Case Story : Aim High

Military crim­i­nal defense attor­neys con­tacted me to aide in the defense of a US ser­vice­man who was charged with com­mit­ting a drive-by shoot­ing. I reviewed the case mate­r­ial, and said I didn’t think I would be able to help much, because the evi­dence I needed to exam­ine had been destroyed when the gov­ern­ment was col­lect­ing evi­dence. Regardless, they wanted me to fly out and inves­ti­gate the shoot­ing scene.

Good foren­sic sci­en­tists are sup­posed to be impar­tial. Their job is to sim­ply explain to the jury what the phys­i­cal evi­dence means. They don’t have a horse in the race so to speak. They real­ize that regard­less of what side calls them to court to tes­tify, some of their tes­ti­mony can help both sides, and some of the tes­ti­mony can hurt both sides. The good foren­sic sci­en­tist doesn’t let that bother them, or affect their testimony.

I took all the mea­sure­ments I could, but ulti­mately I retold my orig­i­nal opin­ion. I didn’t think I could help them, because the impor­tant piece of evi­dence had been destroyed. They insisted they needed me, that the mea­sure­ments and analy­sis I did of the scene was what they needed, I just didn’t know it at the time.

They case boiled down to two occu­pants of the vehi­cle point­ing the fin­ger at each other, say­ing the other did it. There was one other eye-witness who pointed the fin­ger at the dri­ver of the vehicle.

The gov­ern­ment closed their inves­ti­ga­tion, and granted immu­nity to the pas­sen­ger of the vehi­cle, if they would tes­tify against the dri­ver. Later, dur­ing the defense por­tion of the inves­ti­ga­tion, they located another less-biased eye-witness whose tes­ti­mony con­tra­dicted the first eye-witness. More impor­tantly they sec­ond eye-witness’s account­ing of the events made a lot more sense.

In the end, it was clear that the pas­sen­ger was the more likely shooter. But it was too late for the gov­ern­ment to charge the pas­sen­ger in the vehi­cle, as they had already granted them immu­nity. In most juris­dic­tions the case would have prob­a­bly been dropped. Here though, due to exter­nal pres­sure, drop­ping the case wasn’t an option. The gov­ern­ment had to move for­ward with a very weak case.

The eye-witness who claimed it was the dri­ver was quickly dis­cred­ited in the trial. In sim­ple terms there was no way any sane per­son would believe a word they said. This left only the tes­ti­mony of the pas­sen­ger to con­vince the jury that it was the dri­ver who did the shooting.

The pas­sen­ger spun a fan­ci­ful tale of the events, includ­ing a few very spe­cific points that the phys­i­cal evi­dence con­tra­dicted. This is where I came in. Due to the mea­sure­ments I had taken at the scene, I was able to quickly expose one of the fab­ri­ca­tions that was easy for the jury to under­stand. Another expert tes­ti­fied about other phys­i­cal evi­dence that also seemed to be at odds with what the passenger’s testimony.

There was more to the case of course, much more.

It involved excel­lent foren­sic work by the gov­ern­ments own foren­sic sci­en­tists. But the other foren­sic work didn’t answer the ques­tion of “Who”.

It involved ques­tion­able field work by the government’s crime scene tech­ni­cians. Not that they did any­thing delib­er­ately wrong, sim­ply this par­tic­u­lar case had phys­i­cal evi­dence that was beyond their train­ing and expe­ri­ence to know how to rec­og­nize, or how to col­lect prop­erly. Evidence that could have pos­si­bly helped prove the inno­cence of the dri­ver, lost for­ever when col­lected improperly.

The jury came back quickly with “not guilty” find­ings on all charges.

After the jury came back, the spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor the gov­ern­ment flew in to pros­e­cute the case, walked over to me, shook my hand, asked for my card, and said I did an excel­lent job. More impor­tantly he said I was the most impar­tial of all four foren­sic sci­en­tists that tes­ti­fied dur­ing the trial.

So in a juris­dic­tion where the gov­ern­ment sim­ply doesn’t lose many cases, and where they will not back down when wrong, there was a cer­tain amount of sat­is­fac­tion in know­ing that my tes­ti­mony was used to help prove the inno­cence of a young man who has served and pro­tected his coun­try honorably.

I salute him, and wish him the best future.