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palmela

[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]

Joyce Gilchrist, Oklahoma City Police Department forensic chemist

Sunday, May. 13, 2001
When The Evidence Lies
Sunday, May. 13, 2001 By BELINDA LUSCOMBE Joyce Gilchrist, Oklahoma City Police Department forensic chemist
Jim Fowler has been struck twice by lightning.
A retired house painter in Oklahoma City, Okla., Fowler lived through his 19-year-old son Mark's arrest in 1985 for murdering three people in a grocery-store holdup. Mark was sentenced to death.
A year later Fowler's mother Anne Laura was raped and murdered, and a man named Robert Lee Miller Jr. was sentenced to die for the crime.
The same Oklahoma City police department forensic scientist, Joyce Gilchrist, testified at both trials. But DNA evidence later proved she was wrong about Miller. He was released after 10 years on death row, and a man previously cleared by Gilchrist was charged with the crime.
Fowler can't help wondering if Gilchrist's testimony was equally inept at the trial of his son Mark, who was executed in January.
Last week gave Fowler even more reason to wonder.
A state judge ordered a man named Jeffrey Pierce released after serving 15 years of a 65-year sentence for rape.
Gilchrist placed him at the scene of the crime, but DNA evidence proved he was not the rapist.
In response, Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating launched a review of every one of the thousands of cases Gilchrist touched between 1980 and 1993, starting with 12 in which death sentences were handed down. But in another 11 of her cases, the defendants have already been put to death. The state is giving the Oklahoma Indigent Defense System $725,000 to hire two attorneys and conduct DNA testing of any evidence analyzed by Gilchrist that led to a conviction.
A preliminary FBI study of eight cases found that in at least five, she had made outright errors or overstepped "the acceptable limits of forensic science." Gilchrist got convictions by matching hair samples with a certainty other forensic scientists found impossible to achieve. She also appears to have withheld evidence from the defense and failed to perform tests that could have cleared defendants.

It's a bitter convolution of fate that Gilchrist should be based in Oklahoma City, the last place one would expect to find compelling arguments against the death penalty.
Her story can't help but give Oklahomans pause about the quality of justice meted out by their courts. Says Gilchrist's lawyer, Melvin Hall: "The criticism of her around here is second only to that of Timothy McVeigh." But the allegations also underscore a national problem: the sometimes dangerously persuasive power of courtroom science.
Juries tend to regard forensic evidence more highly than they regard witnesses because it is purportedly more objective. But forensic scientists work so closely with the police and district attorneys that their objectivity cannot be taken for granted.

Gilchrist told TIME in an interview last week that she's bewildered by her predicament. "I'm just one entity within a number of people who testify," she says. "They're keying on the negative and not looking at the good work I did."
In her 21-year career with the Oklahoma City police, she had an unbroken string of positive job evaluations and was Civilian Police Employee of the Year in 1985.
Her ability to sway juries and win convictions earned her the nickname "Black Magic."
In 1994 she was promoted from forensic chemist to supervisor.
Until recently, Hall says, she did not have "a bad piece of paper in her file." Now Gilchrist is on paid leave; in June she will face a two-day hearing to decide whether the police department should fire her. Meanwhile, her reputation has been shattered.

The hammer blow came when Pierce, a landscaper who was convicted of rape in 1986, was released last week after DNA testing exonerated him.
He had been found guilty despite a clean record and plausible alibi largely because of Gilchrist's analysis of hair at the crime scene.
"I'm just the one who opened the door," said Pierce. "There will be a lot more coming out behind me."
Pierce lost 15 years, his marriage and the chance to see his twin boys grow up. But some fear there were others who paid even more dearly: the 11 executed defendants. The Oklahoma attorney general has temporarily shut the gate on execution of the 12 still on death row in whose trials Gilchrist was involved.
While the D.A.'s office believes that the convictions will stand, these cases will be the first to be reconsidered. Defense lawyers fear that the innocent who took plea bargains in the face of her expertise will never come to light.

Gilchrist told TIME, "There may be a few differences because of DNA analysis," but she is confident most of her findings will be confirmed. "I worked hard, long and consistently on every case," she says. "I always based my opinion on scientific findings." She insists she didn't overstate those findings to please the D.A.'s office or secure convictions. "I feel comfortable with the conclusions I drew."

But defense lawyers say the Gilchrist investigation is long overdue. Her work has been making colleagues queasy for years.
In January 1987, John Wilson, a forensic scientist with the Kansas City police crime lab, filed a complaint about her with the Southwestern Association of Forensic Scientists. (The association declined to take action.) Jack Dempsey Pointer, president of the Oklahoma Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, says his group has been fighting for an investigation "almost since the time she went to work" at the lab. "We have been screaming in the wind, and nobody has been listening."

Police Chief M.T. Berry says it wasn't until 1999 that the department had any reason to be suspicious about her work.
That's when federal Judge Ralph Thompson lit into her for "untrue" testimony and the "blatant withholding of unquestionably exculpatory evidence" in the rape and murder trial of Alfred Brian Mitchell. (Thompson overturned the rape conviction but let the murder stand.)
In March 2000 Gilchrist was put out to pasture at a police equine lab, where she says she had to do "demeaning tasks" like count test tubes.

Then this January, a devastating memo from Byron Boshell, captain of the police department's laboratory-services division, thudded onto Berry's desk. It filled four three-ring binders and noted reversals and reprimands the courts had handed Gilchrist, as well as the issues the professional journals had taken with her work.
Under her supervision, it said, evidence was missing in cases in which new trials had been granted or were under review; and rape evidence had been destroyed after two years, long before the statute of limitations had expired.
Gilchrist explained last week that she always followed established procedures with evidence and that the memo was simply the department's way of getting rid of her after she reported the sexual harassment of a colleague.
"There is no doubt this [memo] is retaliation," says Gilchrist.
How did her career last this long?
"She couldn't have got away with this if she weren't supported by prosecutors, ignored by judges and police who did nothing," says Wilson, who filed the original complaint against her 14 years ago. "The police department was asleep at the switch." The D.A.'s office simply says Gilchrist should not be tried in the media. But one prosecutor, who declined to be named, lays blame on the aggressive tactics of D.A. Bob Macy, who's proud to have sent more people to death row than any other active D.A. in the country. Which raises a more troubling question.
How many other Gilchrists are there?
In Oklahoma City, Chief Berry has ordered a wholesale review of the serology/DNA lab. And while Governor Keating insists that no one has been executed who shouldn't have been, Pointer and the local defense-lawyers association plan to re-examine the cases of the 11 executed inmates. "Nobody cares about the dead," he says. "The state is not going to spend money to find out that they executed someone who might have been innocent."
Reported By Wendy Cole And Maggie Sieger/Oklahoma City And Amanda Bower/New York City

palmela

WHEN WILL JOYCE GILCHRIST BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE ?

FORMER OKLAHOMA CITY FORENSIC CHEMIST JOYCE GILCHRIST'S ANALYSIS AND TESTIMONY SENT AT LEAST ONE INNOCENT PERSON TO DEATH ROW
*Defense Attorney Files Suit to Investigate if an Innocent Man was Executed
*Alfred Brian Mitchell's Death Sentence Overturned - Re-sentencing Ordered
Gilchrist has been repeatedly accused of false testimony and shoddy results in her work during the past 15 years.
She has been involved in approximately 3,000 cases, including at least 23 cases where defendants were eventually sentenced to death and have either been executed or remain on death row. 11 of those people were executed during the past two years, including Marilyn Plantz and Randall Cannon who was executed on July 23rd - despite strong doubts as to his guilt because of Joyce Gilchrist's testimony.
Oklahoma County District Attorney Robert Macy, who often relied on testimony from Gilchrist, announced his resignation effective June 30, 2001
A 101-page report about the death penalty in Oklahoma was released by Amnesty International. A copy of the report is available on its web site.
Both Gilchrist and Macy are cited in the Amnesty International report. (4/30/01)

Read the May 1, 2001 CNN report on the Joyce Gilchrist investigation, titled "FBI reviewing cases forensic expert handled".
[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]

Read the July 18, 2001, Shawnee News-Star article, Three death row cases due review about the ongoing investigation into death sentences that may have resulted from Joyce Gilchrist'stestimony. [link widoczny dla zalogowanych]
SO WHEN WILL JOYCE GILCHRIST BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE?
OR WILL SHE?
We, as members of an increasingly concerned public, would like it known that we do not want innocent people executed in our name. Nor do we believe that professionals such as Joyce Gilchrist or Joan Wood (see Florida) should be exempt from punishment. False and inaccurate testimony deliberately given with the express purpose of removing another's Right to Life is premeditated MURDER as much as picking up a gun or knife.
We ask that you join us in expressing your concern and requesting that Joyce Gilchrist be held as accountable in a Court of Law as much as any other she has placed in that position.
Relevant websites:
[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]
[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]
[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]

ADDENDUM:
May 13: Oklahoma City Police Chemist Joyce Gilchrist, who is currently under investigation by the OSBI, provided testimony or work on the cases of the following current death row inmates: Stephen Lynn Abshier; Randall Eugene Cannon; Ernest Marvin Carter Jr; Cyril Wayne Ellis; Yancey Lyndell Douglas; John Michael
Hooker; Victor Wayne Hooks; Michael Edward Hooper; Curtis Edward McCarty; Alfred Brian Mitchell; George Ochoa and Osbaldo Torres. Gilchrist also provided testimony or work on the cases of the following inmates who have been executed: Roger James Berget; William Clifford Bryson; Malcolm Rent Johnson; James Glenn Robedeaux; Michael Donald Roberts; Eddie Leroy Trice; Dion Athanasius Smallwood; Mark Andrew Fowler and Billy Ray Fox; and Loyd Winford Lafevers.

