|
Hearings begin in fatal shooting |
|
Thursday, 06 November 2008 |
|
By Emily Hone BLACKFOOT — Four witnesses testified Wednesday at the preliminary hearing that will decide whether Firth resident Dorothy Jean Porter will stand trial for first-degree murder.
 Morning News - Emily Hone
Firth resident Dorothy Jean Porter could stand trial for first-degree murder if a judge determines there is enough evidence in the July death of her husband — which was first reported as a suicide.
Bingham County Prosecutor Scott Andrew told 7th District Magistrate Judge Charles L. Roos he has six more witnesses to call when defense attorney Scott Axline finishes with his cross examination of Sheriff’s Deputy Kathleen Hall this morning.
Porter was arrested after police arrived at her home on Wolverine Road just before midnight on July 21 to investigate a reported suicide and has been in the Bingham County Jail under $500,000 bail since.
Richard Bingham, the neighbor who called 911 for Porter that night was the first witness to testify Wednesday.
Bingham said he was working in the office at his home about three or four hundred yards from the Porter residence when his dog began to bark. He went outside to see what was happening, and heard someone yelling “Help me,” over and over, he said.
Bingham said he couldn’t tell where the call was coming from but thought someone might be in trouble in the nearby field, so got into his vehicle and began driving along the edge of it.
As he neared the Porter house Dorothy came out wearing a bathrobe and asked him to call 911 because her husband had shot himself, and she couldn’t find her keys or cell phone, Bingham said.
Because he had left his cell phone at home, he said, he returned to his house, made the call then returned to the Porter house, asked Dorothy where her husband was, and went inside to see if there was anything he could do in case he was still alive.
Bingham said he entered the house and saw Greg Porter seated in a recliner chair with a bullet wound in his forehead and a gun in his lap with the muzzle pointed toward his face.
“I checked his pulse and there was none. He was starting to feel cold, as though he had been dead 10 or 20 minutes,” Bingham said.
He said then went outside to be with Dorothy Porter until help arrived.
“She was obviously grief-stricken, saying ‘Greg, why did you do this to yourself?’ “ he said.
On cross examination defense attorney Scott Andrew asked Bingham how he knew the victim had been dead 10 to 20 minutes.
“I was in the military for nine years. I was in Iraq and I’ve been around people who have been recently shot,” he responded.
Bingham said when the first sheriff’s deputies arrived, they asked if he had heard yelling from the Porter house in the past.
He said he always could hear voices from there and houses farther away, but could not make out any words.
“It’s very quiet out there,” he said.
Bingham said he was “really surprised” to learn the next day that Dorothy Porter had been arrested.
Axline spent around three hours quizzing Pocatello forensic pathologist Dr. Steve Scoumal about Greg Porter’s gunshot wound in an apparent attempt to elicit an admission that it could have been a contact wound.
Scoumal said from his experience the evidence did not point that direction.
He said there was no searing of the flesh as there should be if a gun muzzle is in contact with it when discharged, and no stippling — unburned gunpowder that he said makes pinpoint abrasions in the flesh when fired close up.
When Axline persisted, Scoumal admitted he had never test fired weapons of different calibers to determine what happened when they were fired from different distances.
“Based on my experience this is not a contact wound,” he said.
Sheriff’s Deputy Aaron Aikele, said he was first on the scene and believed he was responding to a suicide when he first arrived at the Porter home.
He said Greg Porter was seated in the recliner with the .22 caliber firearm lying on his lap with the muzzle facing his left armpit.
Aikele said after Hall arrived and they inspected the house, they found three .22 caliber shell casings on the floor — two of them behind the recliner — a hole that went completely through one wall and into the floor and another hole in the floor.
On cross examination, Aikele said he removed the gun after emergency medical personnel arrived before they checked to ensure the victim was dead.
He handled it with care so it wouldn’t discharge accidentally, the deputy said, but did not take pains to protect any fingerprints on it from being obliterated.
Aikele and Hall both said they found breakage inside the house along with blood drops and smears at various locations.
Hall testified that Dorothy Porter was crying and alternating between calm and hysteria. She said Porter told her she had been away for a few days and returned to find the house a mess.
Porter said the couple quarreled, Hall said, and that her husband later fired three rounds from the gun past her as she stood by the bedroom door.
She said she was frightened and went to bed, Hall said and got up later when she heard another shot and found her husband had shot himself.
The hearing will resume at 8:30 a.m. today with continued cross examination of Hall.
|
|
Last Updated ( Friday, 07 November 2008 )
|
