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Season Five Home for the Holidays 6
143 Plays14 days ago
In Today’s Episode, we put together our Home for the Holiday cases.
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Sources:
Various News Sources Mentioned by Name
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Transcript
Introduction and Warning
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
00:00:22
Speaker
This is True Crime XS.
Crimes 'Home for the Holidays' Series
00:00:30
Speaker
So obviously we're continuing going down our path of home for the holidays. Today's case comes from kind of a weird place.
Mary Jane Burton's Forensic Controversy
00:00:38
Speaker
I read about this from VPM, which is a part of NPR and PBS ah for for people who follow that.
00:00:47
Speaker
And i when I read about it, I was like, oh, wow, ah this is terrible. So i mean I'm going to tell you what I read at VPM. um This is earlier in the year when I read it. But it said, um Virginia Review Panel recommends action following podcasts on former forensic analysts.
00:01:07
Speaker
So this is written by Megan Polly over there. And when I when i read stuff like this, you know I get interested in the article itself, but it's sort of where I end up going with all of this ah that ties it back to home for the holidays for us. So the article starts out, earlier this week, a state scientific advisory panel recommended alerting all parties and potentially thousands of past criminal cases involving former state lab analysts Mary Jane Burton. It's estimated that Burton analyzed biological evidence in about 10,000 cases during the 1970s and 1980s, although it's unclear how many convictions related to those cases hinged on her lab work. Amy Curtis Jenkins, who is counsel for the Virginia Department of Forensic Science, says the department doesn't have any way of knowing the number of people who might've been convicted in these 10,000 cases.
00:02:07
Speaker
So that would be something that would have to be individually reviewed case by case.
Impact of Burton's Practices
00:02:11
Speaker
The accuracy of Burton's work came into question following the VPM podcast, Admissible, Shreds of Evidence, which if you're into that kind of stuff and seeing kind of how like science plays out from a legal perspective when it doesn't have to do directly with like like a case or a single trial, but the overview, it's a great podcast to check out.
00:02:33
Speaker
um We're not being paid to advertise them. It's just a few episodes that they' like you would really enjoy. So the state lab in Virginia ends up reviewing allegations made in this Shreds of Evidence podcast. And they do an internal review. And in January of 2024, they present this internal review at a meeting of a subgroup of what's known as the Scientific Advisory Committee.
00:02:58
Speaker
The Scientific Advisory Committee advises Virginia's Forensic Science Board. And the podcast details how Mary Jane Burton was known by colleagues to do subpar work, skip critical control tests, and show favor to the prosecution, and even change forensic test results. According to Kathleen Corrado, who's the chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee,
00:03:24
Speaker
She said, I think we are all feeling like we need to have further investigation following a discussion of the allegations presented in the podcast. Corrado recommended that anyone impacted by Burton's past lab work be notified about potential forensic testing errors. The specific language of the notification still has to be drafted and it's expected to be voted on during an April subcommittee meeting. If approved, it would be presented to the full scientific advisory committee in Virginia.
00:03:53
Speaker
The idea that defendants can request not just a review of the case, but then if there is evidence, have it retested to me, would be due diligence, according to Corrado. If there are any issues, if someone has a concern, it can be looked at. That makes sense to me. But the panel stopped short of calling for a full review of all Burton's cases on Tuesday, following recommendations from Jenkins. We have a very limited number of staff members that are serologists, Jenkins said.
00:04:19
Speaker
So going back and looking at the file themselves, I'm not sure is going to be particularly helpful. The subcommittee also discussed the case involving Burton's lab work that's currently in active litigation.
Issues with Hair Analysis
00:04:31
Speaker
However, this time her errors involve an outdated forensic technique called microscopic hair analysis. And that is a practice that's been deemed highly unreliable by the National Academy of Sciences. In 2015, the FBI determined that many of its examiners had overstated hair comparisons using outdated DNA methods and encouraged state labs to conduct similar reviews. At least some of Virginia's hair examiners had been trained by the FBI. The following year, the department began a transcript review of some old cases to determine whether a forensic expert testified about a microscopic hair analysis. And if so, whether they overstated the results. The state lab is not retesting all past cases involving microscopic hair analyses brought into evidence.
00:05:17
Speaker
despite mitochondrial DNA testing now enabling the testing of hairs without their roots. Instead, they're only alerting parties in cases in which an expert overstated the significance of their hair analysis. So far, 23 notifications have been made after 49 transcripts were reviewed. A court order would be required to reexamine the evidence.
