A geotechnical engineering expert said there is nothing to worry about when it comes to the abandoned mine shafts below the future site of a Johnston, Iowa, elementary school.  "It's not that unusual a situation," said Milton Butzke from Allender Butzke Engineers Inc.  About 780 acres of mine shaft stretch from the proposed 26-acre school site to areas further south and west. The mine — Norwood White Mine No. 8 — was known to exist when the land was purchased for around $870,000 in June.

The expert says there are "billions of dollars of real estate built over mine shafts" across Iowa. In fact, a segment of the Norwood mine runs under Iowa Highway 141.  Norwood is just one of 222 coal mines that Butzke documented as being in operation across the Des Moines area from the 1840s to 1947, and no moratorium has ever been put in place for building on top of them. About 44 percent of the mines, including Norwood and most of the larger mines once in operation across the Des Moines area, have detailed records of where the mine shafts and tunnels are located.  According to an Iowa Department of Natural Resources' geological survey, at least 5,500 underground mines have operated in Iowa and cover nearly 15,000 acres.

Excerpted from DesMoinesRegister.com.

Jurors were not convinced that a former Forsyth County, GA, Sheriff's deputy was not guilty of viewing child pornography on his work and home computers.  A federal jury found Milton Scott Pruitt guilty July 22 on two counts of receiving child pornography. Witnesses for the prosecution had previously argued that Pruitt used his work-issued account to tap into the county server to look at images of child pornography kept in another investigator's case file.

Tami Loehrs, a computer forensics expert for the defense, testified that she did not find images of child pornography on Pruitt's county-issued laptop computer. No evidence that Pruitt had downloaded the images was presented, but witnesses said the officer opened the files in March 2007.  Pruitt was fired from the sheriff's office in May 2007.

Excerpted from ForsythNews.com.

Forensic psychiatry expert Dr. Moira Artigues testified last week in defense of Antonio Glennwood Byrd, 26, who is charged with first-degree murder in the July 2, 2007, death of his girlfriend's daughter. The charge came after Mr. Byrd took 2-year-old Miracle McLean to the Anderson Creek Fire Station around 7:15 that morning saying the child had drowned in the tub shortly after he arrived home from work at 7.  The defense expert, a general and forensic psychiatrist from Cary, NC, also says Byrd's mild mental retardation caused him to mistake the child's condition before her death as "normal" and maintains there was not enough time between the infliction of the injuries and death to tie Mr. Byrd to the crime, a point now largely discredited by prior testimony.

Prosecutors Davis Weddle and Teresa Postell allege Mr. Byrd beat the child so badly she died of internal bleeding from blunt force trauma to the abdomen. The autopsy also revealed blunt force trauma to the head and revealed the child was recovering from a broken shoulder.

Excerpted from DailyRecord.com.

Damage from the July 20 storm that brought large hail and high winds to Denver’s suburbs is estimated at $350 million, insurance experts at the Rocky Mountain Insurance Information Association said Monday. That would make it second costliest warm-weather storm in terms of insured damage to homes and vehicles in state history, the RMIIA said.

So far, about 52,400 claims have been filed — 32,900 claims against homeowners’ insurance and 19,500 against auto-insurance policies. The claims were focused on Lakewood, Wheat Ridge, Arvada and Englewood, the RMIIA said. The most extensive damage was to roofs, windows, vehicles and trees.

Earlier this summer, the stormy week of June 6-15 caused an estimated $161.1 million in damage to property and cars in Aurora, Parker, Centennial and Fort Collins. Colorado’s most expensive non-winter storm on record in terms of insured damage was a hail storm on July 11, 1990, that caused $625 million in damage, the RMIIA said.

Excerpted from DenverBusinessJournal.com.

Law.com reports:
Three months into the criminal trial of socialite Brooke Astor's son, Anthony Marshall, and the lawyer he hired who allegedly helped him loot his mother's estate, the presiding judge has cleared the way for a trusts and estate expert to testify for the prosecution.

