New book explodes myth that innocent do not confess

Innocent people do not confess. Especially to rape and murder.

That is the belief of most people, including jurors, judges, attorneys, and even the very police detectives who induce false confessions. The Norfolk Four case is the perfect vehicle to challenge our misguided faith. And Tom Wells and Richard Leo are the ideal storytellers: Wells followed the case for seven years; Leo is a leading expert on the social psychology of police interrogation. The book is meticulously researched, through primary source documents and dozens of interviews.

The Wrong Guys: Murder, False Confessions, and the Norfolk Four reads like a Stephen King novel but provides a step-by-step deconstruction of the bizarre case of the Norfolk Four, explaining the individual, situational, and systemic factors that converge in a typical false confession case.

More on the Norfolk Four case is online here; the publisher's web page is here. My longer review is forthcoming from California Lawyer magazine.

Treating therapist as police interrogator

For all you psychologists, here's a quick ethics vignette:

You live and work in a small town, population 13,000. Like many psychologists, you have a diverse practice. You treat patients at a local mental health clinic. You serve on professional boards. You work part-time as a consultant to the local sheriff's department.

One day, the sheriff asks you to come down and help with some interrogations in a cold case of sexual assault and murder. Among the suspects being questioned are Deb and Ada, two young women you treated in your private practice.

What do you do?

If you are Wayne R. Price, Ph.D. of Beatrice, Nebraska, you see no problem in interrogating the young women despite having been their therapist:

"What I find, I find. It makes no difference to me," Price testified at a pretrial hearing. "When I have an emotional involvement or vested interest and can't do it objectively, I will say so."

Price's role in helping elicit confessions from two of his former patients is in the spotlight now, almost two decades later, because of new DNA evidence pointing to a different killer. The so-called Beatrice Six case has set a record for the number of people exonerated by DNA evidence in a single case.

The five suspects who confessed fit the pattern of false confession cases: Suggestible young people with psychiatric or cognitive problems who used alcohol or drugs, were easily confused, and were worn down by aggressive questioning.

False confessions like this are not nearly as unusual as many people still think. According to the Innocence Project, they have been found in about one-fourth of DNA exonerations.

What is unusual in the Beatrice Six case is the psychologist's role. A psychologist playing the dual roles of trusted therapist and criminal interrogator "would have had a powerful place of trust and persuasion over suspects," the Omaha World-Herald cites confession experts as stating.

The Six did not become formal suspects until four years after the 1985 murder of Helen Wilson. The ball got rolling when a hard-partying 23-year-old named Tom Winslow was in jail for an unrelated crime, the beating of a motel clerk during a robbery. Police approached him with an offer he couldn't refuse: "Help us solve our murder case, and we'll get you out of jail on bond."

Winslow claims police called him a liar and threatened him with the electric chair if he did not confess. He said police fed him information and "suggested he was blocking out memories of a horrific crime due to the cloud of alcohol or drug abuse," according to reporter Paul Hammel, who has followed the case for the World-Herald.

Earlier this month, authorities announced that the DNA found at the crime scene matched an Oklahoma City man, Bruce Smith, who had since died. In light of that evidence, the state is seeking pardons for the Beatrice Six.

Joseph White, a 26-year-old drifter from Alabama, was the only one of the Six who refused to confess. A jury deliberated for only a few hours before convicting him anyway, largely on the testimony of co-defendants who received reduced charges in exchange.

One of White's attorney's, Toney Redman, recalled arguing in court that those testifying were "so weak-minded" that their stories could not be trusted.

"I'm fully convinced now that the police, if they wanted to, could get any borderline personality person, who has alcohol and drug issues, and scare them to death and get them to confess to anything," he told the World-Herald.

Two of the three who testified against White - Ada JoAnn Taylor and Deb Shelden - were former patients of Dr. Price. Their accounts reportedly changed over time, partly after Dr. Price encouraged them to recollect more details.

Taylor, diagnosed by Price with a personality disorder, initially said she couldn't recall much because she had memory problems. After police insisted she was at the scene of the murder, she eventually changed her story. She also told investigators she communicated telepathically with a friend and had five former lives and an imaginary twin. She took a plea deal and was paroled in November.

Shelden, the other former patient of Price's, initially told interrogators she didn't recall the details of the assault on her grand-aunt until months later, when she began having nightmares. She said Dr. Price helped her to remember the details. Shelden was paroled after serving 10 years in prison.

Although Dr. Price - now executive director of Blue Valley Behavioral Health in Beatrice - doesn't see a problem with his dual roles in the Beatrice Six case, many other psychologists might.

Beneficence and Nonmaleficence is the very first principle of the American Psychological Association's Ethics Code, advising us to to "benefit those with whom [we] work and take care to do no harm." Another principle, Justice, cautions psychologists to "exercise reasonable judgment and take precautions" to avoid participating in unjust practices. A third principle, Respect for People's Rights and Dignity, discusses the duty to safeguard people's confidentiality and self-determination, especially when their "vulnerabilities [might] impair autonomous decision making."

The dangers of multiple relationships are specifically addressed in Section 3.05 of the Ethics Code. Psychologists are forbidden from engaging in dual relationships that "risk exploitation or harm to the person with whom the professional relationship exists."

