Somewhat in line with the Court's in camera reviewing. At some point after we complete the discussion with Dr. Lakshmanan of the autopsies of both cases, I would anticipate covering the two mistake cases that the Court has allowed the Defense to raise on the issue of Dr. Golden's competency. I need to make the motion in limine formal that I have tried to make all along regarding the other incidents that have been alleged because I need a ruling from the Court as to whether any of those three additional incidents is admissible. If they are, I would anticipate covering them on direct examination with Dr. Lakshmanan, as well as the two that the Court has already ruled are admissible. Likewise, I would like to know if there is any anything in the personnel evaluation file that the Court will be reviewing in camera which may be relevant, in the Court's judgment, to the issue of Dr. Golden's competency, because if there is and if I can concur in the Court's assessment that this has some bearing on his competency, then again it would be a matter I would expect to elicit through direct examination of Dr. Lakshmanan. I doubt I would finish both autopsy testimony by the end of today, because of the Court session and a juror apparently having a medical appointment, but it is most likely that if I don't today, it would be a matter that I would address quite early, I would think, tomorrow.
All right. How has that--refresh my recollection as to how this issue has been presented to the Court as to these three additional--I don't recollect having read any--
No, I don't think any materials have been submitted. They have been given to Mr. Shapiro. There are three cases. One is the blue case which is a case involving a woman who was shot, taken to Martin Luther King Hospital for treatment and she died at Martin Luther King Hospital. I should point out, all of these incidents arise out of this prime time live broadcast, including the two incidents that the Court has already ruled are admissible. This is the third incident, the blue incident. Allegedly Dr. Golden identified only one gunshot wound to ms. Blue, and allegedly, according to the emergency room doctor who may have been the resident actually, ms. Blue had sustained three gunshot wounds. We believe the evidence will in fact show that Dr. Golden was absolutely correct in identifying only one gunshot wound. We have the photographs of the x-rays. We have the autopsy photographs. And quite frankly, the doctor at Martin Luther King Hospital is simply wrong and we will have to litigate the merits of whether there was a mistake or not and I have no difficulty in litigating the merits because on the merits I believe the evidence will show Dr. Golden made no mistake. So my argument is a 352 argument that this Court has already heard and the jury has already heard testimony that Dr. Golden made a lot of mistakes in this case, these two cases, I should say, of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, and they are going to hear evidence that he made two mistakes that we concede in this other case. Do we really need to spend the time litigating the merits of this blue case? Because if we do, we are going to be bringing in the doctor from Martin Luther King Hospital and we are going to be bringing in other experts, if necessary, to show that Dr. Golden made absolutely no mistake whatsoever. And do we really advance the search for the truth here or are we wasting a whole lot of time over nothing when the jury already understands that mistakes were made in these cases that are before the jury, which is really the most important thing. So that is the first case. The second case is the Erin Abernathy case. This was a child who died and the matter was investigated for possible shaken baby syndrome, and again, according to the broadcast on prime time live, allegedly Dr. Golden threw away the child's brain, making it impossible for anyone to reach a conclusion that would be with sufficient medical certainty to support a criminal prosecution of anyone for killing this child through the shaking of the baby and the so-called shaken baby syndrome. Interestingly, I received a call from a Dr. Speth who claimed to have been retained by ABC and Mr. Donaldson to review the Abernathy case, and according to Mr. Speth or Dr. Speth, he told Mr. Donaldson that there was no mistake made on Dr. Golden's part in supposedly throwing away the brain, and that in fact if there was responsibility it was the neuropathologist, Dr. Itabashi, and he told Mr. Donaldson, but Mr. Donaldson didn't search for another expert, and that was broadcast. Well, we will litigate this issue because there was no mistake made and there was no inability to evaluate the case for shaken baby syndrome. I happen to have been involved as a consultant in our office in that case, so I'm quite familiar with the case, and if we have to litigate it, we will litigate it. Now, of course the comparison of an infant death from allegedly shaken baby syndrome to the circumstances of this case are hard for me to fathom, but again, we can spend the time if the Court wants, but we will be litigating the merits of whether or not a mistake was made.
But wouldn't the relevance in Abernathy be the fact that an important sample was discarded and therefore not available for review, similar to the stomach contents here?
