0:00

From story Mechanics top. Hello.

0:05

Hello, I'm

0:08

on Zoom with Linda Jackson, the

0:10

current director of the Department of Forensic

0:12

Science, and her colleague Brad Jenkins.

0:14

He's the Forensic Biology program manager

0:17

at the DFS. I've heard

0:19

lots of good things about Jackson and

0:21

her leadership at the lab, and

0:23

things started out really friendly. Let

0:26

me see again, turn off this blurry

0:28

or background. But as soon as I

0:31

asked about Mary Jane Burton, it

0:33

started to feel tents. In

0:36

fact, before the interview, Jackson

0:38

had said she wouldn't answer questions about Mary

0:41

Jane, but I gave it a shot. I

0:44

have now heard from a number of sources

0:46

that maybe they're worse some questions around

0:49

the quality of Mary Jane's work. Is

0:51

that something that you're aware of? Well,

0:54

I had said initially that I wasn't

0:56

going to talk about Mary Jane Burton, and so

0:59

I have no information directly

1:02

about her, which is why

1:04

I am not going

1:06

to talk about her history,

1:10

and because I don't

1:12

really have direct knowledge, and so I don't

1:14

feel that it's appropriate for me to talk about Jackson's

1:19

had a long career at the DFS.

1:22

She started in nineteen ninety five as

1:24

a forensic scientist, moved up

1:26

through the ranks and in twenty thirteen

1:28

became the director. She stepped

1:30

into the role in the midst of the state reviewing

1:33

Mary Jane's case files for clippings.

1:35

Okay, she was the analyst

1:37

at the center of this NASID project that did

1:40

you know, continue under while

1:42

you were a director, and it just feels

1:44

important, I guess to be able to talk about

1:46

her and her work. Yeah,

1:49

I mean, you know, the interesting thing about

1:51

this project is that a

1:53

good number, if not all, of her cases

1:57

had testing redone

1:59

in them when they met the criteria

2:01

of someone being convicted, and so

2:04

there's a large sample

2:06

of cases where additional testing was

2:08

done. Of course I

2:10

knew about this additional testing, and

2:13

it's great that a lot of Mary Jane's

2:15

cases got that second look. But

2:18

as we discussed a few episodes back, I'm

2:20

concerned the project didn't get

2:22

to the root of the problem. It

2:24

didn't look at the original prology work,

2:27

and it's still not clear to

2:29

me how many of Mary Jane's

2:31

cases were actually tested. That's

2:33

actually a number that I was trying to

2:35

figure out, essentially, like what proportion

2:38

of the cases that she worked

2:40

did get DNA testing. I

2:42

definitely do not have that information. I

2:45

know that we located the swaps

2:47

and cuttings in over three thousand

2:49

cases, but I don't

2:52

know for her specifically

2:55

what those numbers would be. I don't

2:57

know how the information is stored

3:00

and if that information exists. Okay,

3:03

is there someone else who might know

3:05

those numbers? Where I was going to come and talk?

3:09

You know, you ask a good question, But to

3:12

my knowledge, that was not data

3:15

that we tracked. I know that

3:18

we had eight hundred and sixty cases that we did

3:20

the DNA testing on and we had a confirmed

3:22

confection, But how

3:24

many of those were her cases? I

3:27

don't. We do not have that

3:29

number, and I think that the

3:32

only way that we would know is that we'd have to

3:34

go back through each case and review

3:37

it manually. I try a different

3:39

approach. I ask about Gina.

3:42

We through our reporting, we met a

3:44

woman who worked at the lab

3:46

in the late seventies whose name was Gina

3:48

Dems. Does that ring any bells?

3:51

I don't know? Okay,

3:53

Well, I wanted to sort of share this one. I told

3:56

them the broad strokes of Gina's story and

3:58

our allegations about Mary Jane's work,

4:00

including the fact that Mary Jane

4:02

was falsifying test results. I

4:05

was not aware of that. Obviously,

4:07

those types of I

4:10

mean, those types of

4:13

activities are very

4:16

concerning, and we expect

4:19

people to act ethically, and

4:21

we expect them to act

4:24

with scientific integrity. That's

4:27

what our job is, and those are part

4:29

of our organizational values and in

4:31

our mission. I

4:33

didn't know what to make of this conversation. Are

4:36

these simply platitudes or

4:39

is the lab finally paying attention? A

4:42

few days later, I got an email from

4:44

the DFS, the one I shared with Gina

4:46

in our last episode examination

4:48

results in certain cases, the

4:51

department is an accredited forensic laboratory

4:53

with an ethical and professional obligation to

4:55

investigate these types of allegations.

