F'd Up

Priya Hubbard & Jessica Borges
  • 4.8 (66)
  • SOCIAL SCIENCES
  • SERIES

Priya Hubbard and Jessica Borges invite their friend Keith over for rosé to tell him about their in-depth investigation of one of the biggest crime lab scandals of the century.

  1. The System is F'd Up - Part One

    EPISODE 1

    The System is F'd Up - Part One

    Recap of The System Is F'd Up - Part One Written by Brandi Abbott The episode starts off with how Priya, Jess, and Keith became F’d up. We get a nice taste of Priya, Jess, and Keith’s chemistry together as well as a bit of backstory. They all worked together in Reality TV production, and clicked instantly. Priya and Jess knew they wanted to keep working together and more than that, they wanted to make their own shows and maybe change the world a little bit. The idea for the podcast came to Priya when she was watching "The Staircase," a true crime documentary series about the trial of Michael Peterson. Particularly, the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) Crime Lab bloodstain pattern analyst, Duane Deaver piqued her interested as he seemed more interested in theatrics than forensic science. If you watched “The Staircase”, you know it eventually turns out that Deaver is full of shit, and Priya wanted to know how often something like this happens. She began researching the SBI Crime Lab, and it quickly became obvious that Duane Deaver was just the tip of the corruption iceberg - that there was a much larger issue with the entire system. “The Staircase” sort of touched on this when they quickly covered another man affected by Duane Deaver’s shoddy forensic science. The more Priya researched, the more she realized how much bigger the story was and how many people’s lives could have been (and were) affected. Priya went to Jess and told her she had found their show. Jess was completely shocked at the extent of the corruption and they immediately tried pitching it as a television docuseries, but they realized that because of everything they wanted to do (expose corruption, and highlight issues with the SBI Crime Lab to hopefully enact change), F’d Up might be better suited as a podcast. Plus, in doing a podcast they realized they could invite their friend Keith over and tell him everything they learned. In this way, Keith will be hearing everything for the first time on the podcast and will be learning and gasping along with listeners. Another man “The Staircase” quickly covered was Greg Taylor, a regular guy from the suburbs of Raleigh, North Carolina who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Priya tells us that Greg liked to “party” by which she meant, he used to partake in drugs. One night in September of 1991, Greg left a friend's house to procure drugs - on his way, he ran into an acquaintance named Johnny Beck who wanted to get high as well. At some point that night, they ended up parked in an industrial complex near a cul-de-sac. While Johnny was getting high, Greg became worried a cop may see them so he drove off-road and the truck accidentally ended up stuck in the mud. Greg and Johnny were forced to abandon the truck and decided to walk back - that’s when they saw something weird in the middle of the cul-de-sac. Greg thought it might be a mannequin, but Johnny thought it might be a body. Johnny was right as it turned out to be the body of a young woman named Jacquetta Thomas. Greg, a white guy, wanted to call the cops, whereas Johnny Beck, being a black man with a lifetime of racial profiling just wanted to get out of there. They ended up catching a ride from a woman, who happened to be driving by, and continued partying with her until early morning. Greg needed to get home and get cleaned up before going to work, so he called his wife to come pick him up. Greg and his wife planned to get his truck back from where it was stuck, but when they arrive at the cul-de-sac, they found that the area was swarming with police - it appeared to be a crime scene at that point. They decided to just get Greg to work and go back for the truck later. At work, Greg mentioned this to his boss and his boss wanted to check it out. Greg’s boss, Greg, and his wife headed over to the crime scene. At the crime scene, Greg approached the cops and told them he needed to get his truck. A detective told Greg to meet him at the station so they could talk, but didn’t let Greg take the truck. Later at the station, Detective Johnny Howard was questioning Greg and the questions seemed a bit more serious than the standard “what did you see?” type questions one would reasonably expect if caught in this situation. However, Priya tells us that because Greg was innocent and his entire knowledge of police was from cop TV shows, he was happy to help and it never occurred to him that he could be a suspect. He trusted the system and believed it was in place to help the good guys like him. She goes on to tell us that the police asked Greg if Johnny was black or white. Jess tells us the detective was creating the narrative he wanted and that Greg was getting really confused - as anyone would be. Keith asks why Greg hadn’t asked for a lawyer and Jess and Priya explain that he attempted to contact an attorney, but that when Greg couldn’t get in contact with him, he didn’t try anything else because he was still so confident in the police and his innocence. Jess says that Greg did notice a “shift” in the detectives eyes when he answered the detective that Johnny Beck was black. Greg said he could start to see where everything was going but still was sure he that just needed to cooperate to clear everything up. He agreed to take a polygraph test (this was never done) and gave them the keys to his truck and full permission to check it out. Jess tells us that the Raleigh police decided that what must have happened was Jacquetta Thomas’ murder was a “drugs for sex” deal gone wrong which the news outlets quickly picked up on - this story was completely untrue, however. Priya tells us that they spoke to Chris Mumma (who ultimately ended up representing Greg) and she said that the crime scene was extremely bloody and violent which is much more in line with a crime of passion - not a drug deal gone wrong. In a ridiculous turn of events, despite there being zero evidence, Greg was arrested for first degree murder. While in jail Greg hired an internationally well-known lawyer named Jim Blackburn. Priya mentions that some of us listeners may remember him from the book “Fatal Vision” and says those that do, wouldn’t be wrong to think hiring Blackburn, a defense lawyer with a very public defeat on record, wasn’t the best idea. In 1993, while Greg was out on bond, he was informed that his lawyer had been embezzling money and surrendered his law license. Greg had to find a new lawyer stat, and this new attorney, Mike Dodd, realized very quickly that the case against Greg was weak - Dodd decided that the best defense was no defense. Keith vocalized what everyone listening is probably thinking “that seems like a mistake”. Keith wanted to know why Greg went along with it and Priya says that if it were her she would probably be skeptical but put her trust in Dodd since one would think he knew what he was doing. Evidently not. In April of 1993, Greg’s trial began and Dodd stuck to his “do nothing” plan. During the trial, the prosecution’s entire case hinged on a forensic test done on a spot - a substance found on Greg's truck. The SBI Crime Lab determined the spot to be blood. Priya spoke with Marilyn T. Miller, an associate professor of forensic science at Virginia Commonwealth University to help with understanding the forensic science that comes into play throughout this season of F’d Up and, in this episode specifically, understanding luminol and the other chemicals discused. Priya says Marilyn explained that luminol is used to identify bloodstain patterns or any bodily fluids. She starts to use a hotel room as an example, because where better to find random fluids, but Keith is staying in one soon and doesn’t want to know anything about it. Priya goes on to say that to use luminol one would need to spray the luminol, use a black light to see the bloodstain patterns, and photograph them in about 8 seconds before they disappear. Jess jokes that you would need a pit crew and Priya decides that Luminol Pit Crew is going to be the name of her future death metal band. She tells us that SBI analysts used luminol initially to identify the spot on Greg’s truck. They then used phenolphthalein - the way phenolphthalein works, is one would be able to take a very small sample, add it to the mixture - and if it turns pink: it’s potentially blood. Jess tells us that this test determined that there was a tiny spot of blood under the fender wall of the truck. She also says they brought in a bloodhound named Sadie to the crime scene. Priya says that Sadie sniffed around the truck and determined that there was blood on, around, or in the truck. Priya reads directly from her notes to us “I’m sure Sadie is the best doggo, but that bitch was wrong”. Keith remarks that the Sadie part seems like a ridiculous subplot in a cozy British mystery to which Priya tells him that that isn’t the ridiculous subplot. The actual ridiculous subplot is that neither the prosecution or the defense brought in Barbara, the woman Greg Taylor and Johnny Beck got a ride from the night the truck got stuck and they saw Jacquetta’s body. The prosecution claimed they couldn’t find her and I guess even trying would be against the defense’s entire plan to do nothing. Priya and Jess now tell us about a jailhouse informant named Ernest Andrews who claimed and then testified that Greg confessed the murder to him. Priya says she’s unclear if he Greg even knew Ernest Andrews. Jess mentions that Ernest used this false information to try and get time off his sentence. Still the defense lawyer, Dodd, did absolutely nothing. Priya, Jess, and Keith speculate what Dodd could have been doing instead of his job, such as maybe tending a garden... On April 15th 1993, the state rested with their entire case built on Ernest’s testimony, the presumptive blood tests, and Sadie, the adorable bloodhound. Do

