MARTIN GRIME'S DOGS to give evidence in Detroit murder trial of parents of missing toddler, aged 2, presumed dead

http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120824/METRO01/208240420#ixzz24a3uvyi9

The Detroit News

August 24, 2012

Canine expert can testify on cadaver scent in Bianca Jones case, judge rules
By Christine Ferretti

Detroit — A canine expert whose dog allegedly detected a cadaver scent in the home of a missing toddler will be allowed to testify at the murder trial of the girl's father, a judge ruled Friday.

Wayne County Circuit Judge Vonda R. Evans made the ruling after attorneys for D'Andre Lane spent more than two hours trying to discredit the relatively new scientific method. Lane is charged with first-degree murder and child abuse in the death of his 2-year-old daughter, Bianca Jones.

"I believe the evidence offered is sufficient to go forward. The people should be allowed to demonstrate to a jury that your client was implicated in this particular murder," Evans told the defense. "I think your argument is to weight as opposed to admissibility."

The court Friday also denied a defense motion to halt proceedings in the case while the state Court of Appeals evaluates efforts by Lane's attorneys to have the case tossed out. The attorneys said they also plan to appeal Friday's ruling.

Two forensic canine experts testified Friday before Evans ruled to admit at trial the potential evidence, which is key for prosecutors in the case against Lane.

Danian Woodson, an attorney for Lane, tried to argue against the cadaver dog evidence. But Evans cut her off and denied the motion.

After the hearing, Woodson said the alleged evidence is "not admissible, not relevant, highly prejudicial and should be excluded."

Lane has claimed Bianca was in the back seat of his 2004 Mercury Grand Marquis on the morning of Dec. 2 when he was approached by armed carjackers near Brush Street and Grand River.

The vehicle was found shortly after, but the child was not inside. Her body has not been found.

Forensic canine expert Martin Grime testified Friday and at Lane's prior preliminary examination that he brought in his victim recovery dog, Morse, two days after the girl went missing. He said the dog detected a cadaver scent inside Lane's car, on the child's blanket and car seat, and in the girl's bedroom and Lane's home.

Grime said the dogs detect only the generic scent of human decomposition. The dogs, he said, cannot determine identity, age, race, gender or the rate of decomposition.

Grime testified in court Friday that Morse has never had a false positive response, and that testing done just prior and after the dog worked in the Jones case was successful.

"I believe that the testimony, his conclusion is based on principles and methods that have been in place for several years," Evans said of Grime.

Also Friday, Rex A. Stockham, a special agent for the FBI who oversees its forensic canine program, said the agency has been studying the science for about a decade.

The FBI began testing contract and volunteer teams for the human scent detection program in 2008, Stockham said. The agency has three full-time dogs working in the country.

The dogs are tested annually to ensure they meet best practices standards. Morse has only been tested one time, Stockham said.

Prosecutors allege Lane beat the toddler to death with an 18-inch stick with a towel wrapped in duct tape at the end over a potty training incident.

Lane's attorney, Terry Johnson, contends Lane did "spank" the child with the stick, but that there was no evidence of child abuse or murder since the girl's whereabouts is unknown.

Lane told Detroit Police he left his home around 7:45 a.m. Dec. 2. He dropped his nephew and 8-year-old daughter off before visiting a gas station, Wayne County Community College in Detroit and, with a friend, near the Greyhound bus station on Howard Street. The carjacking, Lane claimed, occurred just afterward, with only him and Bianca in the vehicle.

FBI agent Christopher Hess testified at Lane's preliminary examination that the defendant was unable to explain where he was for a 45-minute window around the time his daughter disappeared.

Lane's girlfriend, Anjali Lyons, has testified she awoke Dec. 2 to Bianca's screams as Lane used the stick to beat the toddler for urinating in bed. Later the same morning, Lane carried a silent Bianca to his car. She was covered with an animal print blanket.

Lane's trial is slated for Sept. 18.

Oh dear !!

Must keep an eye on this! If only this sort of thing got onto the front page of the Sunday tabloids.

PeterMac wrote:Oh dear !!

Quite.

woof woof !

I can't find anything more recent in the British media than this story from the Daily Mail in March and it doesn't mention the dogs.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2115284/DAndre-Lane-charged-murder-toddler-daughter-Bianca-Jones-months-reporting-kidnapping-alleged-carjacking.html

I know the press can't be expected to run a story on every single child who "disappears" but I can't help wondering about the reasons why this case is no longer being reported on.

What if the lawyer who tried to prevent Grime's testimony in court resorts to deperate measures and mentions the McCann case during the trial saying Grime and his dogs have been discredited even by British police giving the example of Redwood recently claiming Maddie may still be alive to support the claim? Even if the result will be to try to undermine Grime and cadaver dogs, I can't see the McCanns being happy about being dragged into such a case IF this happens.

