Grand Jury

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I, Mary M. Ritchie, being a Notary Public in and for the State of North Carolina, was appointed to take the testimony of the following witness, Michael Douglas Newman, before the Grand Jury, Raleigh, North Carolina, commencing at 1:30 p.m. on August 27, 1974.  All Grand Jurors present.

Whereupon, Michael Douglas Newman, having been first duly sworn, was examined and testified as follows:

EXAMINATION BY MR. WORHEIDE:
Q  Would you state your full name, please?
A  My full name is Michael Douglas Newman.
Q  Where do you live, sir?
A  I am now residing at Fayetteville, North Carolina, 819 Ridge Road, Apartment D.  I am assigned to Womack Army Hospital, Student Detachment, Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
Q  Are you a career army man, sir?
A  Yes, sir, I am.
Q  How long have you been in service?
A  About seven and three-fourths years.
Q  What is your current military title and duty assignment?
A  I am currently a warrant officer candidate.  I am a member of the physician's assistant program that is being sponsored through Baylor University.  I'm on student status doing a one year preceptorship at Womack Army Hospital.
Q  Now directing your attention to February 19, 1970, what was your military title then and what were your duties?
A  I was a Specialist E-G.  I was a clinical specialist.  I was working in the emergency room as a shift leader.
Q  Were you on duty in the morning hours of February 17?
A  Yes, sir, I was.
Q  At that time did you encounter a man by the name of Captain MacDonald?
A  Yes, sir, I did.
Q  What time was that?
A  It was sometime between four and four-thirty a.m.
Q  All right now.  Tell us what happened at that time as you recall it.
A  We had received a call earlier, approximately around four o'clock, that we had an incident on post and that we would be getting some patients from it.  And sometime between four and four-thirty Captain MacDonald was brought in by ambulance to the emergency room.
Q  When did you first observe him?
A  As he was wheeled through the swinging doors of the emergency room, itself.
Q  Did you then take charge of Captain MacDonald?
A  Yes, sir, I did.
Q  What did you do?
A  I put him back into a little area that we call the crash room.
Q  Now was he lying there on a stretcher?
A  Yes, sir.
Q  And he stayed on the stretcher when you took him into the crash room?
A  He was transferred over to another stretcher in the crash room.
Q  What did you do so far as he was concerned?
A  Well, we initially cleaned him up to see the extent of his wounds, took vital signs on him to make sure that he was stable.
Q  While you were doing this did you engage in any conversation with Captain MacDonald?
A  No, I did not engage him in any conversation.
Q  Well, did he engage you in conversation?
A  He was talking.  I will not say who he was talking to.  But he was talking.  He was inquiring about his wife and children.
Q  At this time he was brought in by two medics.  Is that it?
A  Yes, sir.
Q  And did they stay with him while you moved him into the crash room?
A  No, I don't think they did.  They were ambulance drivers and I had two corpsmen who worked in the emergency room with me that went into the crash room with me.
Q  So there was you and the two corpsmen.  Now do you recall an army nurse?
A  There was not an army nurse there.  We had a civilian nurse who was retired military army nurse corps.
Q  What was her name?
A  Her name is Mary Donovan.
Q  Was she there at the time?
A  I don't know whether she went into the crash room with us at that time.  I do know she came in and gave him an injection.  I do not know what the injection was.  And then she left the room.
Q  Do you recall a Lieutenant Colonel Mildred Pernell?
A  Yes, sir.  Colonel Pernell was the night supervisor.  She came down to help us and she was filling out the 600 form on him, the form of medical care.  And it has to have his name, rank, serial number, and such.  And she was getting that information for us.
Q  While obtaining this information for you was she talking to Captain MacDonald?
A  Yes, sir, she was.
Q  She asked him questions and he responded to the questions?
A  Yes, sir.
Q  What was your observation as to Dr. MacDonald's or Captain MacDonald's condition at that time?  I am thinking of both his physical condition and his -- let's say his psychic condition, his alertness, whether or not he was oriented as to time and place and the circumstances.  Whether or not what he said was appropriate to the circumstances, etc.
