DNA Evidence Brings Killer To Justice | The New Detectives | Real Responders

paper was light gold in medieval times i want tobacco sugar [Music] that everything we thought we knew about the world might turn out to be completely wrong [Music] in a baltimore maryland suburb a game of hide-and-seek turns deadly for a nine-year-old girl witness his idea suspect and trap him in a web of circumstantial evidence eight years later only dna technology can render the final verdict in california a woman is viciously attacked in her sleep by a suspected serial killer after she slips into a coma investigators struggle to identify a suspect when she regains consciousness she ids her attacker and he is no stranger in the past eyewitness testimony and circumstantial evidence could spell doom for a suspect without an iron-clad alibi today forensics experts are clearing the falsely accused using dna to uncover proof of innocence [Music] [Music] on the afternoon of july 25th 1984 in the baltimore maryland suburb of rosedale police responded to a father's frantic 9-1-1 call thomas hamilton reported that his nine-year-old daughter dawn was missing his sister had been babysitting dawn and dawn's cousin lisa that morning [Music] it's just behind the apartment houses eight-year-old lisa told police that she and dawn had left to go play at a nearby pond around 10 30. [Music] the surrounding wooded area was a great place to play hide-and-go-seek 15 no 20. [Music] one no peeking three but after some time the two became separated lisa couldn't find her cousin and thought that maybe dawn had decided to go back home but she had not returned after an hour passed without a word the aunt became concerned and contacted her brother thomas hamilton knew that dawn was familiar with the woods and thought it was unlikely that she had simply become lost he feared that something terrible had happened a search party made up of family friends and law enforcement officers began combing the wooded area behind the apartment complex [Music] after several hours their efforts had turned up nothing then around five o'clock one of the searchers made an ominous discovery a pair of child's underwear was found hanging from a tree branch investigators quickly began searching the immediate area within a few minutes their worst fears were confirmed lying face down in a pile of brush they found the lifeless body of nine-year-old dawn hamilton kind of body here appears to be a little girl i'm not feeling the pulse her skull had been crushed just up the hill there were indications that she had been sexually assaulted evidence technicians were dispatched to the scene they preserved the girl's underwear hoping some trace of her killer remained investigators collected a large piece of cinder block found near the victim's head it appeared to be consistent with having caused the trauma to dawn's skull the body was removed from the scene and sent to the medical examiner's office for autopsy word of the young girl's death quickly spread through the city tony pipitone a reporter for the baltimore evening sun at the time of the homicide followed the investigation the murder of dawn hamilton would soon become front page news this was a huge story for this area i mean it's not every day a nine-year-old girl disappears and then turns up murdered there were a lot of people out there there was a lot of concern about who the killer was and whether they would find this killer investigators hoped the autopsy might provide some clues to the killer's identity [Music] the medical examiner determined that dawn hamilton had not died as a result of the blunt force trauma to the head after being beaten she was then strangled though there were also indications that the young girl had been sexually assaulted the medical examiner found no evidence of rape however a minuscule amount of biological evidence was recovered from the underwear the samples were collected and analyzed but in the days before dna testing was available examiners were unable to provide police with a specific genetic profile of the killer investigators turned to the public for help but no leads were developed i want to ask you about what happened but a short while later two boys from the rosedale neighborhood came in to speak with police they had seen dawn with a strange man at the pond just hours before the young girl's body was found [Music] the boys had been searching the area for turtles earlier that morning when they spotted a stranger fishing by the side of the pond they decided to show off their catch lisa as they were talking to the man dawn hamilton emerged from the woods she was looking for her cousin lisa and asked if the boys would help her [Music] they declined but the stranger offered to help [Music] moments later dawn disappeared into the woods with the man the boys described the stranger as being about six foot five having curly blond hair and a mustache with the help of a police sketch artist the face of the murder suspect began to take shape for everyone following the investigation it was clear that this was a huge break for police they had the two boys who had seen her go down this trail with this man who had offered to help her find her friend and they believed whoever that man was would be key to solving this case the composite sketch of don hamilton's suspected killer was quickly distributed through the media police also took the drawing door to door throughout rosedale several neighbors claimed to have seen the man lurking around the area on the day of the murder but no one had seen him before then and no one knew his name as the investigation threatened to stall pressure to solve the case mounted again police turned to the media for help [Music] it's tony desperate to generate a lead detectives released a psychological profile of dawn's killer through all area newspapers the detectives had this profile done that said that whoever was responsible for this crime may have had an argument with a woman a domineering woman in his life may have been projecting that anger at that woman at this little girl they said