Oklahoma. They were experts! And they were there to testify against the defendant, to help prove his guilt. The first was the fingerprint expert, Jerry Peters. He explained to the jury that he examined twenty-one prints lifted from Debbie's apartment and car, nineteen of which were Debbie's. One matched Detective Dennis Smith, one matched Mike Carpenter, and not a single fingerprint belonged to either Dennis Fritz or Ron Williamson.
Odd that the fingerprint expert would testify that none of the fingerprints were left behind by the accused.
Larry Mullins described how he reprinted Debbie's palms the previous May when her body was exhumed. He gave the new prints to Jerry Peters, who suddenly saw things he hadn't seen four and a half years earlier.
The prosecution's theory, the same one to be used against Ron Williamson, was that during the prolonged and violent assault Debbie was wounded, her blood somehow ended up on her left palm, and this palm touched a tiny portion of Sheetrock just above the floor of her bedroom. Since the palm print did not belong to Ron or Dennis, and it certainly could not belong to the real killer, it had to be Debbie's.
Mary Long was a criminalist who worked primarily with body fluids. She explained to the jury that about 20 percent of all people do not show their blood type in body fluids such as saliva, semen, and sweat. This segment is known in the trade as 'non-secretors.' Based on her examination of the blood and saliva samples from Ron and Dennis, she was certain that they were non-secretors.
The person who left the semen at the crime scene was probably a non-secretor too, though Long was not certain because the evidence was insufficient. Thus, 80 percent of the population was eliminated from suspicion. Or 'around' 80 percent, give or take a few points. Nonetheless, Fritz and Williamson now bore the ominous tag of 'non-secretors.'
Long's math was blown away on cross-examination when Greg Saunders forced her to admit that most of the blood and saliva samples she analyzed in the Carter case came from non-secretors. Of the twenty samples she examined, twelve were from nonsecretors, including Fritz and Williamson.
Sixty percent of those in her pool of suspects were non-secretors, as opposed to the national average of only 20 percent. It didn't matter. Her testimony excluded many and helped raise the suspicion hanging over the head of Dennis Fritz.
The state's last witness was by far its most effective. Peterson saved his knockout punch for the last round, and when Melvin Hett finished testifying the jury was convinced. Hett was the OSBI hair man, a veteran testifier who'd helped send many people to prison. Forensic examination of human hair got off to a rocky start as far back as 1882. In a Wisconsin case that year an 'expert' for the state compared a 'known' hair sample with one found at the crime scene and testified that the two came from the same source. The source was convicted, but on appeal the Wisconsin Supreme Court reversed and said, strongly, 'Such evidence is of the most dangerous character.'
Thousands of innocent defendants could have been spared if that decision had been heeded. Instead, police, investigators, crime labs, and prosecutors plowed ahead with the analysis of hair, which was often the only real clue left at a crime scene. Hair analysis became so common and so controversial that it was studied many times throughout the twentieth century.
Many of the studies indicated a high rate of error, and in response to the controversy the Law Enforcement Assistance
Administration sponsored a crime lab proficiency program in 1978. Two hundred and forty of the best crime labs from throughout the country participated in the program, which compared their analytical findings on different types of evidence, including hair. Their evaluation of hair was dreadful. A majority of the labs were incorrect four out of five times.
Other studies fueled the debate over hair testimony. In one, the accuracy increased when the examiner compared a crime scene hair with those of five different men, with no indication as to who was the cops' favored suspect. The chance of unintentional bias was removed. During the same study, though, the accuracy fell dramatically when the examiner was told who was the real 'suspect.' A preconceived conclusion can exist and slant the findings toward that suspect.
Hair experts tread on thin legal ice, and their opinions are weighted heavily with caveats such as: 'The known hair and the questioned hair are microscopically consistent and could have come from the same source.'
There is an excellent chance that they could not have come from the same source, but such testimony was rarely volunteered, at least on direct examination.
The hundreds of hairs collected at the crime scene by Dennis Smith took a delayed and tortuous route to the courtroom. At least three different OSBI analysts handled them,along with dozens of known hairs collected during the round-up-the-usualsuspects sweep made by Detectives Smith and Rogers shortly after the murder.
First Mary Long collected and organized all the hairs at the crime lab, but soon packed them up and handed them to Susan Land. By the time Susan Land received the hairs in March 1983, Dennis Smith and Gary Rogers were convinced the killers were Fritz and Williamson. To the dismay of the investigators, however, her report concluded that the hairs were microscopically consistent only with those of Debbie Carter.
For a brief period, Fritz and Williamson were off the hook, though they had no earthly means of knowing it. And, years later, their attorneys would not be informed of Susan Land's findings.
The state needed a second opinion.
In September 1983, citing the stress and strain of Land's workload, her boss ordered her to 'transfer' the case to Melvin Hett. Such a transfer was highly unusual, and made more so by the fact that Land and Hett worked in different crime labs in different regions of the state. Land worked in the central crime lab in Oklahoma City. Hett worked in a branch in the town of Enid. His region covered eighteen counties, none of which happened to be Pontotoc.
Hett proved to be rather methodical. It took him twenty-seven months to analyze the hair, a lengthy period made even more remarkable by the fact that he was looking only at the samples from Fritz, Williamson, and Debbie Carter. The other twentyone were not as important and could wait.
Since the police knew who killed Debbie Carter, they helpfully informed Melvin Hett. When he received the samples from Susan Land, the word 'suspect' was written by the names of Fritz and Williamson.
Glen Gore had yet to provide samples to the Ada police.
On December 13, 1985, three years after the murder, Melvin Hett finished his first report, finding that seventeen of the questioned hairs were microscopically consistent with known samples of Fritz and Williamson.
After spending more than two years and over two hundred hours analyzing the first samples, Hett picked up steam considerably and knocked out the other twenty-one in less than a month. On January 9, 1986, he finished his second report, finding that all the othersamples taken from the young men of Ada were consistent with nothing found in the Carter apartment.
Still Glen Gore had not been asked to provide samples.
It was tedious work, and not without its uncertainties. Hett flip-flopped several times as he labored with his microscope. Once he was certain a hair belonged to Debbie Carter, but later changed his mind and decided it came from Fritz.
Such is the nature of hair analysis. Hett flatly contradicted some of Susan Land's findings, and even managed to impugn his own work. He initially found that a total of thirteen pubic hairs came from Fritz and only two from Williamson. Later, though, he changed his numbers-twelve for Fritz and two for Williamson. Then eleven for Fritz, plus two scalp hairs.
For some reason, Gore's hair finally entered the picture in July 1986. Someone down at the Ada Police Department woke up and realized Gore had been neglected. Dennis Smith collected scalp and pubic hair from Gore and from the confessed killer Ricky Joe Simmons and mailed them to Melvin Hett, who, evidently, was quite busy because nothing happened for a year. In July 1987, Gore was asked again to provide samples. Why? he asked. Because the police couldn't find his earlier samples.
Months passed with no report from Hett. In the spring of 1988, the trials were approaching, and there was still no report from Hett on the Gore and Simmons samples.
On April 7, 1988, after the Fritz trial was under way, Melvin Hett finally issued his third and last report. The Gore hairs were not consistent with the questioned hairs. It took Hett almost two years to reach this conclusion, and his timing was beyond suspicious. It was another clear indication that the prosecution so firmly believed in the guilt of Fritz and Williamson that it found it unnecessary to wait until all the hair analysis was completed. In spite of
