The Hunt - Chapter 5: Photogrammetry
Or what we now affectionately know as 'photoginny'.
This is Chapter 5 in The Hunt, our ongoing serial. Read Chapter 4 here.
The long pause on the other side of the phone by a multiple-PhD-wielding pathologist told me what I needed to know already.
“Justin? Are you sure you’re using that word correctly?”
Although I’d received the same response, more or less, with different levels of formality, incredulity, and cursing, several times over the past weeks, I couldn’t quite get over the impulse to fold myself into my chair, somehow, and become small enough to disappear.
I’d been calling journalists, architects, pathologists, imaging experts, human rights experts, legal scholars, Pulitzer prize winners (times two), and an anthropologist (who doesn’t mind being called an ‘anthro-poltergeist,’ at least when I do it), to ask the same question:
“Can photogrammetry be used to determine what caused ‘impressions’ on human skin, from autopsy photographs?”
Their responses varied from shock to amusement. And perhaps, even, a bit of pity. I had, after all, showed up on their doorsteps, ringing the bell with my elbow, holding out my hands and asking if, perhaps, they’d help me figure out which held shit, and which, shinola.
I took a deep breath, as the steam rose from the fragrant clump in my left hand, metaphorically.
“Yes. Photogrammetry. On autopsy photographs shot from a 35mm camera, measuring skin imprints down to microns. From the 1990s.”
“Oh my god, no.”
“Great. So. How do I-”
I’d suspected that this was going to be a dead end. Debunking junk science is tough. The response, from the more legitimate scientific community, is often something along the lines of “That theory (or application) is bogus, untestable, and unscientific, but that’s not my field.”
Always the gentle-seller, I had one last request.
“Is there anyone you know that could help me?”
“There is one expert I will reach out to for you, I know him personally, he actually works in photogrammetry.”
I thanked her profusely and apologized for consuming her time and leaving brown smears on her porch (metaphorically). We exchanged our farewells and I hung up the phone.
Fuck sakes, another strikeout. This is like my dating career playing out all over again.
The problem was that photogrammetry isn’t, necessarily, bad science. It has legitimate uses in accident reconstruction, civil engineering, and real property litigation. The distance between long-since-razed structures, visible only on a series of aerial photographs taken thirty years ago? Photogrammetry the shit out of that.
But that’s not what Gary Robertson does. Gary Robertson’s position – exotic, bizarre, hard for even a seasoned litigator to swallow without comment – is that photogrammetry is the first, last, and most authoritative word on anything that can be both photographed and measured. Including, without limitation, human skin.
It’s worth pausing and taking a moment to learn what the hell photogrammetry is and how Gary Robertson parlayed his training and experience in this field into a healthy batch of wrongful convictions.
A Brief History of Photogrammetry
“Photogrammetry” is “the science and technology of obtaining reliable information about physical objects and the environment through the process of recording, measuring and interpreting photographic images and patterns of electromagnetic radiant imagery and other phenomena.”1 NASA puts things more succinctly: Photogrammetry is the science of image-based measurement.
Photogrammetry comes in two flavors: “Short-range” and “Long-range.”
Short-range photogrammetry, has to do with smaller objects, and images — the analysis of photographs taken by 35mm cameras, images from surveillance cameras, scanners, and videotape — while long-range concerns images taken from far away, like aerial photographs, satellite images, and drone footage.
Photogrammetry is a means of generating a measurement. Done appropriately, scientifically, and with reliable data and appropriate methods, some of these measurements can be accurate.
Unfortunately, prosecutors haven’t been satisfied with asking “How big?” “How small?” or “How far?”
Rather, photogrammetry, or “image analysis,” in a court setting, has been a way to put a well-dressed and credentialled someone on the stand to tell a captive audience of twelve to fourteen2 individuals doing their civic duty that “x” matches “y.”
