In nineteen eighty five, Charles and Julie McCrory were having marital trouble and seeing a counselor while amicably sharing both the care of their three year old boy, Chad, and occasionally the same bed. On May thirtieth, nineteen eighty five, Charles left Julie's house around ten to fifteen pm and made a phone call in the pre cell phone era. This corroborated that he had arrived at his apartment the
following morning. Charles's parents were expecting Julie to drop off Chad and began to worry when she did not show. After several unanswered calls from Charles and his parents, Charles's father was the first to discover Julie's body just inside her front door. It was determined that she had died of blunt force head trauma sometime in the early hours of the morning. A red bandana was found near the body, and a clump of hairs were found in her hand
that did not belong to her or Charles. Besides conflicting and dubious reports of a car that looked like Charles's at Julie's house that morning, no evidence connected him to the crime. Despite a similar incident within a month committed by a man known to wear red bandanas, the police maintained their focus on Charles. Since the district attorney was reluctant to charge Charles, Julie's family hired a private prosecutor team who sought the help of notorious junk science dentist
Dick Suveran. Suveran testified that some of Julie's wounds were not only bitemarks, but that they were made by Charles at the time of death, effectively sealing his fate. Suveran has since recanted that testimony, including the assertion that the wounds were even bite marks at all. Yet, somehow Charles is still serving a life sentence in an Alabama prison. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful conviction. You know, when listeners of our show asked me, what are some
of the most disturbing cases I've ever heard of? I will list off Vincent Simmons, Richard Glossip, Pedro Renoso. I mean, there's so many others I could mention, But before we even start today, I think Charles McCrory has to be added to that horrifying list. Joining us Besides the man himself. We have his attorneys first from the Southern Center for Human Rights, Mark Louden Brown, Mark, welcome to Wronful Conviction. Thank you very much for having me and a voice
you'll all recognize, I'm sure, Chris Fabricant. Chris is the strategic Litigation director at the Innocence Project, the author of the fantastic book You've heard me talk about it before, Junk Science and the American criminal justice system. And he's also a frequent guest on the show and was featured on our Junk Science podcast hosted by Josh Dubin where he talked about bite mark analysis, which was the pivotal thing in this case. And so Chris, welcome back to Wrongful Conviction.
It's great to be back.
Jason, thanks for having us.
And now calling in from an Alabama prison where he's been locked up for I hate I even have to say this for over thirty seven years. Charles McCrory, thank you for joining us.
Well, thank you, I appreciate you having me.
Well, we're happy to have you here despite the reason why you're here, or more to the point where you are as you call us today, and that reason is bitemark analysis. Which is a proven junk science. It fails that not only reliably concluding who made a bite mark, but also at reliably identifying wounds as bite marks at all, especially because these wounds are found on skin and the medium itself is elastic and usually changing over time as
it heals or decomposes or grows. And then some Charlottan comes into court claiming that they can match a suspects teeth to usually a photograph of an injury, and they say they can do this to the exclusion of every other set of teeth on the planet. It's just fuck and bananas. But it's only recently that lawyers like Chris and Mark have been battling these junk science experts in post conviction, because at the time of conviction, everybody bought
into these lies. And Chris, I've been quoting your book left and right, And of course the book I'm talking about is junk science and the American criminal justice system. But what are some of the other common threads between these wrongful convictions that are based on junk science and bite mark analysis?
In particular, what I've seen in all of these cases. I feel like I've been involved in all the bite mark cases over the last ten years, is that I have never seen an effective cross examination of a bitemark expert a trial, and all the transcripts that I've read, I've never even seen the question, you know, even the most basic one. You know, you think about when an injury is inflicted, usually during the crime itself, nobody was there. Nobody knows the position that the perpetrator or the victim
was in at that time. But we know one thing is that it's not not on a mortuary slab where the photographs were taken of this injury. And we know that the injury has changed, often quite dramatically as a result of decomposition of the body, and they continued decomposition, So you may match quote unquote a bitemark quote unquote one day and not the next. It might be one hour and not the next hour, right, because skin is
changing all the time, particularly with the deceased victim. So you never see that type of cross examination and you never see like, how is it that you know that this is a bitemark? What is it about being a dentist that makes you an expert in diagnosing an injury as a bite mark?
Right?
What the proximity to teeth nonsense, right, So you never see those. And I think that just as a general matter on junk science convictions broadly speaking, is that it's almost impossible to cross examine your way out of a
wrongful conviction with junk science. Once the judge lets it in, you got two strikes against you anyway, you know, And I'm not sure Johnny cochrane could have saved Charles McCrory once Dick subern gets on the stand and you know, spouts these invented credentials, right the American Board of Friends of go Toontology. That's what I wrote about this in the book. It's just an invented organization. Never tested any of their members on their abilities to actually match bike
marks or even diagnose them. They just gave each other board certifications to bring into court and Wougers and places like andlus Alabama, and they led to a lot of wrongful convictions, including at least three others by Dick Suberan.