A  He appeared to be oriented as to where he was and what was going on.  He was able to give his name and rank.  He was excitable and he did become a little bit irritated with Colonel Pernell about giving his social security number.
Q  Did this result in any outburst on his part?
A  Sir, I really don't remember anything other than he was irritable about it and said something to the effect of what do you need that for.  I don't recall his exact words, but he was rather irritated that she was trying to get this information from him.  And there was an outburst.  I don't recall the exact statement that was made.
Q  Did this outburst involve the use of an expletive, and expletive starting with the word beginning with F?
A  Sir, I do not remember.  And I'm sure that if it had been used I would have remembered it, but I don't think that there was any foul language involved.
Q  What was it that he was saying to you and the other people who were present?
A  He was inquiring as to where his wife and children were.  He wanted to know if they were okay, which we gave him no explanation.  We had been told that they were dead, but we were not telling him that they were.  And he was telling us what had happened there at the house.
Q  What did he say happened at the house?
A  He said that earlier in the evening one of the kids had been cranky and had gone to bed with the mother and had wet the bed.  And he went in to go to bed and he found the bed wet.  So he went back into the living room, picked up a book and lay down on the couch and was reading and dropped off to sleep.  He awoke and someone was beating him and there was a -- at first he said there was two black males, one white male, and one white female there.  And one of the black males was wearing an army jacket.  And he said that the girl was saying "acid is groovy, kill the pigs, kill the pigs" and they were beating on him.  And then there was a -- a few sentences later, I don't know what else had transpired between them, he said that he wanted to know how his wife was, that he tried to find a pulse on her.  He couldn't find a pulse and she had a knife sticking in her chest which he pulled out.  And he wanted to know if she was okay.  He said that he had heard the kids hollering for help, daddy, and he couldn't go help them.  And he wanted to know if they were okay.
Q  Did he say he heard the kids hollering for help daddy when he was being beaten by these intruders?
A  Yes, sir.
Q  Did he repeat the story more than once during the first, let's say half hour that you were with him?
A  I really don't recall whether he repeated it more than one time.  I know he kept asking how his wife and children were and where they were at.  I don't recall whether he repeated the statements.  However, later, he did change the story about the color of the people.  He said that there was one black male, two white males, and one white female.
Q  How much later was it that he changed the story?
A  Sir, I would imagine that this was sometime within the first thirty to forty-five minutes that he was in there.  I do distinctly remember he changed this because I was -- I thought it rather strange that the color could change.  Sex could, yes, but not a color change that quickly.
Q  Was there anything about what he told you that struck you as being unusual or peculiar?
A  I thought the fact that he pulled the knife out of his wife's chest was very unusual.
Q  Would you explain that to the Grand Jurors.  By the way, before you explain it would you go into a little bit of your background and tell us whether you've had combat duty, whether you've seen many persons who suffered from various types of injuries including stabbings and being struck by shrapnel and so on and so forth.
A  Yes, sir, I was trained by the military for clinical specialist.  I do have my licenses as a vocational nurse.  I have had them since 1968.  I pulled a tour in combat with a clearing company in Vietnam.  We were for rapid treatment/resuscitation and I ran the treatment section of this clearing company.  And all we did was rapid treatment/resuscitation.  Our casualties were received straight from the field and I have seen many chest wounds and many multiple injuries resulting from combat.  Then when I came back stateside I went to work in an intensive care unit and then I went down to the emergency room.  At the time I encountered the MacDonald affair, I had been working in the emergency room for approximately nine months.
Q  What is the standard operating procedure when a victim comes in who suffers an injury such as a knife wound?  What do you do so far as removing the knife or leaving it in and why do you do it?
A  With any foreign object that is impelled into the body, you do not remove it.  It goes with the patient up to the operating room left in place.  Because if you pull it out you may start someone bleeding to death.  You leave it in place until the surgeons operate and remove it, especially when you have a knife wound and it is still in place when you get them in.  They go to the operating room with it for removal.
Q  Let's say you have a person lying in a supine position, the knife in the chest.  Can you pick them up and lay them on a litter and bring them into the hospital without removing the knife?
A  Yes, sir, you can.
