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Drop Dead Serious With Ashleigh Banfield
Crash Test Showdown: The SUV, the Tail Light, and the Dummy Arm Debate | Karen Read Trial Day 28
00:09:23
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Hey, everyone, I'm Ashley Banfield and this is drop dead Serious. It is day 28 of Karen Reed's murder trial and the defense is betting big on science. Today, jurors heard from a crash reconstruction expert named Daniel Wolf. He came armed with videos and physics and a very, very specific conclusion. And that was that Karen Reed's SUV did not strike John o' Keefe in the night in question. But the prosecution didn't let it go unchallenged. It was a real tug of war in the courtroom today over dummy arms and broken tail lights and even encrypted messaging apps. So let's get right into it. The day began with Daniel Wolf on the witness stand. Again an expert in car crashes. Wolf's job was to figure out whether Karen Reed's SUV could have hit John o' Keefe and if it could have caused the injuries that John sustained. To find out, Wolf and his team ran a bunch of tests. They used a real Lexus SUV just like Karen's, and they used crash test dummies that were wearing sweatshirts just like John's. They even created a fake tail light shaped like the broken one on Karen Reed's car. And then they had that tail light hit the dummy in all sorts of different ways at all sorts of different speeds. The jury saw video after video of these tests, and Wolf explained what happened in each one of them. And How? The results didn't match the real damage on Karen's SUV or on Jack John's clothing. One test showed the SUV driving 24 miles an hour, and at that speed, the back window shattered and the bumper got wrecked. But I think you'll know if you've been following this case. Karen Reed's car did not have any damage like that. Other tests show that the dummy's hoodie got scuffed in ways that did not match the holes in John's real sweatshirt. Alan Jackson, Karen's hotshot lawyer, asked Wolf if taillight pieces could have cut or torn John's clothing. And Wolf said no. At one point, Wolf explained something else important. He said he didn't think that the red plastic pieces from Karen's tail light could have caused John's injuries because they were too small and that the shapes didn't fit. Then Reid's lawyer started asking Wolf some personal questions, questions about Wolf's financial relationship with the defense. The prosecution had previously accused the defense of hiding how much money they had paid Mr. Wolf and his company for these tests. So Karen Reed's own lawyer asked him directly, let's have it out. What were you paid? And Wolf said, yeah, I was paid $20,000 after the first trial for time and for travel. And he also went further, saying he's being paid again for this second trial, this time about $50,000. And after that, it was time for the prosecution's questions, and special prosecutor Hank Brennan stood up to begin his cross examination. And he was coming in hot. First, Brennan asked Wolf about his background and about his qualifications. Then he moved on to Wolf's earlier work, pointing out that his company often works with insurance companies, though Wolf wasn't hired by one in this case. From there, prosecutor Brennan zeroed in on Wolf's relationship with the defense. He asked why Wolf deleted all of his text messages with Karen Reed's lawyers. Because, you know, that can sound kind of hanky. Wolf answered that he deletes messages often, especially ones about logistics. He said that it's something he normally does with lawyers that he works with. Brennan also brought up an encrypted messaging app called Signal. Wolf admitted that, yes, he used it because the defense asked him to, and he agreed to. Then came a moment that probably raised some eyebrows for the jury, even if it wasn't a surprise, if you'd been following this case closely. Wolf admitted that in the first trial, he had given Karen's lawyers a list of questions that he hoped they would ask him, along with notes on how he would answer them and yowza, that never sounds good, right? What are you talking about? You handed over the questions to the defense attorney, saying, ask me these. So prosecutor Brennan jumped on that, calling it a script. But Daniel Wolf pushed back. He said it was not a script, it was just an outline to help explain his work more clearly to the jury. And he made one more thing clear. He said his answers would not change no matter who was asking the questions, because he said his opinions are based on the evidence, they're not based on who's paying him, and they're not based on who's asking questions. Brennan then asked Wolf if he inspected Karen Reed's SUV in person. Wolf told the jury that in many of the cases he works on, the actual vehicle is already, you know, totaled and gone by the time he gets involved. And so he said that's normal in his line of work. And so no, he said he did not inspect Karen Reed's SUV in person. But in his view, he said he didn't need to. It wouldn't change his conclusions one bit. He said that the damage in the photos and the reports gave him everything he needed to analyze the case. But Brennan wasn't done. Prosecutors started asking questions about how much Wolf actually knew about the other experts report, a report written by one of Wolf's work colleagues. Brennan tried to show that Wolf didn't read every source in that report and that maybe he wasn't qualified to give opinions about certain parts of it, like the injuries to John o' Keefe's arm. And then the prosecutor dug into one very specific detail. The weight of the crash test dummy's arm. He pointed out that the Dummy's arm weighed 9.38 pounds, while John O' Keefe's actual arm weighed 11.86 pounds. And he noted that's a 26% difference. Would that difference actually affect the results of the test? Wolf said no. And he explained that when you're dealing with a 6,000 pound SUV, a couple of pounds in the dummy's arm doesn't really change anything. But Brennan kept pushing, quote, weight does matter though, right? He asked, quote, it can if it's significant. Wolf answered. And then Alan Jackson came in for a redirect exam. He played the video of the 24 mile per hour test again and pointed out something important. The damage to the dummy's sweatshirt in the test looked like road rash scrapes from hitting the pavement, not the kind of damage seen on John o' Keeffe's actual sweatshirt. Jackson also made another important point for the defense, Wolf's independence. He reminded the jury that Wolf wasn't originally hired by Karen Reed's legal team. In fact, when Wolf first got involved in this case, he was working for a government agency. The jury was not told that it was the Department of Justice, but that's who it was. That was the agency, the doj. Jackson wanted the jurors to understand that Wolf did not start out trying to help Karen Reed. He was brought in by an outside agency to take an unbiased look at this case. And only later did the defense team reach out to him directly. It was a key moment because if the jury believes that Wolf came in with no agenda, just to tell the truth, it would really help his credibility. And another interesting thing about the weight of the dummy's arm. Wolf said that nobody actually weighed John o' Keefe's actual arm. So he said he had no idea where the prosecution got that information, that John's arm weighed 11.68 pounds. And with that, court was done for the day. Judge Canoni let everybody go early because one juror had to leave at 3.45pm But Wolf is not finished on the stand. He's going to be back next week to continue his testimony. So to recap, a defense expert says the damage on John o' Keefe's clothing does not match what a Lexus taillight would do to it. The prosecution tried to show that that same expert was just a little too cozy with the defense team, even though he was first hired by the government. And the jury heard about deleted texts and encrypted apps and a crash test dummy with an underweight arm. This trial is far from over. So we'll be back on Monday with the latest from the Karen Reed trial. I'm Ashley Banfield. Thank you so much for listening. And remember, the truth isn't just serious, it's drop dead serious.