The Historic Rick Jackson Fingerprint Misidentification Case

     In 1997 detectives in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, a community outside of Philadelphia, arrested Rick Jackson shortly after Jackson's friend, Alvin Davis, was stabbed to death in Davis' apartment. In the interrogation room detectives showed Mr. Jackson a crime scene photograph of a bloody latent print found near the body. According to a pair of fingerprint examiners with the Upper Darby Police Department, one of whom was also a police superintendent, that latent was left at the scene by Mr. Jackson.

     Rick Jackson didn't deny that he had been in Davis' apartment but he denied killing him and said he was certain the bloody print wasn't his. Jackson was actually relieved when he realized the police were basing their case on a misidentified print. He figured that once they realized their mistake they would look elsewhere for a suspect.

     With Rick Jackson so insistent the bloody print wasn't his, Michael Malloy, his attorney, took the unique step of having it examined by outside experts Vernon McCloud and George Wynn. The retired FBI fingerprint examiners had 75 years of experience between them. Both men were certified by the International Association of Identification (IAI). (Only a handful of the nation's fingerprint examiners have gone through the rigorous IAI certification process.) Wynn and McCloud, to their amazement, found that the bloody crime scene latent was not Rick Jackson's.

     The district attorney, confronted with a defense bolstered by a pair of prominent fingerprint experts who disagreed with the local examiners (who were not IAI certified) pushed forward with the trial anyway. In anticipation of the then unheard-of-situation of fingerprint examiners squaring off against each other in court, the district attorney brought in a fingerprint expert from another state to add quantity if not quality to the prosecution's case.

     In 1998 the Jackson case went to trial and the jury, despite the conflicting fingerprint testimony, found him guilty of first-degree murder. The judge sentenced him to life in prison without parole.

     Vernon McCloud and George Wynn were so concerned about the fingerprint misidentification in the Jackson case they asked the IAI to gather a group of experts to review the evidence. When the IAI panel agreed that the crime scene latent was not the convicted man's, the district attorney began to doubt his own experts and sent a photograph of the bloody print to the FBI Lab for analysis. The examiners in Quantico, Virginia agreed with McCloud and Wynn and the IAI panel. Rick Jackson had been sent to prison on the strength of a misidentified crime scene latent.

     In December 1999, after Rick Jackson spent two years behind bars, his conviction was set aside and he was set free. The out-of-state fingerprint examiner who testified at the trial was fired, but the Upper Darby examiners were not disciplined or prohibited from future fingerprint work. Moreover, they would continue to insist that they had been right and all the experts were wrong. In 200l Rick Jackson filed a civil suit against the examiners and the Upper Darby Police Department. He lost the case.

     The Jackson case is historic because it is one of the first cases in which the identification of a crime scene latent was successfully challenged by the defense. This and later misidentification cases raised serious questions about the scientific backgrounds and qualifications of police department fingerprint examiners. 

The Forsythia Owen Murder Case

     On September 25, 2002 19-year-old Forsythia Owen and her boyfriend of nine months got into an argument in the living room of her Denver Colorado apartment. Before the fight broke out she impaired him by slipping a drug into his drink. In the course of the dispute Forsythia Owen grabbed a knife from the kitchen and stabbed her boyfriend in the chest.

     Paramedics rushed the victim to a nearby hospital where he survived his puncture wound. (I don't know who called 911.) Forsythia Owen greeted police officers at the scene by saying, "I'm the one who stabbed him. Arrest me." And that's what the officers did.

     A local prosecutor charged Forsythia Owen with assault with a deadly weapon causing serious bodily harm. Pursuant to a plea deal the assistant district attorney allowed Owen to plead guilty to the lesser offense of felony assault. The prosecutor dropped charges related to Forsythia Owen's assault of police officers while she was in custody.

     In January 2003 the judge sentenced Forsythia Owen to four years probation.

     Owen, a serious abuser of cocaine, alcohol and methamphetamine, had been diagnosed as having a "mood disorder" and "attention-deficit/hyperactivity." Because of her substance abuse, psychiatrists were unable to determine the degree to which she may have been psychotic as well. 

     Ten months into her probation a drug treatment administrator kicked Forsythia Owen out of the program for "non-compliance" and "minimal progress" for continuing to use cocaine and meth. Rather than send her to prison, probation officials enrolled her in a Denver community corrections program. After refusing to cooperate with the social workers the judge, in December 2004, sent her to prison for three years. If they couldn't fix this woman the authorities could at least get her off the street.

     In 2013 the 30-year-old ex-felon lived in the Denver suburb of Englewood with her 12-year-old daughter. On Sunday morning, September 22, 2013, Englewood police officers responded to a 911 call concerning a badly beaten man lying in an alley. Officers found 42-year-old Denzel Rainey in the alley bleeding from a severe blunt force head wound and other injuries. Paramedics rushed Mr. Rainey to the Swedish Medical Center where he died a short time later.

     Mr. Rainey, a married man with three children struggled with alcohol abuse that led to his homelessness. He was attacked in the alley where he slept at night.

     According to the forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy, Mr. Rainey had a fractured skull, lacerated liver, broken arms, fractured left hand and six broken ribs. The medical examiner's office listed the cause of death as blunt force trauma. The manner of death: homicide.

     On Monday the day after the attack in the Englewood alley detectives spoke to a man who said that one of his neighbors, a woman named Forsythia Owen, had come to his house on Sunday with a story about a man who had inappropriately touched and abused her daughter. The man she accused was the homeless guy who had just been murdered in the alley.

     Later that day when questioned by detectives, Forsythia Owen admitted beating the man in the alley with a baseball bat. After confronting him about molesting her daughter she started swinging the bat. Advised of her Miranda rights Owen said, "I need a lawyer."

     An Arapahoe County prosecutor charged Forsythia Owen with first-degree murder and assault with a deadly weapon causing serious bodily harm. A magistrate denied her bond after the police booked her into the Arapahoe County Detention Center.

     Denzel Rainey, other than having driving under the influence convictions and an arrest for marijuana possession, did not have a criminal record. Moreover, there was no information on record regarding accusations of sexual offenses. Mr. Rainey's widow, Lisa, told reporters that "I just don't know what caused her to do that to Denzel. If he did anything to provoke the attack I need to know the answers for closure for me and closure for my kids."

     In speaking to a correspondent with a Denver television affiliate, Lisa Rainey said, "I think Owen is covering for somebody and I want to know: what was the real reason why she did that to my husband. He doesn't deserve to be dead. He would never hurt a child."

     At a March 17, 2014 pre-trial hearing Forsythia Owen's attorney Joe Archembault pleaded her not guilty by reason of insanity. Judge Marilyn Antrim ordered the defendant to undergo psychiatric evaluation at the mental health Institute in Pueblo, Colorado.

     The Arapahoe County prosecutor dropped the first-degree murder charge against Owen to second-degree murder and added first-degree assault and the charge of tampering with evidence.

     The Forsythia Owen murder trial got underway on February 4, 2015. Ten days later the jury, having rejected the insanity defense, found the defendant guilty as charged.

     On May 9, 2015 Judge Marilyn Leonard Antrim sentenced the 32-year-old Owen to 38 years in prison.

James Pepe: The High School Teacher From Hell

     James J. Pepe taught high school history in the Hillsborough County Florida school system. For years he was an erratic, difficult employee who frightened a lot of his follow teachers. In 2001 a faculty member characterized Pepe as "hostile," "aggressive" and "extremely volatile." During this period James Pepe called his principal a "pathological liar" and bragged to people that school administrators were powerless to take action against him. Had this disgruntled, disruptive employee worked in the private sector he would have been fired.

     In dealing with this potentially dangerous and out of control educator the Hillsborough County school superintendent decided against termination. Instead the boss suspended Mr. Pepe with pay, recommended anger management counseling then reassigned him to another school. (In teacher pedophile cases they call this "passing the trash".) Over the next few years, as Mr. Pepe's behavior became more bizarre, paranoid and bellicose he was transferred three more times. At one of the schools this history teacher disrupted, Mr. Pepe accused the principal of assigning him the worst students. He also accused the maintenance staff of turning off the air-conditioning to his classroom. (Given the passive-aggressive nature of public school employee discipline, this might have been true. As they say, even a paranoid can be persecuted. Maybe school administrators were trying to encourage this pain-in-the-neck to quit.)

     In 2012 James Pepe was teaching and causing havoc at Bloomingdale High School near Tampa, his fifth assignment in the Hillsborough County school system. (Mr. Pepe, a seriously troubled unfit teacher was earning $58,000 a year plus benefits.) In recent months he had focused his paranoia on a 59-year-old economics teacher who also taught at Strawberry Crest High School. Mr. Pepe convinced himself that Robert Meredith was the source of all his problems. More specifically the unstable teacher harbored the false notion that Mr. Meredith, his former colleague and friend, was spreading rumors that he was a child molester.

     In August 2012 the 55-year-old history teacher reached out to a childhood friend for help. James Pepe came right to the point--would this person murder Robert Meredith for $5,000? The stunned friend, who said he would think about the homicidal proposal, immediately reported the murder solicitation to the Plant City Police Department. There was no doubt in the friend's mind that James Pepe was dead serious in his desire to have Mr. Meredith killed.

     The police asked the teacher's friend to call Mr. Pepe back and say that while he wasn't interested in committing murder he had found a man who would do the job. The "hitman," of course, would be an undercover cop.

     The undercover officer, in mid-September 2012, spoke with James Pepe by phone. During that conversation the teacher said he "had an issue he might need taken care of for $2,000." (While this seems a little cheap for a contract murder, had Pepe been talking to a real hitman, the price would have been about right. In the U.S. most amateur assassins are inexpensive.)

