April 21 USA: The CSI Effect -- On TV, it's all slam-dunk evidence and quick convictions. Now juries expect the same thing--and that's a big problem Picture this: A middle-aged woman from out of town digs into a bowl of chili at a fast-food restaurant in California. Each bite is more delicious than the last. She chews. She savors. Then something goes terribly wrong. She spits. She screams. She vomits. All eyes focus on the table, where a well-manicured fingertip peeks out from a mound of masticated chili. Lights and sirens. Forensic experts troll for evidence. Pimple-faced fry cooks are lined up. Fingers are pointed, and fingers are counted. The nub is popped into an evidence bag to make the forensic rounds. A fingerprint is taken to run through a national database. DNA tests are done. Detectives search for clues. If this were an episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation --and it might well become one--the well-coiffed technicians who star in the show would solve the mystery lickety-split. Fingerprints or DNA evidence would identify the victim, a leggy blond, within 45 minutes. Then, in a twist, a smudge of blood still under the nail would lead to her killer, a jealous fashion photographer, unwilling to let go of his star. But this is real life. Anna Ayala reported her disturbing find at a Wendy's restaurant late last month. And as of last week, investigators were still stumped. Ayala hasn't confessed to any fraud. The fry cooks all had their fingers. The print wasn't a match. And the DNA test still hadn't come back from the lab. On CBS's CSI, the forensic science is sexy, fast, and remarkably certain, a combination that has propelled the three-show franchise to top ratings, attracting nearly 60 million viewers a week. The whole investigation genre is hot, from NBC's Law & Order series on down to the documentary-like re-creations of A&E's Forensic Files. America is in love with forensics, from the blood spatter and bone fragments of TV's fictional crime scenes to the latest thrust and parry at the Michael Jackson trial. That's good, right? Jurors are smarter, and understaffed government crime labs are using the trend to seek more funding. But not so fast. Stoked by the technical wizardry they see on the tube, many Americans find themselves disappointed when they encounter the real world of law and order. Jurors increasingly expect forensic evidence in every case, and they expect it to be conclusive. "Your CSI moment." Real life and real death are never as clean as CSI's lead investigator, Gil Grissom, would have us believe. And real forensics is seldom as fast, or as certain, as TV tells us. Too often, authorities say, the science is unproven, the analyses unsound, and the experts unreliable. At a time when the public is demanding CSI -style investigations of even common crimes, many of the nation's crime labs--underfunded, undercertified, and under attack--simply can't produce. When a case comes to court, "jurors expect it to be a lot more interesting and a lot more dynamic," says Barbara LaWall, the county prosecutor in Tucson, Ariz. "It puzzles the heck out of them when it's not." A disappointed jury can be a dangerous thing. Just ask Jodi Hoos. Prosecuting a gang member in Peoria, Ill., for raping a teenager in a local park last year, Hoos told the jury, "You've all seen CSI. Well, this is your CSI moment. We have DNA." Specifically, investigators had matched saliva on the victim's breast to the defendant, who had denied touching her. The jury also had gripping testimony from the victim, an emergency-room nurse, and the responding officers. When the jury came back, however, the verdict was not guilty. Why? Unmoved by the DNA evidence, jurors felt police should have tested "debris" found in the victim to see if it matched soil from the park. "They said they knew from CSI that police could test for that sort of thing," Hoos said. "We had his DNA. We had his denial. It's ridiculous." Television's diet of forensic fantasy "projects the image that all cases are solvable by highly technical science, and if you offer less than that, it is viewed as reasonable doubt," says Hoos's boss, Peoria State's Attorney Kevin Lyons. "The burden it places on us is overwhelming." Prosecutors have a name for the phenomenon: "the CSI effect." Some of the "evidence" the CSI shows tout--using a wound to make a mold of a knife, or predicting time of death by looking at the rate at which a piece of metal might rust--is blatant hokum, experts say. But more and more, police and prosecutors are waking up to the need to cater to a jury's heightened expectations. That means more visual cues, with PowerPoint and video presentations, and a new emphasis during testimony on why certain types of evidence haven't been presented. If there are no fingerprints in evidence, more prosecutors are asking investigators to explain why, lest jurors take their absence as cause for doubt. The same goes for DNA