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Routier trial expert cast doubts on own abilities

Prosecutors say forensic analyst competent; defense questions credibility of testimony

05/10/2000

By Holly Becka and Howard Swindle / © 2000, The Dallas Morning News

Two years after providing the scientific evidence that helped send accused child killer Darlie Routier to death row, a Dallas forensic expert questioned his abilities in areas in which he testified, records show.

A series of memos attached to a job grievance filed last year against the Southwestern Institute of Forensic Sciences shows that Charles Linch questioned his qualifications in hair and fiber analysis and blood-spatter interpretation - all areas in which he testified against Ms. Routier, who was accused of fatally stabbing sons Devon and Damon in 1996.

Ms. Routier's attorneys said the memos, along with Mr. Linch's psychiatric treatment in 1994 for drinking and depression, raise significant questions about the credibility of his findings.

Those questions, they said, could become pivotal should Ms. Routier win the new trial she is seeking and could affect several other high-profile cases in which the forensic expert has testified.

Mr. Linch "provided the single most critical evidence against Darlie because it went to the heart of the defense that there was an intruder," said Stephen Cooper of Dallas, one of Ms. Routier's appellate attorneys. "Hidden evidence that would attack a critical witness's credibility ought to be a basis" for appeal motions.

It was Mr. Linch's discovery of a microscopic fiberglass rod on a kitchen knife that prosecutors used to refute Ms. Routier's claims that an intruder cut through a screen, killed two of her sons and wounded her.

Mr. Linch also testified extensively in Ms. Routier's bond hearing about blood spatters found at her home. At trial, he testified about those blood droplets only on cross-examination by defense attorneys.

He said he made his original findings available to another expert, Tom Bevel, who testified as the state's primary blood-spatter expert.

Facing critics

Mr. Linch, 46, who works exclusively as a microscopic hair analyst for Virginia's Division of Forensic Science, discounts criticism of his forensic work while in Dallas.

He said he refused to take proficiency tests in hair and fiber analysis and blood-spatter interpretation to lighten his workload at SWIFS.

"Mitochondrial DNA implementation is a full-time job for two people," said Mr. Linch, who was working to set up SWIFS' mitochondrial DNA lab for specialized DNA testing of hair. "That was all I really cared about, and my 'declines' to take tests were an attempt to reduce distractions."

Dr. Jeffrey Barnard, Dallas County's chief medical examiner and director of the county-financed forensic lab, defended Mr. Linch's expertise, saying, "He's as good as there is at what he does."

He said Mr. Linch's complaints about his lack of scientific training were nothing more than a grievance with his direct supervisor.

Mr. Linch "was completely capable in analytical expertise and never voiced any complaint about his training or skill level until he had a problem with his supervisor," Dr. Barnard said.

Mr. Linch said SWIFS "was sending everyone except me to schools."

"There was a clear SWIFS mission for me to teach all the new, inexperienced people all I knew before they ran me off," the forensic analyst said.

Mr. Linch was no stranger to Dallas-area courtrooms, where his scientific findings were instrumental in the capital-murder convictions of Ms. Routier; Jason Massey, a mutilation-killer; Kenneth McDuff, a serial killer; and Michael Blair, who is on death row for the abduction and slaying of a child.

In early 1998, according to memos from the grievance proceeding, Mr. Linch was briefly suspended from performing hair and fiber analyses after he refused to take, then passed, the proficiency tests. However, supervisors permanently barred him from blood-spatter analysis, according to records and interviews.

"His statements in writing weren't representative of his skill level," Dr. Barnard said. "But once he had given statements like that, we were forced to address them."

Mr. Linch, who said he has written at least five scientific papers on hair analysis for forensic journals, said he has attended schools in hair and fiber analysis and blood spatters.

But Mr. Linch's resume shows that he received training in hair, fiber and serology, or the identification of body fluids, which other forensic scientists say isn't the same as blood-spatter analysis. Blood-spatter analysis is the interpretation of blood droplets and stains, which may help investigators determine how violent crimes occurred.

"Blood spatter is not rocket science," he said. "I took a class in it at the FBI in 1988 and used that foundation in making observations at numerous crime scenes and on clothing articles. I have done extensive experimentation with blood samples on my own.

"There is no scientific interest there for me. It is mainly a common-sense determination."

Dr. Barnard said the Dallas County crime lab addressed Mr. Linch's written complaints about hair and fiber issues by ordering Mr. Linch to take those proficiency tests with no new training.

The FBI hair and fiber academy Mr. Linch had attended in 1988, Dr. Barnard said, remains the "gold standard" for a trace analyst's training.

