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MADISON - The Wisconsin Department of
Justice has opened a perjury investigation into an expert witness who
lied about his credentials in a high-profile homicide case, a
spokesman said Wednesday.
Spokesman Kevin St. John confirmed the
agency is acting as special prosecutor in the case involving
discredited injury expert Saami Shaibani of Lynchburg, Va.
Shaibani was a key witness at the 2002
first-degree intentional homicide trial of Douglas Plude, who was
accused of poisoning his wife and drowning her in a toilet bowl. He
testified that someone must have forced Genell Plude's head under the
toilet water based on experiments in which he positioned volunteers
around a similar-sized toilet.
The testimony undercut Plude's claim
that he found his wife dying with her face in a vomit-filled toilet
and that her death was a suicide caused by an overdose of pills. Other
medical testimony was inconclusive on the cause of death.
Plude was found guilty and sentenced to
life in prison.
After the trial, evidence showed
Shaibani lied when he testified he was a clinical associate professor
at Temple University who taught doctors and surgeons about injuries.
In reality, he had no relationship with Temple. (Years earlier, he had
a "loose courtesy affiliation" that gave him parking
privileges but little else.)
The Wisconsin Supreme Court awarded
Plude a new trial in June, saying Shaibani's testimony was crucial and
would have been discredited had jurors known about his lie. Plude's
second trial is scheduled for April.
Shaibani testified in dozens of cases
across the nation as an expert in "injury mechanism
analysis" — a field in which he has claimed unrivaled
expertise. He has explained it as the science of using physics, trauma
and engineering to tell the cause of injuries. Critics say he invented
the field and dismiss it as junk science.
Shaibani's testimony has come under
attack in several cases. The D.C. Court of Appeals is considering
whether to grant a new trial to a woman convicted of killing her
2-year-old goddaughter in 2001; the court in July asked lawyers about
the relevance of the Wisconsin decision.
The criminal investigation into
Shaibani is an about-face for the Department of Justice, which had
declined to launch one while trying to convince judges to uphold
Plude's conviction.
The department is acting as special
prosecutor because Vilas County District Attorney Albert Moustakis,
who prosecuted Plude, would be a witness in any case against Shaibani.
Perjury, which can be hard to prove, is
a felony that carries punishment of up to six years in prison.
Shaibani did not return phone messages, and it was unclear whether he
has a lawyer.
Plude's appellate lawyer, Stephen
Willett, had warned an assistant attorney general in June 2006 that
his office discovered "substantial portions of Shaibani's
curriculum vitae were invented and perjured."
In addition to the Temple
misrepresentation, he claimed Shaibani inflated or invented employment
relationships with a violent crimes response team, the U.S. Department
of Justice and the FBI, among others. He said the state had a duty to
investigate and it would be "illegal and unethical" for
prosecutors to stand by the testimony otherwise.
Assistant Attorney General Maura Whelan
declined but conceded Shaibani lied about his Temple affiliation. She
said Willett should introduce evidence of any other lies into the
court record; that didn't happen.
During arguments last year before the
Supreme Court, Whelan defended Shaibani as an expert and said his
testimony about Genell Plude's positions "is pretty convincing on
its face." She downplayed his lie about Temple.
"I don't think this particular
kind of lie should be treated more harshly than a lot of the other
things that go wrong at trials," she told the justices.
St. John said Whalen's handling of the
case was appropriate for an appellate attorney.
Reached at his mother's home in Land O'
Lakes, Wis., Plude declined comment on the perjury investigation. In a
letter from prison earlier this year, he blasted the state for failing
to investigate Shaibani earlier.
"I'm sure Doug is upset by what
happened to him at the mouth of this guy and he should be. We all
should be," said Patrick "Buck" Schilling, a public
defender now representing Plude. "It's your and my government
that put someone on the stand that falsified his credentials.
According to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, it led to a man's
conviction."
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