POST: "Velez hearing day 3. A portrait of constitutionally inadequate counsel," by Brian Stull, published on the ACLU "Blog of Rights" on December 14, 2012.
GIST: "The task in this hearing for Manuel’s counsel, a dedicated team of lawyers from the firms
Carrington Coleman and
Rothgerber, Johnson, and Lyons,
has been to demonstrate counsel’s failures to show that the child
victim had been injured long before Manuel had access to him. Much of
the hearing evidence is medical evidence of the child’s injuries that
counsel failed to explore in the 2008 trial, which led to Manuel’s
capital murder conviction and death sentence. One of the crucial building blocks is to show that Manuel’s trial
counsel had every reason to question the timing of the child’s injuries,
but failed to do so. Yesterday, Manuel’s lawyers did just that with
the presentation of deposition testimony of Dr. J. Keith Rose, who had
met with Manuel’s trial attorneys in advance of the 2008 trial. Well
before trial, Rose had told trial counsel they needed a forensic
pathologist to look at the case, to look closely at brain injuries that
appeared based on records to be more than two weeks old, and to create a
timeline of injuries based on all available medical records. Rose also
testified to medical records (in the months before the child’s death)
showing a dramatic increase in the child’s head circumference, a
cardinal sign of head trauma. Rose testified that counsel in 2008,
while asking advice on what to do, had not brought him these crucially
important records. The second building block is to show that, had appropriate experts
been called, a timeline created, and all records gathered, the result of
Manuel’s 2008 trial would have been different. Many experts are
testifying along these lines in this hearing. Today it was Dr. Ronald
H. Uscinski, a renowned neurosurgeon whose academic work was cited in a
recent
U.S. Supreme Court opinion.
Uscinski showed the court the child victim’s CAT scan and microscopic
slides of his brain, both of which showed that the injuries ultimately
resulting in his death happened months before Manuel was involved with
the child’s family."
The entire post can be found at:
Valley Morning Star story: (Day 4):
http://www.valleymorningstar.com/news/local_news/article_43760cfa-4665-11e2-abdc-001a4bcf6878.html
PUBLISHER'S NOTE
I have added a search box for content in this blog which now encompasses
several thousand posts. The search box is located near the bottom of
the screen just above the list of links. I am confident that this
powerful search tool provided by "Blogger" will help our readers and
myself get more out of the site.
The
Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty
incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the
harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into
pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology
system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent
stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at:
http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith
Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at:
http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html
Please
send any comments or information on other cases and issues of
interest to the readers of this blog to:
hlevy15@gmail.com
Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog.
