Inconclusive | Chapter 5

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Speaker 2 After over three weeks, somehow, some way,

Speaker 2 Ian is found guilty of sexual assault in the first, guilty of murder in the second, and guilty of kidnapping.

Speaker 2 He is sentenced to life in prison for the murder conviction and two 20-year sentences for kidnapping and sexual assault to run consecutively.

Speaker 2 Sean is up next. As Ian and Frank have both now been convicted of Dana's murder, Sean's fate seems almost predestined.
Freedom often comes at a steep cost.

Speaker 2 For Sean, the idea of pleading guilty to a crime he didn't commit is a bitter pill to swallow. And his attorney, Keith Shigatomi, is committed to doing whatever he can to help help Sean.

Speaker 8 You don't really believe it's going to happen because it's like so

Speaker 12 fucking ridiculous that it...

Speaker 7 That's how I felt.

Speaker 12 I thought it was fucking ridiculous that they even came after us. It's like...

Speaker 12 It's fucking ridiculous.

Speaker 13 You know, people talk about the defense, the defendant being presumed innocent. That doesn't change unless and until the prosecution can prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

Speaker 13 But in reality, people think that if you're arrested, you're guilty. And so

Speaker 13 we deal with that in every case, regardless of it's

Speaker 13 on the front page news or it's something that nobody has ever heard of before and nobody really gives a shit about. So that's just the reality.
Ian is convicted even faster than Frank.

Speaker 13 And

Speaker 13 obviously,

Speaker 13 the family's devastated. that Ian has been convicted.
He's going to be serving a life sentence Unless something changes at some point in the future, that's his fate. He's got a life sentence.

Speaker 13 Now, at that point,

Speaker 13 Sean is in his early 20s.

Speaker 13 He has two young children. The thought of him going to prison has got to be a scary thought,

Speaker 13 especially for something that we didn't do. And my position throughout the entire case was always

Speaker 13 you know sean i believe in you i believe in me i think we can win this i don't give a what happened to frank i don't give a what happened to ian you want to fight we'll go down we'll go down that we'll go down that that alley together and we'll we'll give them the fight of their life

Speaker 13 and you know sean's appreciative and i said but at the same time if you want to not go to prison, you tell me and I'll see what I can do. And that's when, you know, the decision is made.

Speaker 13 Okay, well, let's see what we can try to do to prevent Sean from going to prison.

Speaker 2 Like Ian, Sean is offered a deal. But unlike Ian, for the sake of his children's well-being, Sean accepts.

Speaker 2 With Ian's support.

Speaker 12 I would have been sitting in the, you know, the cell right by him if I didn't do that. That's the way I felt.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 12 I had three babies, yeah.

Speaker 15 Ultimate Sean's decision, bottom line, you know what I mean? But for me, I want him to take the deal for it.

Speaker 15 I think it would be harder if both of us was locked up, bottom, guarantee.

Speaker 12 Yeah, I mean, I'm sure it was hard for him in his situation he was in, and it was hard for me in my situation.

Speaker 2 This is an underappreciated aspect of wrongful convictions. Many innocent people plead guilty because they can see that they won't get a fair shake from from the courts.
They're not wrong.

Speaker 2 And you can see how Sean's choice here to plead to something he didn't do is quite rational.

Speaker 2 Sean's plea agreement charges him with manslaughter and kidnapping by omission, asserting he failed to prevent the events from occurring rather than admitting his active participation in them.

Speaker 2 But the plea deal has a contingency.

Speaker 2 Accepting the plea deal not only requires a recorded confession, but also passing a polygraph test, implicating his brother in the process.

Speaker 2 I'm Amanda Knox, and this is three.

Speaker 2 Chapter 5. Inconclusive.

Speaker 2 The date is March 23rd, 2010.

Speaker 14 It is 1059 a.m.

Speaker 14 I'm at the

Speaker 14 Public Safety Office on Oahu.

Speaker 14 President for this interview is

Speaker 14 Shiitomi and also Sean Schweitzer.

Speaker 14 For the record identify yourself.

Speaker 14 My name is Sean Schweitzer. And your age, Sean? 24.

