their testimony that they hadn t looked at everything that i looked at. my reaction to that statement is he s totally wrong. the prints that we had that i had of riky jackson were more than adequate to deal with those latent prints. as riky jackson s fate hangs in the balance, each side argues that its interpretation of the forensics is correct. i think as each of the different examiners looked at it, each of them came up with certain points that they felt either matched or were unexplainable differences which would lead them to conclude that it was definitely not a match. you have rarely seen in the fingerprint field a battle of fingerprint experts where you can actually get a retired law enforcement examiner who s going to disagree on record with an identification that s being made by law enforcement, but this was a case where you actually had that. it s up to a jury to decide which expert they think is correct.
forensics, the forensics aspect of the arson investigation. to help him, white hires an austin-based arson specialist and retired chemist named gerald hurst. hurst starts his investigation by examining the state s strongest evidence, the so-called pour patterns. without those patterns on the floor, no case would have ever been developed. based on the new science, there is a different explanation for the patterns the investigators found. it is not arson. what occurred between 1987 when he was tried and convicted and 2004 was a development in the science of arson. where suddenly, the pour patterns could be explained. as this fire investigation experiment demonstrates, accidental fires sometimes behave in ways that could lead fire investigators to believe arson is involved. over the course of several
arson case that was investigated prior to the development of the science can question the reliability of those convictions. when we have an exoneration whether it s through dna or through people coming to their senses about arson and somebody let out of prison that s been in there for 17 years, that s the judicial equivalent of a train wreck. another texas man, cameron todd willingham was convicted of arson using the same fire investigation techniques that center nest willis to death row. based on an independent invest gagd, fire analyst john lantini and others in the field strongly believe the willingham fire was accidental. unlike willis, ilingham never got a chance to successfully challenge the science used to convict him. he was executed eight months before willis release. once the death sentence is executed that person is gone. there s no way to unring that
finally, willis gets the break he s been waiting 17 long years for when one of his appeals pays off. in a highly unusual step, a u.s. district court judge orders the state of texas to either retry willis or dismiss his case. he cites several factors including ineffective assistance of counsel and evidence contradicting the state s theory of the fire. ori white heads up the investigation. white, a college student at the time of the crime, is now the pecos county district attorney. jurors want as much forensics in cases as they can get. and in this case, the forensics were such that it allowed the jury to reach that conclusion. now it s up to white and his team to decide if that jury reached the right conclusion. we began to do a brand new just from scratch reinvestigation of the case. a lot of it was based on the
davis was brutally stabbed and strangled to death in his home. police in upper darby, pennsylvania, have matched fingerprints at the crime scene to riky jackson. in spite of this apparently conclusive evidence, jackson says he s innocent. what happened with my buddy alvin is still a shock to me because i don t think i run in those kind of circles. i was still kind of in disbelief and still thinking, oh, it will blow over. only because i knew i hadn t done it. to defense attorney michael malloy, something doesn t seem quite right. there s no other evidence. i don t think they had anything other than this fingerprints. there s no confession. no eyewitnesses and there doesn t seem to be a motive. malloy decides to investigate the forensics of the case a little deeper. if you cut through it all, it s going to rise or fall on the fingerprints. i told the jacksons they needed to get a fingerprint expert. i felt since it was a significant part of the case, they really needed to get