Q  Is that the standard operating procedure in the military?
A  Yes, sir, to leave it in place until you get them there and they are assessed by a surgeon.
Q  This is the way you are trained?
A  Yes, sir.
Q  It's not until they are actually in the hands of a surgeon who can do something affirmative with respect to the injury that the intruding foreign object that is in the body is actually removed.  Is that correct?
A  Yes, sir.
Q  So this remark that MacDonald made that there was a knife penetrating from his wife's chest that he removed it and threw it away struck you as being peculiar under the circumstances.
A  Yes, sir, it did.
Q  How long was MacDonald in the crash room?
A  He was in there for approximately thirty minutes, give or take a couple of minutes.
Q  When he was brought in did he have a sheet over his body?
A  Yes, he did.
Q  Did you remove the sheet?
A  The sheet was removed in the crash room.
Q  And what did you observe when you removed the sheet?
A  I observed that he had three wounds.  He had two wounds on the chest, one on the left upper arm and he also had a knot on his left forehead that had an abrasion on it.  And he did have a pair of blue pajama pants that had some blood on them, and they were torn.
Q  Now when you say they were torn, in what manner were they torn?
A  The seam was ripped out.
Q  This was not a tear in the fabric but the seam had opened up?
A  Yes, sir.  There was no tear in the fabric, the seam itself had come loose.
Q  At what point was the seam opened?
A  Approximately mid-thigh and --
Q  That's from the crotch down to the mid-thigh?
A  Yes, sir.  On both sides on both legs of the pants.
Q  You say there was blood on the pajama bottoms.  How much blood would you describe as being on the pajama bottoms?
A  Just a moderate amount, sir.  I -- they were not soaked.
Q  They were not dripping with blood?
A  No, sir, they were not dripping with blood.
Q  But there was blotches of blood on the material of the pajama bottoms.  Is that correct?
A  Yes, sir.
Q  And there were several blotches of blood, enough to make it conspicuous?
A  Yes, sir.
Q  Was there blood on his body?
A  Yes, sir.  He had blood on his hands and on his face and there was some blood around the wounds on his body.
Q  Did you clean him up?
A  Yes, sir, I did.
Q  What did that consist of?
A  I took a basin with some surgical soap and water and washed down his face and hands and cleaned up the wounds to determine the extent of injury.
Q  And what type of surgical soap are you referring to?
A  Phisohex.
Q  And you just sort of gave him a sponge bath on a part of his body?
A  Yes, sir.
Q  How much of his body did you cover?
A  I went no lower than the waistline.  I just cleaned up the immediate wounds and his face and hands.
Q  Did you remove the pajama bottoms?
A  Yes, sir, I did.
Q  What did you do with them?
A  I threw them in the garbage can.
Q  What did you do with them first?  Did you put them directly into the garbage can?
A  They were dropped on the floor and later after he was moved out of the room they were picked up and thrown in the garbage can.
Q  Will you describe the details as best you can where these wounds were located that you observed and the type of wounds.  Whether it was a superficial wound or whether it was a penetrating wound?
A  I observed three wounds on the body.  He had one on the upper left arm.  He had one on the right chest.  It seems that it was right below the nipple line, and he had one that was borderline on the abdomen and chest area.  I would have determined them as superficial wounds.
Q  Would you have determined all of them superficial wounds?
A  Yes.  I would not have determined them stabbed wounds.  They just did not appear to be stab wounds.
Q  Was he bleeding profusely from any of these wounds?
A  No, he was not.  There was a very small quantity of dried blood around the wounds and the blood that was appearing on his face and on his hands.  He was not bleeding at the time he came in.
Q  After you cleaned him up and removed this blood, did you see any evidence of blood coming out of the wounds or seeping out of the wounds?
A  The only one that had any seeping was the abrasion on his forehead and there was some serum weeping from the wound.
Q  Serum weeping is not blood but sort of a yellow serum from the body.  Is that it?
A  Yes, sir.
Q  Did you feel it or deem it necessary to apply any bandages such as an adhesive bandage?
