GRAPEVINE November 2012
TAKE A BITE OUT OF
CRIME...?
Are K9 Units putting innocent people behind bars?
WE NEED TO TALK
What you haven’t heard about the Energy Policy
7 STEPS TO FINANCIAL FREEDOM
Celebrate your own Independence Day
GRAPEVINE Features 108
Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math Bill McKibben Three simple numbers that add up to global catastrophe - and that make clear who the real enemy is.
114 More Costly Than Higher Taxes: Rash Decisions Paul Sullivan Investors anxious about automatic tax increases on Dec. 31, should President Obama and Congress fail to agree on a plan to avoid them, should exercise prudence in trying to minimize exposure.
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More Costly Than Higher Taxes: Rash Decisions
102 Take a Bite Out of Crime...? Michael Hall | Ashley Shippin
The story of deputy Keith Pikett, master of the dog-scent lineup, shows investigations can sometimes lead to the greatest crime of all: putting innocent people behind bars.
Paul Sullivan Investors anxious about automatic tax increases on Dec. 31, should President Obama and Congress fail to agree on a plan to avoid them, should exercise prudence in trying to minimize exposure.
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GRAPEVINE Departments EX P LORE
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11 Tricks to Cutting Travel Costs Michelle Higgins Bargain hunters will need to be craftier when booking a trip if they want to get the
DISCOVE RY
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We Need To Talk Frank Verrastro What you should know about the energy policy.
EA RN
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7 Steps to Financial Freedom Stacy Johnson Your Personal Independence Day.
BITE
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What’s Your Chocolate IQ? John Doe How much do you really know about this cocoabased confection?
V ITA LITY
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12 Ways to Never get Diabetes John Doe These simple steps may be all it takes to stay healthy and stop worrying about
D I S COV E RY
WE NEED TO TALK
What you should know about the Energy Policy Frank Verrastro
for starters, the us is already over 80% self sufficient. that’s up 70% from a decade ago.
As the political rhetoric surrounding U.S. energy “independence” heats up, it is worth pointing out a few things to help provide much needed context. After all, there are plenty of things at play here in the coming months and years – resource access and regulatory policy, fuels choices, infrastructure build out, industrial policy, imports and exports, tax and investment decisions, the role of nuclear, subsidies for alternatives, efficiency priorities, SPR policy, environmental concerns and the use of energy as a geopolitical or foreign policy tool. Whew! For starters, the United States is already over 80 percent (up from 70 percent a decade ago) self sufficient when it comes to energy production and use. We
are routinely described as the Saudi Arabia of coal, and have the largest nuclear fleet in the world. We are the world’s largest natural gas producer and the 3rd largest oil producer. Renewables account for roughly 10 percent of our energy mix and we have in place a variety of efficiency standards, mandates and incentive programs. That said, our transportation fleet is more than 94 percent dependent on liquid fuels, mostly petroleum based, and as oil is a globally traded commodity, changes in worldwide supply and demand consequently impact U.S. consumer prices. In an attempt to limit that impact, we have routinely looked to conservation, fuel switching and CAFÉ standards to alter the demand curve; and to incentives, access, technology improvements, alternative fuels and higher prices to stimulate additional supplies. In times of crises, we have utilized the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to infuse the system with additional incremental oil supply. At the time of writing, largely as a result of the unconventional (shale gas and tight oil) revolution, U.S oil production is at its highest level in decades. Natural gas has eclipsed the previous output record set back in 1973. Oil imports comprise less than 46 percent (down from 60 percent) of total consumption, and refined product exports are averaging almost 3 million barrels per day, giving our refining sector an enormous “value add.” Projections indicate that we will be a net exporter of natural gas (and possibly oil) in the not too distant future.