that whoever did this according to this profile grew up around the water because he was near the pond and where these boys were fishing and had gone to this pond to some kind of refuge in a troubled time [Music] hundreds of tips poured into police [Music] one anonymous caller said he recognized the composite and the psychological description as a man he knew named kirk bloodsworth a detective who overheard the conversation was familiar with that name kirk bloodsworth had been reported missing by his wife and the report was filed shortly after dawn hamilton was found murdered believing there may be a connection investigators quickly arranged to speak with bloodsworth's wife [Music] she said in the weeks before dawn's murder she and her husband's marriage began to deteriorate kirk accused her of spending beyond their means frustrated she fought with him constantly as the tensions mounted kirk became distant and preoccupied [Music] a week or so after dawn's murder kirk disappeared she hadn't heard from him since how long had he been missing investigators realized that kirk bloodsworth was involved in a turbulent relationship just as the profile of the killer had indicated well i and like the profile also suggested he was drawn to the water kirk's wife said that her husband may have returned to his hometown located on the chesapeake bay using that profile it all fit together kirk bloodsworth grew up on the eastern shore of maryland he was from a fisherman family kirk bloodsworth was now the prime suspect in the murder of nine-year-old dawn hamilton but as long as his whereabouts remained uncertain so did the prospects of solving this case authorities in the baltimore maryland suburb of rosedale believed they had finally identified a suspect in the brutal sexual assault and murder of nine-year-old dawn hamilton whose body was discovered in a wooded area a few hundred yards from her home [Music] an anonymous caller had identified a composite sketch of the suspect as resembling a man named kirk bloodsworth who disappeared a week after the murder bloodsworth's wife speculated he had returned to his hometown of cambridge on maryland's eastern shore police canvassed the small fishing community they located one of bloodsworth's friends he confirmed that the suspect had in fact recently returned to cambridge bloodsworth told him that he had done something terrible and couldn't return to baltimore the friend didn't ask any more questions he told police where bloodsworth was currently staying the suspect was contacted and brought in for questioning though kirk bloodsworth denied any involvement in the homicide he was unable to recount exactly where he was at the time the murder occurred detectives next asked him what he had done that was so terrible that he couldn't return to baltimore bloodsworth responded that he had failed to take his wife out for a taco salad dinner and he knew she would never forgive him to police the explanation was ludicrous investigators produced a large piece of cinder block similar to the one found at the crime scene and a photo of the victim to see how the suspect would react they placed the rock in the interview room without referring to it specifically and they watched his reaction and i remember one of the detectives saying you could see him just kept going staring back at that rock you know his eyes would shift back at that rock back at that rock everything about the suspect led authorities to believe that he was don hamilton's killer now two decades later kirk bloodsworth recalls that there was nothing he could have said to convince them he was not involved in the murder and they kept drilling me and drilling me and all i kept saying was i didn't do it i'm telling you i didn't do it no i might not know exactly where i was right then and there right now but i didn't do it i know whatever it was it wasn't killing a little girl that day stop me but the evidence continued to suggest otherwise the boys who helped create the composite sketch of the suspect were shown a photo lineup though bloodsworth was shorter and heavier than the boys had described and his hair was a different color they picked him out as the man they had seen with dawn near the pond several rosedale residents also identified photographs of bloodsworth as the man they saw hanging around the day of the murder in the early morning hours of august 9 1984 police traveled to bloodsworth's cousin's home on the eastern shore where he was staying at the time it was quarter to three in the morning and he said there he is and i actually i physically turn around and look the other way because i was expecting them to see you know my cousin's boyfriend or something or somebody else not me and i was just in total shocked by the fact that there was 20 people on the lawn with guns and police cars they were surrounded the house front and back all over the place kirk bloodsworth was charged with first-degree murder and though the case against him was circumstantial prosecutors sought the harshest penalty you had the boys who identified him as being the man that went in the woods with don hamilton it was eyewitness identification there was nothing forensically solid placing him at the scene or placing him as a killer of this girl still it took less than three hours for the jury to find the defendant guilty of murder and sexual assault two weeks later 21 year old kirk bloodsworth returned for sentencing kirk stood up and said this is a travesty this is miss justice he would never do that to a girl the judge sentenced him to death you know one of the most horrible feelings i've ever had was when they sentenced me to death in the courtroom erupted in applause for my execution from prison bloodsworth committed himself to overturning his conviction he eventually received an appeal and at a second trial the judge commuted his death sentence to two consecutive life terms but for a man claiming he had nothing to do with the murder of dawn hamilton that was hardly a consolation [Music] kirk bloodsworth dedicated himself to finding irrefutable proof of his