If that were the case. Our contention is that in fact the brain was properly preserved, examined, sections were taken and the neuropathologist examined those as well and that material was available for review and it is not the so-called throwing away of the stomach contents where basically there is nothing left except Dr. Golden's description. And the important thing to recognize is Dr. Golden is not involved with that in the first place as far as--he preserved the brain for examination by the neuropathologist. The third case is this one that recently came to light, Mr. Hall, and this is the incident involving the missing thyroid gland, if you will. According to Dr. Golden's autopsy the gentleman had a thyroid gland. According to a lawyer representing I believe the widow of Mr. Hall, she contended that Mr. Hall had had his thyroid gland removed many years earlier, and it appears that that is in fact the case, that Dr. Golden made a mistake in identifying the thyroid gland as being present when in fact it was not. Again, now what that has to do--I mean, this is an elderly man and allegations were made that in fact this elderly man was killed as a part of a scheme to acquire assets or something of that nature. The matter has been reviewed within our office, and as of when I last spoke a couple of days ago with a lawyer who has reviewed the case in our office, insufficient evidence was found to support a criminal complaint. We have to litigate the merits, we will litigate the merits. But again, does this give the jury anything of substantial additional information about Dr. Golden's competency that is not available from the two cases that the Court has already ruled are admissible, and all of the mistakes that we are going to be talking about here? Because even, pardon me, when the Court talks about the stomach contents and so forth, obviously we haven't gotten to the issue of is there any significance of throwing away the stomach contents, but the Court has heard my argument before when we were talking about the alleged gun incident with Dr. Golden, that people talk a lot in the press, it seems, about what horrible things are done in the way of throwing away material, without having a basis of fact on which to make these judgments. We are going to give this jury bases and facts as to whether they can make a judgment as to whether they are significant or not and my argument is when the jury hears all the evidence, for example, on time of death, they will understand that the stomach contents is not a factor which is a reliable indicator at all on estimation for range of time of death. And if one wants to use it at all, it serves to narrow the time of death much closer to 10:15 than it would to eleven o'clock. And if Dr. Baden testifies, as I pointed out before, we will certainly question him about his previous testimony in 1988 regarding time of death and stomach contents which I will say for the record is not supported by any medical literature that I have reviewed, the most recent literature in spits and fisher and so forth, but we will litigate it. And the point is that that is the issue, the significance or lack of significance. These issues of the thyroid or the non-thyroid, the evidence would show that the absence of the thyroid gland from this person, when it is represented to have been present, does not deprive the medical examiner of assessing whether or not this person was killed at the hands of another. There were problems in making the assessment because the body was embalmed to begin with and not turned over for possible investigation as a criminal homicide for about eight days, as I recall, from the general information. So there is a lot to litigate as to whether there is any significance whatsoever to having identified a gland that was in fact not present. Those are the three cases that I would ask the Court not to permit testimony about under 352 on the ground that it would engage the jury in a waste of time for material that is duplicative of the evidence that they will have heard that indicates mistakes by Dr. Golden which are directly relevant to their assessment of issues in this case.
Thank you very much. Mr. Kelberg is in an ironic position. Yesterday he wasn't talking about the competency of Dr. Golden, rather, he conducted what I thought was a very effective or would have been a very effective cross-examination of the incompetency of Dr. Golden. Today now he is talking about the competency of Dr. Golden and none of these are issues that we have brought up at all. We haven't said a word, filed one motion, and we have no obligation in advance to tell Mr. Kelberg what our cross-examination is going to be. If he wants to challenge the competency of Dr. Golden, that is his privilege, and he did that yesterday and I thought he did that quite effectively. If he does not want to challenge the competency of Dr. Golden, then he can call him as a witness and vouch for his credentials, but I don't know how to respond to any of this other than it seems like Mr. Kelberg may want to sue Sam Donaldson.
Well, sounds to me like a motion in limine, and if there is no opposition, then I will grant his motion.
Well, we are greatly opposed to anything that is relevant in this case, and clearly Dr. Lakshmanan has put into issue the fact that prior to reviewing the records in this case he had no knowledge whatsoever of any errors done by Dr. Golden, and apparently it was only until we retained our experts, Dr. Baden and Dr. Wolf, to examine this case and point out the errors to Dr. Lakshmanan and his staff, that Dr. Lakshmanan then conducted his own investigation and concurred with the findings of Dr. Baden and Dr. Wolf, that errors had been made. So we think clearly the issue has been put in by the Prosecution and they should not now be able to limit what evidence comes in and what doesn't come in regarding competency.
