Forensic Pathologist Testifies in Police Disciplinary Case

Andy Goldbaum Forensics Mr. Ippolito CE #6

Witte, Brian. “Forensic Pathologist Testifies in Police Disciplinary Case.” Forensic Magazine, © Copyright 2017 Advantage Business Media, 6 Nov. 2017, www.forensicmag.com/news/2017/11/forensic-pathologist-testifies-police-disciplinary-case.

In “Forensic Pathologist Testifies in Police Disciplinary Case” by Brian Witte of Associated Press, Baltimore police officer Caesar Goodson was accused of failing to follow police policy when he did not buckle Freddie Gray in with a seatbelt while arresting him and placing him in a police van, and Gray hit his head on the ceiling of the car during the ride to the police station and ended up fatally injuring his spinal chord in April of 2015. This being seen as an example of police brutality sparked riots and protests across Baltimore upon Gray’s death in the hospital.  Forensic pathologist Dr. Jonathan Alden Gray testified in Goodson’s trial a year later that Gray would have still hit his head on the wall of the van even if he had not been wearing a seatbelt at the time; however, the police department, who believed that Goodson was negligent and deserved to be fired, hired the prosecuting attorney Neil Duke who was allowed to question in court whether Alden’s expertise in pathology extended to the use of seatbelts. On top of this, Duke made a compelling case against Goodson: even though Gray’s aggression during the arrest prompted officer Goodson not to buckle him in, Duke stated that Goodson did not get medical attention earlier during the drive; confirmed that the injury would have been avoided had Gray been hospitalized; cited a medical examiner’s report that claimed the injury took place as early as between the second and fourth stop as well as ruling Gray’s death as a homicide; and claimed that Gray was in dire need of care when Goodson and the other officer checked on him. Dr. Alden’s rebuttal was that hospitalization would have had “no effect whatsoever” because the injury occurred later on, and the evidence was “overwhelming” in that the injury occurred later than the second and fourth stop. Despite Duke’s compelling case against Officer Goodson and the fact that Dr. Alden was even forced to resign as DC’s medical examiner in 2013 due to “operational deficiencies” and accusations of sexual harassment, Goodson was acquitted of all of his charges largely because Dr. Alden’s position of forensic pathologist swayed the court to accept him as an expert witness.

This case is indicative of a fundamental problem in the justice system: the label of “expert witness” is essentially a tenured position. Once someone is deemed an expert witness in a court case, it is very difficult to undo that decision. This poses a problem in a case like this because not only may a forensic pathologist not be qualified on the issue of whether to use a seatbelt, since they deal more with using indicators like toxins or bullets in the body to determine the cause of a death rather than to describe whether a specific practice like using a seatbelt could have led to a death, but it was clear that his trustworthiness as an expert should be questioned after he was fired from his last job for negligence and temperamental issues and yet he was still taken just as seriously because the position of “expert witness” is highly prestigious in its own right. The problem with any government-run institution is that its lack of inclusion in the competitive free market allows public sector workers to escape accountability. In any forensic field, this lack of accountability manifests itself in how difficult it is to remove the status of “expert witness” from someone even if this person would have felt immediate consequences for his/her actions in a private sector job. Just as the government takes action to make sure that our labs and other facilities are the best in the world, the government needs to pay attention to flaws in the system to make sure forensic workers are accountable and therefore the best in the field.

Overall, Witte’s article is well-written. The information is presented chronologically, and it is easy to follow what the positions are of both sides in the case despite a lot of different elements of the crime being examined (ie debate on the use of the seatbelt, medical attention at various times, when the injury happened). However, I would have preferred if Witte included analysis of whether it was appropriate to trust Alden as an expert witness in this case. I know this was strictly a “report” of what happened, but because this was on a forensics publication, raising an issue related to the “forensics” aspect of the article (expert witnesses) would have been more appropriate.