Read this post. Make what you will of it.

Let me make this as simple as possible: The entire point of Tyler Edmonds’ trial was to determine if Edmond’s confession was true, or if his recantation of that confession was true. The confession states that Edmonds and his sister fired the gun together. The recantation says that his sister fired it by herself. There’s no question about what killed the victim. There’s no question that he died of a gunshot to the head. There’s no question about the murder weapon or the bullet.

If Hayne had testified only about what killed the victim, and that the bullet wound was consistent with the type of bullet from the the type of gun the prosecutors say was used, there would have been nothing wrong with his testimony. But he went beyond that. Hayne very clearly with his testimony lent his (pseudo) scientific imprimatur to the prosecutor’s contention that Edmond’s initial confession (two people fired the gun) was a more likely scenario than his recantation (one person fired the gun). That’s why he mentioned Edmond’s videotaped confession in his testimony. He was stating that his examination of the wound supported the confession’s version of events, not the recantation’s.

And so he was saying that his examination of the wound supported the theory of two hands on the gun, not one. It really is that simple. And there’s no scientific validity for that kind of testimony.

Once again, I have no opinion on Edmond’s guilt or innocence. Only that Dr. Hayne gave testimony he wasn’t qualified to give–or that any expert would have been qualified to give. And by an 8-1 vote, the Mississippi State Supreme Court–a conservative court that had repeatedly upheld Hayne’s testimony in the past– agreed.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 11th, 2007 at 7:37 am by admin and is filed under Forensics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.