     In the second phone conversation between James Pepe and the "hitman," the undercover officer tried to arrange a meeting. Pepe declined, but said in no uncertain terms that he wanted to have Robert Meredith murdered. This conversation, of course, was recorded.

     While the police in murder solicitation cases prefer to have audio and videotaped meetings (often in a car parked in a Walmart parking lot) in which the mastermind hands over the blood money and provides the cop with helpful information regarding the target, the Plant City police on September 27, 2012 took James Pepe into custody outside Bloomingdale High School.

     Charged with solicitation of first degree-murder, James Pepe was held without bond in the Hillsborough County Jail.

     On March 31, 2014 James Pepe pleaded guilty to solicitation of murder. The judge sentenced the murder-for-hire mastermind to house arrest for one year and 14 years of probation. This was, under the circumstances, an extremely lenient sentence. One would hope, at least, that the conviction ended Mr. Pepe's teaching career. 

The Case of the Unknown Hitman

     In September 2001, when Keisha Lewis of Canton, Ohio informed her former boyfriend, Paul Tarver, that she was three months pregnant with his baby, he was not happy. He made it clear that he did not want to be a father. Tarver told Keisha to get an abortion, and if she didn't, he would not support the child. Keisha said she had no intention of aborting the pregnancy and would have the baby with or without his support.

     Two months later Keisha and Paul were still fighting over whether she should get an abortion. When Tarver realized she was not going to changer her mind, he threatened to kill her if she didn't end the pregnancy. Keisha said she was reporting him to the police but didn't follow through on her threat. Perhaps he was just bluffing. After the arguing and threats Paul Tarver suddenly stopped coming around. Keisha figured he had moved out of her life for good.

     On March 7, 2002, a week before the baby was due, Paul Tarver popped back into Keisha's life and seemed to be a different man. He apologized for the fighting and the threats and offered to make amends. He said he wanted to remain friends--for the baby's sake--and in the spirit of good will he offered to take her out to dinner. Relieved that her baby's father was no longer an enemy she accepted his invitation.

     A few days later Paul and Keisha, in the cab of his Ford Ranger pickup, pulled into the spacious parking lot surrounding Canton's Country Kitchen restaurant. Although Keisha was nine months pregnant and had trouble walking, Paul parked the truck in a remote section of the lot far from the restaurant. Keisha had just opened the passenger's door and was about to alight from the vehicle when a man wearing a hooded sweatshirt and gloves stuck a gun in her face and ordered her to slide across the seat so he could squeeze into the truck.

     The armed kidnapper ordered Tarver to drive to a chicken hatchery a few miles from the restaurant where the gunman ordered him to hand over his ring, watch and wallet. The kidnapper shot Keisha in the abdomen, Tarver in the foot, then jumped out of the truck and ran into the nearby woods. Using his cellphone Paul Tarver called 911.

     Surgeons, although able to save Keisha's life, could not save the fetus. Doctors treated Mr. Tarver's wound which was minor. Keisha suffered major nerve damage that would leave her with a permanent limp.

     Detectives with the Canton Police Department trying to identify the kidnapper didn't have much to go on. Keisha could only provide a general description of the assailant and Paul Tarver wasn't much help either. Investigators did recover the three shell cases from the shooting scene. A forensic firearms identification expert matched the crime scene firing pin impressions to a .380 Carpati pistol recovered from the site of another Canton shooting. In tracing the history of the gun, police learned that one of the owners was a man who had once worked with Paul Tarver. Detectives also questioned a man from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Mr. Tarver called several times just prior to the assault. During the interrogation the Pittsburgh man broke down and cried, then terminated the questioning.

     In October 2002, a Stark County prosecutor at Paul Tarver's murder-for-hire trial presented a weak, circumstantial case against him. The police had still not identified the triggerman. The defendant's attorney did not put his client on the stand in own defense. If he had done so, the jury would have learned about Tarver's long history of drug trafficking and robbery. Perhaps because the defendant did not take the stand to deny that he had paid someone to end his girlfriend's pregnancy, the jury found him guilty.

     The judge sentenced Paul Tarver to 31 years to life. He continued to maintain his innocence and the triggerman was never identified. This was one of a handful of murder-for-hire cases in which the mastermind was convicted without the testimony, or even the identity of the hitman.

The Kleber Cordova Bathtub Murder Case

     On May 9, 2008 at 7:30 in the morning, 29-year-old Kleber Cordova called 911 and reported that his wife accidentally hit her head on their bathtub faucet and slipped, unconscious, under the water. He said he=

 tried but failed to lift his 4 foot 10 inch, 125 pound wife out of the tub.

     First responders to the Morristown, New Jersey home found a nude Eliana Torres submerged on her back with her face directly under the spout. Given cardiopulmonary resuscitation and rushed to the Morristown Memorial Hospital, the 26-year-old woman died five days later without regaining consciousness.

     Kleber Cordova and Eliana Torres had a one-year-old son and an eight-year-old daughter. The girl attended second grade at the Normandy Elementary School. Cordova, his wife and their eight-year-old daughter had been born in Ecuador and were in the United States illegally. The victim's mother, Rita Valverde, on the day of the bathtub "accident," rushed to the Morristown hospital from her home in Danbury, Connecticut.

     Cordova, when questioned by the police at the hospital a few hours after his 911 call said he arrived home from his night job to find his wife lying face-up in the bathtub with water from the spout pouring directly into her mouth. After failing to remove her from the tub Mr. Cordova called for help. The next day, aware that his wife was still alive and could possibly regain consciousness, Cordova asked to speak with detectives.

     In a video-taped statement given in Spanish through an interpreter, Kleber Cordova changed his story. During the week prior to the bathtub incident he and Eliana had been arguing. She informed him that she had a boyfriend and planned to leave him. That morning, after she asked for a divorce, he want "crazy" and held his wife's head under the water for about three minutes. To make the drowning look like an accident he removed her wet clothing and hid the garments in his car. 

      The interrogators did not warn Cordova of his Miranda rights prior to his confession, but since he had initiated contact with them, the judge in the preliminary hearing ruled the confession admissible. The confession was later ruled inadmissible. With his confession thrown out, the defendant decided to plead not guilty.

     Charged with the murder of his wife, Kleber Cordova was placed in the Morris County Jail in lieu of $1 million bond.

     On March 23, 2009, Morris County prosecutor John McNamera offered Mr. Cordova a deal. If he pleaded guilty to murder the judge would sentence him to 30 years in prison. If tried and found guilty he could receive up to 75 years behind bars. Cordova rejected the offer. He would take his chances with a jury.

     The Cordova murder trial began in early March 2012 at the Morris County Superior Court in Morristown, New Jersey. Assistant prosecutor Brian DiGiamaco did not show the jury Cordova's video-taped confession because this evidence had been ruled inadmissible. The prosecutor put the defendant's daughter, now twelve years old, on the stand. On the morning in question the eight-year-old girl awoke to the sound of her mother's cries for help. From the bathroom Eliana had screamed, "God help me!" in Spanish. The young witness said she walked into the bathroom where she saw water splashing out of the bathtub. Her father was leaning over her mother who was clawing at his face. (When the police spoke to Cordova at the hospital they noticed fresh scratches on his face.) Cordova, when he realized that his daughter was standing nearby, said, "Everything is all right, go to your room." Fearing that her father would get angry if she disobeyed, the girl returned to her bedroom, closed the door and sat on her bed.

     From her room the witness heard someone turn off the bathtub water. Her father then walked out of the bathroom and into the kitchen. She heard his wet sneakers on the kitchen floor. The witness said she took this opportunity to re-enter the bathroom and check on her mother. That's when she saw "the thigh part of her body" in the tub and a lot of water on the floor. Frightened, the victim's daughter ran back to her bedroom.

     Later that morning, in the hospital waiting room, the defendant told his daughter not to say anything about what she had seen. The victim's mother, Rita Valverde, was sitting nearby and overheard Cordova say this to his daughter.

     On cross-examination by Cordova's attorney, public defender Jessica Moses, the defendant's daughter acknowledged that the first time she accused her father of killing her mother was in December 2008, several months after the incident. The defense attorney in this line of questioning hoped to convince the jurors that detectives had wrangled this story out of the eight-year-old. (Since the incident the witness had been living with her grandmother, Rita Valverde, who had moved from Connecticut to Florida.)

     On March 28, 2012 the victim's sister, Zaida Solis, took the stand and testified that three days after Cordova's arrest he said this to her: "How could I do that to the love of my life?" The defendant also told his sister-in-law that the drowning had "happened fast," and that he was sorry about it. According to Cordova, on the night before the bathtub attack, Eliana had phoned her boyfriend in front of her husband. The next morning she demanded a divorce.

     After the state rested its case, Jessica Moses asked Judge David Ironson for a judgment of acquittal on the grounds the prosecution had not made a prima facie case against her client. If she did not prevail on that request, the public defender asked for a reduction of the charge from murder to passion/provocation manslaughter. "There is no evidence to support a murder conviction," she argued.

     In opposition to the public defender's reduced charge motion, assistant prosecutor Maggie Calderwood asserted that the defendant had killed his wife "knowingly" and "on purpose." Judge Ironson denied the public defender's motions. The murder charge would stand.

     Jessica Moses didn't have much of a defense beyond a character witness who said Mr. Cordova worked hard as an overnight cleaner at a Morristown restaurant and as a hospital security officer. According to this witness, the defendant had fainted after visiting his unconscious wife in the hospital. Cordova did not take the stand on his own behalf.

     In her closing argument to the jury the public defender said the defendant's daughter changed her story when questioned by the police months after her father called 911. The defense attorney, in explaining why Cordova had taken off his wife's clothing and hid them in his car, said he "panicked" after the 911 dispatcher asked him a series of questions regarding what had happened in the bathroom. He staged the scene as an accidental drowning because he was sure the authorities would accuse him of murder. As evidence that the killing was not premeditated, the public defender pointed out that two days before the struggle in the bathtub Mr. Cordova bought his wife a new computer and paid an extra $99 for a one-year warranty.

