0:00

From Story Mechanics and VPU. Hello,

0:06

So' reporter

0:10

Sophie Barman and I are meeting up with Earl

0:12

Ruffin the second man to be exonerated

0:15

by Mary Jane Burton's clippings. We're

0:17

at a high school gymnasium in Suffolk, Virginia.

0:20

Earls invited us to his stepdaughter NILA's

0:22

basketball game. Shoot the ball. Now,

0:29

let's see if she made these three thos spreading

0:31

a fas a bendon me she

0:34

act forty years

0:36

ago. Earl was a star player

0:38

from was the last time you played basketball?

0:44

When I first came home? I played first

0:48

came home from Southampton State

0:51

Prison. So

0:53

much was taken away from Earle the day

0:55

he was arrested in nineteen eighty two, when

0:58

he left work with two police officers,

1:00

he assumed this mistake would get cleared up

1:02

in no time. He didn't

1:04

go home again for twenty one years,

1:07

and when he did, the investigating

1:10

officer. No apologies did

1:12

this attorney, And no apologies

1:15

my lawyer. No. The judge

1:18

that I'm passed away so I was expecting or none from

1:20

him. Now, I ain't never heard of judge apologizing

1:22

for sending nobody to prison. Never

1:24

in my life. But anyway, no,

1:28

no apologies. But if it

1:30

was me, I

1:32

would want to apologize.

1:34

I would something of this magnitude,

1:38

something of this magnajude to destroy

1:40

a man's life, to take away twenty one

1:42

years of his life. And you can't sit

1:44

there and say that you was wrong. You

1:46

can't admit to the fact that you was wrong. There

1:50

was one member of the jury who apologized

1:52

to Earl in an anonymous letter, and

1:55

then there was Anne, the

1:57

woman who was assaulted. She wrote

1:59

me ane of this was in May two thousand

2:01

and three. Deal, mister

2:03

Ruffin. I thank

2:05

God for the gift of DNA testing.

2:09

I thank God for Miss Burton.

2:11

Most of all, I thank God for

2:14

your strength and your persistance in

2:16

finding justice. I do not

2:18

know how to express my sorrow and

2:20

my personal devastation. It's like

2:23

she's trying to say sorry in every

2:25

possible way she can think of. I'm

2:28

so sorry for the part I had

2:30

in this injustice. The letter

2:33

is heartbreaking, especially

2:36

knowing how much pain it caused Anne

2:38

to learn that she'd misidentified her all. I

2:40

feel personal responsibility for

2:43

your conviction and you incarceration. He

2:46

finishes reading and sets the letter down

2:50

so how do

2:52

you feel like that's it? Well,

2:57

it brings back memories.

3:00

Yeah,

3:02

I still I feel the pain that

3:06

I've suffered through all this injustice,

3:09

and I'm

3:11

strong enough there just just to live with it. I

3:14

know. That's why I'm here today doing

3:17

this interview with y'all.

3:20

That I'm mad enough

3:22

to handle it, you know. So I'm

3:26

okay, I'm okay, you know, Yes,

3:29

I'm okay. As

3:35

we come to the end of our twelve episode

3:38

series, how much hope

3:40

should we have that men like Earl

3:42

Ruffin won't be sitting for an interview

3:45

like this forty years

3:47

from now. What's being done

3:49

to make sure the system gets it right?

3:53

And what role can

3:55

forensics playing that This

3:59

is a I'm Tessa Kramer.

4:15

So has DNA proved

4:17

to be the revolution for forensics?

4:20

It was promised to be in

4:22

many ways. Yes, When

4:24

you look at DNA as a tool for crime

4:27

scene investigation, especially

4:29

when it comes to the kinds of cases we're talking

4:31

about in this series that is

4:33

violent crime and even more specifically

4:36

stranger rapes, DNA technology

4:38

has helped to improve the accuracy

4:41

of convictions nationally.

4:43

If you look at convictions from the eighties before

4:46

forensic labs, we're using DNA where

4:48

someone was convicted and then exonerated

4:50

years later with DNA analysis, there

4:53

were one hundred and thirty six exonerations.

