Mr. Blasier.

Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon.

THE JURY: Good afternoon.

REDIRECT EXAMINATION BY MR. BLASIER

Dr. Rieders, good afternoon.

Good afternoon.

How are you feeling today, doctor?

Has Miss Clark's questions made you feel any better?

Beg your pardon?

Has Miss Clark's questions made you feel any better?

Objection.

After lunch I felt better.

Sustained.

Dr. Rieders, I want to just ask you a few questions about the Sconce matter. Were you the only forensic toxicologist to find oleander in that tissue?

No.

Were you even the first one?

No.

Who was the first one?

Dr. Randy Basil, the Institute of Chemical Toxicology in--outside of San Francisco.

And is he a very highly expected forensic toxicologist?

Yes.

Now, Dr. Henion, is he a highly respected forensic toxicologist?

He's really not a forensic toxicologist. He hates to go to court. So--

Now, in stating the opinions that you've stated here today about the Sconce matter, have you relied on Dr. Henion's report in the Sconce matter?

Did I rely on it? No, not at all.

In terms of the opinions that you stated today about what he did versus what you did.

Well, I relied on what he wrote in his report.

What aspect of his report did you rely on?

The entire report. I relied on the list of specimens that he has in it that he sent to the--California, Ventura. I relied on his own statement in there that what he did didn't in any way, shape or form have a bearing on what was in there when this man died years earlier.

And are you referring to a specific part of his report that you relied on?

Well, you mean--

Specific sentence?

Yes.

Could you read that, please?

Sure. Be glad to.

What page are you referring to, Mr. Blasier?

I think it's--

Sir, this is the first page after the cover.

All right.

It is in the introduction if you don't have a copy. I can read the whole thing, but really, this is the relevant portion, right? Well, let me read the whole paragraph.

Well, objection, your Honor. I think if the witness should be able to read it, I would like to see it.

Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you had a copy.

Objection. Irrelevant.

Overruled.

It's what he relied on.

Can I show the Court?

If the objection is relevance, that objection is overruled.

Could you please read that paragraph that you relied on?

I'd ask that the witness read it to himself and indicate--it was to refresh his recollection, wasn't it, your Honor?

No. He was asked what he relied upon.

Objection. Hearsay.

Sustained.

Did anything that Dr. Henion concluded cause you to change your opinion in any way?

No, not at all.

Incidentally, after you finished working on the Sconce matter, did the Los Angeles District Attorney's office hire you to work on another case?

I was already working on one, and I worked on another one afterwards, yes.

And what case was that?

Dr. Boggs.

Now, I want to ask you a couple of questions about the differences between what Agent Martz has testified to and what you have testified to with respect to whether or not this is EDTA that's on the gate and the sock. Do you have that in mind?

Yes.

Is it accurate that both of you agreed that the retention time that he got is consistent with EDTA?

Yes.

That the presence of the parent ion, the 293 parent ion that he found is consistent with the presence of EDTA?

Yes.

The presence of the 160 daughter ion that he found, would you agree, is consistent with the presence of EDTA?

Yes.

And he agreed with that; did he not?

Yes.

Would you agree that the only difference between your opinion and his opinion is based on his inability to find the other piece, the other daughter ion, the 132 daughter ion?

Objection. Leading.

Sustained. Rephrase the question.

Is it your understanding--what's your understanding with respect to Agent Martz' unwillingness to declare that what he saw was EDTA?

That he performed one analysis where he scanned widely between 130 and 293 across the spectrum for both daughter ions, and he claimed that in that, he didn't see anything, didn't see the 132 daughter ion, that there was nothing there because the computer didn't print out any numbers.

Now, this machinery that he has--

Objection. That misstates the testimony.

Overruled.

The machinery that he has--do you recall that we were talking before about the analogy of a television camera that's set up to focus on you and maybe scan back and forth, but not deviate very much from where you're sitting? Remember that analogy?

Yes.

And that's the analogy that relates to looking for the 160 daughter ion, correct?

Looking either at the 160 daughter ion or scanning across and seeing what it appears in that scan.

And when Agent Martz did that scan of the 160 ion, the small range, 158 to 162, he found the 160 daughter ion, didn't he?

Yes.

Now, does that machinery that he has, that the FBI has at their lab, is it capable of also looking at the 132 ion?

Yes.

Is it capable of scanning that area within a small range?

Yes.

Did he ever do that?

He said he did not.

Now, did you hear Miss Clark's questions about whether it's incumbent upon a scientist to do every possible test available to test a hypothesis?

I remember the question, yes.

Did Agent Martz do every possible test available to try and see whether or not the 132 ion was there?

No.

Now, you indicated that Agent Martz did one test that provided some information about whether or not EDTA on a metal can might be lost because--by virtue of it being on a metal surface. Remember that?

Yes.

What were you talking about? What were you talking about when you referred to that?

He put some EDTA blood on a metal can surface and also on a control swatch. Then he wiped the surface subsequently, so he had a swatch from the surface and he had a control swatch, and he analyzed both.

Objection. No foundation of personal knowledge.

Sustained. Rephrase the question.

Did you review Agent Martz' testimony?

Yes.

Did you read it and look at it on videotape?

Yes.

Did you hear his discussion about his test results with respect to the amount of EDTA he got off of his metal can versus the cloth swatch?

Yes.

And what's your understanding of that testimony?

That he found EDTA in both, there was less in the one from the can than on the control swatch.

And scientifically, what inference can be drawn from that?

