Hearing focuses on video
Posted on Tuesday, November 11, 2008
An Australian mathematician testified for several hours Monday about his analysis of a surveillance video that captured the moments before 22-year-old Scot Stobaugh was shot to death in a Little Rock laundry on March 16, 1993.
Richard Hartley, who has a doctorate in mathematics and specializes in video-analysis research at Australian National University, said he believes that the gunman in the video was about 3 inches shorter than Terrick Terrell Nooner, who is on death row for the murder.
Another expert witness who specializes in metrology, the science of measurement, testified on behalf of the state that he doesn’t believe it’s possible to confidently predict the height of the gunman “to any degree of accuracy,” and declared Hartley’s opinion unreliable.
Julie Brain, an assistant federal public defender, is asking Chief U. S. District Judge Leon Holmes to throw out Nooner’s capital murder conviction. In a petition filed last year, she cites “highly sophisticated videogrammetric analysis” that proves the shooter was 5-foot-6, like Robert Rockett, who was charged along with Nooner but was convicted as an accomplice and is serving a life sentence. Nooner is 5-foot-9. Brain included an affidavit from Rockett saying he is the person captured in the fuzzy video wearing a jacket and a baseball cap and marching Stobaugh out of camera range, where he was shot seven times and robbed.
Brain also attached an affidavit from Antonia Kennedy, “without whose testimony Nooner wouldn’t have been convicted,” who now says that it was Rockett instead of Nooner who confessed to her the morning after the crime that he was the gunman.
“Piece by piece, the state’s case against Mr. Nooner has collapsed, and the evidence now reveals the truth: Robert Rockett killed Mr. Stobaugh, and Terrick Nooner is innocent,” Brain said.
Holmes is conducting a hearing on what Brain calls newly developed scientific evidence. The federal courthouse in Little Rock will be closed today for Veterans Day, but the hearing will resume Wednesday.
Nooner, now 37 and wearing glasses, sat quietly in Holmes ’ courtroom Monday listening to the highly technical testimony.
Hartley explained in detail why his analysis, which relies on perspective and measurement of other objects of known size in the video, couldn’t rely on height comparisons with the laundry tables in the room, the line of washing machines that can be seen along one wall or patterns in the vinyl tile.
“The camera height as a reference does seem to be a significantly better choice,” Hartley testified. He also asserted that computerized measurements aren’t as reliable as comparisons made with the human eye.
He said his analysis took into account the geometry of the triangle formed by the gunman’s stance, and the fact that the gunman wore shoes and a cap. On cross-examination by Kelly Hill of the attorney general’s office, Hartley said that if the gunman was wearing thick socks or heel inserts in his shoes, he would be even shorter, or even less likely to be someone of Nooner’s height.
Gary Gray, who still owns the Funwash at 4206 W. Markham where the killing happened in the middle of the night, answered extensive questions about changes made to the laundry’s flooring, cameras, ceiling and equipment between March 1993 and when the photographs were taken in 2006 and 2007 that helped Hartley make his calculations.
Gray told Brain that the housing for the surveillance camera that recorded the killer’s images has always been in the same place. However, he told an attorney for the state that he’s not sure if the camera itself was replaced before 2006 or 2007, or if the camera’s angle had ever been altered.
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