4:57

Fast forward to the two thousands. Now

4:59

there using DNA analysis at the

5:01

time of the crime, and it's a

5:03

different story. Between

5:06

two thousand and two thousand and nine, this number

5:08

drops to twelve. This

5:11

isn't the full picture. It's one indicator.

5:14

Many wrongful convictions never come

5:16

to light, especially when there's no evidence

5:18

left to do DNA testing. We've

5:20

seen over and over in our story the

5:23

many barriers to challenging a conviction,

5:25

especially for people of color. Still,

5:28

this is a dramatic change from

5:31

one hundred and thirty six to twelve.

5:34

But is DNA the

5:37

panacea as it's also been called

5:39

in this series that

5:41

I'm not so sure about. When

5:44

I showed defense attorney John Sheldon

5:46

the copies of the labs record books where Mary

5:48

Jane had erased and changed results,

5:50

his response really stuck with me. This

5:53

is the

5:55

worst kind of fraud that we always think

5:58

exists, and everyone says, now all it doesn't. It's

6:00

rare to get the faker, the

6:03

person who gets result X

6:05

and they erase it and they write why. But

6:07

what you do get is the person who

6:10

runs the test, and they don't get what they like, and so they

6:12

say, yeah, you know, I probably didn't do that right. So

6:14

you go back and you do it again. And John

6:17

says this happens even with DNA

6:19

analysis. If you think about

6:21

how they get their work

6:24

and who they report it to. They

6:26

get their work from the police, and

6:29

you can't usually get biological

6:32

material without some background about

6:35

it, because you need to know am I testing this because

6:37

I care about it's a male or female? Because I

6:39

want to know is this a human? You

6:41

know, human or something else?

6:44

You have to know something about the theory of the case, and

6:46

you need to know, Well, what I really want to know is does

6:48

this from the genes match

6:51

this Q tip? Because

6:53

the Q tip is from the guy and the genes who

6:55

is from the girl? You're

6:57

you are part of law enforcement because you're

7:00

co opted by your clients.

7:02

These are your clients. It doesn't have to be it's

7:04

easy. It would be easy to separate the testing

7:06

from the theory of guilt, but they

7:08

don't do it. I heard this over

7:11

and over. The science

7:13

has gotten better, but forensic

7:15

labs are still far too

7:17

enmeshed with law enforcement, and

7:20

analysts are still far too

7:22

susceptible to influence an implicit

7:24

bias. The problem is that

7:26

the labs are setting up

7:28

their procedures in a way that allows for

7:31

these elements of bias to creep

7:33

in. This is William Thompson, who

7:35

studies the human factors involved

7:37

in forensic science. They're

7:39

not doing their work in a way that's adequately

7:42

rigorous and scientific

7:45

and that insulates them from external

7:47

pressures. And then you have this phenomena

7:49

where you keep seeing, you know, the

7:52

apples just keep going bad in the same

7:55

familiar ways. You see

7:57

it, You see it over and over again. These

8:00

stories of bad apples crop

8:02

up in labs across the country, in

8:04

all sorts of forensic disciplines. As

8:07

I've been reporting this story, I kept

8:09

having the feeling that I had to keep zooming

8:11

out and out and out just to

8:14

see the scope of the problem. Here and

8:16

you can see the scale at which this may

8:18

be playing out in headline after

8:20

headline, riyal testimony of an Oklahoma

8:23

chemist was false. Now hundreds

8:25

of cases in which she testified are under

8:27

review. In Chicago, a police crime

8:29

lab analyst named Pamela Fish disregarded

8:32

exculpatory blood testing, and a chemist

8:34

testing drugs in the state crime lab in Massachusetts

8:37

spent years getting high on the job. Now,

8:39

the DC auditor says part of the

8:41

problem is that the crime lab has

8:44

failed to operate independently,

8:46

as it is supposed to former state chemist

8:49

who admitted to faking tests

8:51

and identifying evidence as illegal narcotics

8:53

without even testing the evidence. It's

8:55

alleged that Zane faked data, concocted

8:58

results, and testified using phony

9:00

blood evidence in hundreds of felony trials.