    46 min
  2. The System is F'd Up - Part Two

    EPISODE 2

    The System is F'd Up - Part Two

    The System is F'd Up Part 2 - Recap Written by Brandi Abbott This week on F’d Up, the story of how Greg Taylor was wrongfully convicted continues. Priya begins by telling us that in the late 1990s North Carolina had two student ran “Innocence Projects,” these were the University of North Carolina Innocence Project and the Duke Innocence Project. The projects were receiving a lot of the same letters so some people had the idea to start The Center on Actual Innocence to coordinate the work done by each innocence project. In 2000, it was incorporated as “The North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence or the NCCAI. Keith asked if they only deal with death penalty cases to which Priya and Jess say no. Jess begins telling us about Chris Mumma. When Chris was younger she was a juror on a death penalty case and had never really given much thought to the death penalty before then. After she had her three kids, she decided to go to law school to study corporate law. However, a death penalty case really stuck with her so she interviewed her fellow jurors and wrote a paper on it. After law school, she clerked at the North Carolina Supreme Court, during which, she became friends with Chief Justice I. Beverly Lake Jr. While there, Chris saw a lot of cases come through, and was concerned about whether some people were actually guilty. She tried bringing it up with one of the Justices and a few clerks but it became clear that after the case is over, the idea of guilt or innocence is off the table. One case in particular stood out to her, she was concerned about how someone could be in jail for 30 years for a crime they didn’t commit. With her background in finance and efficiency, she was surprised at how chaotic the justice system is and the major lack of checks and balances. In 2001, she found out that the two universities were starting the NCCAI and she ended up running the North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence – and still does. The NCCAI receives about 650 applications per year - either from inmates or from the family of inmates. When Chris receives all of the materials, she goes over them and decides whether they’ll be taking the case into “Further Review” which would involve obtaining all court files from the case. Once those are reviewed if it’s still looking like the convicted person is innocent it goes into “Investigation”. This stage is about more hands on work like going out interviewing people, tracking down anything that may help them understand all aspects of the case – and whether they may encounter any issues if they choose to pursue it further. In 2002, Chief Justice I. Beverly Lake Jr., Chris’ friend from the North Carolina Supreme Court established The Criminal Justice Study Commission after some highly publicized exonerations. Jess says he realized some shit was going down. This study commission reviewed police and prosecution procedures for factors that contributed to wrongful convictions in an effort to see why these wrongful convictions were happening. Within a few years they decided that what they needed was to establish an independent state innocence inquiry commission. Priya jokes that they really needed to establish another acronym. They established the Innocence Inquiry Commission, the purpose of which is to review credible post conviction cases wherein the convicted person claims wrongful conviction. Jess takes us back to Greg Taylor and reminds us that where they left off in the last episode is with Ed Taylor having gone to visit his son in prison and he’d told him they were out of resources and options – and it was likely Greg would not be getting out of prison. Around this time in 2006, Ed went to the general assembly hearing that was determining if the Independent State Innocence Inquiry Commission would be created. It passed and was created, officially going into operation in 2007. Because everything is connected in North Carolina, the NCCAI sends their cases to the Independent State Innocence Inquiry Commission. Priya tells us that according to the website the Commission is separate from the appeals section of the justice system and that when a person is declared innocent through it they can not be re-tried at any point for the same crime. When the commission was established Ed Taylor managed to get a written document into the hands of someone having dinner with Chris Mumma. Chris started reading Greg’s story and was blown away, she realized he had applied to the NCCAI but because they had such a large stack of applications, they just hadn’t gotten to his yet. When she reviewed his case she noticed all of the red flags from the way his case was processed. It was clear to her that though Greg and Johnny were just together by chance, law enforcement had actually been after Johnny Beck, but were trying to get to him through Greg. Keith asks if it was because Johnny was a big time drug dealer and Priya and Jess answer that they didn’t think he was “big time”, that he was just a drug dealer. When Chris was going through Greg’s file, she found out about all of the plea offers he had received that said he could go home if he just told them Johnny killed Jacquetta Thomas. Jess points out that if Greg was guilty he probably would have definitely said Johnny did it, and that even as an innocent person it had to be extremely tempting. She says that Greg just remained consistent the entire time. He knew that he had been with Johnny the entire night, from 10 PM to 6 the following morning, that the victim was last seen at 1 AM in her apartment, they saw the body around 3:30 AM, and that Johnny was just as innocent as Greg was. Greg turned down a plea before his trial, during his trial, and five years after his sentence. Chris thought that if he had been involved there was no way he would have passed up those opportunities. Keith says that he could understand before the trial and during because you would be hoping to not be convicted but after you’ve been in prison for five years it would take real conviction to not take the deal and he doesn’t know if he would have been able to do the same. Chris said whoever attacked Jacquetta Thomas, it wasn’t like they were just trying to stop her or like they were just trying to have control for sexual reasons, which is what was presented at the trial. The way Chris interprets the scene is that it was personal. There was no evidence transferred to either Greg or Johnny, even if the blood on the truck was hers, there were other explanations for how it could have gotten there, but if happened during the attack especially as violent and bloody as the scene was, there was no way it would have been just one spot. Priya points out that Barbara picked them up and says that she wouldn’t pick up someone at three in the morning who was covered in blood. Keith agrees and says if you look like a Jackson Pollock he’s going to keep on driving. Jess says Chris felt like this case had enough red flags to take on and the NCCAI officially agreed to review Greg’s case in February of 2006. The NCCAI gathered all of the necessary info on the case and, in July of 2007, referred it to the Innocence Inquiry Commission. Priya says that the IIC’s process is more in-depth than a pre-trial investigation and they take a no stone unturned approach. Priya says it’s still a very slow process. So two years later, August of 2009, Greg got a visit from them saying there had been a major revelation in his case. The IIC discovered that a man named Craig Taylor, yes CRAIG Taylor, confessed to selling drugs to Johnny the night of Jacquetta’s murder, but not just that, he confessed to killing her. Keith asked if the confession had been there the whole time, and Jess said no, that it had just came about. In September of 2009, the IIC’s eight-person panel unanimously voted to send Greg’s case to a three-judge panel to decide if he’s innocent. In October of 2009, Chris teams up with two other attorneys Mike Klinkosum and Joe Cheshire and everyone knows this is Greg’s last chance at freedom. In January of 2010, Chris was going through boxes of evidence, specifically the lab notes that SBI analyst Duane Deaver had taken of the blood evidence found on Greg’s truck. She found something in his notes that completely changed the case, but Jess won’t tell us what that is yet. Keith yells that that’s b******t and she placates him by saying that what we can know now was that Deaver’s reports had never been shared with the defense. We’re reminded that the blood evidence was the only thing that linked Greg to Jacquetta Thomas’ brutal murder - and that this “evidence” was mentioned 17 times in Tom Ford’s closing arguments. Priya points out that if you’ve seen “The Staircase”, you’ve definitely seen this before (though not in the detail they’ve gone into) and you just may not remember it. In February of 2010, the evidentiary hearing started and Greg testified, still maintaining his innocence. The DA Colin Willoughby claimed that Craig Taylor’s confession was falsified. Keith says that this all just sounds like shady b******t - and it really does. The DA had investigated a confession of Craig’s on another murder. Keith asks how many murders this guy confessed to and Priya tells us that it had been a bunch and this was apparently his thing. She also tells us that the DA did not like the IIC, and he knew that a lot of their case hinged on this confession and he wanted to bring it up in court maybe to set them up or afterwards to use it as an example of how the process didn’t work. A police search and rescue dog trainer, testified on Sadie’s (the adorable bloodhound from episode one) behavior. Sadie was not trained to do what the police had her doing. The handler specifically told the Raleigh PD that Sadie was not trained to do the things that were asking and the officers instructed the handler to try any

