Posted on 06/25/2002 9:30:26 AM PDT by FresnoDA
SAN DIEGO ---- A police criminalist testified Monday that tiny pieces of evidence ---- hairs and carpet fibers ---- found in David Westerfield's house and motor home could link the Sabre Springs man to Danielle van Dam, the 7-year-old neighbor he is accused of kidnapping and murdering.
Tanya DuLaney, a trace evidence analyst with the San Diego Police Department, said blonde hairs, dog hairs and tan carpet fibers found on Westerfield's property were similar to Danielle's hair, the short brown-gray fur of the van Dam family dog and Danielle's bedroom carpet.
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DuLaney said she could not make a 100 percent match of the hair and fiber evidence.
Westerfield, 50, could face the death penalty if convicted of kidnapping and murdering Danielle. The young girl was reported missing Feb. 2. Her nude and decomposing body was found nearly four weeks later in rural East County.
Westerfield, a twice-divorced design engineer, kept his hands clasped in front of him during Monday's proceedings, occasionally writing notes and consulting with his attorneys.
Danielle's mother, Brenda van Dam, attended the entire hearing. The van Dams live two doors down the street from Westerfield and were passing acquaintances with him. Damon van Dam sat with his wife during the morning session.
Day 12 of Westerfield's trial was dominated by the hair and fiber testimony of DuLaney, who told jurors that light brown-blonde hairs found in Westerfield's motor home and house were similar to Danielle's hair in color, length, diameter. Westerfield has short, dark hair.
Jurors heard testimony that DNA evidence will show Danielle could have left the blonde hairs found on sheets and pillow cases taken from Westerfield's master bedroom ---- the first possible evidence placing the second-grader upstairs in his home.
"They could have come from Danielle van Dam," DuLaney said of tests performed on the hairs. "All six of them."
Further testimony on the hair samples is expected today or later this week when prosecutors are expected to wrap up their side of the case.
Meanwhile, Westerfield's defense attorney, Steven Feldman, focused on what didn't match, having DuLaney go over hair after hair found in the motor home ---- some brown and others color-treated blonde ---- which were determined not to be Danielle's because of color, length or dye.
Earlier in the trial, Brenda van Dam testified her daughter's hair was never dyed and Danielle had a haircut about a week before she disappeared. Van Dam also had testified she took Danielle to Westerfield's house to sell Girl Scout cookies a few days before Danielle disappeared. She testified her daughter went into the house briefly, but did not go upstairs.
The tedium of the fiber and hair testimony prompted Judge William Mudd to give jurors an extra long afternoon break.
Feldman followed the same line of questioning with the carpet fibers, asking about fibers that didn't match. He called attention to a lack of physical evidence putting Danielle in Westerfield's black Toyota 4Runner, the car Westerfield drove when he went to get his motor home on Feb. 2 ---- the morning Danielle was discovered missing.
None of Danielle's hair or blood was found in the vehicle, another police criminalist, David Cornacchia, testified. Nor were any of the carpet fibers lifted from the soles of Westerfield's 25 pairs of shoes similar to Danielle's bedroom carpet, DuLaney said.
Also on Monday, DuLaney told jurors about finding five carpet fibers in Westerfield's motor home that were similar in size and shape to Danielle's bedroom carpet.
She showed jurors enlarged pictures, showing the fibers side by side with those from Danielle's bedroom and magnified 400 times, to illustrate how the fibers were consistent.
Under questioning from Feldman, Westerfield's defense attorney, DuLaney said it was possible that many houses in a development like the Sabre Springs neighborhood where the van Dams and Westerfield lived could have the same carpet.
She also talked about dog hairs found in dryer lint thrown away in Westerfield's garage. More hair was found in the hallway carpet of his motor home, on a bath mat in the motor home and on a white towel. Those hairs were consistent with the hair on van Dam's dog, Leyla, DuLaney testified. Westerfield does not have a dog.
Brenda van Dam testified earlier in the trial that her daughter would often roll around with Leyla, especially after she had changed into her pajamas before going to bed.
While the dog hair found in Westerfield's house and motor home had the unusual pigment formations found in Leyla's hair, DuLaney said she could only say the hairs were similar, not exact matches.
Attempts to perform DNA tests on the hair were unsuccessful, said Holly Ernest, director of the UC Davis veterinary genetics lab. She briefly testified that there was not enough DNA on the dog hair sent to the university for testing to determine whether it belonged to Leyla.
Feldman did not ask Ernest any questions.
Testimony in the case continues today.
Contact staff writer Kimberly Epler at (760) 739-6644 or kepler@nctimes.com.
6/25/02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A62639-2002Apr16¬Found=true
The Supreme Court struck down a federal ban on "virtual" child pornography yesterday, holding that the law was so broadly worded it would suppress not only images that harm children but also legitimate artistic or political expression.
"But the Supreme Court said yesterday that virtual images of children engaged in sex, or of youthful-looking adults posing as minors, are neither produced by exploiting actual children nor necessarily meet the court's definition of obscenity. The government's argument that such images would fuel the demand for real child porn or indirectly promote pedophilia was "contingent and indirect," Kennedy wrote. "
This is interesting..
