04/22/2008

By MARIA SUDEKUM FISHER  / Associated Press

Lawyers sparred Monday over the availability of evidence in the case of a man charged with capital murder in the kidnapping, rape and slaying of an 18-year-old woman last summer.

The hearing was ordered by Johnson County District Judge Peter Ruddick because defense lawyers have accused prosecutors in the case of withholding evidence that could help their client, Edwin R. Hall.

Hall, 27, is charged with capital murder in the death of Kelsey Smith, of Overland Park. Smith disappeared June 2 after leaving a Target store. Her body was found four days later about 15 miles away in a Missouri park.

Defense lawyer Paul Cramm has questioned evidence that had been made available to his office, including surveillance video of Smith leaving the Target store and of what police have identified as video of her car leaving the Target parking lot.

Cramm said Monday his office has encountered problems with surveillance footage that included one shot police have said initially showed Smith getting into her car and leaving. Subsequent viewings of the same footage on different equipment, experts testified earlier, showed Smith being confronted at her car.

Cramm has said he wants to see all 32 frames of the surveillance footage, but was notified Monday by his expert that the data prosecutors provided contained only 31 frames, and not the one he was interested in.

"Of course the screen shots for the camera angle that was not on the hard drive was the screen shot that showed absolutely nothing suspicious," Cramm said.

"I am running out of patience," Cramm said, slamming a stack of papers on the defense table. "We have very important work to do on this side of the room, and we can't do it when we get all 31 that don't matter, and we don't get the one that does matter."

Johnson County District Attorney Phill Kline took issue with Cramm's assertion about the surveillance video and said he did not know why there would have been a missing frame. He said his office has provided the evidence in question.

"We provided it on hard drive, we provided in VCR format, we provided it in a forensic analysis. ... I don't know what else we can do," Kline said. "This is what we're running into with counsel. There is a constant inference there is more than one video."

Overland Park Police Chief John M. Douglas also testified Monday that he had ordered an audit of the evidence. He described how it had been disseminated from police to the prosecutors and from the prosecutors to the defense. He said the evidence exceeds 7,000 pages of reports, in addition to video and other electronic material.

"There is quite a massive amount of information," Douglas said.

Ruddick scheduled an additional hearing on the findings of the audit for May 13.

Hall's trial is scheduled to begin Sept. 16. He faces a possible death penalty if convicted.