Published: February 18, 2006 02:57 pm      

First trial haunts Camm defense team

BOONVILLE — It was just three sentences, out of a 6,000 page report, but the words of a blood stain pattern expert that testified on David Camm’s behalf during his first murder trial came back to haunt his new defense team Friday.

In 2002, renowned expert Terry Laber said two of the eight microscopic spots of blood found on Camm’s T-shirt could be high-velocity impact spatter, according to Floyd County Prosecutor Keith Henderson.

That comment is in direct contradiction to what Bart Epstein, Laber’s business partner, testified to Friday. Epstein, and other defense experts, have testified that their analysis of the shirt indicates the blood on Camm’s T-shirt was transferred there when it touched against a bloody surface and that there was no impact spatter.

Epstein, manager of the Minnesota State Crime Lab for several years, denied he and his partner disagreed that transfer was the cause of the stains. In that document, Epstein said, Laber “was asked about one single particle. If you’re looking at one single particle you can’t tell how it was deposited,” Epstein said.

Defense attorney Stacy Uliana and Epstein both accused the prosecution of mischaracterizing the evidence by pulling out a few sentences and twisting the information. Henderson said there was nothing to twist, pointing out it was the defense expert’s partner who made the comment in a document the defense submitted to the court.

Lead defense attorney Katharine “Kitty” Liell said the move was nothing more than a ploy to bias the jury through hearsay, and with that, she asked for a mistrial. Hearsay is not allowed in testimony, but because the two men were partners consulting on the case and the exhibit was in evidence Judge Robert Aylsworth ruled against Liell.

Camm, 41, was convicted in 2002 of killing his wife, Kim, 36, son Brad, 7, and daughter Jill, 5, at their Georgetown home two years earlier. His conviction was overturned in 2004 when an appeals court ruled testimony about his several extra-marital affairs, and other issues, precluded him from receiving a fair trial.

How the blood got on Camm’s T-shirt is a central issue in the case.  If it is high-velocity impact spatter — a mist of blood that sprays no more than 4 feet and dries within a minute — it would prove Camm was within 4 feet of his family at the time of the shootings, Henderson has repeatedly pointed out.

If the stains are transfer, caused by brushing against a surface that has blood on it, it proves Camm’s story of getting blood on him when he pulled his son out of the vehicle is true, according to the defense.

The state’s five experts, including one who is suing Epstein and Laber for libel, have testified that the blood on Camm’s shirt is high-velocity impact spatter, deposited there when he shot his daughter at close range.

But on Thursday and Friday, blood stain pattern experts Epstein and Paul Kish testified for the defense that their colleagues are mistaken. Both men insist the stains on the shirt are transfer. Epstein called one of the expert’s explanation for a blood stain on the back of Camm’s shirt “pure rubbish.”

Neither could say what Camm could have brushed against that would have left eight, tiny dots the size of pen head on the shirt.

Epstein testified the most likely source of the blood transfer was Jill Camm’s long, thick hair, in which there were beads of blood.

How, Henderson demanded to know, could Jill’s blood have gotten on the shirt based on Camm’s telling of events, in which he opened the front, passenger-side door of the Ford Brono, reached between the seats and pulled his son out of the vehicle to give him CPR. Jill was strapped in her seatbelt in the back seat of the passenger side, while Brad was behind the driver’s seat, Camm told police. He said he never touched his daughter because he could immediately tell she was dead.

“If this defendant said he never touched his daughter, would your opinion, sir, be wrong?” Henderson asked.

Epstein told an obviously frustrated Henderson that it wouldn’t, saying there were other ways Jill’s blood could have been transferred to the shirt.

Laber was not on the witness list for either side in the ongoing trial, but both Henderson and Uliana said he may now be called to explain his analysis of the evidence.

Epstein also testified that he didn’t see any signs that Camm had attempted to wipe blood from his shoe, which he said was also a transfer stain. He said the blood on the shoelace looked diluted was because it came from the serum — a yellowish discharge that occurs when blood and plasma naturally separate.

The trial will resume at 10 a.m. Monday; Judge Aylsworth’s court will not be closed for the holiday.