TERENCE MCADAM — Direct by Mr. Berneburg, May 11, 2004
Volume 24, page 1482
A. (Witness complies.)
Q. Do you recognize it? Both of these have labels
A. Yes. I recognize these. which have been punched through them. They’re the same numbers as previously stated.
MR. BERNEBURG: Move to admit 18.
MR. COSTELLO: No objection.
THE COURT: 18 will be admitted. (Exhibit No. 18 admitted.)
Q. (By Mr. Berneburg) How did these boots come to you? What was your understanding of these boots?
A. My information was these were purportedly from a Mr. Butters.
Q. Did you examine these boots for blood?
A. Yes, I did.
Q. Did you find any?
A. No, I did not.
Q. How did you examine these, visually?
A. I did these visually, yes.
Q. Did you use any other methods?
A. On these particulars, no.
Q. You examined them for blood. You could not find any on there. Was there any evidence those had been cleaned or
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recently polished?
A. These boots appeared to be —— they look to have the original polish on them. They look in fairly new condition.
Q. Even if they had been newly polished, you would have been able to find blood on them?
A. I could have if I had possibly taken some swabs and did some testing for blood find some. I in this particular case looked at the Visual of them with lighting and didn’t see any.
Q. You looked at them visually and with lighting?
A. Yes.
Q. That would be infrared lighting?
A. No. Just strong lighting.
Q. You examined them thoroughly and found no blood?
A. Yes.
Q. Did you examine the laces?
A. Yes.
Q. No blood?
A. No.
Q. The soles?
A. Yes.
Q. No blood on them either?
A. That’s correct.
Q. I’m going to show you what’s marked as Plaintiff’s Exhibit 19, also H-4.
Volume 24, page 1487
Q. Just that there was the presence of blood there?
A. Yes.
Q. How many spots or how much blood?
A. It was enough that I couldn’t see it visually. I’ve already testified here today, stains like a twenty-fifth of an inch. I look at them visually. Sometimes I look at it through a microscope, if I can see it and it’s twenty—fifth of an inch. The fact that I’m not seeing it at all means it’s very small.
MR. BERNEBURG: Move to admit number 20.
MR. COSTELLO: No objection.
THE COURT: Exhibit 20 will be admitted. (Exhibit No. 20 admitted.)
Q. (By Mr. Berneburg)_ Looking back at your report at items D—l, D—2, D—3, what can you tell us about, if anything, about the relative position —— excuse me. D—l and D—3 specifically, what can you tell us about the relative position of those pants, given the bloodstain evidence, to the source of that blood?
A. Okay. Beginning with D—l, as regards the source of the blood, I can say that the blood, when it was coming off that source, was traveling parallel to the ground when it struck that person wearing those pants.
Volume 24, page 1488
Q. That’s assuming that the person, that the source of the 2 blood was laying on the ground?
A. No. It’s not assuming that at all. It’s assuming that where the blood came from, it struck those pants when the blood is traveling parallel to the ground. It says nothing about the relative positions of both the suspect or the person doing the beating or whatever and the person receiving the beating.
Q. Okay. So all you can tell then from what you’re seeing here then is whoever was wearing those pants was somewhere close enough to the victim to receive a spatter of blood at 90 degrees?
A. That’s correct, yes.
Q. Is the same true then for D—3?
A. Yes, that is correct.
Q. Okay. When we think of blood flying through the air, is it like water, like when you stomp in a puddle, water comes out, and it goes out and it splashes, and some falls here, and some falls further out? Does it have the same characteristics?
A. Well, first of all, blood is a unique substance. It’s basically a solid dissolved in a liquid. It has very unique characteristics. When I’m doing stuff like this and examining, I do a lot, attend a lot of courses on it. A lot of it involves practical —— doing that. We take blood and
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throw it around and do those things. But some of the liquid characteristics you referred to such as water and stomping in puddles, some of those things, yes, you will see if you have a large pool of blood, you’ll get certainly blood radiating out from the source, yes.
Q. Okay. So whoever was wearing those pants, would it be fair to assume that the footwear would also have blood on it, given your training and experience and the way blood travels?
A. If they were, predominantly the blood is onto pants and, the blood is going horizontal, that’s usually the indication that blood is coming the direction, and the thing that is furthest down on those is on that person would be their shoes. So if I’m finding blood as I did here pretty close to the cuff on some of those pants, it could be that you would anticipate the shoes might have blood on them, but not necessarily so.
Q. Okay. When we see blood high up on the pants, we see blood high up on the jacket, we see it going all the way up to the hat, based on your training and experience, would it be fair to assume that there was something violent going on that was causing blood to fly out in different directions like that? Is that a fair conclusion to draw from this?
A. No. Actually, part of it is and part of it isn’t. You lumped them together, the blood that was on the jacket and the hat. First of all, the blood on the hat, I couldn’t see
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it, so I couldn’t make a call on that. The blood on the jacket was in the form of smears. Really, the only thing I can talk about is blood, as any violence going on, the blood projected from a source, a person. The only value of that would be the blood I saw on the two pants.
Q. The two pants, you know that blood was flying through the air and striking those?
A. Correct.
Q. You cannot say that about the blood on the jacket and the hat?
A. That’s correct. You can confirm the presence of blood on the jacket and hat, but not how it got there.
Q. Is it possible that the blood at one time was projected, airborne and rubbed as an appearance of a smear and started out as an airborne deposition?
A. It could be. The definition of a smear I’ve given is bloodstain that is, as the term applies, smeared. You’re removing a lot of information I would use to describe whether something is airborne or not.
Q. Okay. .Going back to the boots. You said you used a visual inspection. Did you use a magnifying glass or anything to aid your viewing of the boots?
A. Yes, I did. We haven’t used magnifying glasses. We used microscopic scopes. They’re rolling scopes, which they’re microscopes you can roll around on a stand. I did
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use that to look at the boots.
Q. In doing that, you were able to examine the entire boot, the entire surface?
A. That’s correct.
Q. Were you able to examine the laces?
A. Yes
Q. You were able to examine the soles?
A. Yes.
Q. You examined this whole thing with —— what did you call it?
A. The rolling scope.
Q. You looked at right boot and left boot?
A. Yes.
Q. No blood on either boot?
A. No.
Q. Had there been blood there, is it safe to assume you’d found it?
A. In my experience and training, I‘ve looked at many 19 boots with blood on them. Visually_I would anticipate I would see it with those conditions.
MR. BERNEBURG: Thanks. No further questions.
MR. COSTELLO: Is this a good point for a recess?
THE COURT: ‘We can probably take a recess at this point in time. Ladies and gentlemen, why don’t we take a 15-minute recess?
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