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- [00:01]
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- [00:55]
Dr. Radha Modgill
This episode is brought to you by Starbucks.
- [00:57]
Professor Lady Sue Black
That is fire. Whoa, that's good. This might be the drink of the summer. Okay, I like this one too. I'm rocking with it.
- [01:04]
Dr. Radha Modgill
Okay, try it for yourself. Starbucks refreshers concentrates are coming home. Find them in the coffee aisle and make it yours.
- [01:12]
Intelligence Squared Announcer
Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm senior producer Mia Sorrenti. Forensic science has transformed the way crimes are investigated and justice is delivered. From fingerprints and DNA to new forms of anatomical identification, its breakthroughs have helped solve solve cases once thought impossible. Yet when evidence is misunderstood or experts overreach, the consequences can be devastating. In this episode, doctor and broadcaster Dr. Radha Modgill speaks with Professor Lady Sue Black about her 40 year career as one of the world's leading forensic anthropologists. Together they discuss how certain forensic science can be what happens when scientific evidence changes after a conviction, and how can juries be expected to understand complex findings. Let's join Dr. Radha Modgill now with more.
- [02:03]
Dr. Radha Modgill
Hello and welcome to Intelligence squared with me, Dr. Radha Modgill. Our guest today is Professor Lady Sue Black. She's one of the world's leading anatomists and forensic anthropologists. She's the president of Johns College in Oxford and was professor of anatomy and Forensic anthropology at the University of Dundee. She was also the lead anthropologist for the British forensic team in the war crimes investigations in Kosovo and one of the first forensic scientists to travel to Thailand following the Indian Ocean tsunami. She's also the author of the critically acclaimed and award winning Sunday Times bestsellers All that Remains and Written in Bone. And now she joins us to discuss her new book, An Expert Witness. Sue it is an absolute pleasure for you to be joining us today. Thank you so much.
- [02:51]
Professor Lady Sue Black
Oh, the pleasure's mine. And thank you so much for that very generous introduction. So I'm very grateful to you.
- [02:56]
Dr. Radha Modgill
Thank you. It's all true. Well, so you've had 40 years experience analyzing.
- [03:04]
Professor Lady Sue Black
Why don't you tell everyone just how really old I am? Over 40 years.
- [03:10]
Dr. Radha Modgill
Over 40 years experience analyzing criminal case evidence. So tell us, what has it been like acting as an expert witness over that period? But crucially, as well, I'm also really fascinated. Why did you get into this area? Why were you interested in this in the first place?
- [03:26]
Professor Lady Sue Black
So I'm a great believer in fate, and I don't think in my life I've ever made a conscious decision as to where my life is going to go. I'm very good at seizing an opportunity and then running with it, but I don't seek it out. And it was Steve Jobs who said at one point, it's one of the wonderful things about getting older is that you have that time to stop, to turn around and look behind you at the path you've taken. And when you come to a crossroads, you might not know why you made that decision at the time, but with hindsight, you can now see the pattern and the pathway. And I can go right back to when I was a little girl. I was daddy's girl. I loved my father. I loved my mother. My mother was a gorgeous woman. But I just worshiped my father. And anywhere he went, I tagged along like his little shadow. And my maiden name was Gun, which is a good north of east northeast of Scotland name. And my father happened to be a very good shot. And so simply, whenever he went out shooting, and it was only ever for the pot, he never shot for sport. Then I would take the opportunity to go with him. And so from the age of five or so, I never thought anything of carrying home dead rabbits or dead pheasants. And my mother was a little bit squeamish and so she would cook them, but she didn't want to prepare them. And so I got to spend an extra little while with my dad sitting at the back door when teach me how to skin a rabbit or how to pluck a pheasant or a great Scottish word, which is how to grillach a deer, which is to take all the innards out. And so from a very young age, I'm up to my elbows in blood and dead animal, and it doesn't seem unusual. And when I was 12, in my family, the 12 to 13 sort of barrier is an important one. 12, you're allowed to be a child. By 13, our family expects you to start to learn how to be an adult. And when I was 12, my father said to me, what job are you going to get? And I thought he meant when I grew up. He meant when I was 13, what was going to be my job, because there was an expectation that half of anything I earned would go to my mother for board and lodgings. And so it seemed logical to work in a butcher shop. So my entire teenage years, when my friends were selling makeup and blouses and things, I was in a butcher shop. So when I went to university, it seemed logical to go into anatomy because it was like the butcher shop, but just an entirely different animal.
