November 20, 2008

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."

Associated Press