In Chicago, Illinois on September 19, 1910 a noise at two in the morning coming from her 15-year-old's bedroom awoke Mary Hiller. She slipped into her robe and ventured into the hall where she noticed that the gaslight outside her daughter's room had been turned off. Fearing that an intruder had entered the house Mrs. Hiller returned to the master bedroom and shook her husband awake.
Clarence Hiller, on the landing en route to his daughter's room, bumped into Thomas Jennings, a 32-year-old paroled burglar in possession of a .38-caliber revolver. The men struggled then tumbled down the stairway. At the foot of the stairs Mr. Jennings, the bigger man, got to his feet, pulled his gun and fired two shots. The first bullet entered Mr. Hiller's right arm, traveled up through his shoulder and exited the left side of his neck. The second slug slammed into his chest, piercing his heart and lung before coming out his back. The gunman left the scene through the front door, leaving behind a screaming Mary Hiller, her dead husband and a terrified 15-year-old girl who had been sexually molested.
About a mile from the murder house Thomas Jennings, walking with a limp and bleeding from cuts on his arm passed four off-duty police officers waiting for a streetcar. When questioned about his injuries, Jennings said he had fallen off a trolley. One of the officers patted him down and discovered the recently fired handgun. The officers placed him under arrest and escorted the suspect to the police station.
A few hours after the arrest detectives at the murder scene found the two .38-caliber bullets that passed through Clarence Hiller's body. Today a forensic firearms identification expert would be able to match the crime scene slugs with bullets test-fired through the suspect's gun. But in 1910 this type of forensic identification was 15 year in the future. Investigators also determined that the intruder had entered the Hiller house through a kitchen window. A detective who was ahead of his time found four fingerprint impressions on a freshly painted porch rail outside the point of entry. (Paint in those days dried slowly.) A technician with the police department's two-year-old fingerprint bureau photographed the the finger marks that had been left in the dark gray paint. (The science of fingerprint identification first came to America from England in 1906 when the St. Louis Police Department started the country's first fingerprint bureau.) Mary Hiller, traumatized by the murder of her husband failed to pick Thomas Jennings out of a police lineup. While roughed up and the recipient of a third-degree interrogation, Thomas Jennings did not confess.
At Jennings' May 1911 murder trial two Chicago Police Department fingerprint examiners, a fingerprint technician from the police department in Ottawa, Canada and a private expert who had studied fingerprint science at Scotland Yard testified that the impressions on the porch rail matched the ridges on four of the defendant's fingers, placing him at the scene of the murder. While the idea that fingerprints were unique had been around for 20 years, this was the first U.S. jury to be presented with this form of impression evidence. The chance of convicting Jennings was not good because the prosecution's case--the defendant's arrest one mile from the house, his injuries, his possession of a recently fired gun and his murder scene fingerprints--was based entirely on circumstantial evidence. In those days, and to some extent today, jurors prefer direct evidence in the form of confessions and eyewitness identifications.
Prior to the testimony of the four fingerprint witnesses, Mr. Jennings' attorney objected to the introduction of this evidence on the grounds this form of forensic identification had not been scientifically tested and was therefore unreliable and inadmissible. The trial judge, in allowing the fingerprint testimony, relied on a 1908 arson case, Carleton v. People, in which the defendant had been linked to the fire scene by impressions left by his shoes.
The jury, following a short deliberation found Thomas Jennings guilty of first-degree murder. To arrive at this verdict the jurors placed more weight on the physical evidence than on the defendant's claim of innocence. The judge sentenced Thomas Jennings to death.
On appeal Thomas Jennings' lawyer argued that there was no scientific proof that fingerprints were unique. By admitting the testimony of so-called fingerprint experts the trial court had sentenced a man to the gallows on pseudoscience and bogus expertise. The Illinois Supreme Court, on December 21, 1911, ruled that the Jennings trial judge had not made a judicial error by admitting the fingerprint testimony. This was good news for forensic science and bad news for Thomas Jennings who died in 1912 at the end of a rope.
People v. Jennings laid the groundwork for forensic fingerprint identification in America. By 1925 virtually every court in the United States accepted this form of impression evidence as proof of guilt. In medicine, illness leads to cures, and in law enforcement some murder cases lead to advances in forensic science.