- [06:03]
Dr. Radha Modgill
That was fascinating. It really is. And I mean, as a medical doctor, I've done, you know, I've obviously studied anatomy to a degree and kind of looked at pro sections and things like that. And it is. Anatomy is fascinating. It's like looking at all of the mechanics of something, how something works, understanding it. And I think when you see it and when you understand it, you then appreciate it. But also you can appreciate how amazing things are when they work, but also what happens when they go wrong.
- [06:29]
Professor Lady Sue Black
I can remember because I was 19 when I dissected my first cadaver. And I can remember thinking, because I was a scientist, we took a whole year to dissect the body. And I can remember thinking, this is ridiculous. How's it going to take me a whole year to do this? And when I'd made the first cut through skin and I'd seen the first arterial that I'd cut through, I thought, my goodness me, how am I going to do this in a year? And the honest truth is, you can't. There's so much to learn in anatomy, and it's such a privilege and it's such an amazing place to be able to look underneath human skin, that I knew that the minute when I walked into the dissecting room, I'd crossed a Rubicon, I knew that I was where I belonged. And I think you're either an anatomist or you're not. And I think for some of our medical students in particular, and our dental students, they couldn't wait to be rid of the dissecting room. But there were others who really got it and understood it. So were you a lover or a hater? Was it Marmite for you?
- [07:34]
Dr. Radha Modgill
I actually loved it because I was so curious. And also it gave me appreciation of how intelligent life is. And how as human beings, we think we can invent this and invent that and absolutely, we've progressed usually. But, you know, when you see the intricacies of human body and how everything works in absolute synchronicity, I was just so fascinated by how intelligent life is and how all of these things work. So I actually really enjoyed it because it.
- [08:00]
Sponsor Narrator
It gave.
- [08:00]
Dr. Radha Modgill
It's a bit like looking, kind of looking behind a clock, isn't it, and seeing all the mechanics. So I really, really loved it. And it gave me a very good understanding, you know, in all kinds of ways about life. And I suppose, you know, how lucky we are that most of the time our bodies work really well. Actually,
- [08:18]
Professor Lady Sue Black
often, often with students, it's the first time they come across a deceased person and there is all the fear inside you of, oh, my goodness me, what's this going to be like? Is it going to be awful? Am I going to faint? And once you forget to be afraid and you replace that fear with curiosity and learning, then it's the most amazing world. And when you think about it, the person that you dissect, or prosected parts, as you said, that person chose when they were in life to do that. They signed a piece of paper that gave you the gift of education. And I always said to all of my students, nobody will ever give you a gift like that again, ever. Here's my body. Learn. All I ask of you is to learn. And I think there's a weight of responsibility comes on your shoulders when you go into a dissecting room, when you suddenly realize this isn't an it, it's a person, it's someone's father, mother, brother, sister, and they've entrusted you just to learn. It blew my mind every single time I went into the dissecting room. And it still does, it really does.
- [09:31]
Dr. Radha Modgill
Don't you. You have such respect for people, like you say, giving you that gift and that opportunity. And I remember at the end of our year, we all went to a service to say thank you to these people. So it really was, you know, a huge, huge honor.
- [09:44]
Professor Lady Sue Black
Where did you go to university?
- [09:47]
Dr. Radha Modgill
So I was at Cambridge for my first three years and then Imperial. So, yeah, I did that at Cambridge. But, yeah, really honoured to have that opportunity. So you went to university, you became even more fascinated by this, and then that led you down the path of getting into being an expert witness straight away, or what happened next in your career.
