The Shirley McKie Fingerprint Misidentification Scandal

     For most of the 20th century the testimony of a prosecution fingerprint expert was never challenged by the defense. Jurors considered fingerprint identification infallible evidence, the gold standard of forensic science. However, due to a series of high-profile fingerprint misidentifications beginning in the late 1990s, this is no longer the case. More and more defense attorneys in trials in which their clients have been linked to crime scenes through latent fingerprints now seek second opinions from independent examiners. One of the most publicized latent fingerprint misidentification cases, featuring American and Scottish examiners, centered around a police officer in Scotland named Shirley McKie.

The Shirley McKie Case

     In January 1997 Scottish officers from the Strathclyde Police Department responded to the scene of a murder in nearby Kilmarnock. Marion Ross, a 51-year-old bank clerk had been stabbed to death in her bathroom. Her ribs were crushed and she had been stabbed in the eye and throat with a pair of scissors that had been left stuck in her neck. There was no sign of forced entry. Police officers theorized that Marion Ross had been killed by one of the men who recently performed remodeling work in her home.

     Shortly after the crime police officers arrested 23-year-old David Asbury, a construction worker from Kilbirnie in Ayshire. Although no latent fingerprints belonging to Asbury were found at the scene, examiners with the Scottish Criminal Records Office (SCRO) identified a print on a container, a biscuit tin, found in the suspect's apartment as being the murder victim's. The tin contained money the police believed the killer had stolen from the murder site. Asbury claimed that the money and the tin were his.

     The latent on the biscuit tin had been lifted at Asbury's apartment by Shirley McKie, a 34-year-old detective constable with the Strathclyde Police Department. Her feeling of accomplishment in discovering this key piece of evidence ended when she was called on the carpet for leaving her own print at the scene of the murder. SCRO examiners identified a bloody left thumbprint on the bathroom door frame as hers. According to Officer McKie she had been to the murder site three times but never got beyond the front porch. The SCRO examiners, therefore, must have made an identification mistake. Too depressed to work Detective McKie went on leave for two months.

     In May 1997, just three months after his arrest, David Asbury was brought to trial in Glasgow. He still maintained his innocence. Shirley McKie took the stand at his trial and described lifting the latent off the biscuit tin in his house. On cross-examination, Asbury's attorney asked Detective McKie if she had helped process the Marion Ross murder scene. McKie said she had not been inside the murder apartment. In response to this answer the defense attorney asked if SCRO fingerprint examiners had identified one of the latents in the murder woman's bathroom as McKie's. "Yes they had", answered McKie. 

     "But didn't you just say you weren't in the apartment?" 

     " Yes," the witness answered. 

     "So", asked the defense attorney, "the SCRO examiners had made an incorrect fingerprint examination?" 

     "That latent was not mine," replied the detective.

     Following the 13-day trial the jury chose to believe the SCRO correctly identified the biscuit tin latent as the defendants and convicted him of murder. By implication the Asbury jury believed that Detective McKie had been at the murder scene as well and lied under oath.

     In March 1998 police officers came to Shirley Mckie's house and arrested her on the charge of perjury. At her trial in May 1999 two highly respected American fingerprint experts testified that the latent in the murdered woman's bathroom--Print Y7--was not Detective McKie's. The jury after deliberating less than an hour came back with a verdict in favor of Shirley McKie. The acquittal was an embarrassing defeat for the SCRO.

     In December 1999, despite her perjury acquittal, Shirley McKie was dismissed from the Strathclyde Police Department. On suspension since March 1998 the dismissal made her ineligible for a pension.

     Shirley McKie, in October 2003, sued the Scottish government for 850,000 pounds. She accepted an out of court settlement for just under that amount in February 2006. David Asbury won his appeal, and on retrial, featuring the two American fingerprint examiners testifying on his behalf, the jury acquitted him of murdering Marion Ross. No one else was tried for Marion Ross' murder.

     In 2011 the Scottish Special Services Authority (SPSA) held hearings on the SCRO fingerprint misidentifications in the McKie and Asbury cases. The proceedings featured 64 witnesses giving 250 hours of testimony over a period of five days. The authors of the SPSA report, published on December 14, 2011, concluded that human error (rather than a conspiracy) was to blame for the fingerprint misidentifications. The authors of the report also concluded that fingerprint identification should be treated as opinion-based testimony rather than fact-based. This recommendation angered members of the forensic fingerprint identification community worldwide.

How Did Avonte Oquendo Die?