00:05:39
Speaker
We don't have a mechanism under code or law to enforce a request to have evidence retested. It's simply a request," said Jenkins. This was during that recent forensic science board meeting. But some, like Peter Newfield, who's the co-founder of the Innocence Project, told the panel too say that notification is not enough. He called for retesting any hairs Burton analyzed in her 15-year career and said the lab should look at the work of other hair analysts too.
00:06:07
Speaker
These cases happened 40 and 50 years ago, said Newfield. A lot of these people are going to be dead. They may be dead because they were executed. They may be dead from natural causes, but nevertheless, they may have been wrongfully convicted. Unless you do the testing, if the evidence even still exists, no one is going to know the truth.
00:06:26
Speaker
His and other public comments led to another recommendation that the Department of Forensic Science consider all information presented during Tuesday's meeting, including during public comments, when discussing any further case review or testing. So this is kind of crazy, right? Not really. This is actually really interesting. So this is, you know, slightly different, but not really because it is. I don't know that it's been like completely denounced as as junk science, but it makes sense that we would emerge from a highly, what do I want to say, a highly prosecuted time where a lot of people were charged and prosecuted and carried out, you know, if it's a death sentence or life in prison or whatever. It makes sense that we would in turn have to go back and undo a lot of mistakes that were made.
Legal vs. Actual Events Narrative
00:07:23
Speaker
It is actually
00:07:24
Speaker
amazing to me because at the beginning of what you're saying, I've talked before about how in court there's parallel roads, there's like the legal process and then there's like the narrative of what actually happened and sometimes those routes, there's a ah sharp, there's a vast divide. Sometimes those roads are perpendicular instead of parallel, right?
00:07:46
Speaker
um yeah And so in this particular situation, when you think about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, which is what you know the fundamental belief of our country is,
00:07:59
Speaker
it would be that like, this is insane. Absolutely, any conviction that was gleaned from one of these circumstances has to be immediately reviewed, right? Except, you know, again, we've got those separate roads that are, you know, parallel, sometimes perpendicular, where like, it's going to cost a fortune to undo this mess.
00:08:27
Speaker
And in some situations, it's not going to be undoable. Now, why, I do believe that at certain points, especially when you know you're talking about 40, 50 years ago, I realized they were trying to work with what they had and on a you know a forensic technology level, I don't feel like there was a lot of buzz that like, hey, someday this is all gonna be undone through DNA, right?
00:08:57
Speaker
yeah i don't feel like I feel like they were working with what they have. and again I don't know what i would have thought 50 years ago, but to me, it would never make sense for somebody to be convicted off of a microscopic hair analysis without like way more evidence. Yes, it could very well look like a hair, but a hair didn't kill a person, right? And a lot of hairs look similar from a lot of different people. And so I don't know if I would know better 50 years ago, right? Do you have any idea?
00:09:30
Speaker
I wouldn't know this was possible. I mean, like from a scientific perspective, I think the people working these cases, like on behalf of the prosecution and the state crime labs, I don't think they would be the types looking into the future on like as far as we are. Because like you said, like some of these cases are 50 years old. Well, let me ask you this. Anytime you've ever watched anything, especially 80s, 90s, and you would fiction or nonfiction, whatever, and they would say, oh, we compared the hair samples and they were a match.
00:10:10
Speaker
right right When you heard that, did you believe to yourself, well, that's some really good evidence. I don't know that I thought to myself, that's some really good evidence, but I can tell you that like I didn't know enough to know that like some of what I was seeing was completely unreliable. Okay, and see, to me, I've always said, well, it's possible, but that's not definitive, right?
00:10:33
Speaker
to me in certain things, like especially like some of the craziest stuff would be like paint chips or whatever. And like the paint chips match. I'm like, there's a lot of paint chips that would match. Right. yeah And just a general i and OK, so once you get some foyas back, you realize that especially with the FBI, all of the analysis done by technicians are subject to the technicians, a professional opinion.
00:11:02
Speaker
Okay. Yeah, that part gets weird. But yes, you're 100%. So basically, that means you could have two equally qualified forensic technicians that are ah FBI, that could look at something, and they could each have a different opinion that both opinions, even though they contradict one another, could be accepted in certain contexts. That is not good. That's not a good way to source evidence, right?
