The story of Wilton Dedge begins on the evening of December 8th, 1981, where a young, 20-year-old Mr. Dedge was in New Smyrna Beach, Florida working mechanical odd jobs in a garage. He was a recent high school drop-out, and still not sure of what do in his future, until the State stripped that freedom of choice from him for twenty-two years. That same day, Jane Smith had returned to her home in Canaveral Groves, Florida, from cosmetology school. Located approximately forty-seven miles from Mr. Dedge’s location at the time, Ms. Smith came home to an empty household, as her family members had not arrived yet. At this time, around four o’clock in the afternoon, Ms. Smith’s house was broken into while she was changing, raped, and was attacked with a razor blade. According to her description, she had witnessed an over 6 foot tall man, weighing in the field between 160 and 200 pounds. She also described this man as having fair skin, a receding hairline, long, blonde hair, hazel eyes, as well as being physically large and powerful. This description was the first red flag in this case, since Wilton Dedge was 5’5” at the time, and weighed closer to 125 pounds; a complete opposite picture that was painted by the victim. However, Wilton did have long, blonde hair just like the suspect’s description given by Jane Smith (Merjian, 2009). This would later prove fatal for Mr. Dedge’s freedom.

A few days after the rape and burglary were committed on Ms. Smith and her home, she had driven to a close town with her sister, and stopped at a small store to get drinks. It was in this store that Ms. Smith had claimed to have witnessed her attacker, which she then told her sister. After she decided not to contact police, Ms. Smith went back to the same convenience store with her sister and saw the same man again, and then chose to contact authorities. On January 6th, Ms. Smith met with a detective, and her sister claimed she knew the man from elementary school, and had identified him as “Walter Hedge” (Merjian, 2009). Just a couple of days later on January 8th, 1982, the brother of Wilton Dedge, Walter Dedge, was arrested by Brevard County police.

Once a photo lineup was presented to Ms. Smith, she had then selected Wilton Dedge, thus clearing his brother from the crime. Upon his detaining, Mr. Dedge had constantly claimed his innocence, in which he felt his clean record and lack of prior, violent behavior as evidence of such. During the time of his processing, he had continued to be confident that the justice system would clear his name; he did not commit this violent crime, and believed he would be cleared quickly (Merjian, 2009). Unfortunately, this was not the case. The investigation soon began, and without DNA analysis, it would be a tough path for Wilton Dedge to maintain his innocence.

Detectives had discovered two pubic hairs on Jane Smith’s bed, which was then sent to a forensic expert. It was shown that one of these hairs actually belonged to Ms. Smith, while the other hair was compared to a sample given by Mr. Dedge. The forensic expert had then concluded that there were not enough differences in the two hairs to completely eliminate Wilton Dedge as a suspect. Unsatisfied by the results, the police had returned to the crime scene three months after the incident, and utilized a scent dog. In order to familiarize Mr. Dedge’s scent to the canine, Mr. Dedge had soaked his hands at the county’s courthouse restroom, dried them with paper towels, and proceeded to give these samples to an investigator, who collected it in a paper bag. Over a full week later, the scent dog sniffed the dried paper towels within this paper bag, and then had sniffed a lineup of five sheets, one being from Jane Smith’s bed, and the other four being from other prison inmates; all of the sheets in this lineup were untouched by Wilton Dedge. The canine paused at Ms. Smith’s sheets after a second pass, which indicated a positive match according to the investigator. This was later used in trial. Even with six witnesses in the courtroom confirming his alibi, in September of 1982, Wilton Dedge was declared guilty of burglary and rape, and sentenced to thirty years in prison (Merjian, 2009).