Dallas Morning News - October 22, 2001
Chemist's Errors Stir Fear: Did Oklahoma Execute Innocent? [link widoczny dla zalogowanych]

By Arnold Hamilton - Staff writer Diane Jennings in Dallas contributed to this report.

OKLAHOMA CITY -- In a 21-year career, Oklahoma City police chemist Joyce Gilchrist was a prosecutor's dream: She delivered supportive lab analysis and convincing testimony that helped send hundreds to prison – at least 23 people to death row.
Ms. Gilchrist may turn out to be a prosecutor's worst nightmare: So much of her work was questioned by appeals courts and forensics experts that she was suspended and fired.
Investigators are digging through 1,197 of her cases to see whether anyone is behind bars because of false or misleading testimony.
And now – in a year when Oklahoma leads the nation in carrying out the death penalty, and with suspect convictions being reviewed even beyond the Gilchrist cases – some are pondering the unthinkable:
Has Oklahoma executed the innocent?

"I think there's a real concern that that has happened," said Jim Bednar, a former state and
federal prosecutor and state judge who now heads the Oklahoma Indigent Defense System. "I think we've got to ensure that nobody else gets executed until we take a thorough look at this."

Ms. Gilchrist has denied wrongdoing.
Her lawyer, Melvin Hall, describes her as a "scapegoat," noting she "had absolutely not a single piece of negative paper in her 21-year personnel file." Ms. Gilchrist declined to be interviewed.

Defense attorneys and forensic scientists questioned Ms. Gilchrist's work – particularly hair
and fiber analysis – as early as the mid-1980s. Earlier this year, an FBI review of eight cases
revealed significant flaws in her analysis.
Since then, state lawmakers provided $650,000 for
DNA testing, and Gov. Frank Keating ordered the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation to review all criminal cases involving Ms. Gilchrist.
Already, the state task force – including the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, the
attorney general and the indigent defense system – has targeted for independent DNA testing two death row cases involving Ms. Gilchrist's work.
The state crime lab has completed an initial review of 817 files from Ms. Gilchrist's cases, turning up problems significant enough in about 16 percent of them – 130 – to warrant a more extensive review.

Although Ms. Gilchrist's work is the primary target of the state task force, Oklahoma's problems with pre-DNA forensic science have shadowed other cases as well, including some handled by the OSBI itself.

Just three weeks ago, a judge in Wagoner County threw out the murder conviction of Albert Wesley Brown, who served 18 years of a life sentence.
A former OSBI chemist testified that hairs found at the scene belonged to Mr. Brown, but recent DNA tests proved otherwise.
Separately, the Oklahoma City Police Department has asked the task force to review as many as 10 cases handled by a second former police chemist, the late Janice Davis. In one such case, Ms. Davis used hair and fiber analysis to link Dewey George Moore to a 1984 murder.
The task force ordered DNA tests to determine whether Mr. Moore has wrongly spent 16 years on death row.

In 1999, two men who had spent 12 years in prison – one on death row – were released after DNA tests cleared them in an Ada rape-murder. The cases had been reviewed by the New York-based Innocence Project.

"I'm very concerned that there may be anybody serving time or facing execution who may be actually innocent of the charges," said Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson, a former Muskogee County prosecutor. "And that's why I'm very interested in reviewing all of these cases."
Mr. Edmondson, however, opposes a blanket moratorium on executions, similar to one ordered by Illinois Gov. George Ryan after he learned that 13 death-row inmates had been exonerated since 1987.

"Our office determined nearly two years ago we would not seek an execution date if there remained unanswered questions of guilt or innocence that could be resolved with a forensic test," Mr. Edmondson said. "I think that's a far more appropriate approach than a blanket moratorium that would include cases where DNA is not even a factor."

The questions arising in Oklahoma are similar to concerns raised in other states in recent years. Since the death penalty resumed in 1976, 98 death row inmates across the country – including seven in Texas – have been cleared by new evidence, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
In 11 of those cases DNA testing played a role.
In that time, 736 people have been executed nationwide.

Executions slowed
Illinois is the only state to have declared a moratorium, but efforts have been, or are being,
made to get moratoriums in 36 of the 38 states with the death penalty, according to the American Bar Association.
In Texas, a moratorium proposal died after making it out of committee in this year's legislative session. The state's death penalty system, which has executed more people than any other, came under harsh scrutiny last year during the presidential campaign of Gov. George Bush.
The execution pace has slowed in Texas this year – to 13 so far, compared with 40 in 2000.
In Oklahoma, the 12 pending death row cases that Ms. Gilchrist worked on are being reviewed first by the state task force, according to OSBI spokeswoman Kym Koch. Those with sentences of life without parole will be reviewed next, followed by those with lesser
sentences. The 11 Gilchrist cases in which inmates have already been executed will be considered last, if at all.
"There's some opposition to our testing people already executed," said Mr. Bednar, the indigent defense system chief. "I think it would be a horrible mistake for us not to do that."
Some defense attorneys are convinced that such testing would prove that shoddy, possibly
corrupt science was used to secure convictions.

"The prosecutors and the police get the white-hat syndrome – that they know what's best for society," said defense attorney Steve Presson, a former Norman, Okla., police officer. "In doing so, the end justifies the means."

Complaints about Ms. Gilchrist's work arose while former Oklahoma County District Attorney Bob Macy was the chief prosecutor. Mr. Macy retired early in late June and could not be reached for comment, but he earlier defended Ms. Gilchrist.

Ms. Gilchrist joined the Oklahoma City Police Department in 1980 as a crime lab chemist, trained at the FBI academy in Quantico, Va., and the Serological Research Institute in Emeryville, Calif. She was the Civilian Employee of the Year in 1985.

Two years later, she was the target of a complaint to the Southwestern Association of Forensic Scientists, filed by John T. Wilson, the chief forensic scientist in the Kansas City, Mo., regional crime laboratory. Mr. Wilson asserted that Ms. Gilchrist's testimony in four cases amounted to opinion that could not be supported by science.

The professional group declined to discipline her, but it did warn her to avoid mixing "personal opinions" and "opinions based upon facts derived from scientific evidence."

Ms. Gilchrist was promoted in 1994 to supervisor. According to a Police Department memo in mid-January, she continued to have problems with professional organizations: She was expelled from the Association of Crime Scene Reconstruction for "ethical violations."

Chemist defends work
In an interview last spring, Ms. Gilchrist told Time, "I worked hard, long, and consistently on
every case. I always based my opinion on scientific findings.
"I feel comfortable with the conclusions I drew."
The courts weren't so certain.
For instance, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals in 1988 overturned the murder conviction of Curtis Edward McCarty, ruling in part that Ms. Gilchrist testified beyond her expertise. Mr. McCarty was retried and convicted again in the 1982 murder. Even so, the state task force believes the case is ripe for independent DNA testing.
In another case, a federal judge in 1999 in Oklahoma City overturned the rape conviction of Alfred Brian Mitchell, ruling that Ms. Gilchrist's testimony was "terribly misleading, if not false."
Mr. Mitchcell's murder conviction and death sentence were upheld, but a federal appeals court this year vacated the death sentence, citing Ms. Gilchrist's testimony.
Then last May, a state judge ordered Jeffrey Todd Pierce released after he had served nearly 15 years on a rape conviction. An FBI chemist who re-examined the evidence concluded Ms. Gilchrist wrongly testified that Mr. Pierce's hair was "microscopically consistent" with the rapist's. The OSBI subsequently matched a semen sample from the crime scene with another prison inmate serving a 45-year sentence for rape and robbery.
Mr. Bednar said he believes Ms. Gilchrist's failings point to a "culture" that suggests neither
prosecutors nor police "understand the function of the expert."
"It's very obvious she was not an independent arbiter of fact," he said. "If she was, this
wouldn't have happened. They [police and prosecutors] basically had an advocate and not a
scientist in Joyce Gilchrist. That's tragic."

