Oklahoma Criminal Defense Blog

A recent study has put some values on the criminal justice system in Oklahoma.  The system is expensive and not very effective, consultants from the nonprofit Council of State Governments’ Justice System have urged in their preliminary report.

House of Representatives Speaker Kris Steele has moderated a presentation in three cities to date, Lawton, Enid and, most recently, Muskogee.  The study is based on what it says is the data, and is aimed to reduce state spending in corrections so the savings can be reinvested in new ways to decrease crime and strengthen neighborhoods.  The presentation is being made by a team of experts who are part of the Council’s Reinvestment program and claims to have helped a dozen states, including Kansas and Texas, redesign their corrections systems.

Speaker Steele remarked that Oklahoma has increased spending on corrections by 41 percent, yet violent crime has remained unchanged.  He said, “at least 36 other states have seen decreases in violent crime during this same period.”

The project director of the Reinvestment program, Marshall Clement, said his team had focused on the major areas: Oklahoma has crime rates that are unchanged or are rising, unlike the rates in the national trends; a high percentage of inmates in Oklahoma are being released without supervision; and the incarceration population in Oklahoma is increasing at a rate that is unsustainable.  The rates for murder over the last decade has declined 13 percent nationally, yet has remained unchanged in Oklahoma.  During the same period, the rates for robberies has declined 18 percent nationally while increasing at the rate of 15 percent in Oklahoma.
What has caused these results?   A tight cause and effect is hard to show in all cases of population behavior.  Clement opined that perhaps the decline was influenced by the decline in the number of police per capita, at least in Tulsa and Oklahoma City.  He noted that the police force in Norman had increased by 18 percent with adjustment for population increase while witnessing a 48 percent decrease in violent crime.  Of course, the only certainty from much of this statistic-quoting is a headache. George Berkeley reminds us that finding effect from cause can be nothing but speculation.

One of the interest the program pointed out does merit looking at.  Many inmates prefer to serve a little more of their sentences before obtaining full release from their sentence rather than getting out earlier under parole and all the supervision requirement of parole.  The federal system requires supervision under “supervised release” after every completion of every sentence.  You would expect their recidivism rates to be better, just from that.   But the federal system seems to have an inexhaustible supply of money to fund their programs.  And one of the objections made by Oklahoma inmates to accepting to the supervision of parole, so it is reported, is the cost of supervision.  That is understandable because the $100 per month charge for this and other such charges can add up for someone who is barely earning enough to pay his expenses and the court costs that are still waiting to be paid.

The federal probation officers actively and successfully assist in getting their charges jobs and charge fees according to the income that inmate is earning.  That system is designed for the inmate to succeed, unlike the state system that tends to dump a pile of rules and regulations on a few overworked parole officers who can barely keep up, much less help their parolees meet the extra challenges of re-entering society, given all the challenges they face.

Inescapable in the discussion of exploding prison populations was the issue of 85 percent rule that requires those sentenced for certain crimes to serve 85 percent of their sentence.  Oklahoma is going to need an additional 3,000 beds in the next few years, just to hold the increase in inmates that results from the 85 percent rule.

Crime Scene Investigation is the premise for several television shows.  Known as “CSI, ” the various shows take place in different cities with a different cast for each.  Prosecutors have noticed that some of the half-assed cases they have presented at trial have been found lacking by jurors who later referred to case presented in the courtroom to their experiences watching “CSI.” Naturally, such prosecutors resented any fault-finding, so they have blamed the jurors, said the jurors expected “too much.”

Prosecutors usually pay lip service to the legal standard required for their cases, the well-known burden of persuasion articulated as “beyond a reasonable doubt.”   But they really do not want to be held to that standard because it really is a high standard.  What they want is to give the jury as much evidence as they can get and fill in the blanks with argument and the opinions of police officers posing as experts derived from the police training schools geered to a maximum level of high school.  There may or may not be enough to prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt in a given case, but prosecutors always use emotion to carry them to the line or over the line when things get close.   When the jury doesn’t buy it, it’s time to blame the jury.

