Hey folks, Kate Judson here, I'm a lawyer and the executive director of the Center for Integrity and Forensic Sciences. We're back with another episode of Junk Science, a series we first released in twenty twenty. But these stories are just as relevant as ever. In this week's episode, Josh will dive into the story of Dale Johnson and the use of footwear analysis to wrongfully convict an innocent man. It's yet another example of a highly subjective analysis that
is presented in court as objective fact. Just like other types of pattern matching evidence, in court, testifying experts may overstate the certainty of the evidence, overstate their conclusions, or exaggerate their reliability. In fact, when looking at hair comparison analyst testimony another type of flawed pattern matching, the FBI and others found that analysts overstated their conclusions more than
ninety five percent of the time. There's no reason to believe that other types of pattern analysis are any different. So sometimes analysts overstate or exaggerate, and of course sometimes they're just playing wrong. Dale Johnson's case is an extreme example of this area of flawed analysis, but there are plenty more cases where footwear comparisons are used in a problematic way, and likely many more exonerations to come.
It's a clear fall day in America's heartland. You sit in a chair outside your trailer, contently looking out over your farm. It's cool and the sun is setting behind the dense forest that surrounds your property. Everything seems just right. That evening, your stepdaughter in Net stops by with her boyfriend. You and your wife were pretty upset when Annette told you she was moving away from the farm and moving
in with her boyfriend, Todd and his parents downtown. You don't want a Net to be caught up with someone from town. All those townies seem to care about his church and gossip. You want nothing to do with them, and they don't seem to want anything to do with you. But in Nette's already eighteen, she's an adult. You can't really control her. You try to act supportive, so you nod to Todd and help a Nette pack the last
of her things into his trunk. You give her a hug before she gets into the car with him, and you watch as Todd pulls away to drive them back into town, and you're feeling a little helpless. The next day is pretty routine for you. You pick up loads of hay to bring to your barn. It's strenuous work. You work hard all day. You're exhausted, and you go to bed early. The next morning, the phone rings. It's Todd's mother. She says, are ant in Todd with you?
No?
You say, I thought they were with you. Todd's mother becomes frantic. She says, the kids went for a walk around four pm yesterday and they never came home last night. But there's something else going on there. There's a hint of something, a tone of accusation in her voice, like she's somehow blaming you. You hang up and call the police immediately. You wait all day, hoping to hear something, but there's nothing. You're just waiting and waiting, and the
police finally get back to you in the evening. They can't find them. One sleepless night bleeds into another, and then another and another. This is one terrible nightmare for you and your wife. Ten days go on like this. All you and your wife can do is it and worry. You're not eating, you're not sleeping, you don't know what to do with yourselves. It's raining outside when you finally get a call from an officer and you can hear it in the tone of their voice. This is not
going to be good. The news I have for you is not going to be easy to hear. He says, we found Todd in a net in the Hawking River. Oh my god, you can't stand. Your body is trembling. You try to restate what the officer just said. You're trying to wrap your head around what this means. You found their bodies, their dead bodies. The officer says, they didn't find their whole bodies, just their torsos. Their bodies
have been dismembered. You're completely sick. Officers spend two days searching the cornfields between the railroad tracks and the river where the torsos were found. They find Todd in the net's limbs and heads buried in shallow graves. You and your wife drive into town to the police station, and you're taken aback by the attitudes of these cops. When you're separated from your wife and pulled into an interrogation room, officers tell you to take off your boots, your shirt,
your pants. You sit shivering in your underwear for eight and a half hours and then a detective comes in. He sits down right next to you, puts his finger in your face and says, you did this. We know you did this. We found your bootprint down by the riverbank. Once we match that boot to the print that was left at that riverbank, it'll prove you were there. You killed your stepdaughter, and then you sick bastard, you cut