00:11:28
Speaker
Right. i Like ever. And so I understand, you know, making the case. I also want, I completely understand what's happening here. Now in the context of looking at something and being able to say, okay, we have this case and here this case is somebody that was found guilty. And it appears that a lot of weight was put on this, this,
00:11:54
Speaker
hair evidence and it seems like it falls in line with our finding now that back then our examiners overstated how accurate the comparison was and They might have I'm not saying they did it maliciously. They may have believed what they saw right? Yeah, and and so, you know how much consideration does it take to to go through all the cases and do that, right? I don't think it would take that much. And I also, I really, really, really hope that like there weren't that many cases that like the only thing standing between guilt and innocence was like one microscopic hair analysis that was overstated by the examiner. That's horrifying if it is a lot.
00:12:52
Speaker
You know, I don't know what it is. Do you know what the answer is? I don't know what the answer is, but to me, it... that's a That's a reflection of a deeper, more systemic problem than is even being covered here because it should have never been the case that a conviction would lie on just that, right? Ever. Well, okay. So to answer your question, technically there's not a lot of cases where it was just microscopic hair evidence standing between someone in a conviction or an exoneration.
00:13:25
Speaker
in terms of the legal process. Unfortunately, the microscopic hairs and other evidence related to this is kind of how time goes on, um as highlighted in these 13 cases. which So today's episode, we're going to talk a little bit about several of these cases.
Wrongful Convictions Exposed
00:13:47
Speaker
Unfortunately, it was used as a tipping point, if that makes sense. So Really, the evidence that's presented could kind of go either way, but the microscopic hair evidence in a couple of these cases is used to, quote, tip the scales toward guilt. And I understand that, again, assuming good faith at the time, thinking that they were presenting accurate information that was helpful to justice, not just aiming to convict somebody. i I do believe it's possible that
00:14:18
Speaker
if this is your job and you are scraping the bottom of the barrel to figure something out, you could have faith in this process, right? Oh, yeah yeah. And like, so there's other aspects to this that I wonder about. So one of the aspects I wonder about is like, you know,
00:14:35
Speaker
Do you blame the person that did it? Did they not know what they were doing? Was it poor training? Was it like the budget was so slim at the time, this is who we could hire? you know like what like What was happening at that time that we end up here? and like Were those corners we were cutting, meaning sort of like different jurisdictions, state, local cities around the US,
00:14:56
Speaker
Like was it worth what's eventually going to like come to record that I would say it is it's actually like a process problem because they could look at the same hairs today and get the exact same result and it's still DNA could say that that's not the match that they said it was.
00:15:15
Speaker
So it's actually like, ah it's a high level failure. When you don't have DNA and you're like, well, this hair looks exactly like that hair, which it could, but like hair is hair and it is not individually definitive ever. yeah I would say that it would be more of a narrowing down than anything.
00:15:42
Speaker
Yeah, what I thought we would do to talk about that aspect of it is I thought I would like kind of go through what the Registry of Exonerations, and in this case, the Innocence Project, said about one of these cases.
00:15:57
Speaker
And kind of tie it to a couple of the other cases and kind of look at it So if we see if we could identify what had gone wrong here So, you know while it's home for the holidays and typically we kind of stick to one or two people and one crime This is going to be multiple crimes because I felt like it was important to highlight the butterfly effect that happens here where something that happened continues to affect the local system. Because we're talking about, like what I just read you guys is from stuff that's ongoing in 2024. But the first case we're going to talk about goes all the way back to 1981. And while those two things are directly linked, they are linked to so many other things. Like you were saying, how many cases could it be? It's a lot.
Critique of the Judicial System
00:16:47
Speaker
Um, the, the best way I can think of to, to, to explain it, uh, is sort of to like, look, these are lesser crimes. Like typically we're talking about somebody who's gotten like life for a murder conviction and they're getting out. These crimes are not necessarily murder convictions that we're talking about here, which I think makes it even more egregious. And that's because you and I live in the age where,
00:17:13
Speaker
We're trying to catch up on backlogs of DNA analysis from assaults and from sexual assaults. And to see the resources catch up is like a really awesome thing. But to see that they're then going to have to be redirected to something like this.
00:17:28
Speaker
is It's pretty deflating, don't you think? Deflating would be one way to put it. ah Horrifying would be another way to put it. It has made me realize when you look at our clogged court system for criminal justice, the amount of serious violent crimes that have occurred is not reflected there.
00:17:49
Speaker
right like We have a lot of crap going through the judicial system on the criminal side altogether. The judicial system has its very own economy. right The economy relies on all these hand-slapping. I don't even know what you call it, where you got to go, you got to pay, you got to you know deal with junk. These are not crimes. right i mean They are because the law says you can't do it.