Outraged, the family tried all they can for the next couple of years to financially prepare for the oncoming legal battle. In August of 1984, the second trial commenced, along with an entirely new defensive legal team. The lawyers pointed out inconsistencies in the evidence provided by the scent dog and his owner. With a case that is now in the favor of Wilton Dedge, a known snitch, Clarence Zacke, was presented by prosecutors. Mr. Zacke had dishonestly claimed that Mr. Dedge admitted to the violent crime while in a prison van with him. The jury decided to side with the false testimony, thus, the judge declared Wilton Dedge guilty, with an increased sentencing to life imprisonment (Merjian, 2009).

After almost twenty years behind bars, in June of 2001, Wilton Dedge was able to use DNA testing to prove that the pubic hair was not his. However, even after being proven innocent through scientific analysis, the State Attorney’s Office denied the appeal, and claimed that it was too late for the DNA results to be admissible. After three more years of ensuing legislative combat, the State surprisingly requested the semen samples from the rape kit be DNA tested. Upon being cleared a second time, Wilton Dedge was finally released on August 12th, 2004 (Merjian, 2009).

Mr. Dedge did not receive any compensation from the State, even after the State admitted in court that they would not allow Dedge be free even if they were aware that he was innocent. Eventually in 2005, after another year of back and forth arguments in the courtroom, Wilton Dedge was awarded two million dollars by Florida, which at the time, was a first for the State in its 160-year history (“National Registry of Exonerations”, 2012).

The case of Wilton Dedge is a classic example of the factors surrounding the psychology of wrongful convictions. The three, main, erroneous aspects that originally landed Mr. Dedge in prison was eyewitness misidentification, improper analysis by a forensic expert, and the lineup misidentification by the scent dog (Merjian, 2009). All three of these methods of prosecuting alleged criminals have mistakenly incarcerated hundreds, and potentially thousands of innocent individuals. In fact, it is approximated that 75% of cases involving DNA exonerees are due to false identifications (Wells, 2014). The misidentifications are usually made by eyewitnesses who are not very confident in their choice, and lab studies have indicated that a confidence-accuracy relation is rather helpful in figuring out when an eyewitness is accurate or mistaken (Smalarz & Wells, 2015). Although, variables that would alter testimony can be highly controlled in a laboratory environment, but in real-life scenarios, the amount of variables that can contaminate testimony are borderline impossible to control. This adds a layer of difficulty towards identifying truthful, mistaken, or deceitful eyewitnesses.

An example of a variable that can be highly challenging to control for, was the sister of Jane Smith. Ms. Smith had come across Wilton Dedge’s brother in a convenience store, which she assumed was her attacker. After being falsely identified by Ms. Smith’s sister, they had returned to the convenience store with a new amount of confidence she did not have originally, as made evident by the original decision to not contact the police. Authorities were called after the second visit to the store, indicating a bias had occurred between Ms. Smith and her sister.

The second factor that attributed to Wilton Dedge’s false imprisonment was the role of forensic bias. The most egregious example of forensic bias occurred during the 2004 Madrid bombings, in which Brandon Mayfield was mistakenly detained as a suspect based upon an incorrect fingerprint analysis conducted by FBI forensic experts. While he was in the process of defending his freedom, Spanish investigators had matched the fingerprints to the actual bomber: Ouhnane Daoud (Kassin, Dror, & Kukucka, 2013). In a stark contrast to the Wilton Dedge case, the FBI quickly apologized and awarded Brandon Mayfield two million dollars as compensation.

Similarly to the aforementioned forensic bias case, Wilton Dedge was also subjected to the unfortunate result of confirmation bias. The forensic expert on the case had stated that the single pubic hair that helped incriminate Mr. Dedge could not be matched via frequencies or consistencies, and also claimed “it would not be a million white people” who had hair like the single strand found at the crime scene (“National Registry of Exonerations”, 2012). This would indicate a severe confirmation bias at the hands of the single examiner that was on the case. The reason for this is because the U.S. National Academy of Sciences published a report in 2009 that explicitly stated the lack of proper scientific procedure in classic, forensic analysis techniques (Giannelli, 2012). Some of these included blood splatter patterns, fingerprinting, crime scene reconstruction, and hair comparisons. These were all considered subjective, and susceptible to confirmation bias (Giannelli, 2012).

