“Forensic science begins at the end of someone else’s story.”
“Scrutinizing a violent moment in time.”
“Samples are collected and preserved the scene exhaustively photographed evidence prepared for forensic experts to examine.”
“Television and movies fuel blind faith in the power of crime scene investigations or CSI but since the emergence of DNA analysis a disturbing trend has emerged.”
“DNA hold from evidence that spent decades gathering dust has revealed a surprising number of wrongful convictions.”
“In fact in hundreds of exoneration cases DNA did more than free the innocent it proved that the forensic evidence that convicted them was wrong.”
“It’s time to put CSI on trial to find out what’s real science what has scientific potential and what’s just junk.”
“The stakes couldn’t be higher.”
“My name is Odell Adams and I was acquitted on the federal side and on the state side I was convicted of the same crime.”
“Hello 911.”
“Hello, hi.”
“This is 911.”
“I just saw a shot fired uh towards me.”
“Okay, one moment.”
“I’m sorry I’m still shaking right now.”
“That’s okay take a deep breath and tell them what corner you’re at.”
“Second start, 6 start.”
“Did you see who shot at you?”
“I did not.”
“10:30 p.m. on the night of October 5th 2018 gunfire erupts in the parking lot of the Speak Easy Lounge in East Portland Oregon. A couple of bullets strike an empty sedan. Nobody is injured. Whoever fired the shots flees. Witnesses call 911.”
“I am standing outside the Speak Easy Lounge. I’m okay I don’t think anyone else is hurt.”
“Okay uh there was about five shots fired.”
“Okay and could you see the gun?”
“I did not but I saw the muzzle flash.”
“Okay Portland Police collect ballistic evidence from the scene.”
“So there were a scattering of shots.”
“John Rob is a defense attorney who worked on the case.”
“Some of them hit the car some of them hit the bar some of them I think just cleared the roof of the bar and nobody ever found them.”
“The police investigation turned on this evidence 10 40 caliber cartridge casings recovered from the bars parking lot. It was a Friday night that would change one man’s life forever. Odell Adams was at the bar relaxing after a long week of work at an air conditioning company.”
“I was working 12 hours shifts actually and I was going to be taking time off of my regular schedule to become a welder like Hands-On welding and it was a good job I liked it.”
“He had lived in Portland since childhood when he his mother and five siblings moved there from Milwaukee.”
“As a kid was very active super funny.”
“Sha’s secret is Odell Adam’s older sister.”
“He was a very wise kid and very strong and very protective you know.”
“But leaving his father and extended family back in Wisconsin hit him hard.”
“And I think that everything kind of like played a part in my behavior I think that kind of played a big part in everything when I was growing up and acting out.”
“I don’t want to say he kind of fell through the cracks but you know the neighborhood that had a lot of gang members I would say but um for the young folk it was their Community the community was the community so all my friends and all that stuff was in this community which was a high drug area.”
“Encounters with police became the norm.”
“And the police didn’t like care about your age or anything and they was like treating me like a grownup.”
“Like I can actually remember a time where like a officer like went in my draws looking for Kraken I’m like I was like what like 12 12 years old you know what I’m saying? It became like regular for me like okay here come the cops okay well they they going to do this and they going to do that.”
“Odell had been caught up in the criminal justice system for a long time.”
“I think he was 13 when he was facing his first charges. There’s so much that was missed back then and so maybe there were a lot of red flags that my mother didn’t see she’s a single parent with six kids doing the best that she can to take care of us.”
“The neighborhood the police it was a cycle Adams couldn’t shake.”
“Once you are on probation then they just keep extending it keep extending it and keeping extending it keeping extending so then you are like just on probation forever basically.”
“By the fall of 2018 when the shooting outside the Speak Easy Lounge took place he was on supervised release for possession of a firearm and was focused on rebuilding his life and his future for his family.”
“It was a very difficult time my mom had colon cancer and has been fighting colon cancer for a very long time so my mom was very sick.”