9:02

Any testimonial or documentary

9:04

evidence offered by Zane at any time

9:06

should be deemed invalid, unreliable,

9:09

and inadmissionable. We

9:12

have seen too many

9:15

bad actors in the forensic

9:17

world to be able to say

9:20

this is just an aberration rather

9:23

than really confronting what is

9:25

truly a systemic problem. Manka

9:27

Sinha is a law professor at the University

9:29

of Maryland who specializes in forensics.

9:32

We have a tendency to think of

9:34

forensics like maybe it's the clean

9:37

part of the criminal legal system,

9:39

even if there are dirty parts like

9:42

police brutality and racism

9:44

and prosecutorial misconduct. But

9:47

that's not the case. More

9:49

on that. After the break a

10:05

few months ago, I read a paper that Mancasin

10:07

had published about forensics reform, and

10:10

I was eager to talk to her. I remember

10:12

vividly, in my first couple of weeks

10:15

as a public defender, sitting in the classroom

10:17

that we use for training, and

10:20

this mentor of mine coming in and

10:23

doing the first class I ever had

10:25

on forensics, and my mind being

10:27

blown right then and there. Manka

10:30

started her career as a public defender

10:32

in Washington, DC. That's

10:34

where her skepticism of forensics

10:36

started to take root. When you're in law school,

10:38

for the most part, you don't learn anything

10:40

about forensics whatsoever, and

10:43

you go into practice with all the same assumptions

10:45

that lay people do, which are that

10:47

the stuff is really reliable, that everything

10:51

is really accurate, and

10:53

it's as clear and

10:55

black and white as the ding ding

10:58

ding you see on CSI, and

11:01

I remember him walking us through

11:04

the flaws and these various disciplines

11:07

up to and including DNA, which

11:09

is considered the most reliable of all forensic

11:13

methods. I remember

11:15

when I got to this place of like, I'm

11:18

starting to see these flaws, I'm starting to

11:20

get that these are flaws, and then

11:22

going into a courtroom and trying

11:25

to have this conversation with a judge

11:27

and just feeling like I was banging

11:30

my head against the wall because either

11:32

they didn't see it, or they didn't want to see

11:35

it, or they refused to see

11:37

it. But that moment I

11:39

also remember vividly of like standing in

11:41

a courtroom next to my client and

11:43

having that feeling of like wanting to

11:45

look left and then wanting to look right, like is

11:48

anybody with me on this? And there being

11:50

nobody in the room who was

11:52

with me. Over the decade she spent

11:54

doing public defense, she grew increasingly

11:57

disillusioned. We would call

11:59

the lab and asked

12:01

to speak with the analyst and

12:03

they would flat out refuse

12:06

to talk to us. We

12:09

would be asking for the work. We would be

12:11

asking for their notes, their worksheets,

12:13

all of the things that support their conclusions.

12:15

And it was a constant battle. MANCA

12:18

was dealing with a lab that was officially run

12:20

by the DC Police Department. It

12:22

wasn't an independent agency like the Virginia

12:24

Lab. Although there's debate over

12:27

how much difference quote unquote lab

12:29

independence really makes one

12:31

thing that's not up for debate. There's

12:34

really no dispute that

12:37

black communities, other communities

12:39

of color, poor communities,

12:42

other marginalized communities are disparately

12:44

affected at all

12:47

stages of the criminal legal system.

12:50

Black and round communities are policed

12:52

more. They are searched more,

12:54

they are arrested more, they

12:57

get worse plea offers, they are

12:59

convict did more, they are wrongfully

13:02

convicted more, all disproportionately

13:05

more. Even when you control for other

13:07

factors, every

13:10

single one of those phases that

13:12

I just described is

13:15

influenced by technology.

13:18

Forensics is technology. It's

13:20

scientific knowledge used as a tool

13:22

for law enforcement, and crime

13:25

labs are designed to help with the

13:27

investigation of crimes. But

13:29

when you look at the racial makeup of who's

13:32

being convicted, the disproportionate

13:34

impacts on people of color are

13:36

obvious. And I should say,

13:39

of those thirteen exonorees we've been talking

13:41

about in this series, eleven

13:43

of them were black. So

13:47

how do we address the systemic problems

13:49

with forensics? This is a question

13:51

I put to a lot of people. You need to change

13:53

policies going forward and not just reopen all the cases.

