Junk science convicted Suzette Welton of setting the fire that killed her teenage son, but 17 years later the Alaska Court System won't let her out of prison unless she proves she is innocent, which is next to impossible.
In 2002, when the judge in her case sentenced her to 99 years in prison, he made it clear that he disagreed with the jury's verdict.
"I am haunted by the specter, the possibility, that I am sentencing an innocent woman. I'm haunted by that," Judge Milton Souter said. The case, at the end of his 24-year career, was the hardest he had ever judged.
He could have overruled the jury if he found the verdict was completely unjustifiable, but decided not to after balancing the question for three agonizing months.
His reason was the "very clear evidence" of arson. Experts said someone set the fire in Welton's rented house. A process of elimination pointed to her as the culprit.
But it turns out that the evidence of arson was not clear at all. Fire investigators relied on debunked methods — "old wives' tales," a national expert calls them — which have been discredited scientifically, leading to dozens of exonerations across the country.
With no arson, there was no crime. The rest of the case against Welton consisted of a few wisps of circumstantial evidence.
More:
https://www.adn.com/opinions/2017/05/14/debunked-science-has-kept-suzette-welton-in-prison-for-17-years-2/
