Friday, March 25, 2016

Bulletin: Massachusetts: Reliability of alcohol breath testing machines: Lawyers representing more than 500 defendants have asked the state’s highest court to intervene in a case that challenges the reliability of alcohol breath testing machines used across Massachusetts..."The defendants argue evidence produced by the breath-analysis machines is not scientifically sound."..."As many as 1,000 drunk driving cases have been stayed pending a hearing on the issue, which is being heard by Judge Robert A. Brennan. Brennan, who sits in Salem District Court, previously agreed to allow a defense expert to review the machine's source code. However, defense lawyers say their expert balked when the German manufacturer, Draeger Safety Diagnostics, asked him to sign a nondisclosure agreement, which they described as vague and overly restrictive, placing their expert in potential legal jeopardy. “It really exposed the expert to litigation throughout the United States and Germany,” lawyer Gregory Oberhauser said last month, explaining it contained “loose” definitions of confidential information, breaches and other legally sensitive concepts." Milford Daily News.

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"Lawyers representing more than 500 defendants have asked the state’s highest court to intervene in a case that challenges the relia...

Curtis Lovelace: Illinois: Second trial for former football star set to begin on July 25th hinges on a pivotal question: Is Curtis Lovelace responsible for his wife's untimely death - or, as the defence contends, did no crime occur because she died of natural causes from health problems caused by chronic alcoholism and bulimia. "Dr. Michael Baden, a pathologist with a national reputation, testified that it is his opinion Cory Lovelace died from suffocation with a pillow. But Dr. Shaku Teas, a forensic pathologist from the Chicago area who initially was contacted in March 2014 by police during the reinvestigation, said it's her opinion no crime occurred. "There is no (criminal) case here," Dr. Teas said, indicating that she would have found that Cory Lovelace died from chronic alcoholism."

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STORY:  "More questions than answers," by reporter Jim Dey, published by the News-Gazette on March 24, 2016. PHOTO CAPTION: Cur...
Thursday, March 24, 2016

Bulletin: Daniel Dougherty: Philadelphia: Retrial continues; Jurors shown 1985 photo of boys' soot-covered bodies: "Dougherty's trial lawyer, Thomas Ciccone, now deceased, never rebutted the state's expert testimony by calling a defense expert to describe improvements in fire science between 1985 and 2000, the appeals court said. The testimony of Assistant Fire Marshal - John Quinn - now too ill to testify, was left unchallenged. Quinn said the blaze was arson, with fires started on a love seat, a sofa, and beneath a dining-room table. In court on Thursday, Quinn's trial testimony was read to jurors." Trial resumes Monday; Reporter Jeff Gammage; Philadelphia Inquirer;

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"Dougherty has always insisted he awoke to a house ablaze, ran outside, then tried desperately to rescue John and Daniel. In 2000,...

Bulletin: Daniel Dougherty: Philadelphia: (New trial); Ex-girlfriend still says he didn't set the fire that killed his sons; " Dougherty, 56, has insisted from the start that he awoke to a house ablaze, ran outside, then tried desperately to rescue 3-year-old John and 4-year-old Daniel Jr. He's counting on advances in fire science to free him. Sixteen years ago in 2000, Dougherty was convicted and sentenced to death for setting the fire at the Carver Street rowhouse. He was granted a new trial in 2014 after an appellate court ruled that his lawyer's failures had so skewed the original proceeding that "no reliable adjudication of guilt or innocence took place." His death sentence was vacated in 2012, becoming a life sentence. The retrial holds national implications as an example of cases in which evolving fire science has freed some inmates and brought the guilt of others into question. Prosecutors insist that the original guilty verdict was correct." (Philadelphia Inquirer report published Wednesday March 23, 2016 - updated March 24): Reporter Jeff Gammage;

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"She didn't think Daniel Dougherty started the fire that killed his two young sons. She thought it was caused by an electric fan...

Keith Kutska; Wisconsin; Murder or suicide? He has appealed to Wisconsin’s Third District Court of Appeals seeking to overturn a judge’s decision to not grant him a new trial for the murder of Tom Monfils. "In a July hearing, Kutska's new team of lawyers argued that his lawyer at trial and his appeals lawyer were incompetent because they relied too heavily on findings by pathologist Dr. Helen Young, who investigated Monfils' death. Young concluded major injuries on Monfils' body must have occurred before he was put in the pulp vat, indicating he had been beaten. They also argued a theory that Monfils committed suicide wasn’t properly presented at Kutska's trial and that a detective investigating the case bullied witnesses into giving false statements."

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"Attorneys for Keith Kutska have appealed to Wisconsin’s Third District Court of Appeals seeking to overturn a judge’s decision to n...
Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Dr. Waney Squier; (Aftermath 3): Publisher's View: Why the outrageous attack against Dr. Squier by the British General Medical Council - and its decision to thrust her out of the UK's medical profession - reminded me of the vicious attacks on the brilliant, principled, courageous American scientist Elizabeth Loftus - who is also, like Dr. Squier, one of my heroes. "In her acceptance speech for the Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award, Loftus states that the word "freedom" is personally important to her, as when she began speaking out about repressed memory, she never imagined she would become "the target of organized, relentless vitriol and harassment". Loftus feels that today's world for science is a perilous one and if scientists want to preserve their freedoms they need to speak out "against even the most cherished beliefs that reflect unsubstantiated myths". Like Loftus, Dr. Squier has become the target of "organized, relentless vitriol and harrassment." And like Loftus she has fought to preserve scientific freedom by speaking out "against even the most cherished beliefs that reflect unsubstantiated myths" - in spite of the inevitable persecution (read 'witch hunt') which she would be, and was exposed to.

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PUBLISHER'S VIEW: The outrageous attack against Dr. Squier by the British Medical Council - and its decision to thrust her out of the U...

Bulletin: Daniel Dougherty: Philadelphia; Junk arson 'science; McLatchy News reports that more than 30 years after his two young sons died in a house fire, and nearly 17 years after he was sentenced to death for setting it, Daniel Dougherty will get a new chance to prove what he has always insisted: He didn't murder his children, he loved them and tried to save them the night their Oxford Circle house burned in 1985. Dougherty, 56, has been granted a new trial in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court after an appellate court found that his lawyer's failures so skewed the original proceeding that "no reliable adjudication of guilt or innocence took place." His retrial is scheduled to start Monday. Dougherty's new lawyers are expected to present expert testimony to show that the fire science used to convict him was bunk, that what sounded like proof of arson actually proved nothing..." Nationally known investigator John Lentini, of Scientific Fire Analysis L.L.C. in Florida, said the cause of the blaze should have been ruled "undetermined." The extensive damage to the brick rowhouse, he wrote in a report for the defense, made it impossible to determine where or how the fire started. What's certain, he said, is that the evidence did not show three separate points of origin, the basis for the prosecution's conclusion that the fire was arson. Dougherty has always said he was asleep on the living-room couch, his children in their second-floor bedroom, when he awoke to see the curtains on fire. He ran outside, then tried to reach the boys before being forced back by heavy smoke and flames. Experts who study arson convictions compare Dougherty's case to that of Cameron Todd Willingham, executed in Texas in 2004 for killing his three young daughters by setting the family home ablaze. Five years later, an expert hired by the Texas Forensic Science Commission called the arson finding into question, and said better understanding of fires could have freed Willingham. Around the country, prison inmates have challenged convictions they say are based on old, disproven science." McLatchy News;

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"More than 30 years after his two young sons died in a house fire, and nearly 17 years after he was sentenced to death for ...