13:56

There are some ideas out there for how to improve

13:58

things from academics like

14:00

Brandon Garrett, who you just heard. He

14:03

also says we need better judicial rules

14:05

making sure juries understand how reliable

14:08

a particular technique is and

14:10

how reliable a particular expert

14:13

is, and we don't know that. We have no idea whether

14:15

this is a really good expert that gets fingerprints right

14:17

all the time, or whether this person is a

14:19

total disaster and shouldn't be trusted in court.

14:21

The innocence projects, Peter Nufeld says

14:23

there are ways forensic labs could keep

14:26

tabs on the quality of the

14:28

analyst's work. We have advocated

14:30

for thirty years for

14:34

blind external testing,

14:37

where you submit specimens

14:39

as if it was a real case, so

14:41

the people in the laboratory don't know whether

14:44

it's a real case or they're being tested.

14:47

Virginia Beach Sheriff ken Stally is a

14:49

big advocate for oversight boards. If

14:51

you have a policy team and you have ten people

14:53

thinking about it, it's better than having one person

14:56

have total say. So over that these kinds

14:58

of measures would definitely help

15:01

and listen. I'm pro science,

15:04

not junk sciences that have been discredited,

15:07

but real science like DNA

15:09

analysis. I'm all in I

15:12

think science has the potential

15:14

to be a check on weaker parts of the criminal

15:17

legal system. Just think of

15:19

all the cracks in the system that DNA has

15:21

already exposed. But

15:24

talking to Manca, it got me thinking

15:26

that if we really want science to play

15:28

a role in correcting the flawed processes

15:31

and biases of our system,

15:33

we need to dig a lot deeper

15:36

these little tweaks that the margins aren't

15:38

going to quote unquote fix anything, because

15:40

the system is doing what it was designed

15:43

to do. And

15:45

what is the system designed

15:48

to do? Manca says, there's

15:50

a strain of thinking that's been gaining momentum,

15:52

and it starts with the idea that

15:54

the entire carcetol system

15:57

has its origins in

16:00

white supremacy. In our

16:03

system of chattel slavery, it

16:05

served in explicit

16:08

purpose of maintaining racial

16:10

hierarchy. And so

16:12

there's a tension between traditional

16:15

reform or conventional sorts of reforms,

16:18

and more radical

16:20

approaches that really

16:22

confront the origins of the system, seek

16:25

to minimize harm, seek

16:27

to contract the system,

16:30

and delegitimize the system, rather

16:32

than expand it. Maybe

16:34

it's time for a little bit

16:36

more of a

16:39

radical rethinking of how we're doing this.

16:42

I wanted to ask how hopeful

16:45

you personally feel about

16:47

the prospects of reform. You don't want

16:49

to ask me that. I've

16:54

spent a lot of time thinking about

16:56

this question. When I started

16:58

reporting on Mary Jane Burton and the thirteen

17:01

exonerations, I kept getting

17:03

the same warning, you're opening

17:06

Pandora's box. Now

17:08

that we've opened the box, let's

17:10

talk about how that myth ends. So

17:13

as the story goes, Pandora opens

17:16

the box and all these evil forces

17:18

come flying out into the world. But

17:22

what I didn't know is that, according

17:24

to the original telling, not everything

17:27

escapes. Pandora slams

17:29

the lid with one thing left inside

17:32

Hope. Now

17:34

what does that mean? That's been

17:36

the source of some debate. Is the

17:38

world's left without Hope because

17:41

it's trapped in the box? Or

17:44

did Pandora save Hope? Is

17:46

Hope all that we're left with after

17:48

all the evils have been unleashed. Even

17:54

though this is the last episode of this season,

17:56

We're not going to stop reporting. I

17:59

hope to have update for you on future seasons

18:01

of this show about some action

18:03

from the state, an investigation

18:06

by the lab or ideally someone

18:08

outside the lab. We've reached

18:10

out to Virginia's governor, several members

18:12

of the state legislature, other lawmakers.

18:15

So far, we haven't gotten much of a response.

