September 2, 2020 • 36 mins
Josh Dubin speaks with Bill Osinski, journalist and author of “Guilty By Popular Demand.”
Even when done correctly, impression analysis of evidence, like shoe prints and tire tracks, is purely subjective. Many experts recognize its limitations. But one so-called “expert” in particular pushed the limits of this forensic discipline to produce horrific outcomes.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's a clear fall day in America's heartland. You sit
in a chair outside your trailer contently looking out over
your farm. It's cool and the sun is setting behind
the dense forest that surrounds your property. Everything seems just right.
That evening, your stepdaughter in Net stops by with her boyfriend.
(00:23):
You and your wife were pretty upset when Annette told
you she was moving away from the farm and moving
in with her boyfriend, Todd and his parents downtown. You
don't want a Nette to be caught up with someone
from town. All those townies seem to care about his
church and gossip. You want nothing to do with them,
and they don't seem to want anything to do with you.
(00:44):
But in Nette's already eighteen, she's an adult. You can't
really control her. You try to act supportive, so you
nod to Todd and help a Nette pack the last
of her things into his trunk. You give her a
hug before she gets into the car with him, and
you watch as Todd pulls away to drive them back
into town, and you're feeling a little helpless. The next
(01:08):
day is pretty routine for you. You pick up loads
of hay to bring to your barn. It's strenuous work.
You work hard all day, you're exhausted, and you go
to bed early. The next morning, the phone rings. It's
Tod's mother. She says, are nett in Todd with you?
Speaker 2 (01:29):
No?
Speaker 1 (01:29):
You say, I thought they were with you. Tod's mother
becomes frantic. She says, the kids went for a walk
around four pm yesterday and they never came home last night.
But there's something else going on there. There's a hint
of something, a tone of accusation in her voice, like
she's somehow blaming you. You hang up and call the
(01:52):
police immediately. You wait all day, hoping to hear something,
but there's nothing. You're just waiting and waiting and the
police finally get back to you in the evening. They
can't find them. One sleepless night bleeds into another, and
then another and another. This is one terrible nightmare for
(02:14):
you and your wife. Ten days go on like this.
All you and your wife can do is sit and worry.
You're not eating, you're not sleeping, you don't know what
to do with yourselves. It's raining outside. When you finally
get a call from an officer, and you can hear
it in the tone of their voice. This is not
(02:36):
going to be good. The news I have for you
is not going to be easy to hear. He says,
we found Todd in a net in the Hawking River.
Oh my god, you can't stand. Your body is trembling.
You try to restate what the officer just said. You're
(02:58):
trying to wrap your head around what this means. You
found their bodies, their dead bodies. The officer says, they
didn't find their whole bodies, just their torsos. Their bodies
have been dismembered. You're completely sick. Officers spend two days
(03:23):
searching the cornfields between the railroad tracks and the river
where the torsos were found. They find Todd in a
net's limbs and heads buried in shallow graves. You and
your wife drive into town to the police station, and
you're taken aback by the attitudes of these cops. When
you're separated from your wife and pulled into an interrogation room,
(03:45):
officers tell you to take off your boots, your shirt,
your pants. You sit shivering in your underwear for eight
and a half hours, and then a detective comes in.
He sits down right next to you, puts his finger
in your face and says you did this. We know
you did this. We found your bootprint down by the riverbank.
(04:09):
Once we match that boot to the print that was
left at that riverbank, it'll prove you were there. You
killed your stepdaughter, and then you, sick bastard, you cut
off her arms, her legs, her head. You better confess,
because I'll tell you right now, it's going to get
worse for you if you don't. You say, over and
(04:32):
over and over again, what in the world are you
talking about. I didn't murder a net I just came
here to help you find out who did. What is
this all about. They don't have enough evidence to charge
you for the murder of a net and Todd, so
they have to let you go. They impound your car
(04:52):
so it can be searched for evidence. It's dark and
cold when they drive you home. They let you and
your wife out of the car and you're still naked
except for your underwear. You walk barefoot to your trailer.
Your toes are totally dumb by the time you get
to the door. Downtown, rumors start to spread. People are
(05:13):
saying this murder must have been some kind of cult ritual,
that it must have been you who did it? The quiet,
stern stepfather who never says much, never goes to church,
keeps his family hidden away. Who knows what goes on
at that farm. They didn't like you before, but now
they're straight a hostile. They cross the street to get
(05:34):
away from you when they see you coming. It takes
them a year to build the case against you. Are
they even looking at other suspects. The whispering of your
name around town grows to a fever pitch. You can
hear their accusations ring in your ears. Murderer, molester. You're
(05:57):
eventually arrested in charge with the butchering murder of your
stepdaughter and net and her boyfriend Todd. When you finally
go to court, you do something very out of the ordinary.
You waive the right to a jury trial. Finding twelve
impartial people in Logan, Ohio really not going to happen.
(06:19):
The newspapers, everyone around town, they all think you're guilty.
Everyone just wants to feel safe again. They won't be
satisfied until someone is convicted and they are sure that
person is you. Instead of a jury, you put your
fate in the hands of a three judge panel. A
(06:40):
jury might not see it, but three judges they have to.
It's their job to apply the facts to the law
without any outside influence from the court of public opinion.
Your lawyer calls to the stand and FBI analyst who
says the plaster mold of what the prosecution claims is
your bootprint at the riverbank is quote unquote unsuitable. The
(07:03):
analyst says it lacks sufficient detail for meaningful comparison, and
that it looks more like the footprint of someone who
is walking barefoot. There is no way to claim your
boots match that print, so you're optimistic. But then the
prosecution calls an anthropology professor to the stand. She says
she studied footwear impressions of countless samples. Her delivery is
(07:27):
slow and deliberate and really credible. She says, quote, no
person's footprints are the same as another. They're as unique
as a fingerprint. I've analyzed the wear patterns on the
inside of the defendant's boot, and I can say with certainty,
scientific certainty, that the footprint found by the riverbank was
(07:49):
made by the defendant. This sounds unbelievable, but you see
the judges are nodding along. There's no wather buying. This
is there After a very short deliberation, the judges apparently
believed the testimony of the prosecution's anthropologist who put you
right at the scene of the crime. They convict you,
(08:12):
and you are sentenced to death. The story you just
heard is based on the murders of Annette Cooper Johnston
and Todd Schultz.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Dale.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Johnston was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death in nineteen
eighty four. He was exonerated in nineteen ninety, over twenty
years after the murder. The true killer finally confessed, but
even then the people in the town of Logan still
chose to believe that Dale was guilty in one way
(08:45):
or another. On today's episode, we're going to examine how
a supposed footprint put an innocent man on death row.
