Jury appears weary of sparring by insect experts
Last defense witness may testify Tuesday
By Kristen Green
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
August 2, 2002
Jurors in the David Westerfield trial rolled their eyes, sighed loudly and slumped in apparent exasperation as the fourth bug expert in the case testified yesterday.
But they may be done with insects.
Entomologist Robert D. Hall, an associate vice provost at the University of Missouri, might have been the last witness in the case. At most, the jury will sit through one more scientist's testimony.
The defense may call a forensic anthropologist as its final witness Tuesday. If lead defense attorney Steven Feldman decides not to summon the witness, Judge William Mudd will instruct jurors on legal issues and the prosecution will begin its closing arguments.
Until yesterday, the jury of 12 jurors and six alternates listened attentively to eight weeks of evidence in the capital murder case. Westerfield, 50, is being tried on charges he kidnapped and killed his 7-year-old neighbor, Danielle van Dam.
Prosecutor Jeff Dusek became increasingly testy with Hall as the afternoon progressed. Several jurors appeared disgruntled after Hall repeatedly asked if he'd understood Dusek's questions correctly, and then refused to directly answer them.
Soon after a few jurors let out audible sighs, Dusek ended his questioning.
The condition of Danielle's body has become a key issue in the case, with the defense claiming the insect evidence makes it impossible for Westerfield to have committed the crimes.
Hall testified that insects had access to Danielle van Dam's body between Feb. 12 and Feb. 23.
The girl was reported missing by her parents Feb. 2, after her mother went to wake her and found she wasn't in bed. Her nude body was discovered 25 days later off rural Dehesa Road in East County.
Westerfield's lawyers are trying to show their client couldn't have dumped the 7-year-old's body because he became a suspect by Feb. 5 and was under constant police surveillance.
Hall said insects are "extremely resilient" to drought, calling into question earlier testimony by prosecution witnesses that low fly populations might have affected the number of insects found on her body.
|
And Hall said ants were incapable of carrying off all the fly eggs and maggots that would have infested Danielle's body, countering the prosecution's theory that ants carried off earlier generations of flies that laid eggs on the girl's body.
If ants were that effective, he said, we'd no longer have flies.
But under cross-examination by Dusek, Hall acknowledged that the insect infestation of the corpse wasn't "typical" because so few maggots were found in the girl's head.
Dusek peppered Hall with questions about why his calculations were compiled through a method less favorable to the prosecution. And Dusek also asked Hall why he criticized the findings of an entomologist hired by the prosecution, but not one hired by the defense.
When Dusek asked Hall about whether the body could have been mummified enough that it wouldn't have attracted flies, Hall said a partially dried body would still have places that flies could survive.
Bugs will arrive on the body within minutes to hours of when it's left outside, he said.
His findings are most similar to those of Indiana entomologist Neal Haskell, who testified for the defense that flies laid eggs on the girl's body between Feb. 14 and Feb. 21.
Another defense witness, San Diego entomologist David Faulkner, estimated Danielle's body was invaded between Feb. 16 and Feb. 18.
M. Lee Goff, who testified for the prosecution, said her body could have been available to bugs in early February.
The entomologists' findings vary widely, and they have occasionally taken shots at each other's calculations.
Goff, an entomology professor at Chaminade University of Honolulu, criticized the methodology Haskell used. And yesterday Hall criticized Goff's calculations, which Goff admitted under cross-examination Tuesday contained five errors.