the word “energy” incidentally equates with the greek word for “challenge.” i think there is much to learn in thinking of our federal energy problem in that light. further, it is important for us to think of energy in terms of a gift of life. 80 |
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D I SCOV E RY
Last year, fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas) accounted for roughly 80 percent of global energy consumption. Renewables, including nuclear, made up the rest. And while the growth in solar and wind has been enormous, the base remains small and intermittency and infrastructure challenges remain large. Yet, in the wake of Macondo, Fukushima and the shale gas and tight oil revolutions, the energy landscape is rapidly changing. Higher prices and technology applications at scale are producing a revolution of their own – namely in the ability to access huge unconventional oil and gas resources both here and abroad. And this phenomenon is creating a new American energy reality, allowing the nation to increasingly become more energy self-sufficient, achieve a significant reduction in our imports/balance of payments, and concurrently create an engine for economic growth, a platform for technology and innovation, job creation, new tax and royalty revenues, and the revitalization of domestic industries. But realizing this vision requires that policymakers successfully tackle a number of complex issues. Here are what I believe are the most important: Resource access & development policy: The U.S. is resource-rich when it comes to energy forms, so the issue here is how much do we make available for development, at what price,
over what period and under what type of regulatory regime? Outside of the central and western Gulf of Mexico, much of America’s offshore oil and gas resources are presently off limits, although there are plans being worked on to develop offshore wind energy systems. Federal lands require (by statute) a number of alternative use and conservation/ preservation considerations and we are now only beginning to consider scalable Arctic development, including lands in Alaska. Environmental policy to preserve and protect lands, species, water, air and safety requirement for developers are also critical considerations. Prudently weighing trade offs are key challenges for policymakers. Onshore, in the lower 48 states, issues surrounding well integrity, hydraulic fracturing, water use, treatment, recycling and disposal of waste water, community impacts, emissions and other environmental and safety concerns are currently the focus of both state and federal regulators and will need to be resolved collaboratively with producer/operators and other stakeholders to allow the large scale development of our enormous unconventional resources. Infrastructure build out: This is a key consideration for realizing the benefits of the current boom in unconventional oil and gas development. Crude oil needs to get to refiners and natural gas to utilities, indus-
our current energy policy is bankrupt.
trial customers, processors and other end users. That requires pipeline interconnects and new midstream infrastructure and involves permits, environmental assessments and managing “above ground” impacts of local communities through which pipes and railways travel. As investments here are bound to be enormous, regulatory certainty and confidence in a timely and predictable permitting process (while allowing for public input) are critical as lead times are significant and failure to construct key infrastructure leads to bottlenecks and stranded resources. Fuel choices and the use of mandates and incentives: Power generation, industrial uses, feedstocks, transport and heating/cooling account for the bulk of domestic energy usage. With ample new supplies of fossil fuels on the horizon, policymakers will be confronted with the choice of how and whether to employ federal tools (e.g., subsidies, mandates, incentives, etc.) to stimulate fuel diversification choices and support nascent industries, an especially tricky proposition in an era of reduced federal budgets, but one which needs to be discussed in the context of near and longer term diversification and cleaner future fuels and transport options. The role of nuclear energy going forward is an obvious issue here as the high cost of entry and competition from low cost gas in a low demand growth future makes such new investments infeasible strictly on economic
2.1 THERE ARE
MILLION MILES OF GAS PIPELINES
OIL HAS BEEN USED FOR OVER
5000 YEARS
400 THERE ARE
NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS WORLDWIDE
COAL IS MINED IN
27 S TAT E S
HYDROPOWER
20% MAKES UP
OF ALL
ELECTRICITY
WIND ENERGY
50% CAN BE USED IN
OF US TERRITORY
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7 STEPS TO FINANCIAL FREEDOM Your Personal Independence Day Stacy Johnson
Independent: (adjective /,ində ’pendənt/) 1. Free from outside control 2. not depending on another for livelihood or subsistence. Our nation’s independence is a source of pride for every American because it marks the day when our nation became the master of its own destiny -- free from outside control. Imagine the day when the definition of “independent” will apply to you -- the day you’ll stop “depending on another for livelihood or subsistence.” When it arrives, fireworks won’t come close to expressing the satisfaction you’ll feel. Can’t see it happening? I have some advice that might help. 1. Free from outside control 2. not depending on another for livelihood or subsistence. Our nation’s independence is a source of pride Our nation’s independence is a source of pride for every American because it marks the day when our nation became the master of its own destiny -- free from outside control. Imagine the day when the definition of “independent” will apply to you -- the day you’ll stop “depending on another for livelihood or subsistence.”
Less about money, more about time. Stop thinking of physical possessions in terms of money and start thinking of them in terms of time. Mentally convert money into minutes and you’ll achieve financial freedom faster.
Where you see yourself is where you’ll be. There are dozens of examples of lottery winners ending up as broke as they started, and dozens more of people who lost everything in one field only to regain it another. The way we visualize our future over time helps shape it.