I'm Josh Dubin civil rights and criminal defense attorney, an
innocent ambassador to the Innocence Project in New York. Today,
on Wrongful Conviction Junk Science, we examine footwear comparison evidence.
(09:10):
Even when done correctly, impression analysis of evidence like shoe
prints and tire tracks is purely subjective. Many experts recognize
its limitations, but one so called expert in particular, pushed
the limits of this forensic discipline to produce horrific outcomes.
It turns out that Dale Johnson wasn't the only innocent
(09:32):
person to be convicted of a crime based on faulty
footwear comparison evidence.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
The Pacers Foundation is a proud supporter of this episode
and of the Last Mile organization, which provides business and
tech training to help incarcerated individuals successfully and permanently re
enter the workforce. The Pacers Foundation is committed to improving
the lives of hoosiers across Indiana, supporting organizations dedicated primarily
(10:03):
to helping young people and students. For more information on
the work of the Pacers Foundation or the Last Mile Program,
visit Pacersfoundation dot org or the Lastmile dot org.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
In nineteen seventy six, archaeologists made one of the most
exciting discoveries of our time. They found footprints dating back
three point seven million years immortalized in the volcanic ash
in Tanzania, and they looked like human prints. Archaeologists were thrilled.
(10:41):
They thought these footprints could shed some light on when
human beings began walking upright on two feet. Luis Robbins
was an anthropology professor at the University of North Carolina
at Greensboro. She too was excited about these footprints and
wanted to know exactly who left them behind. Louise had
(11:02):
been conducting her own studies in footprint analysis. She started
collecting footprints from people who were still alive. Five hundred
people put ink onto their feet and then stood on
a piece of paper. Based on those prints, Louise tried
to find characteristics and feet that were specific to age, sex, stature,
(11:23):
and weight, using her own system of measurement. She would
then compare those characteristics to the footprints found in the caves.
Her conclusion, no two footprints are the same. In fact,
she thought she could tell a great deal about a
person just by looking at their footprint. Her methods were
(11:43):
never tested by her peers, nor were they confirmed by
other scientists, but Louise she thought she was onto something.
She claimed to do something no one else could identify
a person solely through their footprint, and so in nineteen seven,
when a team of scientists went to excavate the site
in Tanzania where the prehistoric footprints were found, Louise went too.
(12:08):
When she saw the prince. She claimed that one of
them was left by a woman that was five and
a half months pregnant. Now, other scientists on the expedition
scratched their heads. It was hard enough to figure out
if the prints that they were looking at were even
human at all. No one had ever claimed to know
the gender of the person that made the print, let
alone of that person was carrying a child. Then Louise
(12:32):
took a dangerous leap. She positioned herself as a forensic expert,
authoring a book on footprints. She didn't write this book
with her scientific peers in mind, but she wrote it
for law enforcement and crime labs. Only five pages in
this book were dedicated to the analysis of actual shoe prints,
(12:54):
and yet, based on these five pages, Louise claimed that
she was an expert in this area of forensic science.
Lawyers began to hire her as an expert witness. They
told judges that her work was on the cutting edge
of forensic science. Critics of her work called it Cinderella analysis.
After all, she usually made sure that the shoe fit
(13:18):
when she matched the suspects foot to the shoe Prince
found at a crime scene. In the more than twenty
cases for which she testified. Twelve people, some of whom
who have since been proven to be innocent, were sent
to prison, including Dale Johnston, who was sentenced to death.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
Dale Johnson and his wife Sarah at the time, came
down to Logan several days after the bodies had been discovered,
and they came to the Logan police department. They wanted
to be helpful to them, and Dale was immediately taken
up to an interrogation room. His boots, his pants, his
(14:04):
shirt were all confiscated. So he was sitting there in
the chair in his underwear and they were bombarding him.
You did it, didn't you? And we know you did it?
Over and over and over again. He kept saying, no,
I have nothing. I just came. I came into town
to try to help.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Here today is Bill Osinski, a journalist who covered the
Dale Johnson case for years and wrote a book about
it called Guilty by Popular Demand. So Bill, tell us
a little bit about yourself and how you started covering
this case.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
For nearly forty years, I was a reporter. I worked
for eleven different newspapers around the country. I worked for
the Akron Beacon Journal at that time, which is nearly
two hundred miles away from Logan, Ohio, where the murders
took place. But in those days, the newspapers valued a
major story and would make that kind of an investment
(14:58):
in time and resources to over a widely publicized case
like that.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
So, Bill, you actually went to Logan, Ohio to Coverdale's trial?
What was that like?
Speaker 2 (15:09):
I drove into Logan, which is about thirty five miles
southeast of Columbus, Ohio, never been there before, and I
drove in on a January morning, and it was one
of the coldest days I can remember. The temperatures were
well below zero. And I went to the center of
the little town and found the courthouse. And here, you know,
(15:32):
eight o'clock on a weekday morning, there was a line
outside the courthouse. People were standing in that below zero
cold waiting for a chance to get in to hear
all this salacious details of this horrific murder of a
teenage couple who were found dismembered, parts of their bodies
(15:54):
buried in a cornfield near the Hawking River in Logan, Ohio.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Wow, this is a really brutal crime. I mean, you
have body parts buried in fields, and the prosecutors claimed
that Dale Johnson committed these murderers, and putting aside what
his motive would have been, how do they claim he
committed the murderers.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
The prosecutor alleged in his scenario that Dale Johnston had
kidnapped these two kids in downtown Logan, made a stop
on his way home at a doctor's office and drove
him out to his trailer, where they got into an
argument about a little used car that the parents were
supposed to have given a net but hadn't yet, And
(16:40):
out of that argument, Dale went into a jealous fit
and pulled out a gun which they never found, and
shot his stepdaughter and the boyfriend, and then took them outside,
apparently and butchered them, and then brought them back to
downtown Logan where they had last been seen, and put
(17:04):
some body parts, heads and limbs in the cornfield. I mean,
it just it made absolutely no sense. They had no
evidence that he was actually back in town at night
trying to bury these bodies, but that's what they elect.