00:18:14
Speaker
And I'm talking about citations and fractions, things that are nonviolent offenses that keep the judicial economy moving. When you're talking about a serious case involving you know somebody's death or somebody being assaulted or some other violent crime that really matters, that's really all that matters there. And if if you do a comparison, there's way more people facing ridiculous punishments for things that aren't any of the things I just said, right?
00:18:50
Speaker
yeah And it's astounding. And so it sort of makes you wonder, like, what the heck? I do feel like it's worth the offset of sacrificing the the low-lying fruit of the judicial economy to get justice and the violent crimes, the the actual crimes that matter, right? Do you see what I'm saying here? I'm saying that i'm following you. It would be a worthwhile payoff to exchange the monotony of
00:19:27
Speaker
the resources being used for things that don't matter to get actual justice for people. the There's so many times that doesn't happen. How many times are, you know, if you go to any courtroom in any county in the United States on any random Monday morning, you're not going to find very many cases that are worth the resources being expended upon them. Think about that.
00:19:56
Speaker
i I would say that our country's law enforcement, police and judicial system ah work together on a lot of cases that for a myriad of reasons There's a lot of time and money wasted, if that's what you're getting at, yes. Well, right, and okay, so putting aside the the waste part of it, if you want to waste it, fine. But make sure like all of the important stuff is done. To me, justice involves getting somebody out that's factually innocent as much as it does putting someone who is, you know, guilty with physical evidence available to show their guilt in prison. To me, those are way more important situations. I feel like we, as a society, we're too quick to lock people up for things that don't matter. And we're very, very slow when it comes to making sure justice happens when it counts.
00:21:04
Speaker
Yeah, I would agree with everything
Arthur Lee Whitfield's Exoneration
00:21:06
Speaker
you said there. This case that I chose to like lead off here has a couple of twists in it that like you can't write. like If you wrote it ah in fiction and put it into a television show or a movie, people would tell you that it was too unbelievable. We're gonna go back to August 14th, 1981 to Norfolk, Virginia. And the crimes that we're looking at here are sexual assault and robbery, the perpetrator at the time, who's later exonerated, is a young black male. He's 26 years old. The official contributing factors are mistaken witness identification and official misconduct. And this is one of those that, when the question is asked, did DNA evidence contribute to the exoneration, the answer is yes. And this all takes place in the state of Virginia. You can find this on the registry at the law school at the University of Michigan's National Registry of Exonerations.
00:22:01
Speaker
You can also find information about it at the Innocence Project or homepage. So it says, in less than one hour on the night of August 14th, 1981, two women in Norfolk, Virginia were raped. Both victims eventually identified Arthur Lee Whitfield as the assailant. In 1982, he was convicted of one of the crimes.
00:22:26
Speaker
and he pled guilty to the second crime in order to receive a lighter sentence and have some of the outstanding charges dropped. The first victim had been accosted as she got out of her car. The assailant threatened her with a knife, stole her money and ordered her to undress. The perpetrator then raped her and left her there. She drove to a friend's house nearby and she reported the rape.
00:22:53
Speaker
At trial, she testified that she had several opportunities to view the perpetrator by the light of a street light and the spotlight of a nearby house. At the police station, she picked out seven photographs. One of those photographs was Whitfield's, and she subsequently identified him in a live lineup. The second victim was attacked shortly after the first. She had exited her car. She was accosted, threatened with a knife, and raped. At trial,
00:23:23
Speaker
The defense argued that Arthur Lee Whitfield had been misidentified. Both victims described their attacker as having no facial hair, but Arthur Whitfield at the time wore a beard. Whitfield's family testified that he was with them the entire evening of August the 14th.
00:23:41
Speaker
The jury convicted and Whitfield was sentenced to 45 years. He pled guilty to the second crime and received 18 years to run consecutively to the first for a total of 63 years. So because he pleads out to the second crime, he's not going to have a chance to appeal that crime.