Freedom is being rich, not looking rich. See that guy in the Porsche next to you at the red light? He’s not rich. He’s a salesman on his way to the home of someone who is.
Freedom is inversely proportional to debt. It’s fundamental: The more debt you have, the less freedom you have. In fact, while it may sound extreme to compare debt to slavery, in a sense that’s exactly what it is. Every debt you have is an invisible ball.
stop beating yourself up and start visualizing a new, financially free you. no matter where you’re starting from, or how bad you’ve screwed up in the past, financial independence is achievable. 84 |
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EA R N
Think like a hamster, live like a hamster
Where you see yourself is where you’ll be.
People who go through life doing what commercials tell them to do live in a world of instant gratification. They run like hamsters on a wheel, filling their closet, refrigerator and garage with impulse buys and struggling to stay ahead of their Visa bill.
There are dozens of examples of lottery winners ending up as broke as they started, and dozens more of people who lost everything in one field only to regain it another. This suggests that the way we visualize our future over time helps shape it.
GOLDEN RULES OF SAVING ON EVERYTHING 1
never buy new what you can buy used.
Say you set aside $1,000 a month. If you earn 1% on it for 30 years, you’ll end up with $419,628. Earn 10% on it and you’ll end up with $2,260,487. The 1-percenter has a nice nest egg; the 10-percenter is not only financially free, his kids might be as well.
2
never buy this generation when last generation will do.
YOUR PERSONAL INDEPENDENCE DAY
3
always ask for a lower price.
4
stop paying for name brands.
5
share with your friends and neighbors.
6
substitute imagination for money.
Make your money work more
Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum. Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum. Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with
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7
try to make it or fix it yourself.
8
always use the internet.
9
never subscribe to “deal” websites.
10
sell before you buy.
BI T E
WHAT’S YOUR CHOCOLATE IQ? How much do you really know about this beloved cocoa-based confection? John Doe
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Chocolate contains more antioxidants per serving than
In which region was chocolate first discovered?
A Blueberries B Red wine C Green tea D All the above
A Central America B Asia C Western Eurpoe D Middle East
The word chocolate, is derived from the Aztec word “chocolatl”, which means
How long does it take to turn cocoa beans into an individual chocolate bar?
A Sweet bark B Dessert C Cocoa bean D Warm Liquid
A 2 to 4 hours B 1 to 2 weeks C 2 o 4 days D 30 to 45 minutes
In the 16th century, cacao beans were used to treat
A Chocolate Bloom is
A Fever B Fatigue C Indigestion D All the above
GRAPEVINE
A Gray-white streaks B A flower shaped chocolate C Separation from boiling D Paste produced from cocoa beans
BITE
A 1.4 ounce bar of milk chocolate delivers 15% of the recommended daily value of
Which type of eating chocolate contains the most chocolate liquor?
A Folic acid B Calcium C Vitamin A D Riboflavin
A Milk B Sweet C Bittersweet D Dark
What percentage of American chocolate eaters prefer milk chocolate?
In general, milk chocolate that has been stored properly will keep for
A 25% B 65% C 40% D 90%
A 8 days B 3 years C 3 weeks D 8 months
ANSWERS Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five
1. D All the above 2. D All the above 3. A Central America 4. D Warm Liquid 5. C 2 o 4 days
6. A Gray-white streaks 7. D Riboflavin 8. B 65% 9. C Bittersweet 10. D 8 months
1-3 POINTS
4-7 POINTS
COCOA NO-GO
SEMI SWEET RESULTS
Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five
Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s,
7-10 POINTS
CHOCOLATE CHAMP! Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen.
DID YOU KNOW Research suggests that chocolate was originally used more than 2,500 years ago, begining in Central America.
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eating chocolate can also lower your ldl cholesterol and add beneficial iron and magnesium to your body
the best-tasting chocolate bar looks shiny and even. americans choose chocolate over vanilla
66 percent of the worlds cacao is produced in Africa and 98 percent of the worlds cocoa is produced by 15 countries.
POLLUTION
facts about our contaminated world.
pollution is the introduction of contaminants into the natural environment that cause adverse change. Pollution can take the form of chemical substances or energy, such as noise, heat or light. pollution is the introduction of contaminants into the natural environment that cause adverse change. Pollution can take the form of chemical substances or energy, such as noise, heat or light.
