Complete Cameron Brown Case Coverage.
Inspiration Point, Rancho Palos Verdes, CA
Four year old Lauren Sarene Key plunged to her death off of
Inspiration Point on November 8, 2000.
Lauren, on the last day of her life.
Monday, May 4, 2015
9:05 AM
When I get inside Dept. 107, DDA Hum and Aron Laub are arguing whether or not the defense expert can present the dummy drop videos.
It's complicated. I can into this in the middle of these arguments. DDA Hum is arguing that these videos have nothing to do with travel through space, but impacts with the cliff.
Mr. Laub is arguing that the dummy shows the movement through space after the impact.
The court: It seems like your witness is trying to get this in through the back door, how Lauren's body would have reacted once it left the cliff, impacted with the cliff and after. The court has already ruled on that. There's a real problem with the video.
DDA Hum states that the simulations by Dr. Hayes do show how a human body would react with the cliff.
The court rules that these dummies have never been offered to replicate a human body.
Mr. Laub states that they will eliminate the human body video. We will present the golf ball throw videos. He explains that there will be another another slide inserted that doesn't mention the dummy drop video.
The court asks Laub to go talk to Mr. Sigmund.
DDA Hum brings up the issue that the defense wants to read into the record Lynn Brown's testimony. The court asks who this is. DDA Hum states it's the defendant's mother. DDA Hum states he understands why they want it read into the record; there are health issues. He doesn't have a problem with that. He does have an issue with some of the testimony that he is objecting to. Mr. Laub states that he [knows?] the objections and will be submitting a redacted testimony to DDA Hum.
The court informs counsel if you need me to intervene, let me know. Judge Lomeli leaves the bench.
There is a young woman sitting in the row in front of me. Once Judge Lomeli leaves the bench, the defense investigator comes over to speak to her.
9:22 AM
Sarah and a friend arrive. DDA Hum comes over to speak to Sarah to warn her about upcoming slides in the defense witness' presentation.
I forgot to mention that the court asked the defense if they expected to rest tomorrow. Mr. Laub states that they will rest tomorrow. DDA Hum confirmed he will be putting on a rebuttal case.
9:29 AM
DDA Hum is helping the defense work out the logistics of getting the defense expert's presentation to work with the ELMO projection.
9:34 AM
We wait. Dr. Sigmund is working on getting his PowerPoint presentation to display on the overhead screen. Brown was just brought out.
9:38 AM
Jury enters. Judge Lomeli states "Jury walking" and Brown gets up from his seat, buttons his jacket and turns towards the jury.
GUNTER SIEGMUND
Please tell the jury what it is that you do. I am a mechanical engineer with a PHD in bio mechanics. He analyzes how injuries are caused in various incidents. He gives his CV, his professional training, etc. His company is Mea Forensics Engineers & Scientists. His is hands on work, vs the academic who does the study of [this work].
He's testifying in regards to the death of Lauren Key. He was provided with a number of photographs, autopsy reports, reports from the police, Dr. Hayes's reports and things of that nature. And provided testimony of Dr. Hayes. Reports, did that include the work that he had done in this case? It described the work that he had done.
He produced a powerpoint to take us through the significant factors in this case. Yes. He also relies on Dr. Hayes' powerpoint; a number of those slides. He also did experiments with children throwing golf balls, to determine the speed/movement of children. Hes.
DDA Hum asks that Mr. Laub occasionally ask a question, verses a narration.
First slide is the same slide that Dr. Hayes was shown. In the cours of my powerpoint, I'm going to be addressing the same question, and showing why I disagree with Dr. Hayes.
This slide shows, autopsy reports. This slide as it stands, is Dr. Hayes slide. Will yo uexplain why this is important? Dr. Hayes sumarized Lauren's injuries, and there are some injuries that are missing. There are injuries on the back shoulder and injuries on the abdomen that don't show up on this slide. They are on Dr. Chinwah's autopsy. He puts up a slide of the autopsy drawing front and back sketch.
Now showing autopsy photos. The left side of Lauren's body. They are photos of very small injuries on the left side of her body. The black arrows are Dr. Siegmund's. These do not appear to be massive injuries, like on the face and upper body. They are small bruises.