     Avonte Oquendo, an autistic 14-year-old who didn't speak, attended school in Long Island City, Queens New York. The black, five-foot-three, 120 pound student was enrolled in the school's special needs program. He lived with his mother, Vanessa Fontaine, a social services case manager and his four older brothers aged 19 to 29. Avonte's school sat on a busy street across from a playground, a dog run and a jogging path that overlooks the East River.

     At 12:40 PM on October 4, 2013 a school surveillance camera caught Avonte coming out of the building with other school kids. That was the last time anyone saw him. Reacting to the missing persons report filed by his mother, dozens of New York City police officers from the 102 Precinct, aided by two helicopters, conducted a thorough search of the neighborhood.

     Following the initial surge of police activity on the case, Avonte's mother Vanessa, working out of a donated recreational vehicle parked in front of the school, oversaw the deployment of volunteer searchers and the distribution of missing person fliers.

     Vanessa Fontaine also organized candlelight vigils and rallies, raised $95,000 in reward money from anonymous donors and appeared on several nationally broadcast television programs. While the police received hundreds of tips, nothing panned out.

     Two months after her son's disappearance Vanessa Fontaine moved her operation out of the RV and set up shop in a rented office. Thirty days after that, with still no leads on Avonte's whereabouts, activity on the case waned. There were fewer tips coming in and only a handful of volunteers showed up each day at Vanessa's missing persons headquarters.

     The missing boy's mother filed a $25 million lawsuit against New York City's Board of Education. The plaintiff accused the staff at Avonte's school of failing to protect him.

     On Thursday night January 16, 2014 body parts and items of clothing were found near the Queens shoreline. The remains were later identified as the missing boy's. The search was over and a new phase of the case, determining Oquendo's cause and manner of death, was underway.

     In March 2014, Richard Condon, the school system's "Special Commissioner of Investigation" sent a 12-page report regarding the Oquendo case to the Queen's District Attorney's Office. The report did not allege that any crime had occurred and did not recommend that any school employee should be disciplined.

     As a criminal matter the Oquendo case was closed. The official manner of the boy's drowning went into the books as "undermined". 

     In July 2018 the city settled a wrongful death suit filed by the family for $2.7 million.

The Casmine Aska Attempted Murder Case

     At 8:30 Friday night February 1, 2013, residents of the Morris Heights section of The Bronx discovered a 9-year-old boy named Freddy Martin lying on the sidewalk in front of a five-story apartment building. En route to the New York Presbyterian/Columbia Hospital the boy told paramedics that "Cas dragged me to the roof and threw me off. I don't know why."

     Suffering broken bones, head trauma and internal bleeding, doctors put the boy into an induced coma and placed him on life support.

     New York City detectives later that Friday night questioned 17-year-old Casmine Aska at the local precinct station. Casmine, a resident of the apartment building, initially denied being on the roof with Freddy. After further interrogation he admitted being on the roof when the boy fell off the building. "I grabbed Freddy around the legs," Aska said. "His feet were off the ground. I turned around. I slipped and Freddy fell."

     On Sunday, February 3, 2013 Casmine Aska was arraigned in a Bronx courtroom on charges of attempted murder, assault, reckless endangerment and endangering the welfare of a child. Assistant District Attorney Dahlia Olsher Tannen informed Judge Gerald Lebovits that Aska, as a juvenile, had been in trouble with the law. The prosecutor, who didn't elaborate, asked the judge not to grant the suspect bail.

     Kathryn Dyer, Aska's attorney, in making an argument for bail in this case, said, "This is not about attempted murder." Acknowledging that her client possessed a juvenile record, Dyer assured Judge Lebovits that Aska had "taken responsibility for his life." Defense attorney Dyer pointed out that Aska's favorite subject at Harry S. Truman High School was chemistry, that he attended weekly religious classes, and served food to the homeless.

     Judge Lebovits, apparently unimpressed by Aska's academic interests, religious activity and community service, denied him bail. The judge's rationale: "Extraordinary risk of flight."

     A few weeks later when questioned by detectives at the Riker's Island Jail, Aska, in explaining why after the boy's fall he went home and took a nap instead of calling 911, said, "I didn't call the NYPD because my brain froze. I was shivering, I was crying, I went to my aunt's..my whole world stopped."

     On February 15, 2013, when doctors took Freddy Martin off life support the boy began breathing on his own. Questioned by detectives he accused Aska, a kid who had been bullying him, of intentionally throwing him off the building.

     A month before Aska Casmine's September 2014 trial he agreed to plead guilty in return for a 40 year prison sentence. 