off for arms, her legs, her head. You better confess, because I'll tell you right now it's going to get worse for you if you don't. You say, over and over and over again, what in the world are you talking about. I didn't murder a net I just came here to help you find out who did What is this all about. They don't have enough evidence to charge you for the murder of a net and Todd, so they have to let you go. They impound your car so it can be searched for evidence. It's dark and
cold when they drive you home. They let you and your wife out of the car and you're still naked except for your underwear. You walk barefoot to your trailer. Your toes are totally dumb. By the time you get to the door. Downtown, rumors start to spread. People are saying this murder must have been some kind of cult ritual, that it must have been you who did it. The quiet, stern stepfather who never says much, never goes to church, keeps his family hidden away. Who knows what goes on
at that farm. They didn't like you before, but now they're straight a hostile. They cross the street to get away from you when they see you coming. It takes them a year to build the case against you. Are they even looking at other suspects. The whispering of your name around town grows to a fever pitch. You can hear their accusations ring in your ears. Murderer, molest you're eventually arrested in charge with the butchering murder of your
stepdaughter and net and her boyfriend Todd. When you finally go to court, you do something very out of the ordinary. You waive the right to a jury trial. Finding twelve impartial people in Logan, Ohio really not going to happen. The newspapers, everyone around town, they all think you're guilty. Everyone just wants to feel safe again. They won't be satisfied until someone is convicted and they are sure that person is you instead of a jury. You put your
fate in the hands of a three judge panel. A jury might not see it, but three judges they have to. It's their job to apply the facts to the law without any outside influence from the court of public opinion. Your lawyer calls to the stand and FBI analyst who says the plaster mold of what the prosecution claims is
your bootprint at the riverbank is quote unquote unsuitable. The analyst says it lacks sufficient detail for meaningful comparison, and that it looks more like the footprint of someone who is walking barefoot. There is no way to claim your boots match that print, So you're optimistic. But then the prosecution calls an anthropology professor or to the stand. She says she studied footwear impressions of countless samples. Her delivery is slow and deliberate and really credible. She says, quote
no person's footprints are the same as another. They're as unique as a fingerprint. I've analyzed the wear patterns on the inside of the defendant's boot, and I can say with certainty, scientific certainty, that the footprint found by the riverbank was made by the defendant. This sounds unbelievable, but you see the judges are nodding along. There's no wather
buying this is there. After a very short deliberation, the judges apparently believe the testimony of the prosecution's anthropologists who put you right at the scene of the crime. They convict you, and you are sentenced to death. The story you just heard is based on the murders of Nette Cooper Johnston and Todd Schultz.
Dale.
Johnston was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death in nineteen eighty four. He was exonerated in nineteen ninety, over twenty years after the murder. The true killer finally confessed, but even then the people in the town of Logan still chose to believe that Dale was guilty in one way or another. On today's episode, we're going to examine how a supposed footprint put an innocent man.
On death row.
I'm Josh Dubin, civil rights and criminal defense attorney and Innocent ambassador to the Innocence Project in New York. Today, on Wrongful Conviction Junk Science, we examined footwear comparison evidence, even when done correctly, impression analysis of evidence like shoe prints and tire tracks as purely subjective. Many experts recognize its limitations, but one so called expert in particular push the limits of this forensic discipline to produce horrific outcomes.
It turns out that Dale Johnson wasn't the only innocent person to be convicted of a crime based on faulty footwear comparison evidence.
The Pacers Foundation is a proud supporter of this episode of wrongful conviction with Jason Flahm and of the Last Mile organization, which provides business and tech training to help incarcerated individuals successfully and permanently re enter the workforce. The Pacers Foundation is committed to improving the lives of Hoosiers across Indiana, supporting organizations dedicated primarily to helping young people
and students. For more information on the work of the Pacers Foundation or the Last Mile Program, visit Pacersfoundation dot org or the Lastmile dot org.