4:58

Well, yeah, I have a fact that sion, I

5:02

mean, an investigation. Certainly

5:04

sounds like the kind of accountability that

5:06

is needed here. But before

5:08

we get too excited, what should

5:11

we expect from the DFS. What

5:13

is the lab's record of reviewing

5:15

misconduct within its own four

5:18

walls. In

5:21

this episode, we take a deeper

5:23

look at the Virginia Lab, and

5:26

what we find is a problem

5:28

much bigger than one forensic

5:30

scientist. I'm

5:35

Tessa Kramer and this is admissible.

5:46

Hi Ben, Hey, it's been a minute. I

5:49

know, how have things been going.

5:52

It's been zooe. But I'm

5:55

excited to turn to this. Meet Ben

5:57

Pavior, VPM State politics

5:59

reporter. He's got a knack for investigating

6:01

government agencies and bureaucratic misconduct.

6:05

Ben did some reporting for US and told

6:07

me he wanted to talk about this one

6:10

case I did today.

6:12

I made a document of mistakes made

6:14

along the way, and maybe mistakes is the wrong word,

6:16

but like fuck ups lack of a better

6:18

word, and it's pretty lengthy. I'm

6:23

fighting a cold, so I'll mostly

6:25

hand the mike to Ben for this episode. This

6:29

is a story about a man named Earl Washington

6:31

Junior. Did you kill that woman?

6:34

No? But you told

6:36

the police that you did. Yes.

6:40

This is Ourl Washington talking to a reporter

6:43

a few years after he was sentenced to death

6:45

for the nineteen eighty two rape and murder of a woman

6:47

in northern Virginia. The case had

6:49

gone unsolved for about a year until

6:51

police charge Washington after his arrest for an

6:53

unrelated crime. Why did you tell

6:55

the police that you did it? I

6:59

want you don't know?

7:02

Washington was a black man with developmental

7:04

disabilities. The main piece of evidence

7:07

against him was this confession

7:09

that he's reflecting on here. Did you understand

7:11

then that you were being accused

7:14

of a murder? It

7:17

was a confession riddled with inconsistencies

7:20

following a long police interrogation. Despite

7:22

this, Washington was convicted and given

7:25

the death penalty. At one point,

7:27

Washington came within nine days

7:29

of being executed. He would later

7:31

say he could hear the electric chair being

7:33

tested from his cell. Washington's

7:36

lawyers managed to get a temporary stay of

7:38

execution, but a few years later

7:40

his execution date was looming again. This

7:43

time, DNA had entered the forensic

7:45

picture. For this reason, Governor

7:47

Doug Wilder orders last minute DNA

7:50

testing on some of the crime scene evidence,

7:52

a siemenstain from the perpetrator of the assault,

7:55

and based on the results, the governor calls

7:57

off the execution. He commuteshing

8:00

sentence to life in prison. But what's

8:03

strange here is the state refuses

8:05

to share the actual DNA results. They

8:08

won't even share them with Washington's attorneys.

8:11

That is until a really surprising moment

8:14

about six years later. Don't

8:19

Night on Frontline, the

8:21

case for innocence. A

8:23

Frontline reporter takes an interest in or A.

8:25

Washington's case. Washington is

8:27

still in prison serving his life sentence. The

8:30

reporter, a documentary filmmaker named Ophra

8:32

Bickle, sits down with the director of the lab,

8:35

doctor Paul Ferrara. Paul

8:37

Ferrara is a name we've heard before.