The Tammy Meyers "Road Rage" Murder Case

     Tammy Meyers and her husband Robert lived on a cul-de-sac in a Las Vegas residential neighborhood with their four children. On Thursday night February 12, 2015, with Robert Meyers out of town on business, the 44-year-old mother gave their 15-year-old daughter a driving lesson on the parking lot of a nearby school. According to the initial account of what happened after that driving lesson, as Tammy drove her daughter home, they became involved in some kind of dustup with a man in a car with two passengers. That man, as the story went, followed the mother and her daughter home. In front of their house, at 11:30 PM, the unknown motorist shot Tammy Meyers in the head. The assault was widely reported in the media as a road rage shooting.

     Emergency personnel rushed Tammy Meyers to the Medical Center of Southern Nevada where doctors placed her on life support. On Saturday February 14, 2015, while police officers searched for the unknown suspect in a silver sedan (a man described as 25-years-old, six-foot tall and 180 pounds) physicians took Tammy Meyers off life-support. She died shortly thereafter.

     Following Tammy Meyers' death new details surfaced about the murder that put a different slant on the case. As Tammy and her daughter drove home that night from the school parking lot, a man driving a silver sedan sped by them. Tammy's daughter, to register her displeasure at the speeding motorist, reached over and honked the horn.

    The speeder, apparently angered by the rebuke, pulled in front on Tammy's green Buick Park Avenue and came to a stop. The man climbed out of his vehicle and confronted the frightened mother and daughter. After threatening the women, the man got back into his car and drove off.

     Instead of calling the police or going home, Tammy Meyers sent her daughter into the house to fetch her 22-year-old brother Brandon. Brandon got into the Buick armed with a 9 mm pistol. He and his mother drove off in search of the unknown motorist who had frightened his mother and his sister.

     According to this version of the story, after driving around for a few minutes, Tammy spotted the silver car she was looking for. She followed that vehicle but quickly lost track of it and headed home. The man she had been following, however, hadn't lost track of Tammy. He followed her and Brandon back to their house.

     At eleven-thirty that night the man in the silver car caught up to Tammy and her son in the cul-de-sac in front of their home. That's when Brandon and the man exchanged gunfire. A bullet from the other man's gun struck Tammy in the head. She collapsed in her driveway. The shooter sped off and someone called 911.

     In speaking to a television reporter with a local ABC affiliate, Robert Meyers said he didn't know why his wife had to lose her life over such a petty incident. "Every time you turn around someone's getting shot in Las Vegas," he said. Admitting that "there were mistakes made" by his wife, the husband called his son Brandon a hero.

     Some people, while lamenting Tammy Meyers' murder, said they didn't understand why she didn't call the police instead of taking matters into her own hands and risking her life and the life of her son by going after the man who had threatened her? Wasn't that asking for trouble? What was she thinking?

     In the wake of this public criticism, Robert Meyers shut down the GoFundMe fundraising site that had been started by a friend of the family. Mr. Meyers returned $6,000 to donors. Sympathy had turned to skepticism. Regarding the Internet site, Mr. Meyers said, "If all of you people think I was a fraud and lied about the facts I am truly sorry."

     Brandon Meyers, in response to the criticism of his mother, said this to a reporter: "Everyone can think what they have to think. I did it for a reason. And I'd do it again for anyone I love."

     On Thursday February 19, 2015, one week after the shooting, the so-called Las Vegas Road Rage Murder Case took a confusing twist when 19-year-old Erich Milton Nowsch Jr. surrendered to the SWAT team that surrounded his house less than a block from the Meyers residence. Nowsch, five-foot-three and 100 pounds, didn't look anything like the composite police sketch of the unknown motorist in the silver car.

     Robert Meyers, in speaking to reporters about this development in the case said, "We know this boy. I couldn't tell you this before. He knew where we lived. We knew how bad he was but we didn't know he was this bad. My wife fed him, she gave him money, she told him to pull his pants up and be a man."

     To a group of reporters out in front of his house, Mr. Meyers said, "Are you all happy? You made my wife look like an animal. There's the animal, a block away!"

    So what did this new twist in the case mean? If Brandon, his sister and their father knew the identify of the person who had committed the murder, why wasn't Erich Nowsch arrested sooner? How did detectives identify Nowsch as the suspected shooter?

    A Las Vegas prosecutor charged Erich Nowsch with murder with a deadly weapon, attempted murder with a deadly weapon and discharging a gun within a vehicle.