“While his mother declined police investigators focused in on security camera footage from the front of the bar. One camera faced North and the other South and there’s a gap that’s between what the two cameras show so there’s a a portion of the area that simply doesn’t show up on either of the surveillance cameras. The footage shows a vehicle pulling up and the driver interacting with Odell Adams and his friends.”
“Man see us you got options roll over.”
“The north facing camera captures the driver of the car parking and going into the bar.”
“Come on man get that.”
“Okay and Adams walking away out of frame.”
“Seconds later an obscured figure emerges and fires gunshots in the direction of the parked cars and a man who would become an eyewitness.”
“He was just a normal guy walking home coming home from work and he was within about 15 ft or so of the shooter when the shots got fired.”
“Did you see who shot at you?”
“I did not.”
“They were uh shit yeah I don’t know little ways down.”
“He didn’t see the shooter’s face but could describe what he was wearing black pants black hoodie white shoes. But because Odell walked out of the security camera range just before the shooting started police target him as the suspect.”
“That’s how the initial police Theory began.”
“Investigators put Adams under surveillance.”
“So I was being followed for a whole month that I didn’t even know I was being followed.”
“He was targeted even though the clothes he was wearing didn’t match the witness’s description.”
“Like I said black hoodie black pants white shoes okay and what Odell was was wearing is a camouflage jacket that was a button-down jacket and was open matching camouflage pants a white baseball hat and a a big white t-shirt underneath the jacket and the jacket was open at all times okay and who did this was he white black Asian Or Hispanic?”
“I could not tell.”
“The witness couldn’t determine the shooter’s race because his hood was up obscuring his face unlike Odell who was wearing a baseball cap.”
“The idea that you can’t see somebody’s facial details cuz there’s a hood covering the face is much different than a baseball hat.”
“4 a.m. on November 2nd Portland’s tactical Operations Division pulls up at Odell Adams mother’s house lights flashing and bullhorns blaring. They set off flash grenades in the front and backyards.”
“I thought I was dreaming at first actually when I heard this big bomb.”
“So then I hear them outside saying come out with your hands up Odell.”
“Odell and his family were still reeling from the loss of their mother just 5 days earlier.”
“We’re planning for her funeral so he picked out her earrings we all found something to dress her in.”
“In their search of the house police find Two 40 caliber handguns in an attic crawl space an ammunition in a downstairs dresser.”
“I kind of thought like thank God she’s not here because of the cancer and because she was so sick and so thank God that we didn’t have a you know she didn’t have a eff squat team busting her door while she’s sick in in bed so that’s what I was thinking about like we got to keep moving cuz we got to bury our mom.”
“Odell Adams was arrested but he had no idea why.”
“I didn’t know what it was for until later on when I got booked in jail for it.”
“He spent the day of his mother’s funeral in jail.”
“He depended on her emotionally financially you know all of it you know and it’s his mom that’s I mean for him not to be able to attend her funeral was very difficult.”
“When tested only one of the two guns found at the home has Adam’s DNA along with DNA from three other people.”
“If you can create that link you can link the firearm to the shooting you can link Odell’s DNA to the firearm and you can combine that with the surveillance video that appears to show Odell walking off one screen then onto the next screen and firing all of the shots from the prosecution standpoint you have a pretty clear-cut case.”
“To build that case investigators send the gun with the DNA to a Firearms examiner for analysis. Firearms examiners study the bullets cartridge casings and guns collected as evidence.”
“And so we would call these as impressed marks that we see on the breach face so breach face impression that’s what we’re going to use to do our identification.”
“When a gun is loaded what you think of as the bullet is technically called the cartridge. When a gun is fired the bullet is often lost but the cartridge casing that held the bullet is kicked out of the side of the gun.”
“So the the premise of firearms examination is to examine these cartridge cases the way they interact how that cartridge when it’s fired interacts with a firearm results in the transfer of markings from the firearm to the cartridge case.”
“Keith Morris is a professor of forensic and investigative science at West Virginia University. The theory behind Firearms analysis is that no two guns are exactly identical and that every gun imprints a unique set of marks onto the ammunition it fires. Investigators use those marks to match a cartridge casing to a specific gun.”