    45 min
  3. The Lab is F'd Up

    EPISODE 3

    The Lab is F'd Up

    The Lab Is F'd Up Recap Written by Brandi Abbott. This week’s episode starts with a quick reminder of where Priya, Jess and Keith left off last week. Duane Deaver had just revealed that he hadn’t reported tests confirming that the spot on Greg Taylor’s truck was not blood. Deaver said that the systems that were in place told him to write his reports the way he did and he was just following protocol. We’re reminded that in the NC SBI Crime Lab there was a practice in place wherein analysts could and would withhold secondary tests that confirmed a substance initially believed to be blood… was not blood. The Attorney General at that time, Roy Cooper, ordered an audit of the lab but that would take months to complete. During that time investigative journalists for the News & Observer had begun looking into the lab and published a 4 part series called “Agent’s Secrets”. The SBI director was quoted as saying, “if any questions are raised, at the time the SBI goes backs and checks. Our goal is to be accurate and find the truth. There is no hidden agenda.” She stated this in response to three other convictions in 2005 where the SBI Crime Lab had bungled evidence - five years before Greg Taylor was released from prison. At this time, lawyers filed a complaint accusing the SBI of royally F’ing these three cases up. One of the lawyers who was a defense lawyer in one of the three capital cases, Diane Savage was the chairman of the Forensic Science Task Force in the criminal defense section of NC Academy of Trial Lawyers. She hoped that there would be a full investigation and that they would shut down the lab until they came up with better quality control. One of the three aforementioned capital cases was a woman named Leslie Lincoln who lived in North Carolina and moved back in with her mother, Arlene, after she went through divorce. In 2002, she had finally started getting her life back on track. She had a job and a new place and everything was really looking up. On March 17th of 2002, Leslie went to do some errands and her mom and brother, Duffy, were at Arlene’s home watching basketball. Duffy left around 4:30. After her errands, Leslie stopped back in to see her mom. She left around 7:30 and stopped at Walmart for dog food on the way home, which was confirmed by several surveillance cameras. The next night Duffy went to his mother’s house where he found the door unlocked and poor Arlene Lincoln’s body in her bedroom on the floor. She had been stabbed over 30 times. At this point we know that the SBI is not unbiased. Priya gives us some background into the establishment of the SBI lab and tells us that the lab’s link to law enforcement plays heavily into all of the cases F’d Up will cover, but especially into the case of Leslie Lincoln. Arlene led a pretty active life. When her neighbors noticed she hadn’t been in her yard, they thought it was weird and called Duffy. Duffy went to check on her, discovered her body and called 911. There were three footprints in the blood by her body and quite a bit of evidence left behind. The police took several things from her home for evidence. They later learned that her credit card was missing. They discovered there had been no forced entry and the killer had had an intense fight with Arlene, one of the stab wounds to her neck was fatal. The police didn’t check Leslie and Duffy for wounds until later that week but they fond none. Duffy’s wife, Sharla said she can remember the day when Leslie realized she was the prime suspect. Initially there had been an inexperienced investigator on the case but within a few days he was replaced by Detective Ricky Best. He had a reputation as a detective who saw the big picture. For some reason, he locked onto Leslie as a viable suspect and about six months after Arlene’s death, the Greenville PD arrested her. She thought she was going in for questioning - then the police chained her to a wall and told her she was under arrest. Soon after the DA filed notice that he would be seeking the death penalty. Leslie was jailed under no bond. She said that for the first three days, they put you in isolation to make sure you don’t hurt yourself and she cried for three days straight. Those three days turned into three years. Priya takes over to tell us about how she and Jess have spoken with a few former SBI agents from the lab. One of the agents told her that he had been in law enforcement for over thirty years and “insinuated things would happen to her if she wasn’t on the up and up”. Jess mentions that it’s telling that he considers himself a law enforcement agent instead of a lab technician. Jess also remembers him saying that “he’s the one who wears the white hat”. This isn’t comforting as he’s supposed to be the guy looking at the evidence and pulling out facts objectively. In 2009, the National Academy of Science issued a report with recommendations, one of which was that forensic labs shouldn’t be under the control of prosecution or law enforcement. The paper series mentioned earlier, “Agents Secrets” tells us that the job of analysts should be to look at the evidence and only state the facts. We learn that analysts are given all evidence from a crime scene but are often asked to check out specifics by the police - which can create bias. If the results of tests aren’t clear it’s possible that if the analyst is looking for a good review or some other incentive, they could find results that favor law enforcement’s theories on a case. The analysts were encouraged to call law enforcement to dig a bit and see where they are on a case. They were supposed to log these calls but that didn’t always happen. At the crime scene of Arlene Lincoln’s murder, a bloody handprint was found on the bedding. Detective Best kept this evidence for months and after Leslie’s arrest took it to the SBI lab to have it tested for DNA. Keith asks why he would have kept this evidence for that long and Priya tells us that she spoke with Leslie’s lawyer and he doesn’t know. No one knows. The DNA test from this bloodstain on the bed and one from the couch matched Leslie’s DNA. Leslie’s attorney, Buddy Conner, who was a family friend, didn’t believe the test results. He pointed out that she was checked for wounds and had none that would have caused her to bleed to create the stain and that she had passed the polygraph. Conner called the analyst who did the testing, Brenda Bissette, and asked her to recheck her work. Despite talking to both her and her supervisor for over an hour, he was informed that they would not rerun the tests unless a judge or prosecutor demanded it. He took the matter to court to ask the judge to demand a retest at an independent lab. The DA, Clark Everett, didn’t object and actually asked the SBI to retest the evidence. In March of 2004, Bissette called Everett to let him know she made a mistake in her testing. Law enforcement and prosecutors view the defense as their enemy and don’t want to disclose things to outsiders. Lab analysts are not considered outsiders. In 2007 (and still in use in 2010) there was a training manual for SBI analysts. The manual stated that a good reputation and calm demeanor also enhances an analysts conviction rate. The manual warned analysts that defense attorneys would often put words in an analyst’s mouth and stated that if there were any weaknesses in the case, the DA should be informed ahead of time to minimize the weaknesses impact. The SBI director, Robin Pendergraft claimed to have never seen the manual but when asked about these directions for analysts she said she found it “interesting”. Analysts were discouraged from speaking to defense attorneys about a case before trial and now are encouraged to speak with defense attorneys only after notifying the prosecutor so that they may choose whether or not to be present for the conversation. At this point the defense hire their own experts to double check evidence and so they can understand things but this has been met with resistance by the SBI. They have also resisted turning over material that the defense say is crucial to helping their clients. Included in the training manual is a memo for prosecutors by a district attorney, Michael Parker. In the memo, he warns against “defense whores.” Yes, that’s a quote. He goes on to promise that the SBI will vet the defense experts, finding background info on them for prosecutors. At this time a lawyer at the NC Department of Justice named John Waters who represented the SBI fought requests for information that weren’t specifically listed in the discovery law that ensures defense attorneys have access to investigative reports and resisted them being able to watch tests done in the SBI lab. In 2009, a policy was put into place banning any observers in the lab. This policy includes instances where every single bit of evidence is used in the test, which Priya tells us happened in one of the other three cases mentioned earlier. In May of 2009, Waters argued that the defense’s scientists could contaminate the lab and insisted that the lab isn’t equipped to have outside scientists observing their casework. There was evidence that Arlene viciously fought her attacker. In her home there were three dollar bills on the couch which indicates that someone wasn’t there to rob her. There was a drawer placed on the floor near her dresser. Though the police took her purse they didn’t process it as evidence or check fingerprints before giving it back to Duffy. The bed next to Arlene’s body was covered in a bed sheet that contained significant amounts of blood. The footprints left in the blood were never measured by police. At 3:15 in the morning on March 18th, 2002 Arlene’s credit card was used at a gas station. Video was recovered from the store but the police either lost or destroyed the video. There was no evidence li

