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Great question — one that bugged me early in the reporting too. There are a couple reasons 1. prosecutors sidestep the hearings meant to determine the admissibility by disguising 911 call analysis as anything but "science"; 2. it's relatively new and unknown, unlike lie detectors, so it's less easy to identify for judges and defense lawyers; 3. it can seem very much like regular, lay testimony instead of expert opinion so some judges have let it in. In emails, prosecutors have laid out these sort of loopholes for getting 911 call analysis into trial via testimony from students trained in it

Hey great question. This was a huge concern from the linguists and pychologists I consulted with. They said practitioners have to be extra careful when applying any academic research that purports there are "right" and "wrong" ways to speak. Especially true in a high stakes setting like a murder investigation/trial. The original 911 call analysis study I saw no mention of autistic folks being factored in. Since we've published, I've heard from many neurodiverse folks who said just that: the criteria used to identify a "guilty" caller looks a lot like the way I just speak.

Good question. The structural incentives are baked into the pitch: the training will let 911 operators know if they are talking to a murderer, give detectives a new way to identify suspects, and arm prosecutors with evidence they can exploit at trial. Students who take the class then bring what they've learned to the real world, apply it to a case and, often, tell Harpster (the founder) about how they used it. Those testimonials are then used as more marketing. It's a feedback loop.

Police leaders and district attorneys will listen to their employees' positive reviews and invite Harpster back to speak again. One thing I learned in the reporting is that those reviews are really powerful. That's why conferences host him too: people really like him and the training.

The court question is a tricky one. I don't have enough data to say whether it's more often successful or not in court. That said, we found several cases where a student of Harpster's — usually a detective or dispatcher — testified to their analysis of someone's 911 call and then that someone was convicted. Some judges, like that one I cited in Nevada, wouldn't allow the testimony. But it's often slipping in, largely because of the way it's been disguised as lay opinion, as one expert put it. Sometimes, and this is rare, it's getting in as actual expert testimony. (See the Riley Spitler example from the story.)

Parsing exactly what the Iranian government is up to at any given time is difficult. A former senior Navy official I spoke to today described it this way: the Iranians may be crazy but they're not stupid. What they may be up to here is an attempt to pressure the US and American allies to rein back the tough economic sanctions the Trump administration has placed on them. Iran messing with oil shipments from the region hurts European and Asian countries too, and they have leverage points with the U.S. that Iran may lack.

Hey great questions. They are not at all familiar about it, which was super surprising to me. Even in the counties where I knew police had taken the training. A lot of them have reached out since and told me they'll now be on the lookout. Some defense attorneys have learned about it in the court room for the first time – they didn't know a detective or dispatcher was going to testify about "guilty indicators" because the prosecutors didn't offer them as experts.

On the juries question, I'm not sure. I don't have enough data to say they who they put stock into and who they don't. The NAS report I discuss briefly in the story gets into how judges seldom restrict experts offered by prosecutors, which I think may play a part. Riley Spitler —the teenager who was convicted of murdering his brother before that was overturned — believed the detective who testified about 911 call analysis had much more authority in the eyes of the jury than he did. "I was just a kid," he said.