TOP 10 MOST POLLUTING COUNTRIES countries that emit the most CO2
CANADA
GERMANY
USA
RUSSIA
IRAN SAUDI ARABIA
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CHINA JAPAN
INDIA
WATER POLLUTION The average number of large oil spills (over 206,500 gallons of oil are split into the ocean), from 1990 to 2000 is about 6.9 yearly, but only one or two gets reported in the mainstream media.
KOREA
40% of America’s rivers and 46% of America’s lakes are too polluted for fishing, swimming, or aquatic life.
POLLUTANTS ENTERING OCEANS air pollutants sewage
litter oil
farm runoff
wastewater martime transportation
AIR POLLUTION
127 MILLION PEOPLE live in counties that received an F for either ozone or particle pollution.
HEALTH EFFECTS Irritation to the eyes, nose and throat
Upper respiratory infections such as bronchitis and pneumonia
lung cancer, heart disease, damage to the brain, nerves, liver, or kidneys
Headaches, nausea, and allergic reactions
HOW TO HELP RECYCLE EVERTHING YOU CAN
PICK UP AFTER YOUR PETS
Landfill space is rapidly filling up and we can greatly reduce the need for having to find precious, open land for additional capacity.
Animal waste that runs off of lawns and sidewalks sends harmful bacteria into the storm drain system and out into the ocean, creating problems for swimmers and fish.
USE ENVIRONMENTALLY SAFE PRODUCTS
DON’T LITTER!
Many pesticides have safe, chemically-free organic alternatives. By using non-toxic methods, you reduce the amount of dangerous chemicals that flows off of lawns and into storm drains.
Simple enough? Everything dropped, tossed, spilled or discarded onto streets and gutters will eventually make its way into the storm drain system--and out to the ocean!
GET CAR TUNE UPS It is important to get your car tuned up annually. So it will run efficiently. Sometimes you may not need to drive. If you can walk or ride a bicycle, you should try it. You can save the gasoline, money, and the environment at the same time.
REPORT ILLEGAL DUMPING! Illegal dumping of trash, paint products, motor oil and other chemicals into storm drains is against the law!
“one hundred and fifty years ago, the monster began, this country had become a place of industry. factories grew on the landscape like weeds. trees fell, fields were up-ended, rivers blackened. the sky choked on smoke and ash, and the people did, too, spending their days coughing and itching, their eyes turned forever toward the ground. villages grew into town, towns into cities. and people began to live on the earth rather than within it.” patrick ness
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TAKE A BI T E O UT OF
CRIME...? The story of deputy Keith Pikett, master of the dog-scent lineup, shows investigations can sometimes lead to the greatest crime of all: putting innocent people behind bars. Michael Hall | Ashley Shippin
Q
uincy, the amazing bloodhound, sniffed the air around the body of Sally Blackwell, who lay half-naked in a field just outside Victoria. Blackwell, a supervisor for Child Protective Services, had been missing for a day when a county-road crew found her in a brushy field on March 15, 2006. She had been strangled with a rope, which was still on her body. Quincy’s handler, Deputy Keith Pikett, held the leash and surveyed the scene, which was teeming with officers from the Victoria Police Department, the Victoria County Sheriff ’s Office, the Department of Public Safety, and the Texas Rangers. It was almost seven o’clock and would be getting dark soon. A few hours earlier, Sam Eyre, a sergeant with the Victoria police, had called Pikett, who lived in Houston and worked out of the Fort Bend County Sheriff ’s Office, about two hours away. Pikett (pronounced “Pie-ket”) was something of a star in law enforcement circles. For years he and his dogs—Quincy, James Bond, and Clue—had helped find missing children and escaped convicts, and
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DID YOU KNOW A dog’s sense of smell is 200-400 times greater than a human’s? Dogs can smell a human buried up to 12 feet underground? Dogs can distinguish between identical twins? German shepherds can search an area four times faster than a human? Dogs identify by scent first, then voice, then by silhouette? Police K9 units were first implemented in NYC & NJ in 1907? The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that sniffer dogs at traffic stops do not violate the 4th amendment, per se?