Clarence Hiller, on the landing en route to his daughter's room, bumped into Thomas Jennings, a 32-year-old paroled burglar in possession of a .38-caliber revolver. The men struggled then tumbled down the stairway. At the foot of the stairs Mr. Jennings, the bigger man, got to his feet, pulled his gun and fired two shots. The first bullet entered Mr. Hiller's right arm, traveled up through his shoulder and exited the left side of his neck. The second slug slammed into his chest, piercing his heart and lung before coming out his back. The gunman left the scene through the front door, leaving behind a screaming Mary Hiller, her dead husband and a terrified 15-year-old girl who had been sexually molested.
About a mile from the murder house Thomas Jennings, walking with a limp and bleeding from cuts on his arm passed four off-duty police officers waiting for a streetcar. When questioned about his injuries, Jennings said he had fallen off a trolley. One of the officers patted him down and discovered the recently fired handgun. The officers placed him under arrest and escorted the suspect to the police station.
A few hours after the arrest detectives at the murder scene found the two .38-caliber bullets that passed through Clarence Hiller's body. Today a forensic firearms identification expert would be able to match the crime scene slugs with bullets test-fired through the suspect's gun. But in 1910 this type of forensic identification was 15 year in the future. Investigators also determined that the intruder had entered the Hiller house through a kitchen window. A detective who was ahead of his time found four fingerprint impressions on a freshly painted porch rail outside the point of entry. (Paint in those days dried slowly.) A technician with the police department's two-year-old fingerprint bureau photographed the the finger marks that had been left in the dark gray paint. (The science of fingerprint identification first came to America from England in 1906 when the St. Louis Police Department started the country's first fingerprint bureau.) Mary Hiller, traumatized by the murder of her husband failed to pick Thomas Jennings out of a police lineup. While roughed up and the recipient of a third-degree interrogation, Thomas Jennings did not confess.
At Jennings' May 1911 murder trial two Chicago Police Department fingerprint examiners, a fingerprint technician from the police department in Ottawa, Canada and a private expert who had studied fingerprint science at Scotland Yard testified that the impressions on the porch rail matched the ridges on four of the defendant's fingers, placing him at the scene of the murder. While the idea that fingerprints were unique had been around for 20 years, this was the first U.S. jury to be presented with this form of impression evidence. The chance of convicting Jennings was not good because the prosecution's case--the defendant's arrest one mile from the house, his injuries, his possession of a recently fired gun and his murder scene fingerprints--was based entirely on circumstantial evidence. In those days, and to some extent today, jurors prefer direct evidence in the form of confessions and eyewitness identifications.
Prior to the testimony of the four fingerprint witnesses, Mr. Jennings' attorney objected to the introduction of this evidence on the grounds this form of forensic identification had not been scientifically tested and was therefore unreliable and inadmissible. The trial judge, in allowing the fingerprint testimony, relied on a 1908 arson case, Carleton v. People, in which the defendant had been linked to the fire scene by impressions left by his shoes.
The jury, following a short deliberation found Thomas Jennings guilty of first-degree murder. To arrive at this verdict the jurors placed more weight on the physical evidence than on the defendant's claim of innocence. The judge sentenced Thomas Jennings to death.
On appeal Thomas Jennings' lawyer argued that there was no scientific proof that fingerprints were unique. By admitting the testimony of so-called fingerprint experts the trial court had sentenced a man to the gallows on pseudoscience and bogus expertise. The Illinois Supreme Court, on December 21, 1911, ruled that the Jennings trial judge had not made a judicial error by admitting the fingerprint testimony. This was good news for forensic science and bad news for Thomas Jennings who died in 1912 at the end of a rope.
People v. Jennings laid the groundwork for forensic fingerprint identification in America. By 1925 virtually every court in the United States accepted this form of impression evidence as proof of guilt. In medicine, illness leads to cures, and in law enforcement some murder cases lead to advances in forensic science.
Yes but we have also been plagued by junk science ever since. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/09/07/trial-by-fire
ReplyDeleteI guess that means we gotta take the bad with the good!
DeleteDNA is not junk science.
ReplyDelete