innocence no matter how long it took eight years into a double life sentence for the murder of nine-year-old dawn hamilton kirk bloodsworth was no closer to convincing maryland authorities that he had been wrongly convicted i talked to anyone and everyone that i could the person in the visiting room that i didn't even know the guard that was walking me from there the dental technician in uh it's sick call the priest to come see me every week i wrote thousands of letters over the eight year period i just kept trying to get somebody to listen to me and it all it did was fall on deaf ears then several years later he learned of a new forensic technology where dna analysis was being used to convict criminals bloodsworth had an idea i thought well if it can implicate somebody and prove that they did do it it can also exonerate a person set them free dr ed blake of the forensic science associates lab in northern california agreed that recent advancements in dna technology could now offer bloodsworth hope that previously didn't exist at the time that don hamilton was murdered there there was no dna technology uh for all and intents and purposes it's not that that that the science didn't know about dna certainly generally science did know about dna it's just that the technology for um doing work in a forensic setting hadn't evolved to the point where uh that technology was was useful in a forensic setting fortunately for kirk bloodsworth things had changed since the mid-1980s examiners began looking into the case [Music] the only item that potentially held exonerating evidence was dawn's underwear found at the crime scene examiners however were confronted with two immediate problems first there was no guarantee that any genetic material remained on the garment secondly even if there was the evidence had been stored in a non-climate-controlled environment for nearly nine years making it likely that any dna samples would be too degraded to be useful but examiners were in luck a stain found on the fabric appeared to be a trace amount of biological evidence under a high-powered microscope examiners confirmed that they had found a viable sample one single gene strand was located in the past this minute sample would have been too small for testing but now scientists had a new technique referred to as pcr analysis the technique allows examiners to isolate a single gene strand containing dna material once isolated the dna is then copied millions of times over so that enough copies of a specific gene can be readily subjected to analysis you can think about dna like the letters in a book the letters in a book which are formed into sentences and the sentences are formed into paragraphs and the paragraphs and the chapters a book has a 26 letter code well dna has a four letter code the pcr process in effect searches the entire book of sentences to copy the one sentence that you're interested in looking at and then copying those over and over so the sentence is easier to read the procedure was successful after comparing the genetic profile of kirk bloodsworth to the one generated from the evidence dr blake concluded that bloodsworth could not have killed don hamilton the inmate was contacted with the news had tears running down my face and my hands were up in the air i went down to the tear in front of the cells screaming that it's over i remember throwing my hands up in the air like this and uh just totally elated these were kirk woodward's last second behind maryland's governor immediately pardoned bloodsworth [Music] on june 28 1993 after spending nearly nine years behind bars he was released from prison he was later awarded 300 thousand dollars in compensation though he returned home to the eastern shore the homecoming was bittersweet kirk's mother had not lived to see him a free man [Applause] my mom knew she knew her son she she knew anybody that she raised was not like that and i guess all moms think that way but she knew her son well knew me well well enough to know that i was innocent of what i was in there for for police in rosedale maryland as long as dawn hamilton's real killer remains at large the investigation into her murder will never be closed in maryland an innocent man was freed thanks to advanced forensic technology a convicted killer in southern california also claims to be paying the price for another man's crime around 2 a.m on september 30th 1979 kevin green returned to his tustin california apartment after leaving to pick up some fast food [Music] though he was only gone for half an hour clothes were now scattered around the residence on the couple's bed he found his pregnant wife diana unconscious she was bleeding badly green quickly called police police and emergency personnel raced to the scene diana was alive but in critical condition she'd been savagely beaten after stabilizing the victim paramedics rushed diana to the hospital there the 20-year-old expectant mother lapsed into a coma crime scene technicians began scouring the residence looking for any trace of the assailant that may have been left behind but no fingerprints or any stray hairs or fibers were found there was no indication that anything had been stolen from the apartment blood and trace amounts of what appeared to be biological evidence were recovered from the bed with the only witness to the assault in a coma police turned to her husband kevin green for answers the marine corps corporal told investigators that he and diana had friends over for drinks earlier that evening [Music] around 1 30 a.m shortly after the guests left kevin was hungry and decided to go out for some fast food there were several parties in the neighborhood kevin forgot to lock the door as he made his way to his car he noticed an african-american male walking aimlessly down the street he had never seen the man before but with all of the parties going on green thought nothing of it when he returned a half hour later he saw the same man climbing into a black van he didn't get a good look at the stranger's face after watching the van pull away green made his way inside kevin now