Expert Witness

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2:16You're on the jury. An expert is on the stand testifying that the defendant must have done it. Then another expert takes the stand and testifies there is no way the defendant could be guilty. Just look at the scientific evidence. The record shows the first time expert testimony was used in an American court. A doctor ventured the scientific opinion that the accused had bewitched his victims. Today, some 300 years later, there are literally tens of thousands of experts ready to testify, many for a fee. They're the only witnesses who are allowed to give opinions, and most jurors believe them. In one study, nearly 90 % said the experts are credible.

3:02But what are their credentials, and what is their record, and how much pressure are they under to present a version of the truth that may not be the whole truth? We begin with Susan Spencer and the story of a man whose conviction for murder could be overturned. Turns out, it's the expert witness who is now suspect. Every man's fantasy is to meet a good woman, you know, fall in love, get married, have a family. And it's happened for me. With a new baby on the way. That's an itty bitty t-shirt. Jim Richardson, his wife Donna, and stepson Josh. She comes home flashing this paper to mine. We're pregnant.

3:41We're pregnant. Want only to look forward to a bright future. He got a rubber ducky. I wanted to name him Bear. Just Bear. But their future is haunted always by Jim's past. Jim Richardson once was convicted of a grisly murder. I didn't do nothing wrong. I had nothing to do with it. He still may be facing a life sentence. Every night when you go to bed, you don't know what's in store tomorrow. You don't know if you're going to get up and go to work. You don't know if you're going to get up and go to jail. It began a decade ago, in the middle of the night, outside his father's house in Crosslanes, West Virginia.

4:20I'm standing here with my key in the door, unlocking the door. He says he heard breaking glass coming from a neighbor's house. So I'm standing here looking through the trees. The house was on fire. You could see the smoke coming up out of the back bedroom of the house. Then he heard a more alarming sound, the cries of a child. You could hear her up there coughing and whimpering and crying like, you know, not real loud, but you could hear. So he says he sprang into action. You know, I busted ass up the hill, kicked open the door, you know, and there she stood in the doorway of her bedroom. He carried three-year-old Lindsay Gilfillan to safety and called the authorities.

4:57By the time the fire company come, the flames was leaping through the roof of the house 20 or 30 feet. I mean, they were higher than these trees. At first, Jim Richardson, then a 31-year-old unemployed construction worker, was hailed as a hero for saving the life of the young girl. Richardson told how he rescued the child. I picked her up and ran outside. Didn't seem like nothing. I mean, you know, it all happened so fast. The only time I really had time to feel good about myself was that night. But his glory was short-lived. Just almost overnight, you went from being a hero, to being the main murder suspect.

5:34It was overnight. In the bedroom of the burned house, police found the charred body of the little girl's mother, Kelly, bound, brutally raped, and beaten to death with a baseball bat. He hit Kelly in the face with a baseball bat. He put a dog collar around her throat, and he sexually assaulted her. He was a suspect almost from the very beginning. He became the focus of the investigation very early. Prosecutor Bill Forbes. Our theory was quite simply that he set the fire to cover it up. The little baby starts crying, so he instantaneously turns from being whatever he is into being a hero in case somebody sees him.

6:09Jim Richardson had had run-ins with police, including a burglary charge when he was a juvenile. But nothing as serious as this. This is a capital case, and upon conviction, he could spend the rest of his natural life in the penitentiary. But Prosecutor Forbes had very little hard evidence against him. So this is the clothing that Jim Richardson was wearing that night? Despite the bloody crime scene, there was no blood on Richardson's clothing. This is a very important bit of evidence. No fingerprints on the baseball bat. The key physical evidence presented at trial? Bodily fluids found on the rape victim, Kelly Gilfillan.

6:48In this highly circumstantial case, one witness was key. Fred Zane, a state police expert. He said that his examination of fluids from the victim essentially ruled out 96 % of the male population as the murder suspect. Jim Richardson, he said, was in the other 4%. I was in shock. Fred Zane is standing at a chalkboard, and he's got test results on a piece of paper. And I don't know nothing about serology. I don't know nothing about blood testing. And I doubt very seriously that anybody else in the courtroom did. Zane once headed the state police lab's serology unit. which analyzes evidence like blood and semen.

