(09:52):
for a murder he did not commit. I'm Josh Duben,
civil Rights It's in criminal defense attorney and innocent ambassador
to the Innocence Project in New York Today on wrongful
conviction junk science. We examine gunshot residue evidence. As listeners
to the show, you've probably heard how coerse confessions are
(10:15):
used to convict innocent people on another podcast in our
feed wrongful Conviction, false Confessions. Now, the coerse confessions of
Chanta and Antonio were certainly factors in convicting Allan at
his trial, but today our focus is on faulty forensic science,
and gunshot residue certainly has its issues that began almost
(10:37):
a century ago.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
When three dozen former Brooklyn Navy yard workers found themselves
irreparably poisoned by the asbestos they used in the construction
of the battleships that won World War Two. Perry White
and Arthur Luxembourg literally put everything on the line to
successfully represent them. Since then, they've champed and the rights
of over fifty thousand regular Americans injured through the negligence
(11:04):
and malfeasance of mainly large corporations. Their ability to level
the playing field against seemingly insurmountable odds has led them
to litigate against opponents as diverse as big Pharma, all
the way to those responsible for rendering the water of
Flint Michigan Undrinkable whites and Luxembourg ticket personally when there's
a miscarriage of justice anywhere, and therefore they feel a
(11:27):
sense of responsibility to support.
Speaker 4 (11:29):
Bramfel conviction podcasts.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
You can learn more about them by visiting whites lux
dot com. That's weitz lux dot com.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
In nineteen thirty three, a group of American police officers
from several departments gathered in a lab at the police
headquarters of Mexico City. They were there to observe Tiodoro
Gonzales demonstrate his new tech for testing gunpowder residue. The
test became known by many names, the dermal nitrate tests,
the glove tests, but my favorite might be the paraffin
(12:10):
gauntlet test. The officers watched as Gonzales poured white, hot
liquid paraffin wax over the fingers, hands, and wrists of
his lab assistant. A glimmer of discomfort flashed across the
assistant's eyes as the hot wax coated his skin. Next,
Gonzales delicately wrapped the layer of cotton around the assistant's
(12:33):
fingers and hands. Layer after layer of wax then cotton
were added, until gloves began to form while the paraffin cooled.
Gonzales explained that after a suspect fires a gun, the
gunpowder residue becomes embedded deep in the pores of the skin.
Even weeks after a gun is fired, the hot melted
(12:55):
paraffin will open up the pores, mix with the oils
in the skin, and caused the porest to discharge the
gunpowder residue trapped within them. Part of this experiment included
Gonzalez's assistant firing a gun and then washing his hands
prior to them being wrapped. The American officers noted the
(13:16):
advantage of this technique. Suspects couldn't simply wash their hands
and avoid detection. Gonzales delicately peeled the gloves from the
hands of his assistant and then took them over to
the lab table and gently laid them down. He measured
a small beaker of a chemical solution that contained sulfuric acid.
(13:39):
Drop by drop, he coated the interior of the gloves
with the mixture. Minutes later, dark blue specks the size
of pinpoints began to form, and Gonzales explained that these
blue dots indicated the presence of dermal nitrates from gunpowder residue.
The police officers huddled around the paraffine gloves to see
(14:02):
for themselves. After that, it took only a few years
for the paraffin test to become widely used in police
departments across the United States. Within three years of Gonzalez's demonstration,
it was used as forensic evidence in the murder trial
of James L. Westwood in Pennsylvania. At his trial, the
(14:23):
state called expert witnesses who testified that gunpowder residue was
present on Westwood's hands, indicating that it was he who
shot and killed his wife. But Westwood's defense attorney called
his own expert witness, a chemist who had conducted his
own study and found that thirteen different substances could also
(14:46):
cause the blue dots to appear on the paraffin gloves.
He cited things like ordinary soot, certain brands of toothpaste,
tobacco cigars, cigarette ashes, and different types of matches, but
none of that evidence mattered for the jury. Westwood was
convicted of the first degree murder of his wife and
(15:08):
sentenced to life in prison. By nineteen sixty seven, a
wider study concluded that rust colored fingernail polish and residue
from evaporated urine, soap, and tapwater would all test positive.
Contact with any of these objects would create blue dots
to appear on the gloves in a paraffin test. The
(15:31):
paraffine test is no longer being used today, and the
science behind testing gunshot residue has changed. By the time
Allan was arrested in nineteen ninety four at sixteen years old,
officers used a new version of the test. It's called
the atomic absorption test, but that test has many of
the same reliability problems as the paraffin glove.
Speaker 4 (15:57):
None of the evidence that was used to convict it
Alan has withstood the test of time. The test used
to indicate that he had gunshot residue on his hands
is no longer considered reliable.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
So joining us today is Joanna Sanchez and she's from
the Wrongful Conviction Project at the Office of the Ohio
Public Defender and we're super excited to have her today.