believed that the stranger was involved in the assault on diana he added that his and diana's marriage was a good one to this day kevin green can't imagine why anyone would have attacked his wife there's no reason in my mind i can't think of any warnings i've heard or any reference to any any anything like this she doesn't have any enemies i don't have any enemies why would this happen what has happened at the crime lab technicians began trying to answer those questions biological evidence recovered from the victim's body and the bed confirmed diana greene had been sexually assaulted but in the days before dna profiling there was little investigators could do to tie this sample to a specific individual even if a suspect emerged and that wasn't the only obstacle facing investigators though the victim was still alive costa mesa homicide detective barbara geisler knew she would have to make her case without the eyewitness testimony of diana greene [Music] her injuries to her head was described to me by the doctors at the hospital as if she had fallen off a two-story building had head first and it was really a miracle that she survived and so she was suffered from lapse of memory i think some of your problems as soon as investigators began reviewing the details of diana green's assault something immediately caught their attention the mo was frighteningly similar to four unsolved rapes and murders that had occurred throughout orange county within the past nine months all the young female victims were found sexually assaulted and brutally beaten to death and in each homicide the killer apparently entered the victim's residences through unlocked doors nothing was taken from any of the apartments suggesting the perpetrator had not been motivated by robbery though diana was the only victim who was married and the only victim to have survived detectives were convinced the crimes were connected the apartment was downstairs she was home alone at the time of the incident she the apartment was did not appear to be ramsacked there didn't appear to be anything taken there was no theft or burglary involved she was sexually assaulted and also bludgeoned that's enough similarity certainly to get your attention though diana greene had miraculously survived an attack by a serial killer her unborn baby girl was barely clinging to life the day after the assault while still lingering in a coma the situation turned critical a nurse came in to do the next check on the baby she was listening to the baby's heartbeat and then she lost it and she kept looking for the heartbeat because she couldn't find it there wasn't any warning there wasn't any um anything anybody could do the baby's heartbeat stopped and by the time they realized that that's actually what had happened the baby hadn't just turned uh it was too late the serial killer who the press dubbed the bedroom basher had claimed another innocent life though publicity surrounding the murder of the unborn baby sent shockwaves through the community no solid leads were developed then eight days after diana greene was assaulted police were called to an apartment complex just three blocks from her residence there had been another homicide the body of 24 year old debra kennedy was discovered by her roommate the coroner at the scene concluded that the young woman had been sexually assaulted and bludgeoned to death in her first floor apartment police were able to collect biological evidence of rape but no other clues to the killer's identity were found tustin police lieutenant bill fisher was assigned the case it was clear to him that deborah kennedy and diana greene had both been victimized by the same predator we found that they were both in their early twenties they lived about a mile and a half apart from one another the attacks themselves were both very similar blows to the forehead with some kind of a blunt object and they had both been sexually assaulted [Music] there had now been six similar attacks in less than a year five women and an unborn baby were dead detectives had no leads and though diana had emerged from her coma the injuries to her brain were taking longer to heal than expected without her testimony identifying the bedroom basher would be difficult a month later after being released from the hospital diana was finally getting her memory back and she was anxious to meet with police though she had not regained her speech she was able to communicate the identity of her attacker you know the person responsible for the death of her baby was not a stranger it was her husband kevin green [Music] police in costa mesa and tustin california struggled to identify a suspect in a string of brutal sexual assaults that had claimed the lives of five women and one unborn child twenty-year-old diana greene who lost her baby as a result of a brutal beating by the suspected serial killer finally regained her memory of the attack and then filed an official statement with police detective barbara geisler reviewed diana's testimony diana claimed that her husband marine corps corporal kevin green was her assailant according to diana on the night she was assaulted she and kevin had a heated argument kevin wanted to have sex but diana then nine months pregnant refused his advances as a result kevin attacked her smashing her in the forehead with his keychain before raping her suddenly investigators had to consider that kevin green was also responsible for the other five unsolved homicides throughout orange county but after retracing his movements over the previous year it was clear that he could not be the bedroom basher however he could have staged the attack on his wife to make it look like the crime of the serial killer in fact the phrase that was coined at that time and i think is used today is that possibly the husband had committed the crime quote unquote as a look-alike keeping in mind all of the homicides that were occurring had been publicized greatly throughout the counties to confirm their suspicions police began interviewing the couple's friends and associates though kevin had told police