ShuBob wrote:What if the lawyer who tried to prevent Grime's testimony in court resorts to deperate measures and mentions the McCann case during the trial saying Grime and his dogs have been discredited even by British police giving the example of Redwood recently claiming Maddie may still be alive to support the claim? Even if the result will be to try to undermine Grime and cadaver dogs, I can't see the McCanns being happy about being dragged into such a case IF this happens.

The PJ never discredited the dogs......what are you trying to say here ShuBob?

So that would be
- McCanns said the dogs were unreliable, (based on the Eugene Zapata case, or rather the case before the admission of guilt,)
therefore
we can argue that they are unreliable in this case, because the McCanns said so, and their uncorroborated word has the force of law
even though
The McCann's statement that they were unreliable was itself shown to be unreliable.
A good Barrister should be able to make something out of that.

All dogs are unreliable
This is a dog
Therefore it is unreliable.

That is a perfectly logical syllogism. But it tells us nothing about the factual accuracy of the major premise.

Some dogs are unreliable
This is a dog
Therefore is is unreliable

This suffers from an undistributed middle ("some dogs") followed by the attempt to force the particular dog into that category.

And so on.

Only the desperate will try to discredit the dogs. Apart from the Shannon Matthews case were she slept on a secondhand mattress following the death of it's previous owner, I am yet to come across a single case where a cadaver dog has indicated the "scent of death" following a missing persons' inquiry only for the person to turn up alive. The lawyer in Bianca Jones case has tried once before to prevent the dog's evidence. It won't be surprising if she tries it again.

Lane's attorney, Terry Johnson, contends Lane did "spank" the child with the stick, but that there was no evidence of child abuse or murder since the girl's whereabouts is unknown.

Ha! did spank = no evidence of child abuse!!! Some attorney eh !
Is Terry Johnson thick or perverting course of justice when he made a stupid self defeating statement like that?

Lane's girlfriend statement that he spanked the child then carried a silence child covered in a blanket away is very powerful evidence which neither the prosecutor or judge can ignore, that the child could already be dead and he took her away for burial.

The circumstantial evidence is very strong against Lane, coupled that with the Morse markings only one conclusion is inevitable.

ShuBob wrote:What if the lawyer who tried to prevent Grime's testimony in court resorts to deperate measures and mentions the McCann case during the trial saying Grime and his dogs have been discredited even by British police giving the example of Redwood recently claiming Maddie may still be alive to support the claim? Even if the result will be to try to undermine Grime and cadaver dogs, I can't see the McCanns being happy about being dragged into such a case IF this happens.

If the lawyer knew about mccanns' discrediting the dog tactics, he should also have known they discredited the dogs in Eugene Zapata's case and look what happened? Unless the lawyer is asking for trouble for himself I doubt he would mention the mccanns, but you never know, because even attorney when desperate can commit some silly mistakes as under estimating Prosecutors and Judge's intelligence.

aiyoyo wrote:

ShuBob wrote:What if the lawyer who tried to prevent Grime's testimony in court resorts to deperate measures and mentions the McCann case during the trial saying Grime and his dogs have been discredited even by British police giving the example of Redwood recently claiming Maddie may still be alive to support the claim? Even if the result will be to try to undermine Grime and cadaver dogs, I can't see the McCanns being happy about being dragged into such a case IF this happens.

If the lawyer knew about mccanns' discrediting the dog tactics, he should also have known they discredited the dogs in Eugene Zapata's case and look what happened? Unless the lawyer is asking for trouble for himself I doubt he would mention the mccanns, but you never know, because even attorney when desperate can commit some silly mistakes as under estimating Prosecutors and Judge's intelligence.

It will be an act of pure desperation. Just take Kate McCann, for example. She continued to reference the Zapata and Jersey home cases long after it had been conclusively proven that the dogs were right in both cases. This, from a woman embroiled in multiple legal cases where the dogs evidence is used in argument. One has to ask why their numerous very expensive legal counsel didn't rein her in. One suspects there is a method to the apparent madness.

I think they are simply trapped. They cannot advert to the possibility that the dogs are correct. If they did their entire edifice would fall.

But why not just stop mentioning the dogs? Why reference cases where the dogs' abilities are proven? Not sure if it's true as I haven't read it but I hear Kate even mentions the Zapata case in her book. It doesn't make sense to me.

