DURHAM -- Former SBI agent Duane Deaver misrepresented agency policy and exaggerated his training and experience under oath when he was certified as an expert witness in the Michael Peterson trial, according to SBI records and the SBI internal affairs director.
Peterson is challenging his 2003 conviction for the murder of his wife, Kathleen Peterson, on the grounds that Deaver, a key expert witness in the case, had a pattern and practice through his career of fabricating evidence of guilt and hiding evidence of innocence.
On Tuesday, the SBI own records showed that, under oath, Deaver had misstated SBI policy, exaggerated his experience and misrepresented his training.
Deaver testified in the Peterson trial that he was an experienced expert in the science of bloodstain pattern analysis, and could interpret the bloody staircase in the Peterson household where Kathleen Peterson was found dead.
Under oath in 2003, Deaver said he had worked 500 cases, written 200 reports, and testified in 60 cases, testimony that was contradicted Tuesday by SBI Assistant Director Eric Hooks, head of internal investigations.
Hooks was asked how many blood stain reports Deaver wrote in his entire career, from 1986 to 2010.
“Forty-seven,” Hooks said.
“Not two hundred?” asked David Rudolf, Peterson’s lawyer.
“No, forty seven,” Hooks said.
Hooks testimony capped a drama-filled day at the Durham Courthouse. The morning began with a terse exchange between Durham District Attorney Tracey Cline and the judge she had tried to remove from several cases, including the Peterson case. Cline had accused Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson of moral turpitude and corruption for ruling against her in several high profile cases.
Hudson quietly but firmly told Cline he did not understand her allegations or why she filed them, and turned to Cline’s request that Tuesday’s hearing be delayed.
Cline said she wanted the N.C. Attorney General’s office to step in; Hudson said the Attorney General’s office hadn’t contacted him.
Cline said she hadn’t prepared at all for the hearing, which had been scheduled for five months. To support her motion, Cline had Kathleen Peterson’s sister address the court.
Staring daggers at Peterson and his lawyer, Candace Zamperini made a forceful appeal for more time, reminding the court that the Friday marks the tenth anniversary of her sister’s death.
“I am here to say my sister still has rights, and there is no way you can have this district attorney represent my sister,” Zamperini said. “She is not prepared, her office is not prepared. The only thing a convicted murderer has is time, and I ask for the time to prepare for proper, quality, intelligent representation.”
Hudson denied Cline’s request, and the hearing began with the state being represented by a prosecutor unprepared to defend the guilty verdict in Durham County’s most publicized and notorious murder case.
Kathleen Peterson, a Nortel Networks executive, died in a pool of blood at the bottom of a blood-spattered staircase in the Peterson’s Forest Hills mansion in December 2001. The case was nationally televised and was the subject of books, documentaries and a feature film.
Deaver was a critical witness in the case. Jurors have said his testimony was critical to their deliberations and verdict, and in particular his opinion that a blood stain in the crotch of Peterson’s shorts could only have been put there during an assault.
Over the past two years, a stream of damaging information has emerged about Deaver: the exoneration of a Wake County man based in large part on Deaver's work in the case; a damning audit by former senior FBI officials; the suspension and disbanding of a bloodstain analysis team that Deaver trained and led; and a finding by a federal judge that Deaver gave misleading testimony in a 1993 murder case.
Deaver testified at the Peterson trial that he was a veteran blood stain analyst with experience at conducting tests and experiments to unravel how blood was deposited at a crime scene. He spent days at the trial testifying about experiments he conducted in a model of the Peterson’s staircase.
Deaver actually had scant experience in such recreations, conducting four such experiments during his career, Hooks testified Tuesday.
The first occurred in a 1989 Greene County capital murder case where the victim had been bludgeoned with a two-by-four. Deaver tried to recreate the blood spatter using pumpkins as skulls, Kinston attorney Bill Gerrans testified Tuesday.
“I didn’t understand how that had anything to do with a human skull being hit by a 2 by 4,” Gerrans said.
The second was a Wake County case in 1993. The third was the Peterson case.
The final recreation was a Davie County case where Deaver and one of his trainees tried to duplicate what prosecutors contended was knife stain on a shirt. After the second try produced the desired results, Deaver is heard on the video exclaiming “"Oh, even better, holy cow, that was a good one. Beautiful. That's a wrap, baby."
The SBI cited that remark as a reason for firing Deaver in January.
Deaver also testified that, in addition to two classes in blood stain analysis in the 1980s, he was mentored by SBI agent David Spittle, who was more experienced in bloodstain analysis.
“I was assigned to an expert, I was trained by him, I continued to work with him,” Deaver testified of Spittle.
In an interview during the SBI’s internal investigation, Spittle said he could not recall training or mentoring Deaver.