The Forensic Psychology Specialty Guidelines, published two years after Dr. Price's involvement in the Beatrice Six interrogations, also caution against engaging in dual relationships that might cause harm: "Forensic psychologists recognize potential conflicts of interest in dual relationships with parties to a legal proceeding, and they seek to minimize their effects. Forensic psychologists avoid providing professional services to parties in a legal proceeding with whom they have personal or professional relationships that are inconsistent with the anticipated relationship."

It's hard to see how providing someone with confidential psychological therapy would not be inconsistent with later becoming that person's police interrogator.

If you have other thoughts on the ethical contours of this case, I encourage you to comment.

Omaha World-Herald coverage of the Beatrice Six case is here, here, and here.

A classic article on dual roles in forensic psychology is: Greenberg, S.A. & Shuman, D.W. (1997). Irreconcilable Conflict Between Therapeutic & Forensic Roles. Professional Psychology: Research & Practice, 28, 50-57.

The case for videotaping interrogations

Detective's candid call for reform

I've been a police officer for 25 years, and I never understood why someone would admit to a crime he or she didn't commit. Until I secured a false confession in a murder case.

So begins a Los Angeles Times opinion piece by Jim Trainum, a Washington DC police detective who runs a cold case unit and lectures on interrogations and false confessions and other police investigation topics.

Like most people, Trainum was firmly convinced that only the guilty confess to crimes. And, like most police, he believed his suspect's confession - obtained without threats or abuse - was "solid."

Even after an "ironclad alibi" forced dismissal of charges, the detective and others continued for years to think she was guilty: After all, she had confessed. And even her own attorney thought she was guilty of killing the man, who had been robbed, beaten, and dumped in a river.

Trainum's thinking underwent a dramatic change only years later, when he reviewed the videotape of the mid-1990s confession in light of more contemporary understanding of false confessions:

"We ignored evidence that our suspect might not have been guilty, and during the interrogation we inadvertently fed her details of the crime that she repeated back to us in her confession," he realized.

Trainum's op ed, focusing on the need to videotape interrogations, is here.

Odd twist in latest DNA exoneration

Speaking of movies -- here's a yarn that would make a good film plot:

A man named Clay Chabot is suspected of raping and killing a woman named Galua Crosby. He goes to trial. A key piece of evidence is the testimony of his brother-in-law. The brother-in-law, Gerald Pabst, testifies that Chabot forced him to tie up Mrs. Crosby and then ordered him out of the room; he could hear Ms. Crosby saying "no" before she was shot. With this kind of evidence, it is no surprise that Chabot is convicted. He gets life.

For the next two decades, Chabot insists he is innocent. He requests DNA testing to prove it. Finally, he gets his wish and - guess what - the incriminating DNA belongs to his good samaritan brother-in-law.

What makes the case all the more interesting is that the prosecutor, Janice Warder, had cut a secret deal with Pabst, promising him immunity from prosecution in exchange for his testimony. Considering his guilt, it was too good a deal to pass up.

And, since no bad deed goes unrewarded, the prosecutor went on to become a judge in Dallas County, Texas; she is now up for uncontested reelection as the District Attorney of Cooke County, Oklahoma.

For Dallas Morning News coverage on this case, see:

Former Dallas County prosecutor who withheld evidence will be Cooke County's District Attorney

Judge calls for retrial in 1986 slaying because of ex-prosecutor's misconduct

Jury convicts man of murder in 1986 Garland slaying

On an unrelated note, the Dallas Morning News also has a cool web page devoted to the Dallas Police Department's cold-case squad and some of its more interesting unsolved cases. Check it out; it's better than the TV series by the same name.

Hat tip: Grits for Breakfast

Hang 'em high county to reverse course

Dallas will review all pending executions

Texas executes far more people than any other U.S. state. And within Texas, Dallas County is second only to Harris County (Houston). But now, a crusading prosecutor is set to reverse course, calling for a potential halt to all proceedings until the guilt of each condemned man can be ascertained.

"I don't want someone to be executed on my watch for something they didn't do," said the maverick D.A.

As today's Dallas Morning News reports,

Troubled that innocent people have been imprisoned by faulty prosecutions, District Attorney Craig Watkins said Monday that he would re-examine nearly 40 death penalty convictions and would seek to halt executions, if necessary, to give the reviews time to proceed.

Mr. Watkins told The Dallas Morning News that problems exposed by 19 DNA-based exonerations in Dallas County have convinced him he should ensure that no death row inmate is actually innocent.

"It's not saying I'm putting a moratorium on the death penalty," said Mr. Watkins, whose reviews would be of all of the cases now on death row handled by his predecessors. "It's saying that maybe we should withdraw those dates and look at those cases from a new perspective to make sure that those individuals that are on death row need to be there and they need to be executed."

He cited the exonerations and stories by The News about problems with those prosecutions as the basis for his decision. The exonerations have routinely revealed faulty eyewitness testimony and, in a few cases, prosecutorial misconduct.

Fred Moss, a law professor at Southern Methodist University, said he had never heard of another prosecutor in the country who had conducted the type of review Mr. Watkins proposed.

"It's really quite extraordinary," Mr. Moss said.

Under Watkins' proposal, all pending death cases will be reviewed by his office's Conviction Integrity Unit, which was created last year.

It remains to be seen whether this remarkable about-face will rub off on Harris County, which as of the latest count had surpassed the next-highest state (Virginia) in number of people executed.

