“False Positive”: a Vox miniseries about Robert Lee Stinson and the Forensic Science that locked him away 23 years for a crime he didn’t commit

[Kin5290]

Vox released part 1 of a three part miniseries about the Ione Cychosz Murder. In November 1984, a neighbor discovered the unclothed body of 63 year old Ione Cychosz, who had been stripped, raped, and beaten to death. Little physical evidence remained on the body save for a number of bite marks inflicted pre-mortem.

Robert Lee Stinson, a 21 year old (Black) man, was arrested, tried, and convicted for the murder. The only physical evidence against him were the bite marks, which the state's two expert witnesses, both forensic odontological, claimed was "overwhelming" with "no margin for error".

20 years later, the Innocence Project took up Stinson's case. DNA analysis of saliva samples excluded Stinson. A reanalysis of the dental impressions also rejected the findings of the state's experts. At 44 years old, Stinson was finally released from prison.

This part of the video is about the crime nd investigation. Like most things Vox does it's incredibly well made.

 

[dragonchild]

"Forensic science" is two unrelated words mashed together to make the public (jurors in particular) think law enforcement's "manufacture convictions out of bullshit" arm is professional and ethical when it's the polar opposite of both. It's as fraudulent as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (a lobbying group that masquerades as a government agency) or the Nobel Prize for Economics (an award created by a bank in 1968, more than 70 years after Nobel's death).

 

[Kin5290]

"Forensic science" is two unrelated words mashed together to make the public (jurors in particular) think law enforcement's "manufacture convictions out of bullshit" arm is professional and ethical when it's the polar opposite of both. It's as fraudulent as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (a lobbying group that masquerades as a government agency) or the Nobel Prize for Economics (an award created by a bank in 1968, more than 70 years after Nobel's death).

Click to shrink...

Yeah, it's mentioned in the video that "forensic science" had little to do with actual science in its inception. Real scientific measurement instruments must undergo validity and reliability testing in order to make sure they correctly measure what they say they measure. Pattern recognition, on the other hand, is purely subjective and subject to personal biases.

In this case I think you could also make a case of misconduct from the expert witnesses, who didn't spend all that much time examining the evidence. When the case was reexamines, a panel of forensic odontologists found that the bite marks didn't match Robert Lee Stinson's teeth at all.