Expert Witness Has Zero F*cks To Give In This Deposition

Oh, this is going to be juicy.

Angry BusinessmenBite-mark “expert” Michael West has had better days.

Sure, he had a lot of success back in the heady times of the early 1990s. He held himself out as a self-styled expert on all kinds of forensic specialties, from fingernail scratches to blood splatters to trace metals, but his bread and butter was bite marks. And he was quite famous for his work for a while, as the Washington Post reports:

In the early to mid-1990s, Michael West became a rock star in the world of forensics. West claimed to have developed techniques that he and only he could perform. According to West, those techniques could both identify bite marks on human skin that no other medical specialists could see, and then match those marks to one person, to the exclusion of everyone else on the planet. West helped put lots of people in prison.

But that which shines so brightly is not meant long for the world, and West’s star came crashing back down to earth:

As early as 1994, there were questions about West’s credibility. He was the subject of several skeptical media profiles, including by Newsweek, the ABA Journal and “60 Minutes.”He has been investigated by and either resigned or was expelled from three separate professional organizations. Back in the early 2000s, one attorney tricked West into matching photos of bite marks on a murder victim to the dental plate of the attorney’s own private investigator.

Now, well, lets just say he has largely fallen out of forensics favor. People that were convicted on the basis of West’s testimony have since been exonerated, and Eddie Lee Howard, convicted of capital murder and rape, is in the midst of appealing his conviction. He’s represented by, inter alia, Chris Fabricant, Director of Strategic Litigation at the Innocence Project of New York, and Fabricant had quite the deposition with Dr. West. As Radley Balko of the Washington Post, who has covered the story extensively, notes:

West frequently has been brash, prickly, and prone to fits of braggadocio on the witness stand. This time, he was also belligerent, profane, and combative. He was openly contemptuous of the entire process — which again was at heart about whether or not the state of Mississippi should put a man to death. The transcript records that he belched before one answer. On two occasions, as he grew increasingly annoyed at Fabricant’s questions, West offered hypotheticals that involved him killing Fabricant.

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Oh, this is going to be juicy.

Well, it certainly doesn’t seem like West respects the hardworking lawyers looking to overturn the convictions of men he put in prison.

THE WITNESS: You know what’s relevant to my opinion?

MR. FABRICANT: What’s that?

THE WITNESS: I said if you know what’s relevant to my opinion, then let me go home and you answer the questions.

MR. FABRICANT: That’s what I’m trying to do right now is —

THE WITNESS: Can you read minds?

MR. FABRICANT: No, I’m trying to —

THE WITNESS: Try to think what I’m thinking now.

MR. FABRICANT: You’re thinking that this guy is a jerk and I want to get out of here.

THE WITNESS: No, no. It would take 5 years of improvement to get you to a jerk.

MR. FABRICANT: Okay. Let me ask you about the — you testified previously that —

THE WITNESS: Sociopath.

MR. FABRICANT: Okay.

THE WITNESS: Not jerk, but sociopath.

The petty slights just keep on coming — Fabricant can’t even get a simple clarification without a childish insult for his trouble:

Q. The only small point that I was trying to make is that at the second trial when you testified, you didn’t use “indeed, without a doubt,” you used what was, at that time, the approved terminology?

A. Okay.

Q. Is that fair?

A. Okay.

Q. When you say “okay,” I have trouble understanding what you mean by that.

A. Okay. I agree. Thank you, Ass-wipe.

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Then Fabricant just opens the door for West’s bile, inquiring if West had questions for him. And, of course, being a sociopath comes up again:

Q. All right. Dr. West, do you have any 25 questions for me?

A. How do you sleep at night?

Q. I sleep well.

A. You’re a sociopath. It’s amazing to me they don’t care what their clients do. They will do anything to get them off, no matter how heinous murdering their clients are.

Q. Let me follow up on that, Dr. West.

A. Go ahead.

Q. “Sociopath,” that’s a specific definition. Do you know what a sociopath is?

A. Yeah.

Q. What is it?

A. To me, that’s someone who is out of touch with reality and has no empathy for the victims. They’re only — they’re driven by their own self-needs.

Q. And you and I just met today, right?

A. Well, yeah.

Q. So that’s your — and you called me that, I think, the moment we sat down. So that’s your — how did you come to that conclusion?

A. You’re sitting next to a sociopath. You work for Innocence Project. Every attorney I’ve met with the Innocence Project lies, cheats, steals and tries to obfuscate the evidence in front of the court. I have no respect for y’all.

Q. I see. And so that makes me a sociopath?

A. No. That makes you an ass-wipe. You make yourself a sociopath.

Yeah… no love lost between these folks.

The sheer pithiness of the final exchange might be my favorite:

MR. FABRICANT: Well, I look forward to seeing you again, Dr. West.

THE WITNESS: Well, don’t be f—— off. Are we dismissed?

MR. FABRICANT: Yep.

THE WITNESS: Thanks.

I guess if someone thoroughly questioned your life’s work you’d be prickly too.

It is all well and good to get a chuckle out of this absurd deposition, but let’s not forget people were convicted, and some sentenced to die, because of the testimony of this man. If West’s behavior during this depo is any indication, he doesn’t respect the very system of justice he’s spent years working in.

Expert witness goes nuts during questioning for Mississippi death penalty case [Washington Post]


Kathryn Rubino is an editor at Above the Law. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).