or gunshot residue. Joseph Peterson, acting director of the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Illinois-Chicago, says DNA is rarely culled from crime scenes and analyzed. Crime scenes today are much like they were in the 1970s, Peterson says, when his studies found that fingerprints and tool marks were the most common types of evidence left at crime scenes. Blood was found only 5 percent of the time, usually at murder scenes. Like crime scenes, many crime labs also haven't changed that much--at least in one respect. Many are still understaffed, and they often don't receive all of the relevant physical evidence from the crime scene, either because police investigators don't know what they're looking for or because they figure--possibly wrongly--that the case is strong enough without it. A crime lab's bread and butter is testing drugs found at crime scenes, doing toxicology screens, and comparing fingerprints. DNA matches are way down the list, mainly because they're time consuming and expensive. How much time? A Cape Cod trash hauler gave police a DNA sample in March 2004. The lab was backlogged. Last week, after it was finally analyzed, he was arrested for the 2002 murder of fashion writer Crista Worthington. Defense attorneys, predictably, are capitalizing on the popularity of shows like CSI, seizing on an absence of forensic evidence, even in cases where there's no apparent reason for its use. In another Peoria case, jurors acquitted a man accused of stabbing his estranged girlfriend because police didn't test her bloody bedsheets for DNA. The man went back to prison on a parole violation and stabbed his ex again when he got out--this time fatally. The CSI effect was raised in the acquittal last month of actor Robert Blake in the murder of his wife. The L.A. district attorney called the jurors "incredibly stupid," but jurors noted that the former Baretta star was accused of shooting his wife with an old Nazi-era pistol that spewed gunshot residue. Blake's skin and clothes, a juror told U.S. News , had "not one particle." "On thin ice." Still, forensic evidence and expert testimony can add a lot of weight. Confronted with a possible fingerprint or DNA match, many defendants will plead guilty instead of risking a trial and the possibility of a heavier penalty. At trial, many juries tend to believe forensic experts and the evidence they provide--even when they shouldn't. Sandra Anderson and her specially trained forensic dog, Eagle, are a case in point. Dubbed a canine Sherlock Holmes, Eagle and his trainer were the darlings of prosecutors and police across the country. They appeared on TV's Unsolved Mysteries and headlined forensic science seminars. The dog seemed to have a bionic nose, finding hidden traces of blood evidence, which Anderson duly corroborated in court. In one case, Eagle's million-dollar nose gave police enough for a search warrant after he found damning evidence in the house of a biochemist suspected of murdering his wife. Plymouth, Mich., Police Lt. Wayne Carroll declared at the time: "Before we brought that dog down there, we were on thin ice." Anderson and Eagle, however, were frauds. After she admitted planting blood on a hacksaw blade during the investigation of the suspect, Azizul Islam, he was granted a new trial last year. It was one of several cases in which Anderson faked evidence. She is now serving a 21-month prison term after pleading guilty to obstruction of justice and making false statements. Lawyers and forensic experts say Anderson is just one of the more bizarre cases of forensic specialists lying under oath, misreading test results, or overstating evidence. In recent years, the integrity of crime labs across the country, including the vaunted FBI crime lab, have come under attack for lax standards and generating bogus evidence. One problem is that crime labs don't have to be accredited. All DNA labs seeking federal funding will have to be accredited by next year, but roughly 30 % of the publicly funded crime labs operating in the United States today have no certification, a recent Justice Department study found. The FBI's lab gained accreditation in 1998, after it was embarrassed by a series of foul-ups. A Houston lab sought accreditation this year, following a scandal that has so far resulted in the release of two men from prison and cast doubt on the lab's other work. Dozens of coroners, crime lab technicians, police chemists, forensic anthropologists, crime-reconstruction experts, and other forensic specialists, meanwhile, have been fined, fired, or prosecuted for lying under oath, forging credentials, or fabricating evidence. It's hard to find anyone in law enforcement who can't recite a story of quackery on the stand or in the lab. Forensic practitioners say the popularity of the field may make things even worse, noting that new forensics-degree programs are cropping up all over the place, some turning out questionable