Introduction

Because we are a society of laws, laws influence everything we do, from buying a home and engaging in business to how we drive and how we conduct ourselves with others. Failure to comply with the law invariably leads to some appropriate resolution in the courts, the judicial system, which ensures compliance through confinement, fines, or civil court awards of compensation.

Most court resolutions occur as a result of a trial that weighs the facts, sorts through conflicting input, and arrives at, hopefully, a fair and impartial decision. That process requires the presence of witnesses whose testimony illuminates the historical event being examined. No witnesses, no trial. Therefore, witnesses are the life blood of the court trial, irrespective of the nature of the contest.

There are two kinds of witnesses: fact witnesses and expert witnesses.Fact witnesses may only testify to what they actually saw, heard, felt, or smelled. Such witnesses are restricted from testifying about any opinions they may have formed as a result of what they learned through their own senses. Expert witnesses, on the other hand, may express opinions based on their in-depth examination of the event through the lens of their unique experience, education, and profession.

Experts in criminal trials include specialists in subjects such as DNA, fingerprint identification, blood and liquid splattering patterns, firearms identification, explosives, and cause of death. Experts who appear in civil trials represent an incredibly vast range of disciplines, from construction failures, to airplane crashes, to beer keg explosions, to auto tire failures, all of which cause injuries. It would take an entire chapter to list the various expert witness specialties which exist in our society. Hence, the opinions of all experts are based on their unique and specialized expertise, as approved by the court.

This book focuses on my role as a security expert witness and my involvement in a collection of actual civil lawsuits driven by criminal acts. The second trial of O. J. Simpson in Los Angeles, CA, is a prime example of a crime litigated in the civil court. A criminal trial determines if a defendant is guilty of a crime (a public offense), and a civil trial determines if a defendant is guilty of a tort (a civil wrong). The burden of proof is higher in a criminal prosecution—that is, “beyond a reasonable doubt”—and lesser for finding against a defendant in a civil proceeding—“a preponderance of evidence.” In the cases of O. J. Simpson, he was found not guilty in the criminal trial, but was found responsible for the deaths in the civil court proceeding.

The “beyond a reasonable doubt” test requires unanimous agreement of all jurors, whereas only a majority of jurors in a civil trial are required to meet the test of “a preponderance of evidence.” Many crimes find their way into civil court, irrespective of the criminal trial’s outcome. However, there’s another significant difference between a civil trial and criminal proceedings. For example, if a woman is kidnapped from a parking lot and is eventually brutalized, the only defendant in the criminal system is the perpetrator of the crime. In civil court, for the very same crime, the defendants invariably include not only the perpetrator of the crime, but the owners or managers of the parking lot, the security firm charged with patrolling the lot, and, perhaps, the maintenance company responsible for ensuring the lights in the lot were all properly working. The typical issues in these types of cases are whether the crime was a foreseeable event and did the defendants take reasonable steps to provide a safe parking environment for invitees on their property. The bottom line: the thrust of the civil litigation in this case is to determine if the defendant did wrong or failed to do right and, therefore, were part of the causation of the damage done to the woman who was the crime victim.

Readers of the various scenarios in this book will follow the expert witness process of evaluating and determining the action, be it the plaintiff’s theory of liability or the defendant’s theory of defense, and observe my determination if my client’s (or prospective client’s) position/theory is meritorious. Both sides retain the best expert they can find and often the jury (or the court) will be persuaded, in some measure, by one of the opposing expert’s opinions.

Therefore, the process, as stated earlier, is ideal because the court and the jurors have the benefit of shared expert insight and wisdom that clarify areas that are otherwise outside the range of the average person’s understanding.

This all comes down to the process of litigation. Regrettably, there are those in this judicial arena who skate on the thin ice of integrity an elusive quality. That’s to say some attorneys will undertake lawsuits that they know, or should know, really lack merit, and there are so-called “expert witnesses” who undertake assignments that they are not qualified for (i.e., they exaggerate or otherwise misrepresent their professional credentials). The legal community has a duty to purge their ranks of renegade lawyers and be more and ever diligent in vetting the qualifications of their experts.

This book was written to provide readers with a fresh and insightful journey through some very brutal crimes, descriptions of how and why they are committed, clarifications of the process or methodology of a true expert in forming opinions, and the litigious process thereafter, with its inevitable consequences.

Every chapter deals with a different criminal incident or incidents, and only the names of the defendants and plaintiffs, as well as the location of the events, have been changed to ensure their anonymity.