The twenty-month-old bloodhound jogged through the quiet streets, finally stopping on Laguna Drive at Blackwell’s house. A truck from a local TV station was parked across the street. It had been a fiveand-a-half-mile journey from the victim’s body to her home, but the dogs weren’t finished. There was a killer to catch. So Pikett held one of the scent pads to Quincy’s nose, and she took off again, turning onto the first street, Navajo Drive. At this point, Sheriff T. Michael O’Connor told Eyre that a
dogs can discern one scent from another, but make mistakes 15% of the time. “person of interest” in the case, Michael Buchanek, lived on the street. Buchanek had gone out on a couple of dates with Blackwell, and he had been questioned that morning. Now Quincy led Pikett and Eyre down Navajo, around a long bend, up a driveway, and to the front door of a brown
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brick home. It belonged to Buchanek. Eyre that a “person of interest” in the case, Michael Buchanek. He was not your typical suspect. The divorced father of two had been an officer with the sheriff ’s department for 24 years. He’d run the SWAT team, taught firearms classes, and had some experience with police dogs, rising to the rank of captain before retiring, in 2004, and taking a job with a contractor training police officers in Iraq. He had asked O’Connor to care for his children if anything happened to him while he was overseas and even left his friend a signed document granting him power of attorney. Buchanek had returned in late 2005, but only after being injured when a suicide bomber attacked his hotel. The law enforcement officers all reconvened at ten o’clock at Cimarron Express, a nearby convenience store, buzzing with excitement about the break in the case. What was next, they asked the deputy? To be certain of the connection and to have probable cause for a search warrant, Pikett suggested a scent lineup. All he needed was a scent sample from
three cities incriminated by one forensic technique. But they had one other thing in common: All five were innocent. In August 2006 the son of Blackwell’s boyfriend confessed to her murder. The Houston burglaries continued while Curtis was in jail, and eventually the actual perpetrator was caught. In April 2009 another man confessed to the Houston murders. That same month Miller was exonerated by a DNA test. Between them, Curtis, Johnson, Bickham, and Miller spent nearly three years in jail, their lives shattered. Buchanek was more fortunate. He was never charged, but he had to deal with five months of stares and whispers. “My friends turned their backs on me,” he says. “People from my church didn’t want anything to do with me. I was locked in my house, crying and praying, trying to figure out why my world fell apart. I spent my adult life defending the Constitution. As far as I’m concerned, Pikett and the others walked all over it.”
THE UNSCIENTIFIC METHOD What could be more terrifying than to be accused of a crime you didn’t commit? How about to be accused by a forensic expert? This doesn’t happen on popular television dramas like CSI, CSI: New York, and CSI: Miami. On those shows investigators and lab technicians confidently use often-fantastical techniques to solve violent crimes, like the time an examiner poured a special paste into a knife wound and extracted a replica of the murder weapon. If Keith Pikett, Quincy, Clue, and James Bond were to appear on CSI, he would be quirky, they would be lovable, and the suspects would be 100 percent guilty. But can dogs—which are reliably used to track criminals and sniff out drugs and bombs—actually match scents in paint cans in a parking lot? We don’t know. Various states have used scent lineups, but there’s little science to back them up. Quincy,
Clue, and James Bond had never had any standard training, and they had never been certified. Pikett (who declined to be interviewed for this story) had no specialized forensic training either, and his protocols and methodologies, which he developed himself, were primitive at best. “A gypsy reading tea leaves and chicken bones is probably as reliable as a dog doing a scent lineup,” Steve Tyler, the current district attorney of Victoria County, told me. Yet Pikett worked on more than two thousand cases, helped indict more than one thousand suspects, and testified in forty cases as an expert witness before retiring this past February. The truth is, police and prosecutors have been using questionable forensic techniques for years, things involving bite marks, blood-spatter patterns, and even ear and lip prints. They use them because they help solve crimes. But over the past decade we’ve begun to understand just how unscientific forensic science can be. In the lab and at the crime scene, unsound techniques have incriminated the wrong person time and again. The most visible evidence of this is the 252 DNA exonerations nationwide since 1989—many of which, according to the Innocence Project, involved some form of improper or faulty forensic science. And these exonerees were the ones whose stories had happy endings, saved by DNA taken from old crime-scene samples that had not been discarded; no one knows how many unlucky people convicted on faulty science still languish in prison. Texas has had forty DNA exonerations, more than any other state, including several high-profile cases that involved forensic science. In 1986 David Pope, of Dallas, was convicted of aggravated sexual assault and sentenced to 45 years in prison based in part on the “voiceprint identification” technology of a sound spectrograph that two analysts had used to compare his voice with
what could be more terrifying than to be accused of a crime you didn’t commit? how about to be accused by a forensic expert?