     According to a police report on the case made public on Friday February 20, 2015, detectives had found, in front of the Meyers residence, six .45-caliber shell casings. Nowsch's friends told investigators the suspect never mentioned a road rage incident to them. Instead, he said people were after him. Moreover, he was not the driver of the silver Audi involved in the case. Nowsch, however, told his friends that he returned fire when someone in the green Buick shot at him.

     Following his guilty plea to murder in late in 2015, the judge sentenced Erich Nowsch to life in prison with the possibility of parole after serving ten years.

The Robert Early Murder Case

      In September 2013 Emily Lambert, a third grade teacher at the O Henry Elementary School near Plano, Texas, a suburban community just north of Dallas, divorced her husband Donavan. The couple had daughters aged four and five. Emily and Donavan, following the break up, remained on good terms.

     Shortly after the divorce the 33-year-old resident of Lewisville began dating a man from Euless, Texas named Robert Early.

     On Saturday, March 1, 2014, Emily Lambert and Mr. Early were booked into the Stevens Best Western Inn in Carlsbad, New Mexico. He was on a work assignment and she had accompanied him for the weekend. The next morning Robert Early called the Carlsbad Police Department and reported Emily missing.

     When questioned by police officers the 33-year-old Early said he and his missing girlfriend had left the motel bar--the Blue Cactus Lounge--at eleven-thirty the previous night. When they got back to their room they argued. Emily Lambert became so angry she stormed out of the motel. When she didn't return in the morning he called the police.

     Mr. Early described Emily Lambert as five-foot-six, 175 pounds, with long blond hair and a large tattoo of an owl on her back. He said she had left the room without her wallet and her cell phone.

     At four-thirty in the afternoon of Tuesday, March 4, 2014, police officers discovered the body of a female that matched the description of the woman missing from the Best Western Inn. The corpse was found in a field along State Road 31 near Loving, New Mexico, eight miles southeast of Carlsbad. Officers identified the body as Emily Lambert.

     That night detectives questioned Robert Early at the Carlsbad Police Department. In the course of the interrogation session he confessed to killing his girlfriend.

     After returning to their room after an evening of drinking at the motel bar the couple got into a physical fight that led to her being knocked unconscious. From the room Mr. Early carried Emily to his silver 2007 Hyundai Elantra.

     With the unconscious women in the Hyundai, Robert drove to a remote area. When he took Emily out of the car she regained consciousness. They fought again and this time he knocked her out with an air pump. He tied one end of a rope around her neck and closed the other end in the passenger's side car door. With her tethered to the vehicle he climbed behind the wheel and dragged her body to where it was found.

     At one o'clock that morning Carlsbad police officers booked Robert Early into the Eddy County Detention Center on the charges of first-degree murder, kidnapping and tampering with evidence. The judge set his bail at $1 million.

     In May 2015, a jury sitting in Carlsbad, New Mexico found Robert Early guilty as charged. The judge sentenced him to the mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole.

The Terry Bean Sexual Abuse Case

      In 2014 Terry Bean, the 66-year-old Portland, Oregon real estate developer, co-founder of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund and  prominent member of an organization called the Human Rights Campaign, had friends in high places.

      Mr. Bean had friends in positions of power because he was a big-time fund raiser (bundler) for politicians in the democrat party. He raised $500,000 for President Obama's 2012 re-election and shoveled money into the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Terry Bean also gave President Obama $70,000.

     Bean's political money funneling resulted in several visits to the White House, a trip on Air Force One and photograph-taking sessions with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

     At a 2009 Human Rights Campaign dinner President Obama thanked Mr. Bean, calling him a "great friend and supporter." 

     In 2013 Terry Bean and his 25-year-old boyfriend Kiah Lawson were photographed together under a picture of George Washington in the White House library. Not long after that the couple experienced a nasty break-up. The fractured relationship would cause both men a lot of problems.

     In 2014 investigators with the Portland Police Department's Sex Crime Unit began looking into allegations made by Kiah Lawson that Mr. Bean secretly made video tapes of men having sex in his bedroom. When questioned by detectives Terry Bean returned the favor by accusing Mr. Lawson of using these videotapes to blackmail him for money.

     The Bean/Lawson sex/extortion investigation took a darker turn when Kiah Lawson confessed that he and Bean used the iPhone app Grindr to arrange a sexual encounter with a 15-year-old boy, a tryst that took place, according to Lawson, on September 27, 2013 at a hotel in Eugene, Oregon.

     In late November 2014 a Lane County grand jury indicted Bean and Lawson on counts of third-degree sodomy and third-degree sexual abuse. Following their arrests the suspects made bail and were released from custody.

