You have heard of the myth of the Horse Whis­per, right?

Heck Hol­ly­wood even made a movie about it. Robert Red­ford was a horse trainer who could whis­per and talk with the horses. They would lis­ten and com­mu­ni­cate with him. Pretty fan­tas­tic stuff!

There has also been the “Dog Whis­perer” which is a TV series on the National Geo­graphic Chan­nel that has a dog trainer whose dogs exhibit behav­ioral prob­lems and whis­pers sweet noth­ings into their ears and can com­mu­ni­cate with the dog just like you and I do.

Then there is my sec­ond favorite, the Ghost Whis­perer, a CBS TV drama, Jen­nifer Love Hewitt as a psy­chic who com­mu­ni­cates with spirits.

Ghost whis­perer meet the fire whisperer

But the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem does one bet­ter, it is my favorite brand of whis­perer.  It allows into evi­dence in a crim­i­nal trial a FIRE WHISPERER.  Fire Whis­perer was a phrase that I first heard coined by John Lentini of Sci­en­tific Fire Analy­sis.

Fire Whisperers-Some Arson inves­ti­ga­tion is very flawed

A fire whis­perer typ­i­cally has the fol­low­ing characteristics:

• under-educated, non-technically trained, high school grad­u­ate (maybe with some college)
• was trained as if by the oral tra­di­tion not unlike the Native Amer­i­can and Abo­rig­ine tra­di­tions by other under-educated, non-technically trained, high school grad­u­ates (maybe with some college)
• tries to make up for the lack of for­mal cre­den­tialed edu­ca­tion by attend­ing “sem­i­nars” where atten­dance as opposed to pro­fi­ciency is the mea­sure.  These “sem­i­nars” are taught by other under-educated, non-technically trained, high school grad­u­ate (maybe with some college)
• the lack of a writ­ten pro­to­col, pol­icy, pro­ce­dure or instruc­tions of their method of fire investigation
• the per­son is a “con­trac­tor” with the lab so as to avoid the need for pro­fi­ciency test­ing through ASCLD/LAB or ISO 17025
• lack of mean­ing­ful expo­sure to fire dynam­ics, fluid dynam­ics, kinet­ics, sur­face ther­mal effects, engi­neer­ing, mate­ri­als sci­ence, ana­lyt­i­cal chem­istry, chro­matog­ra­phy, physics or any hard sci­ence sub­ject taught at a brick and mor­tar insti­tu­tion for a grade
• relies heav­ily upon the use of accel­er­ant detec­tion dogs as opposed to real VOC related ana­lyt­i­cal chem­istry meth­ods (e.g., GC-MS)
• takes lit­tle to noth­ing into evidence
• uses phrases such as alli­ga­tor­ing, char marks and the like with­out try­ing to quan­tify them
• resort­ing to the idea that the most dam­aged part of the area must have been where the fire started
• takes pic­tures of the alleged crime scene with­out use of prin­ci­ples of photogrammetry
• fails to sketch out the area
• fails to take into account the use of water on the fire scene to pos­si­bly con­t­a­m­i­nate other areas of the scene
• fails to do an inves­ti­ga­tion to see what posi­tion var­i­ous items where in prior to the fire by talk­ing with the inhab­i­tants or look­ing at pic­tures (e.g., couch here, power stripped plugged in there)
• does not con­duct an engi­neer­ing study to con­firm that their the­ory of the ori­gin, source and fuels is even possible
• does not start with the null hypoth­e­sis that the event was not an arson, but rather starts out with the idea that it is and looks to con­firm it
• does not use NFPA 921 or ASTM E603-01 or Tech­ni­cal Work­ing Group on Fire and Explo­sion Inves­ti­ga­tions (TWGFEX) as a stan­dard for the analysis
• the idea that the sur­vivor of the fire must have been the per­son who started it
• the per­son accused has lead an exem­plary life free of any hints of trouble
• the per­son accused has no motive finan­cial or otherwise
• rely­ing upon the fact that he/she has done hun­dreds or thou­sands of fire inves­ti­ga­tions in the past to some­how “prove” his/her method is valid
• have no known or reported error rate in their opin­ions or conclusions

But this isn’t just the case of www.TheTruthAboutForensicScience.com says so, but the national media has picked up on it with Stephanie Chen of CNN reporting

Junk sci­ence? Another inmate on death row fights to dis­prove arson

(CNN) — This is the story of two fathers who drank too much and fought with their wives but, their fam­i­lies say, loved their chil­dren more than any­thing in the world.

