The prosecution finished pressing its case Wednesday against the three men accused of covering up the Aug. 2, 2006, death of lawyer Robert Wone.
The trial of Joseph Price, Dylan Ward and Victor Zaborsky is in its fourth week. The three are charged with conspiracy, tampering with evidence and obstruction of justice in connection with Wone’s death in their Dupont Circle town house.
In D.C. Superior Court on Wednesday, a forensic pathologist testified that Wone wasn’t immediately killed by three stab wounds to his chest, but he didn’t appear to try to move or defend himself.
That lack of movement doesn’t happen often in a stabbing, said Dr. David Fowler, Maryland’s chief medical examiner. Fowler did not perform an autopsy on Wone, but reviewed the case at the request of prosecutors.
Fowler said all three stab wounds on Wone’s chest were four to five inches deep and followed parallel trajectories. It is unusual, he testified, for a victim to remain still enough that multiple wounds have such similarities.
In most stabbings, Fowler said, the victim will move, resulting in abrasions where the knife scrapes the skin and varying wound paths. Stabbing victims also reflexively move their limbs to cover their vital organs and will touch the area where they are wounded, Fowler said.
The lack of blood found on Wone’s hands was “somewhat remarkable,” said Fowler, who received much of his medical training in South Africa, where stabbing deaths were the most common type of autopsy he performed. Only a small smear of blood was found on one of Wone’s hands.
Prosecutors have suggested that Wone was injected with a drug that caused paralysis, then sexually assaulted and killed.
Fowler testified that puncture wounds on Wone’s ankles were likely inflicted before he died, and not produced by medical personnel.
He also said Wone likely would have remained conscious for 45 to 60 seconds after having been stabbed.
But he also said there appeared to be no medical reason why Wone would not have been able to move after he was wounded. Under cross-examination by defense attorney Thomas Connolly, Fowler said there was no evidence that Wone was incapacitated, paralyzed or otherwise immobilized at the time of the stabbing.
A lack of obvious evidence that Wone moved after being stabbed also doesn’t necessarily mean he did not, Fowler said under cross-examination by defense lawyer David Schertler.