     One of Bean's attorneys, Kristen Winemiller, told reporters that her client was the true victim in the case. She said, "Over the course of several months in 2013 and 2014 Terry Bean was the victim of an extortion ring led by several men known to law enforcement. His current arrest was connected to the ongoing investigation of that case in which Mr. Bean has fully cooperated. No allegation against Terry Bean should be taken at face value."

     On September 1, 2015 Terry Bean offered the alleged victim $225,000 as a civil court settlement.  In return the San Diego teen agreed not to cooperate with the prosecution. Lane County Deputy District Attorney Erik Hasselman told the judge that without the boy's cooperation the state could not go forward with the prosecution. Shortly thereafter Circuit Judge Jay McAlpin dismissed the case against the prominent gay activist.

     In speaking to reporters prosecutor Hasselman said, "I think this result offends justice."

     In a written statement Terry Bean wrote, "I take some measure of comfort that the world knows what I've always known--that I was falsely accused and completely innocent of every accusation that was made."

     In 2018 the alleged victim, now 20-years-old, came forward and agreed to testify against Terry Bean and Kiah Lawson. In January 2019 Bean and Lawson were re-indicted on the same charges. Eight months later a Lane County jury, based on the testimony of the victim, found Kiah Lawson guilty as charged. The judge sentenced him to two years in prison. 

     In October 2019, the judge postponed Terry Bean's trial to the spring of 2020. That year a state appeals court overturned Kiah Lawson's conviction.

     In January 2022, after the alleged rape victim declined to testify against Terry Bean, the Lane County prosecutor dismissed the case against him.

Veteran Affairs Patient Jonathan Montano's Wrongful Death

     On May 25, 2011, 65-year-old military veteran Jonathan Montano sat in a chair with an IV shunt in his arm waiting for his dialysis treatment at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Loma Linda, California. Norma Montano, Jonathan's wife of 44 years, waited with him in the federal medical facility. After waiting four hours for his dialysis treatment, Mr. Montano informed a nurse that, tired of waiting, he had decided to seek dialysis at the VA hospital in Long Beach. Jonathan sent his wife to fetch the car.

     A VA nurse informed the patient that he was not authorized to leave the hospital. When it became obvious that Mr. Montano disagreed with that policy and began to leave, the nurse called for muscle in the form of armed, uniformed officers with the Department of Veteran Affairs Police. (The VA has its own police force. The VA police exist to deter and prevent crime and investigate criminal incidents within the VA system.)

     As the feeble veteran made his way to the hospital door two VA police officers tackled him to the ground. The stunned patient's head bounced off the floor and he ended up being pinned down with one officer's knee in his back and the other officer's boot on his neck. The brute force caused the dissection of the veteran's carotid artery, and this led a blood clot that caused a stroke.

     Jonathan Montano had come to the VA hospital in Loma Linda for dialysis and ended up being manhandled by in-house police officers. Apparently in the VA system, patients who expressed disapproval of the poor service were punished. Mr. Montano would have been better off if he had been simply ignored or allowed to find care elsewhere.

     As the VA officers were brutalizing her husband, Norma Montano sat in the car waiting for him to walk out of the hospital. She had no idea that his walking days were over. When he didn't appear, she re-entered the hospital to find him, thinking that perhaps medical personnel were finally hooking him up to a dialysis machine.

     According to the VA doctor who spoke to Norma about her husband, the patent had fallen and suffered a stroke. This of course was not true. She learned of the doctor's lie when a nurse pulled her aside and told her what really happened to Mr. Montano.

     Jonathan Montano, on June 11, 2011, two and a-half weeks after being slammed to the hospital floor and pinned with VA boots on his back and neck, died. Hospital authorities listed stroke as the cause, and natural as the manner of his death. As a result of this fabrication no one in an official position called for a criminal investigation.

     In May 2014 Norma Montano and her two adult children filed a civil suit in federal court against the  Loma Linda VA hospital. The plaintiffs sought punitive, compensatory and emotional stress damages for Mr. Montano's wrongful death at the hands of the VA police officers. The government stood accused, in connection with this veteran's death, of committing the torts of negligence and false imprisonment. There was also a bureaucratic cover-up.

    In September 2015 the Montano family settled the wrongful death suit against the VA for $500,000. The fates of the VA officers who caused this veteran's death was not made public.