     On April 5, 2012, after deliberating two hours, the jury found Kleber Cordova guilty of murdering his wife. The defendant showed no emotion as the foreman read the verdict.

     The judge on July 24, 2012 sentenced Kleber Cordova to fifty years in prison. 

The Eric Koula Double Murder Case

     Eric Koula, a 41-year-old day trader who lived in West Salem, Wisconsin with his wife and teenage son, called 911 on May 24, 2010 from his parent's house in nearby Barre to report that someone had shot and killed Dennis and Merna Koula. Homicide detectives who worked on the case soon determined that Koula's parents had been murdered three days earlier with a .22-caliber rifle. (The murder weapon was never identified.)

     After the LaCrosse County prosecutor Tim Gruenke charged Eric Koula on July 29, 2010 with two counts of first-degree murder, police officers took him into custody. According to the prosecutor, Mr. Koula, in financial trouble, murdered his parents in order to inherit their estate. While the prosecutor had motive, means and opportunity supporting his theory, it was what the state didn't have that made acquiring a conviction unlikely. What the prosecutor didn't have included a confession, an eyewitness, physical evidence pointing to Koula's guilt or the murder weapon.

     Eric Koula, represented by attorneys Jim Kolby and Keith Belzer, went on trial on June 6, 2012. In his opening remarks to the jury of five men and seven women, prosecutor Gruenke stated the defendant executed his mother as she sat at her office computer, then shot his father when he walked into the room. Eric Koula's attorneys assured the jury that their client had an airtight alibi and pointed out the obvious weakness of the prosecution's case. According to the defense theory of the murders, the victims had been killed by professional hitmen who entered the wrong house. (That doesn't sound too "professional.") The defense didn't elaborate on who had masterminded the contract killing, or why.   

     According to a forensic accountant who testified on behalf of the state, the defendant had only $3,000 in the bank and owed the IRS and several credit card companies $150,000. Shortly after his parent's violent deaths Koula deposited into his bank a $50,000 check drawn on his father's account. 

     Investigators took the stand and testified that the defendant planted evidence to make himself look innocent. He had written "fixed you" on a piece of paper and put it into his mailbox. The defendant hoped the note would make it look as though the killer was trying to frame him for the murders. The defendant later confessed to fabricating that evidence.

     After the state rested its case on June 14, 2012, the defense put their own forensic accountant on the stand who testified that Koula's assets exceeded his liabilities. 

     On June 16, 2010 Eric Koula took the stand on his own behalf. Questioned on direct examination by his attorney Keith Belzer, the defendant said that in 1994 he, his cousin and his father purchased a Ford dealership. Eric became president of the company but in 2006 his father sold the business. Although his father owed him $1million from the sale of the car dealership the defendant only received $500,000. After the sale of the company Eric Koula began his stock trading enterprise. In 2007 he made $300,000 in profits but the following year he lost $661,000.

     In 2009 Eric's Koula's father gave him $100,000 and in May 2010 his parents promised him another $50,000. On May 20, 2010 the defendant went to his parent's home to pick up the $50,000 check. His father handed him a blank check and told him to fill it in himself. That's why he signed his father's name on the check and tried to make the signature look like his father's handwriting. According to the defendant this was the last time he saw his parent's alive. 

     On Friday, May 21, 2010, the day Dennis and Merna Koula were gunned down, the defendant detailed his activities in a way that established an airtight alibi. The next day he deposited the $50,000 check bearing his father's fake signature. 

     On Monday, May 24, 2010, someone at the school where Mrs. Koula taught called Eric to inform him his mother had not shown up for work and that no one at her house was picking up the phone. Eric drove to Barre to check on his parents. He became alarmed when he saw their cars parked in the garage. Inside the house he found his father lying dead on the home office floor and his mother at her desk slumped over the computer. After calling 911 he phoned his wife and his pastor, both of whom rushed to the scene to give him support. 

     LaCrosse County deputies took the defendant to the sheriff's office for questioning. In his statement he forgot to mention the $50,000 check he had deposited containing his father's phony signature. A week later investigators came to his house to speak to him about the whereabouts of his son Dexter on the day of the murders. The detectives also wanted to know if the boy had access to a .22-caliber rifle. Worried that the police were going to arrest his son for the murder of his grandparents, the defendant wrote the "fixed you" note and placed it in his mailbox. He testified that he had fabricated this evidence to protect his son. 

     The defendant admitted that on July 29, 2010, when he met with detectives for the third and last time, he denied signing the $50,000 check and didn't reveal that he had written the "fixed you" note. 

     On cross-examination, prosecutor Gary Freyburg pressed the defendant regarding his financial troubles. The prosecutor reminded him about the forged $50,000 check and the planted evidence. The cross-examiner pointed out that in Koula's 911 call the defendant started out by explaining why he was at his parent's house. Once he justified his presence at the murder scene he reported his emergency. 

     The testimony phase of the trial came to a close on June 26, 2012. The outcome of the case depended entirely on whether the jurors believed the defendant's testimony. After deliberating less than a day the jury returned a verdict of guilty. Pursuant to Wisconsin law the judge had to impose a sentence of life. The judge could, however, decide to make Koula eligible for parole after serving 40 years behind bars. So the best Koula could hope for was to walk free at age 83.

     On August 12, 2012, Judge Scott Home, at the sentence hearing, said this to the convicted killer: "You took the life of the two people who gave you life and you'll spend the rest of your life incarcerated." The judge sentenced Koula to two consecutive life sentences without the chance of parole.

     On August 9, 2019, Eric Koula, acting at his own attorney in his second appeal for a new trial argued that his trial attorneys should have presented fingerprint and other evidence that supported his hit men theory of his parents' murder. A panel of judges with the Wisconsin District IV Court of Appeals denied the 59-year-old's request.

Bite Mark Identification: Discredited Evidence

     The identification of a series of bruises or abrasions, usually in the shape of two semi-circles or brackets, as a human bite mark made by a particular set of teeth is a function of forensic dentistry referred to as bite mark identification. This form of impression identification, also called forensic odontology, is based on the assumption that no two people in the world have front teeth that are identical in thickness, shape, relationship to each other and patterns of wear.

     The process of comparing a bite mark to a known set of teeth is not unlike the identification of latent fingerprint, footwear and tire track impressions. Bite mark wounds are found on victims of murder, rape and child molestation. This type of crime scene evidence is preserved by life-size photography, tooth mark tracings onto transparent sheets and dental casts of the impressions themselves. A suspect might be asked to bite down on a pliable surface for an impression sample, have a cast made of his teeth, or both. Usually, connecting a suspect to a victim through expert bite mark testimony will be enough evidence, by itself, to sustain a criminal conviction.

     The field of bite mark identification exploded in the 1980s, and hundreds, if not thousands of defendants between 1983 and 2002 were sent to prison on the strength of bite mark testimony. Although bite mark identification had been a recognized branch of forensic science since 1970, it was the 1979 trial of serial killer Ted Bundy in south Florida that put this form of identification on the map the way the O. J. Simpson case in the mid-1990s popularized DNA profiling.

     At the peak of bite mark evidence credibility among forensic scientists, detectives, prosecutors and judges, this form of impression identification was put on the level with the matching of fingerprints. However by 2003 forensic scientists were seriously questioning the assumption that bite marks were as unique and identifiable as latent fingerprints.

     Over the years several leaders in the bite mark field oversold the reliability of this form of identification. For example in 1977 Dr. Lowell J. Levine, a forensic dentistry consultant to the New York City Medical Examiner's Office, wrote: "Since every person's teeth are unique in respect to spacing, twisting, turning, shapes, tipping toward the tongue or lips, wear patterns, breakage, fillings, caps, loss and the like, all of which occur in limitless combinations, it is possible for them to leave a pattern which for identification purposes is as good as a fingerprint."

     In 1996 Dr. C. Michael Bowers, a prominent southern California odontologist, was one of the first forensic scientists to raise doubts about the credibility of bite make identification when he wrote: "Physical matching of bite marks is a non-science which was developed with little testing and no published error rate....An opinion is worth nothing unless the supportive data is clearly describable and can be demonstrated in court. How does one weight the importance of a single rotated tooth in a bite mark when the suspect has a similar tooth? The value judgments range widely on the value of this feature. This is not science. Instead, statistical levels of confidence must be included in the process."

     In a bite mark identification exercise Dr. Bowers conducted in a workshop at the 1999 American Academy of Forensic Science conference, 63 percent of the odontologists who participated made an incorrect identification, findings that displeased many in the field when Dr. Bowers published the results of his experiment. In an article published in 2003 in the British Dental Journal, Dr. D. K. Whittaker, a forensic dentistry professor at the University of Wales, explained why bite mark evidence is so difficult to identify, particularly bite marks on skin:

     "Human bites on skin are difficult to interpret because skin is not good 'impression' material. Moreover, victims may struggle and movement will distort the image of the bite. Skin surfaces are not flat and visual distortion may be present, often heightened by photographic distortion caused by inadequate imaging techniques. Human dentitions, whilst possibly being unique in the small nuances of tooth size, shape, angulation and texture may not inflict unique bite marks which can only record gross and not fine detail. If the victim survives, the injury may change due to infection or subsequent healing and if the victim is deceased, putrefaction may introduce distortion."

     Before odontologists in Great Britain can testify in court as bite mark experts they must have made a minimum of twenty such identifications in other cases. In the United States, an odontologist can be certified by the American Board of Forensic Odontology after two bite mark identifications. As a result, being certified in this forensic field in the United States shouldn't carry much weight. (In fact, two of America's most notorious charlatans in the field were both board certified bite mark experts.)

