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In 1993, 12 years after the crime, James Parsons was indicted for the murder of his wife.[qh]
1993年，也就是詹姆斯·帕森斯犯下罪行12年后，他因谋杀妻子而被起诉。[qh]
The largely circumstantial case rested in no small part on G. Michele Yezzo—that is, on her credibility as an expert, including her unverifiable memory of what she may have seen when she conducted her experiment. [qh]
这起无法取证的案件告破在很大程度上依靠米歇尔·耶佐，也就是说，依靠她作为一名专家的可信度，包括她对进行实验时可能观察到的却无法核实的记忆。[qh]
Yezzo’s testimony provided a crucial physical link between Parsons and the crime.[qh]
耶佐的证词提供了帕森斯和罪行之间至关重要的物理联系。[qh]
At trial, Yezzo acknowledged that other Craftsman tools—of which there are millions—were imprinted with the same logo. [qh]
在庭审中，耶佐承认，其他Craftsman牌工具--其中有数百万个--都印有同样的标志。[qh]
“I want to see more to be able to say it’s that bar, absolutely, to the exclusion of all others,” she testified.[qh]
“我想充分观察确认是这个加力杆，绝对，排除所有其他加力杆，”她作证说。[qh]
“But my opinion is that there is nothing that makes it inconsistent with this bar.”[qh]
“但是我的观点是，没有任何与这个加力杆不一致的地方。”[qh]
If you are a semanticist, parsing carefully, those words mean little.[qh]
如果你是一个语义学家，仔细分析一下，这些词没有什么意义。[qh]
In court, they can come across as definitive: Nothing rules out the possibility. [qh]
在法庭上，这些话语可以给人留下明确的印象：没有什么能排除这种可能性。[qh]
The words were deployed as definitive by prosecutors—“the evidence is uncontroverted by the scientist, totally uncontroverted”—and understood that way by the jury.[qh]
检方认为这些话语是决定性的 --“科学家对证据没有异议，完全没有异议 ”--陪审团也是这样理解的。[qh]
Parsons was found guilty and given a prison term of 15 years to life.[qh]
帕森斯被判有罪，被判处15年监禁至终身监禁。[qh]
Michael Donnelly, now a justice on the Ohio Supreme Court, did not preside over this case, but he has had ample exposure to the use of forensic evidence. [qh]
迈克尔·唐纳利现在是俄亥俄州最高法院的一名法官，他没有主持这起案件，但他有足够的使用法医证据的经验。[qh]
“As a trial judge,” he told me, “I sat there for 14 years. And when forensics experts testified, the jury hung on their every word.”[qh]
“作为一名承审法官，”他告诉我，“我在那里坐了14年。当法医专家作证时，陪审团会听从他们的每一句话。[qh]
Two decades later, in 2013, the Ohio Innocence Project decided to look into the case. [qh]
20年后的2013年，“俄亥俄州洗冤计划”决定对此案进行调查。[qh]
Parsons was still in prison. [qh]
帕森斯当时还在监狱里。[qh]
Because his conviction rested substantially on Yezzo’s testimony, the Innocence Project requested her personnel file from the Bureau of Criminal Investigation.[qh]
由于他的定罪在很大程度上取决于耶佐的证词，“洗冤计划”要求刑事调查局提供她的个人档案。[qh]
“It was really just a Hail Mary,” Donald Caster, a professor at the University of Cincinnati College of Law and a staff attorney at the Ohio Innocence Project, told me recently. [qh]
辛辛那提大学法学院教授、俄亥俄州“洗冤计划”专职律师唐纳德·卡斯特最近告诉我：“那真的只是孤注一掷。”[qh]
The legal team, he said, had noticed “squirrelly things” in a couple of other Yezzo cases. [qh]
他说，法律团队在耶佐的其他几起案件中注意到一些“奇怪的事情”。 [qh]
In early 2015, the Innocence Project received the bureau’s personnel file—all 449 pages of it. [qh]
2015年初，“洗冤计划”收到了局里的人事档案--总共449页。[qh]
“People just don’t have personnel files that are hundreds of pages long,” Caster noted. “It’s not really a thing.”[qh]
“普通人没有长达数百页的人事档案，”卡斯特指出。“这真的不简单。”[qh]
