New Year's Day, 1959

The transition from one year to another is a time to remember. Perhaps because I have recently made contact with some people from Pullman, Washington, the town where I lived the first sixteen years of my life, something came back to me. The memory concerns a man whose last name was, I think, Meade or Means, but whose first name was John. My father was the Chairman of the Department of Animal Science at Washington State University (actually it was called Washington State College during our period there). Several times each year my parents...

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Sniffing and Sampling Only One Spot at Fire Scene Gets Arson Conviction Thrown Out, or How Not to Respond to Canine Evidence

I don’t know if anyone keeps statistics comparing the type of evidence and the percentage of cases where ineffective assistance of counsel is eventually argued, but if they do I’d be willing to bet that where canine evidence is a significant part of the prosecution’s case, claims of ineffective counsel after convictions are very high. Far too often lawyers, jurors, and judges take the handler’s testimony as gospel. One judge who doesn’t is Judge Nancy Gertner of the federal district court of Massachusetts. In 2006, James Hebshie was convicted...

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Bomb Dogs More Effective Than Manual Screening at Ferries, but Cost Three Times as Much

U.S. ferries annually carry over 80 million passengers and 25 million vehicles. They are potential targets for terrorism, and ferry systems have been hit by terrorists overseas. The Transportation Security Administration supplies Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response teams to ferry systems. Some of these VIPR teams include explosives detection canine teams (a handler and a dog). TSA has deployed 319 VIPR units to ferry systems in almost four...

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School District Resists Autism Service Dog, but Benefits Outweigh Control Problems

K.D., an autistic child, attended an Illinois elementary school. In May 2009, the boy received a Labrador retriever, Chewey, from Autism Service Dogs of America (ASDA). The court kept the child’s identity and the family’s name confidential, but news reports have identified them. The Villa Grove School District soon sent K.D.’s parents a letter saying that Chewey could not accompany K.D. to school. In July 2009, K.D.’s parents filed suit, seeking a court order permitting K.D. to bring Chewey to the school. The school district filed a motion to...

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Huang Hua, Joan Hinton, and China, 1984

Two people that I met in China died recently. Last week it was Huang Hua, once Vice Prime Minister of China, who entertained my father and the members of his family traveling with him in a dining hall in the Forbidden City in Beijing. More on that later. The other was Joan Hinton, whom I met on a collective farm in rural China. My father led a group of American agriculturalists around China for 30 days in 1984. Instead of just visiting the cities,...

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