The full story is here. Related coverage in the Dallas Morning News is here.

NPR series on confidential informants

Confidential informants are the lifeblood of law enforcement's effort to fight crime. But the best informants are generally very bad people - ruthless criminals - and while their information helps the FBI crack cases, the practice of using these informants is fraught with risk.

So begins an interesting 3-part NPR series by Dina Temple-Raston on the pitfalls of law enforcement reliance on informants.

Part One, "Bulger Case Changed FBI's Role With Informants," features the infamous case of Whitey Bulger, the Irish godfather who corrupted two FBI agents back in the 1970s.

Part Two is entitled, "Some FBI Agents Pay High Price For Using Snitches."

And in Part Three, "Legislator Aims To Regulate FBI Behavior," we hear about the controversial proposal by Rep. William Delahunt (D-MA) to subject FBI agents to criminal prosecution if they don't alert local law enforcement when one of their informants commits a crime.

Illustration: Popular Science August 1958; credit to Radio River (Creative Commons license).

Yet another DNA child rape exoneration

Excellent journalistic expose

Shortly after sunrise (yesterday), the inmates in the stark prison yard cheered wildly and pumped their fists for Robert McClendon as he took his final steps toward freedom. The Columbus (Ohio) man grinned as he walked past the concrete-block walls and curls of barbed wire, no longer condemned for a child rape that DNA shows he didn't commit.

That is the lead to a story in yesterday's Columbus Dispatch. The case is featured as part of a yearlong investigation by reporters at the Dispatch, who found "deep flaws" in Ohio's system for uncovering wrongful convictions:

"Police and courts regularly destroy evidence. Prosecutors, benefiting from a flawed law, routinely oppose DNA testing. Judges dismiss inmate requests without a reason, as required by law."

The full "Test of Convictions" series - including interactive videos and graphics - is here; the McClendon case is presented here.

The evidence does not lie – or does it?

Will exposes signal end to blind reliance on "science"?

CSI trumpets the notion that evidence does not lie.

But critical news stories may be signaling the end of uncritical evidence of this dubious tenet.

Take this introduction to a 2007 Denver Post series, “Trashing the Truth”:

Virtually every night on prime time, TV detectives pluck tiny samples of DNA from clothes, carpets, and even car tires, test it and nail the bad guy, all in one episode. But in real life, DNA samples … get mishandled with impunity…. Law enforcers have won passage of laws letting them off the hook for perjuring evidence on which people's lives and liberties hinge. The result: Killers walk…. These are the stories you won’t see on CSI. In cases around the country, the truth is being trashed.

As the Post series meticulously documents, contrary to the portrayals on fictional crime dramas and by expert witnesses for the prosecution, evidence rooms are characterized by "darkness and disorder" and the accidental and intentional destruction of tens of thousands of potentially important DNA samples.

Forbes magazine recently echoed the alarm, in an opinion piece "What's wrong with CSI: Forensic evidence doesn’t always tell the truth" by Roger Koppl, an economics professor and director of the Institute for Forensic Science Administration:

Forensic evidence is foolproof, right? It's how those clever cops on CSI always catch the killer. DNA evidence springs innocent men from prison. Fingerprints nab the bad guys.

If only forensics were that reliable. Instead, to judge by the most comprehensive study on the reliability of forensic evidence to date, the error rate is more than 10% in five categories of analysis, including fiber, paint and body fluids. (Meaning: When the expert says specimen X matches source Y, there's a 10% probability he's wrong.)

Even Government Technology, hardly a muckracking journal, is calling for reform. GT's July 9 story, "Police Crime Labs Struggle with Funding, Training and Bias Issues," focuses on the Houston crime lab, where an investigation found "hundreds of cases where incompetence, inadequate training and resources, lack of guidance and even intentional bias on the part of a crime lab - which is not independent from the HPD - contributed to mistakes."

The problems "may be inherent in crime labs across the country," the GT article concludes, citing reports of DNA testing errors nationwide - in Washington, North Carolina, California, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Nevada.

Problems obvious

When a TV station in Houston looked into that city's crime lab operations back in 2002, the problems were obvious to an independent forensic expert:

"They weren't running proper scientific controls. They were giving misleading testimony. They were computing their statistics incorrectly - in a way that was biased against the accused in many cases,” said forensic expert William Thompson of UC Irvine.

Errors favor prosecution

Most troublingly, the errors are not random - they almost invariably favor the prosecution. Thompson identified a "team culture" mentality in the crime lab, a mentality that may lead technicians to bend the evidence against defendants in court.

Journalist Scott Henson at Grits for Breakfast has been keeping up with this issue for several years, publicizing not only DNA evidence scandals but also problems with other supposedly neutral scientific technologies in the criminal justice system. These include false-positive breathalyzer tests for drunk drivers and urinalyses that routinely send probationers and parolees back to jail.

Indeed, Henson says it was the 25% rate of false positives in breathalyzer tests that first turned his attention toward "the reality that accuracy appears optional in many forensic science endeavors, with error rates of 10% or more routinely accepted in a variety of forensic fields."

What’s the solution?

Most outsiders agree that a first step toward improving the abysmal state of scientific evidence collection and analysis is outside oversight.