8:39

He's the guy Gina first approach to try

8:41

to get the lab to do something about Mary Jane

8:44

Burton. Later he'd become the

8:46

director of the lab, and it's under

8:48

his leadership that the Virginia Lab begins to establish

8:50

itself as a pioneer in the use of DNA

8:53

technology. So Frontline

8:55

asked Ferra about those mysterious DNA results,

8:58

the results that were enough to commute Washington his

9:00

death sentence to life in prison, The

9:02

results that the state had kept under lock

9:04

and key. When Frontline asked doctor Ferrara

9:07

for the test results of the blanket, to

9:09

our surprise, he handed them to

9:11

us with cameras rolling. Ferrara

9:14

decides to share the results of the labs

9:16

DNA testing. The results

9:18

of the test were explosive. Earl

9:21

Washington was definitively excluded

9:25

the results of our testing on the blanket

9:28

are much more definitive in being

9:30

able to eliminate Earl

9:32

Washington as a possible contributor. That's

9:35

Ferrara there. He's basically saying

9:37

on national television, that guy

9:39

who came within nine days of execution, that

9:42

guy who was still serving a life sentence,

9:44

we've got DNA evidence that seems to show

9:46

he was innocent. This sparks

9:49

public outcry and another round

9:51

of DNA testing. The technology

9:53

had advanced a lot. Washington's

9:55

attorneys, understandably don't

9:57

exactly trust the DFS with this task,

10:00

wanted the DNA testing to go to an independent

10:02

laboratory. This is Peter

10:04

Neufeld, co founder of the Innocence Project.

10:07

He was part of Washington's legal team. But

10:09

Paul Ferrara was adamant that his DNA

10:11

unit was as good as any in the country

10:13

and they would do great testing. Virginia

10:16

insists on doing the DNA testing themselves.

10:19

This part gets a little complicated, but the bottom

10:21

line is, again the lab gets

10:24

a little cagy about the results. It

10:26

was suggestive of his innocence, but that's

10:28

as far as they would go. But it's

10:30

enough for the governor. By now, that's Jim Gilmore

10:33

to grant Washington a conditional pardon.

10:36

Finally, after seventeen years, Washington

10:38

is released from prison. But

10:41

Washington's legal team is like, that

10:43

seems kind of fishy, So they take matters

10:46

into their own hands. They send the evidence

10:48

to their own DNA expert. He got

10:50

an absolutely clean result, not

10:52

only completely excluding Earl Washington,

10:54

but also pointing to a different perpetrator,

10:57

somebody else who they are able to identify

11:01

through the convicted offended database, a

11:03

man named Kenneth Tinsley who was serving time

11:05

for other sexual assaults, something the

11:07

Virginia Labs should have spotted on their own. In

11:10

other words, their DNA unit

11:13

sort of blew it. So Washington's

11:15

legal team is like, whoa,

11:18

they want to get to the bottom of what happened. We

11:20

suggested that they do an independent audit

11:23

of what went wrong, and they said, no,

11:26

we can take care of our own house and

11:29

we'll give you a report. Newfield

11:31

says he tried to convince Ferrara.

11:34

We basically begged him

11:36

not to do an internal audit, and

11:39

we said, this is just not going to go well for the laboratory

11:41

for you. And I liked Paul, and

11:45

he just said, no, this is what we're doing. I'll take

11:47

care of it. And as internal order said,

11:49

there were no problems with the laboratory with

11:52

perfect well, that was ridiculous.

11:54

And then we went public saying it was ridiculous.

11:57

They go to the press, there's a story in the Washington

11:59

Post, and the case catches the attention

12:01

of then Governor Mark Warner. If there was a

12:03

screw up of the lab, I was very

12:06

committed to that point. To Kennedy game

12:08

the torpedoes, We're going to get the truth, no matter what it

12:10

costs, no matter of feathers we have

12:12

to ruffle, and if our laborage screwing up, we're

12:14

going to acknowledge it. Werner orders

12:16

an outside audit to find out exactly

12:18

what the hell went on behind the scenes. A

12:21

you should report that reached a

12:23

very different conclusion about

12:25

the quality of work in that laboratory. An

12:28

audited Virginia's crime lab found serious

12:30

problems and the way it handled DNA evidence.

12:32

The state labs chief DNA analyst,

12:34

Jeffrey Bann, had aired in both DNA

12:37

tests. The outside audit finds that the

12:39

lab's analysis back in nineteen ninety

12:41

three, the one that kept Washington as

12:43

a suspect was questionable, and

12:46

they said the lab was wrong to rule out

12:48

Tinsley as a suspect in its second round

12:50

of testing. Outside and internal

12:52

pressures to resolve the case had

12:54

a detrimental effect on the analysts

12:57

decisions, examinations, and reports.

