Friday, September 16, 2011
 
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Witnesses take stand at Cline murder trial

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[September 16, 2011]  Thursday morning, testimony began in the murder case against Lincoln resident Ty Cline. 

Cline was arrested on Aug. 26, 2009, and charged with felony murder in the death of 2-year-old Lucas Alberts.  

The toddler was the son of Cline's girlfriend Jody Alberts and had been left in Cline's care while Alberts attended the Illinois State Fair in Springfield on the evening of Aug. 22. 

Early in the morning of Aug. 23 the child was admitted to the emergency room at Abraham Lincoln Memorial Hospital in Lincoln after his mother found him unresponsive when trying to wake him from sleep. 

Alberts was transferred to OSF St. Francis in Peoria and was a patient in the pediatric intensive care unit, where he died in mid-afternoon. 

Attorneys for the prosecution are Jonathan Wright of the state's attorney's office and Ed Parkinson, appellate prosecutor. Cline is being represented by Springfield attorneys Jay Elmore and Jeff Page. 

With Judge Thomas Harris presiding and a jury of 15 -- 10 women and five men -- the morning testimony included Detective Paul Adams and Chief Ken Greenslate of the Lincoln Police Department and Dr. Channing Petrak, the attending pediatric doctor at OSF. 

Adams' testimony included a slide tour of the Cline home and identification of two rat cages that Cline has said the young child fell into on the evening of Aug. 22. 

Adams identified the locations of furniture, the rat cages and blood evidence found. 

He also recounted to the court his questioning on Cline on the morning of Aug. 23 outside his home. According to Adams, Cline was asked to exit his home and sit with Adams in his squad car. He was read his rights and then questioned about what had happened to the child the night before. 

It was also noted that Cline had been drinking rum early that morning. Adams confirmed that Cline told him this and that his breath smelled. When asked if the search of the home found a bottle of rum, the answer was no. When asked if the officers had observed a bottle of rum in Jody Alberts' home, the answer was "yes." 

Adams, who was questioned by Wright, confirmed that there had been conversations with the neighbors who lived in close proximity to Cline in an apartment building on 14th Street. He also testified that accounts of Cline's activities the night of Aug. 22 by the neighbors differed from Cline's own account. 

Adams was asked to recount what he had been told by neighbors, but the defense objected to the line of questioning, saying it was hearsay. The question was withdrawn, and Wright rephrased it, asking if Adams had received information from the neighbors that was in conflict with what he'd been told by Cline. Adams answered "yes."

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When Elmore cross-examined Adams for the defense, he walked through the timeline on the morning of Aug. 23. Adams said he'd received a call to ALMH at 6:50 a.m., arrived at 7:15 a.m. and talked to the attending doctor. 

He was asked if he went to Cline's apartment, then to the home of Jody Alberts and finally if he returned to Cline's, and Adams answered "yes" to all. 

Adams testified that he stayed outside of Cline's home until a search warrant arrived at 11:04 a.m. He verified that from his vehicle he could see only the front door of Cline's apartment and was unable to know if there were any comings and goings from the back door. 

Elmore walked through the order of events that led to Cline being questioned. He recounted that Greenslate entered the apartment and escorted Cline out to Adams. 

He asked if Cline went freely to the detective's car, if he was cooperative and if he talked willingly to Adams. Adams responded that he did. 

When Elmore asked Adams if the rat cage in the courtroom was the one found in Cline's apartment, Adams confirmed that it was. Elmore then asked Adams to verify the visible dent caused on the cage when the youngster fell on it. Wright objected to the question, which Elmore rephrased by saying: "This is the cage you found, and the cage is dented." Adams confirmed the dent. 

Elmore also asked if Cline told Adams he did not see the child fall because he had his back to the cages. He referred to Cline saying it happened so quickly he didn't see what happened. 

Adams said that Cline did say that it happened quickly but seemed pretty clear on the details of the alleged accident. 

It was also noted by Elmore that Cline told Adams the child hit his face and was bleeding from the mouth, thus the blood stains on the carpet. 

He then asked Adams if Cline's demeanor changed when he was asked if he had hit the child. Adams said that it did. Cline became upset and said he did not strike Lucas, did not touch him. 

Elmore asked if Adams was in the apartment during the search, and Adams affirmed. Elmore asked if Cline was cooperative then, and again Adams confirmed that he was. 

When Greenslate took the stand, he was questioned by Wright.

During his testimony, Greenslate recounted going to the hospital for a possible abuse case, calling in Adams and then going to the Cline home. 

He said that when he arrived at the Cline home, the vehicle owned by Cline was parked outside. Greenslate, accompanied by Officer Devore, knocked on the door and announced as police but got no answer. He also tried to telephone Cline and again got no answer. 

Greenslate left to get a search warrant and returned approximately 90 minutes later. He once again knocked and announced, then used a key provided by the building manager and entered the home. 

Greenslate explained the process of "clearing" inside the home, saying he had his weapon drawn as is standard procedure. He entered the home and did not find Cline on the main floor. He then stood at the stairwell and announced himself again and ordered anyone upstairs to show themselves. Cline then came into view. Greenslate ordered his show of hands and told him to come down the stairs, and Cline did so. 

Greenslate was asked if neighbors' accounts of where Cline was late in the evening of Aug. 22 were in conflict with what Cline told the officers, and Greenslate confirmed that they were. 

When Elmore questioned Greenslate, he asked if Cline had been cooperative in coming downstairs and outside, and Greenslate confirmed he had. 