7:28He's showing how this matches me and this matches me and this don't match her. Couldn't be anybody else, you know. Where's this coming from? For this trial, Zane was flown in from his new job in Texas. I had no reason whatsoever to doubt what he was saying. Judge Paul Zakabe presided over the trial. He was very convincing. Jim Richardson never wavered from saying he'd done nothing more than rescue an innocent child. Did you kill Kelly Gelflin? No, sir, I did not. Did you set fire to a home in her body? No, sir, I did not. Did you sexually assault her without her consent? No, sir, I did not. As testimony continued, he remained optimistic.

8:08I'm sitting there believing the whole time, you know, I didn't do it. I didn't do it. I'm missing. It'll be okay. The jury will acquit me. He was wrong. We need a jury finding defendant James Edmund Richardson guilty. A first-degree murder. He was convicted on all counts. Not only have you shattered this little girl's life, but you've also shattered the lives of Kelly's husband, her parents, and her relative. And the jury was impressed enough to not recommend mercy. That meant life with no possibility of parole. As soon as you heard the word guilty. That was it. I don't remember much from that point till the next morning when I woke up.

8:45In the suicide cell in the old Kanawha County Jail. Why'd you kill her? I didn't. You didn't kill her? No, sir. He would serve eight long years before his bizarre story took an unexpected twist. We began hearing rumors there was a problem with Fred Zane. When we come back, the revelations that may give Jim Richardson another chance. This is blood. That is blood, yes. It's evidence of a third person in that house that was not Jim Richardson. And why Fred Zane, the expert witness who helped send him to jail, may be heading to prison himself.

9:30From the moment his life sentence began, Jim Richardson insisted he was innocent of raping and murdering Kelly Gilfillan. So you were framed? Absolutely. I was set up. I was tried and convicted of a crime that I did not commit. To no avail. After a failed appeal to the West Virginia Supreme Court... I found out that they turned my appeal down. That was a crushing blow. Richardson was losing hope. At that moment, I looked at the penitentiary and I said, I'm home. This is it. I'm screwed. But in 1992, a fellow inmate was faring better. What got me started was I met Glenn Woodall in prison. Glenn Woodall, in prison for rape, was challenging his conviction using DNA.

10:16It's obvious he cannot be the assailant. And DNA testing proved Woodall was innocent. After five years in prison, he was freed and paid a million dollars by the state. Woodall's release was a bombshell and would be a turning point for Jim Richardson. Prosecutor Bill Forbes took notice. We realized that we had not only a serious problem, but we had people in jail wrongfully. 48 Hours has obtained a confidential letter from the state's insurers advising officials to settle with Woodall as quickly and quietly as possible. They obviously paid a bunch of money to keep this thing quiet. Why? They feared an avalanche of lawsuits because the state's expert witness, who had testified in hundreds of cases, was utilizing test results which were fabricated.

11:06I had no reason to believe that the hair could not have originated from Mr. Woodall. That witness, the expert who testified so convincingly against Woodall, is Fred Zane, the same Fred Zane whose testimony was pivotal in convicting Jim Richardson. What was his reputation? In the business of prosecuting crime among state police, and as far as anybody knew among other lab people, he was a god. A god? He was a good witness, a competent witness, an unchallengeable witness, an infallible witness. But as the West Virginia Supreme Court launched its investigation, a very different Fred Zane emerged. You talk about somebody being railroaded into prison, I'm one of them.

11:52The court found that Zane routinely falsified evidence. In examining 36 of thousands of cases he handled, it found he lied about, made up, or manipulated evidence to win convictions in all of them. When they examined the actual records, they found that Fred Zane had fake data in virtually every case that has ever been examined. throughout his career. Public defender George Castell is representing Jim Richardson and a dozen other prisoners who now have a chance to have their convictions thrown out. I was stunned because nobody had any sense of magnitude of it. As the details began to be explored, it just continued to get worse.

12:34From his prison cell, Jim hoped this would be the answer to his prayers. I did not have nothing to do with setting the fire. I did not have nothing to do with harming or killing the girl. I looked him square dead in the eye and I said, I want a DNA test. I said, whatever it takes, I want a DNA test. So Richardson's lawyer sent Fred Zane's notes to an independent lab for analysis. Remember Zane's testimony that only 4 % of the male population could have committed this crime? The lab came to a very different conclusion. In truth, no male could be excluded. 100 % of the male population could have been the source of the fluids.