In nineteen seventy six, archaeologists made one of the most exciting discoveries of our time. They found footprints dating back three point seven million years immortalized in the volcanic ash in Tanzania, and they looked like human prints. Archaeologists were thrilled. They thought these footprints could shed some light on when human beings began walking upright on two feet. Luis Robbins was an anthropology professor at the University of North Carolina
at Greensboro. She too was excited about these footprints and wanted to know exactly who left them behind. Louise had been conducting her own studies in footprint analysis. She started collecting footprints from people who were still alive. Five hundred people put ink onto their feet and then stood on a piece of paper. Based on those prince Louise tried to find characteristics and feet that were specific to age, sex, stature,
and weight, using her own system of measurement. She would then compare those characteristics to the footprints found in the caves. Her conclusion, no two footprints are the same. In fact, she thought she could tell a great deal about a person just by looking at their footprint. Her methods were never tested by her peers, nor were they confirmed by other scientists, but Louise she thought she was onto something.
She claimed to do something no one else could identify a person solely through their footprint, and so in nineteen seventy eight, when a team of scientists went to excavate the site in Tanzania where the prehistoric footprints were found. Louise went too. When she saw the prince, she claimed that one of them was left by a woman that was five and a half months pregnant. Now, other scientists
on the expedition scratched their heads. It was hard enough to figure out if the prints that they were looking at were even human at all. No one had ever claimed to know the gender of the person that made the print, let alone of that person was carrying a child. Then Louise took a dangerous leap. She positioned herself as a forensic expert, authoring a book on footprints. She didn't write this book with her scientific peers in mind, but
she wrote it for law enforcement and crime labs. Only five pages in this book were dedicated to the analysis of actual shoe prints, and yet, based on these five pages, Louise claimed that she was an expert in this area of forensic science. Lawyers began to hire her as an expert witness. They told judges that her work was on the cutting edge of forensic science. Critics of her work
called it Cinderella analysis. After all, she usually he made sure that the shoe fit when she matched the suspects foot to the shoe Prince found at a crime scene. In the more than twenty cases for which she testified, twelve people, some of whom who have since been proven to be innocent, were sent to prison, including Dale Johnston, who was sentenced to death.
Dale Johnson and his wife Sarah at the time, came down to Logan several days after the bodies had been discovered, and they came to the Logan police department. They wanted to be helpful to them, and Dale was immediately taken up to an interrogation room. His boots, his pants, his shirt were all confiscated. So he was sitting there in the chair in his underwear and they were bombarding him. You did it, didn't you? And we know you did it? Over and over and over again. He kept saying, no,
I have nothing. I would just I came into town to try to help.
Here today is Bill Osinski, a journalist who covered the Dale Johnson case for years and wrote a book about it called Guilty by Popular Demand. So Bill, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you started covering this case.
For nearly forty years. I was a reporter. I worked for eleven different newspapers around the country. I worked for the Akron Beacon Journal at that time, which is nearly two hundred miles away from Logan, Ohio, where the murders took place. But in those days, the newspapers valued a major story and would make that kind of an investment in time and resources to cover a widely publicized case like that.
So, Bill, you actually went to Logan, Ohio to cover Dale's trial? What was that like?
I drove into Logan, which is about thirty five miles southeast of Columbus, Ohio. I've ever been there before, and I drove in on a January morning, and it was one of the coldest things I can remember. The temperatures were well below zero. And I went to the center of the little town and found the courthouse. And here, you know, eight o'clock on a weekday morning, there was
a line outside the courthouse. People were standing in that below zero cold waiting for a chance to get in to hear all this salacious details of this horrific murder of a teenage couple who were found dismembered, parts of their bodies buried in a cornfield near the Hawking River in Logan, Ohio.
Wow, this is a really brutal crime. I mean, you have body parts buried in fields. And the prosecutors claimed that Dale Johnson committed these murders and putting aside what his motive would have been. How do they claim he committed the murders.
The prosecutor alleged in his scenario that Dale Johnston had kidnapped these two kids in downtown Logan, made a stop on his way home at a doctor's office and drove him onto his trailer, where they got into an argument about a little used car that the parents were supposed to have given a net but hadn't yet, And out of that argument, Dale went into a jealous fit and pulled out a gun which they never found, and shot his stepdaughter and a boyfriend, and then took them outside,
apparently and butchered them, and then brought them back to downtown Logan where they had last been seen and put some body parts, heads and limbs in the cornfield. I mean, it just it made absolutely no sense. They had no evidence that he was actually back in town at night trying to bury these bodies, but that's what they elect. Dale was not a warm guy. I mean, you know, he was the outsider. He didn't have a high opinion
of the locals. They didn't like him. You know, he was convenient guy for them to hang in on.
