We all know about the many benefits of bugs. They pollinate plants, they eat nasty dead stuff, they aerate the soil. Bugs are even used in producing vital medicines. But did you know insects can provide crucial legal services?
Lately, we have been learning how certain famous rich people are going broke from their astronomical legal bills. But what if a person accused of a crime is broke to start with? Where then will he or she find justice? Well, maybe, like James Mayberry of Iowa City, the best advocates just might be maggots.
Forensic entomology wasn’t really a thing when Mayberry was arrested in 1985 for the murder of Julia Wise. Police determined that Mayberry had visited Wise in her home in the Hilltop Trailer Court on July 2. His fingerprints were found on her kitchen knife. He explained he had used the knife to repair her TV antenna. The temperature had been around 90 degrees F. outside and it was probably even hotter inside the trailer. Wise had given Mayberry a cup of water, providing additional fingerprint evidence.
Mayberry was arrested on what he called circumstantial evidence and has served 39 years in prison for a crime he insists he did not commit. Now, Mayberry and his public defenders are trying to re-open his case because, they argue, if he had murdered Wise on July 2, by the time her body was discovered two days later in that sweltering trailer, there would have been evidence of blow flies and their larvae on the corpse. And there wasn’t. A jury might be skeptical of even the most eloquent defense. But the flies don’t lie.
In the Central Park Jogger case in 1989, forensic entomologists determined that insects found on the victim helped establish the time of death and eventually lead to the exoneration of the five teenagers accused of the crime.
In 2001, a homeless man in Las Vegas was found stabbed to death. Kirstin Blaise Labato was arrested, having previously defended herself with a pocket knife from an attack. At first, the pathologist stated the man died shortly before the body was discovered, but changed his opinion as to the time of death several times which lead to Ms. Labato’s conviction. Later, forensic entomologists reported the lack of insects on the body contradicted the pathologist’s final report and helped get Labato released after 16 years in prison.
When James Mayberry was arrested in 1985, his children were babies. Now nearly 40 years later, they’re middle-aged. Throughout his incarceration Mayberry has maintained his innocence but lacked the funds to mount a vigorous defense. Now, with advances in forensic entomology, he might get his day in court, giving new meaning to the phrase, “My lawyer is a maggot.”