Chief Medical Examiner Accused of Witness Intimidation
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Wed September 12, 2007
Area: Atlanta
Georgia's chief medical examiner, Kris Sperry, tried to intimidate and harass an expert who was to testify that there are problems with the state's method of execution in a pending federal lawsuit, according to lawyers for a longtime death row inmate.
New York lawyer Michael Siem, representing convicted killer Jack Alderman, filed papers Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Atlanta seeking sanctions and a protective order against Sperry, the state's expert in the pending case over the constitutionality of lethal injection.
The motion claims that, in phone calls last week, Sperry called officials at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston to talk about Dr. Kelly Rose, a third-year resident in forensic pathology at the Medical University of South Carolina.
Sperry said Rose should not be allowed to testify in the case because she will embarrass the university, according to the motion by Alderman's lawyers. They also said Sperry warned university official she would help Georgia lawyers prepare questions for Rose and that she would be "torn apart on the stand."
Siem wrote to state lawyers, asking that they prevent Sperry from "further tampering [with and] harassing" witnesses. The attorney general's office responded in writing that it would continue to investigate the backgrounds of witnesses in the case.
Sperry, a forensic pathologist for 22 years, said he called the University of South Carolina as part of the routine investigation into expert witnesses - something he said he has done many times before when he was an expert witness for the state in lawsuits.
"I certainly did not threaten and intimidate," Sperry said. "It's just posturing by lawyers. In something that is of such a serious nature... why would the law firm retain the services of someone who has no experience and no qualifications? The attorneys who retained her clearly are trying to spin things their own way."
Alderman is sentenced to die for killing his 20-year-old wife in 1974 with the help of a partner. His attorneys are using his case to challenge lethal injection.
Jean Alderman was beaten and strangled before the two men held her underwater in a bathtub. Alderman and John Arthur Brown eventually loaded the young woman's body into the trunk of a car and left the car partially submerged in a creek in Effingham County.
Brown's death sentence was later commuted to life and he eventually was paroled, but Alderman has remained on death row more than 30 years. He won a second trial when his original sentence was thrown out, but he was convicted and sentenced to death again.
Alderman's attorneys are preparing to take depositions as to whether the people who administer lethal injection are properly trained, whether the proper dosages of various drugs are used to keep pain at a minimum and whether the whole process is constitutional. Rose is one of the experts making that contention, according to documents filed in the case.
The motion to sanction Sperry was filed with Judge Beverly Martin, who is handling the lethal injection case.
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