candidates. "For some reason, the forensic sciences have always had their fair share of charlatans," says Max Houck, director of the Forensic Science Initiative at West Virginia University. "Because of the weight the analysis is now given, professional ethics and certification of labs has never been more important." "Dead-bang evidence." One of the most infamous charlatans worked his magic just down the road from Houck at the West Virginia State Police lab. Fred Zain, who died in 2002, was a forensics star, a lab chemist who testified for prosecutors in hundreds of cases in West Virginia and Texas, sending some men to death row. No one ever bothered to look at his credentials--including the fact that he had failed organic chemistry--or review his test results. When 2 lab workers complained that they had seen Zain record results from a blank test plate, they were ignored. Zain was undone when DNA test results performed on Glen Woodall--serving a prison term of 203 to 335 years--proved that he could not have committed two sexual assaults for which he'd been convicted. Zain had told the jury that the assailant's blood types "were identical to Mr. Woodall's." After Woodall's conviction was overturned, in 1992, the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals ordered a full review of Zain's work. Its conclusion? The convictions of more than 100 people were in doubt because of Zain's "long history of falsifying evidence in criminal prosecutions." Nine more men have since had their convictions overturned. Forensic science experts say the solution is to tighten standards for experts and increase funding for crime labs. A consortium of forensic organizations is lobbying Congress now to do both. "In many places, crime labs are the bastard stepchildren of public safety," says Barry Fisher, a member of the Forensic Science Consortium and director of the L.A. County Sheriff's Department crime lab. Asked about the importance of mandatory certification, he adds: "I don't know if I would go to a hospital that wasn't accredited. The same goes with labs." Some forensic experts, however, question the value of certification. Psychologist Steve Eichel, a longtime critic of what he calls "checkbook credentials," secured credentials for his cat--"Dr. Zoe D. Katze" --from 4 major hypnotherapy and psychotherapy associations. Critics have questioned the rigor of the American College of Forensic Examiners International, the largest forensic certifier in the country. Its founder, Robert O'Block, who was charged with plagiarism and fired from the criminal justice department at Appalachian State University shortly before starting the organization, strongly denies assertions that he runs a certification mill, blaming those accusations on disgruntled competitors; the Appalachian incident, he says, was retaliation for reporting improper academic practices. Even accredited crime labs, however, can make mistakes. Most publicly accredited labs gauge their proficiency through declarative tests, where lab workers know they're being tested. Although most labs do well on such tests, some experts question their ability to judge labs' day-to-day performance. And even in declarative tests, deficiencies can be glaring. According to 2004 proficiency results from one private testing service reviewed by U.S. News, a few labs failed to properly match samples on simple DNA tests, mysteriously came to the right result after making the wrong interpretation of the data, or accidentally transposed the information from one sample onto another. In a ballistics test, one lab matched a slug with the wrong test gun. Such errors can have real-world consequences in court. In 1999, a Philadelphia crime lab accidentally switched the reference samples of a rape suspect and the alleged victim, then issued a report pointing to the defendant's guilt. Last year, a false fingerprint match led the FBI to wrongfully accuse an Oregon lawyer--and converted Muslim--of complicity in the al Qaeda-linked Madrid train bombings. The FBI later blamed the foul-up on the poor quality of the fingerprint image. "There are a number of cases that deal with what on the surface ought to be dead-bang evidence," says Fisher. "But it turns out it was the wrong result. Improper testing or improper interpretation of data left the innocent convicted." For all the setbacks and scandals, science has made considerable progress in the courts since the advent of forensic investigation. In the 1600s, the evidence against two London "witches" accused of causing children to vomit bent pins and a twopenny nail was . . . a bunch of bent pins and a twopenny nail. So it must have seemed fairly revolutionary in the 1800s when a Brussels chemist named Jean Servais Stas devised a way to separate a vegetable poison from the stomach of a countess's brother to prove how he had been killed. Or when an English investigator around the same time solved the case of a murdered maid by matching a