Peterson Trial: Henry Lee has heated exchange in court; backs fall scenario

Two dozen people stood outside the locked door of Durham Superior Courtroom No. 1, buzzing with excitement. A star was in town.

The parties in State v. Michael Iver Peterson took their seats, the judge went to the bench, the jury filed into the box. Then David Rudolf, the attorney for Mike Peterson, stood to announce:

"At this time, the defense would call Dr. Henry Lee to the stand."

Unlike most witnesses in a murder trial, who approach the stand as if it were the dentist's chair, Lee leapt to his feet and jauntily stepped to the front of the courtroom. As he passed the jury box, he called out, "Good morning!" and the panel returned the greeting with equal enthusiasm.

Henry Lee was big in forensic science before forensic science was cool. To photocopy his resume would take a big bite from a ream. He has his immigrant story, a Taiwanese police officer coming to the United States in 1965 with his wife and $50 in his pocket to complete his education. He never lost the East Asian pronunciations of English.

With a Ph.D. in biochemistry, he eventually built for the Connecticut State Police an internationally recognized laboratory to apply the dispassionate eye of science to the messy human realities of murder. His fame went global with his testimony in the 1995 trial of O.J. Simpson, and people heard a scientist explain in easy-to-understand terms how Simpson did not kill his wife.

Though officially retired, he consults, almost always working on behalf of prosecutors, but he takes defense cases for $500 an hour. He has collected about $27,000 so far to analyze how Peterson's wife Kathleen, 48, died in a pool of blood at the foot of the back staircase in the couple's Forest Hills mansion Dec. 9, 2001.

District Attorney Jim Hardin has accused Peterson of beating his wife to death in the staircase, leaving seven lacerations in an area with a diameter of about 5 inches on the back of her head. Rudolf, in the second week of his direct defense of Peterson, has said Kathleen Peterson fell against a flat wall, a crown molding and an oak step, then bled to death as Peterson sat out by the mansion's pool after midnight.

Rudolf brought in Lee to interpret the massive amount of blood left behind in the stairwell. Lee told the jury he applied scientific principles to his studies, and he illustrated his approach with an eye-opening primer on blood spatter.

With a bottle of red ink and a dropper, Lee stood before the jury and dripped some ink perpendicular to a white poster board, making a perfect red circle. He tilted up another poster board and squeezed the dropper to show how liquid changes shape depending on the angle of impact. He poured some ink onto a poster board and smacked it with his right hand. He picked up an atomizer and sprayed red ink, to show how drops change shape depending on the speed upon impact.

Then, Lee said, blood spatter can come from other places. He lifted a small bottle of ketchup to his lips. He took a mouthful. He inhaled through his nose. Then he spat the ketchup on the board.

Thus introduced to Dr. Henry Lee, the jury stared at him, then sat back for the rest of the testimony.

Lee first visited the Peterson mansion on Valentine's Day 2002, and, "I look at the totality," he said, "just like you go into a forest and look at the forest before you look at the trees."

Lee said Monday that the Durham police "did an excellent job" documenting the death scene, although "there's always room for improvement." Rudolf handed over the police photographs, and Lee pulled out a 6-inch magnifying glass to examine them.

Lee said the blood and hair at the scene suggested that Kathleen Peterson fell against the vertical crown molding of the staircase. He found in the blood 11 partial fingerprints and palm prints there, meaning she might have tried to get up. Blood on her feet showed she stood up at some point.

She may have hit the wall in the stairwell and even a metal chairlift fixed to the wall. She may have shaken her head, allowing her shoulder-length brown hair to fling blood. She may have coughed up blood against a wall.

"In your opinion," Rudolf asked, "was this consistent with a beating death?"

"No," Lee said. "Inconsistent."

Rudolf handed Lee to District Attorney Jim Hardin for cross-examination. Hardin let the jury know that Lee also used the stairwell for his own purposes. He visited the Peterson home on another occasion while a television news magazine videotaped him for a story on the scientist.

"You were there with '20/20'?" Hardin asked. "Yes," Lee said, smiling.

A defense pathologist said last week that Kathleen Peterson's injuries were consistent with a fall, not a beating. But when Hardin asked Dr. Jan Leestma to explain the order in which she received the injuries, he repeatedly declined. Monday, Hardin tried the same question on Lee.

"I really can't give you the sequence of events," Lee said. "I don't know which fall was first or which fall was second."

Hardin gave Lee a photograph of the stairwell's north wall, where the Steinlen "chat noir" poster hangs. There, a "void" or open space was somehow created amid the blood. Hardin called it an attempted cleanup. Not so, Lee said.

Kathleen Peterson might have coughed up blood near the wall but had a fist to her mouth, which blocked the spray from landing, creating the void. Lee said that possibility could have been confirmed if the blood had been tested for saliva.

So Hardin asked: "Did you do a saliva test?"

Suddenly, the genial scientist disappeared.

"Nobody asked me!" Lee put an edge in his voice. "It's not my responsibility! Your local laboratory crime-scene people should do it. If they do their job properly, I don't have to come here. You cannot blame me that I did not do the test."

Hardin asked, "But you can't say it was coughed or aspirated blood?"

"I already say that. That's why I say the crime-scene people should be doing the saliva test."

Hardin could not resist: "But you didn't do one either, right?"

"How many times I have to say, it's not my job!"

The words settled over the jury. After a few more minutes, Hardin said he was finished for the day. Lee would return in the morning .

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The Peterson trial: Day 46

SUMMARY: Forensic scientist Henry Lee, hired by the defense, testified that he didn't agree with the State Bureau of Investigation that blood-stain patterns showed Kathleen Peterson had been beaten to death. He said several other possibilities could account for the blood spatter, smears and drops.

It was more likely, Lee said, that the woman injured her head in a fall, struggled to her feet and fell again, all the while coughing up blood and flinging it onto the walls and stairs with her bloody hair or hands. Lee said the SBI's experiments to recreate the blood patterns were not scientific.

He said there was too much blood in the stairwell to have come from a beating.

SURPRISES: Lee said he found bloody fingerprints and palm prints on the walls and door molding, which could indicate Peterson struggled to her feet after falling .

This story was originally published September 15, 2003 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Peterson Trial: Henry Lee has heated exchange in court; backs fall scenario."