his marriage to diana was solid one of the couple's neighbors said that the two would often have heated arguments that could be heard throughout the complex investigators next interviewed the couple that had spent time with kevin and diana just hours before the assault they described a tense relationship they recalled that just after diana learned she was pregnant kevin became abusive toward her during dinner one night he was convinced she would use the pregnancy to avoid being intimate with him the friends didn't think the marriage was a happy one convinced they were on the right track investigators brought kevin green in for questioning looking to corroborate diana's story investigators collected his keychain that he allegedly used to beat her with percy later analysis revealed no traces of blood but kevin green couldn't explain how or why his wife had memories of him attacking he her he had nothing to do with her assault he maintained that at the time of the attack he was across town getting fast food [Music] for lieutenant bill fisher of the tustin police department something about the suspect's alibi was suspicious one of the things that didn't make a whole lot of sense to us is that the fast food place he went to was an identical one to a fast food restaurant that was directly across the street from where he lived both restaurants were open 24 hours for drive-through purposes at the time of the crime yet he chose to bypass the one that was across the street and drive to the same type of establishment in the community next door looking to catch kevin green in a lie investigators interviewed the store employee who had worked the night he allegedly pulled into the drive-through the clerk confirmed kevin green's story she remembered serving him around 1 30 or 2 a.m on the night of the assault the information appeared to be a setback for investigators but when they factored the driving distance into a timeline of the evening police realized that kevin would have had just enough time to attack his wife and establish an alibi more importantly the suspect could not explain away the eyewitness testimony of his own wife she was so emphatic about the fact that it was kevin that attacked her we were unable to show anything different on november 30th 1980 the marine corps corporal was handed over to police and placed under arrest green maintained his innocence convinced that the real culprit was the stranger he had seen outside his apartment the night of the assault police felt otherwise they arrested me and threw me in jail on first degree murder attempted murder and two counts of assault with a deadly weapon with great bodily injury 250 000 bail and headlines for all the world to see marine arrested in the beating attack and death of his daughter kevin green mounted a strong defense at trial but diana's emotional testimony won over the jury he was convicted on all counts and sentenced to life in prison though green fought to overturn his conviction his efforts went unrewarded fifteen years into his sentence he had exhausted all of his appeals because he never showed remorse for the crimes that he insisted he hadn't committed kevin green was turned down for parole in 1988 1991 1993 and 1995. green resigned himself to the fact that he would die in prison a self-proclaimed innocent man 15 years into a life sentence for assaulting his pregnant wife and killing their unborn baby kevin green continued to maintain his innocence but with all of his appeals exhausted his only hope for justice was that the real culprit who green believed to be the serial killer known as the bedroom basher would someday be caught but tustin and costa mesa police had been unable to identify a suspect in the five unsolved 1979 homicides the investigations into those murders had ground to a halt but in the summer of 1995 tustin police detective tom tarpley learned of a new national database called codis the combined dna identification index that had the potential to re-energize those investigations we were instructed that a database existed in which you could take evidence from unsolved cases develop a genetic profile from that evidence and then that evidence would be put into a computer which is maintained by the state of california that holds genetic profiles of known offenders people who are in prison or have been convicted of certain serious crimes so you could take the two genetic profiles and see if there was a match between the unsolved case and the known offender detective tarpley requested the case files for any of the unsolved serial murders that contained potential dna evidence lieutenant bill fisher who had also worked the case against kevin green had one he turned over the file of 24 year old deborah kennedy who was bludgeoned to death within days of the assault on diana greene when lieutenant fisher brought me the deborah kennedy case file i went through that file looking at the physical evidence and it appeared that there was a rape kit that was taken at the time of her discovery hoping to close one of the unsolved bedroom basher murders detectives retrieved the sexual assault kit and sent it to the orange county sheriff's crime lab for analysis [Music] but now more than 16 years since the specimen was collected criminalist frank fitzpatrick wasn't sure if the old sample would be of any use the problem was that the sexual assault kit had not been refrigerated had not been frozen and we really had no idea of what kind of shape this biological evidence was going to be in we asked one of our dna analysts to work through the night and to see what they could do with with trying to extract some dna from this technicians were in luck trace amounts of genetic material were extracted from a clipping of debra kennedy's bed sheets using the pcr technique the dna was then copied so that criminalists would have enough material to test the analysis produced a genetic profile of debra kennedy's killer when investigators entered the profile into the codis database they found an identical match the biological evidence had originated from a man who was