corduroy patch left in the mud at the crime scene to the pants of a laborer working some nearby fields. "Obvious" problems. That doesn't mean forensics can always be believed, however, even when the data are accurate. As Sherlock Holmes said, "There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact." DNA is a case in point. While DNA testing is the most accurate of the forensic sciences, experts can make vastly different interpretations of the same DNA sample. Criminal justice experts say most lawyers and judges don't know enough about any of the forensic sciences to make an honest judgment of the veracity of what they are told. Prosecutor Mike Parrish in Tarrant County, Texas, decided to get a 2nd opinion on his DNA evidence in a capital murder case three years ago after the local police lab amended its result to more strongly link his suspect to the crime. Suspicious, Parrish had the sample reanalyzed by the county medical examiner, whose results were much less definitive. In the end, Parrish said, because of the conflicting DNA reports, he chose not to seek the death penalty. Other forensic tests are even more open to interpretation. Everything from fingerprint identification to fiber analysis is now coming under fire. And rightly so. The science is inexact, the experts are of no uniform opinion, and defense lawyers are increasingly skeptical. Fingerprint examiners, for instance, still peer through magnifying glasses to read faint ridges. Many of these techniques and theories have never been empirically tested to ensure they are valid. During much of the past decade, coroners have certified the deaths of children who might have fallen down steps or been accidentally dropped as "shaken baby" homicides because of the presence of retinal hemorrhages--blood spots--in their eyes. Juries bought it. Noting that new research casts grave doubt on the theory, Joseph Davis, the retired director of Florida's Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner's Office and one of the nation's leading forensics experts, compares proponents of shaken-baby syndrome to "flat Earthers" and says its use as a prosecution tool conjures up "shades of Salem witchcraft" trials. The list goes on. Ear prints, left behind when a suspect presses his ear to a window, have been allowed as evidence in court, despite the fact that there have been no studies to verify that all ears are different or to certify the way ear prints are taken. The fingerprint match, once considered unimpeachable evidence, is only now being closely scrutinized. The National Institute of Justice offered grants to kick-start the process this year. Other "experts" have pushed lip-print analysis, bite-mark analysis, and handwriting analysis with degrees of certainty that just don't exist, critics say. Microscopic hair analysis was a staple of prosecutions until just a few years ago and was accorded an unhealthy degree of certitude. "Hair comparisons have been discredited almost uniformly in court," says Peterson of the University of Illinois-Chicago. "There are many instances where science has not come up to the legal needs," adds James Starrs, professor of forensic sciences and law at George Washington University. Everyone, including the jury, wants certainty. But it seldom exists in forensics. So the expert, says Starrs, "always needs to leave the possibility of error." (source: US News & World Report) ******************** Alabama Woman Walking to Washington for End to Death Penalty, Hunger An Alabama woman is entering North Carolina today on a 925-mile walk to Washington, D.C., to call for an end to the death penalty and hunger in the United States. Lisa Thomas, 52, the manager of a food bank in Brewton, Ala., has found both hospitality and hostility on her trip, and says she was almost run down by a pick-up truck in South Carolina, but she says she is continuing on her journey to try to make a difference. "Thousands are seeing my signs," she said from her cell phone on Route 29 near the North Carolina-South Carolina border today. "If it makes no more difference than that, it makes a difference." A friend is following her in a small van plastered with signs calling attention to hunger and the death penalty. Thomas said the signs apparently provoked 2 young men to "deliberately" turn the wheel of their pick-up and drive directly at her, cursing. She screamed and quickly moved out of the way, and the truck continued down the road. Others have glared at her, she said. "If looks could kill, we'd be dead." But she has also spoken with many supporters. In Athens, Ga., she said, she had a long talk with a young woman who was working in a gas station. She also says she knows she has support of another kind. "I have faith that God will see me through." Some Catholic nuns in Alabama, friends of hers, told her to remember Pope John Paul II, who had recently died, in her prayers. "I have Jesus walking on my right, and the pope on my left," said