And we'll go further into how this junk science applies to Charles's case in just a bit, but first I'd like to go back before all of this happened. Tell us Charles about your life growing up. Were you born in Alabama?
I was born actually in the Panhandle of Florida, and lived in Mobile a couple of years when I was in like first to second grade, But anyway, we moved and Bluja at the beginning of my third grade year and grew up there and graduated and Lujah High School. Went to junior college there at Lurley Wallace for a year or so, and then I transferred to MacArthur Tech College and Op which is just fifteen miles or so away, and I finished a associate degree in computer science. A
few months later. They started working for the junior college that I had been a student and that previously, and set up and then later ran the computer center there. They didn't really have one when I started there. You know, this is back in seventy nine, so we're in a very early period as far as computers were concerned. And worked there for five years, and then had gone over to the Power Company album an Electric co op it
was called in it's now Power South. So pretty much far a living, That's all I'd really ever done full of time was computer work.
So okay, you were working in the field that has become central to all that we do, so plenty of potential in your life. And I understand you were also a volunteer EMT the Rescue Squad as it was called in Andalusia, Alabama.
Yeah, the Rescue Squad was an all volunteer organizations about thirty men that provided damas and rescue for that area. You know, we wore work, to.
Say the least, Yes, saving Lise kind of the freaking opposite of being a murderer, right.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Yeah. And of course during this rise in your career, both professional and in the volunteer space, you had married your high school sweetheart Julie Bonds in nineteen eighty had a great job fulfilling community service, and had your son, Chad in nineteen eighty two, through which you and Julie shared a bond that could not be broken even if your marriage was going through a rough patch.
Right, and it was, you know, the look back, it was just a lot of poor decisions on probably both of our part, but certainly on mind and we kind of grew apart, I guess, you know. I say we had we had a good relationship, very very amicable to
say the least. We were together pretty much every day even during the time that we later separated and I had an apartment across town, we were still very involved with course with our son as well as you know, mutual friends and things like that, and we were together constantly even though we were we were separated and trying to work out marritder issues and so forth.
Yeah, and it seems that things may have worked out in your marriage had all of this tragic series of events not come to pass. The night before Julie died, you two had actually spent the evening together correct.
That night, I'd been over there. We had actually been to see a marriage counselor, had had an affair before that for several months prior to that, and it had ended it although I was still talking to the lady for a while there, and anyway, Julie and I were trying to work through those things, and so we had actually had an interview with it marriage counselor that night, if and then we had actually met back over at the house later and stayed at the house for I
guess a couple of hours or so, and left around ten fifteen, ten thirty, somewhere in that range.
And this affair that you mentioned, the woman you're referring to is Gloria Wiggins. So at least from trial testimony said that you had called her on the phone from your apartment. I remember this is the era before cell phone, so this is corroborative evidence that you were actually at the apartment.
Yeah, at that phone call. I'm at the apartment when I made the call. And then, you know, I just go to sleep, and the next morning I get up at whatever time, six thirty six forty five, had to be at work at seven thirty.
Okay, So this is the morning of May thirty first, nineteen eighty five, and you were having what you thought was going to be a normal day, and as per usual, your parents were waiting for Julie to drop off Chad at their house on her way to.
Work right usually around eighties, and so there was times when she'd bring me breakfast her, you know, or whatever. And so that morning I had called her about that and picking up something on her way and didn't get an answer, and turn around call right back. I figured I'd just dial the wrong number or something. Still didn't get answer, and even then it didn't particularly alarm it.
You know, you just think, okay, she left for work, a little earlier something I really thought a little of it, and then later on it was I believe after eight I called my mom's house and she hadn't got there yet. And my mom, of course, if once something like that had she just starts worrying. So, you know, I called the house a couple more times and get no answer,
and so eventually I called her workplace. They had not seen her either, and about that time, you know, my mom was like, so he Dad's going to check on. I said, okay, okay, I'll go there and just you know, kind of like we're leaving, you know, fears, so to speak.
And so I leave work, go toward the house, and many of the rescue squad members we had two way radios in our personal vehicles, and so as I'm going to the house, I hear them on the radio call about a namas going to beside Charles McCrory's house or
near Charles mccrary's house. And even then, you know, my thought was maybe a neighbor in trouble or somebody outside, or I call and tell him, you know, I look, I'm on my way over there anyway, And when I get there, my dad's outside and he's just you know, he's upset, and said, something's wrong with Julie. You know, where is she? And he just kind of like falling towards the house. I said, where's Chad, and he said,
I've already got Chad. He's at the neighbors. He had he had already been in the house and founder the front door was a jar when he got there.