Speaker 14 We hope to while I'm getting an interview regarding the data I investigation,

Speaker 14 basically any information you have,

Speaker 14 including what involvement you may have in the investigation. I'll ask questions as we go along or as you complete your statement.

Speaker 14 So you you can begin.

Speaker 12 Yeah,

Speaker 12 you know, it's uh

Speaker 12 shitty that I had to do that, but

Speaker 7 you better take it.

Speaker 5 You better have taken it.

Speaker 2 Sean takes the polygraph, and initially, the test detects deception. And no matter how hard he tries, Sean's confession is proving to be false.

Speaker 2 But instead of viewing these results as an indication of potential innocence, the prosecution decides to salvage their situation.

Speaker 13 They administer the exam to Sean.

Speaker 13 So I'm there.

Speaker 13 Guillermo is there, but Guillermo's off the side. He's doing whatever he's doing

Speaker 13 or whatever.

Speaker 5 And the

Speaker 13 Examiner comes out to me and goes, hey, Keith, your boy is testing hot. I go, what do you mean? He's failing.
You're not passing. So I go to Galermo and I ask, hey,

Speaker 13 will you accept inconclusive? And Guillermo goes, yeah, I accept that. So I said, okay, great.
He never passed the polygraph and I've never said pass the polygraph.

Speaker 13 And I don't bring it to anybody's attention because, you know, they're saying that they're willing to go forward with it.

Speaker 2 The consensus around Sean's polygraph results is that they are inconclusive.

Speaker 2 a conclusion Detective Guillermo accepts with no objections, until they arrive in court and Judge Riki Mei Amano presses for clear answers.

Speaker 13 Typically what happens is when you go to court and you plead guilty, the court just wants to make sure you know what you're doing and says, you know, are you pleading in fact guilty because you were in fact guilty?

Speaker 13 And well, yeah. And they just get through it and

Speaker 13 take the plea and

Speaker 13 it's over.

Speaker 13 But I think in this case,

Speaker 13 the judge was

Speaker 13 wanting to be pretty thorough and was asking all about these statements that are in the

Speaker 13 plea agreement as well as the plea.

Speaker 13 And I believe she was getting somewhat frustrated because Sean's not going to tell him, I did this, I did that, I'm guilty.

Speaker 13 You know, it was hard enough to try to get in there and fashion a plea that we could

Speaker 13 accept.

Speaker 13 And so I know the judge is getting frustrated, and that's when I think Rik and Ishida

Speaker 13 stepped up and said, Oh, Judge, you know, kind of like, don't worry about it. He's admitted to it.
He made a statement to us. He passed the polygraph.

Speaker 13 And I think at that point, Judge Amano kind of like, okay, and then let's just get this thing over with and

Speaker 13 takes the plea. Now, the other thing is, is that if you look at the

Speaker 13 plea agree,

Speaker 13 I think he

Speaker 13 led to manslaughter and

Speaker 13 kidnapping.

Speaker 13 But if you look at it closely, it says by omission, and that I failed to take action to

Speaker 13 prevent all this from happening. He doesn't say I did anything wrong.
He just says I didn't do anything.

Speaker 13 And my position has always been

Speaker 13 that there is no such charge

Speaker 13 as

Speaker 13 manslaughter by omission or kidnapping by omission that's a bonus charge and you can't plead guilty to something that not a charge and and so that's another basis that has been raised to allow sean to withdraw the pleas because he pled to something that doesn't exist you can't convict someone for a crime that doesn't exist

Speaker 13 so that was that that was kind of like the the escape valve that I'd left in there.

Speaker 2 But by 2000, the case is is closed.

Speaker 2 Despite no evidence pointing towards the three men, in the court of law, Frank and Ian are guilty of Dana Ireland's murder and will spend the rest of their lives behind bars.

Speaker 2 The prison Sean has to spend his time in after accepting the plea deal is a bit more invisible.

Speaker 15 The railroad just affected us in both ways, you know.

Speaker 7 The yin and the yang,

Speaker 5 where

Speaker 15 one in the cell, one in society. You know, society itself can be cool.

