A10
OREGON
East Oregonian
Saturday, December 21, 2019
Nonprofi t trying to help lawyers become more scientifi cally literate
By JAKE THOMAS
Oregon Capital Bureau
SALEM — When Janis
Puracal began reviewing evi-
dence used to convict Nich-
olas McGuffi n of killing his
girlfriend, she recalled how it
didn’t add up.
In 2011, a jury con-
victed McGuffi n, a resident
of Coquille, of manslaugh-
ter after his girlfriend Leah
Freeman turned up dead. In
2014, the Oregon Innocence
Project took
up his case.
P u r a -
cal,
then
an
attor-
ney
with
the group,
noticed how
the prosecu-
Puracal
tor’s timeline
of events didn’t fi t with other
evidence or alibi witnesses.
She eventually found
what would be key — a tech-
nical report documenting a
DNA analysis in the case.
Puracal had an independent
expert look at the report’s
raw data.
The expert discovered
that another man’s DNA was
on Freeman’s shoe, which
could have proven McGuf-
fi n’s innocence and pointed
to another suspect. But this
information hadn’t been dis-
closed by prosecutors.
“Certainly, when we saw it
I was complete fl oored,” said
Puracal. “I couldn’t believe
it was exculpatory evidence
that hadn’t been reported.
That was a big deal.”
Earlier this month, a
judge found that the evidence
should have been disclosed at
trial and overturned McGuf-
fi n’s conviction, who was
later released from prison.
The victory is the most
high-profi le yet for the Foren-
sic Justice Project. A small
Portland-based
nonprofi t
founded by Puracal last year,
the Forensic Justice Project is
dedicated to helping defense
lawyers understand, fi nd and
challenge scientifi c evidence
introduced during trials.
The use of DNA analysis
EO Media Group fi le photo
The director of the Oregon State Police forensic lab in Bend performs part of the process in
examining evidence in a screening room at the lab in 2015.
and other forensic evidence
have been increasingly used
in courtrooms and is often
depicted in TV dramas as
indisputable proof of guilt or
innocence. But Puracal said
that DNA testing or even
the use of fi ngerprints and
older techniques are far from
fl awless.
“A lot of people just think
that forensics work like they
do on TV, right?” said Pur-
acal. “It gets magic answers
in half an hour and solves
cases.”
Since founding her non-
profi t, Puracal has been
involved in cases across the
state. Now, it could be poised
to have a bigger impact on
the state’s criminal justice
system.
In November, the Ore-
gon Offi ce of Public Defense
Services signed a two-year,
$600,000 contract with the
Forensic Justice Project to
provide case support and
training to public defense
lawyers across the state.
Public defense attorneys
can already request funding
for forensic experts or anal-
ysis from the Oregon Offi ce
of Public Defense Services.
The training offered by the
Forensic Justice Project will
help them ask the right ques-
tions and identify potential
problems in the evidence.
“Specifi c forensic issues
can be complex, and the sci-
ence is frequently moving
the needle on what is admis-
sible scientifi c evidence,”
Eric Deitrick, the offi ce’s
general counsel, said in an
email. “It’s incredibly chal-
lenging for already overbur-
dened public defense attor-
neys to keep up with new and
changing forensic issues.”
Aliza Kaplan, a profes-
sor at Lewis & Clark Law
School and counsel for the
Forensic Justice Project, said
that only a few states have
similar organizations. She
said that the training will
teach defense lawyers how
to read technical reports,
question experts and bet-
ter understand scientifi c evi-
dence. She said that’ll require
them to bridge a gap in their
legal education.
“Most of us joke that we
went to law school to get
away from science,” she said.
‘This is a serious
problem’
Forensic evidence has
been used in some form for
centuries and is often based
on the theory of transfer that
“when two objects meet,
some evidence of that meet-
ing can later be found and
verifi ed.” In the late 1800s,
a fi ngerprint was fi rst used
to solve a crime and doctors
examined the victims of Jack
the Ripper for wound pat-
terns. But in recent decades
such methods have been
questioned.
Marc Brown, chief dep-
uty defender for the Public
Defense Offi ce, pointed to
the case of Brandon May-
fi eld, an Oregon attorney
who in 2004 was arrested
by the FBI over allegations
he was involved in fatal
train bombings in Spain. His
arrest was based on digital
images of partial, latent fi n-
gerprints found at the scene.
Subsequently, the FBI deter-
mined that the fi ngerprints
didn’t match.
Mayfi eld was exoner-
ated and the FBI apolo-
gized. Brown said the case
prompted a closer look at
forensic evidence.
The National Academy of
Sciences said in a 2009 study
that local forensic science
facilities were understaffed
and underfunded and they
worked with no established
standards.
The study also found that
with the exception of DNA
analysis, no method could
consistently link suspects to
evidence.
“The simple reality is that
the interpretation of forensic
evidence is not always based
on scientifi c studies to deter-
mine its validity,” the study
found. “This is a serious
problem.”
A 2016 report by the Pres-
ident’s Council of Advisors
on Science and Technology
called for standards forensic
methods.
The next year, Kaplan
and Puracal published their
own paper that described
wrongful convictions based
on faulty forensic evidence,
including one case where a
dog hair was mistaken for
a suspect’s. The paper also
mentioned the case of Phil-
lip Scott Cannon, who was
convicted of murder in 2000
in Polk County. He spent 11
years in prison before a court
found that an expert mistak-
enly matched lead in the bul-
lets found in the victims to
lead in an ammunition box in
Cannon’s home.
Kaplan and Puracal con-
cluded that despite the two
national studies, defense
lawyers still weren’t chal-
lenging questionable forensic
evidence.
They are unsure how
many cases in Oregon
involve questionable foren-
sic evidence. Brown also said
it’s hard to gauge how many
cases deserve scrutiny in
Oregon because of the state’s
fragmented public defense
system.
Puracal said that there’s
no way to know how many
cases like this are out there
unless someone goes out and
looks for them.
“That’s what we’re doing,”
she said.
Good science in the
courtroom
Puracal said that one prob-
lem that frequently comes up
is expert testimony that goes
beyond what the science sup-
ports. She said that some-
times experts seem wedded
to a conclusion or aren’t up to
date on the science.
She said that’s particularly
important for DNA analysis.
She said that the amount of
DNA that can be tested for
has gotten smaller. While
useful, she said smaller
amounts opens up the pos-
sibility of contamination or
multiple people’s DNA get-
ting mixed.
“The jury gets captivated
by forensic science,” said
Puracal. “You come in with
an expert and it’s impressive
and the jury will defer to
that expert. And that means
that we need to make sure
that good science is com-
ing into the courtroom and
not leading to wrongful
convictions.”
Brown said that the earlier
studies of forensic evidence
questioned long-established
“comparison analysis” using
evidence as bite marks, tire
tracks or footprints to prove
a suspect’s guilt.
He said that while less
of this evidence is being
used in Oregon courts, there
are still problems. He said
there’s no statewide stan-
dard for how fi ngerprints are
used. He pointed to a 2016
appeals court case involv-
ing a woman who was con-
victed of burglary on a single
fi ngerprint left on a bottle.
The bottle — and the fi nger-
print evidence — was dis-
carded by police and the case
remains under appeal.
Puracal said that the
Forensic Justice Project
will focus on cases involv-
ing DNA as well as diagno-
ses of abusive head trauma,
commonly known as shaken
baby syndrome. She said that
experts will often testify that
they are certain a child was
abused rather than injured by
an accident.
“We know that a baby
could be abused,” she said.
“But the problem is that the
science doesn’t tell us that
this baby was abused and not
injured by some accident or
some disease or disorder.”
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