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Former Orange County Sheriff Michael S. Carona, charged with selling access to his office for cash, favors and gifts, has retained Jones Day on a pro bono basis. An allegedly corrupt sheriff who is making about $200,000 a year in retirement makes for an unusual pro bono client but colleagues say Jones Day Los Angeles attorney Brian A. Sun took the case because he considers it an example of government overreach.. Carona will pay the cost of law enforcement expert witnesses, his local attorney, and investigators. LATimes.com also reports:

…Sun offered to handle it pro bono as long as Carona resigned. Carona would continue to pay all costs of the defense, such as investigators and expert witnesses. Carona also agreed to pay Jones Day’s legal fees up to the date of his resignation this month, and he continues to pay H. Dean Steward, a San Clemente attorney who has represented him for more than two years. “To suggest that he’s getting a free legal ride is wholly inaccurate,” Sun said. “Mike and his family will likely expend much of their net worth defending these charges.”

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St. Luke’s Magic Valley Regional Medical Center has sued a Washington attorney who represented the hospital between 2003 and 2006 saying that Tom Luciani did not adequately defend against claims of Medicare fraud and other record-keeping practices. When the hospital discovered Luciani had no plan to produce a medical billing expert witness to counter testimony from a plaintiff’s witness, it hired its own counsel in 2006. Times-News Magic Valley.com also writes:

The complaint, filed Jan. 17 in U.S. District Court in Boise, claims that Tom Luciani intentionally breached his fiduciary duty and committed professional malpractice while representing the hospital and Farmers Insurance between July 2003 and early 2006. Luciani was brought on by the insurance company to represent the hospital during litigation that started in 2001 with a tort claim against the hospital by two former employees….

According to the hospital’s most recent court filing, Luciani had a longstanding relationship with Farmers, which brought him in to replace another lawyer when the case moved to federal court. Following the desires of the insurance company, the complaint states, Luciani’s strategy focused on protecting Farmers from any damages while leaving the hospital open to a possible $22 million judgment.

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Ed Poindexter, former head of Omaha’s Black Panther chapter, is appealing his conviction for the 1970 bombing murder of Omaha Policeman Larry Minard. The Neraska Supreme Court will examine two key points that emerged from testimony in May 2007 in Douglas County District Court. Michael Richardson of OpEdNews.com writes:

Poindexter and his co-defendant, Mondo we Langa (formerly David Rice), who both maintain their innocence, were convicted largely on the brokered testimony of 15 year-old Duane Peak, the confessed bomber, and dynamite allegedly found in Langa’s basement. Peak implicated Poindexter and Langa in exchange for a lenient sentence as a juvenile instead of facing the electric chair. Contradictory police testimony about the dynamite and expert witness testimony that Peak did not make the emergency call that lured Minard to his death have opened a huge breach in the prosecution case against the Panther leader.

Langa raised the issue of the voice on the tape in a 1983 appeal to the Nebraska Supreme Court. At that time, the Court noted there had been no “expert in voice analysis” examination of the tape and thus, “there is insufficient evidence to support the claim that Duane Peak did not make the call.” However, in May 2007 Judge Bowie did hear expert witness testimony about the voice on the tape. Voice analyst Tom Owen testified that in his opinion the voice was not that of Peak thus undermining the credibility of the state’s chief witness.

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Bill Muzzy’s testimony is crucial in the civil trial against TRW Vehicle Safety Systems, the company that manufactures seatbelts for General Motors. The seat belt and air bags expert witness was cross examined for five hours in the 146th District Court in Killeen Texas. Muzzy maintains that a design flaw in a seatbelt led to the death of Jenny Singley. kdhnews.com also reports that the expert witness’s credentials include his role as investigator of the restraint system in the fatal Dale Earnhardt crash and 5,500 experiments on human volunteers for the Navy and Air Force during the Cold War, which involved testing human tolerance to acceleration. “We have all the evidence in total to show the seatbelt didn’t operate correctly,” Muzzy said. “This is the most likely scenario.”

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Jonathan Evans and his co-counsel, Michael Edmiston, won in back-to-back arbitration hearings before Los Angeles based Financial Industry Regulatory Authority arbitration panels. In both cases, the conduct of the brokers and their firms was so shocking that both arbitration panels awarded attorney’s fees and securities expert witness fees along with sizable compensatory damages. Street Insider.com also reports that in the second hearing:

Evans represented a single-mother of two whose broker, Shapour Javadizadeh, of RJJ Pasadena Securities caused massive trading losses in her account with a high-risk option trading strategy. His client inherited the account from her father in 2002 and was using the money to pay her living expenses while rebuilding her life. In a hard-fought week of hearings, which saw numerous “attorney-only” conferences with the Arbitration Panel, including one which resulted in sanctions against the Respondents for their shenanigans in withholding documents, Evans prevailed for his client. The Panel awarded $151,000 in compensatory damages, attorney’s fees, expert witness fees, and sanctions.

“During my cross-examination of the broker, I was amazed when he literally stood up before the Panel and admitted he did everything complained about in the Claim. It was a moment out of a courtroom drama, and his admission won the case for us,” said Evans, reflecting back on the hearing. The FINRA case number is 06-04288 and the award may be found at http://www.finra.org.