currently serving time for rape in a central california prison investigators went to the jail to question 40-year-old gerald parker now linked to one of the bedroom basher murders though he was indirect and evasive parker implied that he was responsible for the kennedy murder he did not for example come out and say i did this he just would not say that i didn't do this which sometimes is just as good as an admission so it was it was kind of a game of cat and mouse at that point investigators persisted and finally parker admitted to killing deborah kennedy [Music] and there was another attack he wanted to talk about [Music] gerald parker a former marine claimed that he was the man who had assaulted diana greene back in 1979 her husband kevin green was innocent parker said that on september 30th 1979 he slipped into the greens apartment after seeing kevin get into his car and leave using a 2x4 he attacked diana as she slept in her bed he then sexually assaulted her and made his way out of the apartment he completed his brutal attack in less than half an hour and left the apartment just as kevin returned home though police were unable to explain diana's memory of the assault they were now confronted with the possibility that kevin green may have been innocent after all my feeling was we've got a big problem here you know we've got a guy that is in prison locked up for a number of years for murder that he didn't commit but it became our job to show that parker was in fact the real killer and that's what that's where the human element came in we had to get that information from him that could ultimately set kevin green free if in fact he wasn't the offender and the best way to do that was through the physical evidence the biological samples recovered from the diana green case and samples from all of the unsolved bedroom basher murders were sent out for a dna analysis at the orange county sheriff's crime lab examiners generated a genetic profile of all of the samples they all shared the same genetic code and they had all originated from gerald parker the findings were passed on to investigators so now we had conclusive physical evidence as well as testimonial evidence that gerald parker was there and that he raped diana greene that then created a reasonable doubt in all of our minds in law enforcement that we could not stand by the conviction of kevin green anymore and the process that began to free him on june 20th 1996 after being locked up for nearly 17 years kevin green was released from prison after being driven to the airport by detectives he made his first phone call as a free man i called my dad and i asked him if he get you know guess where i'm at and he'd always thought i would try to escape so he says well i know where you're supposed to be i told them i'm in the salinas airport and they're taking me down to orange county to let me go i'm coming home and we you know just stunned silence there for a minute and he says do you have handcuffs on he said nope so he believed at that moment that something you know a convicted murderer is not leaving a prison without handcuffs unless he ain't coming back in 1998 gerald parker was tried and convicted of the assault on diana greene and the murder of her unborn child he was also found guilty of slaying the other five bedroom basher victims gerald parker was sentenced to death my opinion the dna database is that it's probably the single greatest thing to ever happen to law enforcement and into the criminal justice system not only can you convict people of crimes that would have gotten away with serious crimes such as rape and murder but you can also as we see in the kevin green case free people that were erroneously convicted kevin green returned to his hometown in the midwest and though he has remarried and gotten on with his life this experience will always be with him an experience like this like any other experience in life is going to change you time went by i changed in a lot of ways i grew up i became more mature i got a good education which is very important i learned how to read a lot better i mean i graduated high school by the skin of my teeth i graduated college in prison with an a average so it wasn't my lack of intelligence it was my lack of focus i understand i think a lot more about life i'm willing to accept a lot about a lot of things easier than people around me do because i feel like god has a plan and a reason for things to happen in certain ways the experiences of people like kirk bloodsworth and kevin green have not gone unnoticed on february 11 2000 vermont senator patrick leahy chairman of the senate judiciary committee introduced the innocence protection act a bill designed to ensure that no more innocent people are convicted of crimes they didn't commit if you're going to say you're going to put somebody behind buyers for all their life or you're going to execute them that's a pretty major step for society to take and you better be sure you're convicting somebody who is guilty right now we have a system we can't say that right now you have a system where a lot of innocent people get convicted it doesn't have to be that way it's relatively easy to make sure that doesn't happen it's time we make sure it doesn't happen homicide investigators must often rely on circumstantial evidence to win a conviction but sometimes things aren't what they appear to be with advanced forensic technology science can render the final verdict and find justice for the falsely accused by uncovering proof of innocence

Channel: Real Responders

Views: 149,109

Keywords: police documentary, the new detectives, forensic science, investigation, detectives, police investigation, cold cases, criminals, crimes, true detectives, sherlock holmes, real crimes, real detectives, private detective, the new detectives 2020, the new detectives full episodes, the new detectives 2021, the new detectives new episodes, the new detectives serial killers, the new detectives real responders

Id: G2tgv3EjczE

Length: 50min 34sec (3034 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 07 2021