“So the typical approach would be if for instance we get cartridge cases from a crime scene and then at some point a detective uh might come across a suspect who may have a firearm then the firearm would be provided and we would make uh test fires from that particular firearm.”
“Then the test fired cartridges are compared to those from the crime scene using a comparison microscope with two stages one for each cartridge. If the marks on the cartridges are similar enough they are called an identification or in other words a match so that’s kind of the measure of the similarity the way in which a source determination is made so this could say then that this cartridge case was fired by this particular firearm or it was not.”
“The discipline of firearms analysis got its start in a high-profile criminal case on February 14th 1929. A gang of Chicago gangsters led by Bugs Moran was waiting for a shipment of Canadian whiskey when they were gunned down by men dressed as police officers. It would become known as the St Valentine’s Day Massacre.”
“70 shells were recovered at the crime scene more than 40 bullets and fragments were extracted from the victims.”
“There was a group in Chicago that did work on the scientific investigation of crime and they worked on the valentine day massacre and one of the leaders would be Calvin Godard.”
“Dr Calvin Godard was an army colonel and forensics pioneer. He had recently overseen the invention of a consequential piece of technology.”
“They developed the comparison microscope which is still the main system which is used by fire examiners today to do comparison.”
“When police discovered a cash of Thompson submachine guns belonging to an associate of Al Capones Goddard declared them a match to the casings and bullets from the scene of the massacre. The high profile case lent credibility to the burgeoning discipline.”
“Goddard went on to lead his field coining the term forensic ballistics training police departments and Advising the FBI on the establishment of their crime lab.”
“Today there is more than a century of precedent for firearms examination evidence being admitted at trial.”
“Firearms and toolmarks is probably one of the most common pieces of evidence in the United States.”
“Julia Leighton is the former General Council for the public defenders service in Washington DC.”
“It impacts a large large number of cases and typically cases that carry serious penalties.”
“Lawyers and judges place a premium on precedent. Nicholas scurich is a professor of psychology and criminality at the University of California Irvine.”
“It’s not surprising that you know they’re kind of wedded to this type of evidence coming in at trial.”
“But is it just legal tradition or is there actual science to Firearms analysis?”
“When I started as a public defender in DC it was just generally assumed that there was a scientific Foundation to these disciplines and that there were procedures in place to ensure that they were reliable. We weren’t challenging the evidence we weren’t even looking very closely at the evidence that sort of changed with the introduction of DNA forensic evidence.”
“DNA was so new legal precedent had yet to be set so it was an open question and for us to be effective lawyers we had to understand the evidence understand the development of the technology so that we could effectively represent our clients in whether or not it should be admitted and if so under what circumstances and with what limitations.”
“Learning about DNA prompted Leighton to question the science behind other types of evidence that bore the label forensic including forensic Firearms identification.”
“DNA evidence came out of the University and academic Community firearms and Tool marks that’s a discipline that essentially came out of crime labs in the early 1900s. It’s not something that the larger scientific Community has had any reason to pay any attention to.”
“We have databases in the DNA world that tell us what the frequency of various features are so we have a sense of their rarity. Are there databases that show us the frequency with which you see certain features and as it turns out there aren’t.”
“Firearms analysis isn’t the only forensic discipline without true scientific underpinnings.”
“Aside from that sort of straightforward DNA analysis much of the other forensic evidence that we’re using in courts today simply hasn’t been validated.”
“Maisha Sinha directs the criminal defense clinic at the University of Maryland’s car School of Law and researches the intersection of forensics and law. In 2009 the nationaly of Sciences issued this sweeping report after an exhaustive 2-year investigation of forensic disciplines.”
“So the report’s goal is really to improve the forensic system. It was a very impressive set of expertise in this committee and their report was really damning. It was like finally somebody’s opened Pandora’s Box about how little research how little foundational empirical scientifically valid research has been done.”
“And we thought we were going to go forth and and have a sea change but the report was long and packed with science judges didn’t have time for in one instance the judge remarked well you can admit it into evidence but I don’t have time to read it.”
“Change didn’t come and among judges there was little accountability.”
“Judges know they can trust the court of appeals to affirm whatever they do in this area.”