Thomas, a Baptist. She expects the walk through North Carolina will take her about 10 days, through Gastonia, Charlotte, Concord, Salisbury, Thomasville, Greensboro, and Reidsville. Route 29 parallels Interstate 85 until Greensboro, and when the roads merge and become dangerous, she will ride in the van. She and her friend sleep overnight in rest areas or parking lots in the van. She will enter Virginia in Danville. If you live along or near Route 29 in North Carolina, FADP encourages you to give Lisa a call and consider offering hospitality at your church or home. Her work with the poor and elderly at the food bank nspired her to walk to Washington to bring attention to hunger in America, but it was a recent meeting in Birmingham that encouraged her to add the death penalty to her cause. Someone mentioned at the meeting that Alabama was about to execute a man on death row. There was little reaction in the group, she said. "No one was concerned we were going to kill this man. I thought Wow, we are nonchalant about the death penalty.'" She hopes her walk will "stir people up." To follow Thomas on her journey, visit a weblog by Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty at http://www.phadp.org/blog/. (source: People of Faith Against the Death Penalty) FLORIDA: Hungarian hooker testifies----Maxwell McCord, a Weston man accused of murdering his wife, desperately wanted out of his marriage, a prostitute testified Tuesday. A Hungarian prostitute told jurors Tuesday that Maxwell McCord described his wife in vulgar and demeaning terms and spoke of an end to their marriage a couple of weeks before she was murdered. Ildiko Cseh, speaking in a hushed voice and wearing black sunglasses, said McCord was "much upset" about his wife in July 2001. Prosecutors say the 39-year-old Weston father was a sex addict and a desperate spendthrift who killed his 31-year-old schoolteacher wife, Marie Noguera, to end a loveless marriage and cash in on her $350,000 life insurance policy. Noguera was found strangled in an upstairs study in a house in a gated neighborhood on Aug. 2, 2001. Prosecutors have said they will seek the death penalty if he is convicted. During the trial, which began more than a month ago, defense attorney Jeanne Baker suggested that McCord, while stretched financially, was far from a desperate man. She says a rush to judgment has left Noguera's real killer at large. The fact that McCord enjoyed the services of prostitutes was not, Baker said, indicative of major marital strife. Baker said prostitution is more accepted in his native Denmark, where the practice is legal. Prosecutors hope Cseh's testimony will further their theory that McCord was hostile and desperate to end his marriage. The morning after Noguera's murder, McCord told police that everything was "normal" in their relationship and that there were no extramarital affairs by either spouse. In halting and often mumbled English, Cseh told Assistant State Attorney Brian Cavanagh that McCord visited her at least 20 times at a club off Griffin Road called "Sweet Tens." She said he paid, on average, $250 in cash for 30 minutes of sex. Cseh, in a previous statement to police, said the defendant told her "he had a big fight again with his wife, and now they are very close to get divorced, and so he's going to . . . get done everything soon." During cross-examination, Baker questioned whether Cseh was motivated to help authorities in the hopes of acquiring a green card. Baker also questioned whether Cseh was confusing McCord with another of her many customers. The trial continues this week in Broward Circuit Judge Peter Weinstein's courtroom. (source: Miami Herald) MONTANA: Sentencing postponed for death penalty case The sentencing of Laurence Dean Jackson Jr., a Harlem man found guilty of killing a Blaine County sheriff's deputy and wounding another, has been postponed to October. The sentencing hearing was to begin April 27 for Jackson, whom a Missoula jury found guilty of deliberate homicide and attempted deliberate homicide on Nov. 5. Jackson was accused of slaying deputy Joshua Rutherford and wounding deputy Loren Janis on May 29, 2003. The jury determined he was eligible for the death penalty. In a hearing Wednesday, Jackson's attorneys argued that they need more time to complete a background investigation of his life in order to present all of the information at the sentencing hearing. District Judge John McKeon agreed with their argument that "extraordinary circumstances" had prevented the investigation from being completed, and ordered the sentencing moved to Oct. 4. Blaine County Attorney Yvonne Laird said in an interview after Wednesday's hearing that the decision was unfortunate but likely unavoidable. "It's unfortunate that this process has to be delayed even further, putting the victims through further trauma, but under the circumstances it's probably necessary," she said. State law provides for the presentation