So your father was the first to see this horrible crime scene before whisking away your three year old boy, who was thankfully unharmed. It's the only silver lining in this whole thing. And as you mentioned, he had taken him to the neighbors. Julie, on the other hand, was not so fortunate. She had been beaten to death. Rigormortis typically sets in about three to six hours after death, and by the time investigators arrived on scene around nine am, rigor mortis had not yet set in, so the murder
must have occurred sometime between three and six am. Well, you hadn't seen her since about ten to fifteen pm, despite conflicting and dubious reports of a car that looked like yours having been allegedly seen at the house during those hours. And we're going to get to that in a bit, but first I want to talk about the crime scene itself. Now, this was a terribly violent struggle.
A stocking had been tied to her right wrist. Hair was found at her left hand, hair that must have logically belonged to the person but to whom she was fighting for her very life. There was also a red bandana found near the body. Now, the fire poker from the fireplace appeared to be missing and was never found again.
From the autopsy, it appears that she was struck four times in the back of the head, with one wound to the side of the head blunt trauma's the left part of her skull, eleven puncture wounds to the left breast, fractures on both mandibles, bruises on her face and ribs, and two bruises that may or may not have been bite marks on her right shoulder. So this is your wife, the mother of your son, and now you've come upon this unbelievably bloody and brutal crime scene.
When you walk in and see that, you just mean, you don't know, you just don't know what sits to do. I mean, you don't know what to think. It's so shocking that there's really no standard response for it. You know, after I had saying that Julie was dead, and then the risky score got there right after that. And of course, you know, I knew all the guys on the squad, they were all friends of mine, and they were you know, wanting to see At that point, the police had not
arrived or anything. And so as we do that, I come out and I go across the street to Chad and I remember I remember holding him and just I mean, really, the thought that come to mine is, my god, what is happening. I remember him kind of pushing back a little bit. I guess I was squeezing him too tight or something. But and then in the coming days, you know, he would ask for and we'd try to answer him as best you can.
This is an incredibly brutal crime and the perpetrator undoubtedly would have been very bloody. And there was only lads to a been about four hours passed between the last time that mister McCrory he saw the victim in this case, and when he was first questioned by police at that time, they turned over all of his clothes, they searched the intertor's car, they searched his house, They found no trace of blood on anything. Then they examined the hares that
were clutched in the victim's hand. Those hairs were not from the victim, and they were not from Charles McCrory. In other words, they were from a third person. We still don't know whose hairs those were. There was also a red bandana found near the victim's body. There was a construction worker that worked next door to the victim's house was known to wear a red bandana. There was an open window on that side of the house, the same side as the construction site, that had a fresh
bootprint outside that window. The police took an impression of that bootprint, but then never compared it to anything or anybody, and never dusted the the window sill that was open for fingerprints. But we know that a man who worked at that construction site named Ainsworth was known to wear a red bandana. And we know that a few weeks after this murder, he committed a home invasion rape and served twenty years in prison for that crime. Was never
investigated as a suspect in this case. Then we also know that mister McCrory had been entirely cooperative with the prosecution from beginning to end, had voluntarily supplied samples of his hair, his DNA, his body, all of which was exculpatory, nothing to point to mister McCrory's guilt. The only physical evidence was concocted, and we'll talk about the bite marks
in a second. The only other evidence was that neighbor across the street who claimed that around four o'clock in the morning, his nineteen year old kid decides to get up and check on the garden, but he wasn't sure of the date, was sure of the truck, but he's thought that on the date in question that he had seen a truck similar to mister McCrory's.
And despite this extremely dubious teenage middle of the night gardening scenario, we also found out later that he and later his grandfather not only exaggerated their vantage point, but also several other neighbors with much more credible recollections reported only Julie's car in the driveway on the date and time in question.
That's the only evidence that they had apart from this bite mark.
And the bite mark. Even their trial expert Dick Suveran, years later admitted that he wasn't even sure if it even was a bitemark at all. But even back in nineteen eighty five, other than the refuted recollection of this teenage middle of the night gardener and his grandfather, all
other evidence pointed away from Charles. But tunnel Vision had already said in and some say that it came back to something Charles had said at the crime scene and what later the prosecutor tried to use against him a trial. It was when at the scene, looking at the body with the other rescue squad guys on police and seeing the gash on the back of her head, Charles said something to the effect of do you think it was the licks to her head? Is that what killed her?
So they just totally ignored the clump of hair in her hand, the red bandana, any alternative suspects, the lack of blood on anything that Charles owned, and started turning their focus on him anyway, on Charles, do you remember when that happened?