Now some prosecutors actually question veniremen during voir dire to qualify them as trial jurors, asking them what their expectations are in the way of evidence.  Of course, these prosecutors would never admit that the news and entertainment media are full-time tools for the prosecution.  Look at all the crime featured at every news cast on every television station.  Look at all the reality  “cop shows,” where the suspect is followed in a death-defying chase, wrestled to the ground, hand-cuffed, all in full view of the camera, and then led away to a voice-over says, “every suspect is presumed innocent.”   This makes a joke of  the instructions of law that viewer later receives when he takes his seat as a juror because it has been told repeatedly by the television that “this is just a formality, but you really know he is guilty as sin.”  So much for beginning with the presumption of innocence.   Thus has television for decades inculcated every viewer into believing crime is everywhere, criminals need to be punished even if the technicalities and courtroom niceties cannot always be complied with.  It has brought the average citizen along to be a bad-guy-getting cohort of the prosecution rather than a guardian of the system of justice.   Jurors thus cannot imagine themselves threatened by a justice system with a lowered burden of proof.

So now prosecutors don’t think they’re getting a fair shake from jurors who may hold their feet to the fire by demanding a thoroughly investigated case rather than a superficial one?  This is sour grapes from people who have had it their way for way too long.  If jurors had required more thorough evidence in all those death cases in Dallas, the prosecution would not have wrongfully convicted so many to send them to death row.

Only now with DNA evidence can the factually innocent person prove he is truly innocent.  It is sad to think how many years sloppy evidence has been putting people to death in the American justice system.   That’s what happens when a district attorney is in office too long and the average person thinks the number one thing to do is fight crime – not decide justice.  And prosecutors complain jurors are making them actually prove their case with the scientific tools available?   And prosecutors only rejoinder is that it is too much trouble for them, and, besides, why don’t the jurors just take their word for it?  That’s why we have judges and criminal defense lawyers, to keep the system honest.

There have been studies of this claimed “CSI effect.”  The New England Law Review in 2007 published the results of the study by Simon Cole and Rachel Dioso-Villa, entitled “CSI and Its Effects: Media Juries and the Burden of Proof.”  Their conclusions were that this claimed effect did not exist except in the minds of prosecutors who lost cases along with some stories in the press that were generated from prosecutors.

Another study was done by Eastern Michigan University criminologists.  They found the  “CSI effect” had no independent effect on jurors’ verdicts, although they did find that jurors who watched CSI were generally more interested in issues surrounding criminal justice and the law.

Maybe CSI should start showing the police routinely leaking stories before trials to help poison the jury pool with the prosecution’s version of the facts, the way they did with the French diplomat, Dominique Strauss-Kahn.   Then they could show how the police case collapsed, and how all this illustrated the extreme nature of the press assassination that had taken place upon the accused before a trial could even begin.  That would be realistic, but it would be outside the story line.  Given its viewership and the proliferation of shows in different cities, the CSI script appears to be successful as it is.

Staff disciplinary actions by the Department of Corrections give some insight into the culture and people at the Department of Corrections and at least one of the prisons in Oklahoma.  Department spokesmen say in deciding the penalties, they consider various factors to arrive at an appropriate punishment, including obviously the nature of the violation in question and disciplinary actions in the past.

Mabel Bassett in McLoud is one of three correctional facilities for women in Oklahoma. Opened in 1998, it is a maximum security facility.  Of three of the employees of the facility who were disciplined, the nature of the violation, the type of discipline exacted, and, for two of them, the response of the employee to that discipline, offers light on the kind of employees who work there and what kind of organization they work for.

Some of the employees found good in their having been disciplined, that is, in learning a lesson.   Corporal David Juber was suspended for two days without pay in January, 2009.  His offense was accepting three to four letters “of a sexual nature” from an inmate and then not informing supervisors of the letters.  Juber stopped accepting the letters and told officers he was having marital problems at the time and explained that he liked the attention he got in the letters.  In response to the Department’s discipline, Juber wrote, “I know what I did was wrong. This type of action will never happen again. “ And, so far as we know, it did not.  But in February, 2010, CPL Juber received a four-day suspension, this time for breaking the rules on the use of tobacco, to wit, by taking chewing tobacco from a bathroom hiding place.

Crime declined last year to the lowest rate in 40 years.  The findings reported by the F.B.I. has baffled experts for a number of reasons.  This drop in crime continues declines in previous years, and that continuation of decline also baffles the experts.