Dale was not a warm guy. I mean, you know,
(17:26):
he was the outsider. He didn't have a high opinion
of the locals. They didn't like him, you know, he
was convenient guy for them to hang it on.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
So, Bill, did anyone think that Dale was innocent? I mean,
what was your sense of the atmosphere surrounding the case.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
There was such an atmosphere of the case having been
already tried in the court of public opinion before the
trial even started. More than a year passed between the
murderers and the trial, and obviously the only story coming
out of him instigation was that Dale Johnston did it.
So that, in fact, was why the defense waived a
(18:06):
jury trial and asked for a three judge panel, because
they knew that people in Hockey County were so predisposed
to believe that Dale Johnson was the killer.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Now, very little evidence was found at the scenes where
these body parts were found, but we know investigators found
some sort of print in the mud by the riverbank.
And Dale goes down to the police station with his
wife Sarah, and he thinks he's going there to help
them find the killers, but they confiscate his boots, and
(18:48):
of course those boots would be compared to the impression
found at the scene. So tell us a little bit more.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
About what happened. There were so many cops out there that,
according to the testimony of a Ohio Bureau of Investigation agent,
they totally ruined the crime scene as far as being
able to collect any valid evidence. They were cops stopping
all over. Well, what happened was the sheriff of Hockeing
(19:15):
County had an impression made of a depression in the riverbank,
and they made it casting, and they sent it off
to the FBI, and it was examined by a nationally
known footprint expert at the FBI, and he was brought
in to testify to his findings, and he testified that, well,
(19:37):
all he could say that this casting was more likely
a footprint than any kind of a shoe print or bootprint.
And however, he forwarded this plaster cast at his own
volition to a woman anthropologist, Luis Robbins, for her examination.
(19:58):
And she had a the theory of how he could
identify footprints from the wear patterns on the inside of
someone's footwear. She had this Kakamami theory that by examining
the interior of a footwear she could get wear impressions
(20:21):
and use that to analyze a casting of a print
from a shoe or a boot. And so she testified
and trialed it. Well, you can't really say that Dale
Johnson's boot fits this, but from the wear patterns that
she observed from the interior of the boot, when you
(20:43):
looked at it that way, then yes, this was made
by Dale Johnson's boot. And I had never heard of
that before. It didn't make any sense to me. It
was only later, after the damage was done, that it
came out how irresponsible and unreliable and untrue.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Her testimony was, so let me get this straight. This
is like, you know, kind of mind blowing here. Louise
Robbins said that she could match the depression found by
the riverbank to Dale based on where patterns made by
his foot inside his boot. I mean, it just sounds ridiculous.
I've never even heard of that before. This seems to
(21:23):
go so far outside the bounds of any verifiable science.
And you know, it's important for our listeners to keep
in mind that with impression pattern matching methods, that's that's
the type of science we're talking about, or alleged science
that we're talking about. With shoe prints and tires. There's
a database that experts have and they refer to this
(21:46):
database when they're matching a shoe or a tire to
an impression at a scene, and tires and shoes are
mass produced, so the same rubber mold is used to
make them. But that just tells an expert what class
that piece of evidence came from. So, for instance, they
can say that this footwear impression was made by a
(22:08):
size ten Nike Air Jordan. But the problem is a
lot of people own a size ten Nike Air Jordan,
so it's not enough to put somebody at the scene.
So impression analysis really comes down to the individual characteristics
in the specific shoe or shoes that belong to the accused,
and we're talking about things like cracks in the sole
(22:32):
of the shoe, comes stuck to the bottom of the heel,
you know, characteristics that are often caused by routine wear
and tear. But the problem is there is no standard
regarding the number of unique characteristics that are needed to
make a positive identification. And it sounds like from the
(22:52):
mold they were working with in this case that the
FBI analysts couldn't even tell if the impression was made
by a bare foot or or a shoe, let alone
what kind of a shoe. So that should tell you
something about the quality of the impression they were working with.
But miss Robbins makes this huge leap, and it's really
(23:13):
really hard to imagine that this could have been allowed
in a courtroom when someone's freedom was on the line.
And yet he or she is one of the prosecution's
key witnesses when it came to analyzing the physical evidence
of the scene. So how prominently did Miss Robin's testimony
play in the prosecution's closing arguments?
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Bill, Well, it was very prominent because it was the
only piece of evidence that linked Dail Johnson to the
murder scene. I thought it was a very weak link
to begin with, but apparently it was strong enough for
three judges. His closing line was, murder is the ultimate
(23:57):
form of molestation, so you must be guilty of murder too.
He had, of course, been alleging without evidence, that Dale
Johnson had inappropriate relationship with Annette.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
So after he's convicted and sentence, what happens next?
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Bill? He was sent immediately to death row. But you know,
it was such a weird, hostile atmosphere in that town.
I mean, I will never forget. When it came time
for the verdict, all the spectators had gathered on the
lower level of the courthouse, but listened to the verdict
by radio, and I will never forget that when the
(24:37):
guilty verdict was announced, there was this eerie cheering that
came from below, you know, that filled up the court room.
And these people wanted somebody to pay, and Dale Johnson
happened to be the guy who they were able to
hang it on.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
I mean, it seems Bill that they didn't even have
anything other than a hunch that Dale Johnson did this.
I mean, it's hard to make sense of this. I mean,
do you think that they did this on purpose? Do
you think that they set out to frame Dale Johnson?
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Well, I don't think anyone wants to accept that the
prosecutors and police would knowingly fabricate an entire case against
a murder defendant. And I know I came down to
Logan with no preconceptions. I do remember, you know, having
(25:34):
the belief that, you know, the state wouldn't bring these
charges unless they had something against this guy. And by
the end, I said, where is the case? I was
shocked at the prosecutor's summary. I mean it it was
total high opera and total fantasy. Everything that was presented
(25:57):
in that trial was a lie. I believe somewhere before
I die, I'm going to learn the truth in this case,
and that just so happens that I did.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
You know, it's interesting that oftentimes, when one of these
disciplines of junk science is used in a case and
the person is convicted, it's not the exposure of that
junk science as being total bullshit that leads to the exoneration.