Ms. Gilchrist was transferred to the police equine lab in March 2000. She was placed on paid administrative leave last February. Police Chief M.T. Berry, who requested the FBI review of her work, said the decision to terminate Ms. Gilchrist came after a police review board hearing.
Ms. Gilchrist's attorney, Mr. Hall, said she is weighing a possible legal challenge.

Death-row cases
Meanwhile, the state task force reviewing Ms. Gilchrist's files has ordered DNA testing on two
death row cases: John Michael Hooker, who was convicted in the 1987 stabbing deaths of his
girlfriend and her mother; and Michael Edward Hooper, convicted in the 1993 shooting deaths
of his former girlfriend and her two young children.

Once the OSBI completes its initial review of Ms. Gilchrist's cases, it will compare her
scientific analysis with her testimony. Then, the attorney general's office and the Oklahoma
Indigent Defense System will decide which of the cases will be selected for DNA testing. The
decisions will depend largely on whether the attorneys believe Ms. Gilchrist's analysis and
testimony played a significant role in the convictions – or whether other evidence was more
pivotal.
Ms. Gilchrist said she is not opposed to such scientific review. "I look forward to that.," she told CBS' 60 Minutes II in May. "I would accept responsibility if I'm wrong, but I've never intentionally done anything wrong in a case I've ever been involved
My heart goes out to all the other people I know that are in here who are innocent because of the Oklahoma County District Attorney’s Office and the Oklahoma City Police Department," said Jeffrey Todd Pierce after he was freed from prison on May 7.
"I hope you all won’t forget about them, too, because there are more. I’m just the one that opened the door, and I feel there will be a lot more coming out behind me."
Pierce sat behind bars for 15 long years before DNA
tests proved his innocence. Oklahoma City police chemist Joyce Gilchrist, who is currently under investigation for falsifying, withholding and failing to test evidence in criminal cases, testified against Pierce. Now authorities are reexamining 1,448 cases that Gilchrist worked on --
including 12 death penalty convictions. But in 11 cases that Gilchrist worked on, the defendants have already been executed -- including Marilyn Plantz,
who was executed on May 1, 2001, despite the recent revelations about Gilchrist’s shoddy performance.
A preliminary FBI investigation found that in at least five cases that ended with convictions, Gilchrist testified "beyond the acceptable limits of forensic science" and that Gilchrist misrepresented hair and fiber analysis in court to get convictions.
What’s more, the Oklahoma City Police Department can’t even keep its records straight. The stigation won’t be able to review cases for three years -- 1980, 1981, and 1990 -- because they can’t be found.
According to the Oklahoma Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, Gilchrist’s analysis and testimony has sent at least one innocent person,Robert Miller Jr., to death row. Gilchrist examined hairs obtained from the crime scenes and testified that they belonged to Miller.
But 10 years after he was convicted and sentenced to death, DNA testing proved Miller’s innocence. In 1998, he became the 76th innocent person freed from death row.
The DNA evidence also showed that a man named Ronnie Lott was the perpetrator of the crime. At the first trial, Gilchrist had discounted Lott based
on her analysis!
Gilchrist has been working for years with the district attorney’s office to win convictions. Finally, prosecutors in Oklahoma City are feeling the heat.
How many other wrongful convictions resulted from Gilchrist’s shoddy work remains to be seen.

FORMER OKLAHOMA CITY FORENSIC CHEMIST JOYCE GILCHRIST'S ANALYSIS AND TESTIMONY SENT AT LEAST ONE INNOCENT PERSON TO DEATH ROW
+Ron Williams Exonerated - Conviction Based on Faulty Forensics
+Defense Attorney Files Suit to Investigate if an Innocent Man was Executed
+Alfred Brian Mitchell's Death Sentence Overturned - Re-sentencing Ordered

An investigation initiated by the FBI into former
Oklahoma County forensic chemist Joyce Gilchrist
continues. Gilchrist has been repeatedly accused of false testimony and shoddy results in her work during the past 15 years. She has been involved in approximately 3,000 cases, including at least 23 cases where defendants were eventually sentenced to death and have either been executed or remain on death row. 11 of those people were executed during the past two years, including Marilyn Plantz (upper left a few days before her death). A lawsuit
has been filed to re-examine the case of Malcolm RentJohnson, who was executed in January 2000. On
September 25, 2001, Joyce Gilchrist was fired due to "laboratory mismanagement, criticism from
court challenges and flawed casework analysis'', according to Police Chief M.T. Berry.
Alfred Brian Mitchell was convicted of the 1991 murder as well as rape and sodomy of Elaine Scott. In 1999 a Federal Court in Oklahoma overturned the rape and sodomy convictions as the jury in the
original trial had not been informed a FBI agent refuted Joyce Gilchrist's test results and testimony.
There was no DNA evidence indicating Mitchell had raped Scott contrary to Gilchrist's testimony. Now in August, 2001 a three judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned the death
sentence and ordered a re-sentencing of Mr. Mitchell on only the murder conviction. The judges wrote
"We simply cannot be confident that the jury would have returned the same sentence had no rape
evidence been presented to it".

Robert Miller, Jr., was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1986 rapes and murders of Zelma
Cutler and Anna Laura "Goldie" Fowler. Forensic chemist Joyce Gilchrist examined hairs
obtained from the crime scenes and attributed them to Miller. She discounted a man named Ronald
Lott as a possible suspect based on her conclusions.

Rob spent seven years on death row and another three years fighting for his freedom after DNA testing of
these hairs determined his innocence. The DNA evidence shows Ronnie Lott to be the perpetrator of
this crime. His trial is scheduled to begin in the fall of 2001.
Gilchrist also testified about hair evidence in the trial of Goldie Fowler's grandson, Mark. Three months prior to her death, Mark was convicted
and sentenced to death for the murders of three grocery store employees. Mark always maintained he was the lookout man when the murders occurred and never killed anyone. Gilchrist's testimony about
hair evidence implicated him as a killer. He was executed January 23, 2001.

Goldie's son, Jim Fowler, and his wife Ann (at left with a picture of Mark), now have too many unanswered questions about Gilchrist's forensic examination and testimony and why their son is dead and why they were led to believe for a total of 10 years that an innocent man raped and murdered their loved one.
But there is one thing they do not question...their commitment to their family and ending all of the
unnecessary death that haunts them.
Oklahoma County District Attorney Robert Macy, who often relied on testimony from Gilchrist,
announced his resignation effective June 30, 2001. He proudly claims to have tried at least 60 capital
cases and is known as America's Deadliest DA.

More Information:
Read the story of exonerated death row inmate Ron Williamson.
Faulty hair analysis and testimony by Oklahoma State Bureau of
Investigation criminalist Melvin R. Hett sent Ron to his death sentence
and co-defendant Dennis Fritz to a sentence of life without parole. Both
men spent 10 years in prison before being exonerated by DNA evidence in
1999.

A 101-page report about the death penalty in Oklahoma was released by Amnesty International. A
copy of the report is available on its web site. Both Gilchrist and Macy are cited in the Amnesty
International report. (4/30/01)
[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]

Read the May 1, 2001 CNN report on the Joyce Gilchrist investigation, titled "FBI reviewing cases
forensic expert handled".
[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]

Read the July 18, 2001 Shawnee News-Star article titled "Three death row cases due review",
about the ongoing investigation into death sentences that may have resulted from Joyce
Gilchrist's testimony - including Alfred Brian Mitchell's conviction and death sentence.
[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]

Read the reports about the Federal Appeals Court overturning Alfred Brian Mitchell's death sentence:
August 15, 2001 ABCNews report titled "Oklahoma Death Sentence Overturned",
[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]
or the August 14, 2001 Daily Oklahoman report titled "Death sentence stricken".
[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]

Read the September 25, 2001 Reuters article, titled "Oklahoma Fires Police Chemist Over
Shoddy Lab Work", regarding Joyce Gilchrist.
[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]

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Oklahoma City police chemist faked the crucial evidence The innocent man they put to death
by ERIC RUDER - September 14, 2001
"I'M INNOCENT, and I've got peace in my heart, and I'm ready to go home." Those were among the last words uttered by
Malcolm Rent Johnson before the state of Oklahoma took his
life on January 6, 2000.