I do know there was a time when the fielding is almost like the atmosphere changed. You could just feel it in the air, And in fact, I believe later Saturday, I told my mom that looked you know, they're turning this on me. They're looking at me. And then it was on Saturday night. The mayor of Andalusia was a man named Chalwmers, Brian. He was a longtime family friend of ours. He was a deacon in our church and
I had known Chalmers a long time. He was also one of the charge members of the resk You squad, so I knew him through that. And he called me and said, look, I want to talk to you. So we talked on Saturday night for a good while and Chalmers told me then he said, you know they think you did this. He told me, say, I don't believe that, he said, But I'm the mayor. I can't get involved in this, you know, I've got to let the police do their work.
Wow. So, okay, if you're at home listening to this insane story right now and thinking, well, okay, but you're somehow safe, You're somehow insulated from the possibility of being the victim of a wrongful conviction. Are you friends with the mayor? Because even a friendship like that couldn't save Charles, which shows us, in very stark terms that none of us are safe. So just after Julie's funeral. On that Monday, they brought you in for a more accusatory interview that
ended up in your arrest. Did they try to extract a confession, as we so often see.
Oh yes, as we were walking over to the county jails when one of them said, you know we can help you on this. And you got a long record of community service, you come from a good family. You know, all these kinds of positive things about my life that they seem to soon forget. But they say, you know, we can do a deal here where you know, we'll talk to the DA and see if we can't. You know, I think we can do ten years at that time manslaughter without a weapon. I believe it was called for
like ten years is the max. And said, you know you'd be home in two or three years for Chad even gets in school. Good. You know you'd already be home. So I'm not pleading guilty to something I didn't do. And that kind of ended that discussion.
And oddly enough, the Covenant County DA Grady Lanier, had no plans on indicting you none. The case against you was just too weak. A false confession would have definitely changed his tune. But you didn't crumble. This is why Julie's family, on this bizarre Alabama law, was able to bring in private prosecutors to do with Grady Laneer rightfully did not want to do He declined to do it. Mark, do I have that right?
That's right from talking to folks in the community that he was at best lukewarm about the prospect of indicting mister McCrory and trying the case, as you would think he would be, because, as you pointed out, there was no evidence against mister McCrory, and the evidence that there was was exculpatory, right, And so I believe it was Julie's uncle approached this father son duo of Frank and Harvey Tippler, who were very well known trial attorneys, and
so he went out and paid them to prosecute the case. And I think that's the point at which this alleged bite mark, sort of as Chris said, gets concocted.
There were a number of puncture wounds on the victim's body. It was the tiplars who took this injury and decided that these were potentially teeth marks and took this evidence to doctor Dick Suveran who rose to fame as one of the forensic odentologists. Is they like to call themselves when they're in court. It's just a fancy way of saying forensic dentist. And Suvron decides that these R and D teeth marks, but he's very noncommittal about associating these
teeth marks with mister McCrory. Then the case gets closer and closer to trial. And you see this in wrongful conviction after wrongful conviction, particularly as it relates to junk science. And this is why junk science is so convenient, because it really can say whatever you needed to say. And
it wasn't saying enough before trial. But by the time it got to trial, Dick Suban was saying that it was mister McCrory's tea, to exclusion of everybody else on the planet's teeth that made this particular bitemark.
So, according to this letter from Souveran to the Tiplers that was hidden from the defensive trial, Souvan shared his own doubts about making that match in court, but then he later did it anyway a trial. Now how he squared that circle for himself know, But the Tiplers now had their you know, the piece of evidence that they needed to win, not to get justice, but to win for trial. And this is just five months later in
October nineteen eighty five. And remember Charles was doing well in life, so he was able to hire a real solid team Bubba, Marcel and Larrigus said, who were experienced defense layers. They just couldn't overcome what was eventually the recanted false testimony of Dick Suveran.
So it's a short trial, a couple of days. What is frustrating is that the opening and closing statements are not transcribed, so we only have the testimony of the witnesses. And like you mentioned, it really comes down to the bitemark by doctor Souverron.
But in addition to that, the Tiplers presented the marriage counselor as well as the woman with whom Charles had had an affair, Gloria Wiggins, to solidify their narrative that marital trouble was a potential catalyst or motive. But oddly enough, this woman, Gloria Wiggins, actually corroborated that Charles was back in his apartment around ten thirty pm, not at Julie's. They also brought up this comment from Charles at the crime scene about the quote licks to the back of
her head. Now again, he was making an observation and she had a massive gash to the back of her head. So far, this is not a compelling case at all. Then they brought out the nineteen year old with the crazy midnight gardening story, Willie Meeks, who had been staying with his grandfather, Hubert Walker, Julie's neighbor, who also testified.
There's this teenager kitty corner from Julie's home who claims that he was out at four point thirty at five o'clock in the morning checking on his grandfather's garden. It may have been the morning of May thirty. First, he's not really sure, and he sees this car that looks similar to the one that mister McCrory drives parked at
Julie's house, right, so whatever that is worth. Interestingly, his grandfather there, who lives in that home, also testifies and claims that he is also up in the morning and also says that he sees a similar car, but he says that the car is parked somewhere else in a different location. So like you have these two stories that I think the prosecution probably hoped would corroborate each other, which actually didn't corroborate each other, probably because they were inaccurate.
