Forensic Pathology

     Forensic pathologists are physicians educated and trained to determine the cause and manner of death in cases involving violent, sudden or unexplained fatalities. The cause of death is the medical reason the person died. One cause of death is asphyxia--lack of oxygen to the brain. It occurs as a result of drowning, suffocation, manual strangulation by ligature (such as by rope, belt, or length of cloth), crushing or carbon monoxide poisoning. Other causes of death include blunt force trauma, gunshot wound, stabbing, slashing, poisoning, heart attack, stroke or a sickness such as cancer, pneumonia or heart disease.

     For the forensic pathologist the most difficult task often involves detecting the manner of death--natural, accidental, suicidal or homicidal. This is because the manner of death isn't always revealed by the condition of the body. For example, a death resulting from a drug overdose could be the result of homicide, suicide or accident. Knowing exactly how the fatal drug got into the victim's body requires additional information, data that usually comes from a police investigation. When the circumstances of a suspicious death are not ascertained or are sketchy, and the death was not an obvious homicide, the medical examiner (or coroner) might classify the manner of death as "undetermined."

     The autopsy along with the crime-scene investigation is the starting point, the foundation, of a homicide investigation. If something is missed or mishandled on the autopsy table, if the forensic pathologist draws the wrong conclusion from the evidence, the investigation is doomed.

     Up until the 1930s, before the English forensic pathologist Dr. Bernard Spilsbury glamorized the profession through a series of high-profile murder case solutions, forensic pathology was called "the beastly science." Today, in the U.S., there are about 400 practicing forensic pathologists. For medical examiner and coroner systems to work properly we need at least 800 of these practitioners. On average, about 35 of the 15,000 students who enroll in medical school every year graduate to become forensic pathologists.

     Forensic pathologists in the United States are overworked. Given the nature of the job they are under constant pressure from politicians, prosecutors, homicide investigators, families of the deceased and the media. The pay is relatively low, they often work in unsanitary morgue conditions, and in some jurisdictions run out of space to store dead bodies. Many forensic pathologists burn out and more than a few have had mental breakdowns.    

The History of American Forensic Science

     By 1935 crime laboratories were up and running in New York City, Chicago, Detroit, Boston, Los Angeles and Philadelphia. The FBI Lab opened its doors in 1933. The bureau's national fingerprint repository had been operating in Washington, D.C. since 1924, the year J. Edgar Hoover, an early advocate of scientific crime detection, became the agency's fourth director. August Vollmer, the progressive police administrator from Berkeley, California and Dean John Wigmore of Northwestern University Law School were tireless crusaders for forensic science and physical evidence as an alternative to coerced confessions, eyewitness testimony and jailhouse informants. Wigmore and Vollmer were the main forces behind the formation in Chicago of the Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory in 1930. In 1938 the private lab became part of the Chicago Police Department.

     In the 1930s a pair of private practice forensic chemists and crime scene reconstruction analysts in the northwest, Oscar Heinrich and Luke May, were grabbing headlines by solving high-profile murder cases. Stories involving crimes solved through the scientific analysis of physical evidence had become commonplace features in the fact-crime magazines so popular at the time. Numerous textbooks and manuals had been published on the subjects of fingerprint identification, forensic ballistics, questioned documents, trace evidence analysis, forensic serology, forensic medicine, scientific lie detection (polygraph) and forensic anthropology, the identification and analysis of skeletal remains.

     Criminal investigation textbooks of this era contained detailed instructions on how to protect crime scenes, render crime scene sketches, photograph clues, mark and package physical evidence, dust for latent fingerprints, make plaster-of-Paris casts of tire tracks and footwear impressions, and in the case of sudden, unexplained or violent death, look for signs of criminal homicide. By the mid-thirties virtually every court in the country accepted the expert opinions of practitioners in the major forensic fields and jurors recognized the advantages of expert physical evidence interpretation over the more direct testimony of jailhouse snitches and eyewitnesses.

     Today, notwithstanding DNA science and computerized fingerprint identification and retrieval capabilities, crime solution percentages in the United States have not improved since the mid-thirties when the FBI started collecting crime statistics. The emphasis on street policing (order maintenance), the escalating war on drugs and the threat of domestic terrorism diminished the role of criminal investigation and forensic science in the administration of justice. At a time when DNA technology advanced far beyond the imaginations of the pioneers of forensic serology (Dr. Paul Kirk and others), rapists, pedophiles and serial killers escape detection and arrest due to DNA analysis backlogs created by a shortage of funds and experts.

     Ironically, one of the byproducts of DNA science has been the release of hundreds of innocent people convicted on the strength of coerced confessions, unreliable eyewitnesses and the testimony of jailhouse informants. In the small percentage of trials that involve the analysis of physical evidence, jurors are commonly exposed to conflicting scientific testimony. When faced with opposing experts jurors tend to disregard the science altogether. The forensic pioneers of the twenties and thirties would be appalled by this hired-gun phenomena and the low productivity of today's investigative services.

     During the first decade of the 21st Century, due to forensic misidentifications caused by substandard lab conditions and incompetent personnel, crime laboratories in, among other places, Houston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit and Boston had to be temporarily closed. During this period, for the first time in the history of the science, there were numerous high-profile fingerprint misidentifications. Moreover, modern forensic science has seen an infusion of pseudo-science and bogus expertise into the nation's courtrooms.

      In March 2009 the National Academy of Sciences, an organization within the National Institute of Justice, after an eighteen month study published a report criticizing the state of forensic science in America. The writers of the widely publicized report recommended that Congress create a federal agency to insure a firewall between forensic science and law enforcement; finance more research and personnel training; and promote universal standards of excellence in the troubled fields of DNA profiling, forensic firearms identification, fingerprint analysis, forensic document examination and forensic pathology. From this, one might reasonably conclude that modern forensic science, weighed against the hopes and dreams of its pioneers, has not lived up to its potential.

The Catherine Walsh Murder Case: The Power of DNA Evidence

     A man kills a woman, does not get caught, and moves on with his life. Then one day 32 years later cops knock on his door, put him in handcuffs and haul the stunned suspect off to jail on the charge of murder. Before 1995 a story like this was the stuff of fiction. The advent of DNA technology, however, has made scenarios like this one not only possible but fairly common.

     In the old days (in the context of DNA science), when a murder investigation petered out and the trail grew cold detectives shelved the case, and, except for the victim's family, it was forgotten. Maybe the detective who had tried but failed to solve the murder thought about it every so often. But with dead witnesses, failed memories, lost documents and no leads, the old murder remained as dead as the victim. With the passage of enough time even the killer might forget the killing, or pretended it never happened. It used to be said that murder will out, but that was a lie.

     Thanks to DNA science old murder cases involving biological evidence such as hair follicles, saliva traces, bloodstains and semen residue can now come back to life and haunt killers who thought they had escaped detection. It's justice delayed but a lot better than no justice at all.

The Catherine Walsh Murder Case

     At noon on September 1, 1979, Peter J. Caltury Sr. entered the duplex in Monaca, Pennsylvania where his 23-year-old daughter Catherine Janet Walsh lived by herself. He found her dead, lying face-down on her bed with her hands tied behind her back with a bathrobe cord. Dressed in a nightgown and partially covered by the bed sheet, the victim had a blue scarf wrapped around her neck. When Mr. Caltury called the Monaca Police Department Officer Andrew Gall responded to the scene.
 
      It became apparent that robbery hadn't been the motive for the Walsh murder. The doors to the house had been locked when the victim's father checked in on his daughter and there were no signs of a struggle. Based on these conditions, investigators assumed the victim had known her killer.

     Murder was rare in Monaca, a Beaver County town on the eastern bank of the Ohio River 35 miles north of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The fact Catherine Walsh had been sexually assaulted and murdered in her own bedroom shocked the residents of this small community.

     Catherine, a year out of Monaca High School, married Scott E. Walsh in August 1976. In December 1978 he filed for divorce on the grounds she had "violated her marriage vows." Catherine moved into the duplex after the separation. At the time of her death, however, she was still married to Scott Walsh.