13:00

The review concludes that the lab was under

13:02

political pressure from the state to get results.

13:05

It's a real stain on the reputation,

13:07

and it really also tarnished the reputation

13:10

and legacy of Paul Ferrar,

13:13

who before that was known

13:16

as one of the more enlightened

13:18

members of the forensic lab

13:20

director community, but his

13:22

behavior in the R. Washington case really

13:26

tarnished that much to the

13:28

displeasure of Pete Marone. Pete Marone,

13:30

the guy who Paul Ferrara hired in nineteen

13:32

seventy eight in the wake of Gina's lawsuits,

13:35

the guy who was himself the director of the lab

13:37

for the bulk of the state's DNA testing and

13:39

notification project. Neufeld

13:41

has a hunch about why Pete was so

13:44

unhappy with the audit. Pete would do

13:46

anything to defend the legacy

13:48

of Paul Ferrar. He was extremely

13:51

unhappy with the independent

13:53

review and what it showed

13:55

about not just about the laboratory,

13:58

but about what was wrong

14:00

with the internal audit. The

14:03

bottom line is there was a cover

14:06

up. When the cover up was uncovered,

14:09

there was a mentality

14:11

of circling the wagons and defending our own

14:14

But the whole notion of trying to

14:17

cover up either incompetencies

14:20

in the laboratory or recklessness in

14:22

the laboratory and then protect

14:25

the institution in those higher up in the institution

14:29

is not unique to the Virginia Laboratory.

14:32

Is something we see in all kinds

14:34

of institutions and systems

14:36

throughout our society. Earl

14:39

Washington was finally granted a

14:41

full pardon in two thousand and seven.

14:43

The DNA evidence was just rock

14:45

solid that Earl Washington was innocent, and that's

14:48

what led me to grant that pardon. This is

14:50

Tim Kaine, former Virginia governor and current

14:53

US Senator. Look, I think, if you want to put

14:55

the building lights together of why Virginia

14:57

has gone from def penalty capital

14:59

of the United States to an abolitionist state,

15:02

the injustice done to Earl Washington

15:04

was one of the building blocks. Tim Kaine

15:06

was the fourth Virginia governor after Wilder,

15:09

Warner and Gilmore to get involved

15:11

in Earl Washington's case, but it

15:13

was a later governor, Ralph Northam, who

15:16

fought to abolish the death penalty in the state.

15:18

In a twenty twenty one speech, Northam told

15:20

Washington story to make his case, This

15:23

innocent man came within

15:27

nine days of being executed.

15:30

Ladies and gentlemen, We cannot do

15:32

that in Virginia. If

15:37

ten days had passed, we

15:39

would ask ourselves today,

15:42

how did Virginia execute an

15:44

innocent man? You gotta

15:47

wonder if there hadn't been so

15:49

much public attention, would the state

15:51

have ever released the DNA results

15:54

Without that independent audit, would we

15:56

even know about the labs mishandling

15:58

of this case. But

16:00

there's something else, something that

16:02

didn't even come up in the audits, something

16:05

arguably even worse. While

16:08

Washington was sitting on death row,

16:11

the state was sitting on blood

16:13

tests that should have excluded Washington

16:15

as a suspect from day one.

16:20

More on that after the break. To

16:40

explain what happened with the psurology testing

16:42

in this case, we have to go back to nineteen

16:44

eighty two at this point, or a

16:47

Washington wasn't even a suspect. The

16:50

purologists tested a bloodstain from the crime

16:52

scene, one they thought came from the murderer.

16:55

The lab determined that this perpetrator had

16:57

an extremely rare genetic marker in his blood,

16:59

something called transparent CD. This

17:02

marker is so rare that the police use

17:04

it to rule out suspects people who

17:06

don't have that type. When police

17:08

arrested Earl Washington in nineteen eighty

17:10

three, they tested his blood for that rare

17:13

transparent CD marker and Nope,

17:16

he didn't have it. There was an emergency

17:18

meeting at the crime lab. This

17:20

is one of Washington's defense attorneys, Bob

17:22

Hall, between the prosecutor, the

17:25

lead investigator for the shape plage,

17:27

and the lab examiner who had tested Earl's

17:30

wood. There were no

17:32

notes taken, but immediately following

17:34

that meeting, the lab certificate

17:37

was amended to say transparent

17:40

testing. In conclusion, the analysts

17:43

changed the results she'd gotten a year

17:45

earlier without any retesting.