00:23:59
Speaker
But theoretically, on the conviction, he could appeal it. By the time we catch up with Arthur Woodfield, his appeals are exhausted. So in October of 2003, Arthur Woodfield files pro se, so by himself, just he's going to represent himself, under the vin the Virginia statute that governed post-conviction DNA testing that had been passed in 2001,
00:24:24
Speaker
The response to the court and from the state at the time was that it appeared that the evidence in his case had been destroyed. So we're not talking about a murder case here. We're talking about a very serious sexual assault and robbery happening twice all in one night to two different victims. And that evidence over time has been lost. However, in December of 2003,
00:24:50
Speaker
The state crime lab in Virginia found pieces of the evidence taped inside a notebook of the serologist who had originally tested it. Mary Jane Burton, who we were just talking about, had against the protocol for the state lab saved samples from the cases that she had been working on. In 2001, evidence located in a similar manner had exonerated a man named Marvin Anderson. I'm going to talk about him in just a second.
00:25:19
Speaker
And in 2003, the evidence that Burton had saved in Julius Ruffin's case was tested and exonerated him. All right, so you guys know it's home for the holidays. We're talking about wrongful convictions. Have you ever heard of any of these people, Matt? No, I hadn't.
00:25:36
Speaker
So it's sort of a double-edged sword, isn't it? Like, she's breaking lab protocol and apparently was not a great employee, according to some of the things that you can read about her on the internet. Why was she saving the samples? So was she being pressured to get a conviction and she knew otherwise? Was she... There was a reason she was doing what she was doing. What was it?
00:25:57
Speaker
I don't know why, but she ends up being in the crosshairs of the forensic science community in Virginia in 2024 and all these cases that we've been talking about. But when I look at it all, I have the same questions you have.
Marvin Anderson's Story
00:26:11
Speaker
Like why was she keeping this strange documentation? Is it trophies? Is it because she knew something was wrong and like she hoped that one day somebody would figure it all out.
00:26:22
Speaker
and I don't come to a really good answer like immediately. I'm gonna talk for a second about Marvin Anderson. Marvin Anderson, his is a 1982 case, and he's mentioned here in the middle of Arthur Woodfield's write-up. He's from Hanover County, Virginia. At the time, he is a ah very young black male. He's 18 years old. The contributing factors to his case were mistaken witness identification.
00:26:48
Speaker
So his case is a little different. On December 14th of 1982, so about a year after the 1981 case, does that make sense in time? He's 18 years old and he ends up being convicted by a jury of forcible sodomy, robbery, abduction, and two counts of rape. He gets sentenced to a total of 210 years imprisonment in the Virginia state pen.
00:27:16
Speaker
The crime that that's related to is a young white woman is approached on a bicycle, July 17th, 1982, by a black man who was a total stranger to her. The assailant then beat her, threatened her with a gun. He raped her and he sodomized her.
00:27:36
Speaker
She goes and reports the crime and a police officer there singles out Marvin Anderson as a suspect because the perpetrator had told the victim that he quote, had a white girl.
00:27:50
Speaker
Marvin Anderson was the only black man that the officer happened to know who lived with a white woman. Because Anderson had no criminal record, the officer went to Anderson's employer and he obtained a color employment photo identification card. The victim has shown this color identification card and a half dozen black and white mug shots of other men, and she's asked to pick out the perpetrator. So she picks out Marvin Anderson, the only color photo in the badge.
00:28:15
Speaker
Within an hour of this photo spread, she's asked to identify her assailant from a lineup. Marvin Anderson is the only person in the lineup whose picture it was in the original photo array that had been shown to the victim. So she identifies him as the lineup as well. At trial, the victim gets up on the stand and she testifies in detail regarding the assault. In addition to the rape, she testified that her assailant had pried her mouth open and had forced her to take his penis into her mouth, and then he had forced her to consume fecal matter, and he had urinated on her. She again at trial identified Marvin Anderson as her assailant. There is serology work that had been completed by the Virginia Bureau of Forensic Science at the time, and it was unhelpful to either side in the trial. Anderson's trial counsel, they offer up an alibi defense, which includes Anderson's white girlfriend.
00:29:14
Speaker
From the very beginning of the case, people in the community became aware that the most likely suspect in this case was another black man named John Otis Lincoln. The bicycle that the stranger rode up onto the girl had been identified as being used by the assailant. It was identified by the owner, and they said that John Lincoln had stolen it from him approximately a year and a half before the raid. So although Anderson requested that his attorney call both the owner of the bicycle and John Lincoln as witnesses, his counsel decided not to do what it wasn't in their trial strategy. So an all white jury convicts Marvin Anderson on all counts. This was the very first time that he had been in trouble with the law and he received a series of consecutive sentences that totaled 210 years. In 1988,
00:30:04
Speaker
John Lincoln, he comes forward and he admits that he had been involved in this crime. So six years later, he shows up and he says, I did it, not Marvin Anderson. At a state habeas hearing in August of 1988, John Lincoln confesses he offers details of the crime under oath in open court. The same judge that had presided over the original trial of Marvin Anderson declared that John Lincoln was lying.