A year and a half later, his innocence is nearly proven. But it
will come too late.

Johnson is one of 12 people executed in Oklahoma who were
convicted on the basis of testimony by Oklahoma City police
chemist Joyce Gilchrist. Gilchrist was exposed earlier this year
for mishandling evidence and lying under oath in thousands of
criminal cases over a 25-year period.

Johnson's case--and his near-certain innocence--came to light
after state officials ordered a review of 1,700 convictions where
Gilchrist's testimony played a part.

At Johnson's trial, Gilchrist testified that Johnson's blood type
matched sperm collected from the apartment of Ura Thompson,
a 76-year-old woman killed in 1981. But a reexamination last
month of Gilchrist's "evidence" found that the slides she
prepared contained no sperm at all!

The reexamination was conducted by Oklahoma City police
DNA laboratory manager Laura Schile and endorsed by three
other chemists. But after issuing the report, Schile
resigned--following a confrontation with the lab's chief. "She
was intimidated by the Oklahoma City Police Department and
some of the lawyers involved in this case," said Schile's lawyer,
Gavin Isaacs.

State officials are claiming that Johnson would have been
convicted without Gilchrist's testimony. What garbage! The only
other evidence against him was circumstantial.

Oklahoma authorities aren't willing to admit that they executed
an innocent man. "We have used for the last 25 years bad
science in this state to convict people, and we have stretched
the truth," said James Bednar, head of Oklahoma's Indigent
Defense System and a former assistant state attorney general.
"It's got to stop."

Gilchrist's willingness to lie in order to get convictions is only the
tip of the iceberg in the U.S. criminal injustice system. In West
Virginia, forensic "specialist" Fred Zain is facing five felony
fraud charges for false testimony. In Idaho, Charles Fain walked
off death row last month after DNA tests proved that the
forensic evidence used against him 17 years ago was faulty.

And in Illinois--in a case remarkably similar to
Gilchrist's--officials are reopening at least nine cases in which
police forensic scientist Pamela Fish gave either false or
misleading testimony. The most stunning revelation so far is that
Fish withheld evidence in a 1986 murder trial of four Black
teenagers--who may now be released.
Every example of overzealous prosecutors and lying police
scientists helps to make our case against the death penalty--and
the rest of the rotten injustice system.
Return to Killer Keating's Homepage

he CCADP offers free webpages to over 500 Death Row Prisoners
Contact us for more information.

"The Eyes Of The World Are Watching Now"

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This page was last updated July 29, 2002 Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty
This page is maintained and updated by Dave Parkinson and Tracy Lamourie in Toronto, Canada

===========================

(CBS) The charges are stunning. Did an Oklahoma chemist lie on the witness stand and send a man to his death?

"For 20 years I've questioned what Joyce Gilchrist testified to at trial," said defense attorney Bob Rivitz.

Last year, Rivitz's client Malcolm Johnson, who had served time for two previous rapes, was executed for the 1981 rape and murder of an elderly woman. Gilchrist's testimony – that she found semen matching the accused's blood type at the crime scene – was the key part of the prosecution.

But CBS News has obtained an internal memo from the Oklahoma City Police Department that says the evidence never existed, reports Correspondent Maureen MaherThe bodily fluid "…is not present on (the) slides…," the memo reads. It goes on to request "a complete review of the …evidence" in the case.

Ura Alma Thompson, 76, was found suffocated in her apartment on Oct. 27, 1981. There were no witnesses to the crime, and no fingerprints matching Johnson's were found. He was arrested after officers went to his home to question him about an unrelated parole violation and noticed items belonging to the victim. A search led to the discovery of her apartment key in his nightstand. He contended all the items were given to him by a third party.

"…Even as he was being lead to the execution chamber - he denied committing the crime…" said Rivitz of his client.

In seeking the death penalty, prosecutors cited Johnson's two previous convictions for rape in Chicago and the "heinous" nature of the rape and murder, and said he posed a danger to the community.

Attorney Garvin Isaacs, who has represented several defendants Gilchrist testified against, said any one of the aggravating circumstances in Johnson's case could have resulted in the sentence, regardless of the previous rape convictions.

"It's Oklahoma," he said.

According to a recent survey by Amnesty International, Oklahoma has more executions per capita than any state.

DNA testing has already set another man free who went to jail on Gilchrist's testimony. Last spring, Jeffrey Todd Pierce was released fifteen years after her testimony linked him to a rape he did not commit. Two appellate couts have also ruled Gilchrist gave false testimony about semen evidence in the 1992 rape and murder trial of Alfred Brian Mitchell, whose death sentence was overturned earlier this month because of what one court called her "untrue" testimony.

Gilchrist isn't commenting on the memo, but she told CBS News "using technology that we had at the time, I did the best job I could."

DNA analysis was not available at that time, and the court denied the defense's request for funds to hire its own forensics expert. Johnson's attorney argued during trial that blue cotton shirts were so ubiquitious that the fiber could not definitively be linked to Johnson.

Gilchrist remains on paid suspension with the FBI and the Oklahoma attorney general go over the case. But no matter what the outcome, for Malcolm Johnson it is too late.

========================

CBS) DNA testing in old criminal cases is doing more than freeing dozens of innocent people from prison. It is also pointing the finger of blame at a legal system that has sometimes relied on bad science, and gotten bad results.

That is the case in a growing legal scandal in Oklahoma City where one innocent man has been freed after 15 years in prison, triggering an investigation into the police chemist whose work put him and hundreds of other people behind bars.

The scientist's name is Joyce Gilchrist. Now she finds herself under the microscope and every case she worked on is in question.

For 20 years, Gilchrist examined crime scenes, looking for clues linking suspects to evidence she said she found. Often, her testimony in court meant the difference between innocence and guilt.

When 60 Minutes II first brought you this story last year, questions were just beginning to be asked. Joyce Gilchrist is the target of lawsuits and investigations, and there are concerns that she may have put people in prison with more sorcery than science.

In Oklahmoa City, Gilchrist was considered so good at getting conviction that police had given her the nickname "black magic." She says it started with one particular case: “It was in reference to a homicide case where the defense attorney referred to me in his closing statements as a sorcerer - someone who conducted black magic, and stated that I seemed to be able to do things with evidence that nobody was else able to do.”

Now, she is the target of several investigations, and there are growing concerns that she may have put people in prison with more sorcery than science.

According to her critics, Gilchrist has a history of seeing things in the lab that other scientists can’t, and saying things in court that other scientists won’t.

But for nearly two decades, her work has been helping Oklahoma City police and prosecutors win convictions - whether the defendant was guilty or innocent.

Among the cases that Gilchrist handled was that of Jeff Pierce. Fifteen years ago, Gilchrist was the police chemist on his case. Pierce had been arrested for rape.

“I voluntarily gave them hairs and blood,” says Pierce. “And they said, if this comes back and it doesn’t match, you can go home. And I voluntarily gave it to them. And they came back five minutes later and said, ‘Oh, it all matches... you’re going to prison.’”

Gilchrist used her microscope to match Pierce’s hair and blood to evidence found at the crime scene and on the victim. At trial, her testimony was devastating. She told jurors that the dozens of hairs she found were microscopically “consistent” with Pierce’s, and were a means of “positive” identification.

Pierce had a clean record, alibi witnesses and character references. In the end, though, he was found guilty. But three weeks ago, a DNA test proved he did not commit the rape that put him in prison.

Gilchrist says she did the best she could in the Pierce case: “Using the technology we had at the time, I did the best job I could and I presented the facts to the court and let the jury decide what they believed.”

But there are questions about Gilchrist’s lab work in the Pierce case. A few months ago, when Pierce’s defense team requested DNA testing, chemists pulled out the 15-year-old evidence and found that Gilchrist’s testimony ddn’t match the facts. The FBI was sent in to investigate Gilchrist’s work in the Pierce case, and seven other controversial cases.

The official report found that in five cases, including Pierce's, there are “errors in identification,” and that lab notes were “incomplete or inadequate” In one case, the matches Gilchrist made “fall far below the acceptable limits of the science of hair comparisons.” The FBI suggested a review of all cases where her work was significant to the outcome of the trial.

Gilchrist herself isn’t sure about the FBI tests. “Let’s submit that evidence for DNA analysis and see,” she says. “I look forward to that. And if I’m wrong, you know, I would accept responsibility if I’m wrong. But I’ve never intentionally done anything wrong in a case I’ve ever been involved in.”