     In 2004, as part of a journalistic series on forensic science, the Chicago Tribune examined 154 state and federal trials involving bite mark identification testimony. In more than a quarter of these cases the prosecution and the defense produced forensic odontologists whose expert opinions were diametrically opposed. If bite mark identification is an exact science practiced by highly qualified experts, this many odontologists should not have been testifying against each other.

The Curtis Reeves Murder Case

     From 1961 to 1963, Curtis Reeves, Jr. served as a Navy machinists' mate on a submarine. Following his honorable discharge he drove a truck and worked in a warehouse. In the mid-1970s Mr. Reeves became an officer with the Tampa Police Department. He retired at the rank of captain in 1993 at the age of 51. In the 1980s officer Reeves helped launch the police department's first SWAT team, a unit he eventually headed.

     After retiring from police work Mr. Reeves took a job with the security department at the Florida theme park, Busch Gardens. When he left that position in 2005 he was director of security.

     In 2003 Curtis Reeves and his wife moved into a sprawling ranch-style home in the community of Spring Lake near Brooksville, Florida. He enjoyed riding his motorcycle and was a member of the Mountainview Estates crime stoppers organization. He and his wife had two grown sons, one of whom was an officer with the Tampa Police Department.

     On Monday, January 13, 2014, Curtis Reeves and his wife attended the 1:20 PM showing of "Lone Survivor" at the Grove 16 theater in Wesley Chapel, a suburban community a few miles south of downtown Tampa. Sitting nearby was 43-year-old Chad Oulson and his wife Nicole.

     During the showing of the previews before the start of the feature presentation, Reeves became annoyed when he saw Mr. Oulson texting. When the ex-cop asked htm to stop that activity, Chad Oulson ignored the request. After Reeves complained further, Oulson explained that he was texting his young daughter.

     Reeves, furious over the texting, left his seat to notify theater staff regarding this breach of moviegoing etiquette. When he couldn't find anyone in authority to complain to he returned to his seat. At that point Mr. Oulson made a derogatory comment regarding Reeves' attempt to report him to theater employees. The two men argued which prompted Mr. Oulson to throw a bag of popcorn at Reeves.

    When hit by the popcorn Reeves pulled out a .380-caliber pistol and shot Chad Oulson in the chest. The victim slumped over in his seat. The bullet that entered Oulson's body first hit his wife in the hand as she tried to hold her husband back. Mr. Oulson tried to speak but couldn't as blood seeped from his mouth. Another theatergoer applied CPR while others called 911.

     An off-duty Tampa police officer who happened to be in the theater approached Reeves who sat quietly in his seat with the pistol on his lap. When the officer asked Reeves to hand over the weapon he refused. Following a brief scuffle, Reeves calmed down and gave up his gun.

     Reeves' son, the Tampa police officer (who was off-duty) entered the theater about the time his father shot Mr. Oulson. Shortly thereafter an ambulance crew rushed Mr. Oulson to a Tampa area hospital where doctors pronounced him dead. His wife Nicole was treated for the bullet wound to her hand.

     When deputies with the Pasco County Sheriff's Office arrived at the theater to take the 71-year-old shooter into custody, they advised him of his Miranda rights. Reeves told the officers that the man he had shot had struck him with an unknown object. In fear of being assaulted he pulled and fired his gun.

     Charged with second-degree murder, Reeves made his first court appearance on Tuesday, the day after the shooting. His attorney, Richard Escobar, asked the judge not to set bond due to the fact his client, with all of his ties to the community, was not a flight risk. "The alleged victim attacked him," the defense attorney said.

     The judge, noting that being struck by an unknown object did not call for the use of a handgun, denied bail. During the arraignment, a Pasco County prosecutor said that a woman named Jamira Dixon had come forward with information regarding her recent encounter with Mr. Reeves. According to Dixon, Reeves had become enraged three weeks earlier when he saw her texting in the same theater. Dixon said he glared at her throughout the movie and followed her out of the room when she got up to use the restroom.

     If convicted as charged Curtis Reeves faced a maximum sentence of life in prison. In his case a ten-year sentence would probably have the same result.

     In August 2015 Circuit Judge Pat Siracusa, in a hearing on the case, made the comment that the right to a trial is not a right to a perfect trial. The Reeves defense took exception to this remark and following a backlash the judge recused himself from the case.

     Following one delay after another due to changes in Florida's stand your ground law, a doctrine applicable to the Reeves case, the new judge, Susan Barthle, postponed the trial again until the Florida Supreme Court sorted out conflicts in the application of the stand your ground doctrine. A new trial date was set for February 2019 then postponed again.

      On February 25, 1922, following a short trial, a jury sitting in Tampa, Florida found Curtis Reeves not guilty.

The Strack Family Murder-Suicide Case

     Benjamin Strack, his wife Kristi and their children resided in a duplex in Springville, Utah, a town of 30,000 45 miles south of Salt Lake City not far from Provo. Just before eight o'clock on the night of Saturday September 27, 2014, the oldest Strack child, accompanied by his grandparents, approached the Strack half of the duplex to check on the family. Mr. and Mrs. Strack and three of their children had not responded to emails, text messages or phone calls.

     The grandparents and the oldest child entered the house through the front door that stood wide open. (The back door was cracked open.) In the master bedroom they discovered Mr. and Mrs. Strack and the three children. The 36-year-old parents and the children--Benson, 14; Emery, 12; and Zion, 11--were dead. 

     Police officers at the scene noted that none of the bodies showed signs of physical trauma. Moreover, there was no evidence of a struggle and nothing had been taken from the house. 

     Firefighters tested the air inside the dwelling and did not detect traces of carbon monoxide. The fact that pets in the house were alive and the other residents of duplex were unharmed, pointed away from death by carbon monoxide poisoning. 

     Following the five autopsies the medical examiner announced that none of the Stracks had been subjected to violent assault. The cause and manner of these deaths remained undetermined pending the results of toxicological tests. A police spokesperson told reporters that foul play had not been ruled out in this case. The medical examiner did not reveal when the Stracks had died. 

    On October 28, 2014, reporters learned that investigators believed that the children and their parents had been poisoned to death on September 27, 2014. According to detectives, the children's bodies had been positioned in their parents' bedroom after their deaths. The bodies of Benjamin and Kristi and their children were each lying next to a cup of red liquid. Kristi Stack had red liquid coming out of her mouth.

     From the house investigators removed 14 drinking cups and bottles, a pitcher of red juice, and a purple bucket containing yellow liquid. Searchers also seized a pair of slippers that contained a drop of blood and a towel stained by a red substance. Detectives, in the family's garbage, found empty methadone bottles, 10 empty boxes of nighttime cold medicine, various pill bottles, several empty boxes of sleeping aids, a bag of marijuana and Pepsi cups containing traces of a red liquid.

     In January 2015 the Utah State Medical Examiner declared that the deaths of the children were caused by toxic amounts of diphenydramine and methadone. Kristi Stack died from the same drug plus dextrophan and doxylamine. Benjamin Strack had toxic levels of heroin in his system.

     The medical examiner ruled the parent's death as suicide and the two youngest children's death as homicide. The death of the 14-year-old was listed as "undetermined."

     According to the parents' friends and family, the mentally ill couple were worried about "evil in the world" and wanted to avoid a "pending apocalypse".

The Julie Schenecker Murder Case

     Parker Schenecker, an Army intelligence officer, met Julie Powers, an Army linguist (Russian) in 1987 when they were deployed in Germany. Shortly after they were married in Louisiana in 1991 a psychologist began treating Julie for depression. Three years later she gave birth to Calyx, and in 1997 their son Beau.

     Not long after having Beau, Julie began taking anti-depression medication on a daily basis. In 2001 psychiatrists diagnosed her as suffering from bipolar disorder, schizo-affective disorder and severe depression. According to these physicians she had a personality disorder as well. (There is no effective way to treat the latter.) During her nine months of treatment at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Maryland outside of Washington, D.C. she labored under the false belief that a brain tumor was causing her mental illness. She held this belief after brain scans proved negative. During this time Mr. Schenecker hired a nanny to take care of the children.

     In 2009, while being treated in south Florida for mental illness, Julie Schenecker expressed a desire to take her psychiatrist's comb and use his DNA to impregnate herself.

     On November 6, 2010, while residing in an upscale neighborhood in Tampa, Florida, 15-year-old Calyx told a school counselor that her mother slapped her in the face when they returned from her cross-country practice. The counselor reported the matter to the authorities, and that day a Tampa police officer, accompanied by a child protection social worker paid Julie a home visit. She admitted hitting Calyx with her open hand during an argument four days earlier. The police officer decided not to make an arrest in the case.

     On January 15, 2011 Colonel Schenecker, while assigned as an intelligence officer with U.S. Central Command in Qatar, wrote a long email to the psychiatrist in Florida treating Julie. The colonel expressed concern about Julie's bellicose relationship with Calyx. It seemed the two of them never stopped fighting.

     Colonel Schenecker wrote: "Julie can no longer control Calyx and Calyx has been disrespectful and verbally abusive toward Julie." Colonel Schenecker also noted that his wife had taken to the bottle. "Drinking starts to affect the kids--they start mentioning it to me." Julie had also, according to the colonel, been driving erratically which had resulted in a traffic accident.

     Julie Schenecker wrote an email addressed to her family on January 27, 2011. The message read: "It's really difficult and I'm so sick mentally. I minimally take care of the kids, sad to say. Beau has also developed Calyx's attitude--makes me cry every evening. Seeing what they've become, I will end this soon. I am at my wits end."

     The day following Julie's email to her family, her mother Nancy called the police to report she had not been able to reach her daughter. Due to Julie's mental state, Nancy was concerned that something was wrong. In response to the mother's request for a welfare visit, officers were dispatched to the Schenecker house. There, in the garage, they found Beau in Julie's SUV. The boy had been shot twice in the head.