She's currently representing Alan, whose story we talked about at
the beginning of this episode. Now, Alan's full name is
Raymond Carl Allan Warren, and Joanna might refer to him
(16:32):
as either Allan or Raymond, but don't get confused, okay,
because Raymond and Alan are the same person. So Joanna,
it's great to have you here today, and I'd like
you to start by telling us a little bit about Alan.
What was he like as a sixteen year old living
in Dayton, Ohio.
Speaker 4 (16:50):
Alan was, by all accounts, a normal teenager. He had
a few brothers and he's very close with them. He's
close with his mother, very close to his great and
mother had lots of friends in the neighborhood, would spend
time with them. Alan loves working on cars, so that
was something he spent a lot of time doing, both
(17:10):
fixing cars and painting them, playing basketball. And now you know,
I've known him now for six years. He's a very engaging,
caring person, very talkative, has strong relationships with his family
and friends. Still, okay, So.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
I want to get into the details of the crime
a little bit. So police officers arrive on Allen Street
the night when he had been fixing his moped and
this green car had crashed into the side of a
house and the driver is shot. So what makes them
even decide to go after Allan as a suspect in
the first place?
Speaker 4 (17:47):
So I think it's a matter of circumstance, the boys
they worked on their scooters for a period of time
after they heard the gunshots, and then in order to
go home, Alan had to essentially go through the crime
scene because it happened on the street he was living
on with his grandma's. So Alan that night told the
police about this encounter with the victim, and the police
(18:08):
asked him if he was willing to come down to
the police station to give a statement. So he voluntarily
went to the police station and also voluntarily submitted to
a gunshot residue test. And the result of that gunshot
residue test was that Allen tested negative on his left
hand even though he's left handed, and the palm of
(18:30):
his right hand, though tested positive for two elements that
are known to be in gunshot residue. And I honestly
think once that gunshot residue test came back, they just
became laser focused on Alan.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
So tell us a little bit about that test. What
exactly did gunshot residue testing entail at the time when
Alan went down to that police station.
Speaker 4 (18:52):
So, gunshot residue testing, the idea behind it is that
one person shoots a firearm, particles will be admitted that
will land on their clothing or their hands or their face,
and that those particles can then be tested. You can't
see them, but they can be tested and tell to
please something about whether the person being tested might have
(19:13):
shot a firearm. All gunshot residue testing is not a
simple yes or no test. This is gunshot residue or
it's not. What it's really testing for is the elements
that are known to make up gunshot residue. So specifically,
they test for three elements in most circumstances, and that's lead, barium,
and antimony. In Raymond's case, they actually only tested for
(19:36):
two of those elements, and what they used was an
atomic absorption test, which is now largely out of use,
and that's because it has a high risk of producing
false positives. So the reason the AA test is unreliable
is because it tests for elements that are also present
in items that are completely unrelated to guns. So as
(19:57):
a result, a person who's never touched or been near
a gun could falsely test positive.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
So Joanna, give us an example. What are some things
that Alan might have touched that would make him test
positive for gunshot residue.
Speaker 4 (20:12):
Brake linings are one example of an item that has
the same elements as gunshot residue, and on the night
of the shooting, as we know, Raymond, who frequently was
working on cars, had contact with brake linings while he
fixed his motorized scooter. So the AA test as used
in Raymond's case is problematic because we can't know if
(20:35):
those two elements came from gunshot residue or if they
came from brake linings or some other substance that has
those same elements as gunshot residue.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
So you mentioned that the AA test, the atomic absorption
test that was used on Allen, is not really considered
any more to be dependable, but they're still using gunshot
residue as a form of evidence. With new tests, has
signs progressed in any significant way since the AA test.
Speaker 4 (21:06):
Gunshot residue testing generally has progressed somewhat. The AA test
is no longer really in favor because of its limitations,
and there was a switch over in the mid two
thousands to a test called sem EDS, and that test
was better in that it not only would tell an
(21:26):
analyst whether those elements were present, but also could tell
them the shape and size of the elements and sort
of how they functioned together, whether they were fused, whether
they were the shape of a sphere, all things that
would be important for distinguishing between gunshot residue and let's
say another substance. And so in order for an analyst
to have any confidence that something is actually gunshot resume,
(21:50):
they'd need to do that sort of morphological analysis and
also compare all of the elements in that gunshot resduce
sample with all of the elements and other substances so
that they can actually eliminate other items.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Okay, So that sounds like it does have the potential
to be a more accurate test because you're able to
look at the residue under microscope and tell that the
molecules actually come from a gun and can't be from
anywhere else. But is this a perfect fix?
Speaker 4 (22:20):
Even if that's done properly, there's still a second issue
with gunshot rescue testing, and that's the reason why the
scientific community has really pulled back from this testing, and
that issue is contamination. So gunshot residue is incredibly transferable.