    54 min
  4. Cheating is F'd Up - Part One

    EPISODE 4

    Cheating is F'd Up - Part One

    Cheating Is F'd Up Part One Recap Written by Brandi Abbott This episode starts with a content warning for sexual assault/domestic violence/violence. In 2010, while the NC SBI Crime Lab audit was happening, a defense attorney named Brad Bannon was concerned about a recent case of his. Brad was the type of lawyer who always thought just 30 more minutes of work would break the case – those 30 more minutes would often turn into hours, days and even weeks. The infamous Duke Lacrosse Rape Case was one of these. A woman accused David Evans, Reade Seligmann, and Collin Finnerty of sexual assault. Then District Attorney Mike Nifong supplied thousands of pages of DNA evidence done by an independent lab because he didn’t like that the SBI investigation revealed that the boys were innocent. Brad noticed that the images of the DNA didn’t match and did a ton of research into DNA so that he could understand it. This led to him being able to tear apart the expert witness in court and the boys were found not guilty. So, that’s the kind of lawyer Brad is. In 2007, Kirk Turner was a successful dentist who had been married to Jennifer Turner for 23 years. Jennifer was a horse lover who wanted to start a breeding farm. She had nine horses and this took up a lot of her time, and occasionally Kirk would help her out after work. Everyone was shocked when Kirk announced he was leaving Jennifer and their daughter asked him if he was cheating on Jennifer. He denied it but he was lying. Jennifer took him to court and he was ordered to pay her $30,000 a month. She then found out about the affair and sued the other woman in an alienation of affection suit. North Carolina is one of the few states who recognizes alienation of affection and it allows a spouse to sue a third party for wrongful acts that deprived one of a lack of affection from their spouse. This lawsuit pissed off Kirk and he told Jennifer that there was more than one way to end a marriage… Which is ominous. On September 12, 2007, Kirk and his friend, Greg Smithson, went to pick up some welding equipment from the garage/shed (pretty sure here in NC, we would just call it a “shop”) at the house that he and Jennifer had previously shared, but now it was just Jennifer living there. Within a couple of minutes, Greg heard screaming or fighting, and a couple of minutes after that Greg limped out of the shed, covered in blood. Smithson didn’t know what was happening and ran into the shop to call 911 – and that’s when he found Jennifer’s dead body. The police arrived at the scene and eventually Chief Deputy Jerry Hartman was called and he arrived a few hours after both Kirk and Jennifer’s body had been taken to the hospital. Hartman went into the shop and examined the scene. There was blood everywhere. He saw clothes in the office area including Kirk’s t-shirt and jeans, which had to be cut from him. Hartman left the scene to get a search warrant so he could check everything out properly. Keith wants to know why he needs a search warrant at an obvious crime scene and Priya is like well we have scientists not being scientists so at least the cop is acting like a cop! Hartmant got the warrant and was back within a few hours which is when the shirt and jeans were photographed. Because there was blood on the boxes, table, floor, and basically all over the place, a discussion took place between Hartman and the on scene investigator, they wanted to bring in a bloodstain pattern analyst and called in the SBI Crime Lab. The bloodstained clothing was taken to the sheriff’s office and Hartman went over to the hospital where Kirk was. Kirk had been stabbed twice in the leg and had lost a ton of blood. Kirk told Hartman that Jennifer had attacked him with a decorative spear that was leaning against the wall. Priya takes a moment to ask what the f**k is going on in North Carolina with all of these rich white people just having decorative weapons laying around – first Michael Peterson with “The Staircase” and now this! Kirk said that Jennifer shoved the blade into his left leg and then stabbed him again. The second stab was about an inch away from hitting his femoral artery. According to the News and Observer, Kirk reached into his right pocket, pulled out his knife and slashed at her. He slashed her neck twice and severed her carotid artery. According to testimony at the trial, her trachea, windpipe and jugular were cut. His story is basically that Jennifer attacked him and he just started flailing in self-defense. On September 14th, 2007 SBI Special Agent Gerald Thomas went to the crime scene to investigate the bloodstain patterns covering everything. This was two days after everything had taken place and a lot of the evidence had been taken to the sheriff’s office so he headed there next. They switch over to a “Science Sidebar” real quick and Priya gives us a quick definition of blood stain pattern analysis and how they are studied. She tells us that there are three types of blood stains: passive stains, transfer stains, or projected or impact stains. Transfer stains result from objects coming into contact with existing blood stains and leaving wipes, swipes, or other pattern transfers behind. Gerald Thomas finished his examinations that same day and completed his report about two weeks later. His report included notes about a large bloodstain on Kirk’s shirt and that it was a Transfer bloodstain pattern resulting from a bloody hand being wiped on the shirt. The day of Jennifer’s death, Kirk’s buddy Greg had gone outside because he was uncomfortable with the conversation Kirk and Jennifer had involving sex. Kirk confessed he had changed the subject right after Smithson left as he needed to discuss some papers with her. One of these was to force the sale of her beloved horse farm and the other was an affidavit from her first husband, saying their marriage had failed due to her obsessive love of horses. Priya said she watched an episode of “48 Hours” in which Kirk was on the stand being super apologetic and explaining he only took the papers to her to illustrate how awful the divorce process could become. Priya and Keith, having been divorced, think that’s bull and that he took the papers there to rile her up. Priya says that she’s mostly been concentrating on the science and the SBI aspect of this case in her research and it isn’t her place to say whether he’s guilty or innocent, but she’s been like “well why would she stab him”. Priya said there’s no chance that Kirk thought this woman, who cares more about horses than anything else, wouldn’t be beyond upset over the sale of her horse farm and that there’s a very good chance he wanted to use it to get her to drop the lawsuit against the woman he cheated on her with. Priya says she gets why Jennifer stabbed him and that she went for the leg, not the heart or head, and that on her second stab she got closer to his balls, and that that’s what she thinks she was aiming for. Priya goes on to say that she 100% believes Jennifer was provoked, reacted, and paid for it with her life. The ADA, Greg Brown, was upset about how long everything was taking. He and the prosecutors had a theory that Kirk killed Jennifer and then injured himself, and Keith said he had been thinking the same. Chief Deputy Hartman thought it was an argument gone wrong and that maybe Jennifer stabbed Kirk and tried to run and that he grabbed her killed her. The end result was the same either way, Kirk killed Jennifer, it’s all just a matter of whether or not it was in self-defense. The police and prosecutors were convinced it wasn’t, so the case was brought before a grand jury. Kirk was charged with murder on December 13th of 2007 with basically no evidence that it was anything but self defense. Grand juries are much easier to convince than trial juries so Gerald Thomas was going to have to prove to a trial jury that Kirk murdered Jennifer. In the next episode, we’ll learn what happened at the trial and what the SBI determined happened.