17:47

The change looks small, but it was

17:49

enough to keep Washington in the suspect

17:52

pool. If this feels like deja

17:54

vu, same this

17:56

is very similar to what we saw Mary

17:59

Jane Burton, in the Winston Scott

18:01

case and in some of the cases from

18:03

Gina's documents. It's

18:05

the same pattern. We keep

18:07

seeing a urologist getting

18:09

a result that should have excluded a

18:11

suspect and then manipulating

18:14

that result just enough to keep them

18:16

in the pool of possible perpetrators. But

18:20

this is not one of Mary

18:22

Jane's cases. Do

18:24

you know who the analyst

18:26

was? I can check here, Dane

18:32

Dabs. Danne Dabs,

18:34

the trainee who started shortly after

18:37

Gina, the one who shared her

18:39

concerns but kept her head

18:41

down during Gina's fight with the lab and

18:44

went on to have a long career in forensics.

18:47

I called Danne to see what she has to say about

18:50

this. I wanted to ask if you could just explain

18:53

what happened with the transparent

18:55

protein in that case. I

19:00

don't know. I mean, I really don't remember.

19:02

I remember the name ear Old Washington, and I

19:04

don't really remember all the details of the case.

19:07

I mean, it's just been way way

19:10

too long ago. I tried

19:12

to jog her memory. After or Washington

19:14

was arrested, we reissued an

19:16

amended report to sound that transparent to be

19:18

inconclusive. Instead of that unique

19:20

protein. Do you remember

19:22

any of that? No?

19:27

Too long ago. Deanne

19:29

was also questioned about this during a civil

19:31

suit in two thousand and three. Back

19:33

then, she did offer an explanation.

19:36

She testified that she had stumbled

19:38

on an article in a scientific journal about

19:40

transparent which made her question the

19:43

results in some of her old cases, including

19:45

Washington's, so she decided

19:47

to go back and change those old findings.

19:50

And Deanne just happened to find that article

19:52

and change the test result a

19:54

few days after meeting with investigators.

19:57

I feel, Tessa in on what I've learned

20:00

and what I still didn't know. Yeah,

20:02

I mean that seems really very

20:05

suspect to me, But there's

20:07

no notes from that meeting, so we don't know. I

20:11

mean, isn't it kind of crazy that was a meeting?

20:13

Was it between the police officers or the prosecutors

20:15

in Danne? I think it was state police,

20:18

the local prosecutor and local

20:20

police and then Danne. I don't

20:22

know, am I wrong? Does it seem like maybe those

20:24

people shouldn't even be having meetings? That's

20:26

the thing, Like, is this common? But then the timing

20:29

of her going to change it is just like such

20:32

a red flag, right, And so I tried

20:34

to find that journal article she was talking about.

20:36

I dug into like the archives of

20:38

the Journal of Forensic Science from

20:41

nineteen eighty three, which is when she says

20:43

this all happened. They're one hundred and twenty

20:45

six results and there's just

20:48

nothing remotely related to like

20:50

blood proteins, transparent, all

20:53

the keywords. Now, I didn't read

20:55

every article on the Journal of Forensic Science.

20:58

I could have missed it. So we totally

21:00

rule out Deanne's explanation. Still,

21:03

hearing that Deane was the analyst

21:06

in this case, it kind of rattles

21:08

my understanding of the story I've been telling.

21:11

Dane may not have taken a stand the

21:13

way Gina did back in the seventies, but

21:16

I've always seen her as one of the

21:18

good ones, like a good

21:20

scientist. Gina too,

21:23

she describes Deanne as meticulous,

21:25

no bullshit. So

21:28

what does it mean if one of the good ones

21:30

is susceptible to doing this kind of thing too.

21:33

It wasn't just Mary Jane Burden. Here's

21:35

Peter Neufeld again. When something goes wrong.