You know, Mick said that he saw the truck there, and my attorney had him draw a sketch, and that's part of the trial records. There's actually a hand drawn sketch of where the truck was parked. And I think it's the point a lot of people just didn't catch in the jury at the time. The house has a double driveway in it, and Julie's car would always parked it, you know, closer to the front door, and my Bronco was sit beside it, but there was plenty of room
in the driveway for both vehicles. So when I got there, my dad's car was already there, parked beside Julie's car in the drive so I just pull up behind him over on the grass to the left side of the driveway. So then Danny leaves to go tell mother what had happened, and so when he leaves, that leaves an opening in
the driveway. And so that's exactly how Meeks drew it on his diagram, and to me, it's obviously what Meeks saying is what he'd remembers seeing that morning after the police got there and after all this had happened, And there's an aerial photo of the scene taken by the police that shows that.
So it seems like maybe this kid was interviewed in the aftermath about seeing Charles's car a few days after the fact, and his recollection was a bit fuzzy. Perhaps his memory was enhanced by that aerial photo. We'll never know. Perhaps, as we've seen in other cases, you just had a kid who, for whatever reason, wanted to insert himself into
an investigation to help the police. However, what we found out just before the evidence you hearing that Chris and Mark recently tagged him, was that an investigator working for Chris checked out the properties and get this, the vantage point that Willie Meeks and his grandfather had. They checked it out, and what they found is that that vantage
point was totally misrepresented to the jury. The jury had been told that they were right across the street, but if you were standing where they said they were standing and looking at Julie's house, you would not have been able to see the driveway in the way that they claimed.
This kid who testified they was checking the garden as the father of a teenager. It struck me when I read the transcript, it was like who does that? Who gets up? But like, you know, I think that you know, normally when you would have a testimony like that at a trial, that you would have some sort of explanation. Yeah, it was part of my job, like to go out and you know, make sure that the garden was still there at four thirty in the morning, when it's still basically dark out.
The defense called two other neighbors, one of whom had an actual explanation that was credible for why they were out on the morning of May thirty. First, that is, they were getting in their car to go to work. These were you know, and it was an adult who had a job. These two witnesses said there was no car there, meeting that description.
So this midnight, pre dawned gardening teenager and his grandfather, who remember, whose accounts did not corroborate each other, were refuted by two other neighbors with credible recollections of that morning who said that both said that Charles's car was not there. And in addition to this weak evidence, the Tiplers presented no confessions, eyewitnesses, forensic evidence because there wasn't any. The hares found in Julie's hand were not a match
for Julie or Charles. Charles's clothes, his car, fingernails, his apartment. No blood evidence at all was found. In fact, get this prior to trial. At one point they even claimed that they had found blood on his tennis shoes, but when it came back for the lab it turned out to be Coca cola. Now, the defense presented Charles, who, of course reiterated the same statement that he had been making since day one, recounting his every step and maintaining
his innocence. The defense tried to up to the evidence of an intruder coming through the open rear window, the bootprint, and the red bandana, as well as the construction worker Ainsworth who worked behind Julie's house and committed a rape and home invasion just a month after Julie's murder, but none of it gained enough traction to overcome the testimony of Dick Suveran.
Doctor Richard Suveran, fresh off his testimony convicting Ted Bundy. Doctor Suveran is a charismatic guy, one of the sort of godfathers of forensic odonology. Right, he's got resume full of credentials, at least he did in nineteen eighty five. At the time of this trial. Fancy doctor flies up to ende Lujahl Obama from Miami and wow's the jury
with this quote unquote science. And you know, I think the private prosecutors, the Tipplers, knew how important he was because they saved him to the end of their case against mister McCrory. And right at the end of his testimony, they do this series of questions, is this a bitemark?
Yes?
Did mister McCrory make this by mark?
Yes?
Did he do it during the murder? Essentially? Yes? And if you're a juror, that's hard to overcome. You know. Yeah, there's tons of all their expalatory information out there, obviously, but you just had this fancy doctor who flew up from Miami saying this guy bit her while.
He was killing her.
You know.
It's usually at this point that I ask if you were still holding out hope that the jury got it right, but it doesn't sound like anyone did. Can you take us back to that moment, that awful moment when the jury came back in.
Well, when when they walked in, I mean, I could have told you the verdict before they're in, just jurors that were smiling and looking at us and so forth. But when they came back in that they were not looking at our way, and I knew then, you know that it was over. When jeordge Balwin, you know, fantastic guilt to I told him then that I didn't kill her. I knew it wasn't gonna make any real difference, but
there's something I felt I had to say. I had to tell him personally, well, you know, I wanted to stay in front of everybody. I need not do this. And we were surprised that the judge allowed me to remain out on bond until sentence, and that was just unheard of. And I've often thought that maybe that was a little bit of how he felt about the case, because you just don't get convicted the murder and stay out on bonding. And I went out for ten more days.