The statistics, reported to the F.B.I. from 13,000 local law-enforcement agencies, show that in small towns with populations under 10,000. the number of murders declined more than 25 percent from the year before.  Nationally, violent crimes declined by 5.5 percent from the previous year, and that previous year (2010) had also witnessed about a 5.5 percent decline from the year 2009.  Nationally, murder declined while property crimes, including larceny, burglary, car theft, and arson, dropped only 2.4 percent last year, following a drop of 4.6 percent drop the year before.  Last year in all regions of the country, the odds of being murdered or robbed were not even half what they had been at the statistical apex of reported violent crimes in the 1990s.

New York and San Antonio were the only cities of over a million to witness an increase in violent crimes.  These increased in New York 4.6 percent last year to the total number of violent crimes reported of 48,489.  In New York last year, rapes reported increased 24.5 per cent, murders 8.24 percent with an increase of 65 murders over 2009, which had been the lowest number since the 1960s.  The further historical backdrop for this that 2,245 murders were recorded in New York in 1990, but less than 900 for the last 9 years.

Some of the standard explanations are that, when crime statistics go up, they are explained as the result of better reporting due to more effective police “encouraging victims to come forward, “ and when crime shows a decrease, it’s a result of good police work.   Criminal defense attorneys hear that all the time.

Crime is supposed to increase in times of economic distress and recession, such as we are, in periods of higher unemployment.  The experts are therefore puzzled.  Neither can they explain how crime has dropped another year after the previous declines.

Another popular theory, certainly among the public, is that higher incarceration rates are supposed to lower crime, yet these drops are taking place as the country has been lowering incarceration rates.

An independently-financed study has concluded that Oklahoma’s parole process is keeping the prison population too high for taxpayers to afford.  Still another study with the same conclusion.  The Northpointe Institute for Public Management conducted the study which was financed by the George Kaiser Family Foundation.

Oklahoma is the only state that requires the governor to approve paroles.   Not mentioned in any of the studies is that the political pressure on governors to “lock ‘em up” which is a constant force against governors’ granting paroles.  That is likely one of the significant reasons no other states allow (i.e., make) the governor  to make those calls.

The parole board has an approval rate that  is approximately 13 percent, but the parole approval rate from governors is closer to 11 percent.  This is what the legislature is looking at closely as money shortages continue in state budgets.  If parole approval rates increased to 20 percent, it would save the state an estimated $9.7 million the first year.  Further calculations show that a 60 percent parole approval rate would produce an estimated $33 million.

Director of Corrections Director Justin Jones said this study came to the same conclusions as a study in 2007, that Oklahoma had one of the lowest parole approval rates in the country.   But this study expresses its conclusions in terms of dollars saved, a cost-benefit analysis.  He thought it was the most in-depth study done, and, one done without tax dollars, since a private foundation paid for the study.

Oklahoma’s prisons are now at 98 percent capacity at 26,000 prisoners.  Since 2006, inmate population has been increasing every year from 8,500 each year to 9,000 last year.  Meanwhile, releases from prisons decreased from 8,700 in 2008 to 8,500 this year.  The estimated cost of keeping inmates for 2.4 years while they are eligible for parole is $192 million.

Inmates often waive parole now because their sentences are shorter than waiting for the parole process.  The parole process takes 130 days on average, and the cost of this delay taxpayers is $3 million.  A prisoner who is near the end of his sentence would rather wait a little longer before release and then be released without the conditions of parole.  Additionally, denial of parole would prohibit an inmate from eligibility for the GPS monitor program.   There are 6,913 inmates coming up for parole for the first time in the next year, and there are 5,305 inmates without life sentences serving time past their first parole eligibility.   An inmate who is denied parole must wait for another chance at parole for at least one year in the case of non-violent sentences and at least 3 years for those convicted of violent crimes.

Pending now before the legislature is House Bill 2131, sponsored by Speaker of the House Kris Steele, which would allow the governor to grant paroles in cases of certain crimes.  The Bill provides the parole board’s decision in all other cases would automatically go into effect unless the governor took action within 30 days.  The bill would also extend eligibility for inmates for community sentencing and GPS monitoring.

Year after year, the Oklahoma Department of Corrections comes back to the legislature again and again for supplemental funding.  They can never get enough money.  It’s the same in every state.

“Corrections spending is a Pac Man in state budgets everywhere.  It’s eating into all other priorities,” Michael Thompson, executive director of the Council of State Governments Justice Center said.  He spoke earlier this week at a forum to discuss corrections policies.   He and other experts, discussing what other states are doing about problems in corrections, said Oklahoma legislators seem to be headed in the right direction.

