Expert Witness Undisciplined
By Elizabeth Roberts
The Court of Appeal judges who quashed the murder conviction of a man who killed his baby daughter, heavily criticised the way a Florida paediatrician gave evidence in an �unduly theatrical and undisciplined� manner.
Karim Salahuddin was convicted in October 2004 of murdering his six-month-old daughter Cassidy after a jury found that he had shaken her violently on May 5 2003, causing her to suffer a brain injury.
The 21-year-old defendant, of Serpentine Road, Pembroke, appealed against that conviction, having maintained at his trial that he had slipped and fallen, dropping his daughter by accident. Last month at the appeal, his defence team asked for leave to present fresh evidence which contradicted the conventional view of �shaken baby syndrome�.
They criticised the trial judge, Chief Justice Richard Ground, for the way that he directed the jury and handled witnesses, and also criticised the way evidence was given by paediatrician Dr. Randall Alexander, a witness for the crown.
The three judges who heard the appeal, Justices Sir Anthony Evans, Austin Ward and Sir Charles Mantell quashed the murder conviction and mandatory sentence of life imprisonment that had previously been handed to Salahuddin, and replaced this with a ten-year sentence.
Giving their reasons for this in a written judgement released yesterday, they rejected the criticism put forward by the defence of the way the Chief Justice acted during the trial.
But they did accept the defence argument in relation to the behaviour of Dr. Randall Alexander, and cited this as their reason for reducing the murder conviction to one of manslaughter.
Dr. Alexander had, while in the witness box, used a plastic doll to illustrate his evidence. He shook the doll violently, before smacking its head down on the witness box, and is said to have then turned the doll over and done the same to the other side of its head.
The judges said that the manner in which this �highly disturbing� evidence was presented �came as a complete surprise to the Chief Justice�.
They said that it had been of critical importance in the trial as it went directly to the question of whether Salahuddin intended to kill his daughter or not.
�Anyone who used the degree of violence demonstrated by Dr. Alexander against a six-month-old child could only have intended to cause at least really serious harm. It no doubt formed the basis of the jury�s decision to convict of murder rather than manslaughter,� said the judges.
�We think that Dr. Alexander was wrong to act as he did. It was his duty to give evidence in the least emotive way possible, particularly in a case such as this where feelings were likely to run high. His performance was, to say the least, unduly theatrical and undisciplined.�
The judges also found that Dr. Alexander�s evidence was out of line with evidence received by the Court of Appeal in England which has accepted that a much lesser degree of force than that illustrated by him is all that is required to produce a non-accidental head injury to a child.
However, they rejected an application from the defence to call fresh evidence challenging the conventional diagnosis of �shaken baby syndrome� as they said this would not have made any difference to their manslaughter ruling.
http://www.theroyalgazette.com/siftology.royalgazette/Article/article.jsp?articleId=7d5c19230030014
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