13:13based on Fred Zane's testing, because he found nothing that matched any male. No male could be excluded. But when the lab finally retested the forensic evidence in Jim Richardson's case, there was a big problem. When you tested the evidence, what did you find? Well, we found nothing. When we received it, the vaginal swab that Fred Zane claimed to have tested was totally blank. In other words, all the cotton had been removed. It was just a blank stick with no DNA on it at all. Without DNA, Richardson could not prove his innocence. I'm looking around at the yard at the penitentiary, and I'm thinking, you know, I'm going to be here for the rest of my life.

13:50I'm going to be here forever. And that's hell of a thought. But George Castell would not give up. This is all stuff that you had tested. Can we look at that? He won access to every box of evidence from the crime scene. And he made a shocking discovery. Included in that, to our surprise, was a blood-soaked flashlight. Where was this flashlight? Where had it been? The flashlight had been in the sheriff's department evidence locker with the rest of the evidence. It was critical new evidence. This was all tested and this is blood. That is blood, yes. And it's not Jim Richardson's blood. It's not Jim Richardson's blood.

14:24It's not the victim's blood. It's not the victim's. It's evidence of a third person in that house that was not Jim Richardson. Andy found a provocative statement from the only eyewitness, three-year-old Lindsay Gilfillan. She describes her rescuer and her mother's murderer as two different people. What happened to that statement? It was concealed. It had been withheld all those years. The prosecution says the statements were there all along. That question aside, Judge Zakabe could not ignore the other mounting evidence. I set aside his conviction after reviewing all the evidence. Jim Richardson finally was free to go home.

15:02Oh, God. You know, after eight years, I come in and everybody's crying and hugging me. You finally believe. Oh, God. You know, just grinning from ear to ear, you know, just loving every middle of it, because I was home, I was there, you know. But he is not yet out of the woods. A new special prosecutor could indict Richardson again, based on the remaining circumstantial evidence. The greatest moment for me will be to hear that the prosecuting attorneys have decided not to reconvene a grand jury. That'll be the greatest moment in my life. because at that time, I can sit down and take a breath. It'll be over.

15:44It'll be over. So Jim waits for a decision. But his wife, Donna... Thanks. You don't know the meaning of the word. ...can no longer wait. Okay, doll. Okay. It's time. There he is. There he is. And life begins for Isaac Castell Richardson, named after Jim's lawyer, George Costell. You gotta think, looking down at some cute little smiling face, hearing, Daddy, I love you. Daddy, will you teach me how to ride a bicycle? There it is, there it is. I mean, it's the greatest thing in the world. He's just beautiful. Later on 48 Hours... What does Fred Zane deserve? He deserves to be incarcerated and locked up at least as long as any person he did that to.

16:36He deserves an eye for an eye. I want to see him go to jail. I want to see the state of West Virginia say, yeah, we're sorry. You were screwed. We admit it. Fred Zane gives his first television interview. I have never thought in any case that I've ever testified on that anything that I said would be the turning point. Never. Never meant it to be. Never wanted it to be.

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19:20Joshua! Terri Henson had hoped that someday, when her children were grown, they would enjoy watching these old home movies of childhood milestones. Happy birthday! Like her daughter Brittany's fourth birthday. Happy birthday! But her son Joshua's first birthday... He's just a real happy child. ...would turn out to be his last. Terry was a criminal law student living in Tabor City, North Carolina, when her life changed abruptly one chilly night in October 1996. When did you know something was wrong? When Brittany cried out, Mommy, I'm scared. Asleep downstairs on the couch, she says she awoke to a nightmare.

20:04I glanced up and saw an orange glow. A fire raging upstairs where her children slept. And I saw that it was in Joshua's room. And as soon as I hit that doorway, I didn't get past the door at all. It just, like, exploded. Hello? 911, help! What's the problem? My house is on. Help! Frantically, she called 911. I can't drive the stairs. I can't get them. He cried out, Mama. I know I yelled and told him I was coming. When it was over... As dumb as it sounds, I remember it going through my mind, you know, the kids are just going to come out of the house and run to me. Brittany was in the hospital, badly hurt.