He also asked if Cline's bed upstairs looked as if it had been slept in. Greenslate said he couldn't recall. Elmore showed him a picture of an unmade bed and asked if it was Cline's. Greenslate said it appeared to be. 

Jury hears testimony from first medical professional

Dr. Channing Petrak was the last person to take the stand before the noontime break. 

For the prosecution, Petrak was questioned by Parkinson. He first established her creditability as an expert witness and asked if she had been called on in other cases as an expert. She confirmed she has testified a total of 23 or 24 times in her career. 

He asked her to confirm that in those cases she had been accepted as an expert on child abuse, and she confirmed she had. 

During her testimony, she recounted the first contact with the child in the intensive care unit and confirmed that his mother was with him at the time. 

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Going through several slides, she identified and described bruising on the child. She identified bruising on the buttock, shoulder, right arm, right flank, high on the chest, the lower chest, right hip, abdomen above the hip, bruises on the shins and the base of the scrotum. She also identified lacerations at the base of the penis and a tear inside the mouth in the upper area. 

Additional bruising was noted on the child's face and described as linear. She said the facial bruising was not consistent with hitting an object that was a single plane, because the first bruise just below the cheekbone was straight, while the additional bruising lower on the face and along the jaw was curved. 

Petrak was asked if CT scans and MRIs were performed, and she confirmed they were done at OSF to determine if there were brain injuries. She confirmed a subdural hematoma and said there was an edema or swelling of the brain. 

She was asked if the injuries sustained by the child could have been caused by a fall, and she said she was confident that they could not. In her professional opinion, Lucas Alberts' injuries were not accidental. 

Parkinson recounted that when Jody Alberts left her son with Cline, she said he was fine, but by 5:30 the next morning he was having difficulty breathing and was unresponsive to his mother. He asked if that description was symptomatic of a brain injury, and Petrak confirmed it was. Parkinson asked if the child could have been injured days earlier and the doctor said no, the symptoms of brain injury would have been almost immediate. 

Finally, Parkinson asked if the child suffered a retinal hemorrhage, and she confirmed that he did. 

Elmore cross-examined Petrak and began by asking if her testimony was based on her own professional opinion. She confirmed that it was. He then asked if there are differing opinions concerning head injuries, and she said "yes."

He asked if her report on Lucas Alberts stated that his injuries were consistent with abusive blunt force trauma, and she answered "yes."

He asked if there is an ongoing debate in the medical profession regarding fatalities resulting from short falls. Petrak said that fatalities from short-distance falls are approximately 1 in 1 million. 

Elmore asked Petrak to review an article written by a Dr. John Plunkett and published in the American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology. He offered that Plunkett studied 18 cases of short-distance falls, from a few inches to a few feet, where children had died. 

Elmore reviewed the cases and drew similarities between them and Alberts' and asked Petrak to confirm. In most cases she responded with, "Yes, it is what he says." At one point she added to her testimony, "He says 'yes'; I disagree," to which Elmore quickly stated he didn't ask her for her opinion. 

He finally concluded that based on the study it was hard to say whether Alberts died of accidental or non-accidental blunt force trauma. 

Elmore also asked Petrak to answer a series of questions with simple "yes" or "no" answers, but she was unable to do so. He called on Judge Harris to instruct the witness. Harris asked if the questions could be answered simply "yes" or "no," and Petrak said they could not. Harris instructed Elmore to move on to another line of questions. Elmore argued that the witness was taking over, and Wright immediately objected to the statement. Harris sustained objection and instructed Elmore to move on. 

Elmore left the article written by Plunkett and moved on to two others that once again offered opinions that opposed Petrak's. 

One article was written by Dr. Scott Denton of Peoria and stated that in infants and toddlers, loss of consciousness happens less frequently in short falls. Petrak again confirmed, saying, "That is what he says, yes." 

Elmore then said Denton's article states that it is a widely held dogma that the person the child is with when it loses consciousness is the perpetrator, but that Denton goes on to say that is not necessarily true. 

At that point, Parkinson objected to the line of questioning, saying that Denton is on the list of witnesses to appear before the court, and he saw no reason to be going through this with Petrak. 

Elmore moved on to a third article and went through much of the same type of questioning, drawing for the last time the point that where blunt force trauma due to short falls is concerned, there is controversy, and Petrak confirmed this. 

He then moved on to the rat cage and the size of Cline's hands, asking if she had measured the spaces on the wire of the cage and if she had measured Cline's hands. She answered "no" to both. 

He also asked if she had done any studies on injuries from rat cages, and she answered "no." He asked if she'd written any articles, and she again answered "no." 

When Elmore finished, Parkinson did a redirect, calling back the article written by Plunkett. He went through a number of cases and asked Petrak to verify that in the short-fall scenarios, the child had lost consciousness within a short period of time. Some of the cases reported loss of consciousness "immediately," others within 10 to 15 minutes and in one case within three hours. 

He also asked if she knew of any studies that had been done on rat cages, and she said she did not. 

Elmore countered, drawing attention to a case in Plunkett's study where the child didn't show symptoms until two days after the fall. He also asked if Petrak's report said anything about the marks on the face being from a hand, and she said "no." 

Parkinson countered once again, drawing attention to a page of Petrak's report that mentioned strangulation. Elmore objected before the question was completed, and Parkinson said he'd strike the question. 

This completed Petrak's testimony, and the jury was then afforded a lunch break. 

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