8127/frame/fm

The Estate of Samuel H. Sheppard v. The State of Ohio
. The full report may be found at
http://www.courttv.com/national/2000/0131/mccrary_ctv.html
. All typos and errors as in original.
8127/frame/ch07 Page 187 Friday, July 21, 2000 11:46 AM

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Principles and Practice of Criminalistics
Kirk uses the phrase “Presumably inflamed…” to indicate the assump-
tions upon which he builds the remaining reconstruction. He is inferring
what seems reasonable to him, rather than evaluating the many causes that
might have resulted in the evidence. The remainder of the paragraph uses
words that are either subjective or suppositional (“instinctively” and “may
have”). He fails to consider, for example, what effect striking the pillow with
the purported weapon would have on the pillowcase. Would it have been
ripped? Would there be a more definitive imprint of the weapon in blood?
With the exception of the obvious fact that the assailant struck the victim,
none of the reconstruction in this paragraph is based on the scientific eval-
uation of the physical evidence.
To be sure, Kirk’s examination of this case is far more scientific than is
McCrary’s, but neither respects the limitations of the evidence, physical or
“behavioral.” The result is overinterpretation leading to seriously flawed and
easily dismissed reconstructions.
c.
Reconstruction or Reenactment
A reconstruction should not be an attempt to reenact the incident (Garrison,
1993). The portrayal of exactly what happened during the event, including
emotional elements, activities of people, facial features, and other speculative
elements, rarely contains any factual elements. Although it is only human
nature to try to fill in the details of any event, especially a crime, an acute
awareness of this tendency should be enough to deter it in the professional.
We know of one such “reconstruction” that included a reference to the victim
looking at himself in the mirror before turning away to commit suicide. Of
course, no piece of physical evidence would allow the analyst to infer this
action; it was pure conjecture on the part of the criminalist. A re-creation,
then, is a reconstruction to which is added subjective elements such as emo-
tion and nuance that results in a “videotape” replay of the incident. The
criminalist must only provide information on the sequence of events, and
avoid guessing what any person “must have been thinking” under the cir-
cumstances of the event.