Day 1

The Judge heard from Dr. Bill Smock about a meeting with the Commonwealth Attorney Dave Stengel. The Commonwealth Attorney's office failed to notify Jason Stinson's legal defense of this meeting. This is a violation of the law under Maryland vs. Brady. You can click here for more information on Maryland vs. Brady. The key elements of this are that Dr. Bill Smock approached Dave Stengel as a friend on March 18th, 2009 because he thought Stengel had been given some bad medical advice. Dr. Smock had reviewed this case at the request of the Courier-Journal and he told Stengel that this was an "accident" and "not a criminal event". He also provided them with documentation to support his findings.

At that time the Commonwealth Attorney's office had not consulted a single medical expert. Dave Stengel chose to disregard the expert the Commonwealth has relied on for 25 years, who has testified for the Commonwealth in hundreds of cases and is under contract with the Commonwealth to provide expert opinions regarding cases just like this one. He set a trial date for Jason Stinson's reckless homicide case 2 days later. Before the Stinson trial Dr. Bill Smock had never testified for the defense in the Commonwealth.

What was done about it? Well nothing really, but maybe it can be brought up to the powers that be after this trial is over. Judge Susan Shultz Gibson also heard a motion to dismiss the latest wanton endangerment charge, but she denied that motion. However, in another motion to suppress evidence the judge agreed with the defense that the last round of documents (1500+ pages worth) would not be allowed into trial because it was entered to late. These documents were entered 4 and 5 days before the beginning of the trial. She did rule that Jason Stinson's defense could use these documents if they helped their case, but they prosecution could only use them for impeachment purposes.

120 prospective jurors were sworn in today. 12 have already been dismissed for various reasons such as scheduling conflicts or extreme prejudice towards this case.