Alexander D. Forger, the former chairman of Milbank & Tweed, can give expert testimony on the "patterns" of Astor's wills and codicils and the "professional practice standards" for trusts and estates attorneys, Acting Supreme Court Justice A. Kirke Bartley Jr. ruled Wednesday from the bench.

However, the judge barred Forger from testifying on issues that could prove critical to the prosecution's case: whether Henry Christensen III, who represented Astor for more than 20 years, and G. Warren Whitaker, the attorney who drafted a hotly disputed Jan. 12, 2004, codicil to the socialite's 2002 will, violated ethical standards.

Although the first 48 hours can be critical to obtaining evidence and interviewing witnesses, extensive research may cover days or months and exhaustive footwork may be necessary to run down information on debris, paint chips and blood. Aerial photographs are a tool often used in courtrooms to show an entire crash scene, and traffic homicide investigators can be called as expert witnesses. 

Cpl. Mark WeberWeber, one of six FHP traffic homicide investigators who probe fatal crashes in unincorporated parts of the county, stresses the use of seat belts, motorcycle helmets and designated drivers, citing "unnecessary deaths" in a majority of fatal crashes where victims would have survived if wearing a seat belt.

Lack of attention also can lead to catastrophe. There is a provision on FHP crash reports to indicate distracted driving caused by cell phones, changing the radio, or a dog jumping in the car, Weber said. Driving while sending text messages also has been observed. "People just don't want to take responsibility for their actions," Weber said discussing the ramifications of erratic driving and reckless vehicle operation.

Excerpted from Ocala.com.

The federal trial of the man whose company allegedly took out a multi-million dollar loan in Butler County’s name without the county’s approval is scheduled to start Monday, July 27.   Orlando Carter, 42, of Mason pleaded not guilty in June 2008 to an 11-count indictment that included charges of bank fraud. He is accused of making false statements to secure more than $10 million in loans, and to obtain credit for personal real estate and the operation of his business, Dynus Corp.

U.S. Attorney’s Office lawyers questioned the defense team’s plan to call a forensic accountant expert to testify that Carter had every reason to believe his finances were what he said them to be. One of the charges against him is that he misrepresented his income to get a $850,500 home loan. The defense team said it plans to dispute bank records that the prosecution has copies of, but says the bank lost the originals.

Excerpted from OxfordPress.com.

Monsanto, an international corporation that mines and processes phosphate in Soda Springs, has joined the Idaho Conservation League in petitioning the DEQ board to regulate large mercury emitters like itself. Company officials said the move was not a change of heart, only a natural response to the advice of its environmental expert witness -- the same man whose testimony convinced the DEQ to kill the proposed rules this winter.

"We left the February board meeting feeling mercury regulation was not dead and we have work to do," said Mick McCullough, an engineer with Monsanto in Soda Springs. Now Monsanto is trying to persuade the rest of Idaho's industry leaders -- none of whom would be affected unless they opened a new facility that emitted hundreds of pounds of mercury. The Idaho Association of Industry and Commerce, among the state's most powerful business lobbies, is neutral so far but will hold a meeting Thursday to decide its position before the DEQ board's July 29 meeting.

Excerpted from IdahoStatesman.com.

While a person's DNA holds billions of genetic markers, criminologists look at only 15 markers to show the molecular difference from one person to the next. They then create a statistic that shows how likely it is that someone else might have the same DNA profile.  "If it's a nice clean profile, then the numbers are pretty incredible," indicating it's a probable match, says Ruth Ballard, California DNA expert and professor in biology at California State University, Sacramento. 

But many experts agree that a partial DNA profile is much harder to evaluate. "It's those kind of samples that really end up being argued in court," says Ballard, who has served as an expert witness for prosecutors and defense attorneys on DNA evidence. "It's a rational disagreement; it's an area where experts can't decide yet."  On the other hand, "If you have a full profile, and you're looking at all 15 of these markers, when you run the numbers on that, they are so incredibly low, the probability of another person having the same markers as you do is so unlikely, the crime labs are reporting it as a match," Ballard said.