The Jon Lang Murder Case

     After a party on the night of June 18, 1993, 35-year-old Jon Lang's wife Debbie died in the couple's swimming pool. The drowning took place in Patterson Township not far from the western Pennsylvania town of Industry. The Beaver County coroner ruled the death accidental.

     Nineteen years after Debbie Lang's drowning, a coroner's jury sitting in Beaver Pennsylvania ruled that Debbie Lang's death had been caused by a criminal act. In November 2012 a Beaver County prosecutor charged Jon Lang, now 54, with the murder of his wife.

     Whenever a suspect is charged with murder decades after the questioned death, the newly discovered evidence is usually a crime scene fingerprint identification or DNA evidence that linked the defendant to the victim or the site of the murder. It's forensic science that usually saves the day in cold-case murder investigations.

     In the Lang case, however, the evidence supporting the long delayed murder charge lacked the incriminating value of physical evidence. The incriminating evidence was in the form of the most unreliable evidence of all--eyewitness testimony.

     The new testimony in the Lang murder consisted of an event the witness had seen nineteen years earlier when he was 16-years-old. Jamie Darlington told a panel of Beaver County coroner's jurors that on June 18, 1993 he was a guest at the Long residence. That night when Darlington looked out a second-story window he saw Jon Lang push his wife into the swimming pool. According to the witness Mr. Lang kept his struggling wife submerged by holding her down with a long-handled pool skimmer.

     According to the 35-year-old's testimony, Mr. Lang became aware he had been seen murdering his wife. When Mr. Lang entered the house after the drowning he threatened the boy. "You didn't hear anything," he said. "And you didn't see nothing." Darlington said he didn't report the homicide out of fear for his own life.

     William Difenderfer, Jon Lang's attorney, called Jamie Darlington's testimony "preposterous." The attorney asserted that Darlington was telling this story now because he was himself in trouble with the law. (In this regard Mr. Darlington was not unlike a jailhouse snitch, the absolute bottom of the evidentiary totem pole.)

     In speaking to a local television reporter after the coroner's jury verdict, Gloria Caler, a Lang neighbor in 1993, said, "I just never believed it was an accident because the lady couldn't swim and the pool was green and it was like, who would want to go swimming in a pool like that? At the time I never thought it was an accident, but nothing came about it."

     On December 9, 2013, the first day of Jon Lang's murder trial, the defendant pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter, a lesser homicide offense. While the no-contest plea was not legally an acknowledgement of criminal culpability it was interpreted as an admission of guilt. Why else would Jon Lang allow himself to be convicted on such flimsy evidence?

     The Beaver County Judge sentenced Jon Lang to three to six years in prison, a light sentence if he had murdered his wife in cold blood. 

The John Mayes Murder Case

     Police officers in the northwest New Mexico town of Farmington, on the morning of June 10, 2011, discovered the body of Dr. Jim Nordstrom. The victim was buried in a woodpile behind his upscale house. The previous night someone bludgeoned the 55-year-old physician to death. One of the victim's fingers had been nearly severed in what the forensic pathologist identified as a defensive wound. The killer had stolen the doctor's pickup truck as well as his credit cards.

     Not long after finding the doctor's body behind his Foothills neighborhood home, police officers arrested 17-year-old John Mayes. Rob Mayes, Farmington's city manager, had adopted John, a boy who had grown up in Ukraine where he had been abused.

     Detectives over a two day period conducted five interrogation sessions during which time John Mayes confessed to killing the doctor. The interrogations were recorded and preceded by Miranda warnings. Mayes also signed forms in which he waived his constitutional right to remain silent. The young murder suspect did not, however, have an attorney present during the police interrogations.

     John Mayes told his questioners that on June 9, 2011 he ran away from home. When he came upon the house in the Foothills neighborhood he snuck inside and hid in a bedroom. He entered the dwelling through an unlocked window. At the time of the intrusion Dr. Nordstrom was in his living room watching television. About an hour after Mayes entered the house the doctor walked into the bedroom. That's when Mayes struck him in the head eight times with the handle of a pool cue.

     With the doctor dead in his home, John Mayes stole his credit cards and his pickup truck. After taking a four hour nap in the stolen vehicle he ate a meal at a Burger King. When he finished his hamburger he used the victim's credit cards to go on a $3,000 shopping spree.

     Later that night John Mayes returned to the murder scene to clean up the blood and to bury the body in the victim's backyard. After tiring of digging a grave he dragged the corpse to the woodpile.

     San Juan County Chief Deputy District Attorney Brent Capshaw charged John Mayes with first-degree murder and the lesser offenses of aggravated burglary, tampering with evidence, vehicle theft and fraudulent use of credit cards. After being booked into the San Juan County Jail the magistrate denied the suspect bond.