This year the Oklahoma legislator has proclaimed corrections a top priority.  Its consumption of money has been a black hole for years, and there is no end in sight.  The prison population has been exploding from one of the highest rates of incarceration in the country.   The Speaker of the House said, “I don’t believe we can afford to continue on the path we are on.”   That is an understatement.

The experts offered some ideas from other states.  The state of Washington decided in 2002 to reduce sentences for drug offenders.  The cost savings were dedicated to drug courts.  The crime rate now is 43% lower than it was in 1980, yet spending for criminal justice has increased 117 % during that period.   The director of the Washington State Institute for Public Policy, Steve Aos, offered a perspective.  “If you put everybody in prison, your crime rate will go to zero.  If you put nobody in prison, your crime rate is going to go up.  Where you want to be on that curve is a very important policy call,” he said.

That is why policy changes in the state of Washington have brought savings to the state budget.  Aos said the state’s budget deficit this year would be 25% greater if not for the savings from the changes in corrections policies.

Thompson said the state of Kansas is safer now even though it spends less on corrections.  The state of Kansas adopted changes similar to those of Washington, and its prison spending went down even as its crime rate went down.  He said Oklahoma has a huge reliance on prisons because it does not use enough other options in probation, parole and community sentencing or other alternate sentencings.

Among the proposals pending in Oklahoma are requiring more alternative and community sentencing and removing the governor from the parole process for nonviolent offenders.  Why take the governor out of the process?  The governor, like all politicians, cannot appear soft on crime.  That’s why the number of paroles has declined over the years, even while the legislature enacts harsher penalties and higher minimum sentences and the courts stuff more inmates into the system every year.  More in, fewer out.  It just cannot go on because we ran out of money a long time ago.

The United States Supreme Court reminded us again of the power of the First Amendment.  Very few people have had sympathy for the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, whose members have been appearing outside the funerals held for American service members killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan.  But today, the Supreme Court decided their protests were protected under the free speech provision of the First Amendment to the Constitution.

We are all reminded that the Bill of Rights rarely protects things popular.  Otherwise, the protection of the Constitution would not be sought.   Many citizens believe they would never need the protection of the 4th or 5th Amendment, and when they do need them, they are surprised how slim those protections have become, eroded by so many Supreme Court rulings that have chipped away at them from the constant drive of law enforcement for more “tools” to get bad guys.    Few citizens identify with the protections of the Bill of Rights with anything more than a superficial nod because most citizens believe they are an obstruction to “justice.”

Chief Justice John Roberts acknowledged the unpopularity of the speech the opinion was protecting.  “Speech is powerful.  It can move people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and – as it did here – inflict great pain.”   But “we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker” because free speech requires protection of “…even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate.”

The decision was 8-1 and continues in a series of recent rulings in favor of the First Amendment.  Laws limiting speech about politics and laws making it a crime to distribute depictions of cruelty to animals were struck down last year.   This term of court, a law banning the sale of violent video games to minors is under consideration.  But when national security conflicts with free speech in the Roberts court, “national security” and its endless tentacles always win.

Justice Roberts wrote that two main factors required the church prevail in this decision.  First, the speech was on a matter of public concern.  Although not the church members did not express themselves in “refined social or political commentary,” nevertheless, “the issues they highlight” are matters of public import.”  Secondly, the church members had a right to be where they stood.  The church members had complied with the instructions of the police and the law, picketing on a public street 1,000 feet from he funeral site.   They also were quiet and caused no violence.   Therefore, “any distress occasioned by Westboro’s picketing turned on the content and viewpoint of the message conveyed,” the Chief Justice wrote, “rather than any interference with the funeral itself.”  Protestors’ speech cannot be restricted just because it is upsetting or arouses contempt, the opinion said.  “Westboro’s funeral picketing is certainly hurtful and its contribution to public discourse may be negligible, “ the opinion observed, but speech of this kind is protected.

The case decided today came from a protest at the funeral of Marine Lance Corporal Matthew A. Snyder who died while serving in Iraq.   The church members appeared with signs reading “America is Doomed” and “God hates fags.”  The link, incredible as it is, is the church’s belief that God is punishing America for its tolerance of homosexuality.  This in spite of the policy, until very recently, of the American military of “Don’t Ask; Don’t Tell.”    Of all the institutions in the country that would seem to be not particularly welcome to homosexuals, it is the military.   That is one the things that makes this church so bizarre to begin with.

