Expert Witness Blog

Organized crime expert witness and former FBI agent James Wagner will be allowed to testify at the trial of several alleged mob figures accused of taking part in a conspiracy that included 18 murders. U.S. District Judge James Zagel said expert witness Wagner can discuss how the so-called Chicago Outfit is structured and how it operates, although he can’t talk about individual members or the defendants.

Defense attorneys do not want Wagner, head of the Chicago Crime Commission and former head of the FBI’s organized crime unit in Chicago, to link their clients to the mob. The trial is expected to start in June and is aimed at clearing up unsolved gangland slayings, reports the The Journal Gazette – Times Courier.

Tim Storey of the National Conference of State Legislatures will be the lead expert witness at the California Assembly Elections Committee hearings on redistricting. The NCSL is a bipartisan group representing all 50 state legislatures. Storey, an expert witness on redistricting, is a senior fellow with NCSL and has authored many articles on the redistricting and elections processes.

So far this year more than 25 states have considered proposals, but so far none has passed one. In the last two year period preceding this year, 23 states looked at proposals according to the California Progress Report.

Justice T. David Little of the Ontario Superior Court spoke at the Advocates’ Society 2007 Spring Symposium in Toronto regarding expert witnesses. Justice Little said that expert witnesses are there to assist the court with issues that it may not understand. “Tell the expert before they get on the stand, ‘Don’t be an advocate.” In Ontario counsel have to seek leave from the trial judge if they wish to call more than three expert witnesses.

Also speaking at the symposium was Joan Lukey, a partner with WilmerHale in Boston. Ms. Halle spoke on holographic evidence. The technology has been used in one trial so far in the United States in a case that questioned a surgeon’s actions during a medical procedure. A holographic model of the operating room was created as evidence, which resembled the actual scene from the day in question, complete with the appearance of virtual figures in the room, as reported in LawTimes.com.

Yorkville, IL residents called their own expert witnesses to fight landfill developer Fox Moraine LLC’s plan for a landfill on the city’s southwest side. Fox Moraine argued that properties near the facility would suffer no serious harm. After hearings, Yorkwille aldermen voted 7 to 1 against the plan. Aldermen Golinski described Fox Moraine’s landfill expert witness as “unconvincing.”

Many of the city officials have questioned Fox Moraine’s safety measures, its traffic plan and its compliance with Kendall County rules, which ban landfills within city limits says the BeaconNews Online.

The judge in Phil Spector’s murder trial ruled that forensic scientist expert witness Henry Lee removed something from the scene where actress Lana Clarkson was shot and withheld it from the prosecution. Lee has previously testified in the high profile cases of O.J. Simpson, William Kennedy Smith, Kobe Bryant, JonBenet Ramsey, Scott Peterson, Chandra Levy, Michael Skakel, Vincent Foster and the Branch Davidian compound fire.

Dr. Lee has a lot to lose here,” said Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler, casting doubt on the expert’s credibility.

Judge Fidler heard testimony from several witnesses on the mystery of a piece of fingernail missing from the crime scene. Lee’s expert witness testimony is expected to interpret blood spatter patterns supporting the claim that Clarkson killed herself in Spector’s home reports CNN.com.

Judge Elizabeth Thomakos will allow no child abuse expert witness to use the term Shaken Baby Syndrome in the Marsha Mills murder trial, beginning next week in New Philadelphia. According to the TimesReporter.com:

Thomakos explained the expert witnesses presented by the prosecution will not be permitted to give an opinion that the child was diagnosed with Shaken Baby Syndrome, will not be allowed to testify Mills shook him and will not be permitted to comment on whether Mills was truthful in her version of events….Thomakos used a recent decision by the Ohio Supreme Court in a case involving Battered Woman’s Syndrome to evaluate the admissibility of expert testimony. She decided that should Steiner testify the boy died from Shaken Baby Syndrome, he would take away the role of the jury in determining Mills’ credibility. The testimony of the expert could cause a juror to conclude the expert believed the defendant is guilty.

The Maryland Supreme Court agreed with the Court of Appeals unanimous decision that a Frye-Reed hearing is necessary to determine the validity of expert witness testimony in the case of Josephine Chesson, et al. v. Montgomery Mutual Insurance Company. The plaintiffs, employees of Baltimore Washington Conference of the United Methodist Church in Columbia, claim they suffer a disease known as “sick building syndrome” because toxic mold was found behind a wall. “sick building syndrome” expert witness Dr. Ritchie Shoemaker testified on their behalf. LegalNewsline.com stated that:

Defense counsel argued that a hearing should have taken place to determine if Shoemaker’s beliefs regarding sick building syndrome are widely accepted, a practice established in 1978’s Reed v. State decision and designed to determine the admissibility of an expert’s testimony. It interpreted a U.S. Supreme Court ruling from the 1920s.

Justice Irma Raker wrote. “We shall hold that the expert’s testimony should have been the subject of a Frye-Reed hearing.”

Lisa Handley, political scientist statistics expert witness for the federal government, testified in the 2007 Port Chester mayoral election voting-rights trial. Handley said:

She is very confident that the village election system dilutes the Hispanic vote and testified that there is an overall pattern of racially polarized voting in the village.

According to Lower Hudson Online, expert witness Handley analyzed 16 elections and concluded that the candidate preferred by Hispanic voters was defeated in 12 of those races.

The perjured testimony from Joseph Kopera, Maryland’s police ballistics expert witness who killed himself this month after being confronted with evidence that he had falsified his credentials continues to affect the cases in which he testified.

Maryland prosecutors and defense attorneys have said that revelations about Kopera’s falsified credentials could force new trials for some of the hundreds of people he helped convict in a career that spanned nearly four decades.

As reported in the Baltimore Sun, one defense attorney stated: “The point is not that the jury might have evaluated his conclusions differently if they had known that his knowledge was based only on ‘on the job training,’ although that is certainly a possibility. Rather, the point is that once a jury is aware that a state’s expert has utterly failed to abide by the oath given to all witnesses, the jury reasonably can conclude that the witness has little regard for the truth.”