There was another autopsy photo of Lauren's body showing an injury of her right shoulder.
Another slide of Dr. Hayes' the Scene Survey: Cliff Profiles. Going over this slide and his interpretation of this slide.
It's difficult to describe this testimony without the attached slides.
Photo of the cliff face, looking straight on and then a blow up, , regarding the previous slide. They dropped a rope and shows the cliff face is under cut. And taking that back to the previous side drawing, Dr. Hayes' side drawing of one of the pie slices shows this part of the cliff going out, when his dropped line weight shows that the cliff face is undercut.
Now stating that he doesn't know if the rest of the graph is correct, but the bottom portion of Dr. Haye's side graph, in the vicinity of where the dropped line is incorrect.
Now showing another slide of Dr. Hayes, Fall Biomechanics: Results.
Showing the cross section of slices B, C, D, E & F. These are all sections that end up in the inlet of the water.
A juror yawns. Another juror tries to keep his head up.
These represent fall trajectories. They represent the path as they free fall. States that these lines don't all use the same point of departure. They would be beside each other. They also change in space.
Explains what Dr. Hayes chose as a point of departure. Also explains that each black line on the latest slide, shows different cliff profiles, because there are different profiles at each pie slice point.
All of these slides show the bottom of the cliff face extending out, so they are incorrect.
The comparison is what Dr. Hayes is presenting is slip/fall verses thrown/push. The green line shows the slip/trip.
Explains that some of the lines show that they penetrate the cliff and that wouldn't happen.
States that there's something missing as far as another arc because nothing could penetrate the cliff. It would follow a new parabolic arc.
If you fell onto the ground and slipped onto the ground, and enough friction and insufficient distance then you would go over the cliff. there are multiple variables as to whether you would go over the cliff if you tripped and these graphs do not show that.
His understanding of what the graphs are showing, is that they don't properly represent what would happen.
If we consider all the departure points, there would be many, many graphs and not just [these?].
Now more testimony as to what the yellow lines mean.
I think the import thing that this slide depects, is it's only five slices, a single departure point per slice. There are many, many other possibilities that have not been analyzed.
What is a spread sheet. It's a software program that allows you to put numbers or equasions in a cell that relate to other cells, that generate numbers based on equasions. That's what engineers use it for.
Did Dr. Hayes create a spreadsheet showing the formulas or mathmatics that led to these lines? yes. These lines are generated from a graph. the spreadsheet contains the fall equasion. They show spots in time. These are created from a spreadsheet, that Dr. Hayes created.
They do not represent everything on the spreadsheet. Now an image of the spreadsheet that Dr. Hayes created. And the various computations on the spreadsheet that were not represented on the previous pie slice graphs.
The trip/run are generated in the program but not plotted on the graph.
What he did was plotted the trip/run on Dr. Hayes' graph, to show where it doesn't fall. He plotted the trip/run on Dr. Hayes previous graphs in blue and overlayed them on Dr. Hayes' graph.
They fall similar to the yellow lines in some of the graph images.
More explanation of the interaction of the yellow and blue lines that I don't understand.
Dr. Siegmund states that his overlay blue lines show, that they would end up in the same end point on the cliff place that Dr. Hayes says she could only have happened if she was thrown.
If we go back to the other graphs that Dr. Hayes showed us here, you're saying that. No these are ones that I've redone.
You're saying that the point of departure in these, the yellow lines, is different than the yellow lines in the site experiment? Yes. These start at the same departure line, but [?] lines are above other lines.
If you look at this line, it no longer intersects the cliff face here, becaue now the yellow, red and blue line have moved back and now are behind. I understand why Dr. Hayes did this, he was attempting to match the point of departure that his associate used, to launch the pelican box.
In Dr. Haye's experiment, he threw the pelican box, it hit hte cliff face and bounced into the water. IN this bottom portion of this line, the blue line, that seems to be going inside the cliff, that portion is an analogy, you would take a point of imact, that blue line and shelf, you would end up with a new parabolic arc? Yes. The pleican box would bounce off the cliff and start a new line into the water.