     In Calyx's room officers discovered the 16-year-old lying on her bed with a fatal bullet wound to the back of her head. Both children had been shot by the .38-caliber revolver found at the scene. The bodies had been covered with blankets. The officers also recovered a journal at the scene in which Julie described her plan to kill her children and herself.

     Police officers found Julie Schenecker on her back porch. Wearing a blood-soaked bathrobe she was asleep and under the influence of prescription pills. She awoke and told the officers why she shot her children to death. She said she had done this because they had "talked back and were mouthy."

     Officers took Julie into custody at the death scene. At the police station they continued to question her. Julie said she shot Beau in the car after they returned home from his soccer practice. She said she killed Calyx in her room as she did homework on her computer. Julie showed no emotion or remorse as she described killing her children.

     Julie Schenecker informed her interrogators that five days before shooting her children to death she had driven 27 miles to a small Florida town where she purchased the revolver at a store called Lock N Load. (When buying the weapon she told the counterman that there had been a rash of burglaries in her neighborhood.)

     After questioning her at the police station, detectives took Julie to a nearby hospital for observation. She told a doctor that she had a "pre-existing" medical condition. Following her discharge from the medical center on January 29, 2011, officers booked the murder suspect into Hillsborough County's Falkenburg Road Jail on two counts of first-degree murder. The judge denied her bond.

     The homicide suspect's attorneys at her February 16, 2011 arraignment pleaded her not guilty. The lawyers announced they planned to launch an insanity defense on her behalf. Under Florida law, legal insanity is statutorily defined as a mental disease or defect present at the time of the crime that rendered the defendant incapable of appreciating the nature and quality of the criminal act. In other words, the mental illness had destroyed the defendant's ability to distinguish between right and wrong. In Florida, as well as most other states, the so-called "M'Naughten right-wrong test," due to the fact that even seriously mentally ill people are aware of what they are doing when they kill someone, is a difficult defense to prove. Proving that the defendant's actions were driven by the mental illness and nothing else is usually an uphill task. (A defendant must prove legal insanity by a preponderance of the evidence. That means the prosecution does not have the burden of proving the defendant was sane. Like innocence, sanity is presumed.

     Colonel Schenecker divorced Julie in May 2011. Following a dispute over the distribution of family assets, he sued her in civil court for the wrongful death of their children. Julie's civil attorneys in the case countered that the plaintiff was equally responsible for the children's deaths. In support of this argument they cited the emails the colonel had sent to her psychiatrist less than two weeks before the killings. In these emails he expressed his concern for the well-being of the children.

     The Julie Schenecker double murder trial got underway on April 28, 2014 in Tampa, Florida. Following jury selection and the opening statements from each side, the prosecutor put police officers, detectives, crime scene technicians and a forensic pathologist on the stand. On May 5, 2014 crime scene specialist Matthew Evans testified that he recovered numerous bottles of prescription pills at the murder house that included Lithium and Oxycodone.

     The prosecutor asked crime scene specialist Matthew Evans to read from portions of the journal taken from the house. From this document Mr. Evans read the following to the jury: "The best job I ever had was having/bringing up my babies. This is why I had to bring them with me. It's possible they've inherited my DNA and would live their lives depressed or bipolar! I believe I saved them from the pain. I wouldn't wish this on nobody--ever."

     According to the defendant's journal she worried that if she committed suicide her children would have to live with the stigma associated with their mother's act of self-destruction. "If you're wondering why I decided to take out the kids it was to protect them from embarrassment the rest of their lives."

     The crime scene investigator was followed to the stand by a detective who played an audiotape of the defendant's police station interview. Slurring her words, Schnecker explained in detail how she shot her children to death and why. She also listed all of the prescription medicine she had been taking.

     The following day retired Army Colonel Parker Schenecker took the stand for the prosecution. The 53-year-old described to the jury the domestic turmoil of living with a mentally disturbed wife. During his testimony he never referred to her by name, referring to Julie as the "defendant."

     On May 9, 2014, after the prosecution rested its case, The Schenecker defense took center stage. Michelle Frisco, a 43-year-old house cleaner who worked for the defendant, said that Julie had been upset because Beau had become as disrespectful as his older sister. The defendant also told the witness that she drank heavily when her husband was deployed out of the country.

     Dr. Demian Obregon, a University of Southern Florida psychologist, testified that he treated the defendant for various mental disorders. The medicine she took produced side effects such as "lip-smacking" and "leg-jerking." According to this witness, Julie, in August 2010, starting expressing suicidal thoughts. In December of that year she revealed deep feelings of being both helpless and hopeless.

     Throughout the trial Julie Schenecker sat passively with her attorneys at the defense table. But that changed suddenly in the middle of Dr. Obergron's testimony. When the psychologist told the jury he warned her against mixing alcohol with her bipolar medicine, she yelled "Liar! You told me two drinks a day, two Oxys a day!"

     The trial judge responded to the outburst by ordering the jurors out of the courtroom. The judge then issued a strong warning to the defendant. If she engaged in this type of behavior again there would be serious consequences. Such outbursts would not be tolerated.

     On Monday, May 12, 2014, Dr. Eldra Solomon, another psychologist, took the stand for the defense. Hired by Julie's attorneys to examine and evaluate their client's mental state on the days leading up to the killings, Dr. Solomon testified that Julie, on the day she decided to buy the gun, "had her first clear thought in weeks." And that thought involved killing her children so they could all go to heaven together. "People who are not in a psychotic state," Dr. Solomon said, "do not kill their children."

     Dr. Michael Malher, a medical doctor and psychiatrist, had also been hired by the defense as an expert insanity defense witness. In his expert opinion Julie Schenecker, at the time of the killings, was insane pursuant to the criteria of the M'Naughten right-wrong test.

     In cross-examining the defense insanity witnesses the prosecutor, in an effort to undermine their credibility, implied that they were nothing more than insanity defense hired-guns.

     On May 13, 2014 the defense wound-up its case with another expert who found the defendant, at the time of the killings, was in a psychotic state. The defense also called Colonel Schenecker to the stand. The witness described his ex-wife as a 50-year-old with the judgment of a 10-year-old, and painted a picture of what it was like for him and his family to live with a person who was seriously mentally ill. Following the colonel's testimony the defense rested its case.

     The prosecutor on May 14, 2014 in the rebuttal phase of the trial, pressed the argument that the double murder had been motivated by anger. The three rebuttal witnesses on this day were psychiatrists who testified that the defendant operated under a clear, calculated plan to kill her children. These prosecution experts explained to the jury why the defendant, under Florida's right-wrong test, had not been legally insane. When shooting her children she knew exactly what she was doing. The defendant was not acting pursuant to any delusions or instructions from voices in her head. She was driven by anger, not mental illness.

     On Thursday morning, May 15, 2014, following the closing arguments and the judge's instructions to the jury, the jurors walked out of the courtroom to deliberate the defendant's fate. Just two hours later, at three o'clock, the jury returned to the courtroom with its verdict: guilty of two counts of first-degree murder. This jury obviously rejected the Schenecker insanity defense.

     In addressing the judge in advance of the sentence, Julie Schnecker tearfully apologized for killing her children. She said, "They are alive and enjoying everything and anything heaven has to offer. Jesus is protecting them and keeping them safe until we get there." Immediately after this irony-laced statement the judge handed Schenecker the mandated sentence of two life terms without the possibility of parole.

Abolishing The Insanity Defense

     On March 23, 2020, the United States Supreme Court, in Kahler v. Kansas ruled that it is not unconstitutional for a state to abolish its insanity defense. The insanity defense allows a criminal defendant to be found not guilty due to a mental illness that deprived the offender of knowing right from wrong. In other words, the defendant was too mentally impaired to form criminal intent. Instead of being guilty of the crime, the defendant is found not guilty by reason of insanity. These defendants, instead of serving a sentence in prison, are committed to a mental hospital where they remain until doctors determine they are sane enough to return to society. Because juries are skeptical of the insanity defense, it is successful in only one percent of insanity defense cases.

     In November 2009, in a Kansas killing rampage, James Kahler murdered his two daughters, his estranged wife, and his wife's mother. His attorneys claimed that he was insane, but because the state had made the insanity defense unavailable in 1995, Kahler was convicted of four-counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. In 2011, Kahler's attorneys challenged the constitutionality of the elimination of the insanity defense. The case worked its way up to  the United States Supreme Court which ruled 6 to 3 in favor of the state. Justice Elena Kagan wrote the majority opinion.

     While Kahler v. Kansas allows states to abolish the not guilty by reason of insanity defense, defendants can present evidence of mental illness to establish a lack of criminal intent to reduce say, first-degree murder to a lesser homicide offense. Moreover, it can be used post-conviction at a sentence hearing as a mitigating factor.

The Crime Of The 20th Century Was Committed By An Illegal Alien

     In July 1923 Bruno Richard Hauptmann, when he was 23 and living in Germany, stowed away in the hold of the North German liner Hanover. He fled the country because he was wanted by the German police for armed robbery and burglary. When the ship docked in New York City he was discovered and handed over to the immigration authorities. Under the false identity of Karl Pellmeir, Hauptmann appeared before a special tribunal and shortly thereafter was shipped back to Germany.

     A month after his first attempt to get into the United States, Bruno Hauptmann stowed away on the same ship but was discovered before the vessel left the pier. He escaped arrest by the German authorities by diving overboard.

     Two months after his second attempt, Mr. Hauptmann made it to America as a stowaway on the S. S. George Washington. He stepped ashore on his 24th birthday with no passport and two cents in his pocket.

     In New York City Mr. Hauptmann was taken in by an immigrant he met on the street and within a few days found work as a dishwasher. He later obtained a job as a mechanic, then became a dyer's helper before finding work as a carpenter.