- [10:06]
Professor Lady Sue Black
It takes time. So I'm very old and I.
- [10:10]
Dr. Radha Modgill
You're not, sue, you're not.
- [10:11]
Professor Lady Sue Black
I am I'm really old.
- [10:13]
Dr. Radha Modgill
Let me put that straight to the audience right now.
- [10:17]
Professor Lady Sue Black
And when I was first working in the field, we didn't have DNA. So DNA was known about in medical genetics, but it hadn't crossed over into the forensic world. And I was doing my Ph.D. and I did the Ph.D. i did because I'm terrified of rodents, I hate mice and rats, and there's nothing ever could persuade me to lift a dead mice out of a bucket. Nothing. And so my supervisor said, then we'll do something on identification from bone. And I thought, I can do dead humans, can't do dead mice. And whilst I was doing that PhD, we got a phone call from the local police force and they said, look, we've got a body that's been washed ashore. This is the east coast, northeast coast of Scotland, and the body's been in the water for quite a few days, if not a couple of weeks. So the condition of the remains is not good. We can't facially identify the individual, there's so much damage to the face we can't identify from teeth and the top layer of skins come off, so we can't look at fingerprints. Now, nowadays we take a DNA sample, but we didn't have that then. And they said, could somebody from anatomy come over and help us? Because we've got one missing person and we think it's probably them, but we don't know. And the procurator fiscal, which is the equivalent of the coroner, almost needs to have some reassurance that it's the right individual, because, of course we can't show the body to family. So I went across with my PhD supervisor and we were able to determine that he was male with. We were able to determine what age he was, what height he was, a previous fracture that had healed, all these sorts of things. And we noticed he had a birthmark, just a small one, on the left side of his chest. And the police went back to his mother and said, did your son have a birthmark? And she said, no, my son was perfect. And then we said, go and speak to his girlfriend. And so they spoke to his girlfriend. She said, yes, he had a birthmark. So for me, I suddenly realized I could take my anatomy into a world that could really influence people who are at their most vulnerable in terms of their own sort of level of grief. And whilst we might be bringing really bad news, it's news with a kindness because it's truth. But what it taught me was that the mother, from that point forward never believed that the body that was returned to her was her son. The girlfriend believed it, but the mother didn't. And it's that thing about false hope which is so unkind that I felt maybe I can make a difference in that world. And I thought, I can go from the back doorstep with my dad. I can go into the butcher shop, I can go into the dissecting room, actually, I can go into the mortuary. And it's only once you've done the mortuary stuff, but particularly in relation to a criminal investigation, which the first case wasn't, it was an identification. There was no criminal circumstances because he'd crashed his microlight off the east coast. But it's only when we start to look at criminal casework, then you find yourself in the courtroom and that's a whole different ball of string.
- [13:33]
Dr. Radha Modgill
Gosh, what a fascinating story. Because obviously, I mean, obviously you were quite used to doing lots of things, like you said, with your dad and working at the butchers and things, also your university training. But you know that when you're. When you're then asked to kind of go and look at a human body of someone you know who was living not too long ago, who, you know, like you say, got relatives who are quite distressed and who's obviously in a. His body is in a state of decomposition because it's been quite a while, your first thought, maybe, I don't know for you, but for me would be, gosh, that sounds really quite traumatic and quite distressing. But as you quite rightly said, when you hear about the context, the human story, the people around it, what an amazing talent and gift and skill to have, like you say, to be able to help those people understand or give them some certainty around what might have happened or who that person was. And that's not about us.
- [14:28]
Professor Lady Sue Black
Yeah, yeah, it's not about us.
- [14:30]
Dr. Radha Modgill
It's.
- [14:30]
Professor Lady Sue Black
Suddenly you're faced with a situation that is somebody else's situation. It's the police wanting to make sure that there's. There's nothing nefarious going on. It's the family's desperate looking for someone and it's the respect of being able to give somebody back the name that they were given very shortly after they were born. So your own feelings and your own emotions and, you know, as a doctor, you know, you can't deal with patients all day and every day and wear your heart on your sleeve because you have to be objective, you have to be just that little bit removed to be able to do your job dispassionately. And that isn't it's not a sense that we don't care. We care deeply, and you, I'm sure, care deeply about your patients. But we also have to protect ourselves so that we can go on and help the next patient and the next one. And the next one.