ProPublica’s ongoing and incredibly well-researched work on the subject and adjacent subjects in junk forensic science outlines the history, abuses, and failures of expert testimony of this flavor, and it’s all worth a read:
January 17, 2019
The FBI Says Its Photo Analysis Is Scientific Evidence. Scientists Disagree
By: Ryan Gabrielson
https://www.propublica.org/article/with-photo-analysis-fbi-lab-continues-shaky-forensic-science-practices
February 22, 2019
FBI Scientist’s Statements Linked Defendants to Crimes, Even When His Lab Results Didn’t
By: Ryan Gabrielson
FBI Scientist’s Statements Linked Defendants to Crimes, Even When His Lab Results Didn’tFebruary 25, 2020
A Key FBI Photo Analysis Method Has Serious Flaws, Study Says
By: Ryan Gabrielson
https://www.propublica.org/article/a-key-fbi-photo-analysis-method-has-serious-flaws-study-saysJanuary 31, 2023
Is It Forensics or Is It Junk Science?
By: Sophia Kovatch, Pamela Colloff, and Bret Murphy https://www.propublica.org/article/understanding-junk-science-forensics-criminal-justice
But even the image analysts who cut their teeth on solving bank robberies via laundry marks on denim weren’t willing to sign off on Gary Robertson’s analysis in the Mouser case:
Go on and have a read.
Bullshitters calling bullshit on someone is always a good sign that you might be in a problematic situation. The question is, who is more full of shit? Me or them? I personally don’t trust any of my own work, not a single line. Still, I couldn’t ignore that there were countless other documentaries3, podcasts4, and scientific research5 that suggested, potentially, a developing consensus concerning the limitations of image forensics and photogrammetry in criminal cases.
I just had to keep going. I’d catch a break somewhere. Right?
An Accidental Collision
After writing up my notes and washing my hands, I dialled another expert, this time one specializing in photogrammetry.
He picked up the phone, and after a brief exchange, he asked me politely to get to the point.
I’d gotten pretty good at providing a verbal thumbnail, a quick sketch of the facts, so I started:
“There’s a historical case here in Saskatoon, from 1990, a young man froze to death-”
He cut me off.
“I’ll tell you the same thing I told the last guy, I am happy to help on the Neil Stonechild case but I am extremely busy and I do need a retainer to be an expert witness.”
I swallowed a basketball.
Other guy?
What other guy?
Who was calling a photogrammetry expert about Neil Stonechild? Somebody else was out there. And they were a few steps ahead of me.
I silently crossed my fingers, and asked something, light, breezy, and non-commital, hoping to find out who it was I’d been shadowing.
“It was a police officer,” he responded, in a manner that suggested he’d entertain no follow-up questions.
My eyes bugged out. I knew he wouldn’t offer any more information; I didn’t want to press him, but still. I asked if he’d consider putting me in touch with the other contact.
He said he would take my information down, a professional courtesy, but also a way to bring the conversation to an end. I’d been handed my hat and told to take care on the drive home.
But I didn’t mind. I had pacing to do.
A policeman! What the fuck!
I’d gotten a bit of a reputation for being a shit disturber in Saskatoon. The kind of reputation that leads to a bit of hyperawareness of unfamiliar cars and unexpected packages.
If it was Hartwig and/or Senger, hearing that I was sniffing around like this might spook them, and just as I was getting more and more certain that I needed their side of the story.
After an appropriate number of laps around my office, I started pounding out a DM to Somebody Else’s Lawyer. She said she’d have a lot of free time, as soon as her case was with the jury.6
“Dude, I called the photogrammetry expert and guess what? Someone beat us to him and we might have a small problem…”
For a more detailed explanation and history please see - Wikipedia contributors. (2023, December 2). Photogrammetry. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 14:22, December 17, 2023, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Photogrammetry&oldid=1188025408
Yes, fourteen. There are alternates. Twelve Angry Men should have been subtitled “And two more in the hall.”
Netflix Series - Exhibit A - S1 Ep1 - Video Forensics - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10557134/?ref_=ttep_ep1
Go listen to every single episode of this podcast: https://lavaforgood.com/junk-science/
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1917222117
She recalls making this statement; she disputes its veracity.