     On October 10, 1925 Hauptmann married a German-born waitress named Anna Schoeffler, and eight years later they had a son, Mannfried. They lived on the second floor of a rental house on 222nd Street in the Bronx.

     At nine o'clock on the night of March 1, 1932, Bruno Richard Hauptmann drove from the Bronx, New York to outside Hopewell, New Jersey where the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh lived with his wife Anne and their 20-month-old son, Charles Lindbergh Jr.. Hauptmann placed a three-piece homemade wooden extension ladder against the house, climbed into the second story nursery window and made off with the baby. He left behind a ransom note in his own handwriting asking for $50,000.

     Following several more ransom documents, Charles Lindbergh's intermediary, on April 2, 1932, paid the $50,000 ransom to a shadowy figure in a Bronx cemetery. Pursuant to Lindbergh's orders the police were not there to make an arrest and Hauptmann escaped into the night.

      On May 12, 1932 the Lindbergh baby's remains were found along a road two miles from the Lindbergh estate. He had been bludgeoned to death.

     The Lindbergh kidnapping and murder case went unsolved until September 1934 when police officers arrested Hauptmann in New York City in possession of a ransom bill. A search of his garage in the Bronx turned up $14,000 in the Lindbergh ransom money. Handwriting experts identified Hauptmann as the writer of the ransom documents and a wood expert connected the crime scene ladder to the suspect through his carpenter tools and a missing board in the attic to his house.

     Bruno Richard Hauptmann was tried for murder in January 1935 in the Hunterdon County Court House in Flemington, New Jersey. Following the six-week trial the jury found him guilty as charged. Since he had not confessed and there were no eyewitnesses, the case against him, based principally on physical evidence connecting him to the crime, was circumstantial. The trial judge sentenced him to death.

     On April 3, 1936 Bruno Hauptmann died on the electric chair at the state prison in Trenton, New Jersey. To the very end he maintained his innocence. This illegal alien from Germany committed one of the most infamous crimes in United States history.

The Anthony Baye Arson-Murder Confession

     Between December 27, 2009 and January 4, 2010 an arsonist in Northhamton, Massachusetts torched more than 40 homes. It was the biggest crime spree in the history of the town. One of the Ward 3 neighborhood fires took the lives of 81-year-old Paul Yeskie and his son Paul Jr. who was 39. Police officers patrolling Ward 3 during the early morning hours on four of the arson fire nights pulled over a vehicle driven by 26-year-old Anthony P. Baye. These investigative stops did not result in Mr. Baye's arrest.

     Anthony Baye was brought in for questioning on January 4, 2010 by Massachusetts State Police sergeant Paul Zipper and Trooper Michael Mazza. After he was warned of his Miranda rights to remain silent and his right to an attorney, the suspect asked to speak to a lawyer. The officers, instead of terminating the interrogation at that point informed Anthony Baye that he would be better off speaking to them first. They assured him that if he took responsibility for setting the fires the judge would go easy on him. Utilizing this confession inducing technique (developed by Fred Inbau in the 1930s) of minimizing the seriousness of the crime (referring to the arsons as "tomfoolery"), the troopers got Mr. Baye to admit setting 15 of the fires.

     While Anthony Baye didn't come out and admit setting the fire that killed Mr. Yeskie and his son, he did say he never meant to do them any harm. In soliciting the arson-murder confession one of the interrogators misrepresented the criminal law when he assured Baye that if he hadn't intended to kill the Yeskies he could not be charged with felony-murder. (This was not true. Under Massachusetts law, if Mr. Baye intended to set the fire which inadvertently led to their deaths he was guilty of criminal homicide under the felony-murder doctrine.)

     Following the ten hour videotaped interrogation the state troopers took Anthony Baye into custody. The local prosecutor charged him with two counts of first-degree murder and several counts of arson. Given the seriousness of the crimes Mr. Baye was not granted bail.

      Anthony Baye's attorneys, Thomas Lesser and David Hoose, on grounds the state interrogators had violated their client's Fifth and Six Amendment rights by not discontinuing the interrogation and providing him with an attorney when he requested one, filed a motion to suppress the confession.

     On September 21, 2011 Hampshire Superior Court Judge Constance B. Sweeney heard arguments on the defendant's motion to suppress. At the conclusion of the pre-trial hearing Judge Sweeney, while expressing reservations regarding the troopers' interrogation techniques, ruled Baye's confession voluntary and therefore admissible. The defense appealed Judge Sweeney's ruling to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court which agreed to rule on the admissibility of the confession before rather than after his trial.

     On May 21, 2012 the Massachusetts Supreme Court Justices ruled the Baye confession had not been given voluntarily and was therefore inadmissible as evidence against him. Although the justices didn't specifically rule on the issue of whether continuing the interrogation after Baye requested an attorney rendered it inadmissible, the constitutional law on this issue was settled. In the Baye case the state interrogators had clearly violated his Miranda rights. Under Miranda a confession can be inadmissible even though it was given voluntarily. Once a suspect exercises his Miranda rights the interrogation must stop. Anything said by the suspect after this point is not admissible evidence regardless of the fact no coercion was involved.

     One year after the state supreme court ruled Anthony Baye's confession inadmissible, the defendant, pursuant to a plea agreement, pleaded guilty to two counts of manslaughter. On May 15, 2013 the Hampshire Superior Court judge sentenced Anthony P. Baye to twenty years in prison followed by fifteen years of probation.

When Does Speech Become A Criminal Act?

     In December 2018, 21-year-old Alexander Urtula, a biology major at Boston College met Inyoung You, a 20-year-old South Korean girl attending the school as an economics major. Urtula was an outstanding student who was active in the college's Philippine Society of Boston, an organization for Filipino students.

     On May 20, 2019, the day of his graduation from Boston College, Alexander Urtula was deeply depressed and suicidal. As recorded on his Internet journal read by classmates and family members, and documented throughout the 47,000 text messages he received from Inyoung You, Mr. Urtula had been the victim of intense and prolonged psychological abuse committed by his South Korean girlfriend.

     To control Alexander Urtula and isolate him from his friends and family, Inyoung You repeatedly threatened to harm herself if he didn't do what she demanded. And what she demanded, in the weeks leading up to Urtula's graduation, was for him to take his own life. In her text messages she wrote things like "Go kill yourself," and "Go die."

     On the morning of May 20, 2019, the day of the college's graduation ceremony, Inyoung You used her cellphone to track the despondent Urtula to the roof of a parking garage in the Roxbury section of Boston. With You standing on the parking garage roof not far from him, Alexander Urtula jumped to his death. Allegedly, You made no attempt to dissuade him from leaping from the structure.

     In August 2019, three months following Urtula's suicide, Inyoung You withdrew from Boston College and returned to South Korea.

     Suffolk County prosecutor Rachael Rollins, in October 2019, presented a case to a grand jury that returned an indictment against Inyoung You on the charge of involuntary manslaughter. The rationale behind the charge involved You's reckless disregard for Urtula's life by intentionally tormenting him with psychological abuse that included telling him to kill himself. To make this case, the prosecutor would have to establish a direct casual relationship between You's abuse and Urtula's death.
   
     At a press conference following the grand jury indictment, prosecutor Rollins told reporters that You's "abuse became more frequent and more demanding in the days and hours leading up to Urtula's death."

     If Inyoung You was extradited to the United States for criminal trial her defense would include the argument that her text messages and other forms of communication with Alexander Urtula were constitutionally protected as free speech under the First Amendment. Moreover, she would argue that her behavior, while despicable, was not the principle cause Urtula's mental illness and suicide. Her attorney would no doubt also make the point that talking a person into suicide is different that helping a person take his or her life. One is speech, the other a criminal act.

     The above legal issues were never argued because in December 2021, following her extradition to the United States, You pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter. The Suffolk County judge sentenced her to ten years probation. 

The Phil Spector Murder Case

     In the morning of February 3, 2003, Los Angeles County Sheriff deputies responded to a call from the Alhambra mansion owned by Phil Spector, the 67-year-old music producer who became famous in the 1960s for his "wall of sound." In the foyer the deputies found 40-year-old actress Lana Clarkson slumped in a chair. She had been shot once in the mouth by the .38-caliber Cobra revolver lying on the floor under her right hand. When the fatal shot had been fired Clarkson and Spector were the only people in the house.

      Mr. Spector's chauffeur told the police that at five in the morning he heard a noise that sounded like a gunshot. Shortly after that Phil Spector came out of the mansion carrying a handgun. According to the driver, Spector had said, "I think I killed somebody."

     The music producer met the victim the previous night at the House of Blues on the Sunset Strip where the struggling actress worked as a hostess for $9 per hour. When the nightclub closed for the night she accompanied Spector back to his house for a drink. According to Spector's account of the death, Lana Clarkson committed suicide.

     The crime scene investigation and the analysis of the physical evidence featured forensic pathology, the location of the gunshot residue and the interpretation of the blood spatter patterns. Los Angeles Deputy Coroner Dr. Louis Pena visited the death scene then later conducted the autopsy. The forensic pathologist, at the autopsy, found bruises on the victim's right arm and wrist that suggested a struggle. A missing fingernail on Clarkson's right hand also indicated some kind of violence just prior to the shooting. Her bruised tongue led Dr. Pena to conclude that the gun had been forced into the victim's mouth. Its recoil had shattered her front teeth. Clarkson's purse was found slung over her right shoulder. Since she was right-handed and would have used that hand tho hold the gun, the deputy coroner questioned suicide as the manner of death. Based on his crime scene examination and autopsy, Dr. Pena ruled Lana Clarkson's death a criminal homicide. The police arrested Phil Spector who retained his freedom by posting the $1 million bail.