Well, one obvious inference--

Objection. Misstates the testimony, your Honor.

Overruled.

One obvious inference is that he got less back than what he put on the can. So suddenly it was broken down by the can, swallowed by the can or otherwise. But the likely thing is destroyed, broken down after.

Would it be fair to characterize Agent Martz' testimony with respect to quantity, that his opinion is that he didn't find enough of whatever it was that he found that it could have come from a purple top tube, that he didn't find as much as he would have expected to find?

I--in my direct, I already answered that. He had no clue as to how much he started with in his samples. So how could he determine what the concentration was? He could only have prior amounts. If you don't know what the concentration is, you don't know what you're dealing with. Said there was EDTA in the blood. And if it was a tiny, tiny amount, then the concentration was the same in the EDTA tube. He doesn't know what the concentration was.

Did he do any experimentation or anything as a result of you watching his testimony indicating that he tested to find out how much EDTA he would expect to find after eight months under the conditions which these samples were subjected to?

No.

Is that something that if you were trying to do every possible test to test a hypothesis, that he should have done?

Yes, I would think so, at least partly. I mean, for a period of time. Not necessarily eight months.

Now, if Agent Martz were testing the hypothesis as to whether food or other substances can create levels of EDTA in the blood equivalent to the amount found on the gate and the sock, what would be the proper way to test that hypothesis? What would one proper way be?

To test 10 or 20 random blood samples from normal people or as many as you can conveniently. It's a simple test, so you can test a lot. It's a standard procedure.

Do you feel that him testing his own blood after placing it in a red top tube for a period of time is an adequate test to determine how much EDTA he might have had in his blood originally?

Not without adequate quality control such as testing red top tubes, if you put things in them, whether there's any EDTA in the stopper or in the lining, in the silicone lining, which wouldn't be too unusual. You know, without that, it's not a very good way of getting an answer. Besides that, if you put blood in a red top tube, you can't test blood. You blood serum or plasma.

Why is that?

Because it clots.

How long does it take to clot?

Five to seven minutes.

May I have a minute, your Honor?

Certainly.

Now, Dr. Rieders, do you know of any other compound that would give you the retention time of 293 and the 160 ions as EDTA does?

I don't know of any and I have not found of any. I've specifically searched not the Merck index as was mentioned, but there's a separate Merck index publication which lists molecular weights. And by looking at those substances that have a molecular weight of 292 and then looking at their structure, I mean, you know, there wasn't anything in there that indicated that I could get a 160 or a 132 ion out of those in a mass spectrometer. I also looked in an index of mass spectra that I have and didn't find anything in there that matches this particular pattern.

Now, you can't say--since you haven't looked at all 11 million or however many organic compounds there are, you can't say whether there might not be some other compound out there that hasn't been looked at that might look like this, correct?

That's correct. That's always true. I've said that before. You can only work with what you know.

And that's true with any kind of substance that you're looking for that you're examining with mass spectrometry, correct?

Objection. Leading.

Sustained. Sustained.

Is that true with respect to any compound that you look for with mass spectrometry?

Yeah, and any test, any form of mass spectrometry. You can't give an absolute answer. You can not identify something to the exclusion of all other compounds unless you do it purely by faith alone.

Now, we've been talking about tandem ms or ms/ms in this case. Why is it--why do you repeat ms and then repeat it again? What does that mean?

Well, the technique is a little bit different. I think I explained what ms is. I think maybe Roger Martz did too, about weighing a molecule, breaking it up like a diamond and then weighing the pieces. In ms/ms, what you do is, you put material into a mass spectrometer. It weighs it and then it takes preferably the whole molecule or the whole molecule with a charge on it, a hydrogen ion charge and filters it into another mass spectrometer alone all by its lonesome without all the other junk that's sitting back there. So you've isolated that particular ion. Then that second mass spectrometer cuts that into what called daughter ions, into two pieces, perhaps three pieces. It's called by--by colliding with gas molecules, that's how it's done, gently, and then it weighs those pieces. So that is the second mass spectrometer. The better way is to take it into the second mass spectrometer, then break it up and then again filter out one of the ions into a third mass spectrometer for measurement. That's what you have when you have MS MS MS. You can continue that virtually ad infinitum, not with his instrument, but with some instrument. So you can go to the fifth mass spectrometer.

Is it accurate to describe then that the first ms is looking for the parent ion, the 293, and the second ms looks at the daughter ions?

The first ms looks at the parent ion. The second ms takes that parent ion purely and breaks it up, and the third ms measures it.

Now, are tests done to determine identification of substances using just ms?

Of course. They've been done for a long time. As a matter of fact, that is a wide spread test. This technique is relatively a simple one.

When ms was designed, did we also have ms/ms or did that come along later?

Afterward. Not terribly long. In research form, but it came afterwards.

Is it accurate to say that testing is done all the time where identifications of substances are made based on just ms?

Yes.

Doctor, after being cross-examined and hearing Agent Martz' testimony, do you stand by your opinion that what was found on the back gate and the sock to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty was EDTA?

Yes.

Do you stand by your opinion that the probable source for that EDTA was a purple top tube?

Objection. That misstates, conclusion.

Overruled.

Probably, yes.

Do you know of any other possible source for that amount of EDTA?

Yes, theoretically.

Any other source that you would expect to find in someone's human blood?

If they've been treated with intravenous calcium EDTA within the last eight hours for lead poisoning, yes.

Other than that?

Or for other forms of treatment, diagnostic or treatment with disodium calcium EDTA.

No way.

That's all I have.