Excerpted from TheSacramentoBee.com.

The second full trial of a US peer-to-peer file swapper begins next week.  Joel Tenenbaum, a Boston College grad student, will face RIAA lawyers who are fresh from a $1.92 million victory in the Jammie Thomas-Rasset case and eager to go 2-0 in such prosecutions.  The record label companies want willful statutory damages of between $750 and $150,000 per infringement against Tenenbaum for 30 songs.

Iowa State computer science professor Doug Jacobson will testify as a computer expert while the defense has Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson.  The defense expert will argue that the 816 songs in Tenenbaum's KaZaA share folder back in 2004 were simply a "fair use" of the recording industry's protected work. 

Excerpted from ArsTechnia.com.

Defense attorneys and law professors agree that the insanity defense is difficult and jurors are skeptical.  It comes down to a “battle of the experts.” The defense’s medical expert testifies that the accused has a mental disease, the state counters with an expert who finds the person sane and the jury has to decide which diagnosis is credible.   “Jurors don’t like the insanity defense,” said Robert Rigg, associate professor and director of the Criminal Defense Program at Drake University Law School in Des Moines.  

This is what Mark Becker, 24, accused of shooting Aplington-Parkersburg football coach Ed Thomas to death, faces in his first-degree murder trial set for September.  He filed this week his intent to claim insanity and/or diminished responsibility as a defense.  Becker’s is the latest in a recent string of insanity defenses.

Excerpted from GazetteOnline.com.

In What is a Hazardous Material?, safety engineering expert James L. Unmack, P.E., C.I.H., C.S.P., describes what makes a hazardous material:

Whether a material is hazardous depends on who you ask and why. Various governmental programs have different criteria on what constitutes a hazardous substance. Most lists of hazardous materials include substances with hazardous properties such as toxic, flammable, corrosive, or reactive.

The Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) identifies hazardous materials as any material that is toxic, flammable, corrosive, or reactive, or otherwise listed as hazardous by the Administrator.

The Secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) defines hazardous material as substance or material that poses an unreasonable risk to health, safety, and property when transported in commerce, and includes hazardous substances, hazardous wastes, marine pollutants, and elevated temperature materials.

The U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) identifies hazardous materials in the hazard communication standard as a substance that is carcinogenic, toxic, corrosive, flammable, unstable, or otherwise poses a significant safety or health hazard.

Consider the characteristic of flammability, or more generally, the characteristic of being capable of supporting combustion. How may this characteristic be quantified in a meaningful way? What point on the scale represents a hazardous material?

Engineers have been developing earthquake-resistant buildings for years, but a group of physics experts now believe it's possible to make an entire building effectively disappear from an earthquake's destructive path, avoiding serious damage. Inspired by the recent development of novel materials that precisely control the flow of light waves around objects, they've shown that the same ideas can work whether the waves make up light, sound or earthquakes.  The American Institute of Psychics reports:

Earthquakes are some of the most destructive forces in nature. The waves they produce ripple across the earth's surface, much as water waves travel across the ocean. The waves from earthquakes crumple buildings, bridges, and other structures, causing millions of dollars in damage and often death. Despite efforts to understand earthquakes and reinforce buildings against them, damage from the shaking ground is nearly impossible to avoid. But that may not be the case for long, say a team of physicists in France and the United Kingdom.

A former postal employee from Bridgeport, CT, accused of stealing about $1,000 in gift cards from the mail last year, pleaded guilty Monday to misappropriating postal funds while employed as a Postal Service mail-processing clerk, the US Attorney's office said.  A legal filing in federal court said that Police agreed that the prosecution had evidence that included "physical evidence including the gift cards that were recovered from Ms. Police's person, as well as the testimony of law enforcement officers, expert witnesses, and other witnesses."

