Waldorf man facing manslaughter charge

Maryland Independent

Friday, September 17, 2004

Experts duel at biker trial

View PDF: Waldorf man facing manslaughter charge

by Jay Friess
Staff Writer

The trial of a Waldorf man accused of negligent manslaughter stemming from a May 2002 multivehicle crash on U.S. 301 in Bel Alton continued Wednesday as experts called by the prosecution and the defense gave conflicting opinions about forensic evidence.

Lermane Lamont Gartrell, 32, watched from the defense table as defense attorney Andrew Alpert vigorously cross-examined several witnesses to try to refute the police theory that Gartrell and now-deceased Tommy Renard Marsh, 37, of Temple Hills were racing at high speeds while returning from a racing event in Budds Creek when they collided with a 1987 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera driven by James Robert Gillespie, 49, of Oxon Hill, who was pulling out of the parking lot of Apehangers tavern.

Marsh, who was thrown the length of a football field due to the high-speed impact of the wreck, according to prosecutors, was killed instantly. A passing sport-utility vehicle then hit him. Seconds later, Gartrell's motorcycle hit the Oldsmobile, which had spun into the left lane. Gartrell and Gillespie were both injured in the crash. The state must prove that Gartrell was racing with Marsh and that the race led to Marsh's death.

In his opening statement, Alpert claimed that Gartrell had not consumed any alcohol that day, nor was he among the bikers whom witness said were driving carelessly and performing high-speed stunts, like cutting in and out of traffic and "popping wheelies."

He maintains that crash investigators have no evidence that Gartrell was traveling above the speed limit, pointing to the difference in damage between the two motorbikes involved in the crash, which exploded Marsh's vehicle and left Gartrell's with front-end damage.

The prosecution began Wednesday by calling Helen Cantrell, who testified that she was driving her daughters from their home in Newburg to a Girl Scout meeting in La Plata on the day of the crash. As she passed the Red Top packaged goods store, she remembered seeing "more than a dozen" motorcycles come from behind her vehicle and pass her between the lanes, "driving erratically."

"'There's going to be an accident,' that's what I said," she recalled. "in my mind, they should not have been driving through traffic."

Looking ahead, she saw what she later learned was Marsh's bike looping through the air and saw the cloud of dust from the crash.

When pressed by Alpert, she could not recall many details about the crash scene, nor was she certain that Gartrell had been one of the riders who she saw driving erratically.

The prosecution called Cpl, Joel Schindler, a crash investigator for the Maryland State Police, who responded to the scene of the crash. Schindler said that police photographed the analog speedometer readout from Marsh's bike under a black light to expose what they say is a mark that was made on the inside of the unit's faceplate when the accident impact slammed the needle into the faceplate. From the needle mark, police estimate Marsh was driving at 137 mph. The police could not take a similar picture of Gartrell's speedometer because it was a digital readout.

"There is no documented data ... that can be used to estimate Mr. Gartrell's speed?" Alpert asked Schindler on cross-examination.

"No, sir," Schindler answered.

Jeff Dickinson, who installed upgraded hardware on Gartrell's and Marsh's bikes, was called by the prosecution to comment on the motorcycles' high-performance capabilities. Assistant State's Attorney Jerome Spencer asked Dickinson if the bikes were nicknamed "crotch rockets."

"Some people describe them that way," Dickinson answered. He stated that Marsh's Suzuki GSX-1300R and Gartrell's GSXR1000 were capable of reaching 60 mph in less than two seconds and running a quarter mile in less than 10 seconds at speeds above 140 mph. Dickinson said that he had upgraded the bikes' exhaust and computer systems to improve their performance.

Since Dickinson was also listed as a defense witness, Alpert took his turn to directly question the bike mechanic. He presented the speedometer from Marsh's wrecked bike and asked Dickinson if he could determine Marsh's speed at the time of impact using the speedometer.

Dickinson said that the speedometer was useless for such a determination since the needle is so sensitive to touch. "If I was to stand here and drop it, I would make it move again," he said. He theorized that the mark photographed by the police could have been made when the speedometer tumbled on the ground after impact. The high speed could also be attributed to the rear wheel of the bike lifting off the pavement and spinning free just after impact, causing a false speed reading, he said.

Prosecution witness Victor Craig, former crash investigator and publisher of two accident reconstruction newsletters, disagreed with Dickinson's theory, stating that the speedometer needle mark could have been made in the split second before the bike's back wheel lifted free. He further stated that Marsh's speed had to have been fairly high, given the amount of damage done to the bike.

"You don't get that type of damage from your typical 40- to 60-mile-per-hour wrecks," he said. I've never seen a bike tore up that much."

Alpert confronted Craig with an article from an Accident Reconstruction Journal publication that stated that speedometer marks are "not a concrete indicator of speed."

The trial was suspended Thursday but is expected to continue this morning.

Staff writer Alan Brody contributed to this report.

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