There are many cases that are tried each and every day and
many of those cases are based upon evidence. Some of that evidence comes from
expert witnesses and has no other standing other than what the expert has told
the court and the jury. This type of evidence is used daily and if it starts
coming into question on a regular basis, it starts to shake what the courts
system is doing and is based upon. But we also must realize that it would be
wrong to have a person convicted and jailed upon evidence that was not
correctly processed or identified. Humans are capable of error and are capable
of making the wrong judgment. Imagine if you found yourself being accused and
convicted of something that you were not responsible or guilty for and you knew
that the only way that you could be freed of the crime was to show that the
expert witness testimony was not correct. I am sure that you would agree that
it would only be right to do everything possible to make sure that you did
everything you could to fix it.
Take this case where a woman that had been convicted twenty
years ago for engaging in ritual child abuse and has been in prison in Texas
ever since. After twenty years of sitting in custody for one of the most
horrific crimes one can be charged with, the hurting of an innocent child, the
doctor who had given expert witness testimony changed his mind. He came back
and told the courts that the injuries he had identified that were a key piece
of evidence in the trial, were actually not lacerations at all but were part of
the normal physiology of the child.
What?!
First of all, how does a trained doctor identify something
as an injury when it is actually just a normal part of a person? And in the
possibility that does happen and then that faulty testimony goes on to be used
as a key piece of evidence in convicting someone, how does it take that same
doctor twenty years to determine that he has made a mistake and try to fix it?
How does that even happen?! Was he just sitting in the living room one night
watching television when he decided that he needed to go pull up a twenty year
old case and review it and decide that he had made a mistake?
I just do not get it. This sounds like one of those cases
where the initial investigators had the very best of intentions when finding a
possible crime involving children but instead managed to find evidence for
conviction when that evidence may not have existed quite as it should have.
Perhaps this doctor made the mistake he did because he was looking for the
evidence to exist and not necessarily looking at it with the untainted eyes
that he needed to.
Or, maybe, they got it right the first time and these people
were guilty of everything that they were accused of. That is why the law is so
hard to enforce and get right the first time.
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