     The Beaver County coroner determined that Catherine Walsh had been strangled to death and ruled the case a homicide. Detectives questioned, as the obvious suspect, Scott Walsh the estranged husband. Investigators also interviewed a man named Gregory Scott Hopkins from the nearby borough of Bridgewater. Mr. Hopkins admitted he had had a sexual relationship with the married victim but said it had ended a month before her death.

     Although detectives worked hard on the Walsh murder case they were unable to acquire the evidence they needed to arrest a suspect. Years passed and the case went dormant. Detectives worked on other crimes and the Walsh case suspects went on with their lives. Gregory Hopkins became a successful building contractor, and in November 2010, was elected to the Bridgewater Borough Council. He married his first wife in 1967 and divorced her in 1980. He married again in 1983, divorcing this wife in 1999. In 2001 he married Karen L. Fisher.

     In 2010 the Pennsylvania State Police, working off a federal grant, re-opened several old homicide cases that featured biological evidence that could be linked to murder suspects through DNA analysis. One of these cold-case investigations included the September 1979 murder of Catherine Walsh. In December 2011 a state forensic scientist took DNA samples from several people, including Gregory Hopkins. After comparing biological trace evidence from the victim's nightgown, the bathrobe cord and the crime scene bed sheet to Gregory Hopkins' DNA sample, the scientist declared a match.

     On January 29, 2012 detectives arrested Gregory Hopkins at his home for the murder of Catherine Walsh. They booked the Bridgewater Councilman into the Beaver County Jail. Six days later, James Ross, Hopkins' attorney, asked the judge to grant his client bail. The judge, ruling that Catherine Walsh's murder was a non-bailable crime, denied the defendant's request.

     Gregory Hopkins' attorney, promising a "vigorous" defense, told reporters that "Mr. Hopkins is a very reputable man in the community, has been in business for 40 years, served on the borough council and I think the arrest comes as a shock to many people." 

     On November 5, 2012 Common Pleas Judge Harry E. Knafelc ruled that the state could not use a report by the well-known Pittsburgh-based forensic pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht. According to Dr. Wecht, the murder scene DNA evidence revealed that Mr. Hopkins had been in the victim's bed lying on top of her when the murder took place. Judge Knafelc, in ruling Dr. Wecht's analysis inadmissible as evidence, cited insufficient scientific data to back up his expert opinion.

     The Hopkins murder trial got underway on November 10, 2013 in the Beaver County Courthouse. Assistant District Attorney Brittany Smith, in her opening statement to the jury, placed the defendant at the murder scene through his DNA found on the bed sheet, nightgown and the bathrobe cord tied around the victim's wrists.

     Defense attorney James Ross told the jurors that his client's DNA was at the murder scene because he and the victim had engaged in sex the summer before her death.

     Defense attorney Ross, in his cross-examination of retired state trooper Richard Matas, got the prosecution witness to concede that when he processed the Walsh murder scene he had not seen semen stains on the body, the bed or the nightgown. Attorney Ross showed the witness a photograph depicting a bedroom trash can with a piece of tissue beside it. Ross asked the witness why the tissue hadn't been collected as potential evidence. "In hindsight, perhaps I made a mistake," replied the former officer.

     Andrew Gall, the former Monaca patrol officer, testified on cross-examination that he had not worn gloves at the site of the Walsh murder.

     At the close of the prosecution's case which featured the expert testimony of several forensic scientists, the 67-year-old defendant took the stand and testified he had not been in the victim's apartment when she was murdered. According to him the last time he visited her apartment was several weeks before her death.

     On November 22, 2013 the jury of five men and seven women found Gregory Hopkins guilty of third-degree murder. Judge Henry Knafelc, on February 26, 2014, sentenced him to 8 to 16 years in prison.

     In the Walsh case crime scene mistakes made by the police did not diminish the prosecutorial power of DNA evidence.

The Isiah Murrietta-Golding Police-Involved Shooting Case

     On April 14, 2017 in Fresno, California, 19-year-old Eugenio Ybarra, his 17-year-old brother and three of their friends got into an argument in a pizza shop parking lot with 16-year-old Isiah Murrietta-Golding and his 17-year-old brother. When Ybarra and his four passengers drove off they were followed by the Murrietta-Golding brothers. As the vehicles approached the Ybarra residence one of the Murrietta-Golding brothers in the vehicle behind them fired a shot into their car. No one was hit but the shot caused the driver of the car to smash into a tree, killing Eugenio Ybarra. Isiah Murrietta-Golding and his brother drove away from the scene of the crash.

     On Saturday, the day after Eugenio Ybarra's death, police officers while surveilling the Murrietta-Golding house spotted a car pass by with Isiah Murrietta-Golding in the front passenger's seat. Police officers pulled the vehicle over in a nearby shopping plaza parking lot. One of the officers, his gun pulled, ordered the car's occupants, Murrietta-Golding and two other teens to get out of the vehicle with their hands over their heads. The suspects were told to walk backwards toward the police officer. Two of the teens complied, Isiah Murrietta-Golding fled.

     With Sergeant Ray Villalvazo in pursuit, Murrietta-Golding climbed a picket fence and landed on the other side which was the property of a closed daycare center. Officer Villalvazo, from a distance of about 35 feet fired a single shot at the fleeing 16-year-old. The bullet struck the teen in the back of the head causing him to collapse unconscious to the ground.

     The officer approached the fallen suspect and with his gun out searched for but did not find a weapon on him. Officer Villalvazo rolled the boy onto his stomach, pulled back his arms and placed him into handcuffs.

     When medics arrived at the scene one of them requested that the handcuffs be taken off the dying suspect. Officer Villalvazo informed the medics that the cuffs would be removed at the hospital.

     The shooting of Isiah Murrietta-Golding on the daycare center property was captured on the school's surveillance camera.

     Isiah Murrietta-Golding died shortly after arriving at a nearby hospital.

     Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer ordered an internal investigation of the fatal police-involved shooting. When questioned by police department investigators looking into the case, Sergeant Villalvazo said he had feared for his life when the fleeing murder suspect reached into his waistband several times in what the officer interpreted as reaching for a weapon.

     That April a prosecutor charged Isiah Murrietta-Golding's 17-year-old brother with one count of murder and three counts of assault with a deadly weapon in connection with the death of Eugenio Ybarra the day before Isiah was shot to death by officer Villalvazo.

     In March 2018, police chief Jerry Dyer announced that the internal police inquiry into the fatal police-involved shooting of Isiah Murrietta-Golding cleared officer Ray Villalvazo of any wrongdoing. According to the chief, the officer acted within the department's use of deadly force policy. The police department did not, however, make the daycare center surveillance video available to the public.

     Stuart Chandler, the attorney representing Isiah Murrietta-Golding's father, filed a wrongful death suit against the city of Fresno and the police department. The attorney had viewed the daycare center surveillance video, evidence he intended to introduce at the civil trial scheduled for sometime in 2020.

     Attorney Chandler, informed by what he had seen on the video, said this to reporters: "There absolutely is no way the officer's life was in danger. He [the suspect] was running away and he was trying to hold up his pants."

     In April 2018, Isiah Murrietta-Golding's 17-year-old brother, in connection with Eugenio Ybarra's death, pleaded guilty to assault with a deadly weapon. At the juvenile's sentencing hearing he told the court that it was his brother Isiah who fired into the car that crashed into the tree killing the 19-year-old Ybarra.

     In October 2019, attorney Stuart Chandler released the daycare center video of the fatal police-involved shooting. Regarding officer Villalvazo's putting handcuffs on the downed suspect, the attorney said: "He's unconscious and in the process of dying. What is the threat? They just saw him as an animal who had to be shot."

     Following the release of the surveillance video depicting the shooting, a video that could be seen on social media, the new Fresno chief of police, Andrew Hall, defended officer Villalvazo's use of deadly force on the grounds that Isiah Murrietta-Golding was a murder suspect known to be armed.