In 1985, she was named the police department’s Employee of the Year. But a more recent police memo paints a far different picture, suggesting that the lab Gilchrist supervised was chaotic.

The report says that “missing evidence is occurring in major cases.” Some of those cases were death penalty cases. According to the report, a freezer breakdown contaminated evidence from hundreds of cases. The report also said that blood analysis files from three entire years - 1980, 1981, and 1990 - were missing, and that rape evidence was systematically being destroyed after only two years.

“My administrators are the ones who make the decisions about the operation of the laboratory,” says Gilchrist. “I don’t make that decision. I just carry out those orders. That’s why I can’t comment right now.”

In going over Gilchrist’s notes, chemists found she had a wildly inappropriate way of jogging her memory about cases, repeatedly referring to victims or defendants as “fags” and “faggots.”

She admits to using those terms, and says she regrets it now. “At the time though, that’s the slang that was used,” she says.

In March, Gilchrist was suspended from her job by police chief M.T. Berry. “My biggest concern is that in my life as a law enforcement officer, I would rather let a guilty man go free than send an innocent man to the penitentiary. And my biggest fear is that may have happened in this case,” Berry says.

Gilchrist was part of thousands of police investigations. She testified in hundreds of cases. She helped send 23 people to death row. Eleven have already been executed. Now all of her felony cases are under review.

Over the years, Gilchrist’s testimony has been repeatedly criticized by appellate court judges, who have described her testimony as “misleading,” “untruthful,” and “inexcusable.”

“I don’t agree with (that characterization),” Gilchrist says. “Because I’ve never lied in court. I’ve always told the truth. I’ve never lied to anyone about anything. If you don’t want to know the truth, don’t ask me because I’m not going to sugarcoat anything for you. I’m going to tell it to you. I’ll tell it to you just the way it is.”

Gilchrist has been reprimanded by one professional forensic association, and expelled from another for unethical behavior.

John Wilson, chief chemist at the Kansas City police lab, filed an ethics charge against Gilchrist 15 years ago. “I’m not the only forensic scientist who has reviewed her work and said this is bad work,” he says. “The whole criminal justice system has failed. It has absolutely failed.”

Wilson says that the entire system is to blame for allowing Gilchrist to continue working. “I think you have to look at the prosecutor’s office, that they have to understand what’s been going on. They have to have seen all the flags that have been waved. The judges are no different. They’ve seen the appellate court decisions come back. It’s not just the police, it’s not just the prosecutors, it’s everyone in the entire system.”

Gilchrist says that Wilson is a sore loser. "He has come into Oklahoma County, in district court, to testify against me on several occasions... expert witness for the defense. But the juries did not believe his testimony. And I don't think he's been back since."

Gilchrist agreed to talk to us only if we would agree to talk to her old boss Dave McBride. Ten years ago, he was Oklahoma City's police chief. Asked if he had any reason to suspect that she was not doing her job well, McBride says: "No one ever raised the issue." He says that no one mentioned to him that there was a problem with the crime lab: "Never. Not one time, not ever."

McBride believes that what has happened in Oklahoma City could happen anywhere that a forensics lab is attached to a police agency, and that is the case in most large American cities. He says it creates scientists who consider themselves cops in lab coats.

“I think there’s an inherent potential conflict there,” he says. “And I don’t know that that’s always healthy for the criminal justice system. But I certainly think that the investigators liked working with her. And I know that the district attorney loved having her as a witness.”

“I think Joyce Gilchrist may have fallen into an internal feeling that she was on the police team, she was on the prosecution team,” he says. “And what scientists should always feel like is they are on the side of science.”

After Pierce was convicted, Gilchrist received an honorary citation from the Oklahoma City police and a commendation from the district attorney, for her “skillful work in the careful analysis of the forensic evidence.”

Pierce says that he is still outraged at Gilchrist: “She’s ruined me and countless lies. They lost their kids, lost their wives, lots their families.”

When Pierce last saw his sons, they were 1 year old. He and his wife decided they didn’t want prison to be part of their children’s lives. So the boys and their mother moved out of state. They grew up without knowing their father, or even where he was. Pierce didn’t want them to know he was in prison.

Last night, Pierce was released from prison. He was asked what he wanted to say to Gilchrist. “Why? Why did you do this?” he said.

Hundreds of cases that Gilchrist handled are now under review. The worry in Oklahoma City is that Pierce isn’t the only innocent person Gilchrist helped send to prison - just one of the lucky few to get out.

July 2002 Update:

Since his release, Jeff Pierce has been getting reacquainted with his ex-wife and twin sons in Michigan. In April, he filed a $75 million federal lawsuit against the state of Oklahoma and Oklahoma City, Also named in the lawsuit is former prosecutor Bob Macy and Joyce Gilchrist.
Gilchrist was fired from her job in September. She is suing the city demanding her job back.

================================

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Understand The Causes: Unreliable and Limited Science

Understand The Causes: False Confessions

Understand The Causes: Forensic Science Misconduct

Understand The Causes: Government Misconduct
Robert Miller
Incident Year: 1986

Jurisdiction: OK

Charge: Murder, Rape, Robbery, Att. Robbery

Conviction: Murder, Rape, Robbery, Att. Robbery

Sentence: Death
Year of Conviction: 1988

Exoneration Date: 1/22/98

Sentence Served: 9.5 Years

Real perpetrator found? Yes

Contributing Causes: Unreliable/Limited Science, False Confessions / Admissions, Forensic Science Misconduct, Government Misconduct

Compensation? Not Yet

Robert Miller was accused of breaking into a woman's home on September 2, 1986, and raping and murdering her. He was also accused of trying to break into another home early on Thanksgiving Day 1986, and of breaking into a third victim's home and raping and murdering her.

From the evidence, Oklahoma police officers knew that the suspect was a black male and an A secretor. They canvassed neighborhoods and asked black men to provide blood samples. Miller was one of twenty-three men who obliged and was found to be an A secretor. Police then took him, willingly, to police headquarters in order to give more samples. While at the station, police asked Miller if he could help them solve these crimes and Miller responded by saying he could see through the killer's eyes. The police, who had a hidden camera set up, taped the twelve-hour interview that followed. In this interview, police detectives took advantage of Miller's fragile mental state, playing along with Miller's admission that he had special powers and was deeply religious, even joining him in group prayer. Police eventually led him to what the State called an admission of guilt. Later, an examination of the taped interviews revealed many inconsistencies between Miller's statements and the actual circumstances of each crime. There were several key differences; for example, Miller claimed that one of the victim's was only a little older than himself. She was eighty-three at the time of her death and Miller was twenty-eight.

Miller was charged with two counts of rape in the first degree, two counts of murder in the first degree, two counts of burglary in the first degree and one count of attempted burglary in the first degree. His trial was conducted between May 9 and May 19, 1988. At trial, the jury found the state's allegations that the murders were especially heinous, atrocious or cruel, that they were committed for the purpose of avoiding or preventing a lawful arrest or prosecution, and that a probability existed that the defendant would commit criminal acts of violence that would constitute a continuing threat to society to be true, sentencing Miller to death for the two counts of murder. For the first count of rape, Miller was sentenced to 287 years in prison, and for the second count of rape, he was sentenced to 392 years. For the two counts of burglary, he was sentenced to twenty years each, and for the count of attempted burglary, he was sentenced to ten years. This sentence was formally imposed on May 27, 1988.

On April 6, 1988, 131 pieces of evidence were submitted to the Oklahoma Public Defender's Office, whereupon a serological examination was requested. Many of the samples contained semen but, at that time, the examination could only conclude that the semen donor was an A secretor, meaning the donor's blood was Type A and the type could be determined from bodily fluids. In 1988, Allo-Type Genetic Testing Inc., performed immunoglobulin allotyping from evidence submitted by Joyce Gilchrist from the state laboratory. The findings revealed that foreign allotypes were detected in the nightgown stain, the stained sheet, and two of the mixed blood and body fluid stains found on the sheet of one victim were consistent with Robert Miller and not with Ronald Lott, another suspect. Further, these foreign allotypes are found 33.33% of the time in the black population and only .56% of the time in the Caucasian population. This information translated to the statistic that there was a 98.33% probability that the assailant was black and only 1.67% chance that the assailant was white.

