July 23, 2009

 

OWEGO-- The highly anticipated, somewhat controversial, blood expert takes the stand in the Calvin Harris murder retrial.
     The courtroom was packed to hear Dr. Henry Lee's scientific opinion in the Tioga County case.
     Dr. Lee has testified in several highly publicized trials and has been called the 'father of blood splatter analysis.'
     His analysis has help solved crimes, but will it be enough in a case with no body, witnesses, or weapon?
     Dr. Lee puts blood splatter in 3 categories, low, medium and high velocity. High would be from a gunshot wound, low maybe a cut on your finger. Lee says there was too much blood found in the Harris home for it to be from a finger cut.
     “Basically we know it's not a gun shot, know its not from a gravity force, so it has to be something with an impact force to create that medium velocity; as far as what kind of force, we don’t know,” Lee said.
     Lee emphasized to the jury Thursday, his opinion is based solely on photos taken by state police a few days after Michele Harris disappeared.
     But based on the color of the blood, he says it looks recent.
     That’s as specific as the judge would allow Lee to get; in the first Harris trial, Lee estimated the blood was a few days old.
     But this time around, he can only categorize bloodstains as "fresh", "recent", or "old"
     His description of "recent" means the stains are more than a few hours old, but not as dark as blood looks after weeks or months.
     Defense attorneys claim the use of a flash and the color of the surface can also make blood appear different in pictures.
     Lee agreed to an extent, but explained he was drawing a conclusion from comparing pictures to pictures and he is confident in his results.
     Calvin Harris' lawyers tried to discredit Lee.
     They brought up accusations of tampering with evidence in a recent Hollywood trial.
     Lee countered by saying those claims were lies from people trying to smear his reputation.
     Lee was on the stand for more than three hours. The defense hopes to call their key witness, Kevin Tubbs, early next week.
     Kevin Tubbs is the man who came forward at Harris' last trial just before sentencing, and claimed he saw Michele Harris after prosecutors claim she was killed.