     Blood spatter analysts from sheriff's office criminalists concluded that after the shooting Mr. Spector pressed the victim's right hand around the gun handle, placed the revolver temporarily into his pants pocket, later wiped it clean of his fingerprints then laid it near her body. From the bloodstains on his jacket the government experts concluded he had been standing within two feet of the victim when the gun went off. The absence of her blood spray on a nearby wall led the spatter analysts to believe that Spector had been standing between the victim and the unstained surface when he fired the bullet into her mouth. Gunshot residue experts found traces of gunpowder on Spector's hands.

     The forensic work performed by the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office and the sheriff's department had not been flawless. A dental evidence technician had lost one of the victim's teeth; a criminalist used lift-off tape to retrieve trace evidence from the victim's dress which interfered with the serology analysis; and the corpse had been moved at the scene, causing unnatural, postmortem blood flow from her mouth which compromised that aspect of the blood spatter analysis

     The Phil Spector murder trial got underway in May 2007. On June 26 the government rested its case. The defense led off with Dr. Vincent Di Maio, the former chief medical examiner of Bexar County, Texas. Dr. Di Maio, considered one of the leading experts on the subject of gunshot wounds, testified that he disagreed with the prosecution's experts who had asserted that blood spatter can travel only three feet from a person struck by a bullet. Dr. Di Maio testified that blood can travel more than six feet if a gun is fired into a person's mouth, the pressure from the muzzle gas that is trapped in the oral cavity creates a violent explosion. "The gas," he said, "is like a whirlwind, it ejects out of the mouth, out of the nose."  Because 99 percent of intra-oral gunshot deaths are suicides, Dr. Di Maio opined that Lana Clarkson had killed herself. In Di Maio's 35 years as a medical examiner he had seen only "three homicides that were intra-oral."

     In an aggressive cross-examination by the deputy district attorney, Dr. Di Maio was asked how much he had been paid for his work on the case. The former medical examiner said that his bill was $46,000, which did not include his trial testimony. Courtroom spectators laughed when Dr. Di Maio told his cross-examiner that the longer he kept him on the stand the more it would cost the defendant.

     On September 18, 2007, the Spector jury, following a week of deliberation, announced they were deadlocked seven to five. Two days later the judge sent them back to the jury room with a new set of instructions on how to determine reasonable doubt. In the Spector trial, the celebrity experts for the defense (including Dr. Henry Lee) did more than just muddy the water by pointing out mistakes and erroneous conclusions by the government's experts. They offered a conflicting scenario backed by their interpretations of the physical evidence. In circumstantial cases deadlocked juries were not unusual. The hung jury was what Phil Spector had paid for and that is what he got. The jury remained split and the judge had no choice but to declare a mistrial.

     The second trial, this one not televised, got underway on October 20, 2008. The case went to the jury on March 26, 2009. Nineteen days later the jury found the defendant guilty of first-degree murder. Two months after that the judge sentenced Phil Spector to 19 years to life. In May 2011 the California Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction. The California Supreme Court, when it declined to review the case, guaranteed that Mr. Spector would die in prison. Because so many high-profile forensic scientists disagreed on the interpretation of the physical evidence in the case it was not a positive landmark in the history of forensic science.

Phil Spector Post Conviction

     In 2006, while awaiting his first murder trial, Spector married Rachelle Short. In 2016 he filed for divorce claiming she was blowing through his $35 million estate. While he sat in prison she purchased a $350,000 airplane, an Aston Martin and a Ferrari, expensive plastic surgery, expensive jewelry and two houses for her mother. Spector also claimed that Short had failed to pay $700,000 in taxes and was sending him only $300 a month in prison spending money. When the divorce came through the judge awarded Short $37,000 a month in spousal support plus $14,000 a month for housing costs.

     On January 17, 2021 Phil Spector died in prison at the age of 81.

Betty Rice's Suspicious Death

     Betty Rice was 79 when she died on November 9, 2009 in her Sevierville, Tennessee mobile home. Elizabeth A. Ogle, Rice's 48-year-old niece by marriage had moved from Chatsworth, Georgia to the Great Smoky Mountain region to care for her sick aunt. Ogle, who moved into the double-wide had been taught by a hospice nurse how to administer the proper dosages of morphine to the dying woman.  Betty Rice had been diagnosed with lung cancer that spread throughout her body.

     Because of her age and illness, no one questioned the Sevier County coroner's ruling that Betty Rice died a natural death from cardiac and respiratory arrest. This determination was made by hospital physicians without an autopsy. A few days after her passing her body was embalmed and buried.

     Two months after Betty Rice's death some of her relatives informed the Sevier County Sheriff's Office of their suspicion that she had been murdered by Elizabeth Ogle. Not long before she died Betty added the live-in caregiver to her will. The suspicious relatives believed that Ogle gave Rice an overdose of morphine in order to inherit a portion of her estate which included the mobile home and some certificates of deposit.

     In January 2010, Sevier County Sheriff Ron Seals obtained a court order that allowed the exhumation of Betty Rice's remains for autopsy. Dr. Darinka Mileusnic-Polchan, the Chief Medical Examiner for Knox County and Professor of Pathology at the University of Tennessee, performed the autopsy. Dr. Mileusnic-Polchan, a native of Croatia, reported that Betty Rice's body at the time of her death contained a "lethal amount of morphine."

     Eight months after the autopsy Sevier County prosecutor Jeremy Ball charged Elizabeth Ogle with first-degree murder. The entirely circumstantial case was based on the changed will, a signature that looked forged, Ogle's role as the only person in charge of Rice's morphine intake and the excess amount of the narcotic in the dead woman's system. Elizabeth Ogle, held under $1 million bond, awaited her trial in the Sevier County Jail.

     On October 30, 2012 in his opening remarks to the jury Assistant District Attorney Jeremy Ball said that Betty Rice died from "a liver full of morphine" shortly after the defendant forged the old woman's signature on the new version of her last will and testament. To establish the forgery, the prosecutor put a FBI handwriting expert on the stand. According to the forensic document examiner the signature in question was substantially different than signatures on greeting cards known to be Rice's. But on cross-examination by defense attorney Charles Poole the document witness acknowledged that he couldn't declare that without a doubt the questioned signature was a forgery.

     The prosecution's key witness, medical examiner Mileusnic-Polchan, took the stand and testified that in her expert opinion Betty Rice died of a morphine overdose. Conceding on cross-examination that cancer had destroyed one of Rice's lungs, the medical examiner, none-the-less, testified the elderly woman had not died a natural death. In the forensic pathologist's opinion Betty Rice died of morphine poisoning and by implication, criminal homicide.

     Defense attorney Poole, by asking Dr. Mileusnic-Polchaln how the presence of morphine can be ascertained from remains that had been embalmed, failed to attenuate the certainty of her conclusion.

     On November 3, 2012 after the prosecution rested its case the defense put on the first of its three expert witnesses. Steven Karch, a cardiac toxicologist from San Francisco testified that there was no scientific basis for determining, in the human liver, what was an abnormal level of morphine. Although this witness was not a forensic pathologist he testified that Betty Rice's cause of death was probably heart failure.

     Dr. Gregory Davis, a medical examiner with the state of Kentucky testified that he "respectfully but vehemently disagreed" with Dr. Mileusnic-Polchan's cause of death determination. After reviewing her autopsy report, Dr. Gregory came to the conclusion that Betty Rice died due to complications from her cancer. The forensic pathologist also said that assuming the morphine had contributed to her death the patient could have self-administered the pain-killer.

     Dr. Davis was followed to the stand by a pharmacologist who opined that scientists had not established a way to determine abnormal levels of drugs in a person's body through liver analysis. Scientists had not figured out what an abnormal level of morphine was in a person's liver.

     At the close of testimony on the fourth day of the trial circuit judge Rex Ogle (no relation to the defendant) took the case out of the hands of the jurors by issuing a directed verdict of acquittal. In the judge's opinion the prosecution had not met its burden of proving a prima facie case.

     Elizabeth Ogle was released from custody and was determined to be eligible to inherit pursuant to Betty Rice's will. 

The Ron Jeremy Sexual Assault Case: The Legacy of a Former Porn Star

     Ronald Jeremy Hyatt, born in 1953 into a middle class family, grew up in Queens, New York. Following a stint as a school teacher he tried to establish a career as an actor on Broadway. When that didn't pan out the chubby, five-foot six aspiring actor moved to the Los Angeles area to pursue a career in the film industry. Hyatt, now going under the name Ron Jeremy, found his place as a Hollywood actor when in 1979 the 26-year-old appeared in his first porn flick. (According to porn film fans, inches that would have made Jeremy six-foot three, ended up elsewhere. For the porn industry he was tall in the right place.)

     By 2018, having appeared in more than 2,200 adult films, Ron Jeremy, having acquired the nickname "Hedgehog" because of his stature and hairy body, had become an icon in the porn business. According to the Guinness Book of World Records he held the record in the category "Most Appearances in Adult Films." Moreover, his fame reached beyond the porn community into popular culture where, through endorsements and his "acting," he became a multi-millionaire. In 2001 Jeremy was the subject of a documentary called "Porn Star: The Legacy of Ron Jeremy."

     On November 15, 2017 Rolling Stone published an article by EJ Dickson that discussed a June 2017 YouTube video posted by a woman named Ginger Banks. In that ten-minute clip Banks told the stories of several women who claimed to have been sexually assaulted by Ron Jeremy.

     Ron Jeremy's attorney attempted to get Rolling Stone to retract the damning piece, but the magazine stood behind the reporting.

     In 2018, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Special Victims Bureau launched an investigation into the sexual misconduct allegations against Ron Jeremy.

     On June 23, 2020, Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputies arrested the former porn star. The Los Angeles District Attorney's Office charged Jeremy with raping a 25-year-old woman in her home in West Hollywood in May 2014. He also faced charges related to the sexual assault, on separate occasions, of two women in a West Hollywood bar. The alleged assaults of these women, ages 33 and 46, took place in 2017. The final charge involved the alleged rape, in the same bar, of a 30-year-old woman. This offense allegedly occurred in July 2019.