A  As a precaution against chest wounds I did put a piece of Vaseline gauze over one of the wounds.  This is simply from force of habit, I suppose.  That's something I have done for quite a long time with all chest wounds.  There was no bubbling from the chest wound itself.  There was not a sucking chest wound present that was life threatening.  It was simply a precautionary measure on my part.
Q  You say MacDonald, while he was there, told you this story about four intruders, two black males, one Caucasian male, and a female?  Did he give you a physical description of any of them?
A  The only thing that I recollect was one of them, one of the black males was wearing a field jacket.  I don't recall any conversation about the rest of them other than there was the two statements he made about the number and the color.
Q  And did he specify who was chanting this phrase?
A  The girl was the one that was chanting the phrase that "acid is groovy, kill the pigs."
Q  Did the doctor come to the crash room to take a look at MacDonald?
A  Yes, sir.  There were two doctors came back there.
Q  Do you recall who they were?
A  One was the doctor that was on duty in the emergency room as the physician of the day.  I believe it was Dr. Straub.  And then the surgeon on duty was called down from Ward 2-A to come down and see Dr. MacDonald.
Q  Do you remember his name?
A  Dr. Jacobson.
Q  Did Dr. MacDonald engage these two other doctors in conversation?
A  He did engage Dr. Jacobson in conversation as we were carrying him from x-ray up to the ward.  They were discussing a patient that both of them had worked on some months prior.
Q  Can you tell us approximately what they said to one another?
A  The patient that they were talking about was a young GI who had taken LSD and gone on a bad trip and he escaped from the staff at the hospital and got up to the ninth floor and jumped out the window.  And he was carried into the emergency room.  He was still alive and the necessary resuscitation was done on the individual and he had to have a chest tube put in because of fractured ribs.  And he even had a pneumothorax or hemothorax but anyway a chest tube was put in and Dr. MacDonald and Dr. Jacobson were discussing this patient and they were also discussing the problem of whether Dr. MacDonald should have a chest tube put in also for the pneumothorax that he had.
Q  Was there any discussion as to how serious this pneumothorax was that Dr. MacDonald had?
A  The decision had not been made whether a chest tube would be put in or would not be put in.  That decision was made later in the morning after he arrived on the ward.  And Dr. MacDonald was reluctant to have a chest tube put in.
Q  Would you say this was a borderline pneumothorax and there was a question as to whether or not putting in a chest tube was appropriate?
A  There had been a question as to whether it was a twenty percent or forty percent pneumothorax and as I said the decision was not made until later in the morning whether to put in a chest tube or not.
Q  You say there was a question about that?  Is this something -- some information that you derived from overhearing the conversation of the doctors with one another and with the patient, Dr. MacDonald?
A  This is what I overheard between Dr. Straub who was the radiologist and Dr. Jacobson, the surgeon.  They had the x-ray of his chest on the view box and were looking at it and discussing whether it was a forty percent or a twenty percent hemothorax.
Q  Going back to the crash room for a moment, you described as having cleaned Dr. MacDonald up, washing him off, removing the blood, putting a plaster over one of these wounds, do you remember checking his head to see if he had any head injuries around the side or the back of his head?
A  Well, I can't specifically say that I did.  However, I did look at the man's head.  It would have been very obvious if he had had other head wounds because he had a short hair cut and I do not recall physically taking my hand and going over his head, but I'm sure that I must have looked at his head.
Q  Are you familiar with the symptoms of shock? him did you notice any change in the rate of his breathing?
A  Yes, sir.  I was washing his face and he started breathing more rapidly and more shallow.  And I told him to slow it down, get his breathing back to normal.  And he did.
Q  Will you tell the Grand Jurors the difference between a hemothorax and a pneumothorax.
A  A pneumothorax is air in the pleural space between the lungs and the chest wall.  A hemothorax is blood in this space.
Q  If a person has a wound that penetrates into the lung area, itself, that is the lung is damaged or injured is there any coughing of blood?
A  Yes, there would be coughing of blood.  You would also have a bubbling of blood from the chest.
Q  Was there any coughing of blood on the part of Dr. MacDonald?
A  Not that I observed.
Q  Was there any bubbling of blood?
