ACCURATE INFORMATION IS CRUCIAL FOR MAKING ACCURATE DECISIONS

…The forensic specialist, Dr. Judy Melinek

Whether voting for a politician, or being on a jury in a criminal trial, accurate inputs are crucial.

As I was finishing an article about how Fox News’ talking-head, Megyn Kelly told a bare-faced lie on Fox News about a false voter-fraud issue in Colorado, I came across another case where a major US city newspaper organization totally screwed up a major national news report. 

The article was in regard to the controversial, leaked, autopsy report on the shooting and killing of the unarmed African-American teenager, Michael Brown, by the Ferguson, Missouri Police Officer, Darren Wilson.

The article was in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper and the misleading article was subsequently picked up by many other major US newspapers, TV stations, web sites, and yes, other Blogs.

The issue with the article is that the Post-Dispatch had asked the California forensics expert, Dr. Judy Melinek to review and comment on the leaked autopsy report, which she had agreed to do. 

The problem is that the article doesn’t state what the forensic expert had actually reported to the Post-Dispatch reporter.

First, let’s look at just who is this forensics expert is from California?

Dr. Judy Melinek is a California forensics expert who is frequently called upon as a consultant to interpret autopsy results. She had been an expert medical examiner, and has written an extensive book about her experiences. What is so disturbing is that the article attributed so many quotes to the expert, but she says the article was offering paraphrases and interpretations, some totally incorrect, not her actual quotes.

The differences between what she actually said, and what was published, were so starkly different, that Dr. Melinek then went on Lawrence O'Donnell ‘s nightly news show on MSNBC to refute many of the statements in the Post-Dispatch article.  The article written by the newspaper's reporters, Christine Byers and Blythe Bernhard.

To start with, the headline of the article stated that the autopsy confirmed that Michael Brown was "going for his (Wilson's) gun."   But that’s not what the expert had said.  She told Lawrence O'Donnell on his show that it was just as likely that Brown was trying to defend himself from being shot, not going after the gun.

The Post-Dispatch quotes the expert as saying that Michael Brown's was not in surrender posture when he was shot. However, the Doctor actually wrote that she can't say with reasonable certainty that his hands were "up or down" when he was shot in the right forearm.

Dr. Melinek also told O'Donnell that she was originally only asked if the autopsy report was consistent with Darren Wilson's version of events. She was not asked if it fit any of the other scenarios where eyewitness accounts differed from Officer Wilson's account.

In reading the article, you cannot tell whether the article is highly biased, or if items were purposely left out of the article or if the whole thing was just made up in the reporter’s heads.

As an example, even though the expert says she didn’t say that Mr. Brown was going for the gun, according to the Post-Dispatch article, “Dr. Judy Melinek, a forensic pathologist in San Francisco, said the autopsy supports the fact that this guy is reaching for the gun, if he has gunpowder particulate material in the wound.” The article say the expert added, “If he has his hand near the gun when it goes off, he’s going for the officer’s gun.”

Per Dr. Melinek, “ If he has his hand near the gun when it goes off, it means ... his hand was near the gun when it went off. We don't know why or how his hand got there. It's just as likely that he was trying to block the gun because he was afraid that Darren Wilson was about to kill him.”

Dr. Melinek says there was no way she would have made the statement as the article says.

Here's what Dr. Melinek actually had to say about Brown’s forearm wound: “You can't say within reasonable certainty that his hands were up based on the autopsy findings alone. The back to front and upward trajectory of the right forearm wound could occur in multiple orientations and a trajectory reconstruction would need to be done using the witness statements, casings, height of the weapon and other evidence from the scene, which have yet to be released.”

No one disagrees that shots were fired when Michael Brown was facing Darren Wilson.  All but one of the gunshots, Melinek said, seem to have struck Brown in the front of his body, which is consistent with witnesses who said Brown had been facing Wilson when he was shot. Depending on any witnesses physical proximity to the shooting, Brown could have been turning to Wilson in surrender, stumbling toward him after being shot or even charging him. Any of these cases were possible.

However, the shot to the back of Brown’s upper arm, Melinek said, suggested he could have been shot from behind.

As I had said, the real issue is that the article has been picked up by so many reputable outlets.  Now, how many of them are going to print corrections, and how many corrections would be read by those that read the first inaccurate article?

As with Fox News, this is another reason why it is so important that the American public receive the most complete and accurate information possible.  Democracies cannot exist if those that are going into the voting booths, or that are serving on criminal or Grand Juries, don’t have accurate information for making good decisions.

Yes, it’s all that very important.

Copyright G.Ater  2014