"Real life experience" is what led to the DPI in the first place! Who would have tried to do what they did that night, other than people who thought they had enough experience to survive under those conditions? And "experts" are considered (at least in legal courts) to have opinions that are superior to those who have some amount of experience. Profiler Pat Brown has an interesting story on the subject (from her book, "The Profiler"):
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The family felt that the police rushed to judgment and failed to perform a proper investigation. They didn’t even test for fingerprints on the gun or the beer bottle between his legs. The family thought somebody staged that. They wanted the beer bottle and gun tested for fingerprints and they wanted people interviewed, but none of this was done. The family fought long and hard to prove that Brian would not have attempted suicide. They insisted he wasn’t depressed or upset or having any problems in life.
They came to me and said, “Can you look into this case and bring us some peace?”
One thing I learned right off was that “experts” often disagree with each other. At the beginning of my career, I wasn’t all that familiar with what happens when you shoot yourself with a shotgun, what happens to your head, what happens with the blood, in what direction the pieces go, and what happens to the wadding in the shotgun. I wasn’t a ballistics expert, so I sought out people who were. The original person I approached gave me information that turned out to be incorrect, and I had based a good portion of my initial profile on that.
In the beginning, I agreed with the family. I thought the blood looked like it was going in the wrong direction. But that was an error on my part, because I believed what the first expert told me.
I eventually sought out a different expert, but something still seemed wrong with the picture.
A third ballistics expert brought yet another conflicting opinion but one that came with a much better explanation. That’s how I learned that I shouldn’t blindly believe an expert; I need to find out why they believe what they do. We often see a courtroom expert who will give an opinion, but nobody bothers asking him exactly how he came to that opinion. Just because an expert says “In my professional opinion…” doesn’t mean you should automatically believe he is correct. The courts are a great example of this. How is it that the prosecution expert and the defense expert almost always give opposing opinions? They can’t both be right.
A profiler should always have a thorough explanation of each point in his profile so that anybody, whether a police detective or a victim’s mother, can understand exactly why we believe what we write. Any forensic expert should have a thorough explanation as well. I learned in this case to require any expert who analyzes any portion of a case I am working on to do the same.
The Lewis family believed that Brian did not pull the trigger on the gun that killed him. Someone else must have been responsible.
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Why was the evidence so difficult to understand? "If you don’t understand how a shotgun works, you might misinterpret the blood spatter evidence. Most of us are much more familiar with how a handgun works... [However, the person who committed suicide] used a shell that contained dove and quail shot, lots of little pellets with a bunch of powder propelling them. Basically, instead of a bullet tearing through the head in a straight line, a bomb is launched into the brain. Once that is accomplished, it explodes, and blood gases come into play. They expand, just like a bomb, and the gases move more easily against the places of least resistance. The skull is pretty strong, but the nose and eye sockets are permeable cavities, so Brian’s face exploded but his skull remained intact."
And from the many accounts of issues in the cold weather I've read, along with what one reads in the DG's diary, it still amazes me that people think that pitching two old canvas tents sewn together (and that would come apart at night under much better conditions) in that location, under those weather conditions, and without any heat source was anything other than a "recipe for disaster." And their problem was further compounded by the fact that it wasn't likely anyone would come help them until after they froze to death (and they couldn't even signal for help with flares). Whether they recognized how dire their situation was, or if they thought it wouldn't be too difficult to survive with whatever their original plan was, is a question I'd really like to have answered, but the evidence does not point to any great mystery, and the fact that there are other, more puzzling cases, attest to how often people get into trouble when they engage in these kinds of outdoor activities (look at the mortality statistics).
Topic: Who here on the forum has real life experience? (Read 26803 times)
