INTERVIEW: TESSA KRAMER OF 'ADMISSIBLE: SHREDS OF EVIDENCE' (Part 1) "Admissible: Shreds of Evidence" is a new podcast hosted by reporter Tessa Kramer. The podcast examines how a key building block of the justice system — evidence itself — is often "flawed, disputed, or even manipulated." The first season investigates the story of one Mary Jane Burton, whose forensic evidence exonerated 13 men. Burton was hailed as a hero, but there's more to the Mary Jane files than meets the eye.
I heard from Tessa Kramer (she/her) on what she's most excited to share with listeners, the challenges she faced creating this show, and her advice for budding audio journalists. This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. Content warning: mention of rape and sexual assault. Shreya Sharma (SS): What drew you to the story of Mary Jane Burton? Tessa Kramer (TK): The podcast grew out of a master's thesis project, which I reported on with Sophie Bearman. Before graduate school, in 2018, I'd read about the forensic analyst Mary Jane Burton while I was researching the backlog of rape kits for a writing gig. When I told Sophie, she was immediately fascinated by Mary Jane. I was more drawn in by the scale of this story — when we started reporting, there were 12 men who'd had their names cleared because of DNA testing on clippings of evidence that Mary Jane Burton had saved, and another man would be exonerated during our reporting. A few of the exonerees had met — even become friends — while incarcerated, with no way of knowing that they'd ultimately be cleared by this same scientist's files. All of that felt really poetic and important to explore, and then the more people we talked to, the clearer it became that there was a lot more to the story. SS: What are you most excited about when it comes to listeners tuning into this show? TK: I'm excited for listeners to gain a fuller picture of forensic laboratories. Not to say that crime labs are monolithic, but in many stories, the forensic science is just one chapter in a bigger story — one scene in a police procedural or one episode in a true crime podcast. Here, the crime lab is the story. The people who work in the lab — the analysts, the managers, the office secretary, the trainees — these are the main characters. And then — excited might not be quite the right word — but I hope that the series brings renewed scrutiny to Mary Jane Burton's cases. I hope our reporting encourages the Virginia Department of Forensic Science to take responsibility for the fact that one of the lab's former top analysts was known to do subpar work and that there were senior people at the lab who knew that dating back to the late 1970s, and yet she was allowed to keep working cases until 1988. Even though most of the individuals who let that happen have died, I still think the lab as an institution needs to be held accountable for that and take steps to ensure it would never happen again. SS: What do you hope the listeners take away from this story? TK: I hope listeners come away with a more skeptical eye toward forensic science. I'm not talking about discredited junk sciences — I mean legitimate sciences, like DNA analysis and blood type testing. These techniques are not immune to human influence, bias, error, and other pressures within our criminal legal system. |