From the book. Kate quotes from the lawyer

The most critical question relating to the use of the dog
alerts as evidence is how likely is the dog’s alert to be
correct. In this regard, the only testing of these handler
and dog teams recorded an abysmal performance.
Here ‘the basis’ for the possible past presence of
human remains is that there is a 20 or 40 per cent
chance that a dog’s ‘alert’ was correct. In other words,
with respect to residual odour, the dog-handler teams
performed significantly worse than if the handlers had
simply flipped a coin to speculate as to the presence
of residual odour at each location.
State of Wisconsin v. Zapata, 2006 CF 1996 – defendant supplemental memorandum

Unfortunately for her he subsequently confessed, and showed that the dog was 100% correct.

This is precisely my point- he had ALREADY confessed BEFORE she wrote the book. So why include it?

She continues to reference Zapata and Jersey home cases because her bewk is aimed at ignorant joe public who hasn't followed up the those cases to know she's talking from her derriere.

She's banking on no one will call her bluff because they don't know any better. Gullible people do take what they read at face value, sadly.

aiyoyo wrote:She continues to reference Zapata and Jersey home cases because her bewk is aimed at ignorant joe public who hasn't followed up the those cases to know she's talking from her derriere.

She's banking on no one will call her bluff because they don't know any better. Gullible people do take what they read at face value, sadly.

Aiyoyo, but doesn't her book become a legal document in court cases such as the ones against Amaral and Tony? It's one thing relying on the ignorance of the great unwashed but quite another when you're embroiled in legal cases where the dogs evidence is a factor. She really didn't need to include that case in her book over years after he'd confessed.....unless she had to?

@ aiyoyo
It's indeed pure manipulation of the masses. Just like she said/wrote that after 30 days dogs wouldn't be able to smell anything anymore. Whereas "everybody else" knows that cadaver is a smell, which doesn't go away and ... that Grimes did a test with Eddie with sand in which bones of a 2,000 year-old mummy had lain, which was then put on a sand beach and ... he found it :-)

I am really glad of the references to Zapata and Jersey home cases in the kate mccann bewk. They are going to come back and bite her one day soon. I for one am not complaining about it, nor care why it is in the bewk....It is and its an own goal for her and another notch in exposing the mccanns scam

Châtelaine wrote:@ aiyoyo
It's indeed pure manipulation of the masses. Just like she said/wrote that after 30 days dogs wouldn't be able to smell anything anymore. Whereas "everybody else" knows that cadaver is a smell, which doesn't go away and ... that Grimes did a test with Eddie with sand in which bones of a 2,000 year-old mummy had lain, which was then put on a sand beach and ... he found it :-)

This is a good example of why I cannot figure out if Healy and McCann are just plain stupid or if indeed McCann is being clever and using his "confusion is good" tactic. Did he specifically refer to Mr Grimes dogs ? I am not so sure he did.

The odour a tracker dog looks for will disappear after a reasonably short period of time as far as I am aware, i.e., the tracker dogs used to scent the towel who gave up at the Baptista supermarket. Scent from a live person does not remain in the atmosphere for a long period of time. The cadaver dogs as we all know are a different breed entirely and cadaver will remain as you say for years. Now is this the McCanns being pure thick or are they being deliberately vague and just referring to "dogs".

In the same way McCann leads us to believe they asked for the dogs - was it the EVRD or the tracker dogs they asked for ? If indeed it was Eddie and Keela, they must have had some faith in their capabilities, until such time as they alerted that is. Again though, I think it was the tracker dogs they specifically requested but i can only recall McCann referring to asking for the "dogs" to be brought in and not specifically Eddie and Keela.

Châtelaine wrote:@ aiyoyo
It's indeed pure manipulation of the masses. Just like she said/wrote that after 30 days dogs wouldn't be able to smell anything anymore. Whereas "everybody else" knows that cadaver is a smell, which doesn't go away and ... that Grimes did a test with Eddie with sand in which bones of a 2,000 year-old mummy had lain, which was then put on a sand beach and ... he found it :-)

Including Kate herself, I suspect.

I wonder if she's gearing herself for some sort of selective insanity plea. Nothing she does makes sense to me. Unraveling her thought process may be one step towards finding the truth. She doesn't come across as one who will confess to any wrongdoing under any circumstance.

Sami, regardless of the speciality of the dogs the couple asked for, it would mean they had a level of faith in the ability of police dogs. What evidence do they have that a certain speciality of dog is more reliable than another e.g. is there evidence that tracker dogs are better at their job than cadaver dogs? The McCanns' position on this is untenable IMO and I continue to wonder why they went down that road to start with.

Dogs are trained to alert to what they are specifically trained to do & only what they are specifically trained to do...A tracker dog is different to a cavader dog as to a blood dog. As in the Tia case, a tracker dog will not alert to cavader as it is not trained for the smell, and you can't have a word with it either to alert to anything else that its not trained for just incase! Its not a human

Dogs have a far far superior sense of smell than humans & 2 air passages in its nose, which most humans do not understand about