The Infamous Bell, California Public Corruption Case

     The Los Angeles Times in July 2010 exposed public corruption in Bell, one of the poorer suburban communities in Los Angeles County. Investigative journalists revealed that the city manager, his assistant, members of the city council and the chief of police of this town of 40,000 were being paid salaries that were, even by California standards, outrageously high.

     Robert Rizzo, the city manager, made $800,000 a year as part of a combined annual salary and compensation package. Mr. Rizzo lived in a mansion and was wealthy enough to raise thoroughbred racing  horses. His assistant, Angela Spaccia, pulled in $375,000 a year. Six of the part-time city council members each made $100,000 a year for essentially doing nothing. The clueless taxpayers of Bell, California were being taken on a ride.

     In March 2011, following criminal investigations by the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office and investigators with the state, Robert Rizzo and seven other Bell city officers were indicted on various charges of public corruption. Mr. Rizzo faced 50 counts of misappropriating public funds, conflict of interest, falsifying documents and giving himself and Angela Spaccia raises without council approval. The eight defendants were accused of stealing just under $6 million from the taxpayers of this small, debt-ridden town.

     Randy Adams, the 59-year-old hired by Robert Rizzo as Bell's chief of police in August 2009, was not among those indicted for public corruption. Chief Adams, who had been the chief of police of the Glendale, California Police Department, had been given a sweet deal by city manager Rizzo. Besides his whopping salary of $457,000 a year, Randy Adams was immediately declared physically disabled notwithstanding his impressive time at a 5 K race he ran a month before starting the job. In the Golden State, being declared officially disabled (in Adam's case a bad back and knees) meant that he could retire whenever he wanted and receive a pension equal to one-half of his salary--for life. (City manager Rizzo and his assistant were charged with falsifying public records to show that the chief was only being paid $200,000 a year.)

     Although patrol officers in California routinely made over $100,00 a year, being paid $457,000 a year to run a police department with 40 employees was excessive, even in California. For example, Charles Beck, the chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, an agency that employed 13,000, made $307,000 a year.

     After the Los Angeles Times broke the story of the corruption in Bell, the taxpayers revolted and threw the bums out of office.  Randy Adams left the police department in August 2010. After working a year as its chief he was entitled, pursuant to his employment contract, a pension of $22,000 a month.

     In August 2012, Randy Adams, instead of quietly enjoying the good life at the expense of Bell's struggling taxpayers, sued the city for the one-year severance pay he said he was owed by the municipality. (A year earlier the angry ex-chief sued the city for not reimbursing him for the legal costs he had incurred defending himself against the public corruption scandal.)

     In Bell, California and who knows how many other places in the Golden State, crime didn't pay nearly as well as crime fighting, assuming you could tell the difference between the two.

     On October 23, 2012 a judge ruled against Randy Adams in his suit to recover severance pay and legal expenses.

     In January 2013 former city manager Robert Rizzo, his assistant Angela Spaccia and four members of the city council were convicted of public corruption. The former city council members were each given the light sentences of five years probation. The judge sentenced Robert Rizzo and Angela Spaccia to 12-year prison terms.

The Adam Kaufman "Spray Tan" Murder Case

     Adam Kaufman, on November 7, 2007, called 911 from his home in Aventura, Florida. Sounding hysterical, the 34-year-old south Florida real estate developer informed the dispatcher that he had awaken that morning to find his wife, Eleonora (Lina) slumped unconscious in the bathroom, her neck draped over a bar on a magazine rack. Paramedics rushed the 33-year-old to the hospital where she died later that day.

     One of the responding officers with the Aventura Police Department touched the hood of Adam's car and found it warm. Another officer noticed that only one side of the couple's bed had been slept in. As a result, the police didn't believe Adam Kaufman when he claimed to have slept all night next to  his wife.

     Associate Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner Dr. Chester Gwen conducted the autopsy. Although the forensic pathologist found injuries on Lina's upper-back and abrasions on her chin, neck, left shoulder and chest as well as hemorrhages in her interior neck muscles, declared her cause and manner of death "undetermined."

     Without a finding of death by homicide, the Kaufman case remained in limbo for 18 months. In May 2009 Miami-Dade County Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Bruce A. Hyma ruled that Lina Kaufman had died by mechanical asphyxiation, that she had been strangled. The following month the prosecutor, even though he didn't have evidence of marital strife or a motive, charged Adam Kaufman with second-degree murder.

     At Adam Kaufman's bond hearing his attorneys revealed the defense version of the death: Lina Kaufman, with a history of fainting spells, had applied a spray-on tanning substance that resulted in a violent allergic reaction causing respiratory failure. When she collapsed she fell with her neck draped over the magazine rack bar.

     Adam Kaufman's trial commenced on May 7, 2012 before Judge Brownyn Miller in Miami, Florida. A week later, following the jury selection process, defense attorney Bill Matthewman, in his opening remarks, unveiled the new defense version of Lina Kaufman's death: while sitting on the toilet she had a heart attack and fell forward with her neck hitting the bar of the magazine rack. In addressing the prosecutor's case, attorney Matthewman said, "The state's evidence cannot even prove that a homicide occurred, let alone that Adam Kaufman did it....The case is a tragedy of errors. An innocent man was charged with a non-existent crime."

     Prosecutor Joe Mansfield in his opening speech to the jurors said that Lina Kaufman had been a "healthy, active woman, arguably in the best shape of her life. All of that ended because of the actions of that man, her husband."

      In this case the outcome would come down to how Lina Kaufman had died, naturally or by the hand of her husband. That meant that the important testimony would be of a medico-legal nature.

     On May 16, 2012, Dr. Bruce Hyma took the stand for the prosecution. The Chief Medical Examiner for Miami-Dade County testified that Lina Kaufman had died from strangulation and not a heart attack. Dr. Tracy Baker, the plastic surgeon who had enhanced Mrs. Kaufman's breasts told the jury that when he examined her a few months before her death she was in good health. Defense attorney Albert Milian asked Dr. Baker on cross-examination if Lina could have lied to him about her medical history. The witness answered yes.

     Dr. Chester Gwen, the former Miami-Dade County forensic pathologist who had performed the autopsy in 2007, testified that the injuries he found on Kaufman's body had not been caused by emergency personnel who had tried to revive her. On cross-examination Dr. Gwen admitted that in April 2012 he had said that in his expert opinion the cause of Lina Kaufman's death was still a mystery to him. The forensic pathologist also said that Dr. Hyma, before he ruled the death a homicide by strangulation, had not consulted with him.

     Larissa Adamyan, a friend of the deceased woman, took the stand on behalf of the prosecution. As it turned out her testimony helped the defense more than the prosecution. The witness described the relationship between the defendant and his wife as a "loving marriage." Ten hours before Lina's death, in anticipation of Adam's brother Seth's upcoming wedding, she had gotten a spray tan.

     Aventura police officer Robert Meyers took the stand and said that at the hospital the day Lina died he overheard the defendant tell three different versions of what he had seen that morning in the bathroom. According to this witness the defendant said he found Lina's neck resting on the toilet bowl; her body slumped over the toilet; and her head hung over the magazine rack. On cross-examination defense attorney Milian got the witness to admit that none of this information was included in his police report.

     Dr. Bruce Hyma re-took the stand on May 2, 2012 to explain why it had taken 18 months to declare Lina Kaufman's cause and manner of death as a strangulation homicide. The forensic pathologist attributed this passage of time to a delayed toxicological report and the fact he wanted to be sure he made the right call. On cross-examination the defense attorney accused the medical examiner of caving to pressure from the prosecutor to declare Lina Kaufman's death a homicide.