     John Mayes, represented by attorney Stephen Taylor, pleaded not guilty at a preliminary hearing held in August 2011. Attorney Taylor advised the court he was challenging the constitutionality of his client's initial five statements to the police on the grounds he had not knowingly waived his Miranda rights. (The judge later ruled that the confessions had been constitutionally acquired and could therefore be introduced into evidence at Mayes' trial.)

     Speaking from the stand at his preliminary hearing, John Mayes offered a version of the events of June 9, 2011 that were far less incriminating than the substance of his statements to the police. Rather than sneaking into the doctor's home that night, he came upon Dr. Nordstrom outside of his Foothills neighborhood house when the doctor was washing his pickup truck. Mayes told the doctor he had run away from home and asked if he could spend the night at his place. Dr. Nordstrom said that he could.

     That night Mayes and the doctor watched a James Bond film on television. After the movie the doctor gave Mayes a tour of the house after which they played a couple games of pool. Dr. Nordstrom asked Mayes if he would like to "try something new." When the physician made a sexual advance Mayes beat him to death with a pool cue.

     Mayes admitted that after killing Dr. Nordstrom he stole his truck and used his credit cards before returning to the house to hide the body.

     Pursuant to a change of venue, the John Mayes murder trial got underway on November 13, 2013 in a McKinley County court in Gallup, New Mexico. Neither side disputed the fact Mayes killed the doctor in his home. What the jury had to determine was whether or not the defendant had committed the act in self defense.

     After the prosecution rested its case, a presentation based heavily on the five statements John Mayes had made to the police following his arrest, the defense brought psychologist Gary White and forensic psychologist Maxann Schwartz to the stand. Both witnesses testified that Mayes' behavior that night had been influenced by a personality disorder that affects people who as children had been neglected or abused. The psychologists said the defendant suffered from "reactive attachment disorder," or RAD. People with his disorder often seek attention from strangers but become aggressive when these individuals try to be nice to them.

     On November 20, 2013 a psychologist from Boise State University named Dr. Charles Honts took the stand for the defense to testify that he had given Mayes a polygraph test early in 2013. Prosecutor Brent Capshaw objected to this witness on grounds he was not a qualified polygraph examiner. (In 2005, a U. S. magistrate judge in Atlanta had prohibited Dr. Honts from giving polygraph testimony in a murder trial. The judge had said, "The court attributes little weight to Dr. Honts' opinions.)

     After Judge William Birdsall overruled the prosecutor's objections to this polygraph witness, Dr. Honts took the stand and said he had asked Mayes four questions: Did Nordstrom invite you into his home? Did you play pool with Nordstrom? Did he slap you on the butt? Did you hide in the bedroom waiting to hit Nordstrom? The witness testified that the defendant answered yes to the first three questions and no to the fourth. According to Dr. Honts, his polygraph examination revealed that Mayes was truthful in his responses.

     On rebuttal, Peter Pierangeli, a polygraph examiner from Albuquerque took the stand for the prosecution and testified that Dr. Honts did not ask the defendant appropriate questions. His polygraph results were therefore unreliable. According to Peter Pierangeli, if Dr. Honts wanted to get to the truth, he would have asked Mayes if Dr. Nordstrom had sexually assaulted him.

     John Mayes did not take the witness stand on his own behalf.

     The defense attorney in his closing remarks to the jury pointed out that the police, by not seizing Dr. Nordstrom's computer and a prescription bottle found in his bedroom, had botched the investigation. The defense attorney told the jurors that Dr. Honts' polygraph test, by itself, created reasonable doubt that his client was guilty of murder.

     On Monday, November 25, 2013, after deliberating ten hours over a period of two days, the jury found John Mayes guilty of second-degree murder. The jurors also found the defendant guilty of the lesser charges. The conviction carried a maximum sentence of 31 years in prison. The jurors had accepted enough of the defendant's story to believe Dr. Nordstrom had not been the victim of a cold-blooded murder. The jury had also rejected the notion of self-defense in the case.

     Had John Mayes been convicted of first-degree murder his sentence would have been life without parole.

     In November 2014, at Mayes' sentence hearing, delayed months to allow for the appeal on the procedural issues, the two defense psychologists testified that the now 21-year-old could be rehabilitated through "intensive therapy." Dr. Gary White, the psychologist who had treated Mayes for three years testified that he had seen an improvement in the young man's behavior. Dr. White said he would be willing to continue counseling Mayes if the authorities placed him in a correctional facility in the Albuquerque area.