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Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and chief of staff Christine Beatty were both charged with perjury after they lied under oath about a possible affair between them from 2001 to 2003. M.L. Elrick and David Ashenfelter of FreePress.com write:

The false testimony potentially exposes them to felony perjury charges, legal experts say. Kilpatrick, a lawyer, could also face discipline if the state Attorney Discipline Board finds he lied in court. The Michigan Rules of Professional Conduct, which govern attorneys, say even nonpracticing lawyers in public office can be sanctioned for dishonesty. “Lawyers holding public office assume legal responsibilities going beyond those of other citizens,” the code states.

Lying under oath is one of the worst sins a lawyer can commit — akin to stealing a client’s money, legal ethics expert witnesses said…”It’s literally the equivalent of the death penalty for a law license,” said Michael Schwartz, former administrator of the Michigan Attorney Grievance Commission, which investigates lawyers.

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Jonathan Evans and his co-counsel, Michael Edmiston, won in back-to-back arbitration hearings before Los Angeles based Financial Industry Regulatory Authority arbitration panels. In both cases, the conduct of the brokers and their firms was so shocking that both arbitration panels awarded attorney’s fees and securities expert witness fees along with sizable compensatory damages. Street Insider.com also reports that in the first hearing:

…Evans represented a senior citizen and his wife against A.G. Edwards and its broker, Anthony Russo. Mr. Russo, a broker who had a prior history of discipline including both a termination from a firm and a regulatory suspension for recommending unsuitable securities, positioned much of his client’s retirement funds in high-risk equities just months before the technology bubble imploded. Despite calls from his clients, Mr. Russo did absolutely nothing to mitigate the devastating losses; rather he simply abandoned his clients to one of the worst bear markets in history…

On behalf of his clients, Evans recovered $84,000 in compensatory damages, $33,600 in attorney’s fees, and $13,000 expert witness fees. Anthony Russo, despite his checkered history, and now this arbitration award, is the branch manager of the A.G. Edwards office in Oxnard, California. The FINRA case number is 05-05647 and the award may be found at http://www.finra.org.

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Louise Reynolds of Kingston, Onatario was charged in June, 1997, with the stabbing death of her seven-year-old daughter and held in jail for almost two years. The charges were dropped when lawyers and expert witnesses became convinced that the child had been mauled by a pit bull. A U.S. pathology expert witness also backed the dog-bite theory.

Reynold’s case is in the news again due to an inquiry into the pediatric forensic pathology system in Ontario. According to a confidential document released yesterday, the lead detective urged prosecutors to push hard for Reynold’s conviction. Kingston police fought in court last year to keep the document out of the public eye. Tom Blackwell of The National Post also writes:

Even when the charge was withdrawn in the face of contradictory evidence from other experts, Kingston police continued to back the pathologist’s original viewpoint. International experts who reviewed Dr. Smith’s child-death investigations much later also said that he had wrongly diagnosed stab wounds, and concluded a pit bull had killed Sharon. The same experts found that the head of Ontario’s pediatric forensic pathology unit had made serious errors in 20 of 45 suspicious child deaths he investigated between 1991 and 2001.

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Sam Sommers, a Tufts University assistant professor of psychology, testified last week as an expert witness on whether juror racism tainted Christopher McCowen’s first-degree murder conviction in 2006. A predominantly white jury found McCowen, who is black, guilty of the 2002 murder of Christa Worthington. Also convicted of aggravated rape and aggravated burglary, McCowan was sentenced to state prison for life without parole. The psychology expert witness testified on how racial stereotypes can affect jury deliberations. Mary Ann Bragg of Cape Cod Times also reports:

…Sommers acknowledged most individuals are not “at the mercy of these stereotypes” and they have the capacity – if reminded about the seriousness of the decision – to put their stereotypes aside enough to serve as impartial jurors…In Nickerson’s questioning of 12 jurors last week, the judge focused primarily on three alleged incidents of potential juror misconduct: whether juror Marlo George, who is white, used the term “black man” in a racist manner; whether juror Carol Cahill, who is also white, told fellow jurors she feared McCowen because he was a black man staring at her; and whether juror Eric Gomes, a Cape Verdean, told fellow jurors that blacks had a tendency toward violence.

…Sommers testified that choices of adjectives to describe a defendant such as “black” show what information a speaker thinks is relevant. Use of the adjective “black” would be warranted if the speaker needed to distinguish between two men, one black and one white, Sommers said. Otherwise, “it’s an indication of the belief that race is relevant,” the Tufts professor testified.

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In How Attorneys Can Best Utilize Their Medical Expert Witness: A Medical Expert’s Perspective, Dr. Vernon M. Neppe MD, PhD, FRSSAf, FAPA, writes that expert witness testimony depends on finding an appropriate match for your case. This excerpt deals with document preparation.

There are costs that are necessary:

Rather obvious is the review of the appropriate medical records. All records that are relevant to the expert’s testimony should be supplied. Sometimes, with key witnesses, this may mean all documents pertinent to the case. Whereas this may not be entirely ideal, pragmatism plays a role. The attorney should be careful whom (s)he chooses for that task, as doing this for five or six experts could easily make costs overwhelming. Generally, in each case, there may be one or two key witnesses. The others may be declared in a limited way and receive all relevant documents for the specific area of expertise only. They should carefully obtain only what is relevant information for the specific declaration. The easiest cost saver is a well constructed file of pertinent pages with indexes as well as a brief summary letter containing only facts, e.g. date of alleged incident, demographics, alleged claims and questions to be answered.

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