Not his “type”.
Health care providers began performing blood transfusions over 400 years ago. It was a mystery why sometimes it worked beautifully, but other times it ended in disaster. Then in 1900 Karl Landsteiner discovered that people have differing types of blood and only certain types are compatible with each other. So significant was Landsteiner’s work that in 1930 he won the Nobel prize.
The ability to identify blood types was an important break through in the field of medicine and has likely saved thousands of lives. Law enforcement quickly realized the possibilities for blood typing when applied to forensic investigations. Blood left at a crime scene can help reinforce the guilt of a suspect when the blood types match. However, if they don’t match match it can effectively eliminate a suspect.
In the murder of Edna Franklin there was not one single piece of physical evidence linking Charles Raby to the crime. No blood was found on any of his clothing or shoes. A murder weapon was never found. There were no bloody handprints or footprints despite the presence of multiple stab wounds and deep cuts on Franklin’s body. No fingerprints were found from anyone, let alone Raby.
But Franklin herself provided investigators with their most promising piece of evidence. At her autopsy the medical examiner noted defensive wounds on her arms as well as the presence of blood under her fingernails and hair in between her fingers. Most frail, elderly women do not walk around with the blood of men under their fingernails. It appears Franklin fought for her life and in the process obtained an identifiable piece of her attacker.
At trial, a lab technician perjured himself by testifying that the blood typing results were inconclusive. The prosecution withheld the lab report from the defense even though the results determined the blood under Franklin’s fingernails was type A. Withholding evidence from the defense is illegal and is what is known as a Brady violation. Neither Raby, Franklin nor the two grandsons who lived with her had type A blood. The jury never heard the truth about the most significant evidence recovered from the crime scene, evidence which excluded Charles Raby as a suspect. This should have come as no surprise since, if Raby had any scratches on his face or body, police never made note of them.
Today the Houston police have lab work done by the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences. This lab is completely independent of the police department and stands as a model for crime labs across the country. But for decades the Houston Police Department crime lab operated in a manner that garnered national attention by the early 2000s. Their work was conducted by poorly trained technicians who regularly lied about their qualifications. Lab results were reported in a manner favorable to convictions sought by investigators and prosecutors. Hundreds if not thousands of people were wrongfully convicted as a result.
These problematic lab reports have posed little problem for the prosecutor’s office fighting Raby’s appeals. They now contend that the blood under Franklin’s nails could have come from casual contact or from the carpet. The appeals court agreed with this assessment even when DNA analysis reenforced the blood typing conclusion that Raby could not have been the killer. They reasoned that jurors would have convicted him anyway based on his confession. Perhaps in Texas there is no longer a need for juries since judges have clairvoyant knowledge of what verdict they would reach.
We are left with the question of why investigators submitted Franklin’s fingernail scrapings for analysis in the first place. In a best case scenario the results might have corroborated Charles as a possible subject. At the same time, they knew the results could also have eliminated him and, clearly, that was not their goal. In the end they lied to the jury to obtain the results they wanted. On appeal when the perjury and Brady violation came to light it did not matter to the judiciary. They sought “"finality” rather than truth and upheld the conviction based on smoke and mirrors.
One hundred years after Landsteiner’s brilliant work, police and prosecutors are subverting his findings. People are still dying of problems with blood typing and Charles Raby may well fall victim. But this time the problems are intentional.