It's often that DNA testing is used to prove that
(26:40):
they have the wrong person. What's really interesting about this
case is that Dale is eventually released from prison because
his lawyers were able to prove that some of the
evidence that was used the convictim was not admissible. And
oddly enough, it wasn't the shoe evidence that was thrown out,
but another witness is testimony. It turns out that a
(27:02):
witness had been hypnotized by a detective and was persuaded
to give this awful testimony against Dale at the trial,
and you know, testimony that he like forcefully put a
net in and Todd into a car, and that testimony
was never supposed to be admitted in court, and that
(27:23):
was what was deemed inadmissible, and Dale was let out
because of that, and of course Louise Robbin's testimony about
his you know, the inside wear patterns on his boots,
you know, being definitive proof that the impression left on
the riverbank was his, that was left undisturbed. And everyone
still believed he was guilty. But then someone else confessed
(27:46):
to murdering a net and Todd, so Bill tell us
about that. Who actually committed this crime.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
A sorry little fellow named Chester McKnight. Was nicknamed Chester
the just because apparently because it was weird and was
an habitual criminal, habitual drunk, even though he had a
history of assaults against women. And Chester actually got married
(28:15):
and it lasted a couple of weeks before she kicked
him out and left. And it was in that atmosphere
where Chester just went over the deep end and was
drinking day in and day out. He was obviously depressed,
the wife had left him, and he was just drinking incessantly.
He came on that afternoon, early evening of October fourth,
(28:39):
to Kenny Lynn Scott's house, a local drug dealer. You know,
they were drinking buddies. Anyway, there was a kind of
a makeshift party in Kenny's yard and Chester joined in
and here comes Todd and Annette. So they joined the
party for a little while. I think they may have
had a beer, and Chester decided to hey, let's keep
(29:03):
the party going. I've got some I've got some stuff.
And so they start walking down the railroad tracks and
according to Chester's account, he wanted to have a group
sex with Annette, and she of course know and Todd
tried to get her out of the situation, and that's
(29:24):
when Chester pulled a gun and shot him, and that
started screaming. She shot her. At that point, Chester and
Kenny dragged the bodies down to the riverfront at the
edge of the cornfield and dismembered them. And Kenny, maybe
with help maybe not, got the bodies back into the
cornfield and dug shallow holes and put the limbs and
(29:47):
the heads into a kind of a bear spot in
the middle of the cornfield that he knew about. And
Kenny the next few nights he would go out to
that railroad bridge and cry and moan, and friends saying
what's wrong, Kenny, And he told him, Yo, you wouldn't understand.
His neighbors knew what he was doing. His neighbors saw
his behavior, his neighbors told the police that they should
(30:09):
be investigating him, but they never did, and they didn't
have a record then of this strange call made the
night before the body parts were found. Kenny Linscott made
the call and said, have you found the bodies yet?
And nobody at that point knew that the kids were
even dead or that there were bodies to be found,
(30:31):
And that call was logged and it became the thing
that led to Kenny and ultimately to Chester. And so
I have a law enforcement source that helped me with this,
and he told me that, you know, everybody knew Kenny
was acting weird after the killings, and he said, well,
let's go talk to Kenny. And the sheriff says, oh no,
(30:51):
we confined him when them we need him. So at
the very beginning, lin Scott's name came up, but yet
the police just dismissed him right out of a hand.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
In reflecting on all this, I just want to go
back to Luis Robin's testimony about the shoe print for
a moment. I understand why jurors would be persuaded by her.
She's got this anthropology degree, she's a professor, she comes
across I'm sure, convincingly she went and studied these ancient
footprints in Tanzania. That all makes sense. But the three
(31:25):
judges hearing this, you know, the inside wear patterns on
the boot and that being definitive proof that it was
Dale Johnson's bootprint. I mean, what did they make of
her testimony?
Speaker 2 (31:39):
I can tell you how strongly her testimony was accepted.
Twenty five years later, you know, when the real truth
came out. I interviewed two of the three judges on
the case and they both said, well, we had doctor
Robin's testimony before, so that was very convincing. This was
(32:00):
even after they learned the truth, after they learned that
everything this woman said was was a lie, they still
wanted to wanted to believe in her. I have summed
up this case as a total collapse of a local
justice system, and I still believe that it left me
(32:23):
with such a sense of outrage that this kind of
thing can be done in our system of justice toom
and I mean, you know it was it was not
even close, but the lies that were told in that
courtroom were enough to send an into some man to
death row sitting there through the entire trial. Is they
(32:46):
never they never presented a rational case, and the evidence
that they did present was you know, challenged very successfully
by the defense. I mean, what I learned is that
someone with an academic position and mcclaim of scientific expertise
is automatically granted some level of believability, even by judges
(33:10):
and prosecutors and investigators. And they really accepted Louise Robins testimony,
and as fact I called it in my book Fantasy Forensics,
and as events have proven it was totally fabricated. I
can only attribute it to the desire to get a conviction,
(33:33):
any conviction. That people in that town were petrified. The
judges knew it, They knew what would happen if they
didn't get a conviction, and they knew that they wouldn't
have another crack at Dale Johnson if they acquitted him.
So they convicted him and just you know, went back home.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
The use of doctor Robins is a forensic expert, is
an example of what can go horribly wrong when courts
allow unverified signs into our courtrooms. She testified in twenty cases,
truly a hired gun by attorneys looking for a particular outcome.
Her work was reviewed by a panel of one hundred
(34:16):
and thirty five anthropologists, forensic scientists, lawyers, and legal scholars
sponsored by the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, and they
concluded that her methodology for identification had no basis in science,
but the damage had already been done. Dale Johnson spent
(34:36):
four years on death row for a double homicide that
he didn't commit. But he was fortunate and that even
though his trial left him impoverished, his attorneys stayed on
his case pro bono and took on the appeals. The
psychological trauma inflicted on those who were wrongfully convicted, especially
for people who are innocent and sit on death row,
(34:58):
is well documented. It isn't just the conviction that stays
with the wrongfully convicted, it's the aftermath. Dale lost it all.
He lost his stepdaughter, his property, his wife divorced him.
It wasn't until well into his eighties, actually earlier this year,
that Dale finally received some compensation for his time spent
(35:21):
in prison. The Innocence Project provides support for therapy and
social services for its clients who are forced to cope
with the harms associated with their wrongful conviction. You can
donate to the Innocence Project by visiting www. Dot Innocenceproject
dot org slash give. Next week we'll explore the junk
(35:49):
science of fingerprint evidence. Wrongful Conviction Junk Science is a
production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal
Company Number One. Thanks to our executive producer Jason Flamm
and the team at Signal Company Number one executive producer
Kevin Wardis and senior producers Kara Kornhaber and Britz Spangler.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Our music was.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
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 and on Twitter at
wrong Conviction
It's a clear fall day in America's heartland. You sit
in a chair outside your trailer contently looking out over
your farm. It's cool and the sun is setting behind
the dense forest that surrounds your property. Everything seems just right.