Beyond that, Roger Koppl, the economics professor writing for Forbes, has some other interesting ideas, primary among them opening the labs to free market forces:

The core problem with the forensic system is monopoly. Once evidence goes to one lab, it is rarely examined by any other. That needs to change. Each jurisdiction should include several competing labs. Occasionally the same DNA evidence, for instance, could be sent to three different labs for analysis.

This procedure may seem like a waste. But such checks would save taxpayer money. Extra tests are inexpensive compared to the cost of error, including the cost of incarcerating the wrongfully convicted. A forthcoming study I wrote for the Independent Institute (a government-reform think tank) shows that independent triplicate fingerprint examinations in felony cases would not only eliminate most false convictions that result from fingerprint errors but also would reduce the cost of criminal justice if the false-positive error rate is more than 0.115%, or about one in a thousand.

Other reforms suggested by Koppl and others include making crime labs independent of law enforcement, requiring blind testing, and giving the defense the right to its own forensic experts:

When crime labs are part of the police department, some forensic experts make mistakes out of an unconscious desire to help their "clients," the police and prosecution. Independence and blind testing prevent that. Creating the right to a forensic expert for the defense would help restore the imbalance in scientific firepower that too often exists between prosecution and defense.

The Denver Post series, Trashing the Truth, includes the following segments:

1. Bad faith difficult to prove: Through carelessness or by design, tiny biological samples holding crucial DNA fingerprints often disappear on authorities' watch. Innocent people languish in prison, and criminals walk free.
2. Room for error in evidence vaults: In some evidence rooms, chaos and disorganization make searches futile. Others are purged of valuable DNA samples, leaving cases unsolvable.
3. Missing rape kits foil justice: Rape kits routinely vanish, unfuriating victims and prosecutors alike. Even when evidence is intact, laws can keep suspects like William Harold Johnson walking free in our midst.
4. 14 years later - Tell my story: Floyd Brown has an IQ in the 50s. Its authenticity in doubt, his confession to a 1993 murder has him locked up indefinitely in a North Carolina mental hospital. A bloodstained stick that could settle his innocence or guilt has vanished.

"Misfeasance not malfeasance"

Detective won't face charges in Tim Masters case

A special prosecutor has decided not to file criminal charges for perjury or illegal eavesdropping against the Colorado detective who spearheaded the investigation of 15-year-old Timothy Masters for the murder of Peggy Hettrick, a case about which I have blogged extensively (click here for my past posts).

You will recall that Lt. James Broderick was convinced of the boy's guilt despite the absence of any physical evidence linking young Masters to the crime. He continued to pursue him for years, finally hiring prominent forensic psychologist Reid Meloy to render an opinion based on Masters' personal sketches. That opinion helped garner a conviction; after a decade in prison, Masters was recently freed based on DNA evidence.

Prosecutor Ken Buck said that although he uncovered "several flaws" during his "limited investigation," he did not believe that Broderick engaged in deliberate criminal conduct, nor was there a "reasonable likelihood" that a jury would convict the detective at trial.

A separate investigation into whether prosecutors in the case violated professional standards is due to conclude soon. That investigation is by the Colorado Supreme Court's Office of Attorney Regulation. The former prosecutors, Terry Gilmore and Jolene Blair, are both now judges.

The Colorodoan quotes one former police investigator in the case, Linda Wheeler-Holloway, as saying that the prosecutor's decision is no surprise.

"People didn't play fair. By not telling the whole story, leaving things incomplete, that kind of skewed things in their favor…. There was a lot of faults committed in a lot of arenas that led to the wrongful conviction of Tim Masters."

Writer Pat Hartman, who has an extensive blog on the case entitled "Free Tim Masters Because," has a scathing denunciation of the prosecutor’s decision.

"This wrapup of Broderick's involvement is inadequate and unsatisfactory. It's like watching an elephant be pregnant for months and then give birth to a mouse. Now there's supposed to be an internal [police] investigation…. With this tepid whitewash as precedent, it’s not difficult to foresee the results of that investigation.”

The prosecutor's 11-page report is here. The Coloradoan and the Denver Post have news coverage.

Arson: New frontier for exonerations?

Arson Screening Project launches this week

Shortly before Cameron Todd Willingham’s execution four years ago in Texas for a house fire that killed his three young daughters, four arson experts called into question the scientific evidence underlying his conviction.

"There's nothing to suggest to any reasonable arson investigator that this was an arson fire," wrote expert Gerald Hurst in his report. "It was just a fire."

Texas' governor ignored the report, and Willingham was executed on Feb. 17, 2004.

Although it was too late for Willingham, two years later fellow Texan Ernest Ray Willis was exonerated after a panel of fire experts working pro bono for the Innocence Project concluded that both fires were accidental. (Their full report is here.)

"Bad science" exposed

In their peer review, the fire scientists noted that many of the "indicators" of arson that were taught in fire investigation courses up into the 1990s have since been "scientifically proven to be invalid." Yet many so-called experts remain woefully uninformed on the current state of the science. Worse, others deliberately distort science, behaving "as if constant repetition would make [their false] assertion true."

The report echoes a 2004 Chicago Tribune investigation of the Willingham case that found that "many of the pillars of arson investigation that were commonly believed for many years have been disproved by rigorous scientific scrutiny."