of mitigating evidence, or important factors in the accused's life history, at the sentencing hearing when the death penalty is being considered. The law also sets a maximum time period of 180 days between conviction and sentencing. "The court finds that the Legislature intended to give some finality to the process of sentencing," McKeon said. "For this purpose they put forth a timeline. Hardships can arise in any number of situations that cannot reasonably be anticipated." These hardships, McKeon said, included the fact that Jackson's lawyers were assigned a mitigation investigation specialist in July 2003. McKeon said he agreed with defense attorneys Ed Sheehy and Robert Peterson decision to put the investigation on hold, as Jackson was maintaining his innocence in the case and had not yet been determined guilty. Sheehy told the judge that the defense struggled to locate that investigator after Jackson was found guilty. In December, Sheehy said, it was determined that the man had moved from Washington state to Arizona and was no longer available to handle the investigation. The lawyers then contacted Holly Jackson, who testified Wednesday that such investigations are long, involved processes and that she would be unable to complete her work by next week. Holly Jackson said in her testimony that such a background investigation involves studying hundreds of medical, psychological and institutional records as well as conducting interviews with family members, friends and co-workers of the accused. After identifying trends and contributing factors in the person's life history, Holly Jackson said, she would assist defense attorneys in selecting experts who could analyze the information and present it to the court at sentencing. She said she was about halfway through her investigation. Laird and assistant attorney general Carlo Canty argued that Holly Jackson had not spent enough time and effort to complete her investigation. They noted that she stated in her testimony that she had traveled from her home in Los Angeles to Montana for only two five-day trips in February and April. The defense lawyers also argued that the state law setting the time limit was unconstitutional as applied to the case. McKeon denied the motion to declare the law unconstitutional. Canty said he was satisfied that the judge had upheld the constitutionality of the law. (source: Havre Daily News) OHIO: Death penalty trial opens for man accused of Ohio sniper shootings -- Charles McCoy is accused of killing one person during a 4-month sniper spree. The man who confessed to a string of sniper shootings in the greater Columbus area knew the difference between right and wrong when he took aim at his targets and even took measures to cover his tracks, a Franklin County Prosecutor said in his opening statement Thursday morning. "Life is about choices," Franklin County First Assistant Prosecutor Ed Morgan told jurors in Charles Allen McCoy Jr.'s capital murder trial. "The choices the defendant made helped him to avoid detection and arrest and show the defendant appreciated that his conduct was wrong." McCoy, dressed in prison garb and flip-flops for the 1st day of his trial, evaded police for almost five months while a task force investigated the serial shootings that targeted homes, an elementary school and motorists on Columbus' busy interstates. McCoy's 24-count indictment - which charges him with 7 crimes - stems from 12 shooting incidents between Oct. 19, 2003, and Feb. 14, 2004, all linked by ballistics or casing matches to a 9 mm Beretta handgun that the defendant's parents gave police March 12, 2004. McCoy's mother, Ardith, reported her son missing the same day an arrest warrant was issued. McCoy was captured on March 17, 2004, in Las Vegas. Lawyers for the 29-year-old defendant, who pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, concede that McCoy was the owner of the weapon and do not deny he was the gunman. Instead, they claim their client, who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, did not know the difference between right and wrong when he opened fire on numerous occasions and ignited widespread panic in the community. McCoy, who appeared subdued and emotionless during Thursday's proceedings, faces one aggravated murder charge for the death of 62-year-old Gail Knisley. The victim was traveling in the passenger seat of friend Mary Cox's car on her way to a doctor's appointment when McCoy hit her. As Morgan described Knisley's last words - "What was that?" - after the gunshot and before she slumped over dead in her seat, gasps filled the courtroom. Knisley's husband, son and daughter-in-law sobbed quietly. Morgan also reminded jurors of the effect the shootings had on their own lives. "The choice of driving routes drastically changed for many drivers here in central Ohio," he said. "The evidence will show that this change in driving routes was due in large part because someone in