While the killing of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman has give rise to an important conversation about race, guns and killing in America, it’s largely been theoretical. What actually happened has been a moving target, with the police being nearly useless in providing any meaningful answers due to their cursory investigation.
As the video of Zimmerman after the incident emerged, the narrative shifted away from his story of being beaten, his nose broken and his head banged against the sidewalk. The images on the screen showed none of these injuries. There were reasons why that might happen, though there are far better reasons why a broken nose would look like a broken nose, and why there should have been blood on his shirt.
But the Daily News reports a story via the Orlando Sentinel about one of the most contentious aspects of the encounter, the scream. Did the scream come from George Zimmerman, as he claims, or Trayvon Martin, who can’t speak for himself because he’s dead?
Two leading forensic voice identification experts who listened to a 911 call from a neighbor at the Sanford, Fla., gated community where Martin was gunned down told the Orlando Sentinel that the screams didn’t match Zimmerman’s voice.
Using sophisticated voice match software, Tom Owen, forensic consultant for Owen Forensic Services LLC and chair emeritus for the American Board of Recorded Evidence, told the Sentinel that there was only a 48% chance that it was Zimmerman crying for help on the tape.
Usually, a positive match rates higher than 90%.
“As a result of that, you can say with reasonable scientific certainty that it’s not Zimmerman,” Owen said.
Knowing Tom Owen, having used his services as a forensic voice examiner, I know that he’s a very serious, very sober man, who is extraordinarily knowledgeable about his work. I also know that he wouldn’t hesitate to come out on either end of the question, and hardly reluctant to tell the guy paying his expert bill that he’s wrong. But that’s just my experience with Tom.
If the scream wasn’t by Zimmerman, the narrative of Trayvon Martin beating him, and his defending himself (whether reasonably or otherwise) comes to a dead stop. Yet again, the story has taken a monumental reversal, and Zimmerman’s claims fall apart.
While significant in its own right, given the issues this killing has raised, there’s another aspect to this case that merits concern. Too often, this level of forensic and factual scrutiny is unknown in the investigation stage. This is the sort of detail that emerges long after the jury has rendered its verdict and a person is awaiting the long walk to the death chamber. Only then does anyone start to take a hard look at what happened. But of course, by that point, the burdens have shifted, the process works against any serious review and the defendant faces an uphill, possibly insurmountable, battle to prove that the evidence against him at trial doesn’t bear out.
Why?
Why doesn’t the system put such serious inquiry into such matters until it’s too late. Why doesn’t anyone care to take a hard look, a deeper look, into cases until after a sentence is pronounced?
At Defending People, Mark Bennett made the point that as much as many demand Zimmerman’s arrest (not to mention conviction in the media), the reluctance to arrest him until the evidence of his guilt was sufficiently strong was the better path. He caught a lot of flak for that, but as he made clear, the fact that this isn’t the way it works for most defendants isn’t a reason to drag the Zimmerman case down, but to elevate the rush to judgment of others who aren’t given the benefit of a decent investigation first. In such an emotionally charged case, it’s hard to make a point like this without ruffling feathers, but he’s absolutely right.
Among the many lessons that are coming out of this case, one needs to be that everyone, every defendant, deserves a far better level of investigative scrutiny than the typical rush to arrest, find the evidence that supports conviction and ignore (or bury) whatever doesn’t.
Can’t do it for every case? Too much trouble? Too expensive? Not enough people care? Too bad. If the government wants to convict someone, let them do their job. Close enough isn’t close enough, even though it’s government work. That’s why we have juries, of course, but then, they haven’t always proven adequate for the task of putting the government to its proof. Most juries would do better throwing the government a party for giving them the false sense of security so they can sleep at night. After all, the government protects them. The defendant? Well, sometimes you’ve got to take one for the team.
Voice analysis is the sort of forensic test that comes at a price, one that most defendant’s can’t afford. Rarely would it come at this stage, before anyone was arrested. Only because of the enormous degree of interest in this case are we given an analysis of the scream that disproves, to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty, that it didn’t emit from the mouth of George Zimmerman.
Good for Trayvon Martin. Good for a national conversation on what happened. And it would be awfully good if we learned that this sort of scrutiny needs to come before we convict people instead of afterward.
H/T Eric Turkewitz, dedicated Daily News reader
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Good points, and they need to be made, but I don’t see 48% to be conclusive one way or the other. 48% is flipping a coin.
Now, had it been 90% or 10%, that would be more to my liking if I were on a jury. It is good that this test was made, it’s just too bad the results didn’t come out better.
I think what the article The Orlando Sentinel ran another attempt to drive the narrative. Lacking exemplars of the two voices, saying the same things at the same pitch and tone of voice, identification was going to be wobbly.
I think, too, the low-resolution video doesn’t give us much in the way of evidence, either. Not only can we not actually see if there are injuries, but the video only shows evidence of how Zimmerman looked when he went into the police department. That was after EMTs had ‘cleaned him up’, not what he looked like at the scene, immediately post-event. If the prosecution tried to introduce that as evidence, I’d expect the defense attorneys to object on grounds of materiality, whether it showed was it purported to show, whether it showed anything at all.
Person A shoots person B and there are no witnesses. Person A claims Person B attacked him so… case closed.
Analyzing screams is fine but what about taking Zimmerman to the scene and trying to reconstruct the shooting.
Also did the police give Zimmerman a lie detector test to satisfy to themselves he was truthful?
They did not have to arrest him but they did a lousy job at the investigation. This is something I thought happened 50 years ago not in 2012.
I don’t think the analysis works that way. Most human sound is within the same range, so you never end up with 10% no matter who you’re comparing.
Ever see a nose after it’s been broken. It’s unattractive, and can’t be cleaned up. Also, it bleeds, which means blood drips onto the shirt. It’s possible it was “kinda broken” in some unusual way, but this isn’t what one would expect.
Frank’s got a good point, though. 52% shouldn’t be “a reasonable scientific certainty.”
Maybe they can make all the dials go up to 11 if it makes you feel better.
Guy in a city of 55,000 makes 45 calls (at least, probably more) to the pd, most or all of them about trivial matters. This puts me out of mind to give police any slack. They knew exactly who Zimmerman was, and that he was unbalanced before they even dispatched. A good analysis would not ignore that knowledge or its implications. Zimmerman was roving “reasonable suspicion”. A human “drug dog” writ large.
The first police report said all 45 calls came in the space of about a year (which they probably did). After that caused a minor brewhaha, the police “corrected” to say 45 calls in 5 years. It doesn’t matter. they knew who this guy was and the fact that he had been aggressively looking for trouble for a long time. It is not like maybe they knew that. They knew that. they were using the guy to roust the local coloreds. It is an old police trick — they even used it in a famous novel called “To Kill A Mockingbird” by Harper Lee.
Then there is the fact that the dispatcher asked crazy George not whether there was any evidence of an actual crime in progress, no, not that — the dispatcher wanted to know whether the “suspicious” man was black. First question out of his mouth. He never did get around to asking why anyone thought a crime was committed, or even ordering him not to follow Zimmerman. Oh, they were using him but good. He wasn’t just drugdogging — he had actually crossed the line into birddogging! I bet they thought it was hilarious at the time. What a setup.