Opinion ID: 3047100
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Marland Dulaney, Jr.

Text: Trepal’s main witness in the state collateral proceeding was Marland Dulaney, Jr., a consulting toxicologist. Dulaney opined that he could not rely on the IC charts to a “reasonable scientific certainty” because Martz did not run proper standards and blanks. Martz did not run chloride or sulfate standards to confirm where chloride and sulfate ions appeared on the charts. Martz ran a nitrate standard, but did so by adding known nitrate to water, not to Coca-Cola. Dulaney did not dispute that thallium was present in the Coca-Cola samples. But Dulaney opined that all one can say with reasonable scientific certainty about Q1, Q2, and Q3 is that they contain thallium. Dulaney could not rule out the possibility that thallium nitrate was added to the Coca-Cola samples. Moreover, Dulaney could not testify that the thallium salt present in the Q samples was something other than thallium I nitrate, because he had insufficient information. Dulaney testified that Martz’s “approach is so bad, . . . it has so many holes that anybody can say anything that they want, because they have to make assumptions, and if you assume this and this and this, then this is true.” But the data provided no way to test the assumptions. Based on his review of the data, Dulaney opined that the conclusion that thallium nitrate was added to Q1 and Q2 cannot be made to a reasonable degree of 31 scientific certainty. According to Dulaney, adding nitrate to Coca-Cola and running an IC on it was “the fundamental step that would allow us to say that thallium nitrate was added to Coca-Cola,” and that was not done.