     Prosecutor Mathew Baldwin, during the direct examination of a friend of the deceased woman, asked if the witness had been aware that the defendant, shortly after his wife's death, had been carrying on with another woman. This question brought an objection from the defense. Judge Miller called the attorneys to the bench and excused the jury. In justifying this line of questioning, prosecutor Baldwin said, "He's [the defendant] is asking this girl out with his dead wife's wedding ring on his finger the next month in December 2007. [Lina died in November.] By January and February they're having regular sex. He was not exactly devastated by his wife's passing. The best analogy I can think of is when Casey Anthony was getting a tattoo [after the death of her child]."

     Judge Miller asked the prosecutor if the state had evidence that the defendant had been unfaithful to his wife. The answer was no. Judge Miller ruled that the prosecution could not present evidence of the defendant's post-death dating. At his point defense attorney Matthewman asked the judge for a mistrial on the grounds the jury had heard the question which had planted the idea in jurors' minds that the defendant had not been a good husband. Judge Miller denied the motion. She had told the jurors to disregard the question.

     That afternoon a Miami-Dade crime scene technician testified that Lina Kaufman's fingernails contained traces of her blood and tissue, suggesting she had clawed at something around her neck. The prosecutor also called a physicist to the stand who said it would have been physically impossible for Lina to have fallen off the toilet and land with her head draped over the magazine rack. With that, the prosecution rested its case.

     On Thursday, May 24, 202l the defense launched its case by calling Lina's mother Frida Aizman to the stand. This witness told the jury that she and her family loved the defendant and after Lina's death they had become even closer. The witness also testified that in the weeks leading up to her daughter's death Lina had complained of headaches and feeling weak. She tried yoga to relieve her headaches.

     Miami-Dade fire rescue captain Joseph Carman, the first responder to enter the Kaufman house, testified that he found the defendant giving Lina CPR. According to the witness, Mr. Kaufman was wearing a t-shirt and boxer shorts. The defense presented this testimony because it was consistent with Adam Kaufman's story that he awoke after a night of sleep to find his wife collapsed in the bathroom.

     Thomas Hill, a Broward County Sheriff's Office crime scene investigator took the stand for the defense and criticized Kaufman case investigators for not collecting important physical evidence. The witness said they had failed to gather Adam Kaufman's clothing, magazines from the bathroom rack and bedding from the master bedroom. The crime scene investigator also said he could see no evidence of a struggle in the small bathroom. "My goodness," he said, "she would have been kicking those walls in, and I don't see any of that." The witness said that if Lina had been strangled, the defendant would have had gouge marks on his arms from her trying to claw them from her neck.

     Dr. John Marriccini, the former Palm Beach County Chief Medical Examiner, testified that the forensic pathologists in the Kaufman case had overlooked Lina Kaufman's history of health problems which included heart disease. Celebrity forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden climbed into the witness box and said, "Lina Kaufman did not die of unnatural causes. There was no homicide, there was no murder. She died of natural causes." Dr. Baden testified that in his expert opinion Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner Bruce Hyma based his homicide ruling on the work of two rookie forensic pathologists who had gotten it wrong. Dr. Baden said Lina Kaufman died of a heart attack and that the injuries to her throat from hitting the magazine rack had been exacerbated by bungled resuscitation attempts by the defendant and paramedics. Following Dr. Baden's testimony the defense rested its case without putting the defendant on the stand.

     On May 31, 2012, because the defense had portrayed the Kaufman marriage as blissful, Judge Miller allowed the prosecution to put Fara Corenblum, a rebuttal witness, on the stand. According to Corenblum, she and the defendant started an affair a month after Lina's death. The witness said she ended the twice-a-week relationship after she realized he was not ready to move on following his wife's death. For the prosecution, Corenblum's testimony, by casting a sympathetic light on the defendant, may have done more harm than good.

     Both sides made their closing arguments on Monday, June 4, 2012. The next day the case went to the jury. At five o'clock that evening the jury returned with its verdict: not guilty.

The Krystal Marie Barrows Police-Involved-Shooting Case

     Eleven people were inside a mobile home near Chillicothe, Ohio when, at 10:30 PM on December 11, 2013, a dozen or so members of a local drug task force unit rolled up to the dwelling with a no-knock warrant to search for guns and drugs. One of the occupants of the trailer house was a teenage girl.

     Just before breaking into the home one of the heavily armed U.S. 23 Task Force officers tossed a flash bang grenade through a window. At the moment the device detonated officers forced their way into the house.

     Following the initial chaos created by the SWAT-like raid, officers found Krystal Marie Barrows slumped on the living room couch. The 35-year-old mother of three had been shot in the head. She died shortly after being flown by helicopter to the Wexner Medical Center in Columblus.

     The raiding police officers arrested two women and four men for illegally possessing pistols, assault rifles and heroin. The task force cops also recovered stolen goods and a significant amount of cash. During the raid none of the mobile home occupants pulled a gun or fired a shot. This meant that Krystal Barrows had been shot by one of the task force officers.

     According to the results of a preliminary police inquiry into Barrows' death, she had been shot by Ross County sergeant Brett McKnight. The eleven-year veteran of the Ross County Sheriff's Office had accidentally discharged his sidearm outside the trailer when the flash bang grenade went off. The bullet pierced the trailer home's exterior wall and hit Barrows in the head.

      Other than a misdemeanor drunk and disorderly conviction, Krystal Barrows did not have a criminal record. Her sons were aged 19, 14 and 9. Detectives with the Ohio Bureau of Investigation looked into the case to determine if Sergeant McKnight had fired his gun recklessly.

     In March 2015, after a Ross County grand jury declined to indict Office McKnight for criminal homicide or lesser charges, the officer returned to work without any disciplinary action.

     Two years after the grand jury refused to indict the officer, the Ross County Sheriff's Office and other wrongful death defendants settled a lawsuit filed by Krystal Barrows' family for $156,000.

Failing to Stop a Murderous Serial Stalker

     Scottye Leon Miller, a violent, sociopathic stalker of ex-girlfriends and other women unfortunate enough to have crossed his path, lived in Burien, Washington, a King County town of 33,000 located south of Seattle. Between 2002 and 2010 Mr. Miller stalked, harassed, threatened and assaulted several women. His arrest record featured 15 domestic violence related convictions and six court protection order violations. It was just a matter of time before he killed one of his victims.

     In 2008 the violent ex-con started dating Tricia Patricelli, a 30-year-old mother of two daughters who lived in the nearby city of Auburn. In January of the following year Scottye Miller forced his way into Patricelli's apartment and assaulted her in front of her children. A local prosecutor charged the 30-year-old subject with burglary and third-degree assault. The defendant pleaded guilty and received a short sentence in the King County Jail. (Because home intrusion is a violent felony the judge should have sentenced Miller, given his criminal record, to twenty years in prison.)

     Miller served less than a year in jail on the Patricelli burglary/assault conviction. In January 2012 Tricia Patricelli called 911 and reported that Miller had threatened to kill her and was chasing her in the parking lot of the apartment complex. "Please hurry, he is going to kill me!" she screamed. The police arrived and took Miller into custody. To the responding officers, Tricia Patricelli said, "You don't know who you are dealing with. He is going to kill me."

     Scottye Miller, convicted of fourth-degree assault and harassment, was sentenced to another short stretch in the King County Jail. The fact he was behind bars, however, did not stop this man from continuing to terrorize his victim. While serving his time Miller wrote Patricelli letters in which he promised to kill her when he got out of jail. Apparently in King County, Washington victims of stalking and assault did not get relief even when their offenders were in custody. For a victim of this type of crime this reality must have been frightening.

     Scottye Miller on October 12, 2012 walked out of jail a free man. This meant serious trouble for Tricia Patricelli, the object of this serial stalker's obsession and pathological wrath. The criminal justice system, at this point, had no solution for Patricelli's life-threatening predicament. It didn't take a psychic detective to predict bad things for this vulnerable woman.

     At eight-thirty in the morning of October 30, 2012, just two weeks after Miller's release from the King County Jail, neighbors heard the screams of a woman coming from Tricia Patricelli's apartment. Moments after the woman went silent witnesses saw a man meeting Miller's physical description walk out of the building. Someone called 911.