Based on my former experience as a criminal investigator, I have no doubt that these problems are real, and are likely the tip of the iceberg. I saw many a case in which fire investigators quickly jumped to the conclusion that a fire had been deliberately set based upon the bad character of their prime suspect rather than reliable evidence.

With DNA exonerations starting to max out due to the small fraction of cases in which DNA evidence is collected, the Innocence Project is expanding into other causes of wrongful convictions, including what they call "inexact sciences" and pseudoscientific methods. Old arson convictions are likely to be at the forefront of this new area of scrutiny.

An Arson Screening Project launched just yesterday by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice will lead the charge, scrutinizing the backlog of arson cases compiled by the Innocence Project. Part of the Center for Modern Forensic Practice, the project will collect and evaluate claims of wrongful conviction "based on the use of a faulty, folk-science of fire indicators over the past 20 years."

One of the main dangers of bad science is that jurors tend to trust expert witnesses and to fall for such "science" hook, line, and sinker.

As one of the jurors who sentenced Willingham put it, "Maybe this man was innocent. Now I will have to live with this for the rest of my life."

Among the goals of the new project will be to create a pool of nonpartisan fire experts who can help avoid this outcome by disseminating information about the " 'bad science' arson experience" to other professionals and the public.

Hat tip: Grits for Breakfast

Recovered memory therapist placed on probation

Before today's sexual predator hysteria came the satanic ritual abuse scare of the 1980s. Many of the day care providers prosecuted and imprisoned in that era have quietly won their freedom due to flaws in the cases against them. But what about the therapists who helped in their prosecutions?

This week, one of the key therapists involved in the satanic ritual scare agreed to be placed on professional probation for violating Utah codes of professional conduct.

Barbara Snow, a licensed clinical social worker, wrote one of the academic articles credited with fueling satanic hysteria. The article, "Ritualistic child abuse in a neighborhood setting" (Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Vol. 5 No. 4, pp. 474-487), described secret, organized rings of satanists preying upon suburban children - claims that have never been verified with any credible evidence.

The Utah therapist was involved in several of the 1980s prosecutions in Utah. Children she interviewed described satanic rituals, cross-dressing, and the consumption of human excrement. One man she testified against was later granted a new hearing after the Utah Supreme Court questioned Snow's credibility.

The current case involved allegations that Snow planted false memories in two of her relatives, convincing a female relative that she was the victim of satanic abuse and military testing, and convincing a male relative that his father had sexually abused him. When investigators looked into the matter, she allegedly provided them with doctored notes of those therapy sessions.

More information on the current case is available from the Salt Lake Tribune and the Deseret Morning News. Additional background on Snow is here, here, here, and here.

It's fascinating historical reading, but it unfortunately shows that people don't learn from history.

Mississippi: Forensic "science" train derailing

Last August, I blogged about forensic odontologist Michael West of Mississippi, whose testimony had sent dozens of people to prison, including at least five to death row. West has been the subject of exposes on 60 Minutes and in Newsweek and the National Law Journal. Last week, two of his victims were finally freed after serving a combined total of more than 30 years in prison.

In addition to both being African American, Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks had the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Each was dating a woman whose female toddler was kidnapped, raped, murdered, and dumped in the woods. In each case, Dr. West testified at the behest of District Attorney Forrest Allgood that he had found bite marks that other professionals missed, conclusively tying them to the crimes.

In each case, West was wrong. Two weeks ago, police arrested the true culprit, whose DNA matched that found at the crime scenes. Albert Johnson promptly confessed, leading to the release of Brewer and Brooks.

"The bite-marks men: Mississippi’s criminal forensics disaster" is the title of a report in yesterday’s Slate magazine about the cases and their implications:

These may turn out to be the first in a string of exonerations we'll see coming out of Mississippi. For the last 20 years, the state's criminal autopsy system has been in disrepair. Nearly every institution in the state has failed to do anything about it….

According to the National Association of Medical Examiners, a doctor should perform no more than 250 autopsies per year. Dr. [Steven] Hayne has testified that he performs 1,200 to 1,800 autopsies per year....

Hayne isn't board-certified in forensic pathology, though he often testifies that he is. The only accepted certifying organization for forensic pathology is the American Board of Pathology. Hayne took that group's exam in the 1980s and failed it. Hayne's pal Dr. West is even worse.... He once claimed he could definitively trace the bite marks in a half-eaten bologna sandwich left at the crime scene back to the defendant. He has compared his bite-mark virtuosity to Jesus Christ and Itzhak Perlman. And he claims to have invented a revolutionary system of identifying bite marks using yellow goggles and iridescent light that, conveniently, he says can't be photographed or duplicated.

Mississippi's system is set up in a way that increases the pressure on forensics experts to find what prosecutors want them to find. The state is one of several that elect county coroners to oversee death investigations. The office requires no medical training, only a high-school diploma, and it commonly goes to the owner of the local funeral home. If a coroner suspects a death may be due to criminal activity, he'll consult with the district attorney or sheriff, then send the body to a private-practice medical examiner for an autopsy. The problem here is that a medical examiner who returns unsatisfactory results to a prosecutor jeopardizes his chance of future referrals. Critics say Hayne has become the preferred medical examiner for Mississippi's coroners and district attorneys, because they can rely on him to deliver the diagnoses they're looking for.

The article continues here.