“Nancy gerner is a the former US federal judge.”
“What people forget is that judges are human beings subject to the same kind of cognitive pressures that other people are. The judge will say well I’ll air on the side of let the jury decide that way it won’t be error that way I won’t be making a mistake uh that way.”
“The acquittal in this case of the hung jury won’t be on me.”
“Precedent around Firearms evidence continued to rule but 10 years after the report was was published in 2019 a Washington DC murder trial challenged the status quo. On a November afternoon in 2016 Orlando silver was shot to death in southeast Washington. His business associate a 24-year-old marijuana dealer named Marquette tibs was arrested for the crime.”
“A police officer saw a man who looked like tibs run from the scene and toss a gun in a wooded area. They recovered the gun. A forensic examiner test fired it and compared that cartridge with those recovered from the scene. Their conclusion the gun and the casings from the scene were a match.”
“In a pre-trial hearing tibs public defenders argued that there is no scientific basis for claiming a precise match and therefore the judge shouldn’t allow that testimony in courtroom disputes like this one many judges leave it to the jury to figure out what’s real science and what’s junk.”
“They do this despite a 1993 ruling from the nation’s highest court.”
“The Supreme Court has told us judges that you’re supposed to be the gatekeeper you’re supposed to see if the evidence meets a certain threshold.”
“Judges had to look at the underlying methods and principles for scientific evidence that’s being offered in court.”
“At San Francisco’s UC Hastings law school Chancellor and Dean David fagman specializes in the use of scientific research and legal decision making.”
“So what happened in the early 90s is courts started looking at what the data actually were uh what the methods that were being used and they realized that there wasn’t much there there and the forensic scientist basically said well we don’t have data we don’t have studies but we know we can do it because we’ve been doing it for 25 years uh so trust us and judges said you have to tell us the statistics you have to give us the research studies.”
“This is critical in part because juries find scientific evidence to be distinctly convincing.”
“One of the Baseline problems with forensics and in particular unreliable forensics is that people think of it as highly scientific and as a result they Place great weight on it.”
“But more often than not judges don’t follow the Supreme Court ruling.”
“Many of us became lawyers and judges precisely because we really were bad at math and really didn’t want to be scientists so there is certainly a certain reticence to engage in this but judges have to deal with stuff all the time that they it didn’t know personally. What’s shocking is you know it’s not fancy science that you’re talking about it really is quite straightforward.”
“By the time of the tibs case Firearms analysts had research studies they said could back up the validity and reliability of their methods. Nicholas scur has analyzed dozens of these studies and testified about his findings at the tibs pre-trial hearing.”
“Well there are lot of problems with these studies. In many of these studies participants were sent two groups of spent cartridges and asked to sort them into matched pairs. Now from a pure scientific standpoint that’s not a very good study design in the sense that they’re able to exploit this design to increase their accuracy. Basically the process of elimination could help them get more correct answers.”
“In 2014 Ames Lab at Iowa State University solved that problem with another study. Participants were given a coin envelope with two cartridge cases and they were simply asked do these cases match or not and then they’re given another coin envelope and they’re asked do these cartridge cases match or not so it’s a much cleaner test.”
“But this one had its own issues.”
“What jumped out at me was an enormous amount of inconclusive responses. In addition to marking identification for a match or elimination for a non-match participants could choose a third option inconclusive and 20% of participants responded inconclusive for every single comparison so this wasn’t oh a few of them are inconclusive or or not this was every single response was inconclusive and the study counted those responses as correct responses.”
“But the casings and bullets in the study were designed to match or not match they’re only two answers to the question identification or exclusion. So my view if you say I don’t know that’s not a correct answer. Imagine taking the SAT exam and one of the possible answers is I don’t know and that answer is treated as correct Counting inconclusiveness.”
“Yet a third study set out to prove reliability. Participants were mailed sets of cartridge casings to examine what they didn’t know was that they got the same sets twice so they’re looking at the same bullets or cartridge cases that they’ve already looked at. If their analysis was reliable they should reach the same conclusions both times.”
“But that didn’t happen.”