     Responders to Patricelli's apartment found that Scottye Miller had stabbed Tricia Patricelli to death in the bathroom. He had stabbed her in the face, neck, torso and back--22 times in all. Police arrested him shortly thereafter at a nearby bus stop. Miller denied any knowledge of the stabbing but admitted that he had sent the dead woman text messages in which he had threatened to kill her. Miller told the arresting officers that he had been dating the victim for four years and had lived with her, on and off, during half of that time.

     Shortly after Patricelli's murder, investigators found three bloody knives, a pair of blood-stained gloves and the victim's cellphone at the foot of a fence near the apartment complex. During a second interrogation Scottye Miller confessed to the killing. He said that in the midst of a fight in Patricelli's apartment he just "snapped." After "snapping," Miller slipped on a pair of gloves, and using the three knives he had brought with him to Patricelli's dwelling, started stabbing her. The bloody assault ended up in Patricelli's bathroom where she died.

     On November 15, 2012 a King County judge arraigned Scottye Miller on the charge of first-degree murder. The homicidal stalker was back in jail under $1 million bond.

     In December 2013 a jury found Miller guilty of first-degree murder. Two weeks after the verdict the judge sentenced him to 50 years in prison.

     The Scottye Miller case reminds us of a frightening truth about our criminal justice system. The police cannot arrest dangerous people for what they might do. Law enforcement authorities only spring into action after the harm is done. In this case it was too late to protect the victim's life. Our system of criminal justice is designed more for the protection of the criminal than it is for the safety of the victim. Women being stalked, threatened with death and assaulted by pathological criminals like Scottye Miller cannot look to the police or the courts for protection. They either have to flee and hide, hire a contract killer or buy a gun and do the job themselves. None of these options are good, but neither is being hounded, assaulted, then murdered in your own bathroom by some low-life sociopath.  

Prison Escape By Computer

     Inmates have been known to tunnel, climb, sneak, saw, assault and bribe their way out of prisons and jails. But in central Florida a pair of convicted murderers managed to escape by forging court documents.

     On September 27, 2013, an official with the Florida Department of Corrections ordered convicted killer Joseph Jenkins released from the Franklin Correctional Institution where he had been serving a life sentence. In 1997 Jenkins murdered Roscoe Pugh in an Orlando robbery that went bad. The 34-year-old's ticket to freedom was a phony court document that reduced his life sentence to fifteen years. The release order bore the signature of Chief Circuit Judge Belvin Perry. The forged corrections paperwork included a motion filed by a local prosecutor in support of the new sentence. The phony documents had been processed by the Orange County Clerk of Courts Office.

     On October 8, 2013 another convicted murderer serving a life sentence at the Franklin County prison near Tallahassee walked out of the prison. Charles Walker had killed Cedric Slater in 1998. At his trial Walker claimed that because the victim bullied him he fired three shots to scare him off. Instead of scaring Slater, Charles Walker shot him dead. The Orlando jury found him guilty of second-degree murder.

     Corrections authorities released the 34-year-old Walker after receiving the same set of forged documents that freed Joseph Jenkins. It was extremely rare for a trial judge in cases involving convictions affirmed on appeal to order reduced sentences. Moreover, prosecutors rarely supported shortened sentences. To say that someone at the Florida Department of Corrections was asleep at the switch would be an understatement. After their releases both men went to the Orange County Jail where they registered as felons as required by law.

     According to investigators with the Florida Department of Corrections, the forging lifers had either been helped by a jailhouse lawyer with computer skills or an outside person with paralegal experience.

     Judge Belvin Perry told an Associated Press reporter that "Someone with the aid of a computer lifted my signature off previously signed documents, which are public record." [Judge Perry, in 2011 presided over the Casey Anthony trial. As a result his signature was available on public documents and accessible online.]

     According to Judge Perry, "In my 35 years in the judicial system, I have never seen the state of Florida file a motion to correct an illegal sentence. One of the things we have never taken a close look at is the verification of a particular document to make sure it is the real McCoy." 

      
     At 6:40 PM on October 19, 2013, U. S. Marshals and officers with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement arrested Charles Walker and Joseph Jenkins at the Coconut Grove Motor Inn in Panama City. A tip from a person who knew both men led to their arrests. 

Anthony Novellino: The Pig Mask Murder Case

     In 2010 after years of marriage, Anthony Novellino and his wife Judith, a teacher at Morris Catholic High School in Denville Township, New Jersey, couldn't stand each other. She accused him of being verbally abusive and controlling. He claimed that because she was such a lousy housekeeper the house was always a mess. To back up his accusation he emailed photographs of the unkempt home to family and friends.

     The couple also fought over their oldest son Anthony A. Novellino Jr., a resident of nearby Parsippany. Over the past few years police officers arrested Novellino Jr. for possession of drugs. He had also been charged with auto theft. Judith Novellino treated her drug-addicted son with compassion and accommodated his needs such as giving him money. The father, fed up with his son, believed that tough-love such as jail was the best way to deal with the problem.

     Judith Novellino filed for divorce and on June 8, 2010 it became final. According to the divorce settlement she would receive $110,000, her share of the house, plus $150,000, her half of their IRAs and bank savings. Mr. Novellino made no secret of the fact he felt cheated in the distribution of the family assets.

     On June 19, 2010, eleven days after the finalization of the breakup, Anthony Novellino came home and found Judith in the house retrieving her personal belongings. They argued and he became enraged. The confrontation came to a bloody end when he stabbed her 84 times with an 8-inch kitchen knife. Before he packed some of his belongings and walked to his car, Mr. Novellino slipped a pig mask over his former wife's head.

     Christina German, the divorced couple's daughter, discovered her mother's body in the bathroom when she came to the house to help the 62-year-old move her belongings to an apartment in Parsippany.

     Five days after the brutal murder police in Puyallup, Washington took Anthony Novellino into custody. The 66-year-old fugitive had driven across the country to be with a woman he had met on the Internet. Assistant Morris County prosecutor Maggie Calderwood charged Mr. Novellino with murder and several lesser offenses.

     When interrogated by detectives in New Jersey the suspect claimed he had "hit" his former wife twice with the knife in self defense. The judge denied Novellino bond. Officers booked the suspect into the Morris County Jail where he would await his day in court.

     The Novellino trial got underway in a Morristown Superior Court on July 7, 2014. In his opening remarks to the jury the defendant's attorney, Michael Priarone, said his client, in a fit of temporary insanity attacked his wife. This act of violence, according to the defense attorney, was entirely out of his client's character. As a result, attorney Priarone wanted the jury to find Mr. Novellino guilty of what he called "passion provocation manslaughter," an offense that carried a maximum sentence of ten years in prison.

     Anthony Novellino's attorney moved to have the death scene pig mask excluded from evidence on the grounds it was "highly prejudicial" to his client. The judge denied that request.

     On July 22, 2014, after just three hours of deliberation, the jury found Anthony Novellino guilty of murder, hindering apprehension, tampering with evidence and two counts of illegal weapons possession.

     At the September 12, 2014 sentence hearing the judge sentenced 70-year-old Anthony Novellino to 50 years in prison. The overkill and the pig mask had sealed his fate.

The Tomeikia Johnson Murder Case

     Off-duty California Highway Patrol Officer Tomeikia Johnson and her husband Marcus Lemons started arguing while having drinks on February 21, 2009 at the T.G.I. Friday bar in Compton, California. At 11PM, after the 32-year-old cop paid the bill, she and Lemons, a barber and locally known amateur bowler, left the restaurant with the CHP officer behind the wheel. About an hour later Tomeikia Johnson pulled up to her parents' Compton home with her husband's dead body in the BMW. Mr. Lemons had been shot point-blank in the head with his wife's handgun. Tomeikia Johnson's mother called 911.

