The fate of William J. Barnes, 73, hinges on whether a jury concludes the gunshot wound he inflicted on Philadelphia police Officer Walter T. Barclay in 1966 directly caused Barclay's death in 2005.
In this unusual murder trial getting under way Monday, the focus won't be on the crime itself but on the decades that followed. The key testimony won't come from eyewitnesses but celebrity pathologists who pored over years of Barclay's medical records. Common Pleas Judge Renee Cardwell Hughes at a March hearing predicted the case would be a "duel of experts."
Prosecutors will present Michael Baden, host of HBO's "Autopsy" and expert witness on the high-profile cases of O.J. Simpson, Phil Spector and Claus von Bulow. On the stand for the defense will be Cyril Wecht, whose famous death investigations include Elvis Presley, Anna Nicole Smith and JonBenet Ramsey.
"It's going be fascinating to see how far these experts are willing to go, how attenuated their reasoning is," said New York criminal defense lawyer Scott H. Greenfield. "It's going to get stretched as far as it's ever going to get stretched."
Barnes has remained behind bars since his arrest in September 2007. He was released from prison in 2005 after serving 26 years for the attempted murder of Barclay plus several escape attempts.
Barclay, a 23-year-old rookie, responded to a burglary call in November 1966 and was shot twice by William Barnes, then 30 years old and a longtime criminal. One of the bullets pierced Barclay's shoulder and came to rest beside his spine, paralyzing him from the waist down.
At 64, he suffered heart failure brought on by a urinary tract infection. A medical examiner ruled Barclay's death a homicide, citing four decades of cascading complications from the shooting.
Within days police arrested Barnes, who was working at a supermarket and doing speaking engagements about his criminal history and what he called his "wasted life."
"The law is that when you set in motion a chain of events, a perpetrator of a crime is responsible for every single thing that flows from that chain of events, no matter how distant, so long as we can prove that the chain is unbroken," then-District Attorney Lynne Abraham said at the time.
Using medical evidence to prove the strength or weakness of that chain is at the heart of the case.
Defense attorney Samuel Silver is expected to present testimony about several car accidents and a fall from his wheelchair the officer suffered later injuries that affected his condition.
Assistant District Attorney Ed Cameron is likely to present jurors the excruciating details of Barclay's post-shooting years - a life of chronic pain, pneumonia, bedsores and bladder infections, and a death inside a nursing home, unable to sit up, a feeding tube in his stomach.
A gag order forbids the attorneys from commenting on the case. "It's such a close case on the medical testimony, it's going to come down to who jurors sympathize with the most," said James Ottavio Castagnera, director of Rider University's law and justice program.
"If (Barnes) can come off as a sympathetic guy, the defense should put him on the stand," he said. "Present a picture of guy who's sorry, who paid his dues, who's trying to live out what little he has left of his life."
The task of prosecutors will be "to bring (Barclay) back to life, talk about in excruciating detail how he suffered, make it seem like this guy hasn't suffered enough."