    47 min
  5. Cheating is F'd Up - Part Two

    EPISODE 5

    Cheating is F'd Up - Part Two

    Cheating Is F'd Up - Part Two Recap Written by Brandi Abbott After a quick update of what happened last week, Jess tells us that Gerald Thomas met with Duane Deaver, Chief Deputy Jerry Hartman, a lawyer from the DA’s office, and the DA’s investigator to try and find evidence proving that he killed Jennifer on purpose instead of in self defense. Deaver and Assistant District Attorney Brown hadn’t actually seen Kirk’s bloody T-shirt yet; just photos. They quickly noticed a pointed tip in one of the bloodstains. Priya and Jess show Keith a picture of the shirt (which you can also see on the Facebook page @Effed Up) and he says it looks more like someone placed the knife on the shirt instead of wiping it. This stain led to a theory that Kirk killed Jennifer with the knife and then staged the scene by stabbing himself in the leg with the spear – twice. Because of this conversation, Thomas no longer believed it was the stain of a bloody handprint. Keith wonders why you would stab yourself somewhere that could be potentially fatal – this question leads to the information that the spear went all the way through Kirk’s leg and Keith, who’d previously thought as the DA did, changes his opinion about suspecting that Kirk had staged everything. Thomas now believed the stain was actually a knife being wiped across the shirt - even though his initial report said it was a hand. In April of 2009, prosecutors supplied the defense with some discovery including Thomas’ updated interpretation of the blood evidence that Kirk killed Jennifer and wiped his knife on his T-shirt. The defense attorneys, Joe Cheshire and Brad Bannon, hired their own forensic experts, Stuart James and Marilyn Miller. Kirk being a rich white guy, had the money to hire forensic specialists. Both of these experts thought the SBI Crime Lab was wrong and the bloodstain was a mirror stain, which basically is created when an item is folded together, transferring blood from portion of the item to a fresh, unmarred spot. Stuart was hired to do the analysis and Marilyn was hired to do the reconstruction, but because Marilyn also had experience with bloodstain analysis, she helped Stuart out. They determined that the stain was created by the fabric folding when the EMT’s were cutting off his shirt. The EMTs were focused on saving his life and just cut all his clothes off and tossed them to the side. The experts’ opinion was forwarded to the prosecutors, and Gerald Thomas claimed the ADA asked for additional testing to disprove that the bloodstain was a mirror image. A month later he sent an email to a colleague saying he would conduct tests to “shore up” his conclusions, and he and Deaver got a replica knife and T-shirt to try to recreate the stain. The local paper reported that there was a video of Thomas wearing a clean shirt, dipping the knife in blood only getting blood on the edges and carefully wiping the blood on his shirt in an attempt to duplicate the stain. They performed this test twice on camera with Deaver’s director-like commentary audible at the end of the tape. Deaver went so far as to conclude the tests by saying “that’s a wrap, baby.” Along with the fact that the knife’s blade would be covered in blood, not just the edges, Thomas and Deaver using brand new T-shirts instead of an older worn T-shirt like Kirk was wearing means that the fabric would have responded differently. Nevertheless, the tests were performed and they solidified Thomas’ new conclusion: The bloodstain was made from a pointed object being wiped on the shirt. In May of 2009, Thomas and Hartman from the sheriff’s office had a phone conversation, which Thomas included in his notes – as was protocol. He wrote down that Hartman told him that he was present when the EMTS cut off Kirk’s shirt, that the bloodstain was already on the shirt, and that he laid it flat to dry so the stain wouldn’t be impacted by any handling of it. In July of 2009, Brad Bannon, the defense attorney, called Thomas into his office because he wanted copies of all of his files. Although SBI analysts are discouraged from speaking to the defense, Brad had gotten permission from the DA’s office. Thomas gave him a copy of his complete file and Brad went through everything. While going through the file, something grabbed his attention. The copy of the initial report from September 2007 in the file was different from the copy he already had. He noted that the copy he had, had the numbers 24, 25, and 26 in the corner of the page - which appeared to represent page numbers. The second copy he had just been given had the same title but he noticed the page numbers where different, they were 1441, 1442, and 1443. At first glance it seemed to be the same report, but upon closer examination, one line where Thomas states his opinion about the shirt had changed. The first report had referred to the bloodstain being consistent with a bloody hand being wiped on the shirt and the new report referred to it being consistent with a pointed object. It seemed that Thomas had changed the report, but left the same date on it and didn’t follow the SBI Crime Lab standards of creating a separate report for an amendment. If Brad hadn’t asked for the file, the defense never would have known about the change in the report before the trial. Not only that, but, while looking through the file, Brad also found the notes from Thomas’ phone call with Hartman and he thought something was off with that as well and he decided to ask Thomas about it at trial. Marilyn Miller, the forensic expert, had examined Kirk’s jeans. There was a bloodstain inside the pocket where he kept his knife. She determined it was a transfer stain from where he reached into his pocket to get his knife and that it was his own blood; which supported that he had been stabbed before pulling out his knife. Thomas took the stand next and Brad brought up the phone conversation between him and Hartman where Hartman had said that he had been there when EMTs cut off Kirk’s shirt, that he had been the one to lay the shirt out, and that he had seen a pointed stain on it at that time. Thomas confirmed that that conversation had occurred and that was definitely what Hartman said. When Brad questioned Hartman about the same thing, Hartman said he didn’t say any of that. He said what he told Thomas was that he was not there when the EMTs cut the clothes off of Kirk, that when he did arrive, the clothing was crumpled so he laid the shirt out flat to dry. Thomas claimed that this was just a misunderstanding. Brad then dug into Thomas about his file. He wanted to know how defense attorneys would be able to understand whether or not Thomas was reinvestigating which Thomas tried to evade. Brad then asked if he talked about experiments that were being set up to prove theories and Thomas said yes. Brad then asked if it was important to record those theories and Thomas said “I have them in my head, I know what theory I’m trying to prove…” Later on in the questioning, Brad asked if he could produce any notes or anything that reflect what was said during the meeting with the ADA and Deaver and everyone in January of 2009. Thomas said he didn’t take notes, he had the pictures, and he initialed the photos so everyone would know that he took them and where they were from. Brad then showed him the pictures – they had no initials. Brad showed Thomas an envelope and asked if it was an envelope Thomas used to hold a swab of blood and Thomas said it was. Brad asked how the envelope described the swab and Thomas said “blood sample from cardboard boxes” to which Brad asked if he was aware that there was more than one cardboard box taken in for evidence. Thomas said he was aware and Brad pointed out that looking at the envelope, he would have no idea which box it came from. Brad then questioned Thomas about the change in his report and how nothing on it indicated it was changed. Thomas inexplicably told Brad that he’d amended the report. Which was apparent. The good news is that on August 21st, 2009, the jury deliberated for 6 hours and Kirk Thomas was found not guilty for reason of self-defense. Marilyn’s testimony about Kirk’s pocket ended up being the key evidence as juries actually do love an expert witness when they’re actually an expert and know what they’re talking about. Speaking of… when Marilyn Miller and Stuart James went into the sheriff’s office, not a single piece of that pocket had been cut out and tested and it was never mentioned in the SBI Crime Lab’s notes because no one had even bothered to test it. So, that’s great! But – hold up. Who’s Gerald Thomas and how did we get here?! Gerald Thomas was born in 1971 in North Carolina and graduated from Greensboro College in 2002 with a degree in art, history, and political science. In 2008, he got a Masters in Arts and Sociology. From 1992-1999 he worked at the Liberty Police Department. From 1995-1999, he was a detective with the Randolph County Sheriff’s Office, and from 1999-2003, he was the assistant police chief and police chief at the Liberty Police Department. Basically he spent 11 years in law enforcement and his only science background was attending a training course in basic bloodstain pattern analysis taught by Duane Deaver, Jennifer Elwell and others before joining the SBI. In 2007, he took a similar course at a local community college and in 2009 took an online graduate course from the University of Florida. It turns out that all agents who want to work in bloodstain pattern analysis have to attend a minimum of three crime scenes and have them reviewed by other analysts. Deaver did almost all of Thomas’ mentoring and report reviews, and after Thomas had recorded ten crime scenes, Deaver released Thomas to work crime scenes on his own. Inexplicably, according to Thomas, in the Turner case he didn’t know