"The Tim Masters Case: Chasing Reid Meloy"

That's the title of a hard-hitting article focusing on forensic psychologist Reid Meloy's troubling role in the Tim Masters case in Colorado that many of my forensic psychologist readers have been following closely. This continues to be quite the cautionary tale for the rest of us.

"Meloy's reports and opinions about Masters' artwork have been the source of controversy from the beginning, but never so much as during recent courtroom testimony in which reams of material was introduced for the first time that bring into question not only Meloy's objectivity but whether or not he even came to his conclusions independently," writes journalist Greg Campbell of Fort Collins (Colorado) Now.

Campbell hunted down Meloy at a 4-day youth violence risk assessment training course in San Diego, where Meloy was giving a talk entitled "Adolescent and Young Adult Mass Murder: Assessment and Management of a Catastrophic Risk." He describes Meloy as a "rock star" in the crowd of law enforcement officials, psychologists and education professionals:

" ... taking second billing in the world's small population of celebrity forensic investigators to Roy Hazelwood, Gregg McCreary and John Douglas if only because he never worked for the FBI as they did, and because he's not technically a 'criminal profiler,' a career that has proved so popular in recent American pop culture. His resume more than compensates for being just a step below these movie- and TV-show-inspiring pioneers, however. He is a professor at two San Diego universities, a faculty member of the San Diego Psychoanalytic Institute and former chief of the San Diego County Forensic Mental Health Division. He's written more than 170 papers published in peer-reviewed journals and has written or edited 10 books. Currently, he operates a private forensic practice, consults with the FBI on counterterrorism measures and works to analyze threats to British politicians and the Royal Family. He is a diplomate in forensic psychology of the American Board of Professional Psychology.

"Meloy made no reference to Masters in his presentation, which was focused on the characteristics of mass murderers like Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, Omaha mall shooter Robert Hawkins, and Virginia Tech killer Seung-Hui Cho. In general terms, Meloy outlined traits of these killers that were similar to traits he attributed to Masters. They tend to be loners. They use fantasy to compensate for shortcomings in their lives. They have poor family relationships. They have a fascination with weapons and war."

Campbell repeatedly emphasizes Meloy's refusal to publicly comment on the case or his role in it. He quotes Meloy as telling him: "I don't want to say anything extrajudicially. It's just too sensitive. ... There will be a time and a place."

"The forensic psychologist has never been shy about his opinion that Tim Masters' doodles made him a killer ... but now that charges are dropped, Reid Meloy has only one thing to say: 'No comment.' "

"Although he now doesn’t want to say anything extrajudicially, Meloy was interviewed for a 2000 documentary about the case that appeared on the A&E Network's 'Cold Case Files.' The show is an uncritical ode to how Meloy, Broderick, Gilmore and Blair [the police detectives] joined forces to crack the case using something akin to mentalism.

" 'After spending six months on the case, I felt I understood the motivations for this homicide and that I had become convinced that Timothy Masters was the individual that had committed this homicide,' Meloy said on the show.

"For Meloy, Masters' drawings represented a 'fantasy rehearsal' for the crime, especially a doodle on Masters' math homework of a knife-wielding hand cutting a diamond shape that Meloy interpreted as a vagina, 'which may have been a rehearsal of the genital mutilation,' as he wrote in his first report to Broderick.

"Equally damning in Meloy's interpretation was a picture Masters drew [that] depicted one figure dragging another, which was apparently wounded or dead, from behind. The wounded figure was riddled with arrows and blood seemed to flow from its back. The figure's heels dug furrows in the ground similar to furrows found where Hettrick’s body was dumped.

"Entirely discounting the presence of the arrows - which had nothing whatsoever to do with the murder - Meloy wrote in his report that this picture represented the crime as it actually happened."

Campbell describes Meloy's role as pivotal to Masters' conviction, providing the only "evidence" of guilt:

"Meloy was the cornerstone of that prosecution - without him, it's unlikely that Masters would have been arrested in the first place. To date, he has provided the only 'evidence' in the nearly 21 years since the murder that implicated Masters in any way: an analysis of Masters' boyhood doodles, crude sketches and violent short stories that - even in the complete vacuum of physical evidence connecting Masters to the crime - convinced Meloy he was guilty.

"Meloy drew his conclusion based on a review of certain evidence provided to him by [Detective] Broderick, including Broderick's own categorization and interpretation of Masters' fictional productions, police videotapes and suspect interrogation transcripts, among many more items.

"Meloy did not, however, speak to or interview Masters himself.

"It apparently wasn't necessary.

"In his first report to Broderick he plainly states in several places that Masters committed the crime - referring to him not as a 'suspect,' but a 'perpetrator' - and he was apparently so convinced that he sent a pretrial letter to then-Larimer County DA Stuart Van Meveren in which he hoped for a 'successful prosecution.'

"And thanks to Meloy's testimony, they got it.

"In court, the jury was bombarded with Masters' scary pictures that were shown on a large video monitor while Meloy pointed out features of them that he testified showed pairing of sex and violence; evidence of 'picquerism,' the sadistic pleasure derived from stabbing; degradation of women; and fascination with weapons and death.

"In his first report to Broderick, Meloy wrote that Masters killed Hettrick because he felt abandoned by his mother, who died unexpectedly almost exactly four years to the day before the murder. He opined that her death, an 'emotionally distant' relationship with his father who spent a lot of time away from home while on active duty in the Navy, the departure of his sister from their home to join the U.S. Army, and his retreat into a fantasy world combined to create a boiling kettle of latent violence just waiting to erupt.

