Howard Hawk Willis (right) sits with his legal team at Tuesday’s hearing of his request for a new trial. Willis was convicted and sentenced to death in 2010 for the murders of two teens.
Howard Hawk Willis (right) sits with his legal team at Tuesday’s hearing of his request for a new trial. Willis was convicted and sentenced to death in 2010 for the murders of two teens.
One of the expert witnesses who testified Tuesday on the second day of a hearing of Howard Hawk Willis’ request for a new trial on his 13-year-old capital murder convictions questioned the scientific methodology used to determine the times of death for the victims.
Willis was convicted for the murders of 17-year-old Adam Chrismer and 16-year-old Samantha Leming Chrismer and sentenced to death in 2010. The boy’s head and hands were found in Boone Lake in October 2002, and the bodies of both teens were found a few days later in Johnson City in a storage unit assigned to Willis’ mother.
Willis is petitioning for a new trial on the grounds that several of his constitutional rights were violated when he was forced to represent himself, claiming he was not provided with sufficient resources to defend himself. At the time of the original trial, Willis’ defense was that he did not commit the murders and that he was set up.
In Tuesday’s session, several witnesses were called to testify, including Amy Mundorff. Mundorff is an associate professor at the University of Tennessee, and she is a biological anthropologist who specializes in forensic anthropology and disaster victim identification management.
Mundorff testified on Tuesday for Willis' defense team. Her testimony focused mainly on decomposition and the methodology of Arpad Vass, the state’s forensic anthropologist in Oak Ridge.
During the original investigation, tissue samples from the autopsies of both victims were delivered to Vass, and he later testified that his analyses of tissue samples from the victims’ livers and kidneys were consistent with the finding that Adam had died first, since Adam’s liver, in particular, showed a more advanced stage of decomposition than did Samantha’s liver.
Vass estimated Adam’s time of death as between Oct. 4 and Oct. 8, 2002, and Samantha’s death as between Oct. 6 and Oct. 8. However, Mundorff said on Tuesday that she would not consider the methodology Vass used in Willis’ case to have been adequately tested for validity.
The methodology used by Vass stemmed from a study he did on decomposition involving 18 cadavers. Mundorff said this study did not conform to scientific method.
“Essentially, the scientific method is when you formulate a hypothesis and then you conduct experiments to prove or falsify it,” said Mundorff. “There were no hypotheses there, and there was nothing that they were trying to disprove. The study that they were doing was really just to see if they could get results that might correlate, but we know correlation doesn’t always mean validation.”
Mundorff’s concerns stemmed from the fact that the cadavers used in this study by Vass were not comparable to each other due to differentiating variables such as some bodies being clothed or unclothed, in body bags or out of body bags and also in different phases of decomposition. These variables can all impact decomposition rates, thus making the results difficult to compare.
She was also concerned about Vass’ specific methodology in Willis’ case.
“I think that when he had two organs from Adam where the numbers didn’t match, where he couldn’t do the cross match, that should have been an indicator that the method didn’t work. Instead of recognizing the method didn’t work, he came up with a new way to calculate it, which you can’t change the method to get the results you want,” Mundorff said. “As a scientist, all the methods that we use, there’s sort of like, I would explain it as a covenant with yourself and the scientific community, that you’re going to follow the method, period. And you have to only focus on the method. You can’t focus on getting results. That’s not what science is about.”
Kathleen Morris, a lawyer who represented Willis while his case was on direct appeal, also testified at Tuesday’s hearing. She addressed topics related to the brief that she and another representative had filed at the time.
The defense team plans to bring in four more witnesses for Wednesday’s hearing before resting their argument. The hearing, originally scheduled to run through Thursday, is now expected to finish sometime Wednesday afternoon.
Sarah Owens is a recent graduate of Milligan University and a native of Alabaster, Ala.. She earned a bachelors degree in communications. She has a passion for traveling and animals and an interest in international cultures.