“The examiners were reaching the same conclusion about 65% of the time and importantly this doesn’t mean they reach the correct conclusion 65% of the time it only means they reached the same conclusion 65% of the time so inconsistent results a third of the time and so this is an incredible indictment and maybe why the as 2 research is no longer easily found on their website.”
“Though they are widely used to support firearms analysis none of the studies have ever been published in an independent peer-reviewed scientific journal for this reason and despite decades of precedent the judge in Marquette tibs trial refused to allow a Firearms examiner to testify that the cartridge from the crime scene was a match to the gun and tibs who maintained his innocence was found not guilty of murder.”
“That’s why the tips case is so important that opinion got everybody’s attention.”
“Meanwhile Odell Adams spends 2 years in jail since his arrest in 2018 awaiting trial for an incident in which an eyewitness described a different culprit a shooting where no one was even injured. His losses were only mounting.”
“I was like I lost everything I lost my apartment I lost my job I lost going to see my mother being being buried and just a whole lot of stuff was just like heavy on me during that time.”
“Then Co hit.”
“I’m not sentenced to death I could have like caught Co and died. We’re like housed up in these dorms and stuff and it’s not no um safety things going on.”
“Adam’s case hinges on Firearms analysis specifically whether casings found outside the Speak Easy Lounge match those test fired by the gun found at his mother’s house. The first computerized analysis says no match.”
“The Speak Easy evidence was not created by the gun.”
“When that initial test was run in Odell’s case the answer that was given was that there was no match so at that point in the investigation the investigators assumed that there wasn’t a match.”
“But instead of dropping the case they rerun the test. The computer gives a different result.”
“At this point at this point the computer uh says that they actually do match.”
“I was feeling like they wasn’t satisfied with the result now like I feel like it was more of them trying to force something.”
“As often occurs in Firearms analysis the computer test is followed by a comparison performed by a human examiner using a comparison microscope. He determines that all the cartridges found at the spyy lounge had been fired by the gun from Odell’s mother’s attic.”
“The federal prosecutors had their case ready for trial after 2 years of waiting in jail Adams was offered a plea deal.”
“I think that is designed to break you down so you will get out and just take some probation or take some time and go go home to put it behind you. A lot of people does that you know what I’m saying because they have family and they have kids um like responsibility jobs and stuff but Odell is not a lot of people.”
“I was like no way I’m not accepting something that I didn’t do.”
“Like in the tibs case the judge holds a pre-trial hearing about the Firearms evidence. Odell’s lawyers argue that it is inherently subjective and unreliable.”
“What they were doing wasn’t scientific that the only thing that they were doing is they were looking at those really closely under the microscope changing the lighting and then deciding whether they matched or not.”
“Over the course of four hearings the prosecution’s analyst struggles to articulate an objective basis or methodology for his exam process. Instead the court Hears A Familiar argument.”
“What you’re left with is a firearm examiner who has done this thousands of times and testify in hundreds of cases getting up there and saying based on all of this experience I’m right and you should trust me. You can trust me based on my training and experience we know we can do it because we’ve been doing it for 25 years uh so trust us.”
“And as in the tibs case the judge agrees with the defense. He will only allow factual observations that the caliber of the gun matches the caliber of the casings. At trial The Examiner is not allowed to testify that the casings matched the specific gun.”
“In October of 2020 the jury finds Adams not guilty.”
“I felt like justice has been served.”
“For the second time in a year the science of firearms analysis has been successfully challenged despite an impressive Century of precedent its scientific underpinnings don’t seem to hold up to scrutiny.”
“What most people don’t realize is that outside of DNA analysis most forensic methods they weren’t developed in scientific labs they were developed by and for law enforcement.”
“Modern forensic science 400 public crime Labs across the US countless private contractors was launched by a massive influx of federal funding in the late 1960s when social upheaval LED Lyndon Johnson to declare a war on crime.”
“And very quickly the war on crime evolves into the War on Drugs which everyone is much more familiar with and recognizes as a driving force of the mass criminalization that’s been occurring for the last you know 50ish years.”
