Casey Anthony: Dr. Werner Spitz takes some big hits - Hal

Casey Anthony: Dr. Werner Spitz takes some big hits
posted by halboedeker on June, 18 2011 1:43 PM

Dr. Werner Spitz, the renowned forensic pathologist, had a rough day as a defense witness at the Casey Anthony trial. Did he remind you of Jack Nicholson in “A Few Good Men” or Humphrey Bogart in “The Caine Mutiny”?

It was painful to watch Spitz, who has had a long, distinguished career. A friend said that prosecutor Jeff Ashton did what he had to do in cross examining Spitz. Might the jury sympathize with Spitz? Some TV analysts certainly weren’t.

“Did I want to see Dr. Spitz come here and possibly end his career on this note?” WFTV-Channel 9 legal analyst Bill Sheaffer asked. “No, I did not. You want to see a distinguished gentleman like himself end his career on a high note.”

Sheaffer said Spitz offered a ”ridiculous hypothesis” that duct tape was put on the dead Caylee Anthony. Casey Anthony is charged with first-degree murder in the death of her daughter, Caylee.

Sheaffer decried Spitz’s implication that the medical examiner or her office had staged a photo of the remains. “A couple of jurors laughed and smirked” at Spitz’s comments, Sheaffer noted, a bad sign for the defense.

Richard Hornsby, offering analysis for WESH-Channel 2, was equally frank. “Dr. Spitz did not come across as very well versed in the facts of this case, which is what’s important,” Hornsby said. “They might have been better off with not even putting him on” because “the jury is probably looking at the defense theory and finds it completely incredible.”

Hornsby praised Ashton for a thorough job of cross examining Spitz. “I don’t think there’s an attorney in this town that really thinks that Dr. Spitz convinced that jury of much of anything except that he’s an old guy,” Hornsby said.

I admire that blunt talk. What did you think?

But attorney Hal Uhrig, offering analysis on WOFL-Channel 35, said Spitz did some damage by saying that Dr. Jan Garavaglia, the medical examiner, made a mistake in not opening Caylee’s skull for the autopsy. “The point’s pretty well taken: If you’re going to do an autopsy, do an entire autopsy,” Uhrig said. “For it not to have been done certainly seems like a failure.”

Still, WFTV’s Sheaffer complained that Garavaglia and the medical examiner office joined a list of people the defense has “thrown under the bus,” including meter reader Roy Kronk and George Anthony, Casey’s father.

What do you think?

http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/entertainment_tv_tvblog/2011/06/casey-anthony-dr-werner-spitz-takes-some-big-hits.html

Dr. Spitz gave sworn testimony in the Casey Anthony trial that he had performed or over-seen 60,000 autopsies in his 56 years of practice. When one does the math, he would have had to average more than 20 autopsies per week, based on a 5 day work week, without taking any breaks other than weekends. That combined with his testimony that he hasn't been in the mainstream for quite some time, it is either an impossibility concerning the 60,000 autopsies, or, surely, they were shoddy autopsies! I hope the jury does the math and remembers it was the Defense -not the State- who elicited the 60,000 autopsy figure.

I also watched some more of Dr. Spitz today (from Sat.) on HLN, and my opinion is, it was sort of a waste of time to go on and on about the duct tape. If it was put on as the death weapon (as Dr. G. earlier stated) or after decomposition (as Dr. Spitz claimed) - the victim is just as dead, either way. And guilt continues to point to the person who was last seen with the child; and that same person is the one who cooked up the mythical kidnap story.

6pointedstar wrote:Dr. Spitz gave sworn testimony in the Casey Anthony trial that he had performed or over-seen 60,000 autopsies in his 56 years of practice. When one does the math, he would have had to average more than 20 autopsies per week, based on a 5 day work week, without taking any breaks other than weekends. That combined with his testimony that he hasn't been in the mainstream for quite some time, it is either an impossibility concerning the 60,000 autopsies, or, surely, they were shoddy autopsies! I hope the jury does the math and remembers it was the Defense -not the State- who elicited the 60,000 autopsy figure.

I think that the key word here may be "over-seen." If he was the head of a department, he may have had a slew of distinguished physicians whom he over-saw all doing their work with accuracy and dedication. The devil is in the details, IMHO.