Up to White's Response
You certainly have strong opinions in regard to the matter, but I don't think name-calling ("retarded" "unversed," etc.) is necessary. You may be right that Williams is guilty, but the physical evidence against him was relatively slight, in my view. The connection between the two cases is simple - in both situations, there was a community panic, and in both situations the community demanded that a suspect be named and prosecuted. It is Jewell's good fortune that no physical evidence could even remotely tie him to the case. The FBI, though, was indeed looking at a few nails they found in his apartment because he'd recently visited a hardware store and bought some nails which they thought might be similar to the nails found at the scene of the crime. Jewell was *that* close. This is something that ought to frighten anyone. It also bothers me that when an innocent man is hunted, the guilty go free. If anyone else had anything to do with the murder spree in Atlanta, that person was given a lifetime's pardon by the quick condemnation of Williams.
Profiling does not apply only to serial crimes as Williams was accused of. (He was not formally accused of all the murders, by the way.) It is used to establish a similarity between a suspect and others who have committed similar crimes in the past. In the '84 Los Angeles Olympics, there was such an individual with a "hero-complex" who tried to plant a suspicious package on a bus, and then "save" the bus. This person was quite real, the circumstances were nearly identical, and the individual was involved in law-enforcement. To an extent, Jewell did fit this profile - and it was a powerful reason why he was hunted as he was. He had opportunity and "motive." The only thing they couldn't find was circumstantial evidence. They came pretty close.
I have no contempt for forensic science. That would be absurd. But when you get into behavioral and psychological aspects of choosing a suspect, you are treading on dangerous ground. I don't see how *my* ego is involved here. I'm not a critic of law enforcement; I'm a sociologist who is concerned about a dangerous social trend. I am worried about the obviously rampaging egos of the FBI men who ruined Jewell's life. As for Wayne Williams, we'll never know for sure if he really killed all (or any) of those boys and young men. Fiber evidence is simply not on the same level as fingerprint or DNA evidence, and as someone who is well-versed in forensics, you ought to know that. Could Williams have been "the one"? Certainly. Was the evidence compelling beyond a reasonable doubt? I don't think so. You are, of course, entitled to your opinion, as am I. Simply because I doubt a man's guilt does not make my piece "ego"-driven. I am worried about what could happen to any of us when a community panics and needs someone to blame. If it happens to just one, it could happen to anyone.
I think profiling is a helpful adjunct to criminal investigation, but it should not be allowed to get out of control.
Robin Markowitz
rmarkowitz@earthlink.net
Copyright © 1996 by Robin Markowitz. All Rights Reserved.
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