At trial, Janice Davis Lyhane testified that the donor of the stain found on the sheet of the other murder victim was a blood type A secretor. This finding matched Miller's blood profile. The samples of saliva and blood were obtained by Ms. Lyhane from Joyce Gilchrist. Lyhane testified that, upon examining the hair samples obtained at the crime scene, all that could be concluded was that the hair had "Negroid characteristics," thereby excluding the victim as the possible donor. However, Lyhane could not come to any other conclusions about the origin of the hair sample. In cross examination, Lyhane conceded that two scalp hairs found on a pink blanket belonging to the victim could not have originated from Miller. In cross examination, the defense tried to raise the issue of DNA, but because the witness was not knowledgeable of DNA testing procedures, and DNA evidence had not yet been accepted by Oklahoma courts, the court only allowed the defense to ask questions pertaining to the extent of Lyhane's knowledge of DNA testing in general, and not referring specifically to Miller's case.

Joyce Gilchrist also testified for the state. In her testimony, she described the PGM subtyping she did on a stain from a sheet obtained from one of the victims. Gilchrist obtained a PGM subtype (1+) which is consistent with the victim's PGM blood marker. Although Gilchrist testified that Mr. Miller's blood type had a subtype PGM (1-), she did not exclude him as the possible donor of the semen found in the stain on the sheet. Gilchrist's reasoning was that she had also identified the ABO blood group secretor substance A in the stain that was foreign to the victim and did not eliminate Miller as a possible donor of the semen. Gilchrist also stated that she was unsure if any of the stains were pure semen stains, but she believed there was one and after testing that stain she found Peptidase A, no ESD and PGM markers that were consistent with Miller's blood type and blood markers. Tests were also performed on semen/blood stains from the victim's nightgown that did not exclude Miller as the possible donor. Gilchrist had performed tests on blood and saliva samples from Miller and identified Peptidase A (1), Esterase D (2-1), and Phosphoglucomutase (1). She subtyped the PGM marker and determined the PGM subtype to be (1-). Tests performed on the vaginal posterior fornix swab of the victim revealed PEPA (1), ESD (1), and PGM (1) and the PGM subtype (1+). Although these findings are inconsistent with Miller's types, Gilchrist claimed that he could not be excluded as the potential donor because the swabs were bloody and all the markers that she found were consistent with the genetic markers of the victim, and therefore, Gilchrist determined that the PGM subtyping of (1+) was the result of the victim's blood mixing with the seminal fluid. At the time, the serological forensic examination had not yet been concluded and the seminal stains were being sent to a Dr. Schanfield for further testing.

Because DNA testing methods had advanced since the time of trial, new tests were conducted in June 1992. These tests were conducted on the original biological samples that had been preserved since the first tests in 1988. In this second round of tests, analyses were conducted on a blood sample from the first murder victim, a vaginal and anal swab, a white sheet from her home, a blood sample from the second victim, as well as a sheet, pillow, bed sheet, and nightgown from her home, a vaginal swab, and a blood sample from Miller. Using PCR based DNA testing, DNA was extracted and subjected to DQ Alpha typing. The chief forensic serologist at the Serological Research Institute, Brian Wraxall, concluded that, assuming that there was one semen donor on the anal swabs and white sheet from the first victim and the nightgown and pillow from the second, the semen donor was DQ Alpha type 3, 4. The semen on these items could not have come from Miller since he is a DQ Alpha type 3, 3. On July 18, 1995, Marcia Eisenberg at LabCorp came to different conclusions. According to Dr. Eisenberg, the DNA profile obtained from the non-sperm fraction of the vaginal swab from the frist victim was consistent with the victim's DNA profile and another individual with a n A,B profile at the GC locus. Robert Miller, along with suspects Lott and Wilson could all be potential donors. The DNA profile obtained from the sperm fraction of the cervical swab of the second victim was consistent with a mixture of DNA profiles from he victimr and any individual with a 3 allele at the DQ Alpha locus, thereby not excluding Miller or suspect Lott. A similar conclusion was obtained from the an analysis of the DNA profile from the non-sperm fraction of the rectal swab obtained from the second victim, as well as the non-sperm fraction from her pillow and sheet. Yet another test was conducted in 1994, this time at the Roche Biomedical Laboratories by Richard Guerrieri. According to Guerrieri, Miller was excluded as the source of the genetic material detected in the sperm fraction found on the sheet and pillow, as were the victims.

In 1994, Skip Palenik at Microtrace examined hair samples after they had already been mounted and previously analyzed by Joyce Gilchrist. According to Palenik, the comparison of fragments to the Miller's scalp hair was completely unjustified because scalp hair has a large degree of variation.

New DNA tests began in 1995 at LabCorp. This first set of tests did not exclude Miller as the potential donor of the genetic material. However, further tests in 1996 came to a different conclusion. In these tests, the laboratory used PCR based DNA testing on numerous pieces of evidence that contained sperm and nonsperm samples and compared them with samples from the two murder victims as well as from suspects Ronald Lott, Roderick Wilson, and Robert Miller. Dr. Eisenberg concluded that Miller and Wilson were excluded as possible contributors of the genetic material in all of the samples tested.

With these results, the defense appealed in 1996. The court ruled that the videotapes used in the capital case against Miller would have to be reviewed in order to determine whether or not Miller should be retried. The court ruled that there was insufficient evidence to keep Miller in jail. The state prosecutors appealed. Although prosecutors had dropped the murder charges against Ronald Lott, who had provided a sample as well, they proceeded with the murder charges against Robert Miller because of his supposed confession. The defense claimed that Miller never admitted to the crime, but instead adamantly denied, over seventy times throughout the course of the interview, any involvement. The defense also pointed out that, during the original trial, Judge Charles Owens characterized Miller's taped statements as being neither a confession nor an admission to anything. The statements made by Miller were either general public knowledge, multiple guesses resulting in a correct answer, the product of leading questions posed by the police, outright denials of any involvement, or completely incorrect factual statements. The state's primary source of evidence was highly flawed and could not be used as the primary source for Miller's involvement in the crimes. The case came to rest primarily on biological evidence.

The 1996 DNA tests ultimately led to Miller's exoneration and release in 1998. The tests also identified the true perpetrator, Ronald Lott, a man whose samples had been included in all rounds of testing. The prosecution had known that DNA tests had identified Ronald Lott but continued to maintain that Miller had been present at both crime scenes. Robert Miller had been on death row for nine years. For six of those years, the state had exculpatory DNA test results in their possession. In 1997, Robert Miller was granted a new trial and acquitted, based on DNA evidence, of murder and rape. In December 1997, while Ronald Lott was in jail serving a forty year sentence for the rape of two elderly victims, the prosecutor tried to negotiate with Lott's lawyers. Lott was told that he would face the death penalty because his semen had been found at both murder scenes from the Miller case, unless he could implicate Miller. Lott rejected the deal, leaving the prosecution with no case. On Thursday, January 22, 1998, Robert Miller was finally exonerated.
Robert Miller
Incident Year: 1986

Jurisdiction: OK

Charge: Murder, Rape, Robbery, Att. Robbery

==============

palmela

How Many More Are Innocent?
Oklahoma City Scandal Exposes Shoddy Police Work
By Alice Kim
Joyce Gilchrist

"My heart goes out to all the other people I know that are in here who are innocent because of the Oklahoma County District Attorney’s Office and the Oklahoma City Police Department," said Jeffrey Todd Pierce after he was freed from prison on May 7.

"I hope you all won’t forget about them, too, because there are more. I’m just the one that opened the door, and I feel there will be a lot more coming out behind me."

Pierce sat behind bars for 15 long years before DNA tests proved his innocence. Oklahoma City police chemist Joyce Gilchrist, who is currently under investigation for falsifying, withholding and failing to test evidence in criminal cases, testified against Pierce.

Now authorities are reexamining 1,448 cases that Gilchrist worked on -- including 12 death penalty convictions. But in 11 cases that Gilchrist worked on, the defendants have already been executed -- including Marilyn Plantz, who was executed on May 1, 2001, despite the recent revelations about Gilchrist’s shoddy performance.

A preliminary FBI investigation found that in at least five cases that ended with convictions, Gilchrist testified "beyond the acceptable limits of forensic science" and that Gilchrist misrepresented hair and fiber analysis in court to get convictions.

What’s more, the Oklahoma City Police Department can’t even keep its records straight. The investigation won’t be able to review cases for three years -- 1980, 1981, and 1990 -- because they can’t be found.

