BURLINGTON – Dueling experts provided conflicting testimony Friday over whether the fatal injuries suffered by a North Clarendon woman were inflicted by the man facing a capital trial over her beating death or his alleged accomplice.
Judge Geoffrey Crawford took the differing testimony presented in federal court in Burlington under advisement and is expected to issue a written ruling in the death penalty case against Donald Fell.
At one point during Friday’s hearing, Crawford told Victor Weedn, a forensic pathologist, that he is the first scientist in a case that has spanned nearly 20 years to say the injuries that were inflicted to the neck of Teresca King, 53, were the “sole” ones that caused her death.
“You can see why we’re on edge,” the judge said, in laying out the importance of the testimony.
Prosecutors are seeking to allow Weedn’s testimony into the case, while defense attorneys argue his opinion on the cause of King’s death is based on speculation.
Moments after Weedn got off the stand, Charles Wetli, deputy chief medical examiner for Florida’s Dade County for almost 20 years and later in Suffolk County, New York, testified for the defense that it was a head injury that caused King’s death.
He said the injuries from a blow to King’s head would have resulted in her losing consciousness almost immediately, and then her death.
“In my opinion, the head injury predominated,” Wetli said.
The issue of which injury caused her death has been a matter of dispute in the case, with prosecutors and defense attorneys differing on whether Fell delivered the fatal blow by stomping King’s neck with his boot, or if it was his alleged accomplice striking King in the head with a rock
Fell, 37, faces the death penalty for his alleged role in the November 2000 carjacking in Rutland and later slaying of King in New York state. His friend and alleged accomplice, Robert Lee, died in prison in 2001 before he could be tried on capital charges.
Fell had been sentenced to death following his conviction at a trial more than a decade ago. However, after Fell spent several years on federal death row in a Terra Haute, Indiana, prison, a Vermont judge threw out his conviction and sentence after revelations of juror misconduct.
Prosecutors say that both Fell and Lee “battered” King. Each gave statements after their arrest describing their role. Lee talked of using a rock but not his feet, and Fell told police, “I used my feet,” while Lee used a rock, according to prosecutors.
Medical examiners for both sides have said the most serious injuries King suffered were a blow to her head and a stomp on her neck, prosecutors wrote in a recent filing.
A bloody rock found near King’s body when it was discovered off the side of the road in Dutchess County, New York, is believed to have been used to deliver the head injury while the source of her neck injury is believed to have been a clad foot, according to the filing.
“The evidence thus indicates that the neck injury was imposed by Fell and the head injury was imposed by Lee,” Assistant U.S. Attorney William Darrow, who is prosecuting the case, wrote in a filing.
“Fell retained an expert who opines that the neck injury was not fatal, and the head injury killed King,” Darrow added. “If so, it would follow, to Fell’s advantage that Lee imposed the fatal blow.”
However, Weedn, a witness called to the stand during Friday’s hearing by the prosecutors, offered a different opinion.
He testified that while the blow to King’s head was severe, the brain injuries she suffered would have taken an hour or more to kill her, and may even have been survivable.
The stomp to her throat while she was lying unconscious on the ground resulted in injuries that caused her death within minutes, according to Weedn.
He said he believed that that King’s tongue fell back. Combined with other factors, he said, including “damage to the structural integrity” of her neck and blood from her injuries after having several teeth knocked out, this obstructed her airway and caused her death.
Dr. Michael Baden, chief forensic pathologist for the New York State Police at the time of King’s death, performed the autopsy on her body. He has previously testified at Fell’s original trial in 2005 that there were two possible causes of King’s death, the head or the neck injury.
“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,” Baden testified in 2005 of his findings of the cause of King’s death.
However, during a later hearing in Fell’s case as it now heads to a retrial, Baden said he had made a mistake in 2005, and his statement was not completely accurate.
Baden said he had used the phrase “inability to breathe” to characterize asphyxia to a lay audience. However, in this particular case “asphyxia” referred to the interruption of blood flow to the brain and not air flow.
Crawford issued a ruling following that hearing that Baden could testify during the retrial that the neck injuries would have caused King’s death if not treated, but couldn’t testify that the neck injuries caused her death, according to the court records.
Prosecutors are now seeking to have Weedn’s testimony allowed in the case.
John T. Philipsborn, Fell’s attorney, asked Weedn if he believed Baden, who performed the autopsy on King, didn’t include in his reports an indication of “blood and debris” in King’s airway.
“You’re actually speculating that Dr. Baden missed blood in the airway,” Philipsborn said to Weedn.
“There had to be blood in the airway,” Weedn replied, pointing out the injuries suffered to her face, including losing the upper row of her teeth.
Weedn said because of his training in emergency medical care he pays close attention to the condition of the airway during autopsies. Asked if other medical examiners were deficient in that area, Weedn replied that he believed it was an issue of “awareness.”
Wetli, in his testimony, said that he saw “no evidence of obstruction” in King’s upper airway.
“The airway was not collapsed,” he added.
Fell and Lee, according to court records, were allegedly fleeing the slayings of Fell’s mother, Debra Fell, and her friend Charles Conway in Rutland when they carjacked King in a downtown supermarket parking lot in November 2000.
King had just arrived in the parking lot as she was heading to work early that morning in the store’s bakery.
State prosecutors also accuse Fell and Lee of killing Debra Fell and Charles Conway, but no charges have been brought in that case because of the stiffer potential sentence in King’s murder.
Vermont doesn’t have the death penalty. However, because King was beaten and killed in New York state after her abduction in Rutland, federal prosecutors took jurisdiction of the case and are seeking the death penalty for Fell.
A date for Fell’s retrial has not yet been set. The issue of whether to allow or exclude certain statements from Lee in Fell’s case is currently on appeal before the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City.
Judge Crawford did have a question for Wetli before Friday’s hearing came to a close. The judge said he wanted to know if Wetli, who was in the courtroom for Weedn’s testimony, had identified any “methodology mistakes” in Weedn’s analysis.
“Not that I can really identify,” Wetli replied. “It just seems more theoretical.”