     The 67-year-old former porn star, incarcerated in the Los Angeles County Jail under $6.6 million bond, pleaded not guilty to all charges. If convicted as charged he faced a maximum sentence of life in prison.

     On August 31, 2020, Ron Jeremy was back in court to face 20 additional sexual assault charges involving 13 women ages 15 to 56. The oldest alleged crime took place in 2004.

     The new charges included six counts of sexual battery by restraint, five counts of forcible rape, three counts of forcible oral copulation and two counts of forcible penetration by a foreign object. Ron Jeremy also stood accused of one count each of sodomy assault with intent to commit rape, penetration by a foreign object on an unconscious or sleeping victim and lewd conduct with a 15-year-old girl.

     The most recent sexual allegation against Ron Jeremy took place on January 1, 2020 when he allegedly assaulted a 21-year-old woman outside a business in West Hollywood.

     Ron Jeremy pleaded not guilty to the August 31, 2020 sexual assault charges.

     In January 2023 a judge found Jeremy incompetent to stand trial due to "neurocognative decline." Nine months later the 70-year-old defendant, with dementia and declining health, was released from his jail cell in Los Angeles to a private residence. In November 2023, Ron Jeremy was found incompetent to stand trial.

The David Bowen Murder-For-Hire Case

     The Bowens were an unlikely couple. Forty-four-year-old Daniel, a political ward captain, worked as a janitor at the Chicago Cultural Center. He and his wife Anne Treonis-Bowen, an attorney with the Illinois Liquor Control Commission, were in the midst of a nasty divorce that included a custody battle over their daughters who were five and six. Daniel couldn't stand the idea that his wife, the one with the better job, the one who would end up with the house and most of the marital assets, was about to become the dominant person in their children's lives. She would make all of the parental decisions while he'd be relegated to the role of a visiting ex-spouse. Daniel Bowen considered this a humiliating attack on his manhood. It was the hatred of his wife, not the love of his children, that drove this man to murder.

     In February 2004, Daniel Bowen offered his childhood friend, Dennis McArdle, $2,000 in upfront money to kill Mrs. Bowen. After the hit man completed the job and the victim's life insurance paid off, the murder-for-hire mastermind would pay McArdle another $20,000. Bowen also offered his friend a cushy low-level city job.

      Dennis McArdle, a convicted felon, alcoholic, drug addict and incompetent bungler with no prospects and nothing to lose, accepted the contract murder assignment. From a man he barely knew Mr. McArdle purchased, for $500, a .38-caliber revolver with a homemade silencer that didn't work when he and Bowen test-fired the gun in the basement of the cultural center. Bowen scheduled the murder for March 4, 2004, a day when he would be in the company of others and thus have an airtight alibi.

     As murder plots go this one was simple. Dennis McArdle was to shoot Daniel Bowen's wife after she parked her car that morning at the Chicago Transit Authority station southwest of the city. On the morning of the hit, wearing a ski mask and latex gloves, Mr. McArdle walked up behind the victim in the station parking lot and shot her once in the back of the head. To make the shooting look like a robbery rather than an execution style murder, he took the victim's handbag. The ploy, to the trained eye of an investigator was transparent.

     Although this amateur hitman wore gloves to avoid linking himself to the shooting, disposed of the victim's wallet and got rid of the murder weapon, he took Mrs. Bowen's purse back to his apartment building where he hid it in the basement. A few days later the owner of the apartment building found the handbag, and inside it a prescription bottle bearing the murdered woman's name. The landlord called the police. Because McArdle was the only resident of the building with a connection to the murder victim he became the prime suspect in the case.

     Ten days after Anne Treonis-Bowen's execution, detectives brought Mr. McArdle in for questioning. The 42-year-old suspect, suffering from cirrhosis and hepatitis, quickly confessed and agreed to testify against Daniel Bowen.

     In September 2004, while awaiting trial in the Cook County Jail, Daniel Bowen hanged himself. A month later a judge sentenced Dennis McArdle to 35 years in prison.

    The Bowen case exemplifies the fact that murder-for-hire is most often a crime of desperation committed by dimwits and fools. 

The Debra Milke Murder-For-Hire Case

     In December 1989, 25-year-old Debra Milke lived in Phoenix, Arizona with her 4-year-old son Christopher and a man named James Styers. She rented a room in Styers' house. A few days before Christmas Debta Milke asked Mr. Styers to drive Christopher to the mall so he could visit Santa Claus. Instead of taking the boy to the shopping mall Styers and a friend drove him to a secluded ravine outside of town where Styers shot the boy three times in the head. Detectives and prosecutors believed that Debra Milke arranged the murder of her son for a $50,000 insurance payout. 

      James Styers confessed to the homicide and was convicted of first degree-murder. At his trial neither he nor his friend implicated Milke in the alleged murder-for-hire plot. No other witnesses came forward with incriminating evidence against the mother.

     Evidence that Debra Milke plotted the murder came from a Phoenix detective named Armando Saldate. According to the detective, Milke told him that her role in the conspiracy to murder her son had been "a bad judgment call." Milke's interrogation had not been recorded and Saldate was the only officer involved in her questioning. The mother proclaimed her innocence from the beginning and denied making any kind of confession to Detective Saldate or anyone else. A local prosecutor, relying on the detective's credibility, charged Debra Milke with murder, conspiracy to commit murder, child abuse and kidnapping.

     Detective Saldate, at Milke's October 1990 murder trial, testified that the mother confessed to him regarding her role in her son's homicide. The defendant took the stand, professed her innocence and called the detective a liar. As is often the case jurors believed the police officer over the defendant. The jury returned a guilty verdict. A few months later the judge sentenced Debra Milke to death.

     As it turned out Detective Armando Saldate was in fact a notorious liar. Prior to his interrogation of Milke he had been caught committing perjury in four criminal trials. His credibility was so compromised judges refused to accept into evidence confessions this detective had acquired.

     On March 14, 2013 Chief Federal Judge Alex Kozinski of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Milke's conviction and vacated her sentence. The 49-year-old had been on Arizona's death row for 22 years. Based on Detective Saldate's history of perjury and other incidents of police misconduct, Judge Kozinski ruled that Milke's confession should have been excluded from her trial. Without this dishonest detective's tainted testimony the prosecution had no case. In rationalizing his decision, Judge Kozinski wrote: "No civilized system of justice should have to depend on such flimsy evidence, quite possibly tainted by dishonesty or overzealousness, to decide whether to take someone's life or liberty."

     On September 6, 2013, Judge Rosa Mroz of the Maricopa County Superior Court set the 49-year-old prisoner free on $250,000 bond. County prosecutors said they planned to bring Milke back to trial by the end of that month. Once again, the prosecution would seek the death penalty. The defendant's attorneys petitioned the Arizona Court of Appeals to throw out the first-degree murder charge.

     On December 12, 2014 a three-judge panel on the state appeals court ruled that a retrial in the Milke case would amount to double jeopardy. According to the court, "The failure to disclose evidence calls into question the integrity of the system and was highly prejudicial to this defendant." The appellate court ordered the dismissal of all charges against Debra Milke.

Passing The Trash

     In 2000, 37-year-old Wilbert Cortez, an elementary school teacher at PS 184 in Brooklyn, New York, was accused of inappropriately touching two of his male students. One of the boys reported the abuse to another teacher--three times. The teacher wrote a letter detailing the accusations and put the letter in Cortez's personnel file. Shortly after the students made their complaints school administrators decided to transfer Mr. Cortez to PS 174 in Queens. Instead of dealing with the problem, and if appropriate firing this teacher, they "passed the trash."

     On February 16, 2012 Queens District Attorney Richard Brown charged Wilbert Cortez, now 49, with the sexual abuse of two male elementary students in his computer lab class. The next day, after posting his $50,000 bail, Mr. Cortez walked out of the Queen's County Criminal Court building.

     The accused child molester, on May 29, 2012, was arraigned on additional charges that he repeatedly molested three male students at PS 174 in Queens between 2007 and 2011. Mr. Cortez faced up to seven years in prison on each count.

     When word got out that Wilbert Cortez had been accused of sexual molestation back in 2000 at PS 184 in Brooklyn, parents of children who had attended both schools were outraged that education administrators had swept the problem under the rug by sending him to Queens.

     Feeling the heat, Chancellor Dennis Walcott, on May 30, 2012, called an emergency meeting with these angry parents. More than 100 people attended the meeting held at PS 174. These concerned parents wanted to know why this teacher hadn't been investigated in 2000. Attendees also expressed concern that the school system's hiring procedures did not screen out pedophiles. Chancellor Walcott told those assembled that his staff would be digging through personnel files looking for old sexual complaints that had been ignored, and "take appropriate action where necessary."

     Chancellor Walcott's response, the promise to fix a problem that shouldn't have existed in the first place, didn't satisfy too many people at the meeting. Elementary schools in New York City and around the country were crawling with sex offenders because government laws and regulations limited what employers can legally ask job candidates about their past. As a result, pedophiles get into our schools. And once they are in, because of teacher's unions they are hard to remove. Administrators know this, and for that reason find it easier to pass the trash. Public education is more about protecting teachers than protecting students from sexual predators. 

     On February 25, 2015 Wilbert Cortez pleaded guilty to inappropriately touching one student and endangering three others at PS 174 in Queens. Following his guilty plea Chancellor Walcott stripped him of his New York State teaching certificate.

     Because he had been allowed to plead down to relatively minor offenses the judge sentenced Wilbert Cortez to ten years of probation. The child molester was also required to register as a sex offender and undergo counseling. Like so many ex-public school teachers like him, he got off light.