" 'A retreat into such a compensatory narcissistic fantasy world, replete with sexuality and violence, works for awhile, but at a great cost,' Meloy wrote. 'The unexpressed rage continues, depression may ensue, and anger toward women as sources of both pain (abandonment) and erotic stimulation builds.'

" 'Sexual homicide represents the solution, particularly in the form it took in this case: If I kill a woman, she cannot abandon me; if I desexualize her (genital mutilation) she cannot stimulate me,' he wrote. 'These are not conscious thoughts for Tim Masters, but likely represent the unconscious beliefs that drove his behavior the night of Feb. 11, 1987, when he killed and sexually mutilated Peggy Hettrick, a victim of choice and opportunity. Ms. Hettrick represented all Women (sic) to Tim Masters.' "

The full article is online here. Also at that website are copies of some of Masters' so-called "scary doodles."

Masters scandal highlights need for oversight of prosecutors

Revelations of official malfeasance such as occurred in the Tim Masters case cause a massive erosion of public confidence in the judicial system. The potential upside is reforms to safeguard other citizens from being similarly railroaded.

For example, "Masters is free, but justice not yet served" is the headline of a hard-hitting editorial in the Coloradoan, calling for just such reforms.

But reforms will not come easy. As a new book explains, prosecutors in the United States wield ever-growing power under new laws granting them unfettered "prosecutorial discretion" in charging and sentencing decisions.

Arbitrary Justice: The Power of the American Prosecutor is the book, authored by public defender Angela J. Davis (no, she's not the same Angela Davis you're probably thinking of).

Arbitrary Justice does two things:

• It exposes the "dangerous shift in power from judges to prosecutors" (in the words of law prof Barry Schenk of Innocence Project fame) happening in the courthouse trenches.

• It provides a detailed agenda for reforms aimed at safeguarding defendants, victims, and the public at large.

Hat tip: Corrections Sentencing. Photo is of author Angela J. Davis. See more about the book at its dedicated web site. More blog posts on the Tim Masters case are listed here.

By popular demand: Expert testimony at Masters trial

Readers wondered if I knew how to obtain the actual transcript of forensic psychologist J. Reid Meloy's testimony at the trial of Tim Masters. (That's the apparent wrongful conviction case that I've blogged about most recently here). So, by popular demand, I've uploaded the transcript here:

J. REID MELOY TESTIMONY

Dr. Meloy waxes eloquent on sexual homicide, rehearsal fantasies, the paraphilia of picquerism, the Rorschach inkblot test, and more. He psychoanalyzes the 15-year-old Masters' military fiction and violent drawings of Freddy Krueger. On cross-examination, he even references his own sexually sadistic and predatory fantasies. Happy reading!

Breaking news flash: DNA evidence may exonerate Masters

I've been blogging about the fascinating case of Tim Masters in Colorado, who was convicted in part based on a prominent forensic psychologist's testimony about his doodles.

Yesterday, in a stunning development in the twisting case, it was announced that reanalysis of the DNA linked it to a different man who had once been a suspect in the case. The prosecutor has recommended that Masters be freed pending a new trial, but police detectives are stubbornly sticking with their original theory that the 15-year-old Masters was the killer.

Jan. 22 postscript: Tim Masters is being freed today. He was busy packing his family photos and other belongings but was planning to leave behind his television, coffee pot, and prison-issued clothes. The Daily Camera has the story.

CNN has the story and related links.

For more background, especially on the forensic psychology angle, see my earlier posts, including:

Fascinating new twists in Tim Masters case

The Scary Doodles case

Did forensic profile go too far?

Historic hearings to commence on Calif. death penalty

Amid renewed national controversy over capital punishment, the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice is holding public hearings beginning tomorrow on the death penalty in California. At the first hearing, a lineup of luminaries will present evidence about racial, ethnic, and geographic disparities in who is sentenced to die.

The Commission was created by the state Senate in 2004 to investigate the causes of wrongful conviction and wrongful executions, and to recommend reforms to make California's criminal justice system "just, fair, and accurate." Composed of law enforcement, prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, and citizens, the Commission has already issued a series of unanimous recommendations on other criminal justice issues, including:

• Eyewitness Identification
• False Confessions
• Use of Jailhouse Informants
• Scientific Evidence
• Professional Responsibility and Accountability of Prosecutors and Defense Lawyers
• Remedies for Wrongful Conviction
• Fair Administration of the Death Penalty

(Click on any of the above links to see the related report.) A press release about the death penalty hearings, slated for January, February and March, is here.

Fascinating new twists in Tim Masters case

Expert witness psychologist cited FBI profiler who had rejected prosecution theory of case

The forensic psychology angles in Tim Masters' ongoing motion for a new trial in Fort Collins, Colorado are increasingly fascinating. Here are a few of the newest:

Roy Hazelwood, the pioneering FBI profiler, was hired as a police consultant but rejected the police theory of the case, which linked 15-year-old Masters to a 1987 sex-murder based on the boy's doodles. Police withheld this information from defense attorneys at Masters' 1999 trial, and Hazelwood was never called as a witness.