So, Bill, did anyone think that Dale was innocent? I mean, what was your sense of the atmosphere surrounding the case.
There was such an atmosphere of the case having been already tried in the court of public opinion before the trial even started. More than a year passed between the murderers and the trial, and obviously the only story coming out of the investigation was that Dale Johnson did it. So that, in fact, was why the defense waived a jury trial and asked for a three judge panel, because they knew that people in Hocking County were so predisposed to believe that Dale Johnson was the killer.
Now, very little evidence was found at the scenes where these body parts were found, but we know investigators found some sort of print in the mud by the riverbank. And Dale goes down to the police station with his wife Sarah, and he thinks he's going there to help them find the killers, but they confiscate his boots, and of course those boots would be compared to the impression found at the scene. So tell us a little bit more about what happened.
There were so many cops out there that, according to the testimony of a Ohio Bureau of Investigation agent, they totally ruined the crime scene as far as being able
to collect any valid evidence. They were cops stomping all over. Well, what happened was the share of Hockeing County had an impression made of a depression in the riverbank, and they made it casting, and they sent it off to the FBI, and it was examined by a nationally known footprint expert at the FBI, and he was brought in to testify to his findings, and he testified that, well, all he could say that this casting was more likely a footprint
than any kind of a shoeprint or bootprint. And however, he forwarded this plaster cast at his own volition to a woman anthropologist, Luis Robbins, for her examination. And she had a theory of how he could identify footprints from the ware patterns on the inside of someone's footwear. She had this Kakamami theory that by examining the interior of a footwear she could get wear impressions and use that to analyze a casting of a print from a shoe
or a boot. And so she testified and triwed it. Well, you can't really say that Dale Johnson's boot fits this, but from the wear patterns that she observed from the interior of the boot, when you looked at it that way, then yes, this was made by Dale Johnson's boot. And you know, I had never heard of that before. It didn't make any sense to me. It was only later, after the damage was done, that it came out how irresponsible and unreliable and untrue. Her testimony was.
So let me hit this straight. This is like, you know, kind of mind blowing here. Louise Robbins said that she could match the depression found by the riverbank to Dale based on war patterns made by his foot inside his boot. I mean, it just sounds ridiculous. I've never even heard of that before. This seems to go so far outside
the bounds of any verifiable science. And you know, it's important for our listeners to keep in mind that with impression pattern matching methods, that's the type of science we're talking about, or alleged science that we're talking about with shoe prints and tires. There's a database that experts have and they refer to this database when they're matching a shoe or a tire to an impression at a scene. And tires and shoes are mass produced, so the same
rubber mold is used to make them. But that just tells an expert what class that piece of evidence came from. So, for instance, they can say that this footwear impression was made by a size ten Nike Air Jordan. But the problem is a lot of people own a size ten Nike Air Jordan, so it's not enough to put somebody
at the scene. So impression analysis really comes down to the individual characteristics in the specific shoe or shoes that belong to the accused, and we're talking about things like cracks in the sole of the shoe, comes stuck to the bottom of the heel, you know, characteristics that are often caused by routine wear and tear. But the problem is there is no standard regarding the number of unique
characteristics that are needed to make a positive identification. And it sounds like from the mold they were working with in this case that the FBI analysts couldn't even tell if the impression was made by a bare foot or a shoe, let alone, what kind of a shoe? So that should tell you something about the quality of the impression they were working with. But Ms Robbins makes this huge leap, and it's really really hard to imagine that this could have been allowed in a courtroom when someone's
freedom was on the line. And yet he or she is one of the prosecution's key witnesses when it came to analyzing the physical evidence of the scene. So how prominently did Miss Robbin's testimony play in the prosecution's closing arguments?