     Pending the results of the homicide investigation conducted by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office, the CHP re-assigned Johnson to desk duty. She told investigators that she and her husband, after they left the bar, continued to fight. When she pulled the car off the road he became physical. As they struggled for control of the gun it went off and killed him. According to her account of the shooting she was defending herself against an abusive husband.

     Detectives looking into the shooting believed that Johnson had pulled the car off the road, reached into her purse, took out her gun and shot Markus Lemons in the head. The Los Angeles County deputy district attorney handling the case believed that Johnson had murdered her husband. In January 2011 sheriff's deputies arrested Tomeikia Johnson on the charge of first-degree murder as she sat at her CHP desk. (From the beginning the CHP had cooperated with the investigation.) Initially held in the county jail on $2 million bond she made bail and was released.

     In January 2012, with the defendant's family seated on one side of the courtroom and her dead husband's relatives gathered in the other half of the gallery, the Yomeikia Johnson trial got underway in downtown Los Angeles. In her opening statement to the jury Deputy District Attorney Natalie Adomian laid out the prosecution's theory of the shooting. According to the prosecutor, after Johnson pulled the BMW off the road, she pulled out her gun, pressed the muzzle against his head and pulled the trigger.

     Over the next several days prosecutor Adomian, to support the state's assertion the killing had been intentional, put a blood spatter interpretation analyst as well as a gunshot residue expert on the stand. The experts testified that the pattern and location of the blood and powder staining did not support the defendant's account of the shooting. The forensic scientists were followed by a series of witnesses who portrayed the defendant as having an aggressive personality and a drinking problem. These witnesses characterized Marcus Lemons as a peaceful, nonviolent husband who had taken a lot of abuse from his wife. Since Johnson hadn't confessed and there were no eyewitnesses to the shooting, the prosecution's case was entirely circumstantial.

     To establish that his client had been an abused wife, and that the shooting had occurred during a life and death struggle for the gun, attorney Darryl Stallworth put the defendant on the stand realizing that the outcome of the case depended upon Tomeikia Johnson's credibility. Defense attorney Stallworth, to make the case for his client's innocence, had to put Marcus Lemons on trial. He had to attack a dead man, always a risky move in a murder trial.

     According to the defendant, a week before her husband died while trying to kill her, he had given her reason to fear for her life. They had gotten into an argument while driving back to Los Angeles from a bowling tournament in Las Vegas. She told him to stop the car, and when he pulled off the road, she ran to a nearby truck stop and called 911 and reported that her husband had gotten possession of her gun and wanted to kill her. (No charges were filed against Lemons.) Johnson also testified that in 2008 Mr. Lemons attacked her in a Las Vegas hotel room, injuring her neck. No charges were filed in that case either.

     After giving testimony intended to establish Marcus Lemons as the abuser in the marriage, Johnson provided her account of how he died: After leaving the T.G.I. Friday bar in Compton she and Lemons continued to argue. He became so angry he reached over and started choking her, forcing her to pull off the highway. He grabbed the keys out of the ignition and told her to walk home. She climbed out of the BMW and started running. Worried that he would take the gun out of her purse (left behind in the car) and shoot her, she returned to the vehicle. As she and her husband reached for the gun it fell to the ground. When she picked it up the pistol went off, killing him.

     "Did you want to fire that weapon?" asked the attorney.

     "No."

     "Did you want to kill your husband?"

      "No," the defendant replied.

     The defense rested. Following the closing arguments and the judge's legal instructions the case went to the jury. If jurors believed Johnson's account of the shooting they would acquit her. If not, she would not be walking out of the courthouse a free person.

     On January 23, 2012, the jury, after deliberating slightly more than a day, found Tomeikia Johnson guilty of first-degree murder. She fainted and paramedics rushed to the defense table and wheeled her out of the courtroom on a gurney.

     At Johnson's March 9, 2012 sentencing hearing before Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Robert Perry, her attorney asked the judge to reduce the murder charge to manslaughter. Judge Perry denied the request and sentenced Johnson to 50 years to life. Apparently the judge didn't buy her story either. As Johnson wept, her mother yelled "I love you Tomiekia!" This set off a raucous back and forth in the gallery between the opposing families.

The Kimberly McCarthy Murder Case

     In 1997 36-year-old Kimberly LaGayle McCarthy, a nursing home occupational therapist living in Lancaster, Texas fifteen miles south of Dallas, was hooked on crack cocaine. Married to Aaron Michaels, the founder of the New Black Panther Party, McCarthy possessed a criminal record that included forgery, prostitution and theft of services. She and Michaels had one child, a son.

     On July 21, 1997 Kimberly McCarthy telephoned her neighbor, Dorothy Booth, to inform her she was coming to Booth's house to borrow a cup of sugar. In reality the purpose of the visit was to murder and rob the 71-year-old former El Centro College psychology professor. In Booth's home, McCarthy stabbed the victim five times with a 10-inch butcher's knife before repeatedly clubbing the dying woman with a heavy candelabrum.

     In stealing the victim's diamond wedding ring McCarthy used the big knife to cut off Booth's finger. In possession of the murder victim's credit cards and ring, Kimberly McCarthy drove from the murder scene to a pawn shop in Booth's Mercedes-Benz. The next day police officers booked her into the Dallas County Jail on the charge of murder.

     The McCarthy case went to trial a year after the brutal cold-blooded murder. The defendant's attorney tried to convince the jury the victim had been murdered by a pair of unnamed drug dealers. The prosecution, however, linked the defendant to the murder knife through DNA analysis. Following a short deliberation the jury found McCarthy guilty as charged.

     At the sentencing hearing the Dallas County District Attorney, through DNA evidence, connected McCarthy to two similar murders committed in December 1988. Maggie Harding, 81-years-old, had been stabbed with a knife then clubbed with a meat tenderizing mallet. Jettie Lucas, 85, had been stabbed then beaten with a claw hammer. Both victims had been robbed. (Although indicted in both of these cases McCarthy did not go to trial for these murders.)

     On November 24, 1998, the judge who presided over McCarthy's murder trial sentenced her to die by lethal injection. She would spend the next fifteen years living on death row at the Texas state prison in Huntsville, Texas.

     As is common practice in death penalty cases, Kimberly McCarthy's legal team filed a series of appeals. In 2002 a federal appellate court granted her a new trial. The Dallas County District Attorney, relying on the DNA evidence connecting the defendant to the Booth murder scene, re-tried McCarthy a few months after the appeals court decision. The second jury required little time in finding her guilty. The judge presiding over the second trial sentenced her to death.

     In July 2002, four years after Dorothy Booth's murder, McCarthy's attorneys, having exhausted all other appellate remedies, asked the United States Supreme Court to hear their client's appeal. The high court declined to entertain the condemned woman's case. The prison authorities in Texas set McCarthy's execution for January 29, 2013.

     On January 29, 2013, a few hours before McCarthy's appointment with Huntsville's executioner, the governor granted the 52-year-old prisoner a temporary stay of execution. A month before the new execution date, April 3, 2013, the lethal injection was re-scheduled for June 26, 2013.

     At 6:27 in the evening of June 26, 2013, twenty minutes after the executioner administered the lethal dose, a doctor pronounced Kimberly McCarthy dead. The execution was witnessed by the murder victim's daughter, granddaughter and godson. The executed woman's attorney, University of Texas Law Professor Maurie Levin, told reporters her client's case had been plagued by "shameful errors" of racial bias during the jury selection phase of McCarthy's trials. Levin also claimed that McCarthy's had been denied effective legal representation.

The FBI Crime Lab:The Dark Years

     Until the mid-1990s all of the forensic scientists working in the FBI Crime Lab had at least three years experience in the field as ordinary special agents. Staffing the lab with former criminal investigators (J. Edgar Hoover's idea) was supposed to make them better forensic practitioners. Critics of this policy believed it made them part of a law enforcement team instead of independent forensic scientists. Moreover, by basing the hiring criteria on special agent qualifications, the FBI Lab was not attracting or being staffed by first-rate scientists.