The two never knew each other. One was in Texas and one in Penn­syl­va­nia, but each watched a fire swal­low their home with their chil­dren inside.

One father, Cameron Todd Will­ing­ham of Cor­si­cana, Texas, was con­victed on mur­der charges; author­i­ties said he set the fire that killed his three chil­dren in 1991. He was exe­cuted by lethal injec­tion in 2004.

Across the coun­try, at a prison out­side of Way­nes­burg, Penn­syl­va­nia, where author­i­ties say they hold the “worst of the worst,” is 50-year-old Daniel Dougherty. He, too, was found guilty of delib­er­ately ignit­ing fires in his home that killed his two sons, Danny, 4, and Johnny, 3, in 1985. Police arrested Dougherty 14 years later, when his estranged wife came for­ward and claimed he con­fessed. A jury found him guilty on cap­i­tal mur­der charges in 2000.

He is await­ing death.

Daniel Dougherty, 50, is being held on death row in Penn­syl­va­nia. He is appeal­ing his case.

Last month, a Texas state board admit­ted in a pre­lim­i­nary report that flawed arson sci­ence was used in Willingham’s investigation.

Read about the Texas state board admit­ting to using flawed sci­ence in the Will­ing­ham case

The board’s announce­ment raises a fright­en­ing ques­tion: Could the state of Texas have exe­cuted an inno­cent man?

Like Will­ing­ham, Dougherty has main­tained his inno­cence from the start. He is try­ing to prove he isn’t respon­si­ble for the flames that engulfed his house and that he is also the vic­tim of flawed arson science.

“We have an inno­cent man on death row who has been lan­guish­ing there, and there is absolutely no evi­dence that a crime occurred,” said his attor­ney, David Fry­man. “We’ve been try­ing our best to right that wrong.”

Todd Will­ing­ham said he was inno­cent but was exe­cuted in Feb­ru­ary 2004 for the arson mur­ders of his three kids.

.…

With sci­ence on his side, Dougherty hopes the court will set him free — before it’s too late. No exe­cu­tion date has been set.

Dougherty’s ver­sion of the blaze doesn’t paint him as a mur­derer but as a failed hero, who tried twice to res­cue his sleep­ing sons with a water­ing hose and lad­der, accord­ing to court records. By the time author­i­ties extin­guished the fire, his sons had already died from inhal­ing the toxic fumes.

.…

Is arson sci­ence to blame?

John Lentini and Angelo Pisani — two of the country’s renowned arson inves­ti­ga­tors — have con­ducted thou­sands of fire scene inspec­tions. Five years ago, they received a call from Dougherty’s attorneys.

Sep­a­rately, the inves­ti­ga­tors combed through the reports, tes­ti­mony, pho­tographs and other evi­dence from the orig­i­nal fire scene. Con­trary to the fire investigator’s orig­i­nal report in 1985, Lentini and Pisani argued there were no signs of arson in Dougherty’s home. Such expert tes­ti­mony was never pre­sented by Dougherty’s attor­ney in his 2000 trial.

In the last two decades, advances in arson sci­ence have spurred some inves­ti­ga­tors and lawyers to ques­tion past arson con­vic­tions. Some attor­neys esti­mate dozens or even hun­dreds of cases may have been based on faulty arson sci­ence. There are no fig­ures on how many arson cases have been suc­cess­fully refuted.

Dougherty’s orig­i­nal attor­ney gave a state­ment in the appeal that he didn’t seek assis­tance from out­side fire inves­ti­ga­tors. He admit­ted in Dougherty’s appeal that his team had “pre­sented lit­tle from which to make an argu­ment for life.”