What I then did was, in Dr. Hayes' hand written notes, there was a graph that was esentially the same as this graph, as that it shows the same cliff profile, the slip trip and throw, you can see these toher line ssoign back from taht orginal departure point. but on the graph that was in his notes, there is an additional scenario taht was in his sheet, a run scenario. The run scenario.
Because the colored lines are difficult to see, I created a colored version of this so we could better see what this would look like. Here is the green and yellow line, from Dr. Hayes' graph. The two lines I want to draw your attention to are the blue line that intersects the shelf here, and a different clolor blue that starts here at Lauren's center of mass hight, that falls along a different trajectory, but arrives on the cliff point but ends at the same point as the pelican box.
This shows that there is another possible explanation as the pelican box throw, that does not involve a throw.
Did yoy do any of your own work? Yes. The run profile that Dr. Hayes uses, is at the speed of 11.5 feet per second, which is the run of a child of 4 years old. It would be a run on a level surface. We are on a slope surface that is 20 degrees down hill. A child might be able to run, but a 4 year old could reach a run speed of this.
What did you try to do, to approximate the speed using a run slope? I had two twin girls who were a bout Lauren's size, where they threw golf balls down a 20 degree slope. What a child of Lauren's slize, would do, approaching a throw.
We had them stand there take a throw. Take a step and throw. Take a few steps and take a throw, and Take several steps and stop at a stick on the ground and take a throw. The stick represents theedge of the cliff? It represents a point where, beyond the clif you would slip and fall. It didn't [represent theedge] but as far as you should go.
Keeping in mind that on this slope, there was no cliff there. There was no consequence. Did anyone give them directions? Yes. My partner was there instructing them to throw golf balls as [far? fast?] as they can.
What I was trying to understand was, how did the girls behave when they were throwing. Did they overstep when throwing. I was trying to find an explanation for Lauren's unintentional fall. One of the possibilities.
Going to see a film of this? Yes.
At times there is a voice that is telling them to run faster? Yes. We were trying to determine posibilities. It was to evaluate the range of possibilities that the girls would undertake in this case with encouragement. Lauren on the cliff may have been encouraged to see where her rocks would landed.
DDA Hum. Objection! That's complete speculation. Sustained Stricken.
So when the voice is giving direction, that voice is not meant to represent something that happened? Correct. The purpose was to encourage the girls to throw as hard as they can to simulate possibilities.
The video of the girls throwing is played now.
Its a grassy slope. I remember this video from the second trial.
The first throws are simply standing throws. The female adult was the girls mother.
Stops the video to show the "stick" line. It's in line with the level that was held up by the camera bag.
On the video, the man in the video is encouraging the girls to throw real hard.
10:44 AM
I glance over at Sarah as the video plays. I wonder what she is thinking.
To me, from the photos I've seen, the surface of this hill doesn't look anything like the surface of the "horseshoe" area that detectives and law enforcement believe Lauren plunged from. It's more uniform.
10:52AM
The video is still playing. More examples of the girls throwing. The "stick" is now removed, and the girls are told to run as hard as they can and throw as hard as they can.
Dr. Siegmund explains that there is another one where she stumbles as she throws.
10:58 AM
Judge Lomeli calls the morning break.
As the last jurors exit, Brown leans over and with his right hand cupping over his mouth, whispers into the left ear of the private investigator.
11:13 AM
On the breaks, DDA Hum and Detective Leslie often quickly down an energy or power bar.
11:14 AM
The investigator comes over to look at something in the corner of the bailiffs box/desk area. They have a conversation.
11:17 AM
Brown is brought out.
Off the record, the court and Mr. Laub talk about how much more direct Mr. Laub has.
11;18 AM
The clerk calls for the jurors into the courtroom.
Judge Lomeli tells the jury that this past weekend, it was his bailiffs birthday.
After watching the experiment with the girls, what did you get out of that? First to see if the girls stumbled and over stepped. And second what was their speed. He could use that speed in a projectile motion calculation. How did you measure the speed? The same way that Dr. Hayes did the pelican box.