At a time when federal law permitted such conduct, petitioner Jacobson ordered and received from a bookstore two Bare Boys magazines containing photographs of nude preteen and teenage boys. Subsequently, the Child Protection Act of 1984 made illegal the receipt through the mails of sexually explicit depictions of children. After finding Jacobson's name on the bookstore mailing list, two Government agencies sent mail to him through five fictitious organizations and a bogus pen pal, to explore his willingness to break the law. Many of those organizations represented that they were founded to protect and promote sexual freedom and freedom of choice, and that they promoted lobbying efforts through catalog sales. Some mailings raised the spectre of censorship. Jacobson responded to some of the correspondence. After 2 1/2 years on the Government mailing list, Jacobson was solicited to order child pornography.
Nope.
"Pictures of what appear to be a 17-year-old engaging in sexually explicit activity do not in every case contravene community standards," the court said.
"The (Act) also prohibits speech having serious redeeming value, proscribing the visual depiction of an idea -- that of teenagers engaging in sexual activity -- that is a fact of modern society and has been a theme in art and literature for centuries."
The opinion cited several artistically significant instances in which teenage sex was portrayed, including William Shakespeare's play "Romeo & Juliet," and the recent movies "Traffic" and "American Beauty."
Kennedy was joined by justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer. Clarence Thomas wrote a separate opinion agreeing with their conclusion.
ALSO: Apparently Westerfield's brother is hanging out at the bar and looks strikingly similar to David Westerfield. Strange....
I wonder if anyone else would volunteer to go to Dad'd Family Steakhouse and check it out? I live about 5 miles away and would NOT be caught dead in the place!!!
Please don't mis-read the tone in this question because I honestly didn't hear the trial this afternoon.
What did Feldman say that misled the jury?
Well, I am in AZ so can't go, but I heard one of the jurors is having a class reunion there and the judge was going to allow him/her to attend (perhaps the event has happened already). A place that would be chosen for a HS reunion sounds pretty normal to me.
Capitol Hill (CNSNews.com) - The House of Representatives Tuesday passed legislation designed to "unshackle prosecutors" to again pursue criminal charges against anyone found in possession of child pornography.
The Child Obscenity and Pornography Prevention Act, H.R. 4623, is a direct response to the Supreme Court's April 16 decision in the Ashcroft vs. Free Speech Coalition case. As CNSNews. com previously reported, the court ruled 6-to-3 that the law banning "virtual child pornography" (computer-generated images depicting children who do not exist) was unconstitutionally broad and could be used to prohibit "speech" containing serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
Under the ruling, federal prosecutors would have to identify and locate children used in the production of child pornography, and prove that they were under age at the time the pornography was produced in order to obtain a conviction. The Justice Department argued that - pun intended - it would be "virtually impossible" to convict child molesting pornographers under those conditions.
Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, also warned that, left unanswered, the ruling would have dire consequences.
"Child pornography is a cancer on society," he said Tuesday. "We firmly believe that the impact of the decision in Ashcroft vs. the Free Speech Coalition will be to create a proliferation of child pornography in this country unlike anything we've seen in the past 25 years."
I am confused. If they weren't planning to show the worst scenes, what did they show today? Looks like they picked the worst to me, the ones with the most emotional appeal, the ones that in particular would apply to this case.
After all the sex with animals ones wouldn't prove too much against DW.
- Create a computer-generated (or altered) visual depiction that appears "virtually indistinguishable" from an image of a minor engaging in specified sexually explicit conduct;
- Offer, agree, attempt, or conspire to provide, sell, receive, or purchase a visual depiction of a minor engaging in such conduct;
- Produce, distribute, receive, or possess with intent to distribute or possess a visual depiction that is, or is virtually indistinguishable from, that of a pre-pubescent child engaging in such conduct;
- Show a minor obscene material or child pornography;
- Provide obscene material, child pornography, or other material assistance to facilitate offenses against minors; or
- Employ or coerce a minor to engage in sexually explicit conduct outside of the United States for the purpose of producing a visual depiction of such conduct.
They log (and save) your connect time & IP for billing and crack attempts. Also keep mail logs to track spammers
If they have to, then they could log your web traffic. But it would be a waste of time and effort unless there was a court order.
Judge Mudd told Feldman that they had hearings about the porn and they had agreed to limit images to show jury. Then Feldman represented to the jury that what was shown to them was all that was found. That is NOT the case and the Judge just ruled that Feldman opened the door and the prosecution gets to show and tell the jury just how much and what was found. They had limited it to avoid prejudicing the jury----Mudd just directed prosecutor to mark them for the record and they're all admissable.
Thanks for the clarification. How many images did Feldman say there was, and how many are there really?
IMO, possessing just what was shown to the jury today and keeping it memorialized on cd or disk is bad all by itself. (I don't know if you heard descriptions. I don't want to repeat it, but you can find it in some of my and others' earlier posts)
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