Therefore, he said, SWIFS found it unnecessary to recheck Mr. Linch's work or notify police or prosecutors about the memos in which he questioned his training or his refusal to take proficiency tests.

Crime-lab officials, Ms. Routier's attorneys said, had a legal obligation to ensure the quality of Mr. Linch's analyses in light of the memos and notify prosecutors who sponsored his expert testimony.

"It goes to the credibility of that witness," Mr. Cooper said. "And it appears to me information that was known by agents of the state was deliberately withheld."

John Dahill, a civil attorney from the Dallas County prosecutor's office who advised Dr. Barnard during his interview with The Dallas Morning News, said internal memos written by Mr. Linch and his supervisors could be misinterpreted. The proper context, Mr. Dahill said, is that of an angry employee at war with his boss.

But records and interviews show that Mr. Linch never took a proficiency test in blood spatters and that, shortly thereafter, supervisors substituted another analyst to testify in a pending trial.

"We had people who had specific training at that time," Dr. Barnard said. "It was his supervisor's determination" to take Mr. Linch off blood-spatter work.

Concerns noted

Robert Poole, chief of the physical-evidence section, notified Dr. Barnard on Aug. 6, 1999, that though Mr. Linch refused to take the blood-spatter test, "he had been called upon on numerous occasions to interpret blood spatter at violent scenes."

"Despite his having testified as an expert on blood spatter, he alleged that his lack of formal training in this sub-specialty should preclude him from taking the test," Mr. Poole wrote. "I might point out that formal training was conducted here in the institute and Mr. Linch did not participate."

According to Mr. Linch, he testified only twice about blood spatters - the first time was during Ms. Routier's bond hearing.

Toby Shook, a Dallas County prosecutor in Ms. Routier's case, conceded that Mr. Linch's memos could harm the forensic analyst, depending on the situation.

"I don't have any personal knowledge of what was going on out there, but from an observer's standpoint, it sounds like interoffice fighting or bitterness on his part rather than him actually trying to claim, 'I don't know what I'm doing.' "

Longview attorney Steven Losch, who also represents Ms. Routier in her appeal, and Mr. Cooper disagree, saying jurors in a retrial would deserve to hear about the memos.

"If there was one or even two memos of this tone, then that explanation may be more credible," Mr. Cooper said. "The point being, 12 persons sitting in a jury box listening to this expert should be entitled to see those kinds of memos to let them judge whether he's a disgruntled employee or telling the truth. I think those memos show something more than a disgruntled employee."

More pressures

In an interview last month, Mr. Linch acknowledged that he had been upset about his pay and workload at SWIFS, where he estimated his backlog was 130 cases.

He also challenged his former supervisor's scientific background and that supervisor's grasp of Mr. Linch's expertise in forensics.

He said the supervisor regarded his memos as "an insurrection to the general."

After he refused to take the fiber test, Mr. Linch said, SWIFS sent him to a fiber course that he said had nothing to do with his work; Dr. Barnard said that's because the course covered new technology.

Mr. Linch said he was embittered and felt more pressure after his treatment for depression and drinking, which occurred after he threatened to resign from SWIFS in 1994.

After first agreeing to seek treatment at Methodist Medical Center at his supervisors' request, he said he later was handcuffed and involuntarily committed at Doctors Hospital for about two weeks - a scenario he said was "unnecessary and humiliating."

Twice during that time - and while he was taking prescribed anti-depressants - he was released from the hospital to testify in capital-murder trials in Texas and Arkansas.

Mr. Linch said SWIFS' image and income were more important to lab officials than his welfare. Dr. Barnard called the intervention a voluntary, "humanitarian event."

Brenda Franklin, a licensed vocational nurse undergoing treatment for depression at Doctors Hospital who befriended Mr. Linch, recalled his anger at his SWIFS supervisors and his concession that he needed to control his drinking.

She said he explained to her that he'd come home and drink until he passed out to deal with the violence he saw daily.

"He'd seen such horrible things that you couldn't even imagine, and he couldn't sleep at night for it," Ms. Franklin said.

She said he told her that cases involving children were especially painful. That's why Ms. Franklin said she was shocked when she learned that Mr. Linch, who has two young sons, volunteered to work on the Routier case.

"There's no way that he could work on something like that and not totally go off the deep end," she said.

Mr. Linch said that he stopped drinking after his hospitalization in February 1994 "until after the Routier trial" and that he now takes no medicine for depression.

During the interview, Mr. Linch did not distinguish between the deaths of adults and children. He said it was unsettling when he saw that the Routier boys were wearing Power Ranger underwear.

"That's what my little guys wear," he recalled.

