Opinion ID: 155628
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Blood-spatter Evidence

Text: We reach the same conclusion as to the new testimony offered by Mr. Demarest regarding the state’s blood-spatter evidence. As noted above, in the state court proceedings, Mr. Demarest did allege that Mr. Cohan had failed to challenge the qualifications of Dr. Herbert MacDonell, the state’s first designated blood-spatter expert. Mr. Demarest also alleged that Mr. Cohan had failed to effectively cross-examine Detective Dick Hopkins, the witness who actually testified at the trial regarding the blood-spatter evidence. Additionally, Charles Hoppin, the legal expert who testified at 31 the state evidentiary hearing opined that Mr. Demarest’s trial attorney should have interviewed the state’s expert witnesses and should have consulted with an independent blood-spatter expert in order to properly evaluate and respond to the state’s evidence. See Rec. vol. V, State v. Demarest, No. CR 81-259, vol. 3 at 92-98 (Tr. of Evidentiary Hr’g of Dec. 2, 1985). However it was not until the federal evidentiary hearing that Mr. Demarest offered evidence from Dr. Donald Kennedy challenging the scientific basis of the state’s expert testimony. Dr. Kennedy began his testimony at the federal hearing by examining the manual on blood-spatter evidence written by Dr. MacDonell, the witness initially designated as the state’s expert. Detective Hopkins, the state witness who actually testified at trial regarding the blood-spatter evidence, attended Dr. MacDonell’s course and relied on his manual in reaching his conclusions. According to Dr. Kennedy’s testimony, the manual indicated that Dr. MacDonell lacked a basic understanding of the fluid dynamics of blood droplets. Dr. Kennedy proceeded to explain numerous specific errors in Dr. MacDonell’s manual. He criticized the experiments that it described, characterizing them as “poor high school science.” Rec. vol. II at 46 (Tr. of Evidentiary Hr’g of Oct. 17, 1994). He explained that Dr. MacDonell did not understand basic principles of fluid dynamics such as viscosity and surface tension. He described several measurements pertaining to the 32 fluid dynamics of blood droplets--the bond number, the Weber number, and the Reynolds number--and said that Dr. MacDonell lacked a basic understanding of these concepts. Then, Dr. Kennedy offered explanations of the ways in which Detective Hopkins’s trial testimony reflected Dr. MacDonell’s limited scientific understanding. He disagreed with Detective Hopkins’s statement that one could determine the type of weapon used by applying the principles of fluid dynamics to the blood droplets found at a crime scene. He also questioned Detective Hopkins’s opinions as to the sequence of events leading up to the murder, as to the type of weapon used, and as to the physical characteristics of the murderer (i.e. that the murderer was a strong, right-handed man), stating that fluid dynamics did not allow one to draw definitive conclusions about these matters. Essentially, Dr. Kennedy’s testimony regarding the state’s blood-spatter evidence was that the “physics are wrong, so the science is wrong, so the conclusions are wrong.” See Rec. vol. II at 64 (Tr. of Evidentiary Hr’g of Oct. 17, 1994). No evidence of this kind was presented in the state court proceedings. Thus, it was not until after Dr. Kennedy’s testimony in the federal court proceedings that Mr. Demarest could point to evidence that an adequate pretrial investigation by Mr. Cohan would have uncovered strong scientific evidence that could be used to challenge the state’s witnesses. Mr. Demarest’s new expert testimony from Dr. Kennedy resembles the new expert testimony offered by the petitioner in the Fifth Circuit’s decision in Dispensa, 826 F.2d at 379-80. As in that case, the new evidence offered by Mr. Demarest through Dr. Kennedy 33 and Mr. Foreman transformed his claim from one involving only general allegations of failing to investigate and cross-examine and only a minimal showing of prejudice into one involving a concrete reference to a qualified expert who could have been produced at trial to rebut the scientific basis of the state’s case. We therefore conclude that Mr. Demarest’s allegations regarding his trial counsel’s failure to challenge the state’s bloodspatter evidence were not fairly presented to the state courts.