Jury hears expert testimony in Columbus murder trial

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October 27, 2009

Anonymous The Joplin Globe Tue Oct 27, 2009, 10:09 PM CDT

By Roger McKinney

rmckinney@joplinglobe.com

COLUMBUS, Kan. — Suzanne Jarman was facing the front of a gun safe when she was shot in the back of the head.

She was bent slightly forward, with her head lower or at the same height as the top of the safe.

Those were conclusions Michael Van Stratton shared Tuesday with the jury in the second-degree murder trial of Robert Jarman, Suzanne Jarman’s husband. She died Aug. 22, 2007, at the couple’s home just outside Columbus.

Defense Attorney Sam Marsh will call witnesses today. The prosecution called its final witness on Tuesday.

Van Stratton is director of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation’s forensic laboratory, and he said he is one of 36 certified bloodstain-pattern examiners in the country.

He said his analysis concluded that Robert Jarman was standing near the end of the bed when he fired the fatal shot. He said the gun was parallel to the floor when it was fired.

Van Stratton said there was a void on the bloodstains on Suzanne Jarman’s clothes from her midsection to her lower thighs. He said that could indicate she was bending forward.

He said blood found inside the top of the safe, because of Suzanne Jarman’s height of 62 or 63 inches, also indicated she was bending slightly. The safe is 60 1/2 inches high.

“Only a small part of her head is probably above the top of the safe,” Van Stratton said.

Under questioning by Marsh, Van Stratton acknowledged that the KBI was the investigative agency of the Kansas attorney general’s office, which is prosecuting the case.

In his 911 call, played Monday for the jury, Robert Jarman is heard telling the dispatcher that he and his wife were cleaning out the gun safe, and he was handing her the shotgun when it misfired.

Forensic pathologist Erik Mitchell said the entry wound was at the center of the base of Suzanne Jarman’s skull, but that the barrel of the shotgun wasn’t in contact with her head.

Also on the stand Tuesday was David Wright, a firearms specialist with the KBI. He said his tests determined that the shotgun functioned as it was designed, and it couldn’t misfire. He said that to fire, it required 6 1/2 pounds of pressure on the trigger.

He said he couldn’t determine if a fired shotgun shell recovered from the bedroom was fired by the shotgun, but he did determine that it had been cycled through the gun’s action.

A juror was excused Tuesday because of a family illness, and an alternate took the place of the excused juror.

Motion denied

At the end of Tuesday’s testimony, and with the jury out of the room, Judge Kent Lynch denied defense attorney Sam Marsh’s motion for acquittal, saying the jury may have enough evidence for conviction.

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