How about Mr. Kelberg's argument regarding the factual dispute to the blue case, the fact that in the Abernathy case the discarding of the samples was done by someone other than Dr. Golden, and that in the Hall case the presence or absence of that gland had ultimately nothing to do with the ultimate conclusions?
Well, these are all issues that go to the competency of Dr. Golden. They are issues that we have to review regarding the reports that have been filed with your Honor as to whether or not mistakes have been made in the past by Dr. Golden and whether Dr. Lakshmanan or his staff were aware of those mistakes. But for them to be able to pick and choose and say, yes, he made these errors, he made thirty errors in this case and in two other cases, one case which resulted in the dismissal of a capital murder case, Dr. Golden misdiagnosed an entrance wound and an exit wound and a person who had been in jail and in custody for a prolonged period of time was rendered factually innocent by Judge Pounders. They have chosen, I guess, to bring those things up themselves, to--for whatever strategic advantage may lie in doing that, but I don't see where the Court should rule in limine on any prior activity regarding Dr. Golden's competency. They have put it in issue and we should be allowed wide cross-examination.
For the record Dr. Baden and Dr. Wolf did not point out anything to Dr. Lakshmanan. There was a joint examination on June 22nd and Dr. Lakshmanan was not told of anything identified by Dr. Baden or Dr. Wolf. Dr. Lakshmanan saw exactly what doctors Baden and Wolf saw and Dr. Lakshmanan identified whatever he did.
KEY QUOTEI understand. Your Honor, the Court is well aware of motions in limine. I am contending under section 352, which the Court is well aware of, does not violate the sixth amendment right to confront and cross-examine witnesses, that this evidence should be deemed inadmissible and that is what I ask the Court to rule on. And I believe there is no basis from the Defense to say that the Court is without jurisdiction to rule on a motion in limine. If the Court is without jurisdiction, then I must have been missing something for seventeen years of practice because it is such a common procedure for courts to make such rulings in advance of the anticipated testimony and the Court understands that if in fact there is going to be testimony permitted. And just to refresh everybody's recollection, including Mr. Shapiro's, we made a motion in limine regarding the first two incidents, as the Court will recall. The Court made a ruling, in essence, saying that we were wrong and I abide by that ruling and that is why we are going to bring the matter out.
But nevertheless, we are not here contesting the Court's ruling as to those two issues that were deemed admissible, and we are here merely now because we have these three additional cases which we have examined and we saw claims were made, mistakes were made. We say either no mistakes, blue, Abernathy, nothing attributable to Dr. Golden and completely unrelated to these cases before this jury, and in the case of Hall, something that is simply of no significance whatsoever with respect to that issue. So on that basis I ask the Court to rule under 352 that this evidence is inadmissible.
Thank you. All right. As to the blue case, since there is a factual dispute that will involve essentially the Court and the jury having to try that case as well, I'm going to sustain the 352 objection as an undue consumption of Court time. As to Abernathy, since it appears from the offer that it is not contested that Dr. Golden did in fact retain the brain and that it was actually processed and handled and then discarded by another doctor, I find also that that is subject to a 352 objection that is well taken. As to the Hall matter, this involved the thoroughness in which a body is examined, the amount of time that is spent during the course of the examination, and I find that that does have substantial probative value and I will allow cross-examination as to the Hall matter. All right. Anything else?
Just for the record, because the Defense objected to certain--I think in fact all of our autopsy photographs, but they asked that a particular photograph, G34, be used in our presentation along with the photos that the Court has ruled are admissible, and I have no objection to doing that. And the Defense has agreed that we may also use a cropped photograph, G25, showing the hand of Mr. Goldman which has one particular injury that is not clearly visible in the alternative photograph which the Court allowed us to use which is G26.
That's correct, that it should not be in any way viewed as a waiver of our previous objections.
it seems like Mr. Kelberg may want to sue Sam Donaldson.
Do we really need to spend the time litigating the merits of this blue case? Because if we do, we are going to be bringing in the doctor from Martin Luther King Hospital and we are going to be bringing in other experts, if necessary, to show that Dr. Golden made absolutely no mistake whatsoever.
I think I gave a split decision on that.
For the record Dr. Baden and Dr. Wolf did not point out anything to Dr. Lakshmanan. There was a joint examination on June 22nd and Dr. Lakshmanan was not told of anything identified by Dr. Baden or Dr. Wolf.