00:30:32
Speaker
and he refused to vacate Marvin Anderson's conviction. At this point in time, a coalition of civil rights groups, church leaders, and members of the state legislature, they petitioned for Governor Wilder to declare clemency for Marvin Anderson in 1993. That petition is denied. In the years after that conviction, DNA testing slowly becomes widely available, and Marvin Anderson sought to prove his innocence of the crime.
00:31:01
Speaker
He insisted that the sperm and semen samples be subjected to DNA analysis. His lawyers were told by the police and the prosecutor in the court that the rape kit and its contents had been destroyed. Anderson ends up contacting the Innocence Project, and in 1994, they take on his case. In 2001, Dr. Paul Ferreira, who's the director of the Virginia Division of Forensic Science at the time, he advises the Innocence Project that certain physical evidence from the case, including sperm and semen samples recovered from the victim's body, had been located in the laboratory notebook of Mary Jane Barton.
00:31:41
Speaker
She was the criminalist who had performed the conventional serology in this case in 1982, and the woman that we've been talking about. Had Burton followed policy and returned her partially used swabs to the rape kit, all evidence in this case would have been forever destroyed. So the Innocence Project, they contact the Commonwealth Attorney for Hanover County, and they agree that the Division of Forensic Science should conduct DNA tests on this evidence.
00:32:08
Speaker
In April of 2001, however, the director of the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services, they denied the request for testing. They cite the current number of cases pending in the division and the potential for establishing an unwelcome precedent. The director announces that the department would permit post-conviction scientific testing only upon a defendant's attorney showing ample calls for the court or the governor's office to order such testing.
00:32:35
Speaker
So that's the attitude at the time of Virginia in 2001. They're like, we don't want to do this. But in May of 2001, Virginia ends up adopting a new statute, which is known as Virginia Code 19.2, 327.1.
00:32:51
Speaker
This permits individuals convicted of a felony to ask the circuit court that entered the original conviction to order new scientific analysis of previously untested scientific evidence. The Innocence Project, in conjunction with multiple other entities here, including the Innocence Project of the National Capital Region at American University, they file a request under this new statute. And in the fall of 2001, they win a motion to have this stuff tested.
00:33:20
Speaker
They initiate the process of getting this evidence back into the lab that it's already been sitting in. So in December 6, 2001, the results exclude Marvin Anderson as the perpetrator of this crime. But because the evidence was heavily degraded, the profile obtained was limited to four STR markers.
00:33:42
Speaker
When the profile was run against Virginia's convicted offender database, it matched two inmates. Although the identity of these two men was not officially revealed, it appeared that one of the inmates was John Lincoln. On August 21st of 2002, Virginia Governor Mark Warner granted Marvin Anderson an absolute pardon. So this is going to be 20 years later.
00:34:08
Speaker
He spent 15 years in prison, four years on parole because he is, he doesn't end up getting out on parole. He goes, uh, prison in 1983 and after 15 years he is released, but he's going to be on lifetime parole. So he's doing all of this work in his own case while he's out on parole. So over the next three years, Virginia is going to link more defendants to this DNA material that's found in Burton's files.
00:34:34
Speaker
Right. And so, you know, from what we just talked about, I'm thinking that there's going to be cause in every single one that she kept. That's what I'm thinking. Like, I I'm kind of leaning towards that. And then I go.
00:34:51
Speaker
Well, that doesn't sound to me like a terrible lab person. No, it's it's not. but so Here's the thing. so it It can be confusing sometimes. ah You can lose sight of a bigger picture. It's very easy to do. It's very human to do. When you are working in a state lab, you do what a law enforcement request, you do what the prosecution's office request,
00:35:17
Speaker
it can almost seem like instead of seeking justice, you are working to convict someone. Yeah, you're doing what your bosses request and they got a lot of people that are, like you said, all those people are breathing down on the lab. That's a hierarchical problem. It's not just going to be the person doing the test. but when I don't know what was happening, but I do think that, especially since like there was a guy that they knew that that everybody thought did it, that wasn't the guy that was convicted, that then confessed, but then they didn't buy the confession. It's really weird.