    56 min
  6. The Audit is F'd Up - Part One

    EPISODE 6

    The Audit is F'd Up - Part One

    The Audit Is F’d Up – Part One Recap Written by Brandi Abbott Last week’s episode left off with us learning that the audit of the SBI Crime Lab revealed 230 mishandled cases. This week F’d Up will delve into the audit, but first… an important content warning for sexual abuse and child abuse. First in the audit, they took a sample of cases from 1989 to 1991 and found 30 cases consistent with the scenario in Greg Taylor’s case. Then they reviewed all 15,419 files from 1987 to 2003, looking specifically for cases that had similar language to Greg’s case such as “indications of blood” or “chemical indications for the presence of blood”. Out of that search criteria, they pulled 932 files. Each of those files were thoroughly reviewed and 230 of them contained at least one instance of “where the lab notes reflected that a positive presumptive test for the presence of blood was followed by a confirmatory test of which results were negative, inconclusive or no result.” None of these had the negative test results recorded anywhere except in the analyst’s lab notes. In 40 of these cases, law enforcement was either not able to identify a suspect or the suspect wasn’t charged so they did not result in wrongful convictions, and in 20 additional cases there was either a dismissal or the suspect was found not guilty. The next phase of the audit concentrated on confusing language and they found 105 cases similar to Greg’s. Nine of the cases resulted in dismissals or not guilty verdicts and in the remaining cases, the defendants had served their time or been released. The next phase was “misleading reports.” There were 36 cases that contained reports that said no other tests were conducted but they had been with negative or inconclusive results. Three of these cases had defendants who were still in prison at that time. The final phase of the audit was “misrepresented final reports” which involves cases where the actual results of the confirmatory tests were not reflective of the results contained in the lab results. There were five cases in this category and… they were all handled by Duane Deaver. According to the audit report, not all of these cases resulted in a wrongful conviction but a number of cases warranted a reinvestigation. The recommendation was that if anyone wanted to look into these cases it was up to the defendant, their attorney, or the prosecution to determine whether or not the case was worth reopening. Attorney General Roy Cooper received the report, distributed it to DAs across the state, and then released it to the public. One of the names on that list was a man named Derrick Allen who lived with his girlfriend and her two year-old daughter in 1998. On February 9th, 1998 his girlfriend went to work, leaving him at home with her daughter and a woman who was staying with them named Kia Ward. Around half an hour after his girlfriend left, Derrick called 911 because the baby had passed out. When the EMTs arrived, the baby had no pulse and was dead. The EMTs found what seemed to be blood inside the left leg of the baby’s onesie. She had complained about pain in her leg and passed out after being taking out of a bath. The autopsy revealed abrasions or lacerations to her vaginal orifice. Shortly after, Derrick was arrested and in winter of 1998, he was indicted with first degree sex offense, felony child abuse, and first degree murder. *** When the audit was released people were rightfully angry. Many of the DAs, defense attorneys, and other people in the justice system publicly spoke out against the SBI Crime Lab. AG Roy Cooper said, “The lab can not accept attitudes that are not open to the possibility that a mistake has been made. It can not ignore criticisms and suggestions from the outside.” Spoiler alert: it did. Some lab employees completely ignored the report. Also, Duane Deaver was not the only analyst who tested the spot on Greg Tayler’s truck. Deaver’s superior, Jed Taub, assisted with the analysis. Duane Deaver is talked about most because of “The Staircase” which had that video of him doing his “science”, but Jess says no one ever talks about the woman in the video. Suzi Barker had seven cases mentioned in the audit. Jed Taub retired in 2004 after being with the SBI for 30 years, and was working with the Pitt County Sheriff’s Office as a forensic investigator when the audit was happening in 2010. Taub claimed that they didn’t report the negative result of a confirmatory test because it’s misleading, and that the tests didn’t matter because they couldn’t be sure it wasn’t blood. He said everyone was making a big deal over nothing. He only reported negative tests if the first test was negative. Taub had nine cases mentioned in the audit but basically blamed any “misunderstandings” on attorneys. SBI Special Agent Jennifer Elwell who has been mentioned on previous episodes shared Taub’s viewpoint and said the audit was just “one person’s opinion”. Turns out, she was mentioned in the audit quite a bit. Special Agent Jennifer Elwell and her superior, David Spittle, analyzed items from the scene of the Derrick Allen case for a presence of blood. Elwell was the only one who testified and was mentioned in the audit. The initial testing on the items showed a presence of blood but the confirmatory Takayama test did not, which she wrote down in her notes. When she explained the science at Derrick’s appeal she said you would be looking for a specific formation of crystals to occur. If they did not appear, you would say the test was negative or inconclusive. A negative test result only means the analyst was not able to see the crystal formation. Elwell did the Takayama test in Derrick’s case. She put the small sample of alleged blood and the Takayama reagent under the microscope and waited for the crystals to form. According to Marilyn Miller if the crystals do not fully form, that’s a negative result and if there’s enough of the sample left, a second test should be done. If the crystals still do not form, that is negative. Elwell said at the appeal that crystals didn’t form and that they “tried to form” but nothing happened. According to Miller, crystals can try to form but that is considered a negative result. *** Kia Ward submitted to a polygraph test without the defense’s knowledge. She admitted that she had had sex with Derrick and considered him an “enemy.” Everything she said about him the investigators took as fact, just ignoring the fact she admitted she had a vendetta against him. On April 2nd 1998, the state decided to pursue the death penalty. *** After the audit report was released prosecutors and defense attorneys were in shock and wanted to review all of their cases. Around 80 defendants out of these cases were still in prison at this time. Checking those 80 cases was considered a top priority by the Executive Director for Prisoner Legal Services, and defense attorneys were encouraged to go through the list of those names and see if any of their clients were on it. *** Derrick Allen was facing the death penalty and was rightfully scared so in 1999 he agreed to enter Alford plea deal which basically just acknowledges that a person knows that prosecutors have damning evidence that would likely result in a guilty verdict at trial but doesn’t admit any guilt. This plea deal got him sentenced to 43 years in prison which completely sucks for an innocent person but is still better than dying. In 2004, he withdrew his Alford plea and was given a new trial since he had been in prison five years and was tired of being there over something he didn’t do.  The day after Greg Taylor was exonerated on February 18th 2010, Derrick was appointed a new lawyer named Lisa Williams who reviewed his case files and found things were missing like pages from the investigating agent’s report. This is a violation of NC’s Open File Law which was enacted in 2004 and a federal Brady v. Maryland law. Lisa Williams wrote a letter requesting the entire file, and through this discovery found out a bunch of F’d up shit. At this point everyone knew what had been happening in the SBI lab, including the judge in Derrick’s case, Orlando Hudson. Judge Hudson dismissed Derrick’s case “due to the prosecutors withholding critical information and flagrantly violating Derrick’s constitutional rights” and said that the prosecutors had caused such irreparable prejudice that he had no choice but to dismiss the case. Just like in the previous cases covered, the investigators refused to investigate other suspects because they believed Derrick was guilty. The DA, Tracy Cline, called Judge Hudson dismissing Derrick’s case “an extreme abuse of power” and issued a series of derogatory comments against the judge about that case and several others. In September 2012, the state Court of Appeals unanimously decided there were no grounds for Judge Hudson’s dismissal and that he didn’t have adequate evidence to dismiss the case. His ruling was reversed and the case went back to Durham County Superior Court. There was apparently substantial independent blood evidence, which Priya says she doesn’t really understand because she could only find a reference to a paper towel found in the kitchen that contained blood and that what was thought to be blood on the onesie was not blood. The next four years, Derrick was not in prison but found himself having to worry about whether he was going to be charged again or sent back to prison until October of 2016 when a Durham ADA filed records of the case being dismissed. The reason being that after significant investigation into the case witnesses either could not be located or refused to assist the prosecution. In 2016, at 38 years old, Derrick had spent over half of his life either in prison or wondering if he was going to go back to prison. This miscarriage of justice affected not onl

