The Out-Lawyer's Blog

In front of the sitting jury, Dr. Fraga ran up to the noon break answering questions about his qualifications.

The jury now knows that this defense expert witness has three felony convictions, two for cocaine and one for forging US treasury checks, with lesser DUI & hit and run cases thrown in for good measure.

This is the first time Dr. Fraga will have testified as an expert in “children’s cognition”, and he has never published on the subject.

Why would Bill DuBois take the risk of putting on this somewhat pre-damaged psychologist? 

I suspect there are two reasons:  (a) Dubois and team couldn’t get anyone else. (b) The defense still hopes to use Fraga to get before the jury young “R…”’s testimony at the Reiser preliminary hearing before Judge Conger in which the lad supplied the almost-alibi.  Whenever an expert “relies” on something as a basis for his or her opinion, that “something” becomes potentially available to the jury.

For the potential gain involved, the defense is paying a very high price indeed. Even if the jury believes, for example, that Hans’ son unambiguously testified that he saw Mom disappear though the door of the Exeter house, never to return, there is no evidence to rule out a scenario in which this defendant followed her outside.

We also learned this morning that Hans will not testify today.  Recall that the court is not in session tomorrow.  This gives the defense team the entire weekend to prep their client.  They will need it.

JBG