Agent Versus Agent

     Special Agent Michael P. Malone earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in biology, and taught high school science for two years before he joined the FBI in 1970. After working four years in the field as a criminal investigator he was assigned to the FBI Crime Lab. During his 25 years as a hair and fiber analyst, Michael Malone testified in hundreds of criminal trials. He became popular as a prosecution expert, testifying in dozens of high profile cases where the fate of the defendant depended upon his identification of a crime scene hair or fiber. As an expert witness he was confident and hard to rattle, and he knew how to impress a jury.

     In the early 1990s, Frederic Whitehurst, an FBI Lab bomb residue analyst who identified chemical components of explosive substances, alerted lab supervisors regarding problems in the trace evidence section of the facility. Whitehurst complained that the laboratory was so dirty, physical evidence was always in danger of contamination. Whitehurst was especially critical of hair and fiber analyst Michael Malone whom he accused of allowing his loyalty to police and prosecutors attenuate his independence and objectivity as a forensic scientist. In memos to the director of the lab, Frederic Whitehurst pointed out that hair and fiber identification was an inexact and subjective process, making this form of crime scene identification highly unreliable. The whistleblower noted that Malone's testimony had sent many defendants to prison, some of whom might have been innocent.

     When Whitehurst's internal complaints fell on deaf ears, he began writing long, detailed letters to Michael Bromwich, the U. S. Department of Justice inspector general. Between 1991 and 1994 Mr.  Whitehurst wrote Bromwich 237 letters. In September 1995 the inspector general launched an investigation after ABC's "Prime Time Live," having learned of these letters, aired a story about Whitehurst's campaign to improve the FBI Lab. In April 1997, almost six years after Whitehurst began documenting problems in the nation's largest crime lab, Michael Bromwich issued a 517-page report critical of the laboratory. The inspector general singled out seven lab employees, including Michael Malone, whom he described as having provided "false testimony." He recommended Malone for disciplinary action.

     Two years later a second Department of Justice investigation revealed that Special Agent Malone had made hair and fiber identification errors in four homicide cases in the Tampa Bay area. In the same report detailing these findings, Department of Justice investigators also criticized Whitehurst for overstating the forensic implications of his scientific analysis. Whitehurst, who had been transferred to the paint identification unit of the lab, was suspended. After the bureau denied his petition for reinstatement, Whitehurst retired and entered private practice. To some, Frederick Whitehurst was a hero. To the FBI however, he was a traitor. He was a whistleblower, the lowest form of bureaucratic life.

     Michael Malone denied lying under oath or playing fast and loose with hair and fiber evidence. He blamed the FBI Lab scandal on jealous colleagues whom he described as incompetent. Regarding those cases in which DNA analysis had exonerated defendants whose hair he had identified as being at crime scenes, Malone blamed overzealous prosecutors who overstated the implications of his findings. Following the inspector general's investigations and recommendations, Michael Malone was reassigned back to the field. He retired in December 1999. To the FBI, Special Agent Malone was the hero.

     Today, the head of the FBI Crime Lab hires employees on the basis of their backgrounds in science. (The lab also contracts out work to private laboratories.) Even for non-agent crime lab employees, maintaining scientific objectivity is not easy. But there is no question that the lab is far superior now than it was during those dark years. And as is often the case in governmental scandals that result in improved conditions, it was a courageous whistleblower who made it possible.    

The Pastor Danny Kirk Murder Case

     At eleven o'clock on Monday morning October 29, 2012 in Forest Hill, a suburban town outside of Fort Worth, Texas, Derrick Birdow crashed his Ford Crown Victoria into the Greater Sweethome Missionary Baptist Church. The 850-member congregation was founded in 1995 by Reverend Danny Kirk, a former football star at East Texas State University.

     Shortly after the sedan smashed into the brick building the 53-year-old pastor came out of the church to investigate the source of the commotion. He encountered 33-year-old Birdow who, after plowing into the structure, climbed out of his car apparently unhurt. With no warning Mr. Birdow shoved Pastor Kirk against the car and began punching him in the head.

     John Whitaker, a church maintenance employee, when he saw a man punching the pastor ran outside to help him. While Whitaker was able to punch the attacker several times his blows didn't faze Derrick Birdow who broke away from the altercation and fled into the church with the pastor and the janitor in pursuit.

     The church secretary, aware that a crazy man had plowed his car into the building and attacked the pastor and was now inside the church, locked herself in her office and called 911. "My pastor is bleeding, he's been attacked," she said. "I'm not going out there. I need help real fast. Send policemen. I do need an ambulance."

     The 911 dispatcher asked, "Does your pastor know him?"

     "I have no idea," answered the frightened secretary.

     Inside the church Derrick Birdow ran to the music room where he grabbed an electric guitar. As John Whitaker turned a corner in the hallway Mr. Birdow used the instrument to blindside him with two blows to the head. Seriously injured, Mr. Whitaker went down. Derrick Birdow then began beating Pastor Kirk with the guitar, turning the scene into a blood-bath.

     When officers with the Forest Hill Police Department burst into the church they saw Derrick Birdow covered in the minister's blood and beating the victim to death with the church musical instrument. One of the officers, through the use of a taser gun, subdued the crazed attacker enough to slap on the handcuffs. As the police hauled the violent intruder to a patrol car he continued to resist. After placing the suspect into the back of the cruiser and returning to the church, the officers realized they had not arrived in time to save Reverend Danny Kirk. Derrick Birdow had beaten the pastor to death.  

     A short time later a police officer checking on Mr. Birdow in the back of the patrol car found him unresponsive. Paramedics arrived at the scene, couldn't find a pulse and rushed him to the John Peter Smith Hospital where he was pronounced dead.

     In 2004 a Tarrant County judge sentenced Derrick Birdow to a five-year prison sentence for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. He had also been convicted in the county for the possession of controlled substances, DUI and charges related to domestic violence. According to one of this man's relatives, Birdow had been having some "issues" and hadn't "been himself." Mr. Birdow had also "been going through some stuff. He's not a happy dude." Derrick Birdow was not a member of Pastor Kirk's congregation but his children may have attended the church. It was not known if Reverend Kirk and his killer were acquainted.

      In February 2013 Tarrant County Medical Examiner Dr. Nizam Peerwani ruled that Derrick Birdow had died of PCP ingestion.

     There should be no place more peaceful on a Monday morning in suburban Fort Worth than a Baptist church. But in America, when it comes to mayhem and murder, no place is off-limits. Nevertheless, the beating death of a Baptist minister at his own church by a man wielding an electric guitar, even by U.S. standards of drug-addled crime and mental illness, was more than unusual.

A Light Sentence For Sex With Students

     Meredith Powell began teaching math at Lincoln High School in Tacoma, Washington in September 2012. In January 2014 the unmarried 25-year-old started sending sexually explicit text messages and erotic videos to one of her 15-year-old male students. She followed this up with sexual encounters (oral sex) with this boy and another 15-year-old student. The sexual activity took place in her classroom.

     In February 2014 the police got involved after Meredith Powell wrote a letter to the girlfriend of one of the boys. In that letter she apologized for her "unprofessional" and "drunken" text messages.

     Following a brief investigation Tacoma police officers arrested Meredith Powell for having sex with two of her students. A Pierce County prosecutor charged the teacher with two counts of child rape and several lesser offenses. After her release from the county jail on bond the superintendent of the Tacoma School District placed the accused teacher on unpaid leave pending the outcome of her case.

     In July 2014 Meredith Powell pleaded guilty to two counts of third-degree child rape and one count of communicating with a minor for immoral purposes.

     At Powell's sentencing hearing on August 29, 2014 before Pierce County Superior Court Judge Frank Cuthbertson, Shannon McMinimee, the attorney for the school district, urged the judge to impose a tough sentence. McMinimee reminded the judge that this teacher had committed child rape. (No doubt the school district wanted the judge to send a message to other teachers in the system that having sex with a student was a serious crime.)