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Speaker 2 With his plea deal settled, Sean focuses on caring for his twin daughters, who, unlike other kids at school, have to navigate an adult situation in a middle school setting.

Speaker 2 In one of their eighth grade assignments, their teacher chose Murder in Paradise for a book report.

Speaker 2 Written by a reporter from the Hawaii Tribune-Herald, the book detailed Dana Ireland's murder, the ensuing investigation, and the complicated legal battle.

Speaker 2 As part of the assignment, One of the twins was asked to read the book aloud in class, putting a spotlight on the girls and their family situation.

Speaker 2 Despite their efforts to confront the bullying, one daughter found herself suspended.

Speaker 15 Especially being the notorious Schweitzer brothers, you know, I mean, you know, off the lie.

Speaker 15 The whole book is, you got the book. The book is a lie.

Speaker 15 Everything in that book is a lie.

Speaker 12 You know how kids are

Speaker 12 harassing them, talking.

Speaker 12 So

Speaker 12 one of my daughters is a little more headstrong than the other and she wasn't taking it.

Speaker 12 So yeah, she got into trouble for that.

Speaker 2 This is another underappreciated aspect of wrongful convictions. The ripple effect on families.
While I was on trial, my own sisters were going through a similar nightmare.

Speaker 2 being harassed in school, getting into fights to defend my honor.

Speaker 2 All the while, I was stuck in a cell, and they weren't telling me about the trauma they were going through because they didn't want to burden me further.

Speaker 2 For Sean, there was the added element of guilt.

Speaker 12 And I think it was a few years before I actually talked to him on the phone after everything was said and done.

Speaker 8 I couldn't do it.

Speaker 12 I felt like I fucked, you know, betrayed my brother.

Speaker 2 For Ian, every day in prison blurred into the next, a repetitive cycle that wore him down.

Speaker 15 Every day was different, but the same.

Speaker 15 You know, just doing time and just grinding, you know, minute by minute, you know, doing time.

Speaker 15 Very mental.

Speaker 15 All mental.

Speaker 18 And

Speaker 15 physical fast.

Speaker 15 But majority a lot of mental.

Speaker 2 The stifling sameness is one of the more mundane but maddening aspects of prison.

Speaker 2 You take for granted the variety that fills your life on the outside, trying out that new restaurant, bumping into your old friend from school, and then you're stuck with the same food, the same walls, the same people, day in, day out.

Speaker 2 Every inmate reacts to it differently. It made me depressed, and sadness became my new emotional baseline.

Speaker 2 For Ian, it triggered feelings of anger, but he fought to not let it consume him, recognizing its draining influence. He did his best to keep his spirits up and navigate his new reality.

Speaker 15 I think for me that my belief was the hand of God was going to kick me.

Speaker 2 And it was only a matter of time before the Hawaii Innocence Project would set things into motion in a way that no one was able to before.

Speaker 2 Ken Lawson and Randy Roth, now co-directors of the Hawaii Innocence Project, start by making inroads with the prosecutor's office with their law students at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Speaker 18 Randy put together for our Innocence Project a group of former prosecutors who would come in and

Speaker 18 the students would present actual, and this is one of the cases the students presented. They would present actual cases, cases where we believe our clients are actually innocent.

Speaker 18 They were present on to former prosecutors and get their feedback and stuff like that.

Speaker 18 And so, you know, Randy getting us involved with prosecutors was a huge, huge step because as a criminal defense lawyer, I didn't want to, I mean, I'm like, man,

Speaker 18 it's like fucking Dreichel or somebody. You know what I mean?

Speaker 11 Give me a cross and some holy water.

Speaker 2 Ken's next step was to present the case to the then mayor, Mitch Roth, to see if he would be willing to do a joint investigation.

Speaker 18 And the pitch was, look, you guys know that there's an unknown, we haven't matched this male DNA yet, unknown male. So your interest is finding him.

Speaker 18 You still have a perpetrator out there. We all know that.
Now you believe the perpetrator may be connected to our client. We believe the opposite.

Speaker 18 So we both have a mutual interest in finding out whose DNA this is. And then that could lead us to saying it's not whatever.
And so that's how the joint investigation agreement started, right?