one left on the victim’s answering machine. Pope was exonerated by DNA in 2001. In 1994 hair-comparison analysis was used to wrongly send Michael Blair to death row for the murder of Ashley Estell, a seven-year-old Plano girl; he was also exonerated by a series of DNA tests. Some terrible forensic science mistakes have been discovered without the magic of DNA. Arson science was used in Fort Stockton in 1987 to convict Ernest Willis of murder and send him to death row. It took seventeen years to convince authorities that there was no actual science to the arson evidence, and in 2004 he was released. It turns out that even fingerprint analysis—the gold standard for most of the past century—can lead to mistakes. In 2004 three FBI fingerprint examiners and one independent one investigating the Madrid train bombing that killed 191 people made four unbelievable errors, matching a print found on a bag of detonators near the scene to the finger of Brandon Mayfield, a Muslim attorney from Oregon. He was sent to jail for two weeks, where he spent seven days in solitary confinement. It was a very public humiliation for the greatest crime-solving lab of all time—made worse when Mayfield sued the government and was awarded $2 million. Today, law enforcement organizations and the legal system are facing a crucial moment in the history of forensic science. The Mayfield fiasco, coming on the heels of mistakes at state crime labs all over the country (most notoriously in Texas, where the Houston Police Department crime lab was closed in 2002 because of a series of problems), helped spur the federal government into action. In 2007 Congress authorized the National Academy of Sciences
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send Michael Blair to death row for the murder of Ashley Estell, a seven-yearold Plano girl; he was also exonerated by a series of DNA tests. Some terrible forensic science mistakes have been discovered without the magic of DNA. Arson science was used in Fort Stockton in 1987 to convict Ernest Willis of murder and send him to death row. It took seventeen years to convince authorities that there was no actual science to the arson evidence, and in 2004 he was released. It turns out that even fingerprint analysis—the gold standard for most of the past century—can lead to mistakes. In 2004 three FBI fingerprint examiners and one independent one investigating the Madrid train bombing that killed 191 people made four unbelievable errors, matching a print found on a bag of detonators near the scene to the finger of Brandon Mayfield, a Muslim attorney from Oregon. He was sent to jail for two weeks, where he spent seven days in solitary confinement. It was a very public humiliation for the greatest crime-solving lab of all time—made worse when Mayfield sued the government and was awarded $2 million.
THE EXPERTS Today, law enforcement organizations and the legal system are facing a crucial moment in the history of forensic science. The Mayfield fiasco, coming on the heels of mistakes at state crime labs all over the country (most notoriously in Texas, where the Houston Police Department crime lab was closed in 2002 because of a series of problems), helped spur the federal government into action. In 2007 Congress authorized the National Academy of Sciences to investigate 106 |
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as long as a judge says you’re an expert, you’re an expert. print analysis, which the NAS said was essentially subjective. In fact, except for biological disciplines, like DNA (which has a standardized methodology in which scientists examine a person’s genetic profile by comparing thirteen specific locations on the chromosome), the report found that “forensic science professionals have yet to establish either the validity of their approach or the accuracy of their conclusions.” And the courts—the gatekeepers of the whole process—“have been utterly ineffective in addressing this problem.” It was ineffective. Invalid science, ineffective courts, and the ultimate punishment: A few months after the NAS report was
released, the country got an idea of just how disastrous a forensic science mistake could be when the New Yorker published a long story about the Cameron Todd Willingham case. Willingham had been convicted of murdering his three children by setting fire to his family’s Corsicana home in 1991, and he had been executed in 2004. The guilty verdict came primarily because of the testimony of two longtime arson investigators—an assistant fire chief and a deputy fire marshal—neither of whom had much education in the actual science of fire. The two men sleuthed their way through the burned-out structure, and though they found no indisputable physical evidence
law (theft and extortion, for example) to solve a crime. It’s a wonder he didn’t send any innocents to prison. Of course, he wasn’t real. But what followed him was. A Frenchman named Edmond Locard established the first police lab in Lyons in 1910, where he could analyze evidence left at a crime scene. Locard had studied medicine and law, but more important, he had studied Holmes, and he frequently noted his admiration for Doyle and directed investigators to read him. Before Holmes had come along, few had thought to connect the criminal to the scene, and crimes were typically solved the old-fashioned way: by asking around or just compelling a suspect to confess. Locard revolutionized the inefficient business of crime-scene investigation with what came to be known as the Locard Exchange Principle: “Every contact leaves its trace.”