     The defendant's attorney, Wayne Fricke, in arguing for a light sentence, called his client "an upstanding individual who went through a rough patch last fall. She didn't handle the situation well and got herself into this situation," he said. (Had the defense attorney said this in reference to a male client who'd had sex with a female student he would have been laughed out of court.)

     The defendant rose to her feet, and speaking to the judge, said, "I feel like words can't even express how sorry I am. I wish I could take back what happened to the students I failed. Sorry doesn't take away anything that happened, but I hope they [her victims] can move forward with as little impact as possible. I pray every day for the two boys. I'm heartbroken over the suffering I caused them and their families."

     When it came time to hand down his sentence Judge Cuthbertson said, "This is difficult, this is different, this is not what we usually see. Everything suggests this is out of character for you. But again, you need to understand the severe impact this case has had not only on the victims but on their families."

     The judge sentenced the former teacher to five years. However, he suspended all but six months of that penalty. As part of the sentence the judge ordered Powell to enroll in a program for first-time sex offenders.

     Upon hearing the sentence, the victims' parents could be heard cursing as they stormed out of the courtroom. The attorney for the school district told reporters that she hoped for a longer period of incarceration. She said the state revoked Powell's license to teach.

     When a male teacher has consensual sex with a 15-year-old female student, he will almost always be sentenced to at least two years in prison, often longer. This sentencing double standard suggests that some judges, in cases where the defendant is a woman and the student is male, believe that boys are crime victims in name only. Girls, on the other hand, are victims of adult male dominance.

The Tania Coleman Murder Case

     Firefighters in Erie, Pennsylvania on May 24, 2011, while on a call on east Eighth Street, detected the odor of death coming from a discarded suitcase. When they opened the suitcase the firefighters found the badly decomposed remains of 14-month-old Alayja Coleman.

     The next day at the Erie Police Department detectives questioned the child's mother, 20-year-old Tania Coleman. The pregnant mother of two lived in a house near the discovery of the suitcase. The dead girl's father, Rahsean Murphy, had been in prison most of Alaja's life. Mr. Murphy had last seen his daughter in late March 2011. Xavier Hollamon, Tania Coleman's 20-year-old boyfriend was the father of her other two children as well as the baby to come.


     During the low-key videotaped interrogation that lasted 45 minutes Tania Coleman said that two months earlier she discovered Alayja dead in her playpen. Panicked, she called Xavier Hollamon who rushed to the house. A high school dropout, he had just completed his Army basic training and feared this situation would land him in military prison.

     Rather than report Alayja's death to the authorities, Tania Coleman and her boyfriend put her body into the suitcase and hid it in the house. Before long the odor became too much. On April 25, 2011 Tania and Xavier, at the cost of $73, purchased a fancy plastic trash bin from Walmart. They placed the suitcase containing Alayja's body into the trash container and set it outside until they figured out how to permanently dispose of the body. (Someone in stealing the trash bin removed the suitcase.)

     Forensic pathologist Dr. Eric Vey performed the autopsy and determined the cause of Alayja's death to be starvation. (Her body had consumed her muscles and organs.) The Erie County Coroner ruled her manner of death as homicide. Due to the condition of the corpse Dr. Vey could not pinpoint the victim's time of death.

     Dr. Vey's review of Alayja's pediatric records revealed that when she was 11 months old she weighed less than she had at the age of 4 months. When examined by a pediatrician 6 months after her birth the doctor declared Alayja's weight in the "danger zone" and recommended that Tania feed her a lot of fruits and vegetables. The little girl missed her 9th and 12th month check-ups.

     Erie County District Attorney Jack Daneri charged Xavier Hollamon with abuse of corpse and tampering with evidence, a pair of misdemeanors that together carried a maximum sentence of 4 years in prison. He charged Tania Coleman with these crimes plus first degree-murder. In Pennsylvania first degree-murder carried a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the chance of parole. To make his case the district attorney would have to prove the defendant deliberately starved her daughter to death.

     In early March 2012 Xavier Hollamon pleaded guilty to the abuse of corpse and tampering with evidence misdemeanors in return for 2 years probation and 250 hours of community service. He had been incarcerated in the Erie County Jail for almost a year. Hollamon, as part of the plea bargain, agreed to testify against his former girlfriend, the mother of his two children and the unborn child. 

     Tania Coleman's first-degree murder trial got underway in mid-March 2012 before Judge Shad Connelly in the Erie County Court House. District Attorney Jack Daneri, on the theory that the defendant killed her daughter because she was not fathered by her boyfriend and didn't fit into the family, put on his circumstantial case of intentional murder.

     Jamie Mead, Tania Coleman's court-appointed attorney, presented the defendant as an overwhelmed single parent who neglected a child who died despite efforts to feed her. Attorney Mead argued that if Coleman had intentionally murdered Alayja she would have come up with a better plan to dispose of her body. The defendant did not take the stand on her own behalf. In the defense attorney's closing statement to the jury, Mead accused the prosecution of manufacturing a motive to support their theory of an intentional murder.

     On March 22, 2012 the Erie County jury found Tania Coleman guilty of first-degree murder. Attorney Mead immediately filed motions to either replace the first-degree murder conviction with a lesser homicide or for a new trial. The defense attorney argued that the jury, in finding her client guilty of intentional murder, relied more on emotion than evidence, citing witnesses who testified that Tania had expressed concern about Alayja's refusal to eat.

     Judge Shad Connelly, on May 17, 2012, sentenced Tania Coleman to life in prison without chance of parole.

     On October 7, 2013 a state appeals court upheld Coleman's conviction. The appellate affirmation meant that Tania Coleman would spend the rest of her life in prison. 

"Upskirting" in Massachusetts: No Crime in That

     In 2010, transit authority police in Boston arrested Michael Robertson for using his cell phone to secretly snap photographs from beneath the dresses of unsuspecting female trolly passengers. This perverted behavior was so common in Massachusetts and other places it had a name--"upskirting."

     A prosecutor in the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office charged the 32-year-old upskirt photographer with two counts of secretly photographing a person in a state of nudity or partial nudity. The statute underlying the charges was intended to criminalize the act of placing hidden cameras in restrooms, shower stalls and other places where people undress. This form of voyeurism in the state is punishable by up to two and a half years in prison. Almost all the perpetrators convicted of this offense were men clandestinely photographing women and children. By any standard this was deviant and unacceptable behavior.

     Following Robertson's arrest, his attorney, Michelle Menken, moved to have the charges dropped on the grounds her client's actions did not fall within the letter of the law. Specifically, the women he photographed were not nude or partially nude as required by the statute.

     The prosecutor in charge of the case, in contesting the motion to dismiss, argued that Robertson's behavior clearly came under the spirit of the law. Certainly the legislators who passed this law would agree.

     A Suffolk County District Judge let the upskirting charges stand. Defense attorney Menken appealed that decision.

     On March 4, 2014 the State Supreme Judicial Court, Massachusetts' highest judicial body, ruled in favor of the upskirt photographer. The justices found that the statute in question did not prohibit the photographing of women who were fully dressed.

     Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel Conley, shortly after the ruling, told reporters that, "Every person, male or female has a right to privacy beneath his or her clothing. If the statute as written doesn't protect that privacy then I'm urging the legislature to act rapidly and adjust the law so it does."

     In the United States, before an act can be treated as criminal behavior, the act and a corresponding state of mind must be specifically defined in the form of a statute. As a result, state crimes codes have to be continually updated to keep up with the ever changing nature of human depravity. For example, the reading of the animal cruelty sections of state crimes codes reveals how many ways people have found to torture animals. The theft section of a crimes code depicts all the methods thieves have devised to steal.

     State crimes codes are essentially catalogues of modern deviant behavior. Not long ago, no one had a phone you could use as a camera and no one heard of upskirting. There was a time when there was no such thing as sexting, cyber bullying or getting high on bath salts. To be effective, criminal codes have to keep up with the times. Given the ability of people to blaze new trails into the dark worlds of deviancy and criminality, this is no easy task.