Gibbs
For those of you that aren’t TV fans, one of the longest running prime-time dramas is a show called NCIS (for Naval Criminal Investigative Service). It’s a “cop show”, about a team of investigators who work out of Washington DC. They are led by their now aging leader, Leroy Jethro Gibbs. After eighteen years we know a whole lot about Gibbs. He served as a Marine sniper and lost the love of his life and his child to a drug smuggler. He was first tutored in investigative work by Mike Franks. Gibbs has an addiction to redheaded women and building boats in the basement. And, of course, “Gibbs Rules”, carefully numbered one (twice) through sixty-nine. They are how an old Marine navigates the complications of life.
While Gibbs lost his family, he always has his “team”. And while the team has changed over the years, they all depend on Gibbs. He is their leader, their father-figure, and their friend. But throughout the eighteen years of the show, there has been one stalwart, one compatriot who has remained. Dr. Donald Horatio Mallard, better known as “Ducky” to his friends, is the now retired Chief Medical Examiner of NCIS. Ducky, as well as the quirky and brilliant Forensic Scientists Abby Sciutto (replaced by Kasie Hines) and new Medical Examiner Jimmy Palmer, bring scientific method and investigative techniques to the show. Those processes, combined with Gibbs’ famous “gut feelings”, solve crimes.
Ducky
Ducky himself has a long storied history. A graduate of the Eton College in England and Edinburgh Scotland’s famed Medical College, he was a physician in the Royal Medical Corps of the British Army. His accented and rambling stories always somehow bring historical perspective to the deceased. Ducky talks to his “patients”, the dead on his autopsy table. His goal is to bring them closure for their untimely demise.
If you’re a television fan, you are very used to scientific facts about the dead brought to you with a British accent (with an occasional Scottish brogue). Ducky has been explaining to us what caused a victim’s death for eighteen years. And he is almost always right.
Tobin
So what’s the chance both sides of the Derek Chauvin trial managed to find key scientific witnesses that sound like “Ducky”? The Prosecution presented Dr. Martin Tobin, a pulmonologist from Chicago’s Loyola University. He was born in Ireland, and educated at University College in Dublin and King’s College Hospital in London.
He’s been in the United States since 1981, and with his calm Irish accent carefully walked the jury through the processes of the body getting oxygen. It was his long testimony that generating the most damning scientific evidence against the defendant. He carefully explained how Chauvin’s knees in George Floyd’s back for over nine minutes slowly prevented him from getting enough oxygen, and extinguished his life.
Dr. Tobin volunteered his testimony as “the” expert witness in respiration.
Fowler
The Defense countered with an “expert” witness of their own, Dr. David Fowler. Fowler was born in Zimbabwe (then part of the British Empire called Rhodesia). He attended the University of South Africa in Cape Town, where he earned his medical degree. Fowler then moved onto the United States in 1991, where he completed further study at the University of Maryland, and became a Medical Examiner for the state. He rose through the department to become the Chief Medical Examiner for Maryland in 2002 and retired from that position in 2019.
To the uninitiated, Dr. Fowler’s South African accent sounds “British”. And he too had very convincing theories for the death of George Floyd. He speculated that Floyd died from a heart arrythmia due to drug use, or coronary artery disease, or possibly inhalation of carbon monoxide while he was held in the “prone” position on the street beside the vehicle. In fact, Dr. Fowler came up with almost every possible reason for Floyd’s death, except for the most obvious one: that someone was kneeling on his back, holding his neck to the pavement, while the man’s arms were handcuffed behind his back.
Dr. Fowler is now a “forensic consultant”. That translates to mean he is a paid expert witness, earning hundreds of dollars an hour to testify in Court. And while he is bringing all of his decades of scientific expertise to bear, you can be sure that if he reached a conclusion that the defendant was at fault, he wouldn’t be on the stand at all.
Rules
Gibb’s rules have been around since the beginning of the series eighteen years ago. But it took seven seasons for us to learn about Rule #39 – “There is no such thing as a coincidence”. That one “British” accented scientist would appear on the stand of the Chauvin trial might be happenstance, but that both sides brought their accented “experts” to explain the “science” of George Floyd’s death to the jury – I call “Rule 39”.
I’m sure there are forensic experts born in the United States, who don’t have an accent originating from the British Isles. But they also won’t sound like “Ducky”. Americans have been hearing the scientific truth from Dr. Mallard on NCIS for almost two decades. And don’t forget, we live in a nation that once elected a President mostly based on his character on a television show. It’s all about Rule 39.