Bill, Well, it was very prominent because it was the only piece of evidence that linked Dale Johnson to the murder scene. I thought it was a very weak link to begin with, but apparently it was strong enough for three judges. His closing line was, murder is the ultimate form of molestation, so you must be guilty of the murder too. He had, of course, been alleging without evidence, that Dale Johnson had inappropriate relationship with Annette.
So after he's convicted and sentence, what happens next?
Bill? He was sent immediately to death row. But you know, it was such a weird, hostile atmosphere in that town. I mean, I will never forget when it came time for the verdict, all the spectators had gathered on the lower level of the courthouse but listened to the verdict by radio, and I will never forget that when the guilty verdict was announced, there was this eerie cheering that came from below, you know, that filled up the courtroom.
And these people wanted somebody to pay, and Dale Johnston happened to be the guy who they were able to hang it on.
I mean, it seems Bill that they didn't even have anything other than a hunch that Dal Johnston did this. I mean, I it's hard to make sense of this. I mean, do you think that they did this on purpose? Do you think that they've set out to frame Dale Johnson?
Well, I don't think anyone wants to accept that the prosecutors and police would knowingly fabricate an entire case against a murder defendant. And I know I came down to Logan with no preconceptions. I do remember, you know, having the belief that you know, the state wouldn't bring these charges unless they had something against this guy. And by the end, I said, where is the case I was shocked at the prosecutor's summary. I mean it, it was
total high opera and total fantasy. Everything that was presented in that trial was a lie. I believe somewhere before I die, I'm going to learn the truth in this case, and it just so happens that I did.
You know, it's interesting that oftentimes, when one of these disciplines of junk science is used in a case and the person is convicted, it's not the exposure of that junk science as being total bullshit that leads to the exoneration. It's often that DNA testing is used to prove that they have the wrong person. What's really interesting about this case is that Dale is eventually released from prison because his lawyers were able to prove that some of the
evidence that was used the convictim was not admissible. And oddly enough, it wasn't the shoe evidence that was thrown out,
but another witness's testimony. It turns out that a witness had been hypnotized by a detective and was persuaded to give this awful testimony against Dale at the trial, and testimony that he like forcefully put a net in and Todd into a car and that testimony was never supposed to be admitted in court, and that was what was deemed inadmissible, and Dale was let out because of that.
And of course Louise Robbin's testimony about his you know, the inside wear patterns on his boots, you know, being definitive proof that the impression left on the riverbank was his that was left undisturbed. And everyone still believed he was guilty. But then someone else confessed to murdering and it and Todd so Bill tell us about that. Who actually committed this crime, A.
Sorry little fellow named Chester mcnight was nicknamed Chester the Molester just because apparently because he was weird and was an habitual criminal, habitual drunk, even though he had a history of assaults against women. And Chester actually got married and it lasted a couple of weeks before she kicked him out and left. And it was in that atmosphere where Chester just went over the deep end and was
drinking day in and day out. He was obviously depressed, the wife had left him, and he was just drinking incessantly. He came on that afternoon, early evening of October fourth, to Kenny Lynn Scott's house, a local drug dealer, you know, they were drinking buddies. Anyway, there was a kind of a makeshift party in Kenny's yard and Chester joined in, and here comes Todd and Annette. So they joined the party for a little while. I think they may have had a beer and Chester decided to hey, let's keep
the party going. I've got some I've got some stuff. And so they start walking down the railroad tracks and according to Chester's account, he wanted to have a group sex with Annette, and she of course know and Todd tried to get her out of the situation, and that's when Chester pulled a gun and shot him, and that started screaming. She shot her. At that point, Chester and Kenny dragged the bodies down to the riverfront at the
edge of the cornfield and dismembered them. And Kenny, maybe with help maybe not, got the bodies back into the cornfield and dug shallow holes and put the limbs and the heads into a kind of a bare spot in the middle of the cornfield that he knew about. And Kenny the next few nights he would go out to that railroad bridge and cry and moan and friends saying, what's wrong Kenny and he told him, Yo, you wouldn't understand. His neighbors knew what he was doing. His neighbors saw
his behavior. His neighbors told the police that they should be investigating him, but they never did, and they did have a record then of this strange call made the night before the body parts were found. Kenny Linscott made the call and said, have you found the bodies yet? And nobody at that point knew that the kids were even dead or that there were bodies to be found, And that call was logged and it became the thing
that led to Kenny and ultimately to Chester. And so I have a law enforcement source that helped me with this, and he told me that, you know, everybody knew Kenny was acting weird after the killings. And he said, well, let's go talk to Kenny. And the sheriff says, oh, no, we confined him, when then we need him. So at the very beginning, Linz Scott's name came up, but yet the police just dismissed him right out of hand.