    1h 4m
  7. The Audit is F'd Up - Part Two

    EPISODE 7

    The Audit is F'd Up - Part Two

    The Audit is F’d Up – Part Two Recap Written by Brandi Abbott This week’s episode picks up with a continuation of the audit and the case of a man named Daniel Green. Daniel Green was at a cookout on July 22nd, 1993 when he ran into his friend Larry Demery. Demery asked him if he wanted to come with him to New York to make a delivery, Daniel declined and Demery left the party alone. A few hours later he was back and freaking out. He asked for Daniel’s help and this time Daniel went with him. That same day, a man named James Jordon, the dad of Michael Jordan, attended the funeral of a friend in Wilmington, North Carolina. He headed home at 12:30 AM. It was about a two hour drive and he must have been tired because he pulled off of the highway to take a nap. On August 3rd 1993, a fisherman discovered a body in a remote swamp in South Carolina and it appeared the body had been in the swamp for about a week. On August 5th, the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Department were notified that an abandoned and stripped Lexus, belonging to James Jordan had been found. His family hadn’t spoken to him since July 22nd but no one had filed a missing person’s report. On August 7th, the coroner in Marlboro County, South Carolina cremated the body, saving the jaw and hands for identification purposes and on August 13th the teeth were matched to James Jordon. Back on June 22nd, Demery didn’t admit to Daniel that what he needed help with was moving a body until they were back at his car. Damery told Daniel that he went to a hotel for a drug delivery, that the man he was delivering to tried to proposition him which led to a fight, and there was a shooting. James Jordan is the man who was shot. On August 15th 1993, Demery and Daniel were arrested for murder. They had ridden around in James Jordan’s car for three days. They made calls from his car phone, including to 1-900 sex numbers, and made home movies using James Jordan’s video camera which included Daniel wearing the championship ring and watch Michael Jordan had given his father. Both Daniel and Demery had pasts involving spending time in jail. The cops tried tactics to get them to turn on each other, including threatening them with the death penalty and it worked for Demery. Between the time Demery took his plea offer and his testimony, he changed the story on what happened that night but the plea offer stood. He testified that he and Daniel tried to rob James Jordan, and that Daniel shot him. Daniel was convicted of first degree felony murder and was sentenced to life in prison plus ten years. Daniel has maintained throughout that he was not involved with the robbery or murder, but his conviction was upheld by the North Carolina Court of Appeals in 1998 and the North Carolina Supreme Court in 1999. He filed a Motion for Appropriate Relief, known as an MAR, in 2000. His appointed council had done basically nothing, and in the 2008 after Daniel filed a supplemental MAR, the judge decreed his case would be reviewed and he would be appointed new council. In 2010 he asked for the NCCAI’s representation but they declined because he had recently been appointed new council. Daniel’s case was on the list of 230 cases impacted by the SBI’s shoddy practices. The same bloodstain reporting issues from Greg’s case were present in Daniel’s, and Chris Mumma agreed to take on his case in 2016. Chris reviewed his case and increasingly felt like he wasn’t involved in the robbery or murder and the NCCAI joined his co-council. The SBI complained that the audit done by Swecker and Wolfe looked at their old science through a modern science lens. This doesn’t really work, though, as the audit focused on their practices and reporting, or misreporting rather, not on their actual "science". Jennifer Elwell testified and dismissed the audit completely, though she admitted she only read parts of the report. She claimed that Swecker and Wolf didn’t understand forensic science, which seemed to be the common consensus across the SBI lab. Elwell refused to acknowledge that either she or the SBI were in error. In 2011, DA’s offices in NC had gone though about 150 cases from the report and claimed that these seemed okay as there was other strong evidence in every one of the cases. If that were true though, would this episode on Daniel Green even be happening? The phone calls made from James Jordan’s car was pointed at as the most important evidence by law enforcement including the sheriff, as it linked Daniel and Demery to the car. They failed to mention, however, that the second call made was to a drug dealer named Hubert Deese, the sheriff’s son. Demery and Deese were former coworkers who use to work about two miles from where the body was found in South Carolina. Deese was never interviewed by the police. He was interviewed by the prosecutors, but the defense was never aware. Daniel’s attorneys knew that the phone calls from the car were important to the prosecution’s case and that they were making a big deal out of them, but as far as they knew, the phone calls had only been to sex lines. The coroner noted in his report that there was no hole in the victim’s shirt to match the bullet hole in his chest, but law enforcement did not collect the shirt as evidence. The shirt was given to the funeral home and was buried due to an offensive oder, but was later exhumed and there actually was a bullet hole. Demery, who was considered the star witness, had been given that plea deal. He was originally sentence to life plus 20 years, but his deal made him eligible for parole in 2015. Priya couldn’t find anything saying whether or not he’d been released. The defense was never informed about the plea deal. The prosecution also didn’t read out the list of their potential witnesses to the jury to make sure there’d be no issues. One of the jurors had been accused of sexual misconduct by two of the witnesses. There was a witness who claimed Daniel had robbed him, but, it turned out, was just plain racist and said that all black people look alike. Elwell recanted her own testimony. She originally testified that she found James Jordan’s blood in his car, but her tests were all inconclusive. She admitted to withholding four inconclusive tests results that could have undermined the prosecutor’s theory of how James died. Daniel’s attorneys claim that the DA intentionally exaggerated Elwell’s findings and withheld her notes. The judge stated that withholding the results of the tests were a violation of his order. Right after Daniel was convicted, Elwell claimed she was ordered by a supervisor to destroy the only known samples of James Jordan’s blood, and that she had never before been asked to do that by a supervisor. The defense stated that they had never been informed the samples were destroyed. One of Daniel’s attorneys said the judge who sentenced Daniel to prison filed an affidavit stating that if Elwell has changed her opinion on the substance found in the car then her testimony at trial would constitute as false and misleading testimony on material fact. The blood evidence was the only physical evidence supporting Demery’s version of events and was critical in his conviction, making what was said earlier, about all of the 150 cases in the audit having other strong evidence, false. Despite all of this, Daniel is still in prison. In regards to the Derrick Allen case, which was covered last week, the local paper says the hearing for him touched on the issue of whether the SBI lab is independent or whether it tips the scales of justice in the courtroom in the favor of the prosecution and police. National Academy of Science issued a report in 2009 that said that crime labs should be independent and out from under the influence of prosecutors or police. So, of course, a former judge with no science background named Joe John was appointed interim director of the SBI Crime Lab by Attorney General Roy Cooper. After being there for a month, Joe John told the News and Observer that his impression was that the lab workers were not puppets of law enforcement. He said the analysts told him that they believed their customer was the criminal justice system as a whole. However, Elwell told the News and Observer that the SBI lab was drawing new guidelines to provide a stricter standard of customer service for their client, the state of North Carolina. Joe John did an internal investigation of the lab at the instruction of the DA’s office and found an additional 74 cases that were not included in the audit. These were found by hand reviewing files. Elwell was the analyst in 38 of those cases, and Deaver was the analyst in one. Deaver had 50 cases in the original audit and Elwell had 37. This new investigation brought her total to 75 mishandled cases. Spittle had 90 cases in the audit and 26 in this new investigation so he still holds the lead for worst lab analyst ever. Jess reminds us that the former SBI director, Robin Pendergraft, said that all of the problems at the SBI Crime Lab were just one guy. Defense attorneys were worried about the prosecutors reviewing the cases. Diane Savage said that there was no way for prosecutors to know how a jury would respond if it learned about improperly handled evidence. The News and Observer interviewed the Foreman of the jury in Kirk Turner’s case who said jurors were stunned by the SBI’s conduct. When asked about Gerald Thomas he said he was very conservative and a “law and order guy” but that he didn’t know what word to use but “fraud”. Prosecutors, however, felt that only by them looking though the cases would the result be true justice. DA Willoughby looked though all of the cases that went through his office, and they all appeared to be fine in his opinion. You may remember him from episode two wherein it was revealed he didn’t like the Innocence Inquiry Commission. He stated that the statu