     Defense attorney Stephen Taylor asked Judge William Birdsall to sentence his client to 15 years in prison.

     John Mayes, in speaking to the court, apologized for killing Dr. Nordstrom. He said, "My actions do not reflect what I would like to become. I now know how to better handle myself so that what happened will not occur."

     San Juan County Chief Deputy District Attorney Brent Capshaw told Judge Birdsall that in his fourteen years as a prosecutor the Nordstrom murder was the worst case he had ever worked on. Capshaw said, "Mayes continually bludgeoned Dr. Nordstrom in the back of the head as the victim tried to crawl away. I can't imagine a more violent death." After the murder, according to the prosecutor, Mayes "set up shop" at Nordstrom's home where he downloaded pornography and masturbated. "I can't find a case that calls more for the maximum sentence."

     Judge Birdsall, for the crimes of second-degree murder, aggravated burglary, car theft and several of the lesser offenses, sentenced John Mayes to 33 years in prison.

Victor White's Police Custody Death

     Victor White III grew up as part of a large family (8 siblings) in Alexandria, Louisiana. He played the drums and sang in the choir of the local Baptist Church where his father served as pastor. In late 2013 Victor White moved two hours south of Alexandria to New Iberia where the 22-year-old had a job at a Waffle House restaurant. According to his girlfriend he was saving money so he could afford an apartment for himself, her and their one-year-old son.

     On his day off on March 2, 2014 Mr. White and his friend Isaiah Lewis walked to the Hop-In gas station and convenience store to buy cigarillos. While they were in the store a fight broke out in the parking lot. Someone called 911.

     A deputy with the Iberia Parish Sheriff's Office, in responding to the 911 public disturbance call, spotted White and Lewis walking along the street about six blocks from the scene of the fight, a melee involving young black men. Since Victor White and his friend were black the deputy sheriff pulled over and confronted them.

     The officer, pursuant to the street inquiry, patted down Victor White to determine if he was armed. In so doing the deputy felt a bag in White's pocket that contained marijuana. At this point the officer placed him under arrest, handcuffed him behind his back and gave him his Miranda rights. A more thorough body search uncovered a small packet of cocaine. The officer placed the arrested man into the back of the police car and drove to the sheriff's office.

     At the Iberia Parish Sheriff's Office, according to the police version of what happened, Victor White refused to exit the vehicle. The deputy summoned help. That's when officers heard a gun go off from inside the patrol car. Deputies found Mr. White slumped over in the back seat.

     Shortly after being rushed to a nearby hospital Victor White died from a single bullet wound in his chest. Following the shooting death of a handcuffed man in police custody, the Iberia County sheriff called in the Louisiana State Police to conduct an investigation of the incident.

     According to early news accounts of the case Victor White committed suicide by shooting himself in the chest with a gun the deputy sheriff missed in his frisk and full body search.

    In August 2014 Iberia County Coroner Carl Ditch provided the White family with a copy of the autopsy report. The forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy determined the fatal bullet entered the right side of White's chest, perforated his lung and heart then exited near his left armpit.

     According to the autopsy report the entrance wound was not surrounded by gunpowder stains usually found in cases of close range shots associated with self-inflicted shootings. The forensic pathologist noted abrasions around White's left eye. According to the toxicology report the dead man had alcohol and marijuana in his system.

     In a news release Coroner Carl Ditch announced the manner of Victor White's death as suicide. The coroner said he reached this conclusion after "every other manner of death in the case was ruled out." Obviously aware that questions would be raised regarding how, under the circumstances of this case, Mr. White could have shot himself in the chest, the coroner noted that because of the dead man's physique he would have been able to manipulate the gun to a position consistent with the entrance wound. The forensic pathology did not explain what it was about Victor White's body that allowed him to pull off that feat.

     In early September 2014 a spokesperson with the Louisiana State Police said the results of that agency's investigation had been turned over to the Iberia Parish District Attorney's Office. When reporters asked District Attorney Phil Haney if he was charging anyone in connection with White's death, the prosecutor said he was not.

     The White family was not satisfied with the coroner's manner of death ruling. Moreover, there was deep distrust of the state police investigation. The family added attorney Benjamin Crump of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown fame to the family's legal team.

     In October 2017, United States Magistrate Judge Patrick Hanna ruled out criminal wrongdoing in Victor White's Death. Victor White's family in March 2018 settled their federal lawsuit against the sheriff's office for $325,000.