Perhaps one of the most debunked methods of forensic science, yet still used to this day, is the utilization of scent dogs as admissible evidence (Brisbin, Austad, & Jacobson, 2000). Just ten years ago, dog scent evidence had been involved in around 50% of the 240 wrongful convictions that were later exonerated at that time (“Scent Lineups and Unvalidated Science”, 2009). For Wilton Dedge, he was one of the unfortunate victims of this invalid method of obtaining evidence. The reliance of subjective determination by a biased dog owner and trainer would later prove to be especially useless in the eyes of the State, when Mr. Dedge was finally cleared of all crimes in 2004. Besides the unproven science, the most gleaming reason for the dismissal of this evidence was due to the dog owner himself: John Preston.

Used by prosecutors for dozens of cases in Florida, John Preston had claimed that his canine, Harass II, had smelling abilities that were completely unfathomable. Some of the claims included the ability to rack scents several years after the source, tracking scents through water, and able to track a scent just after a hurricane, which were all eventually dismissed in court (Maxwell, 2009). However, the damage was already dealt, and John Preston and his canine were responsible for the wrongful convictions of four individuals, potentially more, including Wilton Dedge (Maxwell, 2009). The years lost total close to a century.

To conclude, the case of Wilton Dedge is one out of hundreds of cases across the United States of America that involve the complete fumbling of proper prosecuting procedure. Mr. Dedge was subjected to twenty-two years of torture, agony, and unspeakable horror by the State of Florida, based upon mishandling and misinterpretation of supposed evidence used against him. From eyewitness misidentifications, to biased interpretations of subjective details made by examiners, and even the reliance on the debunked science that is scent canines, this legal system failed Wilton Dedge. Not all is so dim, though. DNA testing technology has been improving remarkably since the turn of the century, along with new and improved police investigation techniques, eyewitness identification advancements, scientifically-based lineup procedures, and the dismissal of methods that are prone to subjectivity. As time goes on, police departments and investigative agencies are adopting these newly developed methods for use in their own bureaus. Fortunately after Mr. Dedge’s case, the State of Florida introduced a bill in 2008 that required post-release compensation for the exonerees of false imprisonment. The time lost is irreplaceable, but with organizations such as the Innocence Project constantly examining new cases for the wrongfully convicted, the future of this justice system has a bright light that will eventually be seen by those who are stuck in the dark.

References

Brisbin, I. L., Austad, S., & Jacobson, S. K. (2000). Canine detectives: the nose knows--or does it?. Science, 290(5494), 1093-1093.

Giannelli, P. C. (2012). The 2009 NAS forensic science report: a literature review.

Kassin, S. M., Dror, I. E., & Kukucka, J. (2013). The forensic confirmation bias: Problems, perspectives, and proposed solutions. Journal of applied research in memory and cognition, 2(1), 42-52.

Maxwell, S. (2009, July 16). Did magical dog jail a 4th innocent man? Retrieved from https://www.chicagotribune.com/orl-asecorl-maxwell-preston-062409062409jun24-column.html

Merjian, A. H. (2009). Anatomy of a Wrongful Conviction: State V. Dedge and what it tells us about our Flawed Criminal Justice System. U. Pa. JL & Soc. Change, 13, 137.

Scent Lineups and Unvalidated Science. (2009, June 30). Retrieved from https://www.innocenceproject.org/scent-lineups-and-unvalidated-science/

Smalarz, L., & Wells, G. L. (2015). Contamination of eyewitness self-reports and the mistaken-identification problem. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 24(2), 120-124.

The National Registry of Exonerations. (2012, June). Retrieved from https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=3167

Wells, G. L. (2014). Eyewitness identification: Probative value, criterion shifts, and policy regarding the sequential lineup. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 23(1), 11-16.