- [15:22]
Sponsor Narrator
Yes.
- [15:22]
Dr. Radha Modgill
That's fascinating. So obviously that was an identification case, and then, obviously, is it from there you moved into criminal cases and going into court, is that what happened next?
- [15:33]
Professor Lady Sue Black
It is. Pretty well, by and large, most of the work that I do tends not to need me in the courtroom until it all goes horrendously wrong. So if we can positively identify the deceased, even in a criminal situation, the chances are you won't need the forensic anthropologist in court because you've identified the individual. But each of the forensic anthropologists has their own area of expertise. So my areas of expertise are identification of the child. It's about reconstruction of fragmented remains. It's about criminal dismemberment, for example. And so once you get a niche area in which you become known, then that's when you tend to find yourself going into the courtroom. Because then both sides of our adversarial system want to test you. And the courtroom is a very gladiatorial place. There are two sides, and one side want to make you the world's leading expert, and the other side want to prove that you're an utter idiot and nobody should have allowed you in the courtroom in the first place. And one of those two sides will win. And I've been the hero, and I've been the zero. And it is just sometimes the lap of the gods.
- [16:52]
Dr. Radha Modgill
Yeah. So how fascinating, like you say, to then move into that world of courtrooms and the legal system. I know obviously, in your book you examine how those sort of three pillars of the criminal justice system, so science, law and law enforcement have kind of evolved in relation to each other or sometimes in conflict with each other. So what can happen when sort of flawed methodology or science is presented in court or corners are cut? What are the consequences of that?
- [17:18]
Professor Lady Sue Black
So the biggest consequence offered is when we have a miscarriage of justice. So we're in a situation where the evidence has been presented, the jury have heard it, the jury have given their verdict, and if the person is found guilty, maybe they go to prison. What we can find out over time, of course, is perhaps with appeals, that perhaps the case itself wasn't followed in the way in which it should have done. So the legal side of it, there are questions on. Or there can be questions about the expert, or there can be Questions about the evidence or science will change. And so if you think about what we can do with DNA now compared to what we could do with DNA 20 years ago, it's vastly different. So somebody who might have been convicted for a crime 30 years ago and is still serving a life sentence, then we can find, perhaps as technology moves forward, there might be evidence we can find now that exonerates that person. And that's why keeping the evidence is so important. But if you imagine all the evidence that's generated in a single case, and you think about how many thousands of cases there are in a year, that storage of evidence of itself is a huge headache.
- [18:37]
Dr. Radha Modgill
Yes, it must be a huge challenge, as you say, to keep that evidence, to retain it, I'm assuming, in the correct conditions and the correct circumstances, and then to have the right context of all of the other evidence, bits of, of statements and visuals and other kind of things that also, I suppose, are needed in that scenario.
- [18:56]
Professor Lady Sue Black
And, you know, when there is a case that's not solved, then the cold case review will come back regularly and regularly test for new evidence and new techniques. But when somebody is convicted of a crime, then that's almost the end of it, unless an appeal can set up another investigation. So it's a big hurdle to get through once a conviction has been achieved in the courtroom. And the most important people in the courtroom are the jury because they're the triers of fact. They are the ones who will decide this person is guilty or there is insufficient evidence and this person can walk free. And when we're talking about sometimes quite complex areas of science, we have to bear in mind that many members of our jury haven't read anything about science since they were in school. And that might have been when they were 16 years of age and they're now 65. And science has moved on a lot in there. So the really important thing on us as expert witnesses is to be able to talk about the evidence in a language that is easy to understand but is still accurate, so that the jury can have the best information available on which to make their decision. Because it's a big decision they have to make.