A  There was no bubbling from any of the wounds.
Q  How long was he in the crash room again?
A  I would say thirty to forty-five minutes.
Q  And that was about the time he was removed from the crash room that he told you this different story about pme black male and two white males.  Is that right?
A  It was some time before he left the crash room that he changed the story.
Q  So that would be about a half hour, more or less, from the time that he told you the first story?
A  Yes, sir.
Q  Did you go up in the elevator with him to the place where he was taken for further treatment?
A  Yes, sir, I did.
Q  How long did you stay with him?
A  I simply rolled him through the door and as quickly as he was transferred over to another bed, I took the litter and went back downstairs.
Q  You weren't present when they gave him an examination up there, I take it?
A  No, sir, I was not.
Q  Or when they performed any surgery on him?
A  No, sir, I was not present.
Q  Were you informed of the results of that?
A  I believe that he did have chest tubes put in later that morning -- there were chest tubes put in.  And he only remained in the intensive care unit for something like two days.  And then he was transferred over to the surgical ward.
Q  Was he tested as to blood pressure?
A  On his initial entry into the emergency room, yes, sir.
Q  That's one of the first things you do?
A  Yes, sir.
Q  How was his blood pressure?
A  As I recall, his blood pressure was within the normal limits.
Q  What other tests do you make at that time?  Do you test for temperature?
A  We do not take temperatures as a usual procedure.  We do check the pulse rate and the respiratory rate.
Q  The pulse rate was normal.
A  As I recall it was within the normal limits.
Q  Excepting for this one instance when he began to breathe shallow, his breathing rate was normal.  Is that correct?
A  Yes, sir, as I recall, it was.
Q  When did this conversation between MacDonald and Jacobson take place concerning the kid who had jumped out the window?
A  It took place between x-ray and the elevator and between the ward.  We had to wait for a couple of minutes for an elevator and they were talking there and then we were going up to the second floor they were also talking.
Q  Were you with him when he was being x-rayed?
A  Part of the time, yes.  I had to go back to the emergency room and come back and do a couple of other lab tests on him, draw blood for a couple of other lab tests.
Q  Did you take a blood sample from him?
A  Yes, sir.
Q  Did you take a urine sample?
A  I do not recall a urine sample.  Probably one was taken.  But I don't recall taking it myself.
Q  When MacDonald was x-rayed was he lying on the table of the x-ray room or -- many chest x-rays you stand up.
A  I do not remember because I left when the x-ray tech took him into the room to make the x-ray and went back over to the emergency room to pick up some syringes and tubes for the lab work that I had to draw on him.  And when I came back they had already taken the x-ray and he was back on the stretcher.
Q  Now was it necessary to change MacDonald from one -- let's say litter to another litter?  Was he able to move about?
A  Yes, sir, he was.
Q  During the course of that morning while he was being moved from one place to another, did he have occasion to stand up and walk a few steps?
A  Not while I was with him, no.
Q  He seemed to be in complete physical control, though?
A  Yes, he was.  He was very cooperative.  He was coherent.  He was aware of what was going on, the events that were taking place.
Q  Recall anything else that MacDonald said?
A  Concerning what?
A  Concerning his wife or anything else.  Concerning, let's say, people involved in the drug culture.
A  No.
Q  Concerning hippies?
A  I do not recall anything about that.
Q  Do you recall a statement "Why would anybody do this to my wife.  She never hurt anyone."?
A  Yes, he did make that statement while he was in the emergency room in the crash room.
Q  Did he say anything else in that respect?
A  Nothing, other than asking where she was and if she was all right.
Q  Did you have anything to do with MacDonald later, after this, you know, the first hour when he was received in the hospital, admitted to the hospital, did you see him on later occasions?
A  No, I did not see him again until the hearing took place there on Fort Bragg and he was at the hearing.  When I took him up to Ward 2-D and he was transferred over to their bed, I left immediately and I did not see him again and had no other contact with him.
Q  And you say for two days he was in intensive care.
A  I believe that he was kept in the intensive care for one or two days and then he was transferred over to the male surgical ward.
Q  And you just know that by reference to the records, not by having seen him.