It's very easy to pick it up by touching a
surface that's contaminated with gunshot residue. So if I were
(22:43):
to shoot a gun and shake your hand, you could
very likely test positive for gunshot residue. And with that
that creates just too big of a risk for environmental contamination.
And what it means is that, you know, people who
touch the back of police cars, handcuffs, police officers, police stations,
there's a good chance they could pick up gunshot residue
(23:05):
from those surfaces, even though they themselves never touched a gun.
And we know that happened to Raymond's case because he
was transported to the police station in the back of
a police car and then held in an interrogation room
for several hours before he was actually tested. If on
the call before that police officer had taken somebody who
shot a gun down to the police station, that person
(23:27):
could have left gunshot residue there and then Alan gets
in the car and picks it up. And there have
been studies across the country that show that kind of
thing occurs. So there was a study in Colorado where
they tested I think forty police cars excuse me, twenty
six police cars, and they found gunshot residue particles and
fourteen of them. So this kind of transference is very
(23:49):
common unfortunately, So and.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
You know, in hearing this, I got to tell you
this is like it's startling, it's scary, and you initially
start to see think, well, how many people might have
been wrongfully convicted when the evidence in their case was
just gunshot residue on their hands. I mean, you have
to admit it's pretty compelling evidence for people that don't
(24:14):
know otherwise. And I mean what I mean for people
that don't know otherwise, I'm talking about jurors. So with
that in mind, how big of a role did faulty
gunshot residue evidence plane Allen's case?
Speaker 4 (24:27):
The gunshot residue evidence here was critical in Alan's trial.
The examiner when he testified, what he said was that
this positive test means one of three things. Either Alan
shot a gun, Alan was a victim of a shooting,
or Alan handled ammunition. But we know he wasn't a victim,
and both of the other options still implicate him, whether
(24:49):
he's shooting a gun or handling ammunition. What the examiner
left out is the fourth possibility that this is contamination
and the fifth possibility, which is that it's not gone
shot residue at all. It could just be barium and
antimony on Alan's hands as a result of him having
contact with Brake Linings earlier that night, and that is
(25:11):
the entire scope of the physical evidence in this trial.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
So as a result of this bogus gunshot residue evidence,
Allan gets sentenced to fifteen years to life. He's only
seventeen years old. I mean, what options did he have
to seek recourse? How would one go about proving that
gunshot residue evidence is false.
Speaker 4 (25:44):
It's incredibly difficult for anybody who's incarcerated to collect the
evidence or knowledge necessary to file a new trial motion
or raise a claim that they are wrongfully convicted. So
part of that is he's locked inside, can't go out
and conduct any sort of investigation. He lacks the funds,
(26:04):
so he doesn't have the ability to hire an attorney
or an investigator or an expert witness to go get
this evidence. Alan was challenged and that he couldn't even
get the records in his case, So if he wanted
to write a motion for a few years, he did
not even have a copy of his transcript that would
have helped him to do that. So there are so
many barriers. He's a smart guy, but he's not an attorney.
(26:27):
I mean, that's why we say people should have attorneys.
To litigate these complex issues is incredibly difficult, and it's
all the more so for somebody who's a teenager and
they're incarcerated. They don't have access to these things. And
so he fought on his own for years and years
to try to challenge his conviction. The kind of changes
(26:49):
and evolution with gunshot residue was happening, but he did
not really know that. He didn't have access to forensic
science articles or expert witnesses, so he wasn't even aware
that that was necessarily an issue in his case. And eventually,
in nineteen ninety nine, Chante Hunt gave a statement and said,
(27:11):
I lied because I was scared. Alan was with us
when we heard the shots, so he could not have
shot the victim. And in two thousand and eight, Antonio
gave a very similar statement saying, again, I was scared
and this is a lie, and I did not come
forward for all these years because I was scared of
perjury charges.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Now the Innocence Project has become involved in Allen's case,
and you and your co counsel are fighting to get
allan justice. But as our listeners know by now, as
I'm sure you and I can agree, this problem is
so much bigger than Alan's case. What needs to happen,
in your opinion, to make sure things like gunshot residue
evidence stopped being used to convict innocent people so that
(27:55):
this doesn't happen again and again and again.