According to the Oklahoma Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, Gilchrist’s analysis and testimony has sent at least one innocent person, Robert Miller Jr., to death row. Gilchrist examined hairs obtained from the crime scenes and testified that they belonged to Miller.
But 10 years after he was convicted and sentenced to death, DNA testing proved Miller’s innocence. In 1998, he became the 76th innocent person freed from death row.
The DNA evidence also showed that a man named Ronnie Lott was the perpetrator of the crime. At the first trial, Gilchrist had discounted Lott based on her analysis!
Gilchrist has been working for years with the district attorney’s office to win convictions. Finally, prosecutors in Oklahoma City are feeling the heat.
How many other wrongful convictions resulted from Gilchrist’s shoddy work remains to be seen.

palmela

Under The Microscope
Forensic Scientist Accused Of Mishandling Cases
July 24, 2002
(CBS) DNA testing in old criminal cases is doing more than freeing dozens of innocent people from prison. It is also pointing the finger of blame at a legal system that has sometimes relied on bad science, and gotten bad results.
That is the case in a growing legal scandal in Oklahoma City where one innocent man has been freed after 15 years in prison, triggering an investigation into the police chemist whose work put him and hundreds of other people behind bars.
The scientist's name is Joyce Gilchrist.
Now she finds herself under the microscope and every case she worked on is in question.
For 20 years, Gilchrist examined crime scenes, looking for clues linking suspects to evidence she said she found. Often, her testimony in court meant the difference between innocence and guilt.
When 60 Minutes II first brought you this story last year, questions were just beginning to be asked. Joyce Gilchrist is the target of lawsuits and investigations, and there are concerns that she may have put people in prison with more sorcery than science.
In Oklahmoa City, Gilchrist was considered so good at getting conviction that police had given her the nickname "black magic." She says it started with one particular case: “It was in reference to a homicide case where the defense attorney referred to me in his closing statements as a sorcerer - someone who conducted black magic, and stated that I seemed to be able to do things with evidence that nobody was else able to do.”
Now, she is the target of several investigations, and there are growing concerns that she may have put people in prison with more sorcery than science.
According to her critics, Gilchrist has a history of seeing things in the lab that other scientists can’t, and saying things in court that other scientists won’t.
But for nearly two decades, her work has been helping Oklahoma City police and prosecutors win convictions - whether the defendant was guilty or innocent.
Among the cases that Gilchrist handled was that of Jeff Pierce. Fifteen years ago, Gilchrist was the police chemist on his case. Pierce had been arrested for rape.
“I voluntarily gave them hairs and blood,” says Pierce. “And they said, if this comes back and it doesn’t match, you can go home. And I voluntarily gave it to them.
And they came back five minutes later and said, ‘Oh, it all matches... you’re going to prison.’”
Gilchrist used her microscope to match Pierce’s hair and blood to evidence found at the crime scene and on the victim. At trial, her testimony was devastating.
She told jurors that the dozens of hairs she found were microscopically “consistent” with Pierce’s, and were a means of “positive” identification.
Pierce had a clean record, alibi witnesses and character references. In the end, though, he was found guilty. But three weeks ago, a DNA test proved he did not commit the rape that put him in prison.
Gilchrist says she did the best she could in the Pierce case: “Using the technology we had at the time, I did the best job I could and I presented the facts to the court and let the jury decide what they believed.” But there are questions about Gilchrist’s lab work in the Pierce case.
A few months ago, when Pierce’s defense team requested DNA testing, chemists pulled out the 15-year-old evidence and found that Gilchrist’s testimony ddn’t match the facts.
The FBI was sent in to investigate Gilchrist’s work in the Pierce case, and seven other controversial cases.
The official report found that in five cases, including Pierce's, there are “errors in identification,” and that lab notes were “incomplete or inadequate” In one case, the matches Gilchrist made “fall far below the acceptable limits of the science of hair comparisons.” The FBI suggested a review of all cases where her work was significant to the outcome of the trial.
Gilchrist herself isn’t sure about the FBI tests. “Let’s submit that evidence for DNA analysis and see,” she says. “I look forward to that. And if I’m wrong, you know, I would accept responsibility if I’m wrong. But I’ve never intentionally done anything wrong in a case I’ve ever been involved in.”
In 1985, she was named the police department’s Employee of the Year. But a more recent police memo paints a far different picture, suggesting that the lab Gilchrist supervised was chaotic.
The report says that “missing evidence is occurring in major cases.” Some of those cases were death penalty cases.
According to the report, a freezer breakdown contaminated evidence from hundreds of cases. The report also said that blood analysis files from three entire years - 1980, 1981, and 1990 - were missing, and that rape evidence was systematically being destroyed after only two years.
“My administrators are the ones who make the decisions about the operation of the laboratory,” says Gilchrist. “I don’t make that decision. I just carry out those orders. That’s why I can’t comment right now.”
In going over Gilchrist’s notes, chemists found she had a wildly inappropriate way of jogging her memory about cases, repeatedly referring to victims or defendants as “fags” and “faggots.”
She admits to using those terms, and says she regrets it now. “At the time though, that’s the slang that was used,” she says.
In March, Gilchrist was suspended from her job by police chief M.T. Berry. “My biggest concern is that in my life as a law enforcement officer, I would rather let a guilty man go free than send an innocent man to the penitentiary. And my biggest fear is that may have happened in this case,” Berry says.
Gilchrist was part of thousands of police investigations. She testified in hundreds of cases. She helped send 23 people to death row. Eleven have already been executed. Now all of her felony cases are under review. Over the years, Gilchrist’s testimony has been repeatedly criticized by appellate court judges, who have described her testimony was “misleading,” “untruthful,” and “inexcusable.”
“I don’t agree with (that characterization),” Gilchrist says. “Because I’ve never lied in court. I’ve always told the truth. I’ve never lied to anyone about anything. If you don’t want to know the truth, don’t ask me because I’m not going to sugarcoat anything for you. I’m going to tell it to you. I’ll tell it to you just the way it is.”
Gilchrist has been reprimanded by one professional forensic association, and expelled from another for unethical behavior.
John Wilson, chief chemist at the Kansas City police lab, filed an ethics charge against Gilchrist 15 years ago. “I’m not the only forensic scientist who has reviewed her work and said this is bad work,” he says. “The whole criminal justice system has failed. It has absolutely failed.”
Wilson says that the entire system is to blame for allowing Gilchrist to continue working. “I think you have to look at the prosecutor’s office, that they have to understand what’s been going on. They have to have seen all the flags that have been waved. The judges are no different. They’ve seen the appellate court decisions come back. It’s not just the police, it’s not just the prosecutors, it’s everyone in the entire system.”
Gilchrist says that Wilson is a sore loser. "He has come into Oklahoma County, in district court, to testify against me on several occasions... expert witness for the defense. But the juries did not believe his testimony. And I don't think he's been back since."
Gilchrist agreed to talk to us only if we would agree to talk to her old boss Dave McBride. Ten years ago, he was Oklahoma City's police chief. Asked if he had any reason to suspect that she was not doing her job well, McBride says: "No one ever raised the issue." He says that no one mentioned to him that there was a problem with the crime lab: "Never. Not one time, not ever."
McBride believes that what has happened in Oklahoma City could happen anywhere that a forensics lab is attached to a police agency, and that is the case in most large American cities. He says it creates scientists who consider themselves cops in lab coats.
“I think there’s an inherent potential conflict there,” he says. “And I don’t know that that’s always healthy for the criminal justice system. But I certainly think that the investigators liked working with her. And I know that the district attorney loved having her as a witness.”“I think Joyce Gilchrist may have fallen into an internal feeling that she was on the police team, she was on the prosecution team,” he says. “And what scientists should always feel like is they are on the side of science.”
After Pierce was convicted, Gilchrist received an honorary citation from the Oklahoma City police and a commendation from the district attorney, for her “skillful work in the careful analysis of the forensic evidence.”
Pierce says that he is still outraged at Gilchrist: “She’s ruined me and countless lies. They lost their kids, lost their wives, lots their families.”
When Pierce last saw his sons, they were 1 year old. He and his wife decided they didn’t want prison to be part of their children’s lives.
So the boys and their mother moved out of state. They grew up without knowing their father, or even where he was. Pierce didn’t want them to know he was in prison.
Last night, Pierce was released from prison. He was asked what he wanted to say to Gilchrist. “Why? Why did you do this?” he said.
Hundreds of cases that Gilchrist handled are now under review.
The worry in Oklahoma City is that Pierce isn’t the only innocent person Gilchrist helped send to prison - just one of the lucky few to get out.

