By Lisa Hurt Kozarovich
Contributing Writer
February 28, 2006 02:12 pm
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BOONVILLE — The jury was set to begin deliberating David Camm’s case this morning in Warrick County, following closing arguments by both sides Monday.
Camm is charged with three counts of murder in the fatal shooting deaths of his wife, Kim, 36, son Brad, 7, and daughter Jill, 5, at their Georgetown home Sept. 28, 2000.
The conspiracy charge against Camm was dropped earlier this month when Judge Robert Aylsworth ruled the state had not presented evidence to support the charge.
Camm’s co-defendant, Charles Boney, was recently convicted of the same charges in a separate trial and sentenced to 225 years in prison.
State: Henderson weaves closing argument
As he stood before the jury deciding David Camm’s fate, Floyd County Prosecutor Keith Henderson suddenly yanked tight on both ends of a short, thick rope.
The rope, he told jurors Monday, is similar to the state’s case against the former Indiana State Trooper. Individually, the threads of the rope can be broken, but when weaved together provide an unbreakable bond.
Among the threads: Camm’s demeanor in the days after the murders, an unexplained bloody shoeprint, the blood and gunshot residue on his clothing and his alleged confession.
After six weeks of testimony, Henderson weaved the threads together for the jury during closing arguments.
A good portion of Henderson’s 70-minute closing focused on Camm’s behavior following the murders.
“He called, not 911, but the State Police. He asked for the post commander and was put on hold,” Henderson said, referring to Camm calling his former colleagues instead of the police district where he lived on the night of the murders. “This is no coincidence, it was a plan.”
“Within the first 24 hours, David Camm controlled the investigation, by who he called, and that was his friends who he knew would be sympathetic to him,” the prosecutor said.
Henderson also pointed out the following “odd behavior” in the days after the murders:
• Camm stopped performing CPR on his son to run across the street and get his uncle, then came back and started CPR again — this despite the fact that troopers are trained to never stop CPR until help arrives.
“Any first year EMT knows that. He was a state trooper for almost 10 years,” Henderson said.
• He called his wife’s company at 7:30 a.m. the morning after the murders to report Kim would not be coming in, and had a discussion with her boss about life insurance benefits to be paid out.
• He complained to a female trooper and former colleague that no one would find him “dateable “ now.
• He asked a family friend who owned a cleaning business about getting the Ford Bronco, in which his children were killed, cleaned.
“She was a friend, and she thought that was strange, especially for a police officer,” Henderson said.
• He threatened two of former colleagues of his who were investigating the case, saying, “If you let that blood expert put me in jail, I’ll kill you.”
Next, Henderson reminded the jury about the half of a bloody shoeprint that was found at the scene.
“There was just half of one bloody shoeprint left at the scene, no other (shoeprints). Where did the other prints go? That, ladies and gentleman, is one print that was cleaned up. Prints don’t just disappear,” he said.
The state maintained it wasn’t just the prints that were cleaned up, recalling one detective who testified the overall crime scene “looked too clean.”
Another thread was the prison sweatshirt issued to Charles Boney during one of his prison stays. The shirt, Henderson pointed out, doesn’t have any high-velocity blood spatter on it like Camm’s does.
High-velocity blood spatter only travels about 4 feet and dries almost instantly, so only someone near the bodies when they were shot would have these types of blood stains on their clothing.
The eight tiny blood stains and a piece of tissue found on the shirt Camm was wearing the night of the murders remain the state’s key physical evidence, but just as many experts testified it was contact blood stains as said it was high-velocity spatter.
Henderson pointed out that defense experts could never explain where that contact blood could have come from to create eight dots, and not a smear, when the shirt brushed against a surface.
Besides the physical evidence, Camm reportedly confessed to two men he was jailed with. Both informants said he told them he committed the murders because his wife was going to leave him.
Finally, Henderson said, two respected forensic pediatricians had given the jury Camm’s motive when they testified his daughter had been molested within 24 hours of her death.
He added, “Things were not perfect in that family. This mother knew that and she was going to take action.”
Defense: Burden of proof not met
The state’s case against Camm just doesn’t make sense, defense attorneys Katharine “Kitty” Liell and Stacy Uliana emphasized to jurors in closing arguments, and that means reasonable doubt exists.
For example, why would Camm bother to clean up his footprints when he admitted to being at the scene?
And, why wouldn’t Camm — if he was the killer and had struggled violently with Kim — have scratches or other marks on him as Kim and Boney both did?
Why would Kim and the children go on with their normal activities — school, dance and swim lessons, making dental appointments — if she had learned her daughter had been molested?
Teachers, family members and others testified the children were normal, happy and active the day before the murders.
Why would Kim remodel the bedroom weeks before her death if she was planning to leave her husband?
Why would Camm conspire with Boney and then sit in jail for five years without ever giving up the convicted felon?
As for Camm’s allegedly odd behavior, Liell told the jury “shame on (the prosecutors) for thinking that’s evidence.”
For every witness who testified about Camm’s strange behavior, the defense brought on its own witness to talk about his “zombie” mode, his shock, sobbing, anger and grief.
She said that Camm’s sister suggested he make the call to Kim’s workplace and that Kim’s boss wasn’t sure who brought up the subject of benefits first, him or Camm.
Once the motive of insurance money was thrown out, the state needed a new theory, and came up with molestation, Liell said in the defense’s 90-minute closing argument. She also reminded the jury that, by law, they are required to go into deliberations with a presumption of evidence and to require the state to prove its case.
“We do not have to prove Dave Camm did not leave the gym. The state has to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he did,” said Liell.
The testimony of the state’s expert blood-stain-pattern witnesses alone should create reasonable doubt, Uliana said.
The entire foundation of the case, she said, was based on the word of an inexperienced, unqualified blood-stain-pattern analysis who was at his first crime scene. The so-called expert, she said, had never had the basic 40-hour course on blood-stain-pattern analysis and has no real science background.
Other state expert witnesses testified beyond what the science can determine, Uliana said.
Also at question are the footprints found at the murder scene. Some witnesses said there were none, some said five, some said one-half of a print, Uliana told the jury.
If Camm is convicted, his attorneys believe they have grounds for appeal based on several issues, including the testimony about Jill’s alleged molestation.
“The most obvious reasonable doubt is common sense,” she said.
And common sense, Uliana said, says Camm could not have snuck out of the gym where he was playing basketball with 10 other people he knew, drove five minutes to his house, murdered his family, cleaned up the murder scene, drove back and played ball in a bloody shirt without being noticed.
Bart Montgomery, a juror from Camm’s 2002 trial, was in court to observe the proceedings Monday.
Montgomery said he stood behind his guilty vote “120 percent” and hopes the current jury sees the same things the first one did.
Most importantly, that there is a 15-minute block of time for which the basketball players could not account for Camm’s whereabouts and that the blood on his clothing could not have come from brushing against a surface without leaving a brushing pattern.
To the jury, Montgomery would say, “Your job’s not to solve the case. Your job is to look at the evidence.”
Jurors in the first trial deliberated for two days.
— Lisa Hurt Kozarovich
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