{"id":22,"date":"2015-12-17T02:20:24","date_gmt":"2015-12-17T02:20:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/?p=22"},"modified":"2016-07-03T19:43:35","modified_gmt":"2016-07-03T19:43:35","slug":"da-acknowledges-junk-science-in-arson-conviction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/?p=22","title":{"rendered":"DA acknowledges junk science in arson conviction"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_40\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-40\" style=\"width: 200px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-40\" src=\"http:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/151217Thompson200.jpg\" alt=\"Ken Thompson\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/151217Thompson200.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/151217Thompson200-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-40\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ken Thompson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\">Dec. 17, 2015<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThree men convicted of murder by arson for a 1980 fire in Brooklyn (were) exonerated on Wednesday&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat carried the three men into prison was not reliable evidence of an intentionally set blaze, but rather an arson investigation that was more like shamanism than science, rooted in hunches and folklore and disconnected from the dynamics of actual fires. Like the comparisons of bite marks, hair and handwriting, it was a forensic practice that had the authority of white-coat laboratory science but virtually none of its rigor&#8230;.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><em>\u2013 From \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/12\/16\/nyregion\/between-guilt-and-innocence-an-evolution-in-fire-science.html?_r=1\" target=\"_blank\">Between Guilt and Innocence, an Evolution in Fire Science<\/a>\u201d<br \/>\nby Jim Dwyer in the New York Times (Dec. 16)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Hats off to District Attorney Ken Thompson, who moved to vacate the three convictions, citing \u201ccircumstantial evidence, outdated science and the testimony of a single, wholly unreliable witness&#8230;.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Columnist Dwyer is reminded of a statue at the University of Pennsylvania Law School depicting a mythological Chinese beast believed to have the ability to tell the guilty from the innocent by butting them. Inscribed on its base: \u201cSlow and painful has been man\u2019s progress from magic to law.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSlow and painful\u201d indeed. Ask Junior Chandler, who has been imprisoned since April 17, 1987, for committing the magical crime of \u201csatanic ritual abuse.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dec. 17, 2015 \u201cThree men convicted of murder by arson for a 1980 fire in Brooklyn (were) exonerated on Wednesday&#8230;. \u201cWhat carried the three men into prison was not reliable evidence of an intentionally set blaze, but rather an arson investigation that was more like shamanism than science, rooted in hunches and folklore and disconnected [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2340,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions\/2340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}