With Hazelwood giving a thumbs-down to the police theory, prominent forensic psychologist Reid Meloy became the prosecution's star witness. He did exactly what Hazelwood had cautioned against, connecting Masters to the killing based on a series of violent sketches. Ironically, Meloy cited Hazelwood's theories on profiling as a basis for his opinion.

In addition to the "scary doodles," as they have been dubbed by the media, Meloy theorized that the date linked the killing to Masters, because it was the anniversary of the date that Masters' mother had gone to a hospital. But the information now being turned over by prosecutors suggests that this theory was fed to Meloy by Fort Collins police.

No physical evidence has ever linked Masters to the crime. The newly revealed police notes reflect that authorities were suspicious of a suspected sex offender who lived nearby and later killed himself. Authorities destroyed evidence linking that man, eye surgeon Richard Hammond, to the murder, and did not provide his name to the defense.

The ongoing hearings are aimed at getting a new trial for Masters, who is serving a life sentence, and also getting sanctions against the original prosecutors, both of whom are now judges, for withholding evidence.

The moral for forensic psychologists: Carefully protect your neutrality and independence; never let partisans for one side or the other influence (or appear to influence) your theories or findings.

Note: A more recent post on this case is here.

For my earlier blog posts on this case, click HERE and/or HERE. A Denver Post video, "The Story of Tim Masters," shows details of Masters' police interrogations. The Pro Libertate blog has case analysis, graphics, and links. A blog dedicated to the case, Free Tim Masters Because, has a lengthy page devoted to the role of Dr. Meloy.

Other news coverage includes:
Undisclosed Masters evidence nags, Denver Post, Dec. 20, 2007Notes in Masters case wanted "profile" stricken, Denver Post, Dec. 18, 2007Attorneys: It was the doctor - Master’s defense says Hammond had all the makings of real killer, Reporter Herald (Loveland, CO), Dec. 18, 2007Testimony returns to subject of expert, Reporter Herald, Dec. 17, 2007

News roundup

Scot freed after 20 years

This story hasn't been getting much press in the United States, but it's been a topic of interest in Europe. Kenneth Richey of Scotland has spent 20 years on death row in Ohio, exhausting round after round of appeals for a crime he insists he didn't do. Finally, a plea bargain has been reached in which he will plead no contest to involuntary manslaughter and be home in time for Christmas.

Europeans had been outraged at the conditions of Richey's confinement, which are ho-hum here in the prison nation. Said one Scottish official who visited Richey:

"The reality of somebody who is kept locked up in a cell for 23 hours a day for 19 years is quite mind-blowing. It is a dreadful, inhumane and dehumanising system. If one man is off it, then remember there are hundreds [sic!] of people in America still enduring that dreadful situation."

The London Times has more.

Children electroshocked (roll over, Stanley Milgram)

A prankster has outdone experimental researcher Stanley Milgram by a long shot, telephoning a school for the severely disturbed and easily convincing school officials to shock pupils up to 77 times each!

The prank is highlighting the fact that the Massachusetts school, Judge Rotenberg Educational Center, routinely administers electroshock as punishment. The school is the only one in the United States that does so; the device's inhumanity is concealed by the clinical-sounding name of graduated electronic decelerator.

ABC News has the story here.

"The Scary Doodles Case"

The tale of a teenage doodler,
a disputed confession,
and a forensic psychologist

One of the most interesting disputed conviction cases in the news these days is the case of Tim Masters in Colorado, which I first blogged about back in July. If you haven't read up on it yet, it's worth checking out.

The Rocky Mountain News is pulling no punches in calling for a new trial for Masters, who was only 15 when the murder in question occurred. The News' most recent editorial, entitled "In need of a new trial: Prosecution handicapped Tim Masters' original defense," begins like this:

The worst thing you can say about a legal system is that it railroads defendants - convicts and sentences them without allowing juries to hear the full story and without investigators pursuing equally viable suspects. That's why the case involving a Colorado prisoner named Timothy Lee Masters is so important - and why it is critical that he be granted a new trial.

For purposes of this blog, the case is intriguing because of the disputed confession (see my earlier post) and also because of the central role of J. Reid Meloy, a prominent forensic psychologist. Meloy "worked hand-in-glove with prosecutors," even reviewing the arrest warrant before it was served. The News editorial comments:

Forensic psychologist Meloy's analysis, so crucial to the prosecution's theory, at times has the tone of a pulp crime thriller. Portentous but debatable conclusions are scattered throughout, such as: 'Sexual homicides are often unconscious displaced matricides'; '[the victim] also resembled his deceased mother, which is of enormous psychological significance . . .' ; and, Masters 'knows the distinction between slicing and stabbing, terms that generally would not be distinguished by the lay person.'

Indeed, it was largely on the basis of Masters' violent doodles – and Meloy's interpretation of them – that the boy was convicted, legal observers say. Prosecutors "bombarded" jurors with blown-up images of the doodles, projected onto the wall of the courtroom.

The News article continues here.

My more recent posts on this case are here and here.

The Denver Post has additional coverage of the case and an online video, "Sketchy Evidence: The Story of Tim Masters." The Pro Libertate blog has case analysis, graphics, and links. And there's even a blog devoted solely to the case, Free Tim Masters Because, which has a lengthy page devoted to the role of Dr. Meloy. See further commentary on this topic at the Witness LA blog.