ACWHCC Forging Evidence, Improper Forensic Science & Eyewitness Misidentification Essay

Joyce Gilchrist (Forging evidence)

Joyce Gilchrist, who was known as the “Black Magic” for her ability to match DNA evidence that other forensic examiners could not. She was also known for being unusually adept at testifying and persuading juries, thus obtaining convictions. In 1994, Gilchrist was promoted to supervisor from forensic chemist after just 9 years on the job, but her colleagues began to raise concerns about her work. Gilchrist was dismissed in September 2001 due to “flawed casework analysis” and “laboratory mismanagement”. Concerns about Gilchrist’s actions were first raised when a landscaper, Jeffrey Todd Pierce, who had been convicted of rape in 1986 largely based on Gilchrist’s evidence despite a clean criminal record and good alibi, was exonerated based on additional DNA evidence. Pierce, a husband and the father of two infant children, was misidentified in a police line-up. After voluntarily giving hair and blood samples to the police investigators in an attempt to clear his name, he was arrested and charged with the rape. Gilchrist claimed his hair samples were “microscopically consistent” with the hairs found at the crime scene. Pierce was cleared of the crime in 2001 after DNA evidence was re-examined, and released after 15 years in prison. Pierce subsequently filed a lawsuit against Oklahoma City, seeking $75 million and charging that Gilchrist and Bob Macy, a now-retired district attorney, conspired to produce false evidence against him. The suit was settled for $4 million in 2007, with one Oklahoma City councilman noting that the city could have had to pay much more.

Steven Avery (Improper Forensic Science)

Steven Avery was wrongfully convicted of rape. He spent 20 years in prison before being exonerated through DNA testing. On July 29, 1985, at approximately 3:50 p.m., Penny Ann Beernsten was out running along the Lake Michigan shoreline and was apprehended by an unknown man who forced her into a wooded area and sexually assaulted her. Based on a physical description of Beernsten’s attacker, police provided a photo array of nine men. Beernsten selected the photograph of Steven Avery, who was arrested the following day. At trial, Beernsten identified Avery as her attacker. A state forensic examiner testified that a hair recovered from a shirt of Avery’s was consistent with Beernsten’s hair, but did not present qualifying information about the limitations of hair microscopy. Avery presented 16 alibi witnesses, including the clerk of a store in Green Bay, Wisconsin, who recalled Avery, accompanied by his wife and five children, buying paint from the store. A checkout tape put the purchase at 5:13 p.m. Beernsten put the attack at 3:50 p.m. and estimated it lasted 15 minutes, which meant that Avery would have had to leave the scene of the attack, walk a mile to the nearest parking area, drive home, load his family into the car, and drive 45 miles in just over an hour. The jury deliberated for only four hours and convicted Avery almost exclusively on the eyewitness account, on December 14, 1985. He was sentenced to 32 years in prison. After losing several appeals, a petition for DNA testing was granted in 1995 and showed that scrapings taken of Beernsten’s fingernails contained the DNA of an unknown person. The tests were unable to eliminate Avery, however, and a motion for a new trial was denied. In April of 2002, attorneys for the Wisconsin Innocence Project obtained a court order for DNA testing of 13 hairs recovered from Beernsten at the time of the crime. The state crime laboratory reported that, using the FBI DNA database, it had linked a hair to Gregory Allen, a convicted felon who bore a striking resemblance to Avery. Allen was then serving a 60-year prison term for a sexual assault in Green Bay that occurred after the attack on Beernsten. On September 11, 2003, a request brought by the Manitowoc District Attorney’s Office and the Wisconsin Innocence Project to dismiss the charges was granted and Avery was released.

James Bain (Eyewitness Misidentification, Improper Forensic Science)

James Bain was convicted in 1974 of raping a nine-year-old boy in Lake Wales, Florida. The boy was kidnapped from his home, dragged to a baseball field, and raped by a man he described as having bushy sideburns and a mustache. A relative of the victim’s thought that the description sounded like James Bain. Bain’s photo was included in a lineup of five photographs and the victim picked Bain as his attacker. Bain had no criminal record at the time of his arrest, and insisted he was at home watching television with his sister when the crime occurred. Bain went to trial in May 2974 in the Tenth Judicial District Circuit Court in Polk County. The victim identified him as her attacker. In addition, according to FBI analysis, the rapist did leave semen on the victim’s underwear. The trial occurred, however, before DNA testing was available, so Bain could not be definitively tied to the semen; he could, however, match its blood group. An FBI analyst testified that the semen on the underwear (from three separate stains) was of blood group B. Bain was an AB secretor, which should have excluded him. Instead, the analyst claimed Bain’s blood group had a weak A and thus he could not be excluded from having deposited the semen. This wasn’t supported by testing. An expert for the defense testified that Bain’s group actually had a strong A, and therefore he could be definitively excluded. On May 23, 1974, a jury convicted Bain and he was sentenced to life in prison. Bain began seeking DNA testing of evidence from the crime in 2001 but was unsuccessful until the Innocence Project of Florida accepted his case in 2005. In 2009, DNA testing of the evidence showed no match between Bain and biological material left at the crime scene by the perpetrator. Bain was released on December 17, 2009, after prosecutors filed a motion to vacate his conviction and sentence. He had spent 35 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit—more than any other person exonerated through DNA testing in the United States. Bain was only 19 years old when convicted; he was 54 when he was finally set free. In 2011, the State of Florida awarded him $1.75 million in compensation.