18:19

We did get one lawmaker on the record,

18:21

so Mary Jane Burton was initially treated

18:23

as a hero. In March of twenty twenty

18:25

three, VPM state politics reporter

18:28

Ben Pavior and I spoke with Virginia State

18:30

Delegate Don Scott. He's the

18:32

head of the House Democratic Caucus. Perhaps

18:35

we got Scott's attention because he's

18:37

also a practicing attorney. He's

18:39

done a lot of criminal defense work, and

18:41

so he's dealt with the Virginia Crime Lab

18:43

himself. I scrutinize everything when

18:46

it comes to these folks because I just don't I

18:48

don't trust the system. I'm a natural

18:50

cynic at a skeptic anyway, so I

18:53

naturally don't trust anything they give me.

18:55

We'll cause that skepticism for you. I'm

18:58

a black man in America, what are you talking about? I

19:00

mean, I already know the system is not a

19:02

design for us to necessarily

19:04

get equal justice all the time. So you have to be

19:07

extra diligent to make sure that

19:09

folks don't have an agenda that does not include

19:11

you getting some justice. Yeah,

19:15

you don't seem not surprised by what we've uncovered.

19:17

This is my life. I mean, I know

19:20

how the system works, and it just it

19:22

can eat people up. She had all of

19:24

those cases, fifteen years of cases,

19:26

and all of those folks knew that she was

19:29

a problem, and they knew that she wasn't following

19:31

basic or lab protocol. They knew that they

19:33

couldn't get accredited while she was there. They knew that

19:36

she was falsifying information, and

19:38

they did nothing about it. Do

19:41

you think that's anything about Virginia's culture

19:43

of the time, not about Virginia's about

19:45

America. I mean, come on, man, let's not be naive.

19:47

This happens. This is about weakness

19:50

and power and race, those who are weak,

19:52

those who get preyed upon, and so

19:54

this is not unusual. This happens

19:57

all over the country. You can go

19:59

to any states, probably the same. But

20:01

I think what we're doing is we're making some inroads. We

20:03

just have to keep chopping wood, keep

20:05

holding people accountable. You know,

20:08

I'm a cynic, but I'm an optimistic cynic.

20:10

I want to keep working and getting done otherwise I wouldn't

20:13

be in this business. I'm

20:18

reminded of something Gina Dimas said

20:20

the first time I met her about

20:22

why she thinks the people in charge of the lab

20:24

didn't do anything about Mary Jane

20:26

Burton, but nobody cared because

20:29

who was it? Mostly poor

20:32

people? Black people mostly

20:35

who gives a shit? Oh?

20:38

When you used to hear this all the time. If they

20:40

didn't do this, they did some males they're

20:43

criminals. Before

20:47

our interview ends, I share this with Don

20:50

Scott. People being convicted were people

20:52

of color. They were usually people without

20:54

a lot of money, you know, who weren't considered

20:57

powerful or important. Welcome

21:00

to America, baby, We

21:16

are hard at work on season two of Admissible.

21:19

Visit our website at Admissible dot

21:21

VPM dot org, where you can

21:23

find additional information or share

21:25

tips and suggestions. Admissible

21:28

is produced and hosted by Tessa Kramer. Our

21:31

executive producer is Ellen Horne. Original

21:34

reporting by Tessa Kramer and Sophie Berman,

21:37

with additional reporting by Ben Pavier and

21:39

Whitney Evans. Our editor

21:41

is Danielle Elliott, with additional editing

21:43

by Ellen Horn. Our production

21:45

team is Dana bi Alec Chloe

21:47

Wynn Gilda Dicarley, Leslie

21:50

Nyer. Production legal by Craig

21:53

Merritt and Ennismolansky. Gavin

21:55

Wright is vpm's managing producer

21:58

for podcasts, Meg lenn Home

22:00

as the director of podcast production. Sound

22:03

design and mixed by Charles Michelin,

22:06

music by Del Toro Sound and

22:08

Story Mechanics and with

22:10

additional music by apm

22:12

Our. Theme music is by me Brian J.

22:15

Howard, a Del Toro Sound. Contributions

22:17

of music and performances by Jay Gonzalez,

22:20

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22:23

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22:25

and R. Sloan Simpson. Special

22:28

thanks to Steve humble Page,

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22:41

Extra special thanks to Danielle Firley

22:43

and Brian Horn for reading trial

22:45

transcripts, and to Alexandra Cole

22:48

for PR and marketing supporting admissible.

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Season one. Shreads of Evidence is produced

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