Snyder’s father sued the protesters for, among other things, intentional infliction of emotional distress.  He won a substantial jury award at trial, but that was reversed on appeal.  This case was styled, “Snyder vs. Phelps.”

Justice Breyer joined the majority opinion but wrote separately that other sorts of speech, such as on televisions and internet postings, might merit different treatment.  But that is outside the ruling in the opinion.

The sole dissenting opinion by Justice Alito compared the church’s protest to “fighting words, “ which have been ruled not to be protected under the First Amendment.  “Our profound national commitment to free and open debate is not a license for the vicious verbal assault that occurred in this case, “ he wrote.   He wrote that the Westboro church can speak out in many ways in many places but should not be allowed to capitalize on the private grief of others.  Vigorous debate, as envisioned by the First Amendment, does not allow the “brutalization of innocent victims,” he wrote.

Veteran’s Court was created to help people.  Veterans Treatment Court in Tulsa treats veterans who would otherwise face criminal charges in a different courtroom in the Tulsa Count District Court.  It is one of four in the country   It is being considered as a model by the National Drug Court Institute.

Representatives from five states have come to observe Tulsa County Special District Court Judge Sarah Day Smith conduct proceedings.  The participants report to the judge on their progress through the five phases of the program.

Veterans of wars in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan appear.  They carry the psychic wounds of their service.  It usually manifests itself to the courts as drug problems, but those are only part of the problems in the lives of the veterans.  Some of them homeless, unable to hold a job, they need help instead of prosecution.  Of the homeless in Tulsa, 20% are veterans.  Many have been to drug treatment center after center.

They tell their story in open court.  Just as in drug court or in AA, they share their lives and their success in the treatment program.  The others in attendance share their feelings of accomplishment, their hopes for the future, since they will address the court in turn.  There are 48 participants now in the court, and they each have up to 12 months to complete the program.

District Judge Tom Thornbrugh and District Attorney Tim Harris have pledged their support of the program.  The District Attorney acknowledged that the veterans need to be looked at differently once they come into the criminal justice system.

Judge Day instigated the Tulsa veterans court in 2008 after she had seen one in Buffalo, New York.  She was convinced it worked.  Veterans commonly suffer from post-traumatic syndrome and traumatic brain injuries related to their military service.  No matter how desperate, they rarely ask for help.

As in drug court, familiar to criminal defense lawyers, the participants had to plead guilty to the criminal charges they were facing in order to enter into the Veterans Court process.  If they violate the terms of their probation, they face the maximum sentence of the charge to which they pled guilty.   Only two have dropped out and went to prison.  But veterans organizations and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs help out with services.   Only about 10% of the participants in the program had applied for the veterans benefits before entering Veterans Court.

Joel Stoval filed a motion to withdraw his guilty plea in Freemont County District Court in Canon City, Colorado.  He had pled guilty to first degree murder in 2001 shootout which left a deputy sheriff dead and another police officer paralyzed.

District Judge Julie Marshal denied the motion to withdraw the plea,  She said Stoval’s attorney’s performance “not deficient.”  The judge heard six hours of testimony from Stoval and from his attorneys at the time of the plea, assistant public defenders Patrick Murphy and Doug Wilson.

Stoval had entered a plea to first degree murder of Freemont County Deputy Sheriff Jason Schwartz and the attempted of Florence Police Corporal Toby Bethel, who is paralyzed from the shooting.  He also pled guilty to 16 other counts of attempted murder for shooting at other police officers at the shootout.  He was sentenced to life imprisonment plus 800 years.

The shootout had arose when  Deputy Schwartz arrested Stoval and his twin brother, Michael, because Joel Stoval had shot a neighbor’s dog and a heated altercation began between the Stovals and the law enforcement officers.

At the hearing to withdraw his plea, Stoval testified he felt like he was defending himself, but his attorneys never discussed the issue of self-defense with him.  “They excluded the fact that Toby Bethel was reaching for his handgun,” Stoval testified, at which Bethel’s wife, Mary jumped up out of her seat in the courtroom and yelled, “You are such a #@& liar.”  She then left the courtroom.

