Debate over blood-spatter patterns in father’s murder case

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Richard L. Lyons

Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez described the 2 1/2-year investigation that led to murder charges against Richard L. Lyons in the stabbing death of his 9-year-old daughter as “intense, methodical and thorough.”

Lyons’ attorney, Alan Blumenthal, not surprisingly had a very different take: Moments after a judge ordered Lyons, 42, held without bond Wednesday, Blumenthal said much of the case against his client relies on “junk science.”

Though Blumenthal later said he chose his words poorly, he didn’t back down from his assertion that the type of evidence taking center stage during Lyons’ bond hearing — the pattern of blood droplets found inside Lyons’ van — by itself makes for a weak case.

“It’s more of an art than a science,” Blumenthal said in an interview Friday. “It’s subjective. One expert looks at a blood spatter pattern and sees something completely different from another.”

Blumenthal isn’t alone in that opinion. In 2009, the National Academy of Sciences released a report highly critical of a number of forensic techniques used widely in police investigations, including blood spatter analysis. The report said blood pattern opinions tended to be “more subjective than scientific,” and it called the field’s emphasis on experience over science “misguided.”

“The uncertainties associated with bloodstain pattern analysis are enormous,” the report stated.

The findings prompted U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) to draft legislation late last year that would put tighter controls on federally funded forensic labs, although the legislation had not been introduced as of late last week.

Paul Kish, an internationally known forensic consultant and bloodstain pattern expert based in Corning, N.Y., takes issue with the Academy of Sciences’ report and anyone who would call his field “junk science.”

Kish said blood spatter analysis is “readily recognized by the courts as an accepted scientific discipline.” He said he knows of no judges who have excluded his type of testimony based on the findings of the Academy of Sciences’ report. Several Chicago area attorneys interviewed for this story said that while blood-spatter analysis is imperfect, none could cite a specific instance where a court had overturned a case based on faulty blood-spatter evidence.

Kish said it’s important to remember the challenges facing forensic scientists, who are “working in an environment completely different than someone working in a clean, sterile lab environment.”

But he said blood “behaves in a very reproducible manner.”

During Lyons’ bond hearing, prosecutors alleged he stabbed his daughter, Mya, numerous times.

Prosecutors, who have not offered a motive in the case, dismissed Lyons’ claims that he found his lifeless daughter in an alley behind his home near the 8400 block of Gilbert Court on the night of July 14, 2008, and then carried the body to his van. Prosecutors pointed out that investigators found no trails of blood leading to the location where Lyons said he found his daughter.

Even though Lyons cleaned the inside of his van the day after his daughter’s slaying, prosecutors say, investigators still managed to find traces of Mya’s blood. Two independent forensic investigators who looked at the pattern of blood found inside the van determined that’s where Mya was stabbed, prosecutors say.

Sprayed blood — as opposed to pooled blood — tends to indicate the location of an assault, but not always, Kish said.

“It becomes tricky when it’s only a couple of spatter stains,” Kish said. “If you have only two or three, then that could be blood [Lyons] flicked off” as he placed his daughter into the van.

Prosecutors declined to elaborate on the blood evidence in the case, but they said last week that photos of Lyons taken after Mya’s murder showed patterns of blood on his clothing that also indicate he killed her.

“We brought charges at this particular time because we had sufficient evidence to meet our burden of proof,” Alvarez spokeswoman Sally Daly said.