possession of a 9 mm Beretta pistol was choosing not to fire at a range target, but instead took fire at both moving vehicles and occupied structures." McCoy is also facing charges for opening fire on 2 homes, an elementary school, a car dealership and several motorists. For McCoy's lawyers to prove the insanity defense, they must show that, during the shootings, "as a result of mental disease or defect," he did not know "the wrongfulness of his actions." Prosecutor Morgan urged jurors to consider evidence of McCoy's efforts to elude authorities when deciding whether he knew what he was doing was wrong. "Hearing the choices made by the defendant should help you decide if the defendant knew the wrongfulness of his actions," Morgan said. As the prosecutor pinpointed the shootings on a map, he described how the sniper expanded his shooting zone, which began close to the defendant's home in Grove Point and gradually moved farther away as the investigation and media scrutiny intensified. He also highlighted the fact that McCoy was either in or outside his car when the shootings occurred. "Does that choice possibly facilitate a quick entrance and exit from the crime scene? Is it not a choice to escape detection and escape capture?" he asked. In the shootings that hit cars traveling on busy interstates, Morgan suggested McCoy opened fire from overpasses above stretches of road without entrance or exit ramps to make it difficult for his victims to seek assistance. He also drew attention to the weapon Charles McCoy Sr. gave to police, a 9 mm Beretta that the defendant had disassembled. The father told investigators his son indicated he had taken it apart to clean it. "Why was it the defendant chose to clean just that gun?" Morgan asked. After investigators caught McCoy in Las Vegas, two days after an arrest warrant was issued, the defendant told investigators why he had fled. "'I guess it looked bad for me,'" Morgan repeated for the jury. "Does the defendant's choice to flee clearly show the defendant knew the wrongfulness of his actions?" McCoy's lawyers chose to reserve their opening statement until the start of their case. In the crosshairs The testimony of 4 witnesses Thursday afternoon proceeded swiftly because the defense does not dispute the basic facts of the shootings, and entered into a number of stipulations with prosecutors to avoid calling extra police witnesses. Three of the 4 witnesses involved in McCoy's attacks testified that the incidents went unaddressed until Knisley's murder on Nov. 25, 2003. Darrell Bentley, the manager of Paydays car dealership in Columbus, testified that after one of his employees discovered a bullet hole in the bottom of the driver's door of a 1995 Astro van, he didn't call police until he heard about the homicide almost two weeks later. In the interim, Bentley said he kept the bullet he recovered in his office until a police report was finally taken down. The maintenance supervisor for Hamilton Local Schools also testified he did not call police after responding to a security call at Hamilton Township Central Elementary School and found what appeared to be wood chips on the ground in one of the classrooms around 1:30 a.m. on Nov. 11, 2003. When Donald Curry returned the next morning and observed a hole in a classroom window and a bullet fragment across the hall, he finally called police, who did not analyze the fragment until after the homicide. Retired Dept. of Corrections employee Edward Cable testified he also held onto a bullet fragment that he discovered on the floor of his Ford Windstar minivan after a bullet pierced the driver's-side window behind him. He testified that a patrol officer who pulled over to assist him declined to write a police report after observing the incident, which occurred on Nov. 21, 2003, as he drove on Route 23 at around 7:40 p.m. 4 days later, after hearing about Knisley's death and its proximity to where he was when his car was struck, he contacted police. Cable also told the jury of the gut instinct which led him to decide to not let his grandsons ride in the car with him the evening the bullet pierced his window. "That evening, for some reason, I just felt like they shouldn't," he told jurors with a quivering voice. "Where would your grandson have been sitting if he had been in the car?" Morgan asked. "He would have been in the seat where the window blew in," Cable said. "The bullet might have been slightly in front of him, maybe not," he said. Yellow Freight truck driver William Briggs was the only witness to testify that police conducted a thorough investigation of his rig after a shot pierced the driver's window. "I almost wrecked the truck," Briggs said, later adding that the incident haunts him every time he enters his truck. "The bullet had to be anywhere from just missing my skin to 6 or 7 inches away from my face." Testimony will resume Friday morning. The trial is being aired live on Court TV. (source: Court TV)
