Useful Enemies

Iscan then explained to the court that he had done his own comparison of the Trawniki card photo and the proven photos of Demjanjuk in his own laboratory. Based on that examination, he concluded:

• Comparing proven photos with the Trawniki card photo was like comparing apples and oranges. Therefore, it is not possible to say whether the Trawniki card photo was that of John Demjanjuk or not.

• Smith’s conclusions were based on optical illusions created in a laboratory.

As a defense witness, Iscan had a major weakness—his credibility as an expert witness on the subject of photo identification. In his cross-examination, Shaked attacked that weakness without wasting a moment of court time.

First, Shaked got Iscan to admit that his principal work centered on identifying for medical examiners the age and sex of skeletons, not real people. Then Shaked got Iscan to admit that in determining the age and sex, he did not study the skull or what was left of the face. He only examined the thorax, pelvis, and femur of the skeleton. The face was the issue in the trial, not a leg bone. Finally, Shaked got Iscan to admit that photo identification was outside the area of his expertise.

In sum, although Iscan was indeed an expert, he was not an expert on the subject he had just testified about. His photo analysis and conclusions were, therefore, that of a nonexpert and useless.

• • •

The fourth expert defense witness was Anita Pritchard, a doctoral candidate in psychology at Columbia Pacific University in Marin County, California, across the Bay Bridge from San Francisco. She was the defense’s answer to photo analysts Reinhardt Altman, who cut Demjanjuk photos in half and reassembled them, and Patricia Smith, who superimposed one Demjanjuk image on top of another creating a montage. Like Robertson, Pritchard was a certified graphologist. Her specialty was physiognomy, the art of appraising character or personality from facial features. As a practitioner, she did photo comparisons of faces without using gimmicks like montages, video projectors, scanners, or multiple cameras. Pritchard’s only analytical instrument was her naked eye.

John Gill had found Pritchard in Houston in his last-minute rush to recruit expert witnesses. There had been little time to prepare her for her testimony until she arrived in Jerusalem a few days before she was scheduled to testify. When the two defense attorneys questioned her in her hotel room, they learned that she had served as an expert witness in only one trial, and that her academic and research credentials were worse than weak. At that late date, however, the defense had little choice but to put her on the stand and pray. She was all they had at the moment. She was their Hail Mary pass.

Pritchard testified that both Altman and Smith used photo comparison techniques that were untested and not accepted in the scientific community. Echoing the conclusion of Iscan, Pritchard explained that the images they created were so suggestive to the human eye as to be little more than optical illusions. And conclusions based on optical illusions were themselves illusions.

Pritchard concentrated on Altman. She studied photos of Altman’s cut-and-match display provided by Gill and testified that Altman had altered the photographs when he cut and sized them for the comparison. His matches were fake. In effect, Pritchard was calling Altman a forensic fraud. A snake-oil salesman.

To prove her point, Pritchard randomly selected photos of twelve male models from magazines. Then she cut each picture in half and reassembled them, randomly placing half of one model’s picture next to half of another model, just like Altman had done with his Trawniki card photo and his proven photos of John Demjanjuk. Ten out of twelve of Pritchard’s randomly selected and matched photo halves appeared to be just as correlated as Altman’s Demjanjuk photo halves. The pieces reasonably matched.

Pritchard smiled at the court as if she had just scored a first-round knockout. The bench did not smile back. It was not impressed with her theories or her unscientific demonstration. If Shaked had been rough on Edna Robertson, he showed no mercy with Anita Pritchard, who had just called one of his expert witnesses a fraud. Shaked’s plan was not to humiliate her on the stand as he had Edna Robertson, but to completely break her.

Shaked began the destruction of Anita Pritchard by challenging her credentials as an expert witness. Was she an anthropologist?

No.

Was she an anthromorphologist?

No.

Was she a morphologist?

No.

Did she have any specialized knowledge of morphology of the face?

No.

Had she published any articles in professional journals dealing with the psychology of visual perception, her specialty?

No.

Did she read—or even know—the professional journals relevant to her field?

Only a few.

How much did she know about neurology?

A little.

Physiology?

A little.

Optics of the eye?

A little.

“Since you don’t know these disciplines, how can you talk about visual perception?” Shaked demanded. He moved on to her in-court, photo-halves demonstration.

Was her sliced-photo demonstration based on scientific criteria?

No.

She said she randomly selected the photos used in the demonstration. Did she even know the rules for random selection?

No.

Did she analyze Altman’s work from his original display or from photos of his display?

Photos.

From photos? How can you call yourself an expert?

Shaked wasn’t finished with Pritchard just yet. He got her to admit that the only book she had authored was self-published; that Columbia Pacific University was not an accredited school; that her master’s in psychology from the University of Oklahoma was granted by the department of human relations, not the department of psychology; and that most of her education in graphology was through correspondence courses.

“You’re creating an illusion that you’re an expert,” Shaked hammered. “Maybe you should take back what you told the court earlier…. Tell the court you’re not an expert.”

In the end, Pritchard, who had finally reviewed Altman’s original photos and montages between court sessions, recanted her earlier testimony. “My entire qualified opinion must be removed from my testimony…. There were no alterations in the Altman composites. If offense was taken, I apologize.”

As Pritchard left the stand, Shaked offered his hand as if to say, “I’m sorry. I was just doing my job.”

The defense of John Demjanjuk had just turned from disaster to catastrophe.

Pritchard locked herself in her hotel room that evening. When she didn’t appear for dinner, Sheftel thought he better check to see if she was okay. He called her room. She didn’t pick up. He knocked on the door and called her name. She didn’t answer.

Sheftel found the hotel manager and told him that something was wrong with his guest, Ms. Anita Pritchard. She didn’t answer the phone or the door. Sheftel and the manager rushed to her room and unlocked the door with a master key. They found Pritchard in her pajamas spread-eagled on the bed and unconscious. She had swallowed a bottle of pills.

Sheftel rushed Pritchard to the emergency room, where a doctor pumped her stomach. When she became aware that she had failed to kill herself, she ripped out the intravenous tubes. Nurses reattached them and watched over her. Pritchard returned to Houston a few days later.

At this critical point in the trial, the defense was frustrated, humiliated, and desperate. Shaked had crushed Edna Robertson. He had turned William Flynn into a prosecution witness. He had dismissed Yasser Iscan as