That evening, your stepdaughter in Net stops by with her boyfriend.
(00:23):
You and your wife were pretty upset when Annette told
you she was moving away from the farm and moving
in with her boyfriend, Todd and his parents downtown. You
don't want a Nette to be caught up with someone
from town. All those townies seem to care about his
church and gossip. You want nothing to do with them,
and they don't seem to want anything to do with you.
(00:44):
But in Nette's already eighteen, she's an adult. You can't
really control her. You try to act supportive, so you
nod to Todd and help a Nette pack the last
of her things into his trunk. You give her a
hug before she gets into the car with him, and
you watch as Todd pulls away to drive them back
into town, and you're feeling a little helpless. The next
(01:08):
day is pretty routine for you. You pick up loads
of hay to bring to your barn. It's strenuous work.
You work hard all day, you're exhausted, and you go
to bed early. The next morning, the phone rings. It's
Tod's mother. She says, are nett in Todd with you?
Speaker 2 (01:29):
No?
Speaker 1 (01:29):
You say, I thought they were with you. Tod's mother
becomes frantic. She says, the kids went for a walk
around four pm yesterday and they never came home last night.
But there's something else going on there. There's a hint
of something, a tone of accusation in her voice, like
she's somehow blaming you. You hang up and call the
(01:52):
police immediately. You wait all day, hoping to hear something,
but there's nothing. You're just waiting and waiting and the
police finally get back to you in the evening. They
can't find them. One sleepless night bleeds into another, and
then another and another. This is one terrible nightmare for
(02:14):
you and your wife. Ten days go on like this.
All you and your wife can do is sit and worry.
You're not eating, you're not sleeping, you don't know what
to do with yourselves. It's raining outside. When you finally
get a call from an officer, and you can hear
it in the tone of their voice. This is not
(02:36):
going to be good. The news I have for you
is not going to be easy to hear. He says,
we found Todd in a net in the Hawking River.
Oh my god, you can't stand. Your body is trembling.
You try to restate what the officer just said. You're
(02:58):
trying to wrap your head around what this means. You
found their bodies, their dead bodies. The officer says, they
didn't find their whole bodies, just their torsos. Their bodies
have been dismembered. You're completely sick. Officers spend two days
(03:23):
searching the cornfields between the railroad tracks and the river
where the torsos were found. They find Todd in a
net's limbs and heads buried in shallow graves. You and
your wife drive into town to the police station, and
you're taken aback by the attitudes of these cops. When
you're separated from your wife and pulled into an interrogation room,
(03:45):
officers tell you to take off your boots, your shirt,
your pants. You sit shivering in your underwear for eight
and a half hours, and then a detective comes in.
He sits down right next to you, puts his finger
in your face and says you did this. We know
you did this. We found your bootprint down by the riverbank.
(04:09):
Once we match that boot to the print that was
left at that riverbank, it'll prove you were there. You
killed your stepdaughter, and then you, sick bastard, you cut
off her arms, her legs, her head. You better confess,
because I'll tell you right now, it's going to get
worse for you if you don't. You say, over and
(04:32):
over and over again, what in the world are you
talking about. I didn't murder a net I just came
here to help you find out who did. What is
this all about. They don't have enough evidence to charge
you for the murder of a net and Todd, so
they have to let you go. They impound your car
(04:52):
so it can be searched for evidence. It's dark and
cold when they drive you home. They let you and
your wife out of the car and you're still naked
except for your underwear. You walk barefoot to your trailer.
Your toes are totally dumb by the time you get
to the door. Downtown, rumors start to spread. People are
(05:13):
saying this murder must have been some kind of cult ritual,
that it must have been you who did it? The quiet,
stern stepfather who never says much, never goes to church,
keeps his family hidden away. Who knows what goes on
at that farm. They didn't like you before, but now
they're straight a hostile. They cross the street to get
(05:34):
away from you when they see you coming. It takes
them a year to build the case against you. Are
they even looking at other suspects. The whispering of your
name around town grows to a fever pitch. You can
hear their accusations ring in your ears. Murderer, molester. You're
(05:57):
eventually arrested in charge with the butchering murder of your
stepdaughter and net and her boyfriend Todd. When you finally
go to court, you do something very out of the ordinary.
You waive the right to a jury trial. Finding twelve
impartial people in Logan, Ohio really not going to happen.
(06:19):
The newspapers, everyone around town, they all think you're guilty.
Everyone just wants to feel safe again. They won't be
satisfied until someone is convicted and they are sure that
person is you. Instead of a jury, you put your
fate in the hands of a three judge panel. A
(06:40):
jury might not see it, but three judges they have to.
It's their job to apply the facts to the law
without any outside influence from the court of public opinion.
Your lawyer calls to the stand and FBI analyst who
says the plaster mold of what the prosecution claims is
your bootprint at the riverbank is quote unquote unsuitable. The
(07:03):
analyst says it lacks sufficient detail for meaningful comparison, and
that it looks more like the footprint of someone who
is walking barefoot. There is no way to claim your
boots match that print, so you're optimistic. But then the
prosecution calls an anthropology professor to the stand. She says
she studied footwear impressions of countless samples. Her delivery is
(07:27):
slow and deliberate and really credible. She says, quote, no
person's footprints are the same as another. They're as unique
as a fingerprint. I've analyzed the wear patterns on the
inside of the defendant's boot, and I can say with certainty,
scientific certainty, that the footprint found by the riverbank was
(07:49):
made by the defendant. This sounds unbelievable, but you see
the judges are nodding along. There's no wather buying. This
is there After a very short deliberation, the judges apparently
believed the testimony of the prosecution's anthropologist who put you
right at the scene of the crime. They convict you,
(08:12):
and you are sentenced to death. The story you just
heard is based on the murders of Annette Cooper Johnston
and Todd Schultz.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Dale.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Johnston was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death in nineteen
eighty four. He was exonerated in nineteen ninety, over twenty
years after the murder. The true killer finally confessed, but
even then the people in the town of Logan still
chose to believe that Dale was guilty in one way
(08:45):
or another. On today's episode, we're going to examine how
a supposed footprint put an innocent man on death row.
