Winner of the Week 22 www.TheTruthAboutForensicScience.com Forensic Science Geek of the Week Challenge!!!

The Forensic Science Geek of the Week

The week 22 “www.TheTruthAboutForensicScience.com Forensic Science Geek of the Week” honors goes to Stephen Daniels.

STEPHEN DANIELS

: Stephen Daniels of www.DUIUndo.com

STEPHEN DANIELS, www.TheTruthAboutForensicScience.com Forensic Science Geek of the Week!
Congratulations to our winner! All hail the www.TheTruthAboutForensicScience.com Forensic Science Geek of the Week!!!

About our winner:

Mission Statement:

Stephen Daniels is the principal of www.DUIUndo.com. He offers full service consulting to both the defense and the Government in DUI-related maters including testimony about the Intoxilyzer 8000.
DUI undo Consultants, LLC. believes that if you are guilty of driving impaired you should be held accountable for your error in judgment. However, if there is the slightest possibility that you are innocent we will do everything within our power to help you prove your innocence because… Helping innocent people “PROVE” their innocence is our first priority…!!! Please visit his website at www.DUIUndo.com

STEPHEN DANIELS is Week 22’s www.TheTruthAboutForensicScience.com Forensic Science Geek of the Week!

Congratulations to our Week 22 winner! All hail the www.TheTruthAboutForensicScience.com Forensic Science Geek of the Week!!!

See the challenge question that our winner correctly answered.

Our winner answered the question correctly. Please visit the www.TheTruthAboutForensicScience.com FaceBook fan page.

Our Geek of the Week answered:

The answers are:
1.) John Thomas Scopes (August 3, 1900 – October 21, 1970)
2.) John T. Scopes, was a teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, who was charged on May 5, 1925 with violating Tennessee’s Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of evolution in Tennessee schools. He was tried in a case known as the Scopes Monkey Trial.
BONUS ANSWER: You posted this question because of your post on FaceBook on Friday Nov. 26, 2010 about the movie you watched
Inherit The Wind…!!!

[BLOGGER’S NOTE: Just to amplify…. Stephen is right. I personally find the original movie Inherit the Wind (1960) to be very inspirational. It is based upon The State of Tennessee v. Scopes.

I was loaned a copy of this 1960 classic by a truly great trial attorney, friend and mentor Gary Trichter when I was down in Texas lecturing recently. In reality, at the Scopes Monkey trial all of the defense expert witnesses, save one, was precluded from trial based upon a ruling from the bench that the science was irrelevant.

This simple ruling of banishing science from that courtroom resulted in the preclusion of a fair trial. With only one side of a story presented to the Jury which was drawn from the venire where the law was overwhelmingly popular and governed by a judge who was popularly elected from that area, the guilty result was logically and emotionally natural and unavoidable. Scopes did not give up. He did not change his plea.

At sentencing he denounced the law, the Court’s ruling and vowed to continue to fight it until his last breath. At sentencing, even after defiantly stating his continued opposition to the proceedings and the result, Scopes was not imprisoned although he could have been, but was fined $100 which is $1,228 in 2010 when adjusted from 1925 for inflation.

On appeal, the appellate team challenged the conviction for several reasons. The Tennessee appellate courts found the Butler Act to be constitutional. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court of Tennessee set aside the conviction on appeal because of a legal technicality: the jury should have decided the fine, not the judge, since under the state constitution, Tennessee judges could not at that time set fines above $50, and the Butler Act specified a minimum fine of $100. Justice Green added a totally unexpected recommendation:

The court is informed that the plaintiff in error is no longer in the service of the state. We see nothing to be gained by prolonging the life of this bizarre case. On the contrary, we think that the peace and dignity of the state, which all criminal prosecutions are brought to redress, will be the better conserved by the entry of a nolle prosequi herein. Such a course is suggested to the Attorney General.

Attorney General L.D. Smith immediately announced that he would not seek a retrial, while Scopes’ lawyers offered angry comments on the stunning decision.

It was not until 1968 that the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Epperson v. Arkansas 393 U.S. 97 (1968) that such bans (of teaching evolution-based science in public schools and instead only that which is in the Christian Bible) contravene the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment because their primary purpose is religious. Tennessee had repealed the Butler Act the previous year.

This trial in 1925 was perhaps the first true show down in the 20th century between science and belief/faith. It is the story of an ordinary man in John T. Scopes who stood against all of the pressure to try to right a wrong at a great personal expense. As was aptly put in the movie, John T. Scopes was told that his situation:

Was like walking down a dark alley way at night accompanied by only [his] footsteps. But all you have to do is knock on any door and say, “If you let me in, I’ll live the way you want me to live, and I’ll think the way you want me to think,” and all the blinds’ll go up and all the windows will open, and you’ll never be lonely, ever again.

How many of us could honestly resist that?

It is also a story of a masterful lawyer in Clarence Darrow who struggled against all odds and an immoral regime and law to present the science and the truth in a society where they could legislature away science.

I suggest that Spencer Tracey’s quote in the below can perhaps equally fit today in some courtrooms.

We find ourselves, right now, about to enter the second decade of the 21st century in a great time of flux when empiricism is at odds with “this is the way we always did it” mantra that stands in stark contrast of scientific validity in the forensic arena. Will there continue to be a steady supply of brave folks like John T. Scopes? Will there continue to be equally brave folks like Clarence Darrow? I hope for our sake and that of the future that there continue to be.]

The Hall of Fame for the www.TheTruthAboutForensicScience.com Forensic Science Geek of the Week:
Week 1: Chuck Ramsay, Esquire

Week 2: Rick McIndoe, PhD

Week 3: Christine Funk, Esquire

Week 4: Stephen Daniels

Week 5: Stephen Daniels

Week 6: Richard Middlebrook, Esquire

Week 7: Christine Funk, Esquire

Week 8: Ron Moore, B.S., J.D.

Week 9: Ron Moore, B.S., J.D.

Week 10: Kelly Case, Esquire and Michael Dye, Esquire

Week 11: Brian Manchester, Esquire

Week 12: Ron Moore, B.S., J.D.