Case #16: The Death of Richard Alfredo - Part 2

Refresher:

As I jump back into this case, I should probably do a little bit of refreshing. 61-year-old Richard Alfredo apparently died due to heart problems. Rumors began to surface that his death wasn't so natural after all. The police investigated. They ultimately exhumed Richard's body and traces of LSD and prescription medicine. Richard's girlfriend, Christina Martin, was arrested, charged, and found guilty for Richard's murder. When her case came up for a routine appeal, her lawyer seemed to find something in her file. 

Christina's Lawyer: 

So, jumping back into the case, let's talk a little bit about Christina's lawyer. He was a public defender named Kevin Mahoney. Mahoney said himself that he while was waiting to pick up Christina's case file, he began talking to a man standing next to him. This man had turned out to be an assistant D.A. Mahoney said that this man told him to look closely at Christina Martin's file. Mahoney said he found this to be a red flag, and something he should take seriously. 

A Brief Aside: 

I did try to look through some other sources to see if I could find the name of this man, but, unfortunately, I wasn't able to. 

Back to the Case:

This was apparently Kevin Mahoney's first murder trial. He had looked through everything related to Christina Martin's trial carefully. Things took a turn when Mahoney came across a document with Richard Alfredo's reported cause of death, acute LSD intoxication. Mahoney reached out to a clinical pharmacologist named Dr. David Benjamin. According to Dr. Benjamin, there had never been a reported case where someone had died from direct effects of LSD. Dr. Benjamin also noticed another discrepancy. This also goes back to that whole issue with embalming I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. What's more, even if the urine samples were to come back positive, these results are only for screening. They must then be retested for confirmation. In fact, the outside of the test kit box states that RIA test results are preliminary and a specific alternative must be used to get a confirmed analytical result. Even the scientist who performed the original RIA test, Dr. Louis Amoruso, agreed with this.

The whole point of this is knowing that Christina Martin's first lawyer never actually questioned the test results. Apparently that first defense lawyer was so bad at his job, the judge called him up for a sidebar and flat out questioned him as far as his ability to cross-examine witnesses. 

Kevin Mahoney also found evidence that prosecutors never presented at the first trial. A further test had been done that seemed to find absolutely no trace of LSD in any of the samples. This particular evidence was never given to Christina Martin's initial defense attorney. It appeared that this violated something called the Brady Doctrine. The Brady Doctrine states that the prosecution has a duty to turn over all exculpatory evidence to the defense without even being asked for it. 

This particular evidence was eventually brought before an appeals court judge. This judge, Gordon Doerfer, happened to have majored in chemistry in college. Doerfer eventually cited failure to turn over exculpatory evidence and defects in scientific evidence as grounds for a new trial. 

However, prosecutors decided they didn't want to retry the case, and Christina Martin ended up pleading guilty to manslaughter.

Now, it has been brought up that there may have other natural elements that may have contaminated Richard Aflredo's body when it was exhumed. Some of these elements have very similar structure to LSD. Another theory that has been brought up is that Richard's cold medicine may have actually been what killed him. 

Final Thoughts: 

Personally, I have no idea what to think in this case. It is suspicious that Christina and her daughter fled to Canada. But, the evidence doesn't really seem concrete enough to point to murder, nor does it seem to concretely point to just being an accident. 

Sources:

“Forensic Files - Dessert Served Cold.” Season 8, episode 1.          

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