Canton Coverup Part 451: Hank Brennan Doesn’t Want Highly Qualified Doctor To Testify About Dog Bites On John O’Keefe’s Arm

 

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Hank Brennan agreed to take on a loser case against Karen Read that has almost no chance of succeeding. Since the Commonwealth failed in their first attempt to lynch Read, Brennan has been desperate to find some sort of new angle that wasn’t tried in the first trial. His first bright idea was to accuse her parents of covering up the murder, make them witnesses, and get their cell phone records. When that failed (the Rule 17 motion for their phones was denied) Spanky came up with the new idea of preventing one of Read’s highly qualified witnesses from testifying in Trial 2 – Dr. Marie Russell.

Dr. Russell is a retired ER physician and forensic pathologist. She went to MIT, was a Malden Police Officer with specialized training in hit and run accidents, published books on dog bites, and several peer reviewed papers. Lally was exceptionally rude to her, frequently interrupting her during questioning and getting admonished by Auntie Bev in the process.

Dr. Russell lives in Los Angeles and saw headlines in the Boston Globe about a murder case in Massachusetts in which the defense alleged that the victim was covered in dog bites. She believed that the autopsy photos of John O’Keefe looked like dog bites, spoke about it with a friend who was a prosecutor, and that friend put her in contact with Alan Jackson. She reviewed all of the relevant material in the case, including the UC Davis report that there was no dog DNA on John’s clothing, and reached the conclusion that he was bit by a “large dog.” The best Adam Lally could do to discredit her was grill her on the length of her Boston Globe subscription, and he even screwed that up.

In order to prevent her from testifying, Hank Brennan filed a motion yesterday arguing that she hadn’t proven her reliability in the first trial. However, both Lally and Judge Cannone already grilled Dr. Russell during a voir dire, in which Read had to fly Dr. Russell and two other experts to Massachusetts at her expense, in order to prove to the court that they are qualified. Keep in mind, these are the same people who blindly took the word of Joseph Paul as an expert.

Brennan accuses Dr. Russell of reaching her conclusion about dog bites in spite of the fact that there was “no canine DNA associated with the swabs taken from the area of the victim’s clothing.”

Except we have no idea if John’s clothing was actually tested. Michael Proctor mailed a sample swab on a q-tip to the UC Davis lab, which he claims came from O’Keefe’s shirt. But Michael Proctor is a pathological liar with no credibility, so we have no idea if he actually did that. What we do know is that the Commonwealth did not preserve any tissue samples from O’Keefe’s arm.

Additionally, there were puncture marks all over John’s sleeve in the shape of dog teeth.

Brennan is upset that her opinion on the dog bites didn’t change based on the DNA test results. But why would it? She knows what dog bites look like, so the results of a DNA test that she wasn’t present for would have no bearing on her conclusion.

Brennan seemed to prove her point for her when he put in his motion that Dr. Russell conceded that the bites were not from a law enforcement canine, because the dog didn’t bite and hold.

This is the exact same conclusion reached by expert Garrett Wing, who said with 100% certainty that the bites were from an untrained dog. According to him a dog like Chloe would be excited during a fight and would attack a stranger in its home. A dog like Chloe wouldn’t latch onto O’Keefe’s arm because they weren’t trained to do so. Instead she would bite down on O’Keefe, and when he moved his arm the teeth would tear into his skin causing linear gashing.

This is exactly O’Keefe’s wounds looked like. Critics who know nothing about dog bites have suggested that the cuts are not from a canine because there are no bottom teeth. But Dr. Russell had an explanation for that, and pointed out that one of the bites showed upper and lower teeth marks.

Now Spanky wants to force Dr. Russell to fly to Massachusetts again and prove that she is a reliable expert to testify on dog bites. This time he’s given her a list of questions and some homework assignments. He demands to know the species of the dog, and whether each mark on John’s arm is a bite or a scratch.

Obviously she can’t identify the species of the dog just by looking at a picture of his arm, but it will be easier for her to do the latter.

He also wants her to explain the reason she reached her conclusions, produce any reports she wrote about the case, any materials she reviewed, and document her travel expenses that Read has to pay for.

Ya got that? They’re forcing Read to pay to fly and house this woman 4 times, and then they’re insinuating that this means that Dr. Russell is bought and paid for by the defense.

Brennan also wants Dr. Russell to explain how she quantified the number of previous dog bite cases she has treated, which she estimated were between 500-1000 cases when she testified in June. He also wants a list of every case she has ever testified in.

You know that Spanky is struggling if this is the best he can come up with. Someone should probably explain to him what the word “estimate” means.

Dr. Russell will pass this test with flying colors, but it’s yet another example of how Read is treated unfairly by the court. The Commonwealth can pretend that incompetent morons like Nicholas Guarino and Joseph Paul, and pathological liars like Proctor and Bukkake, are reliable expert witnesses. None of them need to prove anything to the court. But respected doctors like Marie Russell don’t get the same benefit of the doubt.

Let’s hope that Read’s defense team also gives Garrett Wing a call, because I think it would be safe to say that he would completely own Spanky on cross examination.

P.S. All the Commonwealth has to do to shut everyone up about the dog bites is produce Chloe, who they insist is alive somewhere in a state that borders Massachusetts.