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State v. Christian3/9/2004
etracted and "locked" position. In contrast, the passenger's side seat belt was not found in a locked position.
Ira Kanfer, a pathologist from the office of the chief medical examiner, testified that the injury to the victim's right arm was consistent with the type of injury that occurred to people located on the passenger side of motor vehicles. He also testified that the defendant's injury to his left clavicle and the bruising of his right hip were consistent with injuries that might be caused by a driver's side seat belt, "because the [driver's] seat belt comes over your left shoulder" and " he buckle is put on the right hip."
John Kwasnoski, an accident reconstruction expert, testified that, once the car had hit the trestle wall, it took less then one second for the car to go down the embankment. Kwasnoski further testified that, under the circumstances of the accident, which he also characterized as a frontal impact, the "natural tendency" would be for the occupants of the car to move "very much forward and slightly to the right ...." Therefore, it was Kwasnoski's opinion that, if the driver of the car had been wearing a seat belt, it would have been impossible for the driver to shift into the passenger seat. He further testified that, in the present case, there was no evidence that the driver had been unrestrained. Kwasnoski also testified that the occupants' slight movement to the right similarly would have been restricted by the frontal air bags, which had deployed during the accident. Finally, Kwasnoski testified that he did not believe that the victim could have hit the steering wheel--which was obstructed by an air bag-and "then somehow rebound from that and [gone] sideways and [gotten] both her upper body and her feet over on the other side of the console." Rather, he believed that the injuries to the victim's chest had been caused by her body moving forward, at a high rate of speed, into an air bag as it deployed at a rate of more than 100 miles per hour.
In the defendant's case-in-chief, Eugene Baron, an accident reconstruction expert, testified that, based on the severe damage to the interior of the vehicle and the injuries sustained by its occupants, it was "more probable" that the victim, and not the defendant, had been the driver. Specifically, Baron testified that the severe damage to the vehicle's steering column and steering wheel probably had been caused by "an occupant [who had] sustained very severe chest and facial trauma." He further stated that the steering wheel rim significantly had been bent toward the dashboard, indicating that the driver of the vehicle had not been wearing a seat belt. In addition, Baron stated that the driver's side seat belt had not sustained the type of deformation or other damage that customarily would be found after a high-speed collision. Baron testified that he had observed blood on the driver's side air bag, the center of the steering wheel rim, the dashboard and the passenger side door panel. He also testified that the damage to the dashboard on the passenger's side of the vehicle was consistent with the injury to the defendant's right hand. Finally, Baron testified that the vehicle had rotated clockwise approximately 90 degrees after hitting the trestle wall, and that any "objects" in the car, including its occupants, would have been propelled toward the right side of the vehicle during the rotation.
The defendant also presented Robert Fisher, the defendant's treating physician, who testified that the injury to the defendant's left clavicle "could not have been caused by a seat belt with any reasonable medical probability." In addition, the defendant presented the expert testimony of Ricardo Sanchez, chairman and
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