by

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.”

by

James Earl Edmiston, who fraudulently testified he was a computer expert witness, has recently pleaded guilty to federal perjury charges. Federal agents arrested Edmiston in September, 2006 after they became suspicious of the qualifications listed on his curriculum vitae. For example, Edmiston had featured degrees from the California Institute of Technology and the UCLA. It was revealed that these schools didn’t offer the degrees Edmiston had listed.

According to California’s Fresno Bee, Edmiston’s downfall came after he was retained by Fresno attorneys to work on two child pornography cases. Local U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents involved in the cases noticed some inaccuracies on his résumé, and further checks found alleged multiple false statements. It was also revealed that Edmiston served time in prison for forgery.

Edmiston could receive up to 10 years in prison and a $500,000 fine when he is sentenced July 13 by U.S. District Judge Lawrence O’Neill.

Continue reading

by

Robin Clifton’s 21-day arson trial, for which 800 potential jurors had been called, has been postponed for an expert witness to continue preparing. Stephen B. Spies, a retired special agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, is the arson expert witness mentioned in the motion. Clifton is accused of setting four fires on Sept. 5, 2005, two of which destroyed the Rifle Amoco station. He allegedly set other fires at a restaurant and a townhouse under construction.

According to the Post Independent, the size of the jury pool was a result of heavy pretrial publicity of the case and the anticipated length of the trial. Clifton had sought unsuccessfully to have the trial moved elsewhere because of the amount of local media attention the case had received.

by

Former FBI fingerprint expert witness testified that terrorism suspect Jose Padilla’s fingerprints match at least seven of 45 latent prints found on an alleged application for Al Qaeda holy war training.

Padilla and his two codefendants are charged with conspiracy to kill, kidnap or maim people abroad and with providing material support to terrorists. Padilla was accused after his May 2002 arrest of plotting to set off a radioactive “dirty bomb” in a U.S. city. But Padilla’s public defenders cast doubt on the validity of both the prints and the so-called mujahedeen data form, a cornerstone of the government’s case. The form has been described by other expert witnesses as a “pledge” to fight on behalf of beleaguered Muslims abroad.

Padilla’s questioned the thoroughness of the evaluation, asking expert witness Morgan why he hadn’t sought a broader set of the defendant’s prints, according to the latimes.com.

by

The U.S. Court of Appeals, 10th Circuit, affirms lower court ruling on expert witness testimony. In Mariposa Farms, LLC. v. Westfailia-Surge, Inc., 2007 U.S. App. LEXIS 473, Westfalia unsuccessfullly tried to discredit farm equipment expert witness testimony. The higher court found that Dr. Sybren Reitsma’s and Dr. Corbett’s testimony provided the jury with sufficient evidence to find that Westfalia was negligent and breached its warranties.

Mariposa Farms, Inc. filed suit in July 2003 against Westfalia alleging negligence and breach of warranty resulting from the installation and operation of cow-milking equipment manufactured by Westfalia. Mariposa alleged that the equipment malfunction created unstable vacuum pressure, which eventually caused mastitis to spread throughout its herd.
At trial, Mariposa expert witness Dr. Sybren Reitsma testified that, based on photographs and conversations with Mariposa’s principal manager Larry Skelley, it was his expert opinion that the design and installation of Westfalia’s vacuum system caused the unstable vacuum pressure which led to the mastitis outbreak. Another Mariposa expert witness, Dr. Robert Corbett, opined that the milking machine equipment malfunction caused the mastitis spread because, in his experience, the bacteria could not spread as rapidly as it did without the presence of a milking machine malfunction

.

by

On January 30, 2007, the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled that plaintiffs’ epidemiology expert witness Dr. Richard Allen Lemen presented scientifically reliable, and therefore legally admissible, evidence drawing a causal connection between mesothelioma and inhalation of brake-lining dust. Chapin v. A&L Parts, et al., 2007 Mich. App. LEXIS 156. The disagreement between defendants’ occupational health expert witness Dr. Michael Goodman was on the causal connection. The court ruled:

The fact that two scientists value the available research differently and ascribe different significance to that research does not necessarily make either of their conclusions unreliable. Indeed, science is, at its heart, itself an ongoing search for truth, with new discoveries occurring daily, and with regular disagreements between even the most respected members of any given field. A Daubert-type hearing of this kind is not a judicial search for truth. The courts are unlikely to be capable of achieving a degree of scientific knowledge that scientists cannot….The inquiry is not into whether an expert’s opinion is necessarily correct or universally accepted. The inquiry is into whether the opinion is rationally derived from a sound foundation.

In the dissent, Judge O’Connell found that plaintiff’s expert witness and defendants’ expert testified that no less than 15 epidemiological studies have been conducted to determine if there is an empirically verifiable correlation between brake grinding and mesothelioma, none of these studies established a causal connection Therefore, under Daubert, Dr. Lemen’s testimony should be inadmissible.

by

Marie Lindor has retained a well known expert witness in her Brooklyn federal court case, UMG v. Lindor. RIAA alleges copyright infringement due to shared files on Lindor’s home computer. Professor Johan Pouwelse, P2P technology expert, will testify regarding file sharing networks.

Prof. Johan Pouwelse, Chairman of the Parallel and Distributed Systems Group of Delft University of Technology, testified against RIAA’s MediaSentry ‘investigations’ (PDF) in a case in the Netherlands. His expert witness testimony resulted in the court directing ISPs in the Netherlands not to turn over their subscribers’ information. Lindor hopes to discredit RIAA’s software expert witness, Dr. Doug Jacobson, writes the New York Country Lawyer.

by

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee heard expert witness testimony in an attempt to find causes behind record-high gasoline prices. Oil and gas expert witnesses described years of a lack of investment in refinery capacity as a primary factor in rising prices.

Deutsche Bank’s Paul Sankey, oil and gas production expert witness, said years of oil companies losing money led to many companies neglecting refinery investment. A contributing factor was the Texas City explosion, which caused other refiners to operate more cautiously and with less capacity. As the Associated Press reports, last year also saw the temporary shutdown of production at Prudhoe Bay due to maintenance problems.

by

A Des Moines mother alleges that her young daughter was being sexually abused by the child’s father. Pictures led the mother’s expert witness to conclude with 99.9 percent certainty that there had been abuse.

As reported in the DesMoines Register, the mother called the child-abuse hot line and began taking the child for weekly therapy sessions. The state’s child-abuse specialist examined the child and found no signs of sexual abuse, though child sexual abuse experts say lascivious acts don’t necessarily leave physical evidence.

by

Expert witnesses will be questioned by a three-member arbitration panel in the Floyd Landis hearing to determine if the cyclist used banned synthetic testosterone during the Tour de France. Performance Enhancing Drug Experts will answer questions from arbitrators and the opposing party. Cycling Experts are also expected to testfiy.

Landis could be banned for two years from cycling competitions and stripped of his title, something that’s never happened in the Tour’s 104-year history. CBS2.com expects that Landis’ lawyers to argue that major mistakes were made in the tests that came up positive for synthetic testosterone.