PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Tom Bevel, a former Oklahoma police officer who owns and operates a self-described forensic education and consulting company, was originally intended to be the prosecution’s lead blood spatter expert. The defense successfully challenged Bevel’s credentials and methodology in numerous pre-trial motions, noting that in January 2022 he issued a report that said the stains on the shirt were “consistent with transfers and not back spatters from a bullet wound.” In a second report, Bevel wrote that “100+ stains are consistent with spatter on the front of the t-shirt.” That report also deletes a line saying that the shooter in question likely would have “little to no spatter” on their clothing in favor of a line saying that the shooter “is certainly in a close enough range to get spatter on their clothing.” As it turned out, Bevel’s opinion about the presence of blood spatter only changed after an in-person visit from the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division. The defense also claims the state “had to lie to him” about what state-ordered testing of the shirt showed. “SLED retained Mr. Bevel to opine that T-shirt is stained with high-velocity blood spatter that could only come from being in proximity with them at the time of their murders,” one motion reads. “It did so even though the State knew on August 10, 2021 — almost six weeks before first reaching out to Mr. Bevel on September 21st — that confirmatory blood test results were definitively negative for human blood in all areas of the shirt where purported spatter is present.”
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STORY: " "Alex Murdaugh call's out SLEDS bloodspatter T-shirt 'lie,' by '247 News Around the World', on February 24, 2023.
GIST: "Double murder defendant Alex Murdaugh was able to testify about one of law enforcement’s key failures in their investigation over an objection from the prosecution on Thursday afternoon.
“Did you get, on your shirt, high-velocity blood spatter from being within distance of shooting Maggie or Paul?” defense attorney Jim Griffin asked his client at one point.
“There’s no way that I had high-velocity blood spatter on me,” the defendant replied.
When Alex Murdaugh was indicted, Colleton County grand jurors were told by law enforcement that he had blood spatter on the T-shirt he was wearing the night Maggie and Paul Murdaugh were found shot and killed. That turned out to be false. The state’s own laboratory testing showed no blood on the T-shirt – a fact investigators kept hidden from an expert later asked to assess the shirt for blood spatter.
The facts about that T-shirt have proven quite controversial in the case and are considered a significant black eye for the state.
Tom Bevel, a former Oklahoma police officer who owns and operates a self-described forensic education and consulting company, was originally intended to be the prosecution’s lead blood spatter expert. The defense successfully challenged Bevel’s credentials and methodology in numerous pre-trial motions, noting that in January 2022 he issued a report that said the stains on the shirt were “consistent with transfers and not back spatters from a bullet wound.”
In a second report, Bevel wrote that “100+ stains are consistent with spatter on the front of the t-shirt.”
That report also deletes a line saying that the shooter in question likely would have “little to no spatter” on their clothing in favor of a line saying that the shooter “is certainly in a close enough range to get spatter on their clothing.”
As it turned out, Bevel’s opinion about the presence of blood spatter only changed after an in-person visit from the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division. The defense also claims the state “had to lie to him” about what state-ordered testing of the shirt showed.
“SLED retained Mr. Bevel to opine that T-shirt is stained with high-velocity blood spatter that could only come from being in proximity with them at the time of their murders,” one motion reads. “It did so even though the State knew on August 10, 2021 — almost six weeks before first reaching out to Mr. Bevel on September 21st — that confirmatory blood test results were definitively negative for human blood in all areas of the shirt where purported spatter is present.”
The state was not keen to litigate those failed efforts during the trial and essentially abandoned its blood spatter theory.
On Thursday, the defendant himself brought the issue squarely to jurors’ attention and with his own preferred narrative about it.
“As far as my understanding goes, my clothes were never an issue in this case until y’all figured out, as my lawyers, figured out that there was no blood spatter on me,” Alex Murdaugh said, as the stated lodged an objection over that area of testimony.
Defense attorney Jim Griffin pointed out that the blood spatter issues are “a matter of public record” in the case and Judge Clifton Newman issued a rare ruling in the defense’s favor, overruling the state.
Last week, SLED agent David Owen testified that he misled the grand jury about the alleged blood spatter evidence on the T-shirt – but said he did not intend to do so. One of the state’s experts, Dr. Kenneth Kinsey, even made note of some alleged blood spatter calculations in a report filed for the state. When questioned by prosecutors last week, those calculations were never mentioned.
The defendant began again.
“I’m well aware that my clothes never became an issue in this case until my lawyers proved that this blood spatter that they said I had on my shirt from my wife and my son – was a lie,” he said. “And that there was no blood on my shirt. And once they filed the documents and they proved that that was a lie, all of a sudden the clothes I was wearing back on that day became an issue. And that’s in the weeks leading up to this trial.”
The testimony about the T-shirt and the allegedly falsified blood spatter claims were elicited from the defendant during a back-and-forth conversation about the defendant admittedly changing from a blue, button-down “dress shirt” into the T-shirt he was found wearing by law enforcement on the day of the murders. The earlier outfit has been seen by jurors in a Snapchat video where the defendant deals with a tree on his property. The state has suggested Alex Murdaugh later disposed of that blue shirt in an effort to hide evidence."
The entire story can be read at:
https://247newsaroundtheworld.com/crime/alex-murdaugh-calls-out-sleds-blood-spatter-t-shirt-lie/
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. 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;
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985
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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YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:
David Hammond, one of Broadwater’s attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, “Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it’s the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.”
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