Notes From The Road -- Passengers Tell You The Darndest Things

  It wasn't until we began our descent  into the Twin Cities that I learned the passenger sitting next me was a prosecuting attorney on his way to interview a defense witness in a very high profile case.

Despite the fact that I shared I was a freelance journalist, he chatted with me about the case and the witness who by now has undergone his interrogation.

The case involves the death of an infant back in the 90s. A man was convicted of the murder and spent 10 years in jail before a higher court reversed his sentence on grounds that his defense had not provided proper counsel. He has been out of jail for nearly 5 years.

The county has recently reopened that case and my seat-mate is part of the prosecution team. The defense witness he was interviewing is a pathologist. Evidently the state maintains there is no way that the head injuries that caused the baby's death could have occurred from her falling out of her high chair.

The defense pathologist says those injuries could have occurred that way. So it is  a professional he said-she said. The prosecution's strategy is to attack the credibility of the pathologist. That is what my seatmate was hoping to do.

He indicated that her resume had some questionable entries and it was on those points that he was hoping to put into question her integrity as a witness.

I have no idea whether he succeeded or whether the pathologist was able to explain away the discrepencies.
He did tell me her name and gave me her website.

I will be checking in with her next week.