“Still today the Department of Justice is the primary funer of forensic science development including problematic validations studies.”
“You can’t perceive a forensics is either a bubble or separate from or insulated from the carceral system it’s part and parcel of it.”
“What what we’ve ultimately come to is a system in which the police and prosecutor identify who they believe is guilty of a of a charge and then this whole Machinery of the Criminal Justice System starts working on and then ultimately sentencing that person to prison time so they are developed as tools to help law enforcement pursue law enforcement functions meaning surveillance investigation prosecution securing convictions and sometimes even at sentencing to secure a higher punishment.”
“Because of the vast number of guns in the United States Firearms analysis is a singularly effective tool with some devastating results.”
“In 1985 a series of violent robberies shook Birmingham Alabama two fast food managers were shot and killed a third survived his wounds.”
“Police made a photo lineup that included an old mug shot of 29-year-old Anthony Ray Hinton that they had on hand from a petty theft arrest years earlier. The surviving fast food manager picked him out as the shooter.”
“My name is Anthony Ray Hinton and in 1985 it was the hottest day of July it seems like and I woke up uh that morning and didn’t have a care in the world.”
“Police found Hinton mowing his mother’s lawn In the Heat of the July day.”
“I just happened to look up and there stood two white gentlemen that I never seen before. I cut the lawn off off and I said can I help you and one of them replied we’re looking for Anthony Ray Hinton and I said that would be me how can I help you and they said we have a warrant for your arrest and I said For What and one of them replied we’ll tell you that later but right now we want you to put your hands behind your back. I complied I put my hands behind my back.”
“Hinton was handcuffed and put in a Birmingham police cruiser without an explanation.”
“I must ask these detected at least 50 times why am I being arrested and finally he said you want to know why we arrested you? I said yes. He said we going to charge you with first degree robbery first degree kidnap first degree attempted murder. I said but I haven’t done any of that you got the wrong person. He said let me tell you something right now I don’t care whether you did it or didn’t do it he said but I’m going to make sure you found guilt of it. I said for a crime I didn’t commit? He said you must have a hearing problem didn’t I tell you I don’t care whether you did it or didn’t do it?”
“Hinton’s mother kept an old revolver for shooting snakes. Police seized it and turned it over to the state for examination.”
“If we’re looking at something like Firearms analysis most people think well how could race be a factor? You’re just looking at two bullets from a gun but the examiner is not just looking at two bullets from a gun. The Examiner before they ever look at those bullets they look at a police report and in that police report is the lead suspect’s name and their race and a nice narrative about what the police officer thinks happened all of that creates bias in the analysis.”
“They quickly concluded that the bullets from all three shootings matched hinton’s mother’s gun. Hinton had no history of violent crime. On the night of one of the shootings he had been 15 miles away at work closely supervised in a locked warehouse. But just as the arresting officer promised he was charged with the crimes.”
“And I sit in jail for a year and a half. Finally I go before a judge and he asked me could I afford a lawyer and I tell him no. He called his lawyer up front first thing. First thing that that lawyer said he said I did not go to law school to do Pro bono work.”
“I said sir would it make a difference to you if I told you I was innocent?”
“That lawyer looked at me for the first time and he said the problem with that statement all of y’all is always doing something and the moment you get caught you say you didn’t do it.”
“Based on the Firearms evidence Hinton was convicted of two counts of first-degree capital murder.”
“On December the 17 1986 I went to Alabama death row where I would remain for the next 30 years of my life.”
“For the first three of those years he refused to speak.”
“The guard asked me my name and I would write it down when my mother and my best friend Lester came to see me I wouldn’t talk to them I just couldn’t get over the anger.”
“His years in prison stretched into decades. Cases in which the new science of DNA proved the innocence of wrongfully convicted people started making news. But DNA isn’t a Magic Bullet for firearms cases because Shooters rarely leave behind genetic material. There are whole categories of crimes in which you’ll never find DNA evidence and many of those involved firearms.”
“For now DNA can’t help the Anthony Hintons out there. But in 2014 the US Supreme Court ruled that the defense mounted by hinton’s court appointed attorney the lawyer who didn’t go to law school to do pro bono work was constitutionally deficient. He was granted a new trial and the judge dismissed the charges.”