RECKLESS DISREGARD Over the next three generations, this principle would become the cornerstone of forensic science. Out in the field, investigators used deductive logic and common sense to compare and match things left behind at crime scenes—a fingerprint, a strand of hair, a speck of blood—with the person suspected of leaving them. In the labs, forensic scientists developed new ways of helping them. “Crime labs arose from law enforcement,” says Jay Siegel, a member of the NAS committee and the head of the forensics program at Indiana University—Purdue University. “And law
enforcement’s job is to get the bad guys off the street.” The results were often convincing, as when police investigator Calvin Goddard solved the 1929 St. Valentine’s Day Massacre by comparing marks on bullets left at the scene with marks on bullets made from two submachine guns taken from Al Capone’s men. Or when scientists took a huge step forward in 1937 with the discovery that Luminol could be used to test for the presence of blood lorem ipsum. Yet these advances were accompanied by theories and practices that seemed reasonable but were ultimately flawed. For example, the idea that if a hair found at a murder scene was the same color, thickness, and texture as one from the suspect, then the two could be reliably linked. Or that if a bite mark found on a body looked the same as an impression of the teeth of a suspect, he had left the bite mark. Or that two recorded voices could be matched. Imperfections were rarely analyzed, and basic assumptions were problematic—or outright wrong, because they had not been subjected to the scientific method. “There is not the scientific culture in a law enforcement agency that there is in a scientific agency,” says Siegel. “They often don’t pay attention to the scientific rigors needed to properly analyze and interpret forensic evidence.” One of the results of not paying attention to science was that no one ever looked closely at an inherent problem at the heart of these comparisons: the uniqueness fallacy. Folklore, intuition, and hundreds of
it’s awfully easy to see yourself as being on the side of the angels, a member of a team whose goal is to get the bad guys. crime movies and detective shows have led us to believe that every fingerprint, bite mark, voice pattern, or even strand of DNA is unique to a person, but in fact we don’t know if this is true. “What law enforcement folks do is called ‘individualizing,’” says Michael Saks, a leading authority on forensic science at Arizona State University. “They’ll say, ‘We know no two fingerprints are alike,’ or ‘Every single person has unique bite marks.’ They say it, and everyone believes it, but no one knows if that’s true. It can’t be tested unless you test everyone on the planet.” The Ashley Estell case is a good example of what happens when comparisons are taken too far. Estell disappeared from a crowded Plano soccer field in September 1993. Her body was discovered six miles away by the side of a dirt road, and crime-scene analysts found black hairs on and near her body. When a criminologist spotted Michael Blair, who had dark hair, driving by, he insisted the police follow him. They pulled him over, and it turned out that Blair was a convicted child molester. He also had a stuffed toy rabbit and a leaflet about the search in his car. Blair was interrogated for nine hours, and a few days later, he was arrested. Police had no fingerprints, blood, or eyewitnesses to tie Blair to Estell or the scene, but they had found hairs in Blair’s car that, according to a crime-lab analyst, “appeared similar” to Estell’s hair. Hairs in a clump were also found at a park two miles from the soccer field and appeared to have come from both Blair and Estell. At trial, the most important witness was the analyst, who made three major connections between Blair and Estell: Those hairs from the car had the same “microscopic characteristics” as hers; two small black hairs found on and near her body had Mongolian characteristics, which could apply to Blair, who was half Thai; and a fiber found on her body was similar to fibers from the rabbit. The jury found Blair guilty in 27 minutes. One juror later said, “He wore his fingerprints in his hair.” Actually, he didn’t. A series of DNA tests, taken between 1998 and 2007, found that none of the hairs connected Blair to Estell and that the rabbit fiber could have come from half a million different stuffed animals. Blair was taken off death row, and Estell’s killer was never found. The lesson from the Blair saga is that using a microscope to compare a hair found at a crime scene with one from a suspect is too unreliable, too human.
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