A  Yes, simply references from the records.
Q  Mr. Newman, is it standard procedure when a person has had surgery, the type that MacDonald had, that is the insertion of a chest tube, to relieve the pneumothorax, to put him in the intensive care unit?
A  Yes, sir, it is.
Q  Until such time as it has been established that there's no problem with him.
A  Yes, sir.  You need to observe them closely for about the first twelve to twenty-four hours.  And if they do well they can be transferred over to another area.
Q  Do you recall how many people came into the crash room while he was there?  You mentioned Colonel Pernell.
A  Colonel Pernell came in.  The only other people who would have been in there would have been hospital staff.  That would have included the night NCO who would have been Sergeant Henninger.  I don't recall if he came in or not.  I really don't.  My corpsmen were there, myself, and the two doctors.
Q  Were any of these people interrogating MacDonald?  Were they asking him specific questions?
A  The only specific questions that I recall him being asked were information concerning his name, unit, and social security number.
Q  The various statements that he was making, this was information that he was, in fact, volunteering?  Is that correct?
A  Yes, sir.
Q  These were sort of spontaneous statements on his part?
A  Yes, sir.
Q  Did he use, when he described the intruders that came into the house, did he describe them as hippies or make any illusions or references to them along that line?
A  I don't recall his making any reference to them as hippies.  The only thing that I recall is that he stated there was one female who was white, and the one white male and the two black males.
Q  Did he say anything about drug users or make any remarks about drug users he had treated in the past or counseled?
A  Not that I recall.
Q  From your experience, let's say there's a patient who suffered a knife wound in the chest and the patient appears to be unconscious or in very serious condition, would closed chest massage be an appropriate type of treatment under those circumstances?
A  You would have to -- now what were the conditions you said that the patient supposedly has?
Q  Well, you see a patient, the patient is in supine position, there's a knife sticking in the chst, let's say up to this area, would one of the things that you would consider doing be a closed chest massage?
A  No.  I think I would go over to mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.  If you start pressing on the chest you could create some severe problems with bleeding by jarring loose the object or cutting something else with it still in the chest.
Q  Now if you did use closed chest massage then you would have to remove this foreign object.  Is that correct?
A  Well, not necessarily.  You could leave it in, but you would probably jar it loose and you would probably do more damage to the patient by leaving it in place.
Q  Under what circumstances is closed chest massage deemed an appropriate treatment or recourse?
A  When you have a respiratory arrest.  When there is no breathing going on.  Then it is appropriate.  However, most of the time now, they don't use the old, old closed chest massage.  You use mouth-to-mouth and a combination of pressing on the chest a couple of times, five breathes of air blown directly into the patient.  And you really aren't doing the old pump, pump, pump on the chest like they use [sic] to teach.
Q  If you find a patient in a supine position and they have a knife in them, the first thing you do would be to try mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
A  If they were not breathing.
Q  If they were not breathing.  If you observed when you gave them mouth-to-mouth resuscitation that there was some bubbling from the chest area, what would that indicate to you?
A  That would indication a sucking chest wound if they were bubbling from a wound in the chest.
Q  What would you do then?  Remove the knife and give closed chest massage or closed heart massage?
A  No.  If they had a sucking chest wound you would immediately try and seal off this wound either with a piece of plastic or if nothing else, put your hand over it and keep it over it until somebody could get you some tape or some Vaseline gauze or something to seal the area.
Q  And you would continue mouth-to-mouth resuscitation?
A  Yes.
Q  In the event it's finally decided to give closed chest massage, then you would remove the foreign object.
A  I would not.
Q  You would not.
A  I would not remove it unless there is a surgeon standing there saying go ahead and do it.  I would not take the responsibility for doing that.
Q  This is the way you have been trained by the army medical corps?
A  Yes, it is.

MR. WOERHEIDE:  Does any of the Grand Jurors have any questions of Mr. Newman?

JUROR:  Did you know MacDonald either before this occurrence on any occasion?

A  I had probably worked with Dr. MacDonald in the emergency room.  However, I did not recall him specifically by name.  We had a different doctor on