Speaker 2 Ken Lawson and Randy Roth assemble the Marvel Avengers of Defense Teams, for it's not just them and their students, but they call in the help of Barry Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project in New York, and Susan Friedman, the staff attorney for the Innocence Project, with a focus in post-conviction DNA cases.

Speaker 2 But even with this kind of legal lineup, exonerating someone and proving innocence is an uphill battle. Here's Jennifer Brown, current associate director of the Hawaii Innocence Project.

Speaker 19 Yeah, so once we had that with the DNA, and we had already, so we had a transition with prosecutors. So Mitch Roth became the mayor.
He was the former prosecutor.

Speaker 19 So we had started that cooperation agreement with Mitch. We were getting some cooperation, but it wasn't moving quickly enough.

Speaker 19 And then we started saying, you know, like, let's, let's get this moving along.

Speaker 2 The process is full of hurdles, with a limited timeline and number of chances to argue innocence. Post-conviction appeals efforts are constrained by strict rules.

Speaker 2 Only issues raised during the trial can be addressed. No new evidence or witnesses can be introduced.
But The game changer comes with new evidence.

Speaker 2 Stuff like new witnesses, new documents, or new scientific evidence like DNA testing that wasn't known or available at the time of trial.

Speaker 2 The goal isn't just to prove innocence, but also to identify the real perpetrator.

Speaker 18 And keep in mind, too, back in the late 90s, early 2000s, victims of crimes were getting more and more power to express their opinions on plea bargains.

Speaker 18 So it used to be, you know, when I first started practicing, most states didn't ignore victims, but a lot of prosecutors would ignore just

Speaker 18 here.

Speaker 18 You would have to get the approval of the Ireland family to say, I'm going to give this man probation. Is that okay with you? Now, if I'm Mr.

Speaker 18 Ireland, if he's going to confess, I want the guy whose DNA this is.

Speaker 18 So if he wants freedom, if he didn't want to spend one hour in prison for a murder and a rape of my daughter, I'll go along with that plea, but I want to know whose DNA was left on that gurney that my daughter's body was on.

Speaker 18 I want to know whose DNA was in her panty that was laying out there bloody. Or ain't no deal.

Speaker 2 Back in 2008, the Department of Justice launched a program that allowed DNA samples to be tested using newer methods.

Speaker 2 It was then that the attorneys for the Hawaii Innocence Project leveraged that statute to request DNA retesting under seal due to the high-profile nature of the case.

Speaker 2 Keeping testing secret avoided drawing attention while other evidence was explored, all in the hopes of finding the real perpetrator. DNA testing since 2008 has substantially changed.

Speaker 2 The Jimmy Z t-shirt found next to Dana Ireland, one key piece of evidence, could never fully be reviewed because forensic technology was unable to separate other DNA since the shirt was substantially soaked in Dana's blood.

Speaker 2 The prosecution argued the t-shirt belonged to Frank Pauline, supported by multiple witness testimonies claiming to have seen him wearing it.

Speaker 2 At the same time, it was a popular surf shirt like Billabong, and a lot of islanders had one. Regardless, this had stuck with the jury at Frank's trial.

Speaker 2 It was his shirt, they thought, and Dana's blood. So, he must have done it.

Speaker 18 Yeah, I think when you work on these cases, people can be convicted quickly in our system. And then it's just so hard to unchange the wrongful conviction.

Speaker 18 I mean, you see it all the time with cases going to the Supreme Court on people on death row and stuff like that

Speaker 18 and still losing. And so

Speaker 18 I think when we finally got the DNA evidence in, when DNA finally reached a point to where they could separate the blood on the Jimmy Z t-shirt,

Speaker 18 and also determine sweat DNA, wearer DNA, that didn't exist back when this trial started. And all of that showed that Frank Pauline did not wear that shirt at all.

Speaker 18 And neither did the other two defendants, no DNA whatsoever. Gave us hope.

Speaker 2 Here's Randy Roth of the Hawaii Innocence Project.

Speaker 20 Yeah, the Dana Ireland murder was horrendous.

