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A couple episodes ago, I talked to Alisa Hardy and Taylor Dube-Mather about their experiences doing a practicum at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) in Alberta. In this episode, I talked to their supervisor at the time of this practicum, Dr. Janne Holmgren. Janne has been a professor at Mount Royal University for 23 years and teaches in the Department of Economics, Justice and Policy Studies. She coordinates a practicum program for students to gain exposure working with the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. She also does research in how jurors perceive evidence, and how new technologies can be used as forensic evidence.

In this episode we talk about:

• Janne’s initial interest in forensics and how the the OJ Simpson case played a part. Her research examined issues around independent testing and expert witnesses.





• how she identified issues with defense lawyers’ understanding of DNA evidence and biases in how cases were presented





• her PhD and how it involved conducting a mock trial with real legal professionals to study juror decision-making, and how they understood complex expert testimony





• her current research with new technologies, like CCTV evidence and cell phone tracking, and their use in investigations and trials





• the practicum at the OCME, which provides hands-on learning for students. She also talks about extensive screening process that each prospective student must go through due to the graphic nature of the work and confidentiality requirements





• the support for students during the practicum, including gradual exposure, extensive dialogue with Dr. Holmgren, peer support from past students, and counselling resources to process experiences





• the differing reactions to the program by different students





• her passion about recognizing the crucial public service provided by medical examiner offices and their personnel, and hopes to educate others on their important role through her research

The program at Mount Royal University is a Bachelor of Arts in Criminal Justice and you can find out more here: https://www.mtroyal.ca/ProgramsCourses/FacultiesSchoolsCentres/Arts/Departments/EconomicsJusticePolicyStudies/DegreePrograms/BachelorofArts-CriminalJustice/index.htm

The OCME practicum is coordinated by Dr. Janne Holmgren. You can view her profile here: https://www.mtroyal.ca/ProgramsCourses/FacultiesSchoolsCentres/Arts/Departments/EconomicsJusticePolicyStudies/Faculty/JanneHolmgren.htm

You can find out more about the Sara Baillie and Taliyah Marsman case here: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/edward-downey-murder-baillie-taliyah-appeal-1.5994491

You can find out more about the Guy Paul Morin case here: https://www.innocencecanada.com/exonerations/guy-paul-morin/

Robert Jensen’s book, Personal Effects, is available through most major retailers: Amazon, Indigo (and it appears to be on sale thru Indigo right now!). His website is: https://robertajensen.com/

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Transcript

Janne Holmgren: I’m Dr. Janne Holmgren. I’m a full professor at Mount Royal University in the Department of Economics, Justice and Policy Studies. I’ve been at MRU for 23 years.

Yvonne Kjorlien: Wow, you’re one of the old folks here.

Janne Holmgren: I know. Scary. I feel so old.  

Yvonne Kjorlien: you’ve seen it evolve — the institution evolve from its college days to, it’s now university days.

Janne Holmgren: Yeah, from the diploma program to the applied program to the bachelor’s program.

Yvonne Kjorlien: Yeah.

Janne Holmgren: Yeah, so I’ve kind of been around the block.

Yvonne Kjorlien: Right. And so you came to my attention mostly because I just did a podcast episode with Alisa and Taylor who went through, I guess at least one of your classes but the medical examiner’s internship that you coordinate so that they could get a practicum And do some work and get some exposure with what goes on at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. So, that’s kind of how you came to my attention. But you do way much more than that. So can you kind of give a  — how did you come to be at Mount Royal and doing the research are that you’re currently — if you’re doing any research now — what kind of brought you to that point? So kind of give us a sketch of your journey up to now.

Janne Holmgren: I became very interested in DNA evidence around the OJ Simpson trial. Where, it was clear to me that, DNA was going to become a big part, of that. And at that time there’s really nobody in Canada that was doing critical analysis examination of the evidence. So I was really interested in the impact on trials where you have something so novel like DNA that people can’t really see, they can’t really understand, how that ends up, playing out within the courtroom. So I focused my master’s degree on that kind of work whereby, I interviewed defense lawyers throughout Canada.

And I asked a question: what are the implications for your trials? What are you gonna do with this? How are you gonna play with this? And it became really clear to me that the system that we had in place in Canada because we don’t really have independent laboratories, that the access to — for example, a retest of biological samples were really hard to get hold of. So yeah, I know of a few cases in Canada, where, you think back to the Guy Paul Morin and case where the defense, wanted to retest the sample, but to retest the sample in Canada, they would have had to go through the Center of Forensic Sciences in Ontario or, through the RCMP and they didn’t want to do that, because the samples had already been examined in the laboratory in Canada. So they had to go down to the US, I think it was Boston, to get the sample, reevaluated. And it became clear that it was not his DNA that was part of that sample. So, that’s a long, long story and we know now that, it was a completely different individual that was responsible for the death of nine year old Christine Jessup, I think it was in 1994.

So the playing field within the criminal justice system, it was really clear to me that it was not balanced, the scales of justice was really tilted. In addition to that, any kind of expert testimony that we saw in the Court in the early days of DNA evidence was usually presented by people that worked in the laboratories – again, in the Center of Forensic Sciences and the RCMP laboratories — and we really didn’t have Council in Canada that could really contest what it was that they were doing, of what they were presenting within the courtroom.

So in some cases, they would have had to get an independent expert from the UK, Australia or the US, which usually cost, a lot of money. And because they didn’t really understand DNA evidence, the defense lawyers didn’t really understand DNA evidence, they didn’t really know how to extract the information within the courtroom, ask the right questions. I learned that there was a real need for an independent expert that was not affiliated with the police, or a particular laboratory. So in the early days of my work even as a master student, I was asked to help out def