What speed did you discover the girls were moving? Objection.
What speed did you find the girls were moving at in the instances they were over stepping? There's one where she takes multiple steps over that. 8.2 or 8.9 or an average of 8.55 feet per second.
That's not the same time that Dr. Hayes was using in his trip/run data. Dr. Hayes used 11.13 per second. And that was the running speed of a child on level ground. We used a lower speed of one of the girls after she threw, on the sloped ground. She was not in a full run.
11.13 is the average speed of a child running.
After establishing your own speed, for overstepping, what did you do? He used Dr. Hayes' graph and input his own speed overlayed what he got with that over the graphs of Dr. Hayes.
Input 8.55 feet per second over what Dr. Hayes had input of 11.13 feet per second. In these graphs now the blue line falls just to the left of the yellow lines. Now instead of starting below the yellow line and crossing it, it stays just inside the yellow line for the fall trajectory.
Looking at the five boxes up here, is there an example of, where the overstepping with a run of 8.5 ft per second, resulted with an impact with the shelf. In C and D .... they impact with the shelf just a little above where Dr. Hayes says she struck without impacting the upper portion of the cliff.
I miss seeing a young man come in and sitting in the gallery while I was typing.
The data that you found on the spread sheet, included the run/trip math, that was needed to generate you later used as your first blue line? Yes. All the data and graphs I presented were generated, up until this one, the calcuations were already in Dr. Haye's spread sheet.
The only think that I had done, was enter 8.55 feet per second. Otherwise, what I've shown you is from Dr. Hayes' analysis and spread sheet. He's reviewed Dr. Hayes testimony? Yes I have.
Is there any place in his testimony, where it described the blue trip/run fall. There was no place in his testimony that referenced the run/trip/fall.
He said a slip/trip and run discounted as an explanation [that it]. You found, when run his calculations, did produce a single impact with the cliff shelf.
Now, Dr. Hayes first opinion and conclusion slide. He had six slides with conclusions.
Now will present what he agrees with and what he disagrees with.
Yes. That's his first three conclusions. These are Dr. Hayes second three conclusions.
Now Siegmund has further slides to help explain ths.
Lauren died form a singel high speedimpact to the cliff face.
Partially agree. Lauren died form a high-speed impact to the cliff face.
But she could have interacted more than once iwth the cliff Multiple other abrasions on her body.prior face or upper chest ontact woudl be masked by a later high speed impact.
Dr. Siegmund explains that the other injuries could be explained by a child who fell prior to then tumbling off the end of the cliff face and striking the shelf further down the cliff face.
It's impossible to say that she didn't stumble at the top and then the later impact obliterate those injuries.
Lauren had multiple other abrasions on her body, that can be explained by prior cliff action.
In particular Lauren had a facial and chest injury but she also had these shoulder injuries. Those abrasion likelyoccured at a different time than the face and chest. could have occurred at cliff interaction at the top, a stumble, and where the impact speeds would be much less. It also could have occured later on, when Lauren was in the water.
I could not tell where those injuries came from, but do not think they came at the same time as the chest.
Not saying definitely that's true. It is a possibility. The discussion you just gave us about the multiple other abrasions, your conclusion are another possiblity? yes.
Dr. Hayes second opinion.
Its inconsisten with a slip/trip and fall.
I disagree.
Hayes trip run scenar could generate only one impact.
Overstepping a tock throw could generate only one impact.
Closer departure points could generate only one impact.
There are mulitiple scenarios involving a slip or trip that could have generated only one impact.
Based on the child experiments, overstepping after throwing a rock, could also explain the second impact on the cliff shelf. It's another scenario where a slip or trip or stumble could explain Lauren's impact with the shelf.
I've discussed already that the changing the departure point will change those trajectory.
More explanations.
Disagree a slip/trip and fall scenario are inconsistent. I believe they are consistent. They are one possible explanation.
Third opinion.
Lauren injureis are consisten with being launched at between 10 and 15 feet per sec from point ofdepature.
Agree. this is one scenario consissten with Lauren's injuries.
But
Other scenarios are also cosnisten with her injuries. Slip, trip, slide, overstepping after throwing a rock
Other departuerpoints.
