Gina Barton
Appearances
The Excerpt
BONUS | Introducing true crime podcast: Untested
So I went to the trial, and that is where I met Detective Annie Harrison and started to hear and learn about everything that she went through for almost a year to try and bring this man to justice after he had gotten away with numerous sex crimes for 10 years. I just thought it would be a really compelling story for listeners.
The Excerpt
BONUS | Introducing true crime podcast: Untested
And we have some great audio that really gives you the inside view of how a police investigation works.
The Excerpt
BONUS | Introducing true crime podcast: Untested
I met Annie in the courtroom. And I have to say, when I first met her, I was a little bit intimidated by her. She's obviously very authoritative as a police detective. She's a little hard to read. But once I started talking with her, I realized she is really unusual as police. a police detective compared to lots of other ones that I've met during the course of my career.
The Excerpt
BONUS | Introducing true crime podcast: Untested
Annie was willing to talk about some of the mistakes that had been made in the investigation. She was willing to talk about how she as a detective had learned and evolved over the course of her career. She was very open about how much she cared about victims and how important she feels like this project is to get these rape kits tested, and how police across the country just have to do better.
The Excerpt
BONUS | Introducing true crime podcast: Untested
As the reporting process went on, I ended up talking to Annie for probably 40 or 50 hours. I recorded all of those conversations, so I'd like to share this clip from one of them.
The Excerpt
BONUS | Introducing true crime podcast: Untested
The thing that struck me about Annie is that she is very victim-centered in her investigations. She really concentrates on how to make the victims feel comfortable, how not to re-traumatize them through the investigation.
The Excerpt
BONUS | Introducing true crime podcast: Untested
She also goes the extra mile and makes the extra effort to find out everything that she possibly can about the suspect so that if the victim chooses not to come to trial, they can still have a case against him. So Annie never asks the victims if they want to prosecute. Instead, she builds a case assuming that that victim will not testify and
The Excerpt
BONUS | Introducing true crime podcast: Untested
And if the victim does testify, then that's great and it's a better case. But that isn't required to make a case. That stands in contrast to some of the other detectives who investigated this same suspect. The first detective who investigated that case did not send the rape kit to be tested. And she basically said, this is a he said, she said case. He's just as believable as she is.
The Excerpt
BONUS | Introducing true crime podcast: Untested
It's probably not going to go anywhere. And then when the same suspect was investigated again in 2020, the detective there in Georgia said, if you listen to her interview with the victim and her interview with the suspect, which we will be sharing with you on the show, Untested, it's almost as if the victim is being treated as a suspect. And when that detective interviews her,
The Excerpt
BONUS | Introducing true crime podcast: Untested
The actual suspect, Marshawn Curtis, she seems very friendly and tells him that basically she believes him before she's even started talking to him. So I have a clip from that conversation that I'd like to share.
The Excerpt
BONUS | Introducing true crime podcast: Untested
Every time Detective Harrison turned around, she found something else. And the most heartbreaking thing, of course, is that he had been accused of rape in 2012 and wasn't taken to trial then, wasn't held accountable. And then eight years later, 800 miles away from Michigan in Georgia, another woman had accused him of rape. There were other things too that she found in his background.
The Excerpt
BONUS | Introducing true crime podcast: Untested
About a month after the first rape complaint in 2012, he was 19 at the time, and he had sex with a 15-year-old, got her pregnant, which would be illegal on its face because she was not old enough to consent, but no charges there. He followed a woman home from a bar one night at Michigan State, and as he's walking with her, he starts masturbating on the street.
The Excerpt
BONUS | Introducing true crime podcast: Untested
He had a lot of issues with exposing himself to women, planting cameras in public restrooms, just a lot of behavior that was very disturbing, even though it wasn't a physical assault.
The Excerpt
BONUS | Introducing true crime podcast: Untested
I think it's really important that as journalists, we are also cognizant of trauma that victims have been through. And the last thing that I want to do is make things harder for them or traumatize them any further by speaking with them, interviewing them by what I'm reporting or how it's reported.
The Excerpt
BONUS | Introducing true crime podcast: Untested
So we did take lots of steps in the show to make sure that the victims were all comfortable with not only whether their names were used, but with how their words were going to be used, what the context is, what quotes we were using.
The Excerpt
BONUS | Introducing true crime podcast: Untested
And in fact, one of the victims who plays a key role in the story, Jocelyn Phillips from Michigan, said it was okay if we used her name, but she did not want us to use her voice. So instead, we used transcripts and we had an actor read her part.
The Excerpt
BONUS | Introducing true crime podcast: Untested
And so that allows her to be empowered to have her story shared, but to not have to go through having her voice out there, which she wasn't comfortable with. So that's just one example.
The Excerpt
BONUS | Introducing true crime podcast: Untested
I think the biggest problem that we discovered when we investigated this is that a lot of agencies didn't really think about what to do after they tested the rape kit, right? They get a grant, they send the kits to the lab, they come up with the DNA profile, And then they don't do anything with it.
The Excerpt
BONUS | Introducing true crime podcast: Untested
So in Michigan, where I focused my reporting for the show, they had a team that consisted of the detective, a prosecutor, and a victim advocate. And they made sure that for every rape kit that got tested, they went back and reinvestigated the case because just testing those kits really does no good if you don't do anything with the new evidence that you get.
The Excerpt
BONUS | Introducing true crime podcast: Untested
I think that law enforcement definitely needs more training. Annie Harrison in Michigan has had a lot of training on how to deal with victims, how to build a case. The prosecutors there have had training on how to bring a case to trial if the victim doesn't testify. There are all kinds of small things that make a huge difference in whether these suspects are brought to justice.
The Excerpt
BONUS | Introducing true crime podcast: Untested
You know, in some jurisdictions, if the victim isn't going to testify, there's no charges, there's no investigation. And if that would have happened in this case, this man might still be out there assaulting other women. Gina, thank you so much for being on The Excerpt.
The Excerpt
BONUS | Introducing true crime podcast: Untested
The idea started with our project into the problem of untested rape kits. And we looked into a federal grant program that was supposed to help solve that problem. During our reporting, I came across a court file talking about a man named Marshawn Curtis, and he was just going to be coming up for trial.