I'm Josh Dubin civil rights and criminal defense attorney, an
innocent ambassador to the Innocence Project in New York. Today,
on Wrongful Conviction Junk Science, we examine footwear comparison evidence.
(09:10):
Even when done correctly, impression analysis of evidence like shoe
prints and tire tracks is purely subjective. Many experts recognize
its limitations, but one so called expert in particular, pushed
the limits of this forensic discipline to produce horrific outcomes.
It turns out that Dale Johnson wasn't the only innocent
(09:32):
person to be convicted of a crime based on faulty
footwear comparison evidence.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
The Pacers Foundation is a proud supporter of this episode
and of the Last Mile organization, which provides business and
tech training to help incarcerated individuals successfully and permanently re
enter the workforce. The Pacers Foundation is committed to improving
the lives of hoosiers across Indiana, supporting organizations dedicated primarily
(10:03):
to helping young people and students. For more information on
the work of the Pacers Foundation or the Last Mile Program,
visit Pacersfoundation dot org or the Lastmile dot org.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
In nineteen seventy six, archaeologists made one of the most
exciting discoveries of our time. They found footprints dating back
three point seven million years immortalized in the volcanic ash
in Tanzania, and they looked like human prints. Archaeologists were thrilled.
(10:41):
They thought these footprints could shed some light on when
human beings began walking upright on two feet. Luis Robbins
was an anthropology professor at the University of North Carolina
at Greensboro. She too was excited about these footprints and
wanted to know exactly who left them behind. Louise had
(11:02):
been conducting her own studies in footprint analysis. She started
collecting footprints from people who were still alive. Five hundred
people put ink onto their feet and then stood on
a piece of paper. Based on those prints, Louise tried
to find characteristics and feet that were specific to age, sex, stature,
(11:23):
and weight, using her own system of measurement. She would
then compare those characteristics to the footprints found in the caves.
Her conclusion, no two footprints are the same. In fact,
she thought she could tell a great deal about a
person just by looking at their footprint. Her methods were
(11:43):
never tested by her peers, nor were they confirmed by
other scientists, but Louise she thought she was onto something.
She claimed to do something no one else could identify
a person solely through their footprint, and so in nineteen seven,
when a team of scientists went to excavate the site
in Tanzania where the prehistoric footprints were found, Louise went too.
(12:08):
When she saw the prince. She claimed that one of
them was left by a woman that was five and
a half months pregnant. Now, other scientists on the expedition
scratched their heads. It was hard enough to figure out
if the prints that they were looking at were even
human at all. No one had ever claimed to know
the gender of the person that made the print, let
alone of that person was carrying a child. Then Louise
(12:32):
took a dangerous leap. She positioned herself as a forensic expert,
authoring a book on footprints. She didn't write this book
with her scientific peers in mind, but she wrote it
for law enforcement and crime labs. Only five pages in
this book were dedicated to the analysis of actual shoe prints,
(12:54):
and yet, based on these five pages, Louise claimed that
she was an expert in this area of forensic science.
Lawyers began to hire her as an expert witness. They
told judges that her work was on the cutting edge
of forensic science. Critics of her work called it Cinderella analysis.
After all, she usually made sure that the shoe fit
(13:18):
when she matched the suspects foot to the shoe Prince
found at a crime scene. In the more than twenty
cases for which she testified. Twelve people, some of whom
who have since been proven to be innocent, were sent
to prison, including Dale Johnston, who was sentenced to death.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
Dale Johnson and his wife Sarah at the time, came
down to Logan several days after the bodies had been discovered,
and they came to the Logan police department. They wanted
to be helpful to them, and Dale was immediately taken
up to an interrogation room. His boots, his pants, his
(14:04):
shirt were all confiscated. So he was sitting there in
the chair in his underwear and they were bombarding him.
You did it, didn't you? And we know you did it?
Over and over and over again. He kept saying, no,
I have nothing. I just came. I came into town
to try to help.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Here today is Bill Osinski, a journalist who covered the
Dale Johnson case for years and wrote a book about
it called Guilty by Popular Demand. So Bill, tell us
a little bit about yourself and how you started covering
this case.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
For nearly forty years, I was a reporter. I worked
for eleven different newspapers around the country. I worked for
the Akron Beacon Journal at that time, which is nearly
two hundred miles away from Logan, Ohio, where the murders
took place. But in those days, the newspapers valued a
major story and would make that kind of an investment
(14:58):
in time and resources to over a widely publicized case
like that.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
So, Bill, you actually went to Logan, Ohio to Coverdale's trial?
What was that like?
Speaker 2 (15:09):
I drove into Logan, which is about thirty five miles
southeast of Columbus, Ohio, never been there before, and I
drove in on a January morning, and it was one
of the coldest days I can remember. The temperatures were
well below zero. And I went to the center of
the little town and found the courthouse. And here, you know,
(15:32):
eight o'clock on a weekday morning, there was a line
outside the courthouse. People were standing in that below zero
cold waiting for a chance to get in to hear
all this salacious details of this horrific murder of a
teenage couple who were found dismembered, parts of their bodies
(15:54):
buried in a cornfield near the Hawking River in Logan, Ohio.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Wow, this is a really brutal crime. I mean, you
have body parts buried in fields, and the prosecutors claimed
that Dale Johnson committed these murderers, and putting aside what
his motive would have been, how do they claim he
committed the murderers.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
The prosecutor alleged in his scenario that Dale Johnston had
kidnapped these two kids in downtown Logan, made a stop
on his way home at a doctor's office and drove
him out to his trailer, where they got into an
argument about a little used car that the parents were
supposed to have given a net but hadn't yet, And
(16:40):
out of that argument, Dale went into a jealous fit
and pulled out a gun which they never found, and
shot his stepdaughter and the boyfriend, and then took them outside,
apparently and butchered them, and then brought them back to
downtown Logan where they had last been seen, and put
(17:04):
some body parts, heads and limbs in the cornfield. I mean,
it just it made absolutely no sense. They had no
evidence that he was actually back in town at night
trying to bury these bodies, but that's what they elect.