July 2002 Update:
Since his release, Jeff Pierce has been getting reacquainted with his ex-wife and twin sons in Michigan. In April, he filed a $75 million federal lawsuit against the state of Oklahoma and Oklahoma City, Also named in the lawsuit is former prosecutor Bob Macy and Joyce Gilchrist.
Gilchrist was fired from her job in September. She is suing the city demanding her job back. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/05/08/60II/main290046.shtml
===
Oklahoma man exonerated from death row
Posted: May 11, 2007
Innocence Project client Curtis McCarty was freed this morning after more than 21 years of wrongful incarceration – including 16 on death row – when a judge dismissed the charges that would have led to his third trial for a 1982 murder. McCarty had been convicted twice but both convictions had been thrown out by appeals courts. DNA testing has now shown that semen and hairs recovered from the crime scene do not match McCarty.
McCarty was released this morning after judge Twyla Mason Gray dismissed his indictment, saying the misconduct committed in McCarty’s case was inexcusable.
District Attorney Robert H. Macy and lab analyst Joyce Gilchrist both committed serious and repeated misconduct to secure McCarty’s conviction.
Gilchrist was fired in 2001 due to fraud she committed in McCarty’s case and others; she was involved in at least two other convictions later overturned by DNA testing.
"I want to know, where is Joyce Gilchrist and why isn’t she in prison?" Gray said at this morning’s hearing, according to the Oklahoma Gazette.
Macy, who was the Oklahoma County District Attorney for 21 years, prosecuted McCarty in both of his trials. Macy sent 73 people to death row – more than any other prosecutor in the nation – and 20 of them have been executed. Macy has said publicly that he believes executing an innocent person is a sacrifice worth making in order to keep the death penalty in the United States.
"This is by far one of the worst cases of law enforcement misconduct in the history of the American criminal justice system," said Barry Scheck, Co-Director of the Innocence Project, which is affiliated with Cardozo School of Law.
"Bob Macy has said that executing an innocent person is a risk worth taking – and he came very close to doing just that with Curtis McCarty."
McCarty is the 201st person exonerated by DNA evidence in the United States and the ninth in Oklahoma. Fifteen of the 201 exonerees spent time on death row.

News coverage of today’s exoneration
Posted: May 11, 2007
Oklahoma man exonerated – more media coverage
Posted: May 14, 2007
After 21 years behind bars – including 16 on death row – Curtis McCarty was freed on Friday when an Oklahoma City judge dismissed charges that would have led to his third trial for a 1982 murder he didn’t commit. DNA testing in recent years has proven that someone else committed the crime.
Los Angeles Times: Judge frees oklahoma man facing
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August 30, 2001 | Los Angeles Times
Evidence Questioned in Execution: Police memos contradict chemist's forensic testimony at a 1982 Oklahoma City murder trial
By HENRY WEINSTEIN, LOS ANGELES TIMES LEGAL AFFAIRS WRITER
The investigation of a controversial Oklahoma City police chemist has produced evidence raising questions about whether she testified falsely in the 1982 rape and murder trial of a man who was executed last year, protesting his innocence to the end.
On Wednesday, Oklahoma Atty. Gen. Drew Edmondson released two memos written last month by four Oklahoma City Police Department forensic scientists saying tests they had conducted of material found at the murder scene contradicted testimony given by Joyce Gilchrist.
Edmondson stressed in an interview that he remained convinced that Malcolm Rent Johnson was guilty of the rape and murder of Ura Alma Thompson because of the strength of other evidence. Edmondson, who released the memos after they were described in stories by the Daily Oklahoman and Associated Press, said it was possible that "we might reexamine the evidence down the road." Now, however, Edmondson said his office was focused on reviewing numerous cases in which Gilchrist testified and the defendant received a long prison term or a death sentence not yet carried out.
The Oklahoma City Police Department placed Gilchrist on paid administrative leave in March after the FBI reported that Gilchrist made significant errors in five of eight cases the bureau reviewed.
That report led to the release of Jeffrey Pierce, who had served 15 years of a 65-year sentence for rape--a case in which Gilchrist offered key testimony about hair found at the crime scene.

Earlier this month, an appeals court in Denver reversed the rape and murder conviction of Alfred Brian Mitchell, and ordered him retried. The U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that jurors might have relied on Gilchrist's testimony that falsely implicated him for raping a woman before killing her. The judges said that during Mitchell's appeal, his attorneys obtained Gilchrist's handwritten notes, which "completely undermined [her] testimony."
On Wednesday, a spokeswoman for the Oklahoma City police said there are five separate probes of Gilchrist's work taking place, including an internal investigation by the department.
Gilchrist has denied any wrongdoing. On Wednesday, her attorney, Melvin Hall, said neither he nor his client had any comment on the forensic scientists' memos.
The latest controversy involves the 1982 trial of Johnson, who was convicted of raping and murdering Thompson, 76, who was found suffocated in her apartment on Oct. 27, 1981. There was no eyewitness, but the building manager said he had seen Johnson nearby.
Johnson, then 23, was arrested when local police officers found items belonging to Thompson at Johnson's apartment when they went to see him about an alleged parole violation. Johnson had two prior rape convictions.
Among the items found were Thompson's apartment key, a watch and a ring. Johnson said his brother gave him the items--a contention the brother denied.
At the trial nearly 20 years ago, Gilchrist testified that six samples taken from a bedspread and a pillow in the victim's apartment were the same blood type as Johnson's.
Gilchrist also testified that semen found on a stocking was consistent with Johnson's blood type. She said that although sperm was found on a vaginal swab taken from the victim, there was not enough to test. Additionally, Gilchrist said hair fragments found at the scene were similar to Johnson's hair.
In late July, four police chemists reviewed slides prepared by Gilchrist for the trial.
Laura Schile, the lab's DNA manager, described the findings in a memo to Richard Smith of the Oklahoma Municipal Counselors office.
"It should be noted that upon examination of these slides" the findings were contradictory "to those reported out and testified to by Joyce Gilchrist," Schile wrote. "Spermatozoa is not present on" three slides prepared with material that came from the bedspread or three slides prepared with material that came from the pillowcase, Schile added.
A separate memo by three of Schile's colleagues presents the same conclusion.
Schile recommended to Smith, who is advising the police department in its probe of Gilchrist, that the actual physical evidence should be reexamined in the Johnson case.
"Solely relying upon the notes, testimony and reports that pertain to these questioned cases is not sufficient," Schile wrote, adding that the Johnson case marked the second instance in which Gilchrist's testimony contradicted physical evidence that had been independently reexamined.
Attorneys familiar with forensic techniques said that if Gilchrist properly prepared the slides, and they contained sperm at the time, it should still be present. Schile resigned from the police department on Aug. 2 amid reports that she was in conflict with department chieftains. She could not be reached on Wednesday.
Schile's attorney, Gavin Isaacs, said: "She was intimidated by the Oklahoma City Police Department and some of the lawyers involved in this case. . . . She has cooperated with law enforcement investigators."
The three other chemists remain on the job but could not be reached for comment.
In recent weeks, the Johnson case has taken an increasingly high profile in the Gilchrist probe.

Oklahoma City defense lawyer Doug Parr, who is playing a key role in the investigation, said that after he and other attorneys reviewed 12 cases in which Gilchrist had done the prosecution forensic work and the defendant subsequently was executed, "we decided that Malcolm Johnson had one of the strongest claims of actual innocence." "He went to his death proclaiming innocence," Parr said. "His confession to the prison chaplain was that he had done a lot of bad things but not this."
Parr acknowledged that there was strong circumstantial evidence supporting Johnson's guilt. But he also maintained there was no reason not to review all the evidence and subject the biological evidence to DNA testing.
Parr said he has been attempting to get Oklahoma City official to send that evidence to a highly regarded lab in Richmond, Calif.
He said the Oklahoma City officials wanted to send the material to a lab he considered inferior. Jessica Cummins, the Oklahoma City police spokeswoman, said simply that the two sides disagreed on where the testing should be done.
Parr also has filed a lawsuit seeking access to all records in the case.
The city has opposed this request and has acknowledged that it had lost some of the records.
DNA testing was not available at the time of Johnson's trial.
Oklahoma City public defender Robert Ravitz asked the trial judge for funds to hire his own forensic expert to examine the evidence, but the request was denied.
At the time, Ravitz questioned Gilchrist's testimony that blue cotton fibers found at the crime scene matched a shirt Johnson owned. Ravitz said the type of shirt was so common that it could not be conclusively linked to Johnson.
Years later, federal public defender Vicki Werneke of Oklahoma City, who represented Johnson in constitutional challenges to his conviction, attempted to secure DNA testing of the biological evidence. The state attorney general's office resisted, saying that under federal laws governing death penalty appeals, Johnson was ineligible for testing. Federal judges agreed, so no testing was done.
Johnson's appellate lawyers contended that prosecutors had improperly struck three potential jurors who were African American, as was Johnson. The victim was white.
On Wednesday, Edmondson said that he was not sure what to make of the memos by the police chemists. But he asserted that the case against Johnson had been very strong. "He could have been proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt without any forensic testimony," Edmondson said.
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