Although Mr. Linch expressed confidence in his work while in Dallas, he said he is more comfortable in his role in Virginia, primarily because he's concentrating solely on microscopic hair analysis instead of juggling a spate of forensic responsibilities.

Mr. Linch said he was required to take a series of hair proficiency tests and participate in a mock trial before the Virginia state lab would hire or certify him, which he called a testament to the lab's demand for excellence.

"You think Virginia would let me testify on blood spatter?" Mr. Linch asked. "I don't think so."

The Virginia lab is nationally certified by the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors' Accreditation Board, which requires analysts to pass exams in their fields of specialty.

In Texas, SWIFS is one of the few major metropolitan crime labs without accreditation. Dr. Barnard said the proficiency exams Mr. Linch balked at taking are among the prerequisites for forensic analysts when SWIFS seeks accreditation in 2001.

Mr. Linch said he would refuse to testify about blood evidence should Ms. Routier win a new trial.

"If there's a retrial, the word 'blood' won't come out of my mouth," he said.

Greg Davis, lead prosecutor in the Routier case, said Mr. Bevel, a nationally known expert from Oklahoma, testified about blood spatters during Ms. Routier's trial in Kerrville, where jurors sentenced her to death in the fatal stabbing of 5-year-old Damon.

Ms. Routier and her relatives insist an intruder killed her sons and attacked her while her husband, Darin, and youngest son, Drake, were asleep upstairs.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in Austin must soon decide whether a reconstructed transcript should replace the flawed original transcript for use in Ms. Routier's appeal. If not, she could receive a new trial.

"If the case had to be retried, I wouldn't be asking him to testify about blood or blood spatter," Mr. Davis said of Mr. Linch. "I'd go with the same expert I used the first time. I'd call Tom Bevel again, and I'd ask Charlie to express the same opinions he did about the fiber on the bread knife, about any hair comparisons, and I'd let Bevel take care of the blood like he did the first time around."

Although he was not the state's primary expert on blood-spatter evidence at trial, Mr. Linch said he did much of the "blood work" in Ms. Routier's case.

In what he described as an embarrassing meeting before the trial, Mr. Linch said Mr. Davis instructed him to recount for Mr. Bevel how Mr. Linch had taken samples and reached his conclusions about blood in the Routier home.

Mr. Linch quoted Mr. Davis as saying that Mr. Bevel would testify about blood spatters because "Bevel had a book." Mr. Linch termed Mr. Bevel his "trainee."

Mr. Bevel, a retired Oklahoma City homicide investigator and consultant, has several certificates in blood-pattern analysis and crime-scene reconstruction, records show. His book on bloodstain analysis was just being published when he testified in the Routier case.

Mr. Davis said that he didn't recall the exchange with Mr. Linch and that, to his recollection, Mr. Linch suggested Mr. Bevel's involvement. He said Mr. Bevel did further tests and analyses.

"If I had that conversation with him, it must have been late in the ballgame," Mr. Davis said. "But my theory has always been, I don't want to take an expert anywhere he might be uncomfortable. I don't want anyone ever venturing out onto a limb."

Asked whether Mr. Linch had suggested that he was uncomfortable about his expertise in blood spatters, Mr. Davis said no.

Although Mr. Bevel testified more extensively about blood spatters than Mr. Linch, Ms. Routier's attorneys note that Mr. Linch was asked about blood spatters during cross-examination and that other experts' work was based in part on Mr. Linch's opinions and evidence collection.

"Charlie's opinions about the . . . blood drops on the floor are more important than Bevel's because he saw fresh blood on the floor at the crime scene . . .," said Mr. Losch, one of Ms. Routier's two appellate lawyers. "[Mr. Bevel] had to work from photographs that were poorly done. Bevel looked at the crime scene when the blood had turned to dust."

Key testimony

Mr. Linch's scientific findings and testimony served as bookends for Dallas County prosecutors in the Routier case.

During an August 1996 bond hearing, for example, Mr. Linch testified that a hair microscopically similar to Ms. Routier's was found in the window where she said an intruder entered. DNA testing later determined the hair to be that of a female Rowlett police officer.

Mr. Linch said it was he who referred that hair for DNA analysis, which "excluded it as evidence."

"Real simple," he said. "Hair and fiber had nothing to do with the Routier case."

But before the DNA analysis, Mr. Linch's testimony that the hair matched Ms. Routier's was used in a bond hearing in which she was denied a lower bail and forced to remain in jail.

Mr. Linch testified in the same hearing that blood spatters he observed in the Routier home were inconsistent with her account and that the crime scene appeared to have been staged or altered.