- [20:16]
Dr. Radha Modgill
It's a huge decision. And just from that, it strikes me that just so many different skills, that being an expert when this involves, I mean, there's the technical skill and all the training and the years, decades of education and knowledge, but it's also, as you say, that ability to translate and communicate your findings so people can understand them and interpret them, but also, I suppose, really as well as you said before you're getting one side really questioning you, interrogating you, and really sort of challenging your opinion and your expert view. How do you find that? Is that something you enjoy or something that over the years you've kind of got more comfortable with? What's that like?
- [20:55]
Professor Lady Sue Black
I definitely don't enjoy it. Because you don't know where it's going to go.
- [21:01]
Dr. Radha Modgill
No.
- [21:01]
Professor Lady Sue Black
You know, if you're lucky, you stand in the courtroom and hopefully you'll give your evidence in a day. And so the court will start about 10 o' clock and it will want to finish about 4 o' clock and it will have had an hour in the middle for something to eat. And most of the time I'm a prosecution witness, but I am also a defense witness. And so what the prosecution will generally do is they know that it will take all day for you to be heard and for. For the defence to have a go as well. So the first part of the day is with the side that has retained you and they're out there to prove that you're an expert and you know what you're talking about and everything's generally very nice and you get an opportunity to explain what you've done, what you've found and what it means to you. When you come back in the afternoon, then the prosecution will give enough time for the defence to ask their questions, but don't want to give them insufficient time because they don't want it to go on for a second day. And so the timing in the courtroom is really interesting. I've seen a prosecution barrister take an hour to go through my cv, which is totally irrelevant, but all he's doing is wasting time because he's checking the clock to how long he's got left.
- [22:19]
Dr. Radha Modgill
So my introduction for you today was quite short.
- [22:22]
Professor Lady Sue Black
Perfect. It's absolutely perfect. And then when you are at your most tired, that's when the defense come forward and you can feel yourself tense up. You know it, because their job is to test you. That's what they're there to do. And it's not like the American films where, you know, somebody jumps up and says objection. Or, you know, the judge overrules. As far as everyone in the courtroom is concerned, you're an expert, you put yourself here, you're on your own two feet. And it's really only extremes when somebody will. Either the judge or the opposition will come in and actually try to stop something. And I've had a couple of those. But by and large, you can see where the defence lawyer is going. And if they ask you a question that you genuinely don't know the answer to, you have to say, I don't know, I can go and find out, but I don't know at the moment. And that's a really difficult place when you're portrayed as being the expert and the jury are thinking, well, what kind of an expert are you if you don't know? And it is a really. It's a really tricky place because it's somebody else's game, somebody else's rules. And although we roughly know the rules, we don't know the gameplay, so we don't know the tactic that the legal team is trying to take. And that can sometimes lead you down a blind alleyway and you just had no idea how you got there. And then you know you've not done your job properly.
- [23:57]
Dr. Radha Modgill
Yeah. And I suppose that comes to that element of when an expert speaks beyond their expertise. And I'm sure obviously you must have come across other expert witnesses in your time, I'm sure, and perhaps potentially noticed that. And as you say, if people have difficulty or challenges with saying I don't know. And as a doctor, that's something that we have to get used to very often is when a patient asks me something, if I don't know, I have to say, I don't know. And that's one of the clear signs of property, isn't it, professionalism to say I don't know. And that's okay in terms of obviously making sure you're giving accurate information. But I suppose in some cases you may have seen people speaking beyond their expertise or interpreting things beyond potentially what the science is showing.