 When sentenced Oct. 1, she faces penalties of up to six months in prison and a fine of up to $5,000, under the guidelines used in federal court. Her plea agreement with federal prosecutors also requires that she pay the owners of the cards a total of $1,050.

Excerpted from Courant.com.

A leading Australian automotive engineering expert has warned the world could be facing an energy crunch to make the 1970's oil crises seem small time. Professor Laurie Sparke, a former advanced engineering chief for General Motors Holden, says in a few years time no-one will be able to buy oil, at any price.

The expert says the crisis could hit within the next decade, and warns that people should be prepared by converting their petrol-driven cars to Papua New Guinea's great economic hope - liquified natural gas.

Excerpted from RadioAustralia.

A Lehigh County, PA, judge says five wrongful death suits filed against St. Luke's Hospital by families of patients former nurse Charles Cullen has confessed to killing can proceed to trial.  In a series of rulings last week, Judge Edward Reibman threw out 10 lawsuits filed by the families of patients Cullen has not admitted to killing.  In those cases, Reibman granted the hospital's motions for summary judgment primarily because the plaintiffs' medical expert, Dr. David Fowler, could not link their deaths directly to Cullen.  ''[Fowler] notes in his report that he 'cannot exclude or include them as victims within a reasonable degree of medical certainty,''' Reibman wrote.

Cullen, now serving a life sentence at Trenton State Prison, NJ, worked at St. Luke's Hospital as a nurse from 2000 to 2002. He pleaded guilty to killing 29 people and attempting to kill six others at hospitals in Pennsylvanic and New Jersey.  St. Luke's and four New Jersey hospitals where Cullen worked reached an undisclosed settlement in February 2008 with families of New Jersey patients who had been killed by Cullen, a former Bethlehem resident.
Excerpted from TheMorningCall.com.

Allegheny County judge Anthony M. Mariani Wednesday acquitted a South Hills, PA, oral surgeon of all charges related to allegations he molested 17 female patients. Dr. Robert John Boyda was cleared of charges that he assaulted patients in his offices from 2002 through late 2007, when two patients went to police.

Anesthesiology expert Dr. Edward Dench, past president of the Pennsylvania Medical Society, testified that the women's stories were consistent with dreams. He said it would be possible to wake up abruptly after being administered drugs and remember events. Once awake, however, patients would not fall unconscious again.

(Judge) Mariani said he believed the women were truthful about what they thought happened. But the judge said he found compelling the testimony of defense experts who said the women could not have remembered anything because of drugs used to anesthetize them — and the fact that the drugs can cause sexual hallucinations.

"Across the street in civil division, my verdict might be different, but I must be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt," he said. In a civil trial, the burden of proof is a preponderance of the evidence, a lesser standard.

Excerpted from TribTotalMedia.com.

Chubb could be forced to pay out up to $2 billion on directors and officers (D&O) insurance policies due to a surge in litigation in the wake of the financial crisis, an insurance expert cautioned this week.  Jay Gelb, analyst at Barclays Capital, warned investors that “given a potential for a wave of D&O litigation, Chubb does not appear appropriately reserved.”

“If Chubb’s 2008 U.S. D&O accident year loss ratio of 78% rose to the peak developed loss ratio over the past 10 years of 120% (which occurred in 2002 due to the tech bubble/IPO laddering), we estimate Chubb could report additional D&O losses of $2 billion, pre-tax over several years,” Gelb said in his investors’ report.

Excerpted from <a href="http://www.insurancedaily.co.uk/">InsuranceDaily</a>.

North Carolina local officials are examining closely new maps of the nation’s Coastal Barrier Resource Act areas. The federal government created CBRA zones more than 25 years ago to try and minimize loss of life and property by placing unstable areas of undeveloped barrier islands off limits to any type of federal funding, including participation in the National Flood Insurance Program. Officials on all levels stress that the maps are still in draft form, meaning there’s still time for boundary lines to be tweaked. And a lot of what can and can’t be done in the zones – beside granting federal flood insurance – is open to interpretation.