Prison is a horrible place. You don't want to be there, and you don't want your family there, to say the least. There's a real adjustment. That's not the word for it. It's culture shock. I mean, it's just not something I ever dreamed in the worst nightmare, what ever happened. And so to get sentenced to a life sentences, you know, it takes a while to adjust to that.
There's no way I'd ever want to even imagine. Must us live through it? I mean, seeing what Dick Suvron did, did you have any hope that this could ever be undone?
Uh? Well, we of course did a direct appeal to criminal court appeals like you normally would, and that was shot down, although there were some comments in their opinion that you know, they agreed that Subarun's testimony had substantially changed from the time he wrote the letter until he actually came in the courtroom and that should have been revealed to us under discovery laws. But the judge said that Marcel, my attorney, did not object at the proper
time to preserve it for appellate review. And it's like I couldn't believe that, I mean, your attorney doesn't object even though they think there's an issue here. And then, of course we didn't know until after I was at Kilby for a while at a hearing on a motion
for a new trial. The DA greatly near at the time Grady made the comment about Harvey went down there one day, and that's when we first learned that Harvey Tippler, the young the son of the Tipplers, had act going down to Carl Gables, Florida and met with Suverron from the time of the letter until the time of the trial. So now it's like, Okay, now we're seeing some understanding. Why did this testimony change like it did?
Wow, So now things begin to appear a bit clearer.
You know, another thing happened after this case. The Tipplers, younger member of their duo went to federal prison serving life sentence for solicitation and murder as an aside, right, So these are the guys that prosecuted an innocent man.
So it appears Harvey Tippler may have been willing to fudge evidence to ruin an innocent man's life, which makes his solicitation of murder conviction not that surprising, let's face it. So what did the Alabama Supreme Court do with this information album?
The Supreme Court, they really just didn't do anything with it, and then it just sat for a while. And I'm not sure the date here in the early two thousands or someone of the two thousands that the cases involved in Michael Way and the dental mess over there in Mississippi where two different men were sentenced to death row.
Yeah, Lavon Brooks and Kennedy Brewer. That was like two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight. Michael West was basically exposed as being a fixer for hire. If you didn't have the evidence you needed to con back, he'd basically just show up and match any teeth to almost any injury.
Right exactly. That case became public and we got wind of it and Newsweek magazine I believe it was, and so after that we file Rule thirty two trying to attack the dental evidence, but at that point we didn't have near the resources. Any serious ammunition didn't come up until I got a letter from Mark earlier the Innocence Project of New York could ask if we would be willing to provide records. They were doing, I think a task force or study in dental cases around the country.
So we provided all the records.
You know, when we in strategical litigation at the Innocence Project decided to focus on bank Mark comparison at evidence we identified as well as we possibly could every bite Mark conviction in the history of time, and we focused on death penalty cases initially, and then we started, you know, litigating all of these cases because we know that any
conviction that rests on junk science is inherently unreliable. And because Mark and I have litigated many post conviction cases previously, including another wrongful conviction of Shila Denton in Georgia that was also a bite Mark case. We reached out to Mark, you know, because Mark and the Southern Center for Human Rights litigates and Georgia and in Alabama and referred mister McCrory's case to him.
I read the transcript and I thought, yep, we're going to take this. You know, mister McCrory's lead trial council's deceased now, but the junior trial attorney at the time is not. And you know, he was practicing in nineteen eighty five. He's still practicing, So that's a career of
something like thirty seven thirty nine, forty years. When I walked into his office after I learned of this case a couple of years ago, he had mister McCrory's file sitting behind his desk, and he said, that's where I keep my file because this is that case, this is the case that haunts me. One of the first things we did was we've talked with Chris and we said, well, let's just see if doctor Suvron what he thinks today, and so we asked him.
You know, I'm not very popular with the dentists, as you can imagine, particularly after publishing my book, but I do have respect for forensic analysts of any discipline that are willing to review their prior case work and to recant when they know they've been wrong, when they know that their opinion may have led to the conviction of
an innocent person. And I think that with notable exceptions that we've talked about on your show before, Jason, but most forensic analysts are trying to do the right thing. They're not trying to frame innocent people for crimes that
they didn't commit. And you know, when you have the influence of you know, prosecutors saying that that you know, this guy is a guilty murderer and we need your opinion to help put him away, you know, many friends analysts believe that they're doing the right thing by giving the opinion to the prosecution that.
They want dix.
Zuban went back, he reviewed his testimony, he reviewed the evidence at issue, and he entirely recanted his opinion. Once that happened, Mark and I decided to co counsel this case together and we filed a petition for a new trial untainted by false, misleading. Evidence that was presented, nonetheless is so called scientific evidence to mister McCrory's jury, So.
