Jim Geier was instrumental in the arrest and conviction of the Fairbanks Four. When he returned to the courtroom it was clear he was no longer the rookie cop and lackey of Aaron Ring. He had been promoted. He came into court with the title of lead investigator for the Fairbanks Police Department. And he was there to discuss the case that made his career, and ruined innumerable lives.

Geier testified that he was patient, respectful, and nice to the witnesses he interviewed. Cue tape of 14-year-old Shara David crying.

“I’m sorry I am crying,” she said between sobs, “I want my mom, please.”

“Get a hold of yourself,” Geier barked back at the little girl.

And so it went….

Geier justified keeping a murder confession from the actual perpetrators under wraps because, he said, he “just assumed it was on the internet.” Ugh.

In an attempt to defend the boot print exhibit used in the original trials, a piece of non-science created bu Geier, another cop, and a prosecutor, an exhibit which has been called “shocking,” “reprehensible,” “deliberately misleading,” ” not science,” and a host of other obvious things a scientist would say about not-science presented as science and used to run lives. The exhibit, which was used to convince jurors there was a match between the wounds on Hartman’s face and George Freese’s boot, was compared to one of those 3-D optical illusion posters.

“I hate to give this analogy, but they sell photographs, or posters, that you’re supposed to see a dolphin in, but you don’t notice it till you look at it for a long time and then there’s the dolphin,” Geier said. “Well, that was those tread marks.”

And indeed, the exhibit was an optical illusion. But the outcome was not that the onlooker saw a surprise dolphin. The outcome was that people were sent to jail as kids for a crime they did not commit. The outcome was that people died. Even after eighteen years to think it through, the gravity of that outcome remains entirely lost on Geier.

The day was long, and this post could be equally long, but the reality is that nothing very important was said. Jim Geier, in the face of mountains of facts and actual science, defended the “science” of pretending something is true because you want it to be. The sad truth is that the men most responsible for the harm done here are too afraid to truly look behind them at what was left in the wake of their misguided zealotry.

“I hate to give this analogy, but they sell photographs, or posters, that you’re supposed to see a dolphin in, but you don’t notice it till you look at it for a long time and then there’s the dolphin,” Geier said. “Well, that was those tread marks.”