21:38

This a tendency to say, oh, well, it's

21:40

just her. Did just say was one

21:42

person's fault and make her

21:44

the scapegoat. That doesn't

21:46

sit well with me, because any

21:48

competent laboratory would uncover those

21:50

problems of competence or negligence,

21:53

and if they didn't, then dare to

21:55

blame. These are systemic problems. You

21:58

can't just look at one person. You had a similar

22:01

problem with Dabs in the

22:03

Ear Washington case, in the Keith

22:06

Harwood case, which was another

22:08

case you may have come across. I have come

22:10

across this case. Keith Harwood

22:13

was wrongfully convicted of a rape and murder.

22:15

He served thirty four years before DNA

22:17

testing cleared him. When we went back and looked

22:20

at the original prology work in that

22:22

case, Keith hard was excluded, but

22:24

the analysts called it an inclusion.

22:27

This wasn't Mary Jane Burton, and it

22:29

wasn't Dane Dabs. It was another

22:32

analyst, a guy named David Pompasini.

22:35

But it's the same story. The prology

22:37

results should have excluded a suspect

22:39

long before we could test the DNA. It's

22:42

only after you get the exoneration

22:44

that you do that deconstruction. You go back and

22:46

you look at all the other evidence that was used against

22:48

Keith and you find out that a police

22:50

officer engaged in misconduct, and

22:53

you find that the forensic prology

22:55

analysts working for the state of Virginia

22:57

lied about the results. Whether

23:00

the analysts lied or was just incompetent,

23:03

we can't say for sure. But the

23:05

Harvard case prompted another of you at

23:07

the DFS this time of

23:09

the urology work. The DFS

23:11

analyzed about two hundred cases from the analysts

23:14

and the Harvard case and some others. And

23:16

this review was led by Brad Jenkins. He

23:18

was on tesla's call with the DFS director Linda

23:20

Jackson. And what did the review

23:23

find? And today we're going to talk about

23:25

the review of surology

23:28

cases. Here's what Jenkins said at a

23:30

public DFS meeting in twenty twenty.

23:32

Based on the current review, no duplication

23:34

of the issue was observed in

23:37

the Harvard case, and no identification

23:39

of other isolated or systemic issues

23:41

that would warrant continued review of additional

23:43

cases. No further

23:46

reviews are recommended. Hey,

23:48

Brady, sorry,

23:52

a bunch of gear. No, that's all right. I

23:56

went to the lab to ask Jenkins some follow

23:59

up questions. Had a rape case and

24:01

there looked to be those sourology

24:04

typing results that were in the case

24:06

file, but they weren't in the report.

24:09

Did you ever get to the bottom of why that was? We

24:12

don't really know, you know, And

24:16

so that's the short answer. But

24:19

the take on from Desurology review the cases

24:22

we looked at, we didn't see a trend of

24:24

that of where you'd have exculpatory

24:26

type results in the notes and not

24:29

reported in the certificate of analysis.

24:32

Some of the interneys involved in the case, we're starting

24:34

to talk about, Hey, why is this here? We

24:36

also saw in the case notes, and

24:38

so we decided to go back and look on our own and say,

24:41

hey, is there is this a trend out there

24:43

that we need to be concerned about, or

24:46

is this an isolated incident. The

24:48

review came up with a number of findings,

24:50

some procedures that wouldn't be kosher today

24:52

but weren't uncommon back in the day. But

24:55

one thing caught our attention. Another

24:58

thing that the view all talked about is

25:00

that there's some sort of typographical error.

25:03

Can you explain what that might have been? Anyone

25:06

writing up reports, you know, you might put a typo in

25:08

there, and so you will write down this is a

25:10

type A, but you'd actually look in the notes and

25:12

it looks like it's a type B. And so what

25:15

appears to have happened is somebody just did a typographical

25:18

error. And you have to think this is before computers,

25:20

and so everybody's trying to type on the old

25:22

fashioned typewriters. There's no spell check,

25:25

you know, anything like that. I mean,

25:27

I don't know how you would know this, but is there any

25:29

chance somebody deliberately would have changed those

25:31

results or it When

25:33

we saw the typo one of the

25:35

cases that you're speaking of, even with

25:37

the typo, it didn't match the defendant.

25:40

And so we really didn't come across

25:43

cases that I recall where someone had

25:45

it looked like someone had gone in and changed

25:47

all of the reporting

25:50

results to match the defendant

25:52

even though the notes said something different.