That's what we want.
We filed this motion for a new trial in the case, and we were granted an evidentiary hearing, and in the lead up to this evidentiary hearing, the day before, we got an offer from the prosecution for time served, which means that all mister McCrory has to do is accept responsibility for this murder, and he goes home that day day that day, goes back to his son, to his sisters, to his life after thirty seven years in prison. He
did not hesitate for one second in rejecting it. I think I'd plead guilty almost anything to get out of prison after being in for that long, And to me, that was as much evidence as anything else that mister McCrory is an instant.
Man, and the fact that it was offered in the first place, and the fact that they let him go home after he was sentenced, but before he went to prison. All of it adds up to an even more searing indictment of the whole system.
Someone asked me recently, did you entertain it? And I know I didn't entertain it. I'm not about to plead guilty to a murder that I did not do for many reasons. I mean, obviously I want to get out of prison, but we want to know what happened and who did it and so forth, And it seems to be that we're the only ones chasing those answers. The police have long since given up on trying to help that. It seemed like in many ways they've tried to cover
their tracks on their inepness. Back when all this occurred, I mean, investigator blay geartt destroys and burns several things that could have been used for DNAs. That's when DNA was just becoming known and just becoming popular, and yeah, he burns these things.
Now, we would love to do DNA testing of the fingernail scrapings that were taken from Julie right, despite no scratches on mister McCrory, the hair that was found clutched in her head, the red bandana like the one that Ainsworth wore. We'd love to test all of that for DNA, but one of the police officers burnt it all and so it's unavailable for testing.
Who burns evidence? This is insane, like at least lie to us, right it was, tell us that you lost it, but you burned it. It just speaks to the fact that all the people in positions of power really must know that he's innocent.
Is just astonishing. So we proceed to the hearing, and in addition to the recantation that was done in an Affidavid and you know, notably, the prosecution did not call pigsu Verron to try to rehabilitate him or to try to salvage his commcsion. Instead, we put on the evidence, and we put on two forensic dentists, Adam Freeman and Cynthia Berezowski, both of whom are to extent that anybody
can be well qualified in this field. They're both very well qualified and studied it, and they both opined that this was not a bite mark. They looked at the other injuries that had not been called teeth marks and pointed out that these things that were called teeth marks and these other things that weren't appeared to be the same instrument that created all these injuries which were not
teeth right. And then additionally and importantly, we had an investigator go out to the scene a couple of days before the hearing and take a look at the vantage point that the kid across the street and his grandfather claimed to have seen mister McCrory's truck or something that looked like his truck, maybe on the.
Day of the murder, maybe not.
And the description of the vantage point that they gave to mister McCory's jury, it was described as being directly across the street. But if you were standing where they said they were standing, and you were looking toward the victim's house, you would not have been able to see
the driveway in the way that they claimed. And when we put our investigator on the stand, we showed evidence from the nineteen eighties that showed that the houses were in the same position, that there were no new structures, and that they were the same when we did the hearing last year. So even this one shred of weak evidence was further undermined at this hearing.
To sort of close out the rest of the hearing. You know, we felt like we did it. That's the only evidence. It's not there anymore. Right, And so what does the prosecution do. A prosecution has an investigator from their office read the direct testimony of some of the witnesses who testify in nineteen eighty five. So this guy's just literally reading the transcript. He's not reading the cross examinations, he's not reading any of the defense witnesses.
He's just reading.
Certain prosecutor and witnesses from nineteen eighty five, which seems to me a concession that they have no response to anything that we've said. And then in closing argument, get up and create an entirely new theory of guilt.
Right.
Liliana Sigoura and Jordan Smith did an article for The Intercept on this case, and they called the closing argument a fever dream. It was just this story that the new prosecutor made up, completely inconsistent with the theory that the prosecution had at the time. And so we're sitting there like, what is going on? What is this? This makes no sense this is a totally new theory. And so a few days after the hearing, in Investergeiter and I went down to the prison where Harvey Tipler was
serving his prison. Since he was agreeable he knew the case well. He has since passed away. He spoke with us for quite a while about his memory of the case because I mentioned at the outset, we didn't have the opening statement or the closing argument, and so we didn't know what the prosecution argut in closing. So we went to the source and we said, mister Tipler, what did you say in closing? And he said, oh, it is the bitemark. That was all we had, you know.
And so we submitted a notice to the court saying we would like to let the court know that mister Tipler, the lawyer who tried the case, disagrees with the new tact, essentially that the prosecution has taken and the court didn't allow us to add that to the record, so they had no response to the new evidence and instead made up this story. And the real kicker was when they said that the jury was free to decide for itself that it was mister McCrory's bitemark. So notwithstanding three dentists
who said it's not a bitemark let alone. Mister McCrory's execution said, well, but the jury could have decided that it was, and therefore his convictions should stand.
