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Anything new? My Google Alerts seems to have fallen distressingly silent in this most interesting case!
Nothing. Her next court appearance is a week from today, Monday, June 22nd.
Anything new? My Google Alerts seems to have fallen distressingly silent in this most interesting case!
This is rich. Her defense attorney is now trying to make her seem intellectually challenged or insane: "She's starting to understand where she is and what has happened to her." Oh, give me a break. Such artful defense attorney posturing and spin: http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/story/news/2015/07/08/kayaker-fiances-court-thursday/29875503/
Neither kayaker was wearing a life preserver at the time of the incident. No criminality was suspected.
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2015/08/10/hudson-river-kayaker-body-found/---
“The river is as dangerous as it is beautiful,” said forensic scientist Michael Archer.
Archer has been working on a previous Hudson River kayak drowning, in which the survivor was charged with murder.
The similarities between that case and the more recent one were that alcohol was involved, and the fully-clothed victim was found without a life jacket. The dissimilarity is that Fruchtmann was also without a life jacket and was in the same kayak, and police say there is no suspicion of wrongdoing.
But the defense team for Graswald is keeping close tabs on the latest incident.
“I’m not going to give up a defense strategy, but obviously, everyone in the first case is paying attention to this one,” Archer said.
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Wow, why anyone (much less two people) would dare to take kayaks out on the Hudson without life jackets after what happenened to Vincent is mind boggling. Granted, alcohol is said to have played a role, but still, this is :crazy: to me.
ETA: the similarities between the two cases are striking.
:moo:
:rose:
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BBM“Alcohol may have played a role in the capsizing. We’re still investigating that,” said Dutchess County Sheriff’s Capt. John Watterson. “(Fruchtmann) was under the influence of alcohol when interviewed.”
recordonline.com:---
Jeanine Pirro, a former district attorney in Westchester County, said medical examiners typically gave the manner of death, whether accident, suicide, homicide or undetermined, without elaborating.
“That is a very unusual way of describing manner of death,” Ms. Pirro said in a phone interview. “It’s rare that you get something next to the manner of death that is so outside the analysis of the body.”
“Let’s assume that the drain plug was removed,” she added. “It doesn’t mean it’s a homicide. It could mean that it was removed by accident. What does that have to do with the drowning? If that’s what the medical examiner thinks, she’s going to have to back that up on the stand.”
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more at the links---
Graswald’s lawyer, Richard Portale, on Thursday said the determination of homicide on the autopsy report by Orange County’s Chief Medical Examiner, Jennifer Roman, includes a line stating that she drew the conclusion of homicide because of information that the “kayak drain plug intentionally removed by other.” That oversteps the evidence, Portale said.
"I'm not impressed with that at all," he said. He spoke with a number of kayaking experts, he said, and they all agree: "The drain plug wouldn't do that."
The medical examiner based her theory on an implausible claim by police, Portale said. She has a responsibility to conduct her own examination, he argued, and should have examined the kayak or consulted an expert before taking the police explanation at face value. Portale also said he has reviewed Graswald's taped interviews with police, and they're not as damning as prosecutors claim.
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Conferences in the case are next scheduled for October 16.Richard Portale, Graswald’s lawyer, takes issue with the medical examiner’s conclusions. “They only rely on false statements from the New York State Police, and rather than doing their own investigation, contacting their own experts, contacting kayaking experts, examining the kayak, speaking to the manufacturer, [the medical examiner] just relied on what they told her. And then for her to use the word ‘intentionally?’ Did she find that under a microscope? In New York, a medical examiner properly relies on the medical evidence…. They can take other things into consideration, but the issue of intent, that’s the issue for the jury.”
http://gothamist.com/2015/09/10/coroner_plays_detective_in_ruling_h.phpA forensics expert called the reference to the plug in the autopsy a "red herring," saying it suggests intentional murder in a way it's not the role of medical examiners to do:
"That’s not something the medical examiner should be writing down...The way it was written sounds like the medical examiner was saying it’s clearly a murder based on pulling the plug."