Speaker 20 And what I remember, there was just so much news coverage, as one would expect, certainly appropriate, over a long period of time because it took them a while to zero in on the people that they said had done it.

Speaker 20 I thought I was keeping up with it, but I very much got the impression that people that they had said did it,

Speaker 20 including Ian Schweitzer. The mental impression that I formed from the news coverage was that these are some troublemakers.
For whatever reason, I've always

Speaker 20 probably thought more highly of

Speaker 20 police and prosecutors than the average person. I've kiddingly told students that I think half of my students were wired to be prosecutors.

Speaker 20 And I think as much as what the reporters were reporting and their spin on all of this, I was, I think, shame on me,

Speaker 20 ready to believe the worst because why would the police lie? Why would the prosecutors lie?

Speaker 20 And even if they weren't lying, why would they be so badly mistaken if they deal in this world every single day?

Speaker 2 I can't tell you how common and frustrating this attitude is as a wrongly convicted person. But it's human nature to believe that where there's smoke, there's fire.

Speaker 2 The problem is, in wrongful conviction cases, it's all smoke and no fire. But the more pressure there is from the media and the public to hold someone accountable, the more smoke there is.

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Speaker 2 In April of 2015, the Hawaii Innocence Project publicly announced their investigation into Ian's case. And that sent it moving forward like a freight train.
Well, in the legal world, that is.

Speaker 2 In the normal human world, their investigation would take years.

Speaker 2 They spent hours and hours poring over the case file, re-examining evidence, questioning witnesses, and visiting the scene which had changed a lot since 1991.

Speaker 2 Directly west of Vacation Land is Kilauea, one of the world's most active volcanoes, only 40 miles away by car, and even less as the crow flies.

Speaker 2 The legendary active volcano is not far from the Schweitzer House and just a short hop to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.

Speaker 2 I was actually visiting that park watching the volcano erupt when I got the news that Ian was being released from prison.

Speaker 8 It's five miles up the road. That didn't something happen.
It flows down though.

Speaker 8 It doesn't flow this way.

Speaker 15 It's going to have to like go uphill and then comes down to us to get it.

Speaker 7 Yeah, we're on the good side.

Speaker 15 We always were on the good side.

Speaker 2 The eruption in 2023 was minor, all things considered. In 2018, it caused chaos.

Speaker 2 This was a problem for Ken, Randy, and the Hawaii Innocence Project. Most places in the U.S., Crime scenes don't just vanish overnight.

Speaker 12 Yeah, because it actually went under and then it popped up in uh leilani estates and it started letting out on these fissures and it just popping up and then just right in your backyard front yard

Speaker 12 it took out like half of the the community over there like the lower half so like if you go through leilani

Speaker 12 you hit like a the end of the road already and it's it's all lava

Speaker 18 both both crime scenes right

Speaker 7 it's gone that whole vacation land everything

Speaker 2 by 2015 Ian has been in prison for about 15 years.

Speaker 2 But with the muscle he has on his defense team now, he is staying hopeful while his team works on a joint stipulation document that they will spend the next few years refining.

Speaker 2 And it's really just a document where all parties, in this case Ian's defense team and the then Mayor Mitch Roth, agree on what they call, quote, undisputed facts.

Speaker 2 And it serves as a legal shortcut where both sides agree on certain facts relevant to the case so they can just focus on what they disagree on.

Speaker 2 And as we've seen so far, there are quite a few disagreements, especially when it comes to the DNA.

Speaker 2 So the joint investigative teams hire a neutral DNA expert by the name of Lisa Calandro to help perform new testing on two items: the vaginal swabs collected from Dana's body and the hospital gurney sheet where semen was detected.

Speaker 2 It would take three years after entering into the joint investigation for the new DNA results to come in. And when they do, everyone is shocked.

Speaker 2 None of the DNA matches Frank Pauline Jr., Ian Schweitzer, or Sean Schweitzer.

Speaker 2 That's great news. And even better,

Speaker 2 there's a lead. For all the samples are consistent with each other in revealing a single DNA profile.
This profile is labeled Unknown Male Number 1.

