I knelt next to the victim’s car in the parking lot with the prosecutor, defense attorney, and judge crowded behind me. Packed in a semicircle around us, the twelve jurors squeezed in for a closer look.
It had been an attempted armed robbery. Late at night, a woman had pulled her car to the curb at the bank. An ATM was located next to the bank’s front door. The woman planned on getting some cash. It was well after dark, but there was a light above the ATM making it a bright spot in for customers while making withdrawals after dark.
As the car was just stopping when a man wearing a ski mask bolted out from behind a bush next to the ATM with a gun in his right pointed at the woman. He charged up and jerked open the driver’s door with the gun thrust toward the woman’s head.
Instinctively, the woman stomped the gas pedal. The car lurched forward, breaking the robber’s grasp and spinning him away from the car as it accelerated into the street to make good the woman’s escape.
She drove straight to the police station to report the incident. The officer who took her report powdered around the driver’s door handle. A fingerprint appeared, black and clear and crisp where the robber had placed his thumb to lift the door handle just minutes before.
The police submitted the lift, along with a list of possible suspects, to the crime lab. It was a full pattern print and had not smudged or smeared when the robber’s grasp on the handle had been broken by the car jolting forward. Sure enough, it matched the left thumb print of one of the suspects.
At trial, the prosecutor asked a question I didn’t anticipate. “Mr. Wertheim, would you be able to determine the exact location on the driver’s door where this print was found?”
I looked at the latent lift and noticed that two parallel lines slightly darker than the background ran right through the middle of the print. Those would most likely represent two pinstripes on the car. I also observed that there were several small nicks in the pinstripes, one slightly larger than the others and having an uneven, triangular shape.
“Yes, sir, I believe I could.”
The judge looked at the victim sitting in the gallery and asked, “Mrs. (victim) is your car in the parking lot?” She answered in the affirmative and the judge recessed the court to reconvene in five minutes in the parking lot.
As we approached the car, I noted the pinstripes I had surmised and, as soon as I knelt, I could see the three small nicks, including the fact that one was slightly larger and the same uneven triangular shape I observed in the lift.
The judge called court to order with me kneeling and everyone else standing in a tight semi-circle around me. I pointed out what I saw. We concluded direct and went straight into cross examination. After both attorneys were through, the judge allowed the individual jurors to ask questions with me still kneeling beside the victim’s car.
Then the judge called another short recess to reconvene in the courtroom. After a short deliberation, the defendant was found guilty. That trial stands out as one of the most unusual testimonies in my career.