“That’s one of the main problems with this is that it’s not clear what impact this will have,” said Spencer Rogers, a coastal engineering expert with N.C. Sea Grant.

Another issue is that the draft maps, which were prepared partly using aerial photography, lack the precision usually found in land surveys done by local officials or regulators.  The new lines could make it more difficult for private property owners to develop or rebuild their homes and for towns to build public waterfront access areas or find sand for beach nourishment.

Excerpted from StarNewsOnline.

The author of a study to be published in the next issue of the medical journal Lancet said swine flu could devastate indigenous populations around the world due to their sensitivity to infectious disease. Dr. Michael Gracey, a medical expert and adviser to Unity of First People of Australia, an aboriginal non-profit organization, suggests that the world's almost 400 million indigenous peoples — including about 1.2 million in Canada — are particularly at risk for contracting swine flu because they often live in remote, impoverished communities with limited access to medical infrastructure.

First Nations communities in Manitoba and northern Ontario have already been hit by the highly communicable H1N1 virus. Despite comprising just 10 per cent of the population in Manitoba, natives make up about a third of the 685 swine flu cases in that province.

The spread of the virus on reserves prompted aboriginal leaders around Manitoba to declare states of emergency last week to help free funds for federal assistance. The expert said the lack of hospitals and medical workers in isolated aboriginal communities means that while they are often introduced to viruses later than the rest of the population, the effects can be quick and punishing.

Excerpted from VancouverSun.com.

A Bexar County jury on Thursday found that a San Antonio woman used the water in a swimming pool as a deadly weapon in the drowning death of her 3-month-old granddaughter in 2005.  Gabriella Sigler was sentenced to 18 years in prison for the June 16, 2005, death of Melody Sigler. Because a deadly weapon was used, Sigler must serve at least half of the 18-year sentence before she would be eligible for parole.

Sigler sought probation after pleading guilty to injury to a child resulting in serious bodily injury.  Forensic psychology experts testified for the defense that Sigler was suffering from a manic episode caused by bipolar disorder.

Sigler was watching the baby for her son and his girlfriend at her friend's home. The son warned her to never put the baby in the pool, according to court records. Three days before the drowning, the son found the baby floating in the pool with the grandmother standing nearby. Sigler told her son she was teaching the infant to swim like children she saw on a television show about “water babies.”

Excerpted from MySanAntonio.com.

Neuropsychology expert Stephen Maccioccihi, director of the Shepherd Center in Atlanta, attempted to save a convicted hit man from a death sentence in a Fulton County, GA, jury trial Wednesday.  The expert testified that Cleveland Clark is “mildly mentally retarded” and functions at the level of a 12-year-old. Maccioccihi testified Clark scored low when he was tested in jail for mental competency.  As a result, Clark has not been able to hold a job, is impulsive and has difficulty with everyday activities.  The defense hopes the expert's testimony will persuade jurors to vote for life in prison, rather than death, for the April 26, 2000, contract murder of 22-year-old Sparkle Rai.

That same jury convicted Clark on Friday a year to the day that another jury convicted Chiman Rai, 68, of paying $10,000 to have his daughter-in-law killed. Chiman Rai, a native of India, objected to his son marrying Sparkle Rai because she was African American. Sparkle and Rajeeve “Ricky” Rai had been married a month when Clark strangled and stabbed her. 

Excerpted from ajc.com.

Pediatrics expert Dr. Janice Ophoven testified Tuesday in the defense of Amy Dierks.  Daycase provider Dierks is charged with aggravated assault on a six month old boy. The expert argued against the prosecution’s case, stating that child was having a stroke with preexisting conditions with symptoms for nearly a week.

“I don’t know why this case is even here” she said on the stand, and also points out that the scientific information is not adequate. She also stated that recent studies show that in “shaken baby syndrome” it is slamming that does the injury, not shaking. She said that Henry was “stroking” and she can say “for certain he was not” a healthy baby and had “abnormal bones”.

Excerpted from KSFY.com.