00:35:55
Speaker
It's a strange situation when you've got somebody going, I did not do this, and you've got somebody else going, I did this, and nothing's happening, right? yeah It's weird. No matter how hard everybody tries, at the end of the day, you know the state is paying for the evidence that is wrongfully convicting these people.
00:36:19
Speaker
Yeah. And it's their people. Like the people, like the scientists involved here are for the most part either employees of state or employees of contractors for the state. That's
Re-evaluation of Mary Jane Burton's Actions
00:36:29
Speaker
what I'm getting at. Like so it becomes this thing where while certainly you realize what justice entails. So justice entails the truth of the matter. Sometimes the people that it appears you're working for don't see it that way.
00:36:46
Speaker
Right, right. I 100% agree with that. And so it can be hard, right? And it could lead a well-meaning lab person to save samples that she thought were relevant.
00:37:03
Speaker
For whatever reason, I find it interesting. In in that type of ah bureaucratic disaster zone, which is what it is, she's got stuff shoved in her desk. I mean, I guess she didn't leave the building with it, right? In that type of disaster zone, though, think of it, okay, put yourself in the position of the lab tech,
Systemic Issues in Justice
00:37:25
Speaker
right? And you're going, okay, so if I want to keep my job, I got to do this, which would be like, you know, give these opinions that lead towards a conviction, right? Yeah. Even if, like, while I can see the completely subjective basis for what I'm saying, I don't believe it and I don't believe that this is justice. So I can keep my job and do what they say and then have that way on me or I can speak the truth. They're going to lose the case and I'll probably lose my job. That is a bureaucratic nightmare. Yeah.
00:38:02
Speaker
That is not something that a ah lab tech is going to like take on. right They're going to do the job that they're expected to do to get the paycheck that like buys the food and clothes and pays for the electricity. right yeah This is a classic example of the parallel roads that I talk about, in not just in court, but like here's a situation where You have a very well-meaning person that can't do the right thing because of the system being stacked against them. Yeah. Yeah. And like, I can't, like it's, it's um, it's interesting because it sort of turns out like she's the bad guy on all of this. And I don't know if that's true or not yet. I have one more case of her, uh, related to her that I wanted to talk about with this. This is a 1981 crime where
00:38:52
Speaker
A young nurse is assaulted and raped after an assailant breaks into her apartment. Several weeks after the attack, this young nurse is in an elevator at the medical school in Norfolk and she sees a maintenance worker. It freaks her out. And when she leaves the elevator, she promptly calls the police and she identifies this maintenance worker as the person who had broken into her apartment and raped her. So this maintenance worker's name is Julius Ruffin. Julius was 28 years old at the time this happened. young black male. Again, all the sources are the same on on these cases here. At trial, Julius Ruffin's girlfriend testifies that they were together. She is his alibi. But the victim said that she was absolutely positive that Julius Ruffin was the assailant. Scientific testing has presented a trial that says that the semen from the scene, from the crime, is linked to a group that would only include about 8% of African American men. They go through one trial,
00:39:52
Speaker
with a hung jury, a second trial with a hung jury. And finally, in 1982, at a third trial, Julius Ruffin is found guilty. But just as in the case of Marvin Anderson, who we're just talking about, for some reason, Mary Jane Burton had kept bits and pieces of the evidence from Ruffin's trial in her lab notebook. This weird behavior, again, leads to DNA testing being performed. So in 2003, they performed a DNA test on the swab sample she had kept. And not only is is Julius Ruffin excluded, but another incarcerated man, a man named Aaron Doxie III, who was in prison for rape, is linked to the sample. Doxie is also eventually linked by DNA
00:40:38
Speaker
to the rape that Arthur Whitfield had been wrongfully convicted of. This is kind of crazy to me, but this is what's interesting about it, and I wanted to ask you about this part. If Mary Jane Burton doesn't keep this evidence... Everything just goes about like these guys are guilty. Correct. Yeah. And there's there's so many cases. How many more people are there where, I mean, we know it, like in this case, there's at least, so we have the three we're talking about right now, Arthur Whitfield Anderson and Marvin Anderson and Julius Ruffett.
00:41:10
Speaker
There are at least 10 more that are attached to the evidence she kept. And at some point we may come back and talk about them. I just was baffled by this. Admissible Shreds of Evidence is another podcast on that. Just in case you're over the holidays, you want more stuff to listen to. There are several episodes, they're really good. and um They talk about Mary Jane Barton. As for these guys in terms of Julius Ruffin, he ends up being able to be completely pardoned and he gets Uh, I think a million and a half to $2 million dollars in total compensation for his time in prison, but he was in prison for a long time with Arthur Whitfield. He ends up getting a little bit of compensation. That's been more recently. I do know in 2009, he got a portion of like, like maybe 600,000 or so, uh, Marvin Anderson, he got.
