[R]UTLAND — The chief medical examiner who performed the autopsy on Teresca King, a North Clarendon woman slain in November 2000, said part of his testimony at the trial of her alleged killer in 2005 was not accurate. The statement was made during hearings regarding the admissibility of expert witness testimony in the upcoming retrial of Donald Fell.
The hearings involve what is known as a Daubert motion, after a 1993 Supreme Court ruling in a case against Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals. They allow a judge to dismiss expert witness testimony if it does not meet certain scientific standards of reliability and relevancy. Previous hearings in connection with the Fell retrial have sought to limit the presentation of fingerprint, footwear and DNA evidence.
Fell and his co-defendant Robert Lee were charged in the killing of King. In 2001 Lee died in prison. Fell was convicted in 2005 and sentenced to death the following year. However, the decision was overturned due to juror misconduct. Fell’s retrial is scheduled for early next year.
In U.S. District Court in Rutland last week, Dr. Michael Baden, chief forensic pathologist for the New York State Police at the time of the crime, testified there were two possible causes of King’s death, which occurred in New York. The defense argued there is only one scientifically credible explanation for her death and is seeking to limit the testimony admitted at trial.
Fell and Lee kidnapped King in front of the Price Chopper in Rutland and drove her to New York state, according to court documents. She was killed in Dover Plains, New York, on Nov. 27, 2000, and her body was found several days later. Baden said he went to the scene on the morning of Dec. 2.
According to Baden, King suffered traumatic injuries to the head and neck. The most prominent injury, he said, was a narrow fracture at the bridge of her nose that caused extensive damage to the skull and a hemorrhage in the brain. Investigators later concluded the injuries to the upper part of her face and brain were the result of being struck by a rock, which was found with blood on it next to the body.
King also sustained a forceful injury to the neck “due to stomping with a booted foot,” Baden said. This resulted in the fracturing of King’s hyoid bone, just below the tongue, and some of the cartilage surrounding the larynx.
Last week’s hearings focused on whether the neck injuries were lethal. According to their own accounts, Fell kicked the victim and Lee battered her with the rock. Baden’s testimony that King could have died from either of the wounds to the head or neck could affect the guilt and penalty phase of the upcoming trial.
In his 2005 testimony Baden was asked to present his formal findings regarding the cause of death.
According to the court transcript he replied, “Blunt force injuries to the face, head and brain, and traumatic compression of the neck. Traumatic compression of neck with asphyxia, inability to breathe. Homicidal assault.”
However, during Thursday’s hearing Baden said he’d made a mistake and the statement was not completely accurate. Baden said he’d used the phrase “inability to breathe” as a way of characterizing asphyxia to a lay audience even though in this particular case “asphyxia” referred to the interruption of blood flow to the brain and not air flow.
“It was an unnecessarily gratuitous comment,” Baden said.
Judge Geoffrey Crawford said his primary interest relative to the Daubert challenge was not to determine the cause of death but whether the methodology explaining the cause of death was sound.
“I’m interested in making sure the scientific process lines up,” he told the courtroom. “If I get it wrong,” he added, “one of the possible outcomes is a third trial.”
A witness for the defense, Dr. Charles Wetli, deputy chief medical examiner for Florida’s Dade County for nearly 20 years and later Suffolk County in New York, argued there was a single cause of death: “blunt cranial cerebral trauma.” Wetli said there was no evidence to support Baden’s conclusion that the neck injuries were lethal.
“It doesn’t make any sense that there would be an asphyxial component here,” he testified.
Wetli also faulted Baden for not performing a layer-wise neck dissection during the autopsy, for failing to include body diagrams, and not attaching a toxicology report to the final document, which he said was standard practice. According to Wetli, the more comprehensive neck dissection could’ve revealed additional information relevant to determining the cause of death.
U.S. Attorney William Darrow said Wetli and Baden agreed on the majority of relevant matters and that their differences should be decided by a jury. The defense argued that the two men agreed on only one cause of death — the traumatic brain injury — and the assertion that the neck injuries were lethal would not meet the Daubert standard.
In an earlier ruling Crawford allowed for the admissibility of fingerprint evidence.