September 30, 2008
Expert barred from testifying
Officer who tried to reconstruct fatal limo crash is cut off before discussing truck's probable speed
It was State Police Sgt. Scott Crawford's job to figure out how the crash that killed Katie Flynn and Stanley Rabinowitz happened.
Crawford, who had been trained in accident reconstruction, was called to the crash scene less than an hour after it happened. Six months later, he produced a report for prosecutors explaining how the two vehicles collided.
But yesterday, Acting State Supreme Court Justice Alan Honorof ruled that Crawford could not testify as an expert at Martin Heidgen's murder trial. And on the stand, even Crawford seemed to agree.
"I'm not very comfortable with angular momentum overall," he said when asked about the method he used to figure out how fast Heidgen's pickup was going when it slammed into a limousine two years ago.
Heidgen, 25, of Valley Stream, is accused of driving drunk the wrong way on the Meadowbrook Parkway on July 2, 2005, hitting a limousine that was returning from a wedding in Bayville. Killed in the crash were Rabinowitz, 59, of Farmingdale, the limo's driver, and Katie, 7, of Long Beach, who was a flower girl in her aunt's wedding.
Even though Crawford wrote his report for prosecutors, he was called as a witness for the defense. Heidgen's lawyer, Stephen LaMagna, wanted to show jurors that prosecutors have backed away from Crawford because they did not like his estimate of how fast Heidgen was going at the time of the crash - less than 45 mph. LaMagna has said if Heidgen was going that slowly, it shows that he was just lost when he got on the parkway going in the wrong direction. To win a murder conviction, prosecutors must show that Heidgen did not care whether he killed anyone that night or not.
But Crawford was asked by the judge to leave the stand before he could tell the jury how fast he thought Heidgen was going before the crash.
Prosecutor Maureen McCormick has said she decided not to use either of the accident reconstruction experts who worked on the crash, because their results varied so widely. Instead, she is relying on the testimony of an eyewitness who said he drove next to Heidgen at 70 mph, but on the correct side of the road.
LaMagna would not say if Heidgen will testify in the trial.
Katie Flynn's father, Neil, said he doesn't care whether Heidgen takes the stand. He said Heidgen can't be trusted and alluded to prosecutors' claim that Heidgen tried to taint a DNA test by holding another man's bodily fluid in his mouth while a saliva swab was taken.
"Anything that comes out of his mouth will either belong to another prisoner or it will be a lie," he said.
At a glance
Previously: Another motorist on the correct side of Meadowbrook Parkway testified he drove alongside Martin Heidgen at 70 mph.
Yesterday: A State Police trooper who reconstructed the crash said he was not expert in doing so, preventing himself from testifying for the defense about his work.
Still to come: A different expert will estimate Heidgen's speed at the time of the crash.
Copyright © 2008, Newsday Inc.
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