    58 min
  8. The Cost is F'd Up - Part One

    EPISODE 8

    The Cost is F'd Up - Part One

    The Cost is F’d Up - Part One Recap Written by Brandi Abbott Around 2015, a man named, LaMonte Armstrong sued the city of Greensboro, NC and three of its former cops after spending almost 17 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. On July 12th, 1988 Ernestine Compton was found murdered in her home. The crime was publicized on Crime Stoppers, and an informant with a reputation for lying called in and said Mr. Armstrong was the killer. The police followed up on his statement, but at some point he recanted this and the case went cold. By 1992, the police had reason to suspect Christopher Caveness was involved. There was palm and fingerprint evidence at the crime scene so the SBI was brought in to match it to Caveness - but it wasn’t a match. The police had never let go of the idea that Mr. Armstrong had committed the murder, and the informant changed his story again, becoming the star witness in Mr. Armstrong’s trial. In 1995, Mr. Armstrong was convicted of murdering Ernestine Compton. In 2010, the informant recanted his statement again. The cops had failed to mention he was paid $200 and received a lighter or reduced sentence for another crime. The palm print was run again and actually did match Caveness, but by then, he had died in a car crash – not total justice for the victim. But, Mr. Armstrong received some semblance of justice when he was exonerated in 2012 - and the next step was to try and be pardoned, because apparently those two things are separate. Once you’re released, you have to submit an application to the Governor to basically reprove your innocence, then you have to wait until they decide whether to pardon you or not. Thankfully, Mr. Armstrong was pardoned in 2013; which meant he could then apply to receive money that the state sets aside for exonerees. The amounts vary from state to state but in North Carolina, an exoneree can receive up to $50,000 for every year that they spent in prison… though, they cap it at 17 years. There are people in our country who have been exonerated but not pardoned. Jess says that it makes sense that a state wouldn’t want to pardon someone as it admits culpability and they don’t want to pay someone hundreds of thousands of dollars. Mr. Armstong luckily received $750,000 from the state, but because of the severe injustice in his case, he was able to file a civil suit against the city of Greensboro and the three cops responsible for his conviction. The city hired 5 local lawyers to represent the cops in the suit, and as the trial dragged on into 2016, it was reported that the city spent $270,000 towards expenses for it. This meant that the city and state had spent over a million dollars for one wrongful conviction at that point. The city settled in 2016 and offered to pay Mr. Armstrong $6.42 million, as they should have. If someone goes to prison due to a wrongful conviction and mishandling of evidence, they obviously deserve some kind of compensation. If you’ve ever wondered where that money comes from however, the answer is that some can come from insurance but a large amount comes from taxpayers. Priya found a report written in 2015 called “Criminal InJustice”. This report is based on California statistics, not North Carolina, as a report like this seemed unprecedented, but the situations are similar. The report included cases in California where the defendant was convicted of a felony and the conviction was reversed between the years of 1989 and 2012 and the charges were dismissed or the defendant was acquitted on retrial. They examined 692 cases in total and 607 of the cases “illuminate a dark corner in California’s criminal justice system”. The defendants in these 607 cases spent a combined total of 2,186 years in custody. Many of these defendants filed lawsuits and received settlements as a result of the errors. 58 of the 607 people filed claims asking for compensations. At the time of this report’s publication, only 14 of these claims were granted, 36 had been denied, and some were still pending, despite all 58 having been credible. A total of five million dollars was awarded to the 14 defendants, and this fee would have been much larger for taxpayers if all 58 people had been awarded compensation. Looking at all 607 cases, the report estimates that the wrongful convictions cost taxpayers $221 million for prosecution, incarceration, and settlement. The remaining cases out of the initial 692 examined are referred to in the report as group exonerations as they were cases that had multiple defendants. The most prominent of these was the 2002 Rampart Police Scandal in which a group of LA police officers admitted to falsely arresting or accusing hundreds of mostly Latinx residents of various crimes, 228 of which received civil settlements. LA paid more than 70 million dollars in settlements related to that scandal, and the total cost has been reported as between 125 million and one billion dollars. The settlement costs includes payouts to three LAPD officers who had lost their jobs over the scandal, despite having not been involved. The total cost to California taxpayers for all 692 of these cases was more than 282 million dollars. This doesn’t include the cost of people who were arrested but never convicted which adds cost to taxpayers significantly. The money owed to Mr. Armstrong that wasn’t covered by insurance was to be paid by an increase in property taxes to Greensboro residents. Kirk Turner, who was one of two cases covered in this podcast where the accused was declared not guilty, recently won a $200,000 civil suit against the SBI. His case, however, cost the state way more than that. Greg Taylor sued and was awarded $4.6 million from the SBI. By 2013, the SBI and its insurers had paid about 16.4 million dollars between three wrongfully convicted men who spent a combined 40 years behind bars or in detention. Leslie Lincoln, the other case F’d Up covered where the accused wasn’t convicted, you may remember from episode three as having lost everything. She got a lawyer and tried to sue but the lawyer was lagging and doing nothing so she got a new lawyer. This one also dragged his feet on the issue, and ultimately the statutes of limitations ran out. Leslie suffers from PTSD and lives in section 8 housing. Jess says that her situation is more the norm than those who received millions of dollars. In 2012, when Mr. Armstrong was exonerated, there was about a year between when he was released and when he received his payout which Jess says is the case for any of the exonerated who are fortunate enough to be awarded a payout. Priya spoke to Saundra Westervelt and Kim Cook for this episode. Saundra is a professor emerita at UNCG and Kim is a professor of sociology and criminology at UNCW. They’ve dedicated decades to studying and writing about the post-exoneration process and what happens to exonerees once they’re released. When someone is exonerated, they sometimes only receive a couple of hours notice, and have to walk out of prison in the clothes they were wearing when they went in, sometimes decades ago and with no car or transportation. Some people may be lucky enough to have someone still to pick them up or bring new clothes but for a lot of people, years in prison leads to a loss of connections in the outside world. It’s possible that an exoneree has been transferred to a prison hours away from wherever they live, assuming they even still have a home. Many people walk out of prison, finally free after spending years inside for crimes they didn’t commit and find themselves in an entirely new world with no clue of where to go or what to do. Unlike parolees, there are no programs in place to help the exonerated rejoin society. There use to be halfway houses specifically for exonerees, but over the years it became defunded. Programs like the Innocence Project or Center on Actual Innocence help the exonerees that they were working with but there are still many exonerees that weren’t working with a program like these. Exonerees can’t just pick up their cell and call an Uber or a Lyft, because they don’t have phones and may not even be aware of ride services like that. There may be a payphone outside of prisons, but one still may not know anyone’s numbers. Kim Cook told Priya that every exoneree has PTSD, but that it’s what they call Continued PTSD because it continues to happen as they’re faced with all of the challenges of the outside world. Prison takes away your ability to make decisions so sometimes even being faced with what we would consider a small decision (like which cereal to buy) can lead to a panic attack, as this happened with one of the people Kim Cook was working with. A lot of exonerees have limited stamina from being cooped up and find it difficult to walk long distances, and they sleep on the floor because they aren’t used to having a comfortable bed. Essentially, after spending years confined to a cell with limited yard time, especially with speed of which technology and everything has evolved, everything can be overwhelming. Some exonerees give talks on what happened to them in order to try and enact change and will find themselves lost and disoriented on the way to these talks. The New York Innocence Project has two social workers who help exonerees which really should be standard. You may remember all of the milestones that Greg Taylor missed like his daughter’s wedding and graduation, and every exoneree has some version of that story. There are so many relationships and milestones that slipped away while they were in prison and coming to terms with that can be extremely difficult to say the least. In some cases, some exonerees may feel resentment for loved ones who didn’t believe they were innocent or towards people who moved on to a new relationship. To pile onto all of the depression and PTSD, is a rising feeling of bitterness over the injustice, and, in

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Priya Hubbard and Jessica Borges invite their friend Keith over for rosé to tell him about their in-depth investigation of one of the biggest crime lab scandals of the century.

Information

  • Creator
    Priya Hubbard & Jessica Borges
  • Episodes
    14
  • Seasons
    1
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2019 - F'd Up Podcast, Priya Hubbard & Jessica Borges
  • Show Website
    F'd Up