“For the first time in 30 years I heard the word you going home and exactly at 9:30 on April the 3rd 2015 I walked out to Jefferson County Jail for the first time to freedom and it was like being a sweet for I had wanted my mother to be there and she just didn’t survive that long without the erroneous Firearms analysis evidence.”
“Hinton would never have been convicted.”
“Julia Leighton feels that forensics should be treated like other Industries where people’s lives are on the line.”
“We should be treating it as a high-risk industry we should be regulating it we should be investing in it and we should be overseeing it just as we would medicine and Aviation but that isn’t happening and I fear it is largely because the vast majority of people caught up in the criminal justice system are people that are poor and people of color.”
“The system seems broken but legal Advocates say it’s just the opposite it’s operating in ways that it was designed to in the first place.”
“This was designed to be this punitive system without oversight.”
“Subjective forensic methods like Firearms analysis can be used unfairly to develop evidence of guilt.”
“Odell Adams learned that firsthand when he was found not guilty of the shooting at the Speak Easy Lounge in federal court.”
“He figured he’d be home in time for dinner.”
“My lawyers called me and said ain’t you like you supposed to be getting released and all this other stuff and I was like waiting on it but they never let him go.”
“I stayed in custody after I got acquitted. I didn’t understand that at all. I was like like this can’t be happening but but it was it was a shocker to me.”
“Typically when the federal government takes over the case like that what the state prosecutor will do is they will dismiss their case but not this time.”
“The state case never went away it just sort of kept on setting over the dates in the state case to kind of Leap Frog over the continuances that were being granted in the federal cases.”
“I never thought that I would have to go to trial twice for the same incident never in my life. I felt stuck. I felt alone.”
“Adams was stuck and his fate would turn out to be driven by larger forces than he could imagine.”
“In 2016 another government report had rocked the world of forensics issued by President Obama’s Council of advisers on Science and Technology an organization known as pcast. It echoed the 2009 report and its findings are equally striking.”
“It says no we actually many of the things that we’re using in court today continue to not have been validated and again we thought surely this is a watershed moment because we now have a report that corroborates what the National Academy of Sciences found.”
“But law enforcement at the highest levels objected.”
“US attorney general Loretta Lynch rejected the report on behalf of the US Department of Justice and the FBI issued a statement opposing many of pcast conclusions.”
“They were worried that what it would mean for these closed cases would they open back up? Would we have to relitigate all of this? And they were also worried about what it meant for open cases.”
“Just how worried became clear late in the Trump Administration. In January 2021 the Department of Justice issued an unusual statement. It called out recent decisions in which judges ruled that Firearms analysis evidence should be limited. Two of those cases were Marquette tibs and Odell Adams both of whom had been found not guilty in 2020.”
“This is unsigned it has no seal it doesn’t explain who did it why they did it this appears to be sort of an effort by lawyers that didn’t like the Court’s rulings to try and put something out under doj’s label saying there was something wrong with pcast and there’s something wrong with these Court decisions.”
“Courts took action.”
“While Marquette tibs had been tried in Washington DC where there is no state court system to pursue him further Adams was in Oregon when he was found not guilty in federal court. The state moved quickly doubling down.”
“What the state prosecutor did is take the case back to Grand Jury and make the case a lot more serious. They added it an attempted murder charge and attempted assault one charge.”
“If found guilty of these new charges Adams would face many years in prison.”
“The federal trial was intense as hell and then he gets found not guilty and then they pick it up again so it felt like no the hell he didn’t. That’s what it felt like. It felt like how dare you know oh hell no. It felt like almost like this good old boy system and not really about the crime. So so I felt like it was vindictiveness with the state for a second time Adams was offered a plea.”
“We’re saying we just want you home and you’re saying I didn’t do it and I’m not going to admit to something that I did not do.”
“And for a second time he maintained his innocence.”
“You had Odo Adams from day one saying I want my trial. If you think I did this come into court and prove it.”
“Adams State Defense team which included John Rob took the same approach as his federal trial.”