The material at the top of Inspiration Point is loose and could cause a slip trip.
You've been to the top of Inspiration Point? Yes.
Fourth opinion.
The fall trajectro thatwould produce shc an impact is well witin the physical capabilites of an adult male.
agree. An adulst make
Hayes. 5th opinion.
Sip tri scenari would not cause Lauren to fall. launch scenario would produce all known fact of the case.
Disagree.
Hayes trip run scenario would produce all known facts of the case.
Oversteppign scenari would produce all known facts.
Other departuerpoints would produce all known facts.
Minor contacts at the tlif top from a stumble would produce ...
6th opinion.
Lauren sustained her fatal injire by bieng launched fofceull yfrom the point of depeartue, impacting the clif face once, and then landing in the water of the inlet.
I disagree. Throwing Lauren is one possiblity consisten with the physicsal eivdence of this case.
The physical evidence does not rule otu other possiblilies consisten with Lauren's fatal fall.
My conclusions.
Laurne' head injry indicates she struck a hard sufrace during her fall.
Lauren leg torso and should abrasions are consisten with one or more interactiosn with the clif edge and or cliff face.
Possible explanations for Laurens fall include.
-pushed or thrown
-trip or stumble near cliff edge
-sliding on lose soil slope
-overstepping after throwing a rock.
These are all possible explanations for Lauren's fatal flaw.
There is no physical evience to suggest one explanation is more likely than the other.
I cannot discern based on the physical evidence whether she was thrown or fell. There's no physicl evidecne that proves Lauren was pushed or thrown fro mthe cliff top.
Basedon the physical evidence, sicend and biomechancis cannot be used to conclude whether Lauren's fall was accidental or intentional.
Is this something based on your training and years of experience? Yes. In order to conclude that something happened, we need to exclude all other potential possiblilites.
Proving something happened, is proving everything else didn't happen. There are possibilites that we cannot prove.
Direct ends and cross begins.
Dr. S I have a couple of questions starting off.
You're not telling us that Lauren accidentally fell off? No.
Your not saying that Lauren death is an accident? No.
You're not telling us that Lauren was not thrown from a cliff? No.
You're not tellsing us that Lauren's injuries are inconsistent with being thrown from a cliff? No.
Opinion #2.
I knotie that were you say you disagre. you have four differen scenair.
I don't see in any of these, that
I don't see where you say that Dr. Hayes could generate one impact.
They don't say that they would generate Lauren's injuries.
If Lauren left running with she would impact feet first? She would have to leave the cliff, with no forward rotation.
The defendant's lawyer asked you, if you read Dr. Haye's testimony. Yes.
There's no place where Dr. hayes referenced Dr. Hayes testimony. What I would ask you to do, is look at Dr. hayes' testimony. Look at the highlighted testimony there. 5760 line 12.
In fact, in dr. Hayes testimony he does discuss Lauren running off the cliff as fast as she could. Yes.
She would land farther, hitting her back and hitting her feet. So on that basis, he ruled that out.
Mr. Laub argues that this is improper impeachment. Judge Lomeli shakes his head.
Laub argues with the court.
Your testimony was that dr. hayes said that a run could not produce this simple impact.
Laub argues that wasn't his testimony. DDA Hum forcefully states it is exactly.
Laub argues with the court again. The court states this is proper cross examination.
The just [?] testimony was the trip run test in that he had in his run sheet, was not on the graphs, and that he did testify that a run could not have.
Dr. Hayes did not say that a slip/fall/run would not produce a single impact, what he did say is that they would not produce Lauren's injuries.
I believe Dr. Siegmund did agree with that.
11:58
Let me say that these speaking objections. The court is not going to tolerate that. It's heated. The court is not going to tolerate that.
But this witness is being asied, Isn't that correct. It's proper cross examination at this point. You're going to have to bring it down a notch, because it's too heated.
Laub argues with the court. Asking if his witness can ask to explain.
We are now on break. The young man sat with the pretty woman in the gallery and they both spoke to the defense investigator.
12:01 PM
Everyone packs up for the noon break.