Investigative Reporter Tips for Lawyers: #7 PubMed

Among the many blunders committed by Jason Tibbs’s lawyers during the trial that resulted in his wrongful conviction was their failure to call their own experts to the stand to counter the testimony of the State’s forensic pathologist. He had conducted the autopsy on Rayna Rison twenty-one years earlier. Other experts would have questioned what he said about signs of physical trauma and decomposition and used his own words in the autopsy against him. Given the expense and availability of such expert witnesses, it’s no small matter to decide if they’re needed, but there is a resource that can help. PubMed is the Internet shorthand for the National Library of Medicine, part of the National Institute of Health. It is the repository of all credible peer-reviewed medical research in the world. I do not exaggerate. Self-respecting scientists will do all they can to ensure their findings are published in a peer-reviewed journal so they are displayed in PubMed. Below are some tips on navigating the site and examples of how it could have helped Jason’s defense.

·???????? Introducing Abstracts. These brief summaries are the building blocks for PubMed. Each provides a brief description of the subject studied, the methods used, and the conclusions. The abstract shows where the research has been published, the names of the researchers, and their affiliated institutions. Usually, at least one contributor provides an email address should you want further contact. The abstract provides enough information to determine if you want to read the entire article. While some are free, most require a per-article fee or subscription to the journal.

·???????? Forensic pathology. PubMed offers significant updated information about every aspect of this subject and the related investigative tools.? When Rayna’s body was found submerged in a pond in April 1993—a month after she was abducted—there was a lingering question about how she died. As the police reported to the FBI, “Her body showed no signs of defensive wounds or trauma usually associated with physical force beatings or strangulation.” But in 2013, the State accused Jason Tibbs of doing exactly that to his victim. On the stand, the forensic pathologist explained he found no trauma because of decomposition. However, a quick look at PubMed would have turned up research showing that the cold pond water had preserved Rayna’s corpse. Her body was bloated upon recovery, but research shows that occurs at the earliest stage of decomposition -- five days on land, and the skin and organs would have still been intact.

·???????? Forensic toxicology. An unexpected chemical was also in Rayna’s system that the forensic pathologist never explained in 1993 and steered away from explaining in his trial testimony. A quick perusal of PubMed would have revealed the lethality of that chemical and explained why the lab called the results of their analysis “Abnormal.” Some of that information would have also been available on an affiliated NIH site, PubChem.

·???????? Forensic analysis. Despite the “Med” in the site’s name, it provides research on forensic topics not related to medicine or even the human body (e.g., digital evidence). Articles in 2014 would have helped discover new techniques and practitioners of probabilistic genotyping to analyze the DNA from Rayna’s purse, which was a mixture of two unknown males. At the very least, it could have eliminated Jason as one of the sources.