- [24:37]
Professor Lady Sue Black
Maybe that definitely happens. It's not rare, but it's also, you know, there are some really good experts out there who know what they're doing. So it's an unusual situation, but it does happen, and it often happens in younger experts who perhaps aren't as battle worn as the rest of us. Or it happens in a field where there aren't a lot of other experts in that field and the individual feels very confident in themselves. And confidence, whilst it's important in an expert witness, can also be your downfall. So if you become overly confident and you will have come across the medics in your field who believe their own rhetoric, who believe that only God doesn't know that they really are God, we've all sort of been there, and I think in many ways the courtroom almost feeds into that because you are laid out to be the expert, and if you're the kind of person who enjoys that sort of approach, then it's easy to get too big for your boots. And the minute you do that and you have a really good, sharp, keen defence barrister, they're going to cut you down to size. So I was always told, never have an ego in court and never try to be clever. Never ever try to be funny. And, you know, you have to give everything absolutely and utterly dead pan. And there's only one occasion that I can remember where there was a laughter around the courtroom and I can remember feeling so very uncomfortable with it. And it was a murder case, and it was a murder case where the individual had been quite brutally dismembered. And there were two accused. I was appearing for the prosecution, but there were two accused, which means, therefore you have three sets of lawyers. And by the time I'd got to the third set of lawyers, he had said to me, well, presumably the kind of implements that would be needed to do this are professional. And of course, sometimes you can hear yourself say something and you want to stop yourself saying it, but it's too far gone and you can't. And I said, no, not at all. These are the kinds of implements you would find in a kitchen. And if you're somebody who knows how to sharpen a knife like I do, these implements would be in your kitchen. To which he replied, well, remind me not to invite you round for dinner. And I thought, what an inappropriate concept. But actually, the courtroom giggled. And I thought with hindsight, what he actually had done was he diffused what was becoming a really tense situation because the description of the dismemberment was brutal and he'd sort of deflated it a little bit. But I can remember just being horrified because I thought, I can't smile, I can't laugh. It would be totally inappropriate. So I think I just looked horrified, which was probably the right thing to do.
- [27:38]
Dr. Radha Modgill
Yes, I think I probably was.
- [27:45]
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- [29:20]
Dr. Radha Modgill
Now I'm fascinated as a scientist, but I'm fascinated by the scientific kind of techniques. I know obviously some of them are probably very complex and complicated, but could you just run through maybe a couple of sciency kind of bits in terms of your techniques or what you do to actually to help, I suppose solve crimes and to identify people? What, what do you, what kind of methods do you use or techniques do you use?
- [29:43]
Professor Lady Sue Black
Well, of course it does change because now we're, you know, there's a team now which there might not have been in the past, so that we'll be taking samples that will be sent off for DNA. We'll be taking, you know, fingerprints because we've got fingerprint databases. So as, as time moves on and as technology moves on, we have more available to us. And I would say what it's done for my profession is that in the earlier days I probably did more casework at a general level. And now that we have the scientific approach, probably I do fewer cases, but they're more intense. So they're generally about an area that DNA isn't going to solve or fingerprints aren't going to solve. Dentally, it's about finding dental records. So identification itself is a science and a group of sciences that has its own experts. But in my field, for example, it's about identifying what kind of an implement was used to dismember this individual so that I would have research projects. I had a PhD student who went out to a well known DIY store and bought up all the sharp blades and chisels and saws and all sorts of things that he could so that we could test what are the marks that are left on pig bone if we use this. And the young lady on the checkout counter said, it looks to me like you're going to go and dismember a body. And he just didn't know where to look. So I thought, is that the kind of thing that's normally said in Dundee? Maybe it is, yeah. So that we will see a problem in a case and if we don't have the research to back it up, we'll do the research. So we would go through and we would cut bones with different implements. We'd look at it under visible light, we'd look at it under microscopic investigation, we'd look at it in all sorts of different ways, compile the atlas that then allows you to compare in future when you see similar sort of cut marks. Those sorts of things are what we would do.
- [31:44]
Dr. Radha Modgill
That's amazing.
- [31:45]
Professor Lady Sue Black
Part of the work that I went into was identification of individuals from images. And usually those images are child abuse images and there are parts of the anatomy of the perpetrator included in the images. And as an anatomist, every part of your body, you know it from doing your anatomy. Huge amounts of variation. And so we will look at anatomical variation for which there's a huge amount of research, and if it hasn't been done, then we'll go and do it.
