The Case of Junk Science - Bloodstain Pattern Evidence

📻 Episode #147
🎙️ Hosted by Jason Flom
📅 Aug 10, 2020

◆ EPISODE PROFILE

About This Episode

Josh Dubin, civil rights and criminal defense attorney, and Innocence Ambassador to the Innocence Project in New York explores bloodstain pattern evidence with Pamela Colloff, senior reporter at ProPublica and staff writer at The New York Times Magazine.

The Case

Bloodstain pattern experts falsely claim that they can identify the culprit of violent crimes by examining the shape and distribution of bloodstains from a crime scene. But, bloodstain pattern evidence has no grounding in any verifiable science. So how did this kind of junk science become admissible?

Pamela Coloff’s two part story on the Joe Bryan case Blood Will Tell - ProPublica

Part 1 https://features.propublica.org/blood-spatter/mickey-bryan-murder-blood-spatter-forensic-evidence/

Part 2 https://features.propublica.org/blood-spatter/joe-bryan-conviction-blood-spatter-forensic-evidence/

National Academy of Sciences: Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/228091.pdf

In Their Own Words — transcript excerpts

Short excerpts from the episode's official published transcript, with timestamps — listen from these moments, or read the full transcript via the podcast's own platforms.

00:03:34
“Speaker 1: You were eventually charged with the first degree murder of Speaker 1: your spouse. At your trial, the prosecution calls to the Speaker 1: stand a blood stained pattern analyst. That expert gets on Speaker 1: the stand and tells the jury that the story of Speaker 1: the murder of your spouse is soaked into the blood”

00:15:48
“Speaker 1: where they finally get it right right, They get it Speaker 1: to look like it did at the crime scene, after Speaker 1: try after try after try, and they start cheering and Speaker 1: high fiving. So if it's so hard to tell how Speaker 1: a blood stain got where it did, then what kinds”

00:27:43
“Speaker 2: inquiry things like forensic science and its accuracy better and Speaker 2: better and better. But the courts never looked at that. Speaker 2: They just kept looking back blood stand pattern analysis, like Speaker 2: so many of the disciplines that are identified in that Speaker 2: report as being problematic, we're so so deeply entrenched in”

Listen to the Episode

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← #146 Jamal Trulove #148 James Davis →

Also on the podcast: #145 Junk Science - Bite Mark Evidence · #149 Junk Science - Arson Evidence · #152 Junk Science - Hair Microscopy Evidence