25:55

To be clear, the lab deserves credit

25:57

for taking this on. They've done

25:59

this kind of review with several forensic techniques,

26:02

prology, hair analysis, and

26:04

of course there was a DNA testing, a notification

26:07

project. Many labs don't even

26:09

bother. We do a lot of post conviction

26:11

testing and that's a really important

26:13

part of our work to see if we can eliminate

26:16

individuals from crimes. But Peter

26:19

Neufeld says the review was inadequate,

26:22

plagued by similar problems we've seen with the labs

26:24

other audits and reviews. We didn't get

26:26

to see all the word data. We don't know the

26:29

extent of the audit. There was a degree

26:31

of secrecy and lack of transparency,

26:34

so we don't really know. Not

26:37

to mention in the case of an analyst

26:39

or racing and changing results like

26:42

Mary Jane did, that wouldn't even show

26:44

up in this review Erasing the record

26:46

books would cover up the tracks of these kinds

26:48

of discrepancies. We're

26:50

seeing variations on a theme psurology

26:53

results that should have excluded someone

26:55

who DNA later proved innocent, and

26:58

yet every time they're treated as isolated

27:00

incidents. In a way, it's

27:02

the same line the lab has been using since

27:05

Genademas raised her concerns in the nineteen

27:07

seventies. It's just one

27:09

case. Clearly, there

27:12

were fundamental problems of either competence

27:15

or malfeasance in the laboratory, but

27:18

more importantly, there were no

27:20

controls in place to

27:22

uncover incompetence in malfeasance

27:26

and when it was uncovered

27:28

by somebody, rather than move

27:30

forward and try and resolve it, remediate

27:33

it. Instead, it's let's

27:35

repress it, suppress it, let's

27:37

go after the whistleblower and protect

27:40

our own. And this is why we

27:42

don't have a lot of confidence in the LAB to review

27:45

and respond to the concerns about Mary Jane Burden's

27:47

work, to review Gina's claims

27:49

and Mary Jane's entire caseload thoroughly

27:52

and transparently. There's just

27:55

too much of an incentive for the LAB, for

27:57

any crime lab, to diminish the scope

27:59

of a prosecutors, government

28:01

officials, police and

28:04

lab directors are petrified that

28:07

it's not simply you know, one exoneration

28:09

here, one exoneration there, but

28:12

if you lift that rock up and

28:14

you see all the pus and bile that's beneath

28:16

it, you may be talking about dozens

28:19

or hundreds of cases. They're

28:21

petrified of that. And that's my concern

28:23

is that even if we publish this story,

28:26

with this documentation that we have, they'll

28:28

still find a way to call this

28:30

isolated incidents and keep

28:33

it internal and not actually take

28:35

meaningful steps. There are so many systemic

28:37

problems with the criminal legal system in this country,

28:40

and the incentive keep

28:43

that rock firmly on the ground

28:45

and not lift it up and see what's underneath. It

28:48

is so strong for so many decades

28:50

or centuries that I

28:52

mean, hopefully you know, your

28:55

piece and other pieces like it will cumulatively

28:58

have an impact, But it

29:01

is an uphill, you know, Sisufici and

29:03

undertaking. I

29:07

can't unsee everything that I've

29:09

learned about Mary Jane Burton,

29:12

pyrology, forensics. More broadly,

29:15

the scope of the problem here is massive,

29:18

which leaves us with a big

29:20

question, what can we

29:22

do? Is there a way to truly

29:25

reform forensics? These

29:27

little tweaks at the margins aren't going to

29:30

quote unquote fix anything because

29:32

of the system is doing what it was designed

29:34

to do. That's coming up next time

29:37

on Admissible. Admissible

29:47

is produced and hosted by Tessa Kramer.

29:50

Our executive producer is Eli Moore. Original

29:53

reporting by Tessa Kramer and Sophie Berman,

29:56

with additional reporting by Ben Pavior and

29:58

Whitney Evans. Editor is

30:00

Danielle Elliott, with additional editing by

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Ellen Moore. Our production team

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is Dana b Allick, Chloe Wynn, Shilda

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de Carley, Leslie Nyer, Kristin

30:11

Vermilion, and Kim Nader Fane

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Peterson. Gavin Wright

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is vpm's managing producer for podcast.

30:19

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and mixed by Charles Michelin, music

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Mechanics, and with additional

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music is by me Brian J. Howard

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Season one, Shreads of Evidence is

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