Murphy testified to the contrary that Stoval had told him, “Officer Bethel did not see Joel because he was in the shadow next to the truck he had stolen.  I didn’t see any way the argument of self-defense could be made.”  Wilson testified similarly.  “I did not think we had a self-defense that we could have sold to the jury,” Wilson testified.

Joel Stoval testified the entire focus of the plea bargain was to prevent his brother from receiving the death penalty.  “I had to just take the advice of my attorneys.  I had no choice.”

Both Murphy and Wilson testified Stoval did have a concern for his brother, Michael, both attorneys nevertheless thought it was in Stoval’s best interest to accept the plea agreement to avoid the death penalty for himself, especially since they did not know if Bethel would survive.   If Bethel died, the chances of Stoval’s receiving the death penalty would increase significantly.

Assistant District Kathy Eberling asked Murphy and Wilson whether they thought their representation of Joel Stoval was deficient.  Both replied, “No.”  “We spent sufficient time to make sure he understood the charges, evidence and potential of the death penalty.  This was a case in which the facts were not greatly in dispute,” Murphy testified.

The irony is that even if Stoval had gone to trial and the District Attorney had sought the death penalty and a three-judge panel had then awarded the death penalty, it would have been overturned when the United States Supreme Court ruled three-judge panels were unconstitutional.  Stoval would therefore have ended up with a life sentence, instead of the life imprisonment plus 800 years, which he received.

The Oklahoma Office of the Chief Medical Examiner lost its accreditation in July, 2009, from the National Association of Medical Examiners.  In June, 2008, Dr. Jeffery Gorton, the chief medical examiner, announced he planned to quit performing autopsies in Tulsa.  Legislators from Tulsa objected, and he resigned.   An employee in the Tulsa office who was in charge of petty cash and checks was discovered to have a felony conviction and promptly resigned.  Then the chief investigator, Kevin Rowland, resigned last March, claiming the reason for his resignation was job stress.  Four months later in July, however, he was indicted in Tulsa County District Court for sexual battery and harassment.

Tom Jordan, long-time employee and former deputy director of the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation was hired a couple of months ago as chief administrative officer of the Medical Examiner’s office.  Then, a new chief medical director, Dr. Collie Trant, was hired as chief medical examiner in . Those two did not get along, as illustrated by the fact that Tom Jordan informed the board that Trant was a “liar.”  The Oklahoma Board of Medicolegal Investigations then fired Trent on February 5th after nine months on the job. The board gave reason for the dismissal, and Trant has filed suit to get his job back.  Trant claims he was fired when he presented evidence of employee misconduct to the board.

Last month was busy month at the medical examiner’s office with other events.  The governor ordered an investigation into the office.  The board hired another acting chief medical examiner, Dr. Eric Duvall, but he promptly resigned.  Citing financial irregularities, leaders of both houses of the legislature asked for a special audit of the medical examiner’s office, and Chief Administrative Officer Tom Jordan then fired the medical examiner’s long-time budget director, Steve Slater. The board is still looking for a chief medical examiner.

Governor Brad Henry has urged the Medical Examiner’s office be merged into the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation to save money.  Speaker of the Oklahoma House estimates it will save $5.3 million annually with that merger and the merger of the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs also into the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation. However, Representative Randy Merrill, chairman of the house public safety and judiciary appropriations subcommittee, proposes that the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner be moved to the University of Central Oklahoma campus, where the agency can lease a facility built to specification but also maintain its autonomy. This contrasts with a previous push by some to make the agency part of the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation.

This recognition of the importance of autonomy for the medical examiner’s office is surprising.  It is also vital, as any Oklahoma criminal defense lawyer can tell you.  The National Research Council of the National Academics of Science, Engineering and  Medicine’s recently published report on the state of forensic science in the United States cites many reasons why the medical examiner’s office should not be part of the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation.

That report even urged the establishment of a wholly independent federal agency to address the problems with the current system of forensic science to govern and improve the forensic science community. There is also a need for institutional independence of public forensic laboratories, which the National Research Council found to have a prosecutorial bias.

In times of fiscal want, such as Oklahoma now finds itself, it is difficult to justify any expenditure except the very cheapest.  It is understandable the force to merge the medical examiner’s office into the State Bureau of Investigation.  But without an independent medical examiner, we can expect medical findings to follow the dictates of “law enforcement.”   The lessons of the fiasco with our former medical examiner, Joyce Gilcrest would be lost.