About this episode Unraveled delves into the heartbreaking and often infuriating journeys of individuals wrongly convicted, meticulously charting their decades-long battles for freedom. Each episode, narrated with compelling detail, exposes systemic flaws and the profound human cost of injustice, offering a raw, intimate look at the fight for truth. Listeners will gain a deep understanding of the resilience required to overturn wrongful convictions and the vital importance of never giving up on justice.
0:00 After thirty-five years in prison, Robert Wallace Lyons’s murder conviction was vacated on June sixteenth.0:07 His case turns on a type of evidence that has unraveled hundreds of lives, a so-called science that we now know is anything BUT.0:16 Last week, we talked about the fallibility of what a person sees.0:20 Today is about the danger of what an expert claims to see.0:24 The story begins in 1990, in a courtroom in Oregon.0:28 Robert Lyons is on trial for the murder of Lori Stabenow a year earlier.0:33 The prosecution doesn't have a confession.0:36 It doesn't have a murder weapon with his prints.0:39 What it has are marks on the victim's body.0:42 Bite marks.0:43 And a forensic odontologist takes the stand and tells the jury that those marks are a match to Robert Lyons.0:51 He testifies that the pattern of Lyons’s teeth is consistent with the injuries found on Lori Stabenow.0:58 And in 1990, the jury believed him.1:00 How could they not?1:01 This was an expert.1:03 This was FORENSICS.1:04 It sounded objective.1:06 It sounded certain.1:07 And based almost entirely on that testimony, they found Lyons guilty.1:12 He was sent to prison for life.1:14 And for thirty-five years, that was the end of the story.1:18 But while Lyons sat in a cell, the science that put him there was falling apart.1:23 The President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology would later describe bite mark analysis as wholly unreliable.1:32 Studies found it has been linked to at least thirty-one wrongful convictions.1:37 Thirty-one other lives, derailed by the same kind of expert testimony.1:42 Think about that.1:43 It’s not just one flawed case.1:45 It's a flawed method, presented as fact, over and over again.1:50 Another technique, microscopic hair analysis, was found by the FBI to have produced erroneous testimony in more than NINETY percent of trials where it was used.2:01 The problem wasn't the evidence in a single case.2:04 The problem was the field itself.2:07 So what does it all add up to?2:09 It adds up to a change in the law.2:11 This past April, Oregon enacted a new statute.2:14 A law that explicitly names bite mark analysis as discredited science.2:19 It created a legal pathway that simply did not exist for Robert Lyons before.2:24 And on June sixteenth, his conviction was thrown out.2:28 He is the FIRST person in Oregon to be exonerated under this new law.2:33 His attorney, Caitlin Plummer, put it plainly in a court filing on June twenty-ninth.2:39 "There is no admissible, persuasive evidence remaining to support Mr.2:44 Lyons’ guilt." The central pillar of the state's case is now legally recognized for what it always was: junk.2:51 This is what changes.2:53 Not just for one man, but for the system.2:56 Since 1989, the National Registry of Exonerations has tracked over seven hundred wrongful convictions tied to false or misleading forensic science.3:06 Seven hundred.3:07 Robert Lyons is just the latest.3:09 Prosecutors are now deciding whether to try and rebuild a case against him without the evidence that convicted him.3:17 His lawyer is fighting for his release.3:20 After spending more than half his life in prison for a crime based on evidence no court would admit today.3:27 The science that convicted him has been proven false.3:31 The thirty-five years he lost can NEVER be returned.