- [32:15]
Dr. Radha Modgill
And you must have seen, obviously there's that sense of real justice in you and all those other things we talked about in terms of curiosity and probably problem solving and working things out for the people around in that context of the case. But you must have also been very distressed at times in your career and seen some quite distressing things. How have you managed to sort of look after your own emotional and mental health and do that? Because obviously you can only have longevity in a career like yours when you do look after yourself. So how have you managed that? Or have you found that?
- [32:48]
Professor Lady Sue Black
Certainly when I started off, there was no concern about mental health and well being, absolutely none. If you chose to go into the field, then you were expected to go into the field. And there was a sort of bravado around the forensic world where we knew we would see things that nobody else would ever see or should see. And it was our job to cope with it, frankly. And nobody ever came along and asked how you were handling it. And probably the first time that happened for me was in Kosovo and we had. Our team was an investigative police team and the force sent out two counselors. Now, we had been a team for eight weeks in blistering heat. We had done post mortems on Hundreds of bodies, not just adults, but children with the most horrendous trauma. And these two poor counselors were sent out to talk to our team. And we felt it was a tick box because we were all sat round in a circle and we all had a name badge. And they'd say, sue, how do you feel about it? And you think, I'm never going to tell you how I feel about it because this is not the environment in which to do it. So we learned that that was probably a bit of a tick box, but it gave us awakening call to say, we need to do something about this. So in my team, what we did was we made sure that every single one of us had a wingman. So my wingman has been with me for over 25 years and I know her better than anybody else and she knows me better than anybody else. And we still speak to each other every month. And we both know that what we're doing is we're looking at each other and we're assessing. Are we sleeping okay? Are we drinking? Are we putting on weight? Are we losing weight? And we'll probe. So I trust and have trusted her with my life. And I know that if I was to start to have flashbacks, if I was starting to feel the sort of psychological trauma come back to me through ptsd, she would be the first person that I would go to. She's my wingman. And thereafter, there's now a lot more support that we can go and find. That didn't exist in my time. But I think the biggest thing that happened is my dear friend Dick shepherd, who is a forensic pathologist. And Dick has done thousands of postmortems and he wrote a book called Unnatural Causes. And in there he wrote about his downward spiral into ptsd. And I think that was the first time any forensic scientist was brave enough and certainly any forensic pathologist was brave enough to show that we are susceptible to too. And when I started doing mainly the cases on child sexual abuse, one of my dear friends, who's now a retired CID officer, said to me at the time, don't do it. Just don't do it. Because once you get those images in your head, they will never go away. But he said, I also know that you're a middle aged red headed Celtic woman who won't listen to a word of advice I give you anyway. So he said to me, remember, you're there to do a job. You can't own the guilt. You didn't cause this. You couldn't stop it. Your job is find the evidence, collect the evidence, analyze the evidence, present the evidence, and go home. And he said to me, imagine that inside your head you have that clinical box that you need to do your work. You open the door and you go in and you do your job, and you close the door behind you. Your family stays outside, and your work is inside. And our job is to keep the door closed, because when the door is left open, that's when one life bleeds into the other. And that's when we're most likely to start to have the kind of problems that, you know, many people are not surprised we might have.
- [36:53]
Dr. Radha Modgill
What great advice and how incredible. And also just so important for people listening if they're interested in this career and profession, you know, to be able to support people who want to go into that and to sustain it. So that's.
- [37:05]
Professor Lady Sue Black
So my advice is, please stop watching those television programs. Stop watching Silent Witness and Bones and NCIS or whatever the heck they're called, because that's what people think forensic science is about, and it really isn't. It's a real. It's a tough science in a tough world, not just doing the job, but then going into the courtroom and having to deal with the legality of it as well. It is tough.
- [37:32]
Dr. Radha Modgill
I feel the same way about medical programs. I don't watch them.
- [37:36]
Professor Lady Sue Black
Well, you'd throw something at the television, wouldn't you?
- [37:40]
Dr. Radha Modgill
Absolutely.
- [37:40]
Professor Lady Sue Black
Put the tube in there.
- [37:42]
Intelligence Squared Announcer
Exactly.
- [37:43]
Professor Lady Sue Black
Somewhere else. Exactly.
