Pennsylvania Superior Court just ruled that letters written from a plaintiff’s attorney to her treating physician/expert witness are discoverable by the defense.  Such letters are protected by Pennsylvania’s “work product” doctrine, which would normally protect them from disclosure.  However, the court ruled that the defense should have a right to determine whether the plaintiff’s attorney put words in the expert’s mouth and the expert was merely parroting those words back.  In such a case, the  need for disclosure outweighs the need for the work product doctrine, according to the Court.   As a result, counsel should be extremely careful when drafting correspondence to an expert witness.  This applies just as much to the defense as it does to plaintiffs, as letters from defense counsel to their IME (Defense Medical Examination) expert are subject to the same attack.

We represent Jeffrey Leinheiser, the Jenkintown teenager who was convicted of Third Degree Murder for shooting his girlfriend’s abusive father in the head while he slept in his apartment.  Jeffrey was high on Robitussin DM, which contains an active ingredient commonly referred to as DXM.  Ingesting large quantities of DXM is known as “robotripping.”   Robotripping can result in visual and auditory hallucinations and symptoms very similar to those caused by PCP or ketamine (“special K”). 

Jeffrey has nothing left to prove, having won his trial on First Degree Murder charges.  He agreed that he was guilty of Third Degree Murder and chose not to take an appeal.  He was sentenced to 15-30 years in a Pennsylvania prison. 

Jeffrey’s only goal in this is to spread the word that robotripping can cause kids to do things they clearly would not otherwise do if sober.  The scary thing is that while there are tons of examples of kids who have done horrible things while “robotripping,”  and while nearly all high school kids are familiar with the term and its meaning, parents are almost universally unaware of it.  The disconnect is alarming.  Jeffrey has volunteered to help anyone who would like to get the word out on robotripping so that perhaps other tragic situations can be avoided.  He is willing to give interviews and even go on camera to discuss the effects of robotripping. 

Jeffrey’s addiction to robotripping was well documented at his trial.  He had eyewitness accounts of his usage of the drug, email and facebook references to his usage, and Abington Memorial Hospital records documenting his admission for an overdose on the drug, all long before the shooting.

Please feel free to contact Fairlie & Lippy, P.C. at www.fairlielaw.net if you can use Jeffrey’s help in getting the word out.

We hear over and over that someone is guilty of a particular crime because he confessed.  But has anyone ever examined the validity of those confessions?  The New York Times just ran a provocative article examining the validity of confessions and I think the conclusions will shock many people.  I know that when confronted with DNA exonerations in sex offenses many people suggest that the victim could have had sex with someone else earlier the same day so that if the defendant’s DNA is not recovered it does not exclude him.  While that can be a valid argument in certain cases, how do you account for the case of a man who confessed to killing a woman who he claimed was wearing a halter top when in fact she was wearing a sundress?  It turned out that initial police reports contained an erroneous reference to the victim wearing a halter top.  It only makes sense that the man made that mistake after it was repeatedly suggested to him that she was wearing a halter top until he finally broke down and agreed.  How else could you explain him choosing, in the entire use of women’s attire, the same article of clothing that the police report erroneously stated she was wearing?   Worse, this man suffered 18 years of imprisonment and came within hours of being executed before his criminal defense attorneys were able to exonerate him.  Read the full story, the conclusion, and all of the examples of false confessions at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/us/14confess.html?_r=1

We just posted on this issue, but already there has been another wrongful arrest based on mistaken identity.  Paolo Londono was arrested by the Broward County Sheriff’s Office Sunday as she disembarked from a Carnival Cruise ship with her husband and 9 month old son Nicholas.  She says that someone stole her identification in March and used it during an arrest for prostitution, possession of heroin, and drug paraphernalia. 

The issue can be cleared up by matching fingerprints taken during the March arrest to Paolo’s fingerprints, but because it is Labor Day weekend the authorities in charge of sending the prints to Broward County are not working until Tuesday.    She therefore has no chance of release until then.  Sheriff’s Office officials confirm that they must take into custody any person for whom there is a warrant until proof contrary to that assertion is obtained. 

Paolo’s family has hired a lawyer to help her due to the overwhelming embarrassment associated with the situation, the separation from her son and husband, and the fact that she suffers from high blood pressure and the prison did not immediately accept her medication to control the condition.  Hopefully this case has been or will be resolved shortly.

While most police officers would never lie to save a case, sometimes prosecutors imply in their closing arguments that jurors would be very gullible to believe that a police officer might ever lie.   Our argument is not that police lie, it is simply that you should not blindly accept all law enforcement testimony without examining it in the same common-sense fashion that you examine any other testimony.

Within the past several days three stories have surfaced that explode the presumption that all law enforcement testimony should be taken as gospel.  In the first, closest to Montgomery County, a Philadelphia police officer gave a statement in a murder investigation identifying the shooter that he saw on the scene.  He has since recanted and stated that it was too dark for him to see the shooter.  He cannot have it both ways – he either saw the shooter, whom he subsequently identified in a lineup, or he did not.  Sources close to the investigation have been quoted by The Philadelphia Inquirer as stating that the officer wanted to be more important, but backed off the identification when he learned that he was the only one who identified the shooter.  If that is true, then he lied just to become a crucial witness to a case he did not see.  As a result, the murderer is likely to be set free.  Read the Inquirer article on this case at: http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news_update/102208454.html?page=1&c=y.

The second recent case involves competing inconsistent confessions to the same murder.   A gruesome murder of a well liked couple in a midwestern neighborhood where people often leave their homes unlocked caused a tremendous stir, and likely resulted in pressure to solve the case quickly.  Police quickly obtained a confession to the murder, but there was no forensic evidence to back it up.  A well-known investigator was brought in as a hired gun to seal up the case, and he determined that investigators had missed a drop of blood in the getaway car.  The blood was tested and linked back to the crime scene, providing an airtight case of a confession and the corroborating DNA evidence.  Unfortunately for the well-known investigator, another investigator followed up another lead.    The killers had left a ring on the kitchen counter, and when the owner of the ring was located it turned out that the ring had been stolen, along with his vehicle, two days before the killing.  The car thiefs had been caught, and when interviewed one admitted to the murder.  The evidence had been planted by the investigator who was subsequently convicted of manufacturing evidence.  It is fascinating to watch law enforcement extract the confession from the innocent man and to then compare the confession of the actual murderer, and both are available on video at http://abcnews.go.com/2020/double-murder-sets-suspects-confessions-true/story?id=11515210.  The complete story according to ABC News is available at http://abcnews.go.com/2020/murder-mystery-killed-wayne-sharmon-stock/story?id=11523512&page=1.

The third recent case involving law enforcement credibility deals not with courtroom testimony, but instead with law enforcement records.  Dan Wheeler had his wallet stolen and the person then raped someone.   The rapist utilized Dan’s name as an alias at some point in time.   As a result, during a routine traffic stop the officer suddenly pulled his gun and took Dan into custody.  The police readily admit that Dan is not the rapist, yet they will not expunge the record of the alias under the theory that the rapist might use that alias again (it does not matter whether he’s been caught or is incarcerated).  Of course, a new crime might be committed tomorrow and the perpetrator might use my name as an alias, but we should not register it as an alias now.    We think it affects credibility when records are known to be erroneous but are not corrected.  Dan Wheeler should not be named as a sex offender if he is an innocent man.  Read more about Dan Wheeler’s plight at http://www.insideedition.com/news/4971/mistaken-identity-labels-innocent-man-a-sex-offender.aspx.