The National Fire Pro­tec­tion Asso­ci­a­tion, a fire safety orga­ni­za­tion, reported there were more than 200,000 inten­tional fires set to struc­tures in 1980. In 2007, that num­ber dwin­dled to 55,000. Arson inves­ti­ga­tors say the steady decline of arson cases can be inter­preted dif­fer­ent ways: Either there are dra­mat­i­cally fewer cases of inten­tional fires, or arson sci­ence has reduced the num­ber of fires being cat­e­go­rized as inten­tional. This sug­gests that some pre­vi­ous cases deemed arson may not have been, they say.

What is a flashover fire?

In their report on the Dougherty case, Lentini and Pisani say they believe Philadel­phia Assis­tant Fire Mar­shal John Quinn, who led the ini­tial probe, relied on out­dated arson inves­ti­ga­tion techniques.

In his 1985 report, Quinn had deter­mined three fires took place on the first floor of Dougherty’s brick home: one by the sofa, another by a love seat, and a third under the din­ing room table.

Quinn con­cluded only a per­son could have set the fire in three sep­a­rate places. Quinn declined CNN’s request for an interview.

“There is no evi­dence to indi­cate it is arson,” said Lentini, who pro­vided an expert report in Dougherty’s 2006 appeal and also reviewed the Cameron Todd Will­ing­ham case in 2004. “The only evi­dence he [Quinn] has is his three points of ori­gin and those three points of ori­gin are a fig­ment of his imagination.”

Pisani and Lentini argue that the mul­ti­ple burn­ing spots were likely the result of a “flashover” — a nat­u­rally occur­ring phe­nom­e­non dur­ing a fire. In a flashover, the enclosed room can get very hot, reach­ing tem­per­a­tures as high as 1,100 degrees Fahren­heit. The room even­tu­ally com­busts, result­ing in var­i­ous burn­ing points.

Flashover fires can be mis­taken for arson because they leave the appear­ance of mul­ti­ple points of igni­tion, they said. Lentini added Penn­syl­va­nia is “on their way to exe­cut­ing an inno­cent man.”

Pisani and Lentini also reported the ori­gin of the fire could not be deter­mined because of exten­sive dam­age to the room.

The Philadel­phia Dis­trict Attorney’s Office rejected Dougherty’s claims of inno­cence. They said a flashover fire requires an enclosed space, but that Dougherty’s liv­ing room, where the fire occurred, was not an enclosed space since there was a stair­well. They also argued Dougherty man­aged to emerge from the house with­out burns or signs of smoke inhalation.

…

The Dougherty trio: ‘Danny loves kids’

Daniel Dougherty, son of a Philadel­phia police offi­cer, was born in 1960 and grew up in a working-class neigh­bor­hood with five siblings.

Known as the “out­go­ing” mid­dle child, he made friends and girl­friends eas­ily. His father’s death from heart prob­lems crushed the 14-year-old Dougherty, who began to drink.

Dougherty never fin­ished the 10th grade. He met his first wife, Kathy Fox, and they had their first son, Danny, in 1980. Two years later, they had their sec­ond boy, Johnny.

Danny, 4 years old at the time of the fire, was fear­less and curi­ous. He liked rid­ing roller coast­ers with his father. He con­stantly pep­pered fam­ily mem­bers with ques­tions. Johnny, 3, was quieter.

Dougherty was a func­tion­ing alco­holic, his fam­ily says. He rarely missed a day of work as a mechanic, his fam­ily said. He brought his sons to work so they could spend more time together.

“Danny loves kids, no mat­ter whose kids they are,” said his older brother, Nor­man Dougherty, 57, of Philadel­phia. “He loves my kids, his nieces and nephews. He’d take them to the park. He was good like that.”

Dougherty’s older sis­ter, Karen Dougherty, 53, invited them over for Sun­day night din­ners at her home. She said her brother rel­ished in his role as a father. He was the first to take his chil­dren — and hers — sled­ding each winter.

“Our father passed away when my brother was young so he always had the kids close to him to make sure noth­ing would hap­pen to them,” she said.