Dale was not a warm guy. I mean, you know,
(17:26):
he was the outsider. He didn't have a high opinion
of the locals. They didn't like him, you know, he
was convenient guy for them to hang it on.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
So, Bill, did anyone think that Dale was innocent? I mean,
what was your sense of the atmosphere surrounding the case.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
There was such an atmosphere of the case having been
already tried in the court of public opinion before the
trial even started. More than a year passed between the
murderers and the trial, and obviously the only story coming
out of him instigation was that Dale Johnston did it.
So that, in fact, was why the defense waived a
(18:06):
jury trial and asked for a three judge panel, because
they knew that people in Hockey County were so predisposed
to believe that Dale Johnson was the killer.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Now, very little evidence was found at the scenes where
these body parts were found, but we know investigators found
some sort of print in the mud by the riverbank.
And Dale goes down to the police station with his
wife Sarah, and he thinks he's going there to help
them find the killers, but they confiscate his boots, and
(18:48):
of course those boots would be compared to the impression
found at the scene. So tell us a little bit more.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
About what happened. There were so many cops out there that,
according to the testimony of a Ohio Bureau of Investigation agent,
they totally ruined the crime scene as far as being
able to collect any valid evidence. They were cops stopping
all over. Well, what happened was the sheriff of Hockeing
(19:15):
County had an impression made of a depression in the riverbank,
and they made it casting, and they sent it off
to the FBI, and it was examined by a nationally
known footprint expert at the FBI, and he was brought
in to testify to his findings, and he testified that, well,
(19:37):
all he could say that this casting was more likely
a footprint than any kind of a shoe print or bootprint.
And however, he forwarded this plaster cast at his own
volition to a woman anthropologist, Luis Robbins, for her examination.
(19:58):
And she had a the theory of how he could
identify footprints from the wear patterns on the inside of
someone's footwear. She had this Kakamami theory that by examining
the interior of a footwear she could get wear impressions
(20:21):
and use that to analyze a casting of a print
from a shoe or a boot. And so she testified
and trialed it. Well, you can't really say that Dale
Johnson's boot fits this, but from the wear patterns that
she observed from the interior of the boot, when you
(20:43):
looked at it that way, then yes, this was made
by Dale Johnson's boot. And I had never heard of
that before. It didn't make any sense to me. It
was only later, after the damage was done, that it
came out how irresponsible and unreliable and untrue.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Her testimony was, so let me get this straight. This
is like, you know, kind of mind blowing here. Louise
Robbins said that she could match the depression found by
the riverbank to Dale based on where patterns made by
his foot inside his boot. I mean, it just sounds ridiculous.
I've never even heard of that before. This seems to
(21:23):
go so far outside the bounds of any verifiable science.
And you know, it's important for our listeners to keep
in mind that with impression pattern matching methods, that's that's
the type of science we're talking about, or alleged science
that we're talking about. With shoe prints and tires. There's
a database that experts have and they refer to this
(21:46):
database when they're matching a shoe or a tire to
an impression at a scene, and tires and shoes are
mass produced, so the same rubber mold is used to
make them. But that just tells an expert what class
that piece of evidence came from. So, for instance, they
can say that this footwear impression was made by a
(22:08):
size ten Nike Air Jordan. But the problem is a
lot of people own a size ten Nike Air Jordan,
so it's not enough to put somebody at the scene.
So impression analysis really comes down to the individual characteristics
in the specific shoe or shoes that belong to the accused,
and we're talking about things like cracks in the sole
(22:32):
of the shoe, comes stuck to the bottom of the heel,
you know, characteristics that are often caused by routine wear
and tear. But the problem is there is no standard
regarding the number of unique characteristics that are needed to
make a positive identification. And it sounds like from the
(22:52):
mold they were working with in this case that the
FBI analysts couldn't even tell if the impression was made
by a bare foot or or a shoe, let alone
what kind of a shoe. So that should tell you
something about the quality of the impression they were working with.
But miss Robbins makes this huge leap, and it's really
(23:13):
really hard to imagine that this could have been allowed
in a courtroom when someone's freedom was on the line.
And yet he or she is one of the prosecution's
key witnesses when it came to analyzing the physical evidence
of the scene. So how prominently did Miss Robin's testimony
play in the prosecution's closing arguments?
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Bill, Well, it was very prominent because it was the
only piece of evidence that linked Dail Johnson to the
murder scene. I thought it was a very weak link
to begin with, but apparently it was strong enough for
three judges. His closing line was, murder is the ultimate
(23:57):
form of molestation, so you must be guilty of murder too.
He had, of course, been alleging without evidence, that Dale
Johnson had inappropriate relationship with Annette.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
So after he's convicted and sentence, what happens next?
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Bill? He was sent immediately to death row. But you know,
it was such a weird, hostile atmosphere in that town.
I mean, I will never forget. When it came time
for the verdict, all the spectators had gathered on the
lower level of the courthouse, but listened to the verdict
by radio, and I will never forget that when the
(24:37):
guilty verdict was announced, there was this eerie cheering that
came from below, you know, that filled up the court room.
And these people wanted somebody to pay, and Dale Johnson
happened to be the guy who they were able to
hang it on.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
I mean, it seems Bill that they didn't even have
anything other than a hunch that Dale Johnson did this.
I mean, it's hard to make sense of this. I mean,
do you think that they did this on purpose? Do
you think that they set out to frame Dale Johnson?
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Well, I don't think anyone wants to accept that the
prosecutors and police would knowingly fabricate an entire case against
a murder defendant. And I know I came down to
Logan with no preconceptions. I do remember, you know, having
(25:34):
the belief that, you know, the state wouldn't bring these
charges unless they had something against this guy. And by
the end, I said, where is the case? I was
shocked at the prosecutor's summary. I mean it it was
total high opera and total fantasy. Everything that was presented
(25:57):
in that trial was a lie. I believe somewhere before
I die, I'm going to learn the truth in this case,
and that just so happens that I did.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
You know, it's interesting that oftentimes, when one of these
disciplines of junk science is used in a case and
the person is convicted, it's not the exposure of that
junk science as being total bullshit that leads to the exoneration.
