[IP] more on Did bad science lead to the execution of an innocent man?
Begin forwarded message:
From: Eric Weisberg <weisberg@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: May 10, 2006 10:15:53 PM EDT
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Cc: ip@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [IP] Did bad science lead to the execution of an
innocent man?
John Adams wrote:
...Here's the money quote (and I do mean money, come to think of it,
because proving arson is a good way for insurance companies to get
out of paying for damages--I wonder whether, when there's money at
stake rather than someone's life, higher standards are used):
... Churchward said that arson investigations began to change
dramatically in 1992 after the National Fire Protection Assn. adopted
new procedures calling for more scientific rigor. Nonetheless,
Churchward and Lentini said many fire investigators were resistant to
change.
...Their report urged heightened review of fire investigations. "To
the extent that there are still investigators in Texas and elsewhere
who [misinterpret fires], there will continue to be serious
miscarriages of justice," the report states.
I have real experience, personal and professional, with these
issues. Years ago, I tried a case in which the jury found a major
insurance
company liable for "deceptive acts or practices in the business of
insurance" for wrongfully denying a fire claim. The insurer's
chemist "found"
a hydrocarbon accellerant in the charred flooring and testified that
the burn patterns were typical of splashed fuel.
He showed the jury chromatograms of the samples. He put on an
impressive show, speaking authoritatively and without
qualification. He pointed to the peaks and valleys of the graph,
telling the jury that anyone, including them, could clearly see the
signature
of the accellerant used and know that this was a set fire.
I brought in the head of the Dallas Crime Lab who testified
that there was no evidence of hydrocarbons in the samples and that
his own mass spectrometry tests confirmed such conclusion. On cross-
examination, the insurance company's expert changed his testimony,
claiming to see the products of hydrocarbon degradation from heat in
the sample,
arguing that you could add various pieces of the graph together to
get the profile of a hydrocarbon. Again, the crime lab expert said
that was BS.
The picture was simply from burned wood floors. He privately told me
that such phony testimony was quite common in arson cases.
Some time later, had a similar experience with a $34,000 claim for a
fire at my home. I actually saw the fire start in a piece of carpet
I had negligently
left over a floor furnace in my 2 year old's bedroom.
I was lying with him so his mother, who had just come in from nursing
our four day old infant who was still
in the hospital with jaundice, could get some sleep. My wife got out
of the house with the two year old while I called 911. When I got
outside and
did not see them, I panicked, thinking they were still in the house,
and went back in, getting burned by the heat.
When I could not find them in the house, I jumped out a window,
naked, mutilating my bare feet on some bush stobs.
A neighbor brought a blanket to cover me.
Our insurance company denied the claim based upon a phony fire
investigation which "found" tell-tale burn patterns and a lab report
indicating
accellerant. We had absolutely no motive for burning the house, and
the circumstances obviously refuted any suspicion. However, we had
to file
suit and fight the issues as if we were a criminals. If we had to
experience such accusation, you may be certain that others with less
credibility
would be subject to worse treatment, including false prosecution.
Arson, by the way, may be proven in many, if not all states by
circumstantial evidence--motive, means and opportunity--without any
direct proof.
See Davis v. State, 630 S.W.2d 532 (Tex. App. Amarillo, 1982),
holding that circumstantial evidence supported an arson conviction
where a
man that looked and walked like appellant was seen setting fires and
later was seen leaving the site of the fire at the time it was
started, thus
excluding hypothesis other than his guilt. And, Taylor v. State,
735 S.W.2d 930 (Tex. App. Dallas, 1987), which held
It is not required that the circumstances should to a moral certainty
actually exclude every hypothesis that the act may have been
committed by another person, but that the hypothesis intended is a
reasonable one consistent with the facts proved and the
circumstances, and the supposition that the act may have been
committed by another person must not be out of harmony with the
evidence.
.
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