00:42:03
Speaker
some kind of weird annuity where he got like some cash upfront for his time in prison and then he gets 40 or 50 grand a year for life. I just thought these cases were, it was fascinating that they were all linked together and they're all linked to this woman and this woman is causing all this hubbub. But like I had yet to hear in all of this somebody go, well, hopefully there's not more Mary Jane Barton's because then we're, you know what I mean? Like they need more Mary Jane Barton's.
00:42:32
Speaker
in my opinion Well, possibly. There's a lot there that, yeah, it it c so it's so complicated and so much time has gone by, but i I will say that it's always going to boil down to the truth of the matter in and seeking justice, right? Yeah. That's not a subjective subject.
00:42:50
Speaker
I just use like the same the word to describe the word. It is not something that is arguable. It's not optional. Right. It's not optional. Yeah. Exactly. And to me, it seems like it would be a no-brainer, now right? And I just am not sure. Maybe i I do realize that a lot of time you can be in a situation where the person who, because this comes down to using resources, right? Yeah. And so when you've got somebody that's ah responsible for balancing the resources, also responsible for making these crucial decisions, it doesn't it's never going to work out in the interest of, well, I won't say it won't it's never going to work out. I'm just going to say that it can be more difficult to do reasonable things, right? Yeah. well
00:43:45
Speaker
This one it's a really depressing case there is more information about it that you can get to get it i'm not sure if we're gonna if we're gonna do more of this or not. I it's one of those i've been digging into and i've been looking for like there's a couple other cases i think are similar where you have a lab person who worked for twenty years or whatever.
00:44:04
Speaker
ah One is in the 80s and the 90s and they kind of kept information back I'm kind of with you on this thinking to myself like, you know It was this kind of like ah a road map of sorts like these were the ones I didn't understand how the match was made But this is what my boss has said that do you I? Think I think this is one of the more disturbing home for the holidays episodes to be honest.
00:44:28
Speaker
Well, it is. This type of stuff is truly what nightmares are made of because, well, with the debunked stuff, I mean, it's slowly but surely coming around. But otherwise, you know, the only thing worse than, ah are well, okay, so scientific evidence is A lot of times it's very hard to refute, but when somebody that is able to present that, manipulate that for a different outcome, it's just as scary as the justice system was without credible scientific evidence. Yeah, it is. And it's interesting because like I hear all the time and i think of I think of the justice industry as the justice industry. like it's kind of like There are aspects of it that are really weird to me as far as when you got the Innocence Project cropping up everywhere and like all these exoneration projects and different things.
00:45:22
Speaker
But then you see a case like this and it's like, that's why we have to have that. you know It's ridiculous that we have to have it, but that's why we have to. Right. And someday we will look back at the statistics of everything that occurred, how much it cost everybody. And be disturbed, very disturbed. And the justice that was denied or delayed or whatever. And it's going to be very it's going to it's going to be disappointing because It's not going to serve its purpose, I don't think. And the deeper you look into, like, sort of understanding the justice industry, that the more disheartening it is, honestly.
Podcast Promotion and Conclusion
00:46:03
Speaker
Yeah, I would tend to agree with you there. Special consideration was given to True Crime XS by LabratiCreations.com.
00:46:12
Speaker
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00:48:13
Speaker
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00:49:05
Speaker
True Crime XS is brought to you by John and Meg. It's written, produced, edited and posted by John and Meg. You can always support True Crime Access through patreon.com or if you have a story you'd like them to cover, you can reach them at truecrimeaccess.com. Thank you for joining us.
00:49:36
Speaker
This is just a reminder that we are part of the Zincaster Creator Network, and I've put a link in the show notes if you guys want to check it out for your own podcasting needs. um I've always enjoyed using Zincaster. Their quality is great.
00:49:53
Speaker
And we we were able to join their creator network at kind of a key time in in their history. um I have enjoyed it. you know I've considered a lot of other ah places to record and a lot of other ways to put together and host and distribute our podcasts. But I've stuck with Zincaster the longest. We've been with them for hundreds of episodes now and I'm putting a link in the show notes where you can check out ah what they have to offer and see if it's something you would want to use.