It's often that DNA testing is used to prove that
(26:40):
they have the wrong person. What's really interesting about this
case is that Dale is eventually released from prison because
his lawyers were able to prove that some of the
evidence that was used the convictim was not admissible. And
oddly enough, it wasn't the shoe evidence that was thrown out,
but another witness is testimony. It turns out that a
(27:02):
witness had been hypnotized by a detective and was persuaded
to give this awful testimony against Dale at the trial,
and you know, testimony that he like forcefully put a
net in and Todd into a car, and that testimony
was never supposed to be admitted in court, and that
(27:23):
was what was deemed inadmissible, and Dale was let out
because of that, and of course Louise Robbin's testimony about
his you know, the inside wear patterns on his boots,
you know, being definitive proof that the impression left on
the riverbank was his, that was left undisturbed. And everyone
still believed he was guilty. But then someone else confessed
(27:46):
to murdering a net and Todd, so Bill tell us
about that. Who actually committed this crime.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
A sorry little fellow named Chester McKnight. Was nicknamed Chester
the just because apparently because it was weird and was
an habitual criminal, habitual drunk, even though he had a
history of assaults against women. And Chester actually got married
(28:15):
and it lasted a couple of weeks before she kicked
him out and left. And it was in that atmosphere
where Chester just went over the deep end and was
drinking day in and day out. He was obviously depressed,
the wife had left him, and he was just drinking incessantly.
He came on that afternoon, early evening of October fourth,
(28:39):
to Kenny Lynn Scott's house, a local drug dealer. You know,
they were drinking buddies. Anyway, there was a kind of
a makeshift party in Kenny's yard and Chester joined in
and here comes Todd and Annette. So they joined the
party for a little while. I think they may have
had a beer, and Chester decided to hey, let's keep
(29:03):
the party going. I've got some I've got some stuff.
And so they start walking down the railroad tracks and
according to Chester's account, he wanted to have a group
sex with Annette, and she of course know and Todd
tried to get her out of the situation, and that's
(29:24):
when Chester pulled a gun and shot him, and that
started screaming. She shot her. At that point, Chester and
Kenny dragged the bodies down to the riverfront at the
edge of the cornfield and dismembered them. And Kenny, maybe
with help maybe not, got the bodies back into the
cornfield and dug shallow holes and put the limbs and
(29:47):
the heads into a kind of a bear spot in
the middle of the cornfield that he knew about. And
Kenny the next few nights he would go out to
that railroad bridge and cry and moan, and friends saying
what's wrong, Kenny, And he told him, Yo, you wouldn't understand.
His neighbors knew what he was doing. His neighbors saw
his behavior, his neighbors told the police that they should
(30:09):
be investigating him, but they never did, and they didn't
have a record then of this strange call made the
night before the body parts were found. Kenny Linscott made
the call and said, have you found the bodies yet?
And nobody at that point knew that the kids were
even dead or that there were bodies to be found,
(30:31):
And that call was logged and it became the thing
that led to Kenny and ultimately to Chester. And so
I have a law enforcement source that helped me with this,
and he told me that, you know, everybody knew Kenny
was acting weird after the killings, and he said, well,
let's go talk to Kenny. And the sheriff says, oh no,
(30:51):
we confined him when them we need him. So at
the very beginning, lin Scott's name came up, but yet
the police just dismissed him right out of a hand.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
In reflecting on all this, I just want to go
back to Luis Robin's testimony about the shoe print for
a moment. I understand why jurors would be persuaded by her.
She's got this anthropology degree, she's a professor, she comes
across I'm sure, convincingly she went and studied these ancient
footprints in Tanzania. That all makes sense. But the three
(31:25):
judges hearing this, you know, the inside wear patterns on
the boot and that being definitive proof that it was
Dale Johnson's bootprint. I mean, what did they make of
her testimony?
Speaker 2 (31:39):
I can tell you how strongly her testimony was accepted.
Twenty five years later, you know, when the real truth
came out. I interviewed two of the three judges on
the case and they both said, well, we had doctor
Robin's testimony before, so that was very convincing. This was
(32:00):
even after they learned the truth, after they learned that
everything this woman said was was a lie, they still
wanted to wanted to believe in her. I have summed
up this case as a total collapse of a local
justice system, and I still believe that it left me
(32:23):
with such a sense of outrage that this kind of
thing can be done in our system of justice toom
and I mean, you know it was it was not
even close, but the lies that were told in that
courtroom were enough to send an into some man to
death row sitting there through the entire trial. Is they
(32:46):
never they never presented a rational case, and the evidence
that they did present was you know, challenged very successfully
by the defense. I mean, what I learned is that
someone with an academic position and mcclaim of scientific expertise
is automatically granted some level of believability, even by judges
(33:10):
and prosecutors and investigators. And they really accepted Louise Robins testimony,
and as fact I called it in my book Fantasy Forensics,
and as events have proven it was totally fabricated. I
can only attribute it to the desire to get a conviction,
(33:33):
any conviction. That people in that town were petrified. The
judges knew it, They knew what would happen if they
didn't get a conviction, and they knew that they wouldn't
have another crack at Dale Johnson if they acquitted him.
So they convicted him and just you know, went back home.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
The use of doctor Robins is a forensic expert, is
an example of what can go horribly wrong when courts
allow unverified signs into our courtrooms. She testified in twenty cases,
truly a hired gun by attorneys looking for a particular outcome.
Her work was reviewed by a panel of one hundred
(34:16):
and thirty five anthropologists, forensic scientists, lawyers, and legal scholars
sponsored by the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, and they
concluded that her methodology for identification had no basis in science,
but the damage had already been done. Dale Johnson spent
(34:36):
four years on death row for a double homicide that
he didn't commit. But he was fortunate and that even
though his trial left him impoverished, his attorneys stayed on
his case pro bono and took on the appeals. The
psychological trauma inflicted on those who were wrongfully convicted, especially
for people who are innocent and sit on death row,
(34:58):
is well documented. It isn't just the conviction that stays
with the wrongfully convicted, it's the aftermath. Dale lost it all.
He lost his stepdaughter, his property, his wife divorced him.
It wasn't until well into his eighties, actually earlier this year,
that Dale finally received some compensation for his time spent
(35:21):
in prison. The Innocence Project provides support for therapy and
social services for its clients who are forced to cope
with the harms associated with their wrongful conviction. You can
donate to the Innocence Project by visiting www. Dot Innocenceproject
dot org slash give. Next week we'll explore the junk
(35:49):
science of fingerprint evidence. Wrongful Conviction Junk Science is a
production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal
Company Number One. Thanks to our executive producer Jason Flamm
and the team at Signal Company Number one executive producer
Kevin Wardis and senior producers Kara Kornhaber and Britz Spangler.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Our music was.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
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 and on Twitter at
wrong Conviction
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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