20:36She's not breathing. She's not awake. She can't talk to me. And Joshua was dead. And this is the little rabbit he had with him. Yeah, he held this every night when he went to sleep. When I saw this is when I realized that he didn't come out of the fire. At first, it was reported as a tragic accident. They found 15-month-old Joshua Henson in his crib. But authorities soon suspected something far more sinister. Investigators said that the patterns left by the fatal fire showed that it started in Joshua's closet, which is located just underneath this blue tarp. Since they could find nothing in the closet that could have caused the fire, investigators concluded that it must have been set by human hand.

21:27Terry Henson was the only adult home that night. Terry Henson was taken to jail and charged with first-degree murder, attempted murder, and arson. Every time that door closed, it goes through your mind, you know, am I ever getting out? And her daughter, Brittany, was taken away. They took her out of the hospital and put her in a foster home. The evidence seemed overwhelming. State authorities and insurance company experts all agreed. They qualified the case as being a set fire. Prosecutor Lee Bollinger. We can eliminate that it was electrical. We can eliminate that it was natural causes. We can eliminate that it was an accidental cause.

22:04Since we can eliminate all those things, it must have been a set fire. Although she faced the death penalty, the judge gave Terry Henson one crucial break. While awaiting trial, she would be placed under house arrest instead of jail. Actually, I couldn't even leave the front door. That gave her two unusual opportunities, supervised home visits with Brittany, and access to a life-saving tool. I said, well, the only thing I know to do is buy a computer and get on the Internet. I hit the search button and it led me to thousands of pages of things that people have written about fires. She eventually found her way to Austin, Texas, and Gerald Hurst.

22:44A lot of people investigate fires as though they were reading tea leaves. A fire and explosives expert, critical of the way many fires are investigated. He was interested real quick. He told me to send him a copy of the file. He and a colleague, Ken Gibson, offered their services for free. We asked them to come back here to show us what they discovered. The key question, did the fire actually start in Joshua's closet? Hearst suspected something else. If the fire started in the attic, I would expect to find more extensive damage up there than down below. And that turned out to be the case. And he had a logical explanation for those fire patterns seen in the closet.

23:25When an attic catches on fire and burns through a ceiling, all that burning material falls down and starts burning down below and leaves patterns that look like it started down below. But how then did the fire start? It's a textbook case. The clue, they say, is in the state's own pictures. This is a ceiling over the closet. And if you look carefully right there, you can see a wire passing over there. Tests confirmed the wire had been connected to a heater, plugged in for the first time that chilly November night. So there's your culprit right there. And it wasn't Terry Henson. It was not Terry Henson.

24:04In a lab, Gerald Hurst demonstrated what he says happened that night. Now the flame you're seeing there would be more than adequate to set the insulation on fire. Overheated wires could have come in contact with leaking rainwater from the attic. See that? Live flames. and ignited the surrounding flammable insulation. In the Hanson attic, there was a sea of this material. While Terry's experts studied her case, her visits with Brittany continued, sometimes painfully. I don't feel well. And it's hard to sit back and watch your child scream and kick and fight and cry. I mean, just everything you could imagine, begging to stay with her mom, and you can't do anything.

24:46She would still have to face the prosecution experts. They have credentials, they have a parent training. It's formidable. But Gerald Hurst suggested a bold move, an offer to meet with the prosecutor and his expert before trial. If we failed in our attempt to get him to drop the charges, we would have telegraphed our case to him. We basically took a jury room that wasn't being used. We sat down at a table and we had a discussion. It was just the lawyers and the experts sitting down talking face to face. Three weeks later, Terry got a phone call from her lawyer with astounding news. In a stunning about face, the prosecutor agreed to drop all charges against her.

25:28And why do you think the prosecutor dropped all the charges? He had an open mind and he was willing to listen to the truth. After 18 long months, she was free. If I had not gone on the Internet and found Dr. Hurst, I would be sitting in Raleigh now on death row. Although an official with the State Bureau of Investigation says it stands by its report, the prosecutor is not actively pursuing the case. Our decision was not that she was an innocent person necessarily. Our decision was basically we can't prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. For Terry, this reunion with her experts is a reminder that her victory is bittersweet.