On August 24, 1985, the night of the fire, Dougherty was sup­posed to be at an Alco­holics Anony­mous meet­ing. He skipped the meet­ing and instead went to a bar, where he got into a ver­bal argu­ment with his girl­friend at the time (she was not the mother of the two boys). He came home, made him­self din­ner and fell asleep on the sofa in his liv­ing room, accord­ing to his tes­ti­mony at trial. He said he awoke to see the cur­tains in flames. His chil­dren were asleep upstairs.

He ran out­side to get the neighbor’s gar­den hose, but the hose was too short. He tried to get water near the win­dow of the house, but he was too late. Flames were already burst­ing from the house.

The glass exploded, cut his arm and pushed him down.

Next, he grabbed a wooden lad­der. But the fire was too pow­er­ful. He tes­ti­fied it “blew him down.”

“He was so destroyed,” said Judy Sor­ling, 54, who still lives sev­eral houses away on Carver Street where the fire took place. She told CNN she saw Dougherty stand­ing with the hose, attempt­ing to put the fire out. “He kept yelling for help.”

When fire­fight­ers arrived, Dougherty was fran­tic, scream­ing at police to save his chil­dren. His aggres­sive and erratic behav­ior wor­ried police. Author­i­ties shoved his face in the mud and he was taken away, court doc­u­ments say. Dougherty tes­ti­fied he wanted to die at that moment.

Author­i­ties sifted through the charred rem­nants of the home and deter­mined the fire had been inten­tion­ally set.

Police ques­tioned Dougherty and his fam­ily mem­bers, but no arrest was made.

Are arson inves­ti­ga­tions an art or science?

Scenes from pop­u­lar tele­vi­sion shows like CSI often depict detec­tives rely­ing on foren­sic sci­ence and lab work to draw con­clu­sions. But in the realm of arson inves­ti­ga­tions, experts say sci­ence has played a small role until more recently.

Until 1992, some arson experts say, guide­lines for deter­min­ing arson were largely based on hand-me-down myths prac­ticed by fire inves­ti­ga­tors with lit­tle for­mal train­ing. In 1992, the National Fire Pro­tec­tion Asso­ci­a­tion released its first arson guide­book based on years of stud­ies and simulations.

Killed in the Will­ing­ham fire were step­daugher Amber, 2, and twins Kar­mon and Kameron, 1.

The guide­lines, known as NFPA 921, were ini­tially met with resis­tance from fire mar­shals and offi­cers across the coun­try, who believed arson inves­ti­ga­tions were an art rather than a science.

“It was gumshoe work, not really analy­sis and con­duct­ing stud­ies,” said Ger­ald Hurst, an arson inves­ti­ga­tor with a Ph.D. in chem­istry, who exam­ined the arson find­ings in the Cameron Todd Will­ing­ham inves­ti­ga­tion from 1991. He con­cluded the arson sci­ence used in his case was “junk.”

In 2006, Hurst inde­pen­dently exam­ined Daniel Dougherty’s case. Hurst, too, believed that the mul­ti­ple burn­ing points were the result of a flashover fire.

The fire that killed three peo­ple in the Will­ing­ham case in Texas hap­pened in 1991, a year before NFPA 921 was released. In Feb­ru­ary 2004, Will­ing­ham was exe­cuted. Later, three reviews of evi­dence by out­side experts con­cluded the fire should not have been ruled arson. The reports stated a flashover was likely respon­si­ble for the fire at Willingham’s home.

Read about Tex­ans won­der­ing if they exe­cuted an inno­cent man

“There can no longer be any doubt that an inno­cent per­son has been exe­cuted,” said Barry Scheck, co-director of the Inno­cence Project, which uses DNA evi­dence in efforts to prove the inno­cence of peo­ple they believe were wrongly con­victed. “The ques­tion now turns to how we can stop it from hap­pen­ing again.”

From prison, a father waits for a sec­ond chance

In the years after the fire that killed his two sons, fam­ily mem­bers said Daniel Dougherty changed. His addic­tion to alco­hol inten­si­fied as he tried to cope with his loss. He even­tu­ally divorced his wife and remar­ried, then divorced again.

