By Harriet Ryan
Court TV
April 27, 2006
http://www.courttv.com/trials/priest/042606_ctv.html
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| A bloodstain expert told jurors Wednesday that this letter opener matched markings on a dead nun's body. |
TOLEDO, Ohio — A bloody imprint of the U.S. Capitol connects a Catholic priest to the scene of a nun's murder, a prosecution witness testified Wednesday.
An expert in bloodstain analysis told jurors that a faint, dime-sized stain on an altar cloth covering the victim's body matches an outline of the domed building on a medallion affixed to the priest's letter opener.
Prosecutors contend the Rev. Gerald Robinson used the dagger-shaped opener to stab Sr. Margaret Ann Pahl in a hospital chapel in 1980.
Paulette Sutton, the director of investigations at the University of Tennessee at Memphis, said it was highly unlikely the mark came from anything other than the letter opener, a souvenir from a wax museum in Washington, D.C., that Robinson kept in his desk drawer.
"If another object made it, it would have to basically be the same shape, same size and same configuration," Sutton told jurors.
Cold case investigators arrested Robinson, the hospital chaplain, after a detective reexamining the cloth observed several stains similar to the letter opener's blade and handle and sent the evidence to Sutton, one of five scientists worldwide certified in bloodstain analysis.
In testimony Wednesday morning, Sutton said the detective was right about some stains and wrong about others, but she emphasized the medallion imprint, which the officer did not notice.
She showed jurors how she had made a transparent copy of the medallion and then laid it over the mark on the linen. The panelists leaned forward in the jury box as she pointed out several areas where the lines of blood seemed to trace the Capitol's roof and columns.
She also testified that a semicircular bloodstain on Sr. Margaret Ann's forehead was consistent with another part of the opener. The testimony suggested that after stabbing the 71-year-old, the killer pressed the handle of the bloody letter opener into the victim's forehead.
Prosecutors have shied away from describing the murder as ritualistic, but Sr. Margaret Ann was slain on Holy Saturday, the day before Easter, in a sacristy where the Eucharist was kept during the solemn period in the church calendar, and police contend some of her stab wounds formed an inverted cross.
Cross-examining Sutton, a defense lawyer did not address the Capitol outline, but suggested that the expert's findings were skewed because prosecutors only gave her one possible weapon, the letter opener, for comparison.
He suggested that the mark on the nun's forehead might have been made by doctors trying to revive her.
"Could you rule out a stethoscope as making that transfer pattern?" lawyer John Thebes asked.
"No, sir, I did not," Sutton said.
The lawyer had the witness trace a pair of scissors and hold them up to a mark she had identified as consistent with the letter opener.
"It could be a pair of scissors, yes," she said.
A pair of scissors was found missing from the chapel after the murder.
Following up a few minutes later, prosecutor J. Christopher Anderson asked Sutton if she had ever seen a pair of scissors with the Washington skyline on them. She said she had not.
Sutton's testimony came after the defense used a prosecution witness to suggest DNA evidence from the 26-year-old murder m ay suggest another man killed Sr. Margaret Ann.
A DNA examiner from a state crime lab said the nun's underpants contained a mixture of genetic material from the victim and a second, unknown source. Robinson was excluded as a contributor, she said. She said she lifted a minute amount of DNA from the undergarment and found it came from a male, but that there was not enough material to develop a genetic profile.
In questioning the examiner, Anderson suggested the material — which he described as 0.00000000033 of a gram — may have been deposited by medical personnel or investigators. The defense contended it was left behind by the assailant.
"There is DNA on the underwear that is not consistent with him?" Thebes asked, pointing to Robinson.
"That's correct," the examiner, Cassandra Agosti, testified. (VIDEO)
Also Wednesday, jurors heard from a forensic anthropologist who compared a stab wound in Sr. Margaret Ann's jawbone with the letter opener.
Steven Symes, a professor at Mercyhurst College in Pennsylvania, was the third forensic expert to testify about the fit between the tip of the opener and the small hole in the victim's mandible, but his analysis was less definite than the other experts, one of whom described it as a "perfect fit."
Symes said he could only say the wound and the weapon had the same "class characteristics," a conclusion he called "anything but definite."
But, he added, "it's still a nice fit."
Among those watching Symes' testimony was Lee Pahl, the victim's nephew and a pallbearer at her funeral.
After testimony concluded, he told Court TV that his family, including two elderly sisters of the victim, were still surprised that prosecutors were pursuing charges 26 years after the crime.
"Obviously, the family has not forgotten the incident, but as time goes by, you just don't ever think the case would ever be reopened," he said.
He said he had spoken recently with his aunts and found them focused on mercy rather than anger.
"They are interested in — if Father Robinson is guilty — that justice will be served," he said.
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