Speaker 2 Finally, in January of 2022, the Hawaii County Prosecutor's Office, together with the Hawaii Innocence Project and New York Innocence Project, file their joint stipulated facts.

Speaker 2 claiming their reinvestigation has led to the discovery of new evidence that was not presented to the jury in Ian's 2000 trial.

Speaker 2 But it still takes months until October 2022 for Sean Schweitzer and his attorney Keith Shigatomi to meet with Hawaii County prosecuting attorneys Shannon Kagawa and Kevin Hashizaki to discuss the polygraph test he took as part of his plea agreement.

Speaker 2 During this meeting, Sean recants his prior confession in full. And despite how unreliable the polygraph is, law enforcement still relies on it.

Speaker 2 So naturally, they decide to give Sean another, and there is zero detection of deception.

Speaker 2 So the defense team is ready and armed with their new strategy, using a wealth of evidence to prove the existence of this elusive figure, unknown male number one.

Speaker 2 Of course, Ian is aware of all that is going on, but as you heard in chapter one, what came next was a surprise to everyone.

Speaker 2 In January 2023, nearly 23 years after serving time in Arizona, Ian is flown back to Hawaii.

Speaker 18 The next question was, are we going to get a judge that's going to listen?

Speaker 18 Because there's still a lot of people here who believe, you know,

Speaker 18 that Ian and the two other defendants are guilty.

Speaker 18 And that comes from being so, for lack of a better word, brainwashed, you know, during all the years up to the trial and stuff like that, that these guys are thugs.

Speaker 2 And Ian's family and his entire legal team, including Jennifer Brown, are anxious for their day in court.

Speaker 19 I didn't sleep

Speaker 19 the night before, you know, it was, you can't sleep because you're excited. You can't sleep because you're a little nervous.
Can't sleep because you're not really sure.

Speaker 19 Like, we were pretty sure that we believed that the judge was going to vacate and release him that day. But there was still a possibility that he might have to go back and get processed.

Speaker 19 There's all these different things. So walking into the courthouse, because I talked to Linda before and I was like, how many seats do you think you might need? You know, with family.

Speaker 19 And she's, at first, she was like not going to invite any family. And I was like, I think that she was so afraid to have that hope.

Speaker 19 And she had had the hope for so long. And like, you know, another year goes by, and another year goes by.
And so I said, Linda, make the calls, get some family.

Speaker 19 They're going to want to be there for this. I'm going to cry.

Speaker 11 And so she's like, okay, made a few phone calls. And she's like, I think I need

Speaker 19 two rows. So we made sure she had plenty of space.

Speaker 19 And walking in, I saw. so many of his family.

Speaker 22 And everybody was so happy, but also so nervous, you know?

Speaker 19 You also have to remember that

Speaker 19 nobody had seen Ian in years.

Speaker 2 During Ian's January 2023 hearing, his legal team invites experts to testify and walk the judge through all the forensic evidence used to convict the three men.

Speaker 2 Starting with The DNA evidence recovered from the hospital bedsheet and from the armpit of the Jimmy Z t-shirt, which excluded Ian Schweitzer, Sean Schweitzer, and Frank Pauline Jr.

Speaker 2 This DNA was consistent with samples taken from the vaginal swabs and from Dana's underwear, all of which pointed to a single person identified as unknown male number one.

Speaker 18 You don't know who the unknown male is and then think about the people that are actually innocent who have no DNA evidence left in their cases, either been destroyed or was never taken, and they never get out.

Speaker 18 You know, Ian and others like him have been blessed enough to say, you know what, the Jimmy Z t-shirt was still available to be tested.

Speaker 2 The investigation had pinned Ian's 1957 Volkswagen Beetle as the vehicle that hit Dana, Ireland.

Speaker 2 But the tire tracks from the bike accident scene and the Wa'a Wa'a Trail revealed inconsistencies in the tread patterns. They didn't match the VW.

Speaker 2 The experts go on to debunk the tread marks.

Speaker 2 Using the manufacturer's specs of the 1953 model, they point out significant differences in the Beetle's tread width, track width, and the wheelbase measurements compared to what police recorded at the scenes.