At the close of Ms. Routier's case, Mr. Linch also provided key testimony - linking rubbery dust residue and a microscopic fiberglass rod to a bread knife in the Routier knife rack.

Later at trial, Mr. Linch testified that the knife could have cut the screen, and prosecutors used that testimony to bolster their theory that an intruder would have had to enter the home, take the knife, go outside to slash the screen, and then re-enter the home to kill the boys and wound Ms. Routier.

Although the Routier case was the first in which Mr. Linch testified about blood spatters, according to records, he expressed reservations about his qualifications about a year later when his testimony exonerated a Lancaster murder defendant he thought was guilty.

"I testified twice in blood spatter, once in the Routier case," Mr. Linch told the grievance panel. "The second time was the Lancaster homicide where I basically walked a killer because I gave testimony that showed that the state's star witness was lying.

"I was self-taught in blood spatter. After that experience, I didn't feel like I had the background to be testifying in blood spatter. I explained this to [two supervisors]."

Mr. Cooper and Mr. Losch said the memos about Mr. Linch's fiber analysis and Mr. Linch's ban from blood-spatter work taint all his work in Ms. Routier's case.

"They say he's proved he's qualified, [but] I don't accept their mere statement of it," Mr. Cooper said. "Their conduct and their explanation is questionable and deserves further exploration. . . .

"He says himself he's not a blood-spatter expert. If he's willing to sit on the witness stand and swear under oath to an expert opinion that he is not qualified to give, I think that shows a bias and prejudice and favor of the prosecution that would extend over into trial itself."

Strong support

Mr. Davis and Mr. Shook, the prosecutors, said they don't think Mr. Linch overstepped his expertise in the Routier case or any other. They said that Mr. Linch provided only elementary blood-spatter testimony at Ms. Routier's bond hearing and that he didn't testify about it at trial when jurors found her guilty.

For example, bond-hearing records show that Mr. Linch testified that blood droplets were inconsistent with Ms. Routier's chasing an intruder or pacing back and forth. The bloodiest footprints, he said, led from the kitchen sink where police say Ms. Routier slashed herself rather than from the couch, where Ms. Routier said she was attacked.

Mr. Linch also said there was no blood consistent with Ms. Routier's account that she picked up a bloody knife from the utility-room floor.

"That would be pretty elemental stuff," Mr. Davis said. "I mean, the shape of a blood drop on a floor I would consider to be pretty elementary to blood-spatter analysis. Footprints left in blood . . . it doesn't really require any analysis."

Prosecutors and Dr. Barnard also say Mr. Linch's expertise about blood spatters comes from his previous role as a medical examiner's field agent in which he viewed hundreds of crime scenes.

"His background, although he had no course work, does not preclude him from coming up with evaluations and analyses," Dr. Barnard said. "At no time was there any reason a defense attorney could not challenge him or find an expert to challenge him. They always had that check and balance available."

Dallas prosecutors and SWIFS officials also insist Mr. Linch never demonstrated a pro-prosecution bias, noting that he sometimes did forensic work for defense attorneys.

"He doesn't call and say, 'Who are you trying? OK, I'm going to do the evidence that way,' " Mr. Shook said. "He just calls and says, 'Our test shows this.' "

Mr. Linch said he has been retained as a defense expert by lawyers in seven states. He also said the work he is most proud of came in an appeal in which he and other forensic experts provided evidence that freed a Sulphur Springs, Texas, couple wrongfully convicted of killing their daughter.

"It sure as hell is better than sending someone to death row off a hair - or even a fiber," Mr. Linch said.

Bias alleged

Ms. Routier's attorneys note, however, that when Mr. Linch complains in internal memos about his salary not reflecting his successes, the cases he lists are prosecution victories.

"I'm not alleging . . . that Charlie Linch is one of these guys who wants to get the bad guys so he'll make biased findings," Mr. Losch said. "I think the bias arises from the fact he's underappreciated, underpaid, wants more recognition - and the way you gain that is by giving prosecutors the results they want."

Mr. Dahill, as well as Ms. Routier's prosecutors, said the check and balance to an expert's testimony is the judge who allows him to testify and the defense attorney who raises objections.

"These are life-and-death cases in which defense attorneys have a vested interest to prove our guys wrong," Mr. Dahill said. "You don't have to pass proficiency tests to be an expert."

But Mr. Cooper said prosecutors have a duty under the law to ensure that an expert witness is qualified before sponsoring that testimony.

"It should not be solely dependent on a judge or an attorney to figure out that a game is being played on them," Mr. Cooper said. "The logical extrapolation of that argument is they can call anybody they want if they can get away with it. I think that kind of explanation displays a degree of arrogance and callousness."