Surprise Toxicology Finding ‘A Wake-up Call for Defense Attorneys’
A New York prosecutor has dropped plans to retry a murder case based on new findings that a 13-year-old girl found dead 15 years ago died of a cocaine overdose rather than strangulation.
Dr. Michael Baden, a former chief medical examiner for New York City who helped review the evidence, told the New York Times that the case “should be a wake-up call for defense attorneys to have their own experts examine the evidence.”
Erie County District Attorney Frank Clark announced yesterday that a review of the toxicology reports found there was enough cocaine in the blood of the girl, Crystallynn Girard, to cause her death, the Times reports. A medical examiner had originally ruled she was strangled.
Crystallynn’s mother, Lynn DeJac, was convicted in her daughter’s death but was freed from prison last November on the basis of DNA evidence that placed her former boyfriend in Crystallynn’s bedroom, the Associated Press reports. The boyfriend had testified against DeJac on a grant of immunity. At the time of her release, DeJac was said to be the first woman convicted of murder to be freed based on DNA evidence.
DeJac’s lawyer, Andrew LoTempio, told the Times he had received a toxicology report before trial showing trace amounts of cocaine in the girl’s blood, but the medical examiner assured him it could not have caused her death. “As a strategist, there wasn’t any need to get into it and defame Crystallynn in any fashion,” he said.
The Buffalo News reached the original medical examiner in the case, Sung-ook Baik, but he refused to comment. He now works as a medical examiner in California.