Speaker 4 (27:59):
I think police officers and lab examiners should be careful
about when they do gunshot resdue testing and only do
it in the very optimal circumstances, if at all. I
think there are some police officers who feel that it's
just a piece of the puzzle and it's a helpful
tool and the investigation. But I think the risk with
that is that it leads to tunnel vision. You know,
(28:21):
once you have that piece of evidence, you become fixated
on a suspect, and our courts, our judges, need to
look at it critically as well. The court is the
gatekeeper of expert testimony and forensic evidence that comes in,
and what we're seeing is that some courts are limiting
what can be said about gunshot rescue evidence, but they're
(28:41):
still allowing it in. And I think at some point
we hit a breaking point where the risk of prejudice
for this evidence outweighs the benefit of it because it
is so unreliable in so many different aspects. That are
we risking swaying the jury with evidence that really isn't
reliable enough and shouldn't be presented at all.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
All Right, So that certainly addresses what people involved in
the justice system can do. But what can everyday people do.
We have a lot of our listeners asking us, you know,
what can I do to help? So please tell them
things they can do to make sure that this kind
of junk science stops being used and it gets out
(29:27):
of our criminal justice system once and for all.
Speaker 4 (29:30):
I think the biggest thing is people sharing this information
and sharing podcasts like this, sharing when somebody is exonerated
based on forensic evidence that we now know has been discredited.
Is the more people that know about this, I think
the more the system will improve. I think the impact
of sharing this podcast and sharing his story is that
(29:52):
more people hear about it, and then they take that
knowledge with them when they vote, and they take that
knowledge with them when they interact with public officials and
ask them, how do you approach wrongful convictions? How do
you approach forensic science. Are there laws in place that
allow for these convictions to be challenged appropriately? And I
(30:13):
think having the knowledge that's gained from listening to a
podcast like this equips people with the sort of the
talking points and the ability to ask those questions of
public officials.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
So tell us a little bit about where Alan is
now and what options are left for him at this point.
Speaker 4 (30:32):
Now, Alan had litigated emotion asking for a new trial,
and we stepped into that litigation on his behalf in
twenty fourteen, and it's kind of been up and down
through the courts over several years. But earlier this year
the Supreme Court of Ohio decided not to take his case.
So where we're at is we continue to fight for him,
(30:53):
and we believe strongly in his innocence and that he
was wrongfully convicted. And so we're moving forward. We're hoping
to find new evidence or hoping that a new avenue
of relief opens up that allows Alan to challenge his
conviction and hopefully one day go home.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
Look, Joanna, I my heart sort of you know, aches
for you and for Alan really, because I have been
there before. I know that when cases you know, don't
work out, you know, on our initial first try or
first fifteen tries, and go the way we need them
to go, because our clients are innocent, and we know
(31:32):
they're innocent. It can be so frustrating. What's your reaction
when you have setbacks like this. I know that I've
wept on my wife's shoulder before, I know that I
have punched walls. I've had the spectrum of emotions. But
you know, tell me a little bit about what it's
like for you when you know you're faced with setbacks
(31:55):
like this, and you know what it's like with Alan
still sitting in prison.
Speaker 4 (32:00):
I think the important thing we do is we kind
of keep moving forward and keep thinking about our clients,
keep thinking about Alan and what he's going through. And
it's so important that we stay in the fight and
continue to be a voice for those people. And I
hope one day it's not this way. But I know
for me, I look at all the two thousand plus
(32:22):
exonerations that we know about, and I see that those
are never easy, right. They come after setback, and people
have to try multiple different times, multiple different ways. And
so I hope that at some point in time it
doesn't have to be that way. But at least for now,
I know that it's absolutely worth it to keep fighting
for this person and to keep hoping that one day
(32:42):
something we do works and somebody pays attention and that
he gets the justice he's do.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
You know, I tell people all the time that these
wrongful convictions are super difficult. You have to fight tall odds,
you have to keep on fighting forward in the face
of constant rejection from appellate courts. And if you're not
willing to deal with sepacks, if you can't pick yourself
up and dust yourself off and keep charging up that
(33:15):
steep slope, you're really in the wrong business. And it
really does take a team effort. So the more you
can share these stories, the better off we're all going
to be, because there's power in numbers, and there's power
in a collective message. So I hope you will do
just that. Please share our podcast and take action, whether
(33:36):
it be writing your local judges as I often implore
you all to do, or ensuring that when you vote,
you are voting for those judges and the jurisdiction which
you live that actually have the qualifications and the temperament
to be open minded and thorough such that they won't
blindly accept that legal precedent equates to liability. Sometimes bad
(34:03):
science remains in our system of justice because it goes unchallenged.
It's up to all of us to shine a bright
light on these junk sciences and force a reckoning. Next week,
(34:23):
we'll explore the junk science of tool mark identification with
science journalist Tim Recorth. Wrongful Conviction Junk Science is a
production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal
Company Number One. Thanks to our executive producer Jason Flamm
and the team at Signal Company Number One executive producer
(34:43):
Kevin Wardis and senior producers Karen Kornhaber and Britz Spangler.
Our music was composed by Jay Ralph. You can follow
me on Instagram at dubin Josh. Follow the Wrongful Conviction
podcast on Facebook and on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction on
Twitter at wrong Conviction
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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