So to put it differently, lagers are more capable of engaging in junk science than the junk scientists themselves, right, So that the idea is is that you don't even need an expert witness. We can just put this junk science in front of the jury and that would be good enough for government work.
You know what, do you bring in somebody LASU or all these big fancy pictures and all that, and they're gonna believe what he says. And the idea that somehow they can take that out and the jury would have reached the same verdict is ridiculous.
It's unfucking real. And then on the first of March twenty twenty two, you guys filed the motion to reconsider the order. In it, you've described all of the other bitemark cases that resulted in overturned convictions, and this emotion began. I think this is so powerful, just with the names of thirty five people who combined probably served over a
thousand years in prison. If I to guess, and we know some of these names because they've been on the show, and I mean we can read them one at a time, I feel like we should go in each take turns reading the names.
Keith Harward, Robert Stinson, Gerard Richardson, Willie Jackson, Roy Brown, Ray Cron, Calvin Washington, Joe Williams, James O'Donnell, Levon Brooks, Kennedy Brewer, Benny.
Starks, Michael Christine.
Jeffrey Muldowan, Anthony Keko, Harold Hill, Dan Young Junior, Greg Wilhoyt, Crystal Weimer, Stephen Cheney, William.
Richards, Alfred Swinton.
Sherwood Brown, John Kunzo, Garry Sifazzari, Sheila Denton, Robert de Boys, Eddie Lee, Howard, Gilbert Pool, and of.
Course the man we're talking about today, Charles McCrory. And each of these people was wrongfully convicted due to bite mark evidence. And there are countless other names that could be added to this list that we haven't been able to help yet. So with that, Charles is in your thirty of this slow moving train wreck, you know, I want to find out from you guys, is there any steps that people can take as their petition. Is there someone? What can people do?
We are appealing the case. We've partnered with some Alabama lawyers who are helping us do the best we can to try to convince the appellate court that the trial court will get it wrong. And so that's the next step. And I think just the more people who know about the case, the better.
Reshare the podcast the articles to those listeners in Alabama to write into your lawmakers and question, you know why Charles McCrory, an instant man, is still in prison and this is correctable. Charles McCrory can still live the rest of his life and be reunited with his family. So I hope that listeners will help spread the word, help put pressure on the decision makers to do the right thing.
We really want people in Alabama to know that this is happening in their backyard.
And this is not a right or a less issue. This is a human rights issue. There should be no politics in freeing the innocent.
So please do get involved. We'll put links in the bio to action steps you can take. Again. Chris Fabricant, go get the book Junk Science. Some of these stories are just too crazy to be believed. But you'll understand the issue so much better. And it's a great read to read like a novel. And now we turn to the part of our show that I know everyone looks forward to like I do, which is called closing arguments.
And Chris, you know how it works. Charles was going to tell you how it works right now, and Mark, So basically I thank you closing arguments. I'm going to turn my microphone off and leave it on for each of you guys to share any thoughts that you have, anything we may have left out, or anything else you want to say. So we'll go Chris, then over to you Mark, and then of course mister McCrory, Charles, please close it out.
I'd like people to retain their skepticism and that it's really important that we all serve on juries, that we have skeptical jurors and that don't believe anything that somebody tells you just because they're board certified or they're wearing a white lab coat.
I want to just read a quote that I think is important for people to keep in mind. You know, Chris and I have mentioned a few times that we represented a woman by the name of Shila Denton in Georgia who was a bitemark case and in twenty twenty
Miss Denton was granted a new trial. This is died in Waycross, Georgia, conservative part of Georgia, and the judge chief judge wrote, quote proven unreliable scientific evidence should never serve as the basis of a conviction and should be dealt with by the courts if and when it is found. And like doctor Suveran, who we applaud for admitting his mistake, like this judge who wrote this, who applaud for being courageous enough to overturn a murder conviction because it was
based on proving unreliable scientific evidence. I just hope that there are more judges and prosecutors out there who have the courage that this judge did to see that and.
To enforce that.
Well. Again, I appreciate your interest in the case, and I just say that I think I wrote this recent but there should not be a finality in a case where an innocent person is in prison. And I think what some courts want to do is close the door. This is not the only case we know of thirty something exoneries just from dental evidence alone, and how many
others are out there so juries. While they try to make I think good decisions, they do not make perfect decisions and there should be a real process for people. Seriously look at this when people claim innocence, and I appreciate groups like yourself and others that are working on that.
Thank you for listening to raw Conviction. I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Cliburn, and Kevin Wardis, with research by Lyla Robinson. The music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good. On all three platforms, you can also follow me on both
TikTok and Instagram at It's Jason Flam. Wrongful Conviction is the production of Lava for Good podcast and association with Signal Company Number one