Expert Witness

A veteran movie stunt pilot testified Wednesday that if he had been subjected to special-effects explosives similar to those detonated in the sequence preceding the fatal "Twilight Zone" crash, "I'd take my helicopter and go home."

Rick Dutrow, who trained Big Brown to Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes wins in 2008, has filed a federal lawsuit seekng to overturn his 10-year ban from thoroughbred racing in New York for drug violations. The lawsuit, filed in Brooklyn, says Dutrow has been “irreparably harmed” by the New York State Racing and Wagering Board. He wants $10 million in damages for lost earnings, punitive damages and an order lifting the ban. “Any and every horse Dutrow becomes involved with during the 10 years his license is revoked … disqualifies the horse from any racetrack throughout New York state,” the civil court complaint says.

A UCLA finance professor testified Friday that he believed that Walt Disney Co. directors paid "greenmail" to corporate raider Saul P. Steinberg in 1984 and that the transaction was not in the best interests of the company and its stockholders. Prof. Bradford Cornell was an expert witness for former Disney stockholders in a 2-week-old jury trial in Los Angeles Superior Court.

An expert witness for those suing BP over the nation's worst environmental disaster criticized the company's investigation of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico as the civil trial entered its second day. UC Berkeley engineering professor Robert Bea was the first witness in the day's proceedings and told the federal court in New Orleans that BP management's role was not examined. He argued that the company's own investigation of the 2010 spill failed to look at systemic causes, which would include management's actions and the company's cost-cutting culture.

Their faces are etched in his memory. Sometimes they appear in his dreams: gangbangers he has saved from the death penalty, those he's put behind bars and the wrongly accused who have been freed based on his testimony. From his lost days as a teenage dice hustler on the streets of New Jersey to working inside juvenile detention centers, in jails and behind a professor's lectern for 31 years at Cal State Northridge, Lewis Yablonsky has devoted a half-century of his life to understanding gangs.

Phil Spector's murder defense began three months ago with a vow by attorney Linda Kenney Baden to produce an "unimpeachable witness" with "no motive to lie for or against any person." The witness would have "no memory problems ... no language problems," she told the jury. "That witness," she said, "is called science." But now, with the defense case all but completed, its science experts have proved as open to attack as any other witnesses.

A marriage and family counselor hired to testify in the second murder trial of Elisabeth Anne (Betty) Broderick said Wednesday that he and Broderick's attorney agreed to withdraw his testimony, which he said had been so restricted that it had "lost its meaning." Daniel J. Sonkin, who has a private practice in Sausalito, Calif., and who often testifies as a paid expert witness specializing in family violence, made his remarks at a press conference outside the courtroom Wednesday morning.

A forensic pathologist who is a key defense witness in the manslaughter trial of Betty Young Davies testified Thursday that he has doubts about his own competence and that he erred in his findings in another Orange County murder trial. "Didn't you state in a prior court proceeding that your work on that case could be classified as 'sloppy pathology?' " Deputy Dist. Atty. Lew Rosenblum asked in a scathing cross-examination of Dr. Irving Root.

Douglas Carmichael, chief auditor for the new board that oversees the U.S. accounting industry, said Tuesday that he will testify as an expert witness in lawsuits against major accounting firms only if he is subpoenaed to appear. Carmichael was hired as an expert witness in several cases when he was an accounting professor at New York's Baruch College. He joined the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board in April and has five cases active in which he might be called to testify.

As personal ads go, they're not very sultry: no busty blonds, no wealthy widowers, no soulful singles seeking companionship. These pick-up lines lean toward the dry and technical: "Author of 'The Slip and Fall Handbook,' " or "Extremely competent tile & natural stone problem investigations." Though they're drab, they serve their matchmaking purpose well. After all, lawyers who scan these ads on the back pages of trade journals aren't looking for lovers.

Through three decades of fevered tabloid speculation and whispers of a deeper story, the official account never changed: Natalie Wood drowned accidentally. The 43-year-old star of "West Side Story," who couldn't swim, had been drinking the night before she was found floating face-down in frigid waters off Santa Catalina Island. When the L.A. County Sheriff's Department reopened the case in November 2011, around the 30th anniversary of her death, skeptics questioned the timing and doubted whether there was anything new to be learned.

As the defense heads into what is expected to be its last day of presenting testimony, jurors will get an answer to a question that has been floating around the trial since the first day of jury selection about two weeks ago: Will Jerry Sandusky take the stand in his defense? Defense attorney Joe Amendola hinted in his opening statement that Sandusky, a former assistant football coach at Penn State, might testify. Some media reports indicate that Sandusky will testify, even though it will probably open him up to a difficult cross-examination.

The defense in the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse trial rested Wednesday morning without calling the former Penn State football coach to the witness stand. In its opening statements, his lawyers had hinted that they would allow Sandusky to take the stand in his own defense. But after a closed-door meeting with Judge John Cleland, the defense returned to the courtroom and announced it was resting its case in the third day. It had been unclear whether Sandusky would testify because he would likely be subjected to a forceful cross-examination by the prosecution.

Dottie Sandusky insisted in court Tuesday that she never saw her husband Jerry do anything inappropriate with any child and rebutted two accounts that the former Penn State football coach had sexually abused two young boys. Dottie Sandusky's testimony was the highlight in Tuesday's proceedings as lawyers continued to build their defense of Sandusky, 68, charged with 51 counts of abusing 10 boys over a 15-year period. The defense, which is expected to conclude its presentation perhaps as soon as Wednesday, brought in witnesses who testified favorably about Sandusky's character.

A federal trial on same-sex marriage focused Wednesday on the similarities and differences between homosexual and heterosexual couples, with a psychology professor citing "remarkable similarities." Letitia Peplau, an expert on couple relationships, testified that studies have found that the quality of heterosexual and homosexual relationships was on average "the same" as measured by closeness, love and stability. "On average, same-sex couples and heterosexual couples are indistinguishable," said Peplau, a UCLA professor of social psychology called by attorneys for two same-sex couples who are trying to overturn Proposition 8, the 2008 voter initiative that reinstated a state ban on same-sex marriage.

At Phil Spector's murder trial last week, Deputy Dist. Atty. Alan Jackson flatly dismissed the testimony of a series of experts for the defense, calling them "pay-to-say" witnesses who received more than $400,000 in return for doing just what was expected of them. "How does a homicide become a suicide? You write a big, fat check," Jackson told jurors. "If you can't change the science, you buy the scientist." That's a standard argument in courtrooms across America.

An expert witness delivered the most dramatic and potentially damaging testimony against the defense at the Mapplethorpe obscenity trial Thursday when she compared two of the photographs at issue to child pornography and said none are fit to hang in an art museum. Judith Reisman, a mass media researcher with links to anti-pornography groups, contradicted the testimony of other arts experts who extolled the late Robert Mapplethorpe as one of the most important photographers of his time.

In his closing argument last week in the murder trial of pop music legend Phil Spector, prosecutor Alan Jackson encouraged jurors to ignore the experts who testified for the defense because, he said, "if you hire enough lawyers who hire enough experts who are paid enough money, you can get them to say anything." He went on to inform the jury that "Phil Spector thinks if he throws enough money at a problem, he can solve the problem."

Phil Spector's murder defense began three months ago with a vow by attorney Linda Kenney Baden to produce an "unimpeachable witness" with "no motive to lie for or against any person." The witness would have "no memory problems ... no language problems," she told the jury. "That witness," she said, "is called science." But now, with the defense case all but completed, its science experts have proved as open to attack as any other witnesses.