STORY: "Witness refutes evidence that led to historic retrial in Israeli schoolgirl murder," by Reporter Add Hashmonai, published by Haaretz.
GIST: "Yitzhak Menashe, head janitor at the school Ta’ir Rada was attending at the time of her 2006 murder, said at the retrial of suspect Roman Zadorov on Sunday that he saw the victim’s body still bleeding more than seven hours after her death.
His testimony ran counter to the claims that Supreme Court Justice Hanan Melcer, now retired, had cited in ordering the retrial earlier this year.
In the restroom stall where Rada’s body was found, a shoe print from her blood had been identified on the toilet seat cover, but police later concluded it did not belong to Zadorov. Shoe prints of all the people known to have been in the area were also examined, but no match was found in them either. The prosecution thus claimed that the print belonged to an “anonymous responder.”
Melcer’s decision had been based on the assumption that the body could not have continued bleeding more than an hour after the murder, making it unlikely that the shoe print belonged to anyone involved in processing the scene of the crime.
Menashe didn’t testify in the original trial. Prosecutors called him for the retrial because his testimony is critical to the question of whether Zadorov can be shown to be the murderer.
Menashe told the court that he had returned to the school building at the orders of the principal about 9:30 P.M. the day of the killing, nearly three hours after Rada’s body had been found.
“I was on the ground floor when they brought down [Rada’s] body and placed it on a bench. I saw blood still dripping from the corpse,” said Menashe when questioned by the prosecution.
In answer to a question put to him by Judge Daniel Tzarfati, Menashe said, “The body was in a body bag and as they moved it to an ambulance I saw blood.” In response to another question by the head of the three-justice panel, Judge Asher Kula, about the quantity of blood he saw, Menashe answered, “It was a puddle – I’d estimate about 20 centimeters in diameter.”
Zadorov’s attorney, Yaron Halevy, expressed surprise during his cross-examination that Menashe had never mentioned the blood when he was questioned by police, and that no other witnesses testified to blood being spilled so long after the event.
“My logic says there were police there, too, so the body was never left unattended. I say that your story is just a fantasy because I can’t believe that you were the only [witness] not to tell it for 15 years. How could it be that you’re the only one?”
Menashe responded by saying he had told David Spiegel, Zadorov’s lawyer at the time of the first trial, about the blood: “I did tell it at the time to attorney Spiegel, and he was shocked, too.”
The entire story can be read at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. 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; -----------------------------------------------------------------
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL, FINAL WORD: "It is incredibly easy to convict an innocent person, but it's exceedingly difficult to undo such a devastating injustice.
Jennifer Givens: DirectorL UVA Innocence Project.