- [37:44]
Dr. Radha Modgill
How did you know? Sue. So, so, sue, coming to the end of the podcast, but there's one really fundable, two fundamental questions, really, I suppose I want to ask from you. You must have to do. To have done this work, to have done it so well, to have done it such a high standard, made such huge, huge leaps in that. In that field, you must have a very, very strong sense of the importance of justice. How important. This sounds like a silly question, but how important is justice to you? And what do you think your experience over the last, over sort of 40 years has taught you about justice and when it goes right and when it goes wrong?
- [38:20]
Professor Lady Sue Black
So our justice system is imperfect. We're relying on in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, 12 people in Scotland, 15 people, to make a decision in a courtroom on the evidence that they've heard, whether somebody is guilty or innocent. It's what we've had for centuries. It's not perfect, but it's what we have in Europe. They have a different system, not just the adversarial. They have an inquisitorial, where there are experts assigned to the Courtroom, there are problems with that as well. So there is no perfect solution. We do the best that we can, but what we have to have are really strong gatekeepers. And they're the judges that says, will I allow this expert to give evidence in my courtroom? Do I think they're sound? Do I think they're credible? Do I think what they're going to present is a credible science? How far are they going to go? If they're going to go beyond their own level of expertise, we need to stop them. So I think there's much stronger gatekeeping needs to be done by the judges. Prosecution and the defence need to continue to do their job. One is to say, here's the case as we present it, this is what we're trying to prove. And the other side are trying to introduce reasonable doubt. You're an expert witness, you should understand what that reasonable doubt is and get it out there very, very early on and not leave it to cross examination. So it's not perfect. It's not perfect because science changes as well, and techniques available to us now we didn't have before. So there are unquestionably people in prison who do not deserve to be in prison or to have been in prison. And that offends me as well. It offends me when those who are guilty go free. And it offends me for those who are innocent, who are doing time in prison. That's why we have to stay right at the forefront of everything that we do and why these appeal cases are so important. Because I can't imagine anything worse than spending your entire life in prison for something you didn't do. And the only reason you're not getting parole is because you won't admit to it. Why would you admit to something you didn't do just simply to get out of prison? And then you're considered to have been guilty of it, doubly so those individuals who hold to their innocence, despite what's thrown at them, I think are just inordinate heroes. And it's our job to make sure that the justice system keeps up to speed and finds those, roots them out and returns the freedom to them and the innocence that they deserved. It's everything.
- [41:06]
Dr. Radha Modgill
It is everything, isn't it? It really, really is. What do you hope readers of the book are going to get from this? What do you hope they leave with?
- [41:14]
Professor Lady Sue Black
I don't know. I mean, I've written three books, as I was asked to do, and when it came to this third one, I thought, what on earth am I going to write about next. And I realized that I'd just done what I hope was my last court case. And I thought, now I can tell the story of what it's really like to be in the courtroom. Because I couldn't tell it before. If I told it, some junior barrister somewhere would have used it against me. I'm not going back into court as far as I'm aware. I might regret that one. A number of people who've read it said, gosh, there's lots in there I didn't know. I didn't know all these different sides to the legal system. I didn't understand where an expert witness comes in or really what the jury's role is. I always thought that forensic science was the cutting edge science in the world and it really isn't. So the reality of it, I think, has been a bit of a shock for some people and hopefully for those who are thinking about going into forensic science as a career, it's that little red flag that says it's not like silent witness. It really isn't. You're going to find yourself in a courtroom cross examined by a really fierce, really intelligent lawyer whose job it is to introduce doubt into your opinion. You've got to be prepared for that.
- [42:38]
Dr. Radha Modgill
That's fantastic. Honestly, I have found this fascinating and I've read the book, it's absolutely brilliant. So I cannot recommend it high enough. Thank you so much for joining us today, Sue. And the book is out. An Expert Witness is available now. I'm Dr. Ryder Mudgill and you've been listening to Intelligence Squared.
- [42:54]
Intelligence Squared Announcer
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