“We filed all the same motions including the motion to exclude the tool Mark examiner coming in and at the motion phase argued to the judge judge this is not scientifically valid. The the state has not met their burden to show that this is actually reliable.”
“State prosecutors brought two new Firearms examiners to the pre-trial hearing. One of them claimed his personal error rate was Zero.”
“Both sides made all the same arguments but with a different outcome. The judge ultimately decided we’ll just let the jury uh decide it.”
“Letting the jury decide is not what the Supreme Court ruled should happen.”
“The jurors are not scientists they don’t understand all these big languages and all this stuff and is all they do is was watch forensic science and all that stuff on these TV shows and they think oh well if this person said it then then it has to be this. They don’t know.”
“At trial The two Firearms examiners each with an impressive resume declared the cartridges collected at the scene a match to the gun found at Odell’s mother’s house. They also openly acknowledged that they were there in part as a response to the precedent set at Adam’s federal trial.”
“As firearms and toolmarks examiners we follow admissibility hearings across the country. Anytime that there is a ruling specifically about the science we always want to go back and see why a certain ruling was made.”
“They claimed the issue was not a lack of science but a poor explanation.”
“In this case it was an insufficient testimony from the analyst to explain the actual science.”
“It sounded so shady the second time around honestly like the stuff that they were presenting.”
“Aside from the Firearms evidence the State Trial was a repeat of the federal trial. The same arguments were made the same evidence was presented write down to the eyewitness who called 911 and described the shooter dressed differently than Odell Adams.”
“Black pants black hoodie white shoes. He really wants this this guy caught and steadfastly over multiple years described somebody who was wearing completely different clothes.”
“Unlike in the federal trial this time there were no black jurors which Odell felt was a disadvantage.”
“When they say a jury of your peers is people that’s living in the same area that you’re living in and seeing the same things that you’re seeing not people that live up in the hills that watch shows and movies and all this stuff and they stereotype you. I got tattoos I got braids and I fit the description of being guilty behind that.”
“The jury did indeed find him guilty on two counts criminal mischief and unlawful use of a weapon. He was acquitted of attempted murder. By the time of the verdict he had been in jail for 3 years waiting for his trials. At his sentencing Adams spoke in court for the first time.”
“I have been going through this for 3 years and I haven’t even been able to mourn my mother’s death. I was put in this box man and I still feel like I’m I’m in this box and the walls are steady closing on it. It’s not what the big picture is painted here upon me. It’s like I’m just this bad person which I’m not. It’s been barriers that I had to climb over and I’m steady climing whatever happens today it happened. I I have been get in the B end the stick all my life like how much more do a person has to take?”
“What I loved is that he kind of said like this is what has happened. This is what you guys have taken from me. I haven’t had a chance to process my mother’s death you know. Yeah I did a lot of stuff as a kid how long is that going to follow me you know? And when do you guys when are you going to see me as trying to do something different?”
“I was proud that he you know finally had a voice.”
“Odell had to spend two more years in prison on top of the three he had already served.”
“He was finally released in December 2021 in time to see family at Christmas and for the first time he was able to visit his mother’s grave.”
“I know she’s like looking down on me and knowing that I’m knowing that she is proud of me period.”
“His journey through the legal system represents both the past and the future. His State Trial is rooted in a century of legal precedent established for firearms analysis evidence. His federal case represents the prospect for change in how that evidence is treated moving forward. Whether its change the judicial system will accept remains to be seen. A Odell Adams is appealing his conviction.”
“I pick myself up and keep going you know what I’m saying straight up.”
“But if he succeeds in winning a new trial there’s a chance it could end with an even harsher sentence.”
“I appealed because this is not right I didn’t do this I’m innocent I don’t fit the description this is not right. I have been accepting a lot of things and it’s a time where you just get fed up so that’s why I appeal and if I have to appeal again I will appeal and I will keep appealing.”
“I will keep appealing.”
“The ballistic thing is not valid. It’s not no scientific proof of anything. It’s like when you are fighting the whole United States by yourself it’s kind of hard it’s hard.”
