UPDATE 3-22-13

As noted in the last "Update", the scheduling of oral arguments for a PCR in the Indiana Court of Appeals is "unusual," not to mention the fact that the Order for Oral Argument was issued before the panel judges would customarily even be familiar with the content of the briefs.

But "unusual" may not be the best way to characterize it; perhaps "suspicious" is more appropriate. Restore the Truth has learned that the judicial panel that will decide the case includes none other than Randall Shepard, the very recently retired Chief Justice of the Indiana Supreme Court.

Shepard's retirement in advance of this appeal had been seen as quite fortuitous. Before this, there was little hope of a successful result at the state level. This was not only because of his well-known political ties to Evansville's power-elite. It also had to do with a judicial culture that prevailed in the state under Shepard. This new development calls the whole enterprise for Truth into question again.

In the final years of Shepard's tenure, he began to adopt symbolic projects aimed at defining his legacy as that of a modernizer (his close colleague Carl Heldt being appointed to chair one of them). But this can hardly be an accurate legacy, given that it was under the long reign of Shepard himself that the culture of the Court came to be in such need of modernizing.

This question of the larger culture of the Shepard Court is well-illustrated in the specific legal issues at play in the Bradford case.

Under Shepard, the Supreme Court consistently maintained a backward attitude toward advances in science and whether new scientific methods should be allowed to shed light on past injustices. Following Shepard's rulings, Indiana judges have routinely and obtusely dismissed new advances in scientific methods as "merely cumulative" (on top of the old junk science that resulted in faulty convictions) and "merely impeaching" (eroding the believability of testimony). This practice was less about establishing Truth than protecting the status quo for prosecutors, and it was exactly what Judge Carl Heldt did in denying Patrick Bradford's PCR in Evansville in 2012.

But Shepard's retirement in 2012 seemed to have freed the courts for immediate, startling change. In a groundbreaking decision, the Indiana Court of Appeals, following the lead of more progressive states, bucked decades of Shepard-era anti-science, finally recognizing the corrective value of scientific advances for past cases (Bunch v. Indiana). Just as in the Bradford case, "Bunch" involved new arson science that demonstrated the error of a past conviction. The Shepard-free Supreme Court summarily endorsed the decision (transfer denied).

But the true import of a groundbreaking case concerns how it will be applied to subsequent cases. Given the apparent culture-shift in the post-Shepard court, it was hoped that the new regard for science would prevail. But that hope has fallen into question.

Senior Judge Shepard, his considerable political influence clearly intact, re-emerges at the center of a most unlikely and peculiarly timed coincidence: he now sits on the panel that will decide whether the groundbreaking case for science will be applied in the enlightened spirit in which it was decided, or effectively destroyed. Whether science will be allowed into the cause of Justice, as it was in the Bunch case, or be excluded, as it was for the long years of the Shepard court.

Granted, it is not known for certain what this suspicious turn of events will produce. It is possible that Senior Judge Shepard will adopt the enlightened view that his retirement seems to have liberated. It is possible that he will abandon the flat-earth  anti-science that defined his Court. It is also possible that there are no political motivations afoot in the formation of the judicial panel. Anything is possible.

But there will be no question left after the Appeals Court rules. It will rule either for or against science; for or against progress; for or against Truth.