In reflecting on all this, I just want to go back to Luiz Robin's testimony about the shoeprint for a moment. I understand why jurors would be persuaded by her. She's got this anthropology degree, she's a professor. She comes across short convincingly. She went and studied these ancient footprints in Tanzania. That all makes sense. But the three judges hearing this, you know, the inside wear patterns on the boot and that being definitive proof that it was Dale Johnson's bootprint.
I mean, what did they make of her testimony?
I can tell you how strongly her testimony was accepted. Twenty five years later, you know, when the real truth came out. I interviewed two of the three judges on the case and they both said, well, we had doctor Robin's testimony before us, and that was very convincing. This was even after they learned the truth, after they learned that everything this woman said was a lie, they still
wanted to believe in her. I have summed up this case as a total collapse of a local justice system, and I still believe that it left me with such a sense of outrage that this kind of thing can be done in our system of justice toom and I mean, you know it was it was not even close. But the lies that were told in that courtroom were enough to send an into some man to death row sitting
there through the entire trial. Is they never they never presented a rational case, and the evidence that they did present was you know, challenged very successfully by the defense. I mean, what I learned is that someone with an academic position and the claim of scientific expertise is automatically granted some level of believability, even by judges and prosecutors and investigators. And they really accepted Louise robins testimony and as fact I called it in my book fantasy forensics,
and as events have proven, it was totally fabricated. I can only attribute it to the desire to get a conviction, any conviction. That people in that town were petrified. The judges knew it, They knew what would happen if they didn't get a conviction, and they knew that they wouldn't have another crack at Dale Johnson if they acquitted him. So they convicted him and just went back home.
The use of doctor Robins as a forensic expert is an example of what can go horribly wrong when courts allow unverified signs into our courtrooms. She testified in twenty cases. Truly a hired gun by attorneys looking for a particular outcome.
Her work was reviewed by a panel of one hundred and thirty five anthropologists, forensic scientists, lawyers, and legal scholars sponsored by the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, and they concluded that her methodology for identification had no basis in science, but the damage had already been done. Dale Johnson spent four years on death row for a double homicide that he didn't commit. But he was fortunate and that even though his trial left him impoverished, his attorneys stayed on
his case pro bono and took on the appeals. The psychological trauma inflicted on those who were wrongfully convicted, especially for people who are innocent and sit on death row, is well documented. It isn't just the conviction that stays with the wrongfully convicted, it's the aftermath. Dale lost it all. He lost his stepdaughter, his property, his wife divorced him. It wasn't until well into his eighties earlier this year that Dale finally received some compensation for his time spent
in prison. The Innocence Project provides support for therapy and social services for its clients who are forced to cope with the harms associated with their wrongful conviction. You can donate to the Innocence Project by visiting www. Dot Innocenceproject dot org, slash give. Next week, we'll explore the junk science of fingerprint evidence. Wrongful Conviction Junk Science is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal
Company Number One. Thanks to our executive producer Jason Flam and the team at Signal Company Number One executive producer Kevin Wardis and senior producers Karen Kornhaber and Britz Spangler. Our music was composed by Jay Ralph. You can follow me on Instagram at dubin Josh. Follow the Wrongful Conviction podcast on Facebook and on Instagram at wrongful Conviction and on Twitter at wrong Conviction