Speaker 2 They were closer to the markings of a small pickup truck. The VW Beetle would have to have been a highly modified stretch version of the model that Ian had driven.

Speaker 18 I got on the case in 2010 and been with it ever since. So So just, you've been waiting on this day.

Speaker 18 You know, you're just hoping that, you know, there's no surprises, nothing goes wrong.

Speaker 18 And we happen to have a very, very

Speaker 18 good judge who also understood a lot of different things. Like he really understood the tire tread evidence.
I guess he tinkers with cars and stuff like that.

Speaker 18 So I mean, it was just clear to him that there's no way this could have been a Volon.

Speaker 2 Next is the bite mark evidence.

Speaker 2 A forensic odontology expert looks into the bite marks and explains during the hearing how teeth and skin change over time, making it difficult to link bite marks to individuals.

Speaker 2 The expert also criticizes the original doctor's conclusions and believes that the marks were not, in fact, bite marks at all.

Speaker 18 Because what people think what they see on CSI is like, you know, yeah, you can do it, right? You put it through the fingerprint computer, right? You come back, you know what I mean?

Speaker 18 Or, you know, do all kinds of crazy tests. And it's like, okay, it's this guy.
It's just, they really don't understand the level of junk science. The only true science is DNA.

Speaker 18 The only true science is DNA. The rest of this stuff, bite mark evidence, is just crazy.

Speaker 21 Crazy.

Speaker 5 But people believe it.

Speaker 2 Ultimately, Ian, Sean, and Frank are conclusively excluded as contributors to the DNA evidence. The use of the VW in the murder is debunked, and the bite mark analysis is dismissed as junk science.

Speaker 2 Each piece of the puzzle the defense presents points to one conclusion, a single culprit who remains unidentified.

Speaker 2 In other words, three innocent men were convicted of crimes they did not commit, while the real perpetrator was living out his glory days.

Speaker 15 My amazing team broke down everything and just step by step just knocked everything out. When you're innocent, that's what happens.
The truth will come out. I mean,

Speaker 15 for some people, they don't get that chance. I'm glad I got that chance.

Speaker 2 Now, this particular hearing is not to prove Ian's innocence, only to demonstrate that there is crucial evidence that ultimately was not presented at his initial trial.

Speaker 2 But on January 24th, 2023, Ian's conviction is vacated and the charges against him are dismissed. He's formally exonerated now.

Speaker 2 Local investigative journalist Lynn Kawano, who has spent years working on and covering this case, was in the courtroom that day and heard all of this firsthand.

Speaker 9 Yeah, and it is, it's a lot of buildup, right? It's a lot of DNA. And you know how these things are, right? The person testifies, but you have to get their background.
You have to get their education.

Speaker 9 You have to know why they're so good at DNA and what the system is and how it's changed over the years.

Speaker 9 So you have all this this buildup and then you have that moment where Judge Kubota orders the cuffs to be removed. And, you know, we have those moments as journalists.

Speaker 9 You know, there are many different moments and that's one of them where everything changed.

Speaker 9 That one moment, those words from Judge Kubota changes everything about the case, about life for this whole family. And to see Ian's face at that time, because he was,

Speaker 9 he was surprised. You could tell he was saying, wait, can I go? Am I free? What happens now? He thought when he was pulled out of Saguaro that night, he was going to be back.

Speaker 9 He thought it was just another hearing. He had been through many before, and he was going to be back in Arizona.
I don't think he really fully grasped.

Speaker 9 that that was the last time he was going to be at Saguaro. That was the last time he was going to see the people he saw in prison every day.

Speaker 9 That was the last time he was going to be forced to eat a meal that he didn't want to eat. Because then he came here and that night he went home.

Speaker 9 He went home after

Speaker 9 more than two decades in prison.

Speaker 2 That's next in chapter six, which you can listen to next week.

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Speaker 24 Hey guys, it's Brian Baumgartner here from We Need a Forth here to tell you that we are joined this week by Sebastian Manascalco. You don't want to miss it.

Speaker 24 Listen to the latest episode of We Need a Forth, wherever you get your podcasts.