Dougherty received a sur­prise visit from police in 1999, about 14 years after the fire. His sec­ond wife, Adri­enne Suss­man, had reported to police that he con­fessed to using gaso­line in the fire. Dougherty was arrested.

Sussman’s claim should have been dis­missed because no fire reports showed accel­er­ants had been used, Dougherty’s attor­neys argued. At the time Suss­man went to police, she was engaged in a cus­tody bat­tle with Dougherty over their son Stephen, court doc­u­ments say.

Pros­e­cu­tors sup­ported their case with the state­ments of two jail house infor­mants who said Dougherty con­fessed to them in his cell. But Dougherty’s attor­neys say the jail house infor­mants are unre­li­able. They point to stud­ies that show in-custody infor­mant tes­ti­mony is a lead­ing cause of wrong­ful con­vic­tion in cap­i­tal cases.

Dougherty’s first wife and the mother of the deceased chil­dren, Kathy Fox, is now remar­ried. She said she doesn’t believe he inten­tion­ally killed their chil­dren. She never tes­ti­fied in the orig­i­nal trial because Dougherty’s attor­ney didn’t ask her.

“Know­ing Daniel and his rela­tion­ship with his chil­dren, I can­not believe he would have burned them to death,” she said in state­ment pre­sented in Dougherty’s appeal.

So how do lawyers prove a man’s inno­cence more than two decades after a fire occurred?

The task is almost impos­si­ble, said David L. Faig­man, a law pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, San Fran­cisco. Dis­prov­ing an arson case is more chal­leng­ing because the find­ings aren’t as clear-cut as DNA, he said. He said the peti­tion­ers have the bur­den to prove the arson didn’t occur and that they weren’t involved.

“Courts are already reluc­tant to open old cases with­out some­thing like DNA that is really demon­stra­tive proof of someone’s inno­cence,” Faig­man said.

Cameron Todd Willingham’s fam­ily in Texas is on a quest to prove he is inno­cent. While the Texas state board’s pre­lim­i­nary find­ings admit­ted to flawed sci­ence, they also found the inves­ti­ga­tors did not com­mit neg­li­gence. Still, his fam­ily is hop­ing the board’s final find­ings, expected to be released in Octo­ber, will exon­er­ate him.

“It will help us with pub­lic opin­ion,” said Dougherty’s attor­ney at Bal­lard Spahr, about the Texas state board’s ini­tial announce­ments. “I think it can serve as a per­sua­sive influ­ence that this is the real issue. It’s a sci­en­tific issue, and we don’t want to have another Willingham.”

Dougherty’s fate rests in the Penn­syl­va­nia Supreme Court, which could take years to make a deci­sion. If the Penn­syl­va­nia Supreme Court denies his post– con­vic­tion relief, his attor­neys say they will have to go to fed­eral court.

Mean­while, Daniel Dougherty marks his time on death row in Penn­syl­va­nia. He’s in soli­tary con­fine­ment. At 4 a.m., he is awake and lis­ten­ing to the radio through his head­phones. By 5 a.m., he says a prayer and starts his rou­tine of med­i­cines for a num­ber of ail­ments, includ­ing stom­ach prob­lems. He’s wor­ried about whether his body will hold out long enough to prove his innocence.

His food comes through a locked slot on his cell door. He plays domi­noes most days. TV helps him get through. On Mon­days, Wednes­day and Fri­days, he exercises.

He occa­sion­ally receives let­ters from his common-law wife, Kathy Halin, and his fam­ily. They are too poor to visit him on the oppo­site end of the state.

Johnny and Danny, his sons who died in the fire, remain a topic of con­ver­sa­tion that evokes “severe hurt,” he said.

“I LOVED (and still do) my sons more than life itself,” he wrote.

He added in his let­ter that time may heal wounds, but noth­ing can heal this one.

Once again, we should demand that real sci­ence be pre­sented in the Court­room and that sci­ence fic­tion remain in the movies.