NC-SBI
2010-08-12 - by
Over in Davie County a dentist tells the District Attorney his wife stabbed him with a spear, then he stabbed her back with his pocket knife, and she died; the DA calls in the SBI’s Chief ‘Blood Splatter’ expert to figure out exactly what did happen; two investigators stare at the bloodstains on the husband’s tee-shirt, focus on one odd stain, and come to a startling conclusion: The husband’s not telling the truth. He killed the wife, wiped his bloody knife on his tee-shirt, then stabbed himself in the thigh with the spear.
Next the Chief ‘Blood Splatter’ expert, Duane Deaver, and an aide run a ‘scientific’ test to prove his theory: They take a pocket-knife, dip it in blood and wipe it on a tee-shirt to see if it matches the odd stain on the husband’s tee-shirt.
Only there’s a problem: It doesn’t.
So Deaver, following the highly scientific theory ‘if at first you don’t succeed try, try again,’ repeats the experiment and this time has better luck: The stains match – so he’s proved it is possible the husband murdered his wife and then wiped the knife on his tee-shirt but, of course, it’s also possible that one odd stain could have gotten on the tee-shirt in any one of a dozen different ways and Deaver hasn’t eliminated any of them.
But that little hole in Deaver’s ‘scientific’ theory gets left out of the report his office sends the DA – instead the report says the state’s ‘Blood Splatter’ experts have proved ‘scientifically’ and irrefutably the husband is lying and killed the wife – so the DA charges the husband with murder.
Two years later, the case lands in an expose in a newspaper a hundred miles away, along with two other cases where ‘Blood Splatter’ expert Deaver tested stains on a man’s boot and on a car bumper. Deaver’s tests showed the stains might have been blood but, later, testifying in court, Deaver said that using the latest scientific knowledge he’d proved absolutely, irrefutably the stains were blood. In other words, he didn’t tell the truth.
Now what on earth is going on here?
How can it be possible (for over twenty years – because the three cases happened 20 years apart) an official state ‘investigator’ have been giving false testimony to send people to jail?
And, for that matter, why didn’t the DA in Davie County tell Deaver, If you’re saying wiping a bloody knife twice on a tee-shirt is irrefutable, scientific evidence I’m a monkey’s uncle – which is what the foreman of the jury in the dentists case more or less told the newspaper, saying, “Politically, socially, religiously, I’m conservative; I’m a law-and-order man. But I don’t know what other word to use but a fraud.”
Awhile back my friend Joe – who’s a defense lawyer – and I had a disagreement over some aspect of the criminal justice system in North Carolina. I can’t even remember what it was now. But, whatever it was, Joe, I apologize. It’s clear there’ve been shenanigans going on in the SBI and the courts and DA’s offices that are just plain crazy.
NC-SBI
2010-08-12/
Over in Davie County a dentist tells the District Attorney his wife stabbed him with a spear, then he stabbed her back with his pocket knife, and she died; the DA calls in the SBI’s Chief ‘Blood Splatter’ expert to figure out exactly what did happen; two investigators stare at the bloodstains on the husband’s tee-shirt, focus on one odd stain, and come to a startling conclusion: The husband’s not telling the truth. He killed the wife, wiped his bloody knife on his tee-shirt, then stabbed himself in the thigh with the spear.
Next the Chief ‘Blood Splatter’ expert, Duane Deaver, and an aide run a ‘scientific’ test to prove his theory: They take a pocket-knife, dip it in blood and wipe it on a tee-shirt to see if it matches the odd stain on the husband’s tee-shirt.
Only there’s a problem: It doesn’t.
So Deaver, following the highly scientific theory ‘if at first you don’t succeed try, try again,’ repeats the experiment and this time has better luck: The stains match – so he’s proved it is possible the husband murdered his wife and then wiped the knife on his tee-shirt but, of course, it’s also possible that one odd stain could have gotten on the tee-shirt in any one of a dozen different ways and Deaver hasn’t eliminated any of them.
But that little hole in Deaver’s ‘scientific’ theory gets left out of the report his office sends the DA – instead the report says the state’s ‘Blood Splatter’ experts have proved ‘scientifically’ and irrefutably the husband is lying and killed the wife – so the DA charges the husband with murder.
Two years later, the case lands in an expose in a newspaper a hundred miles away, along with two other cases where ‘Blood Splatter’ expert Deaver tested stains on a man’s boot and on a car bumper. Deaver’s tests showed the stains might have been blood but, later, testifying in court, Deaver said that using the latest scientific knowledge he’d proved absolutely, irrefutably the stains were blood. In other words, he didn’t tell the truth.
Now what on earth is going on here?
How can it be possible (for over twenty years – because the three cases happened 20 years apart) an official state ‘investigator’ have been giving false testimony to send people to jail?
And, for that matter, why didn’t the DA in Davie County tell Deaver, If you’re saying wiping a bloody knife twice on a tee-shirt is irrefutable, scientific evidence I’m a monkey’s uncle – which is what the foreman of the jury in the dentists case more or less told the newspaper, saying, “Politically, socially, religiously, I’m conservative; I’m a law-and-order man. But I don’t know what other word to use but a fraud.”
Awhile back my friend Joe – who’s a defense lawyer – and I had a disagreement over some aspect of the criminal justice system in North Carolina. I can’t even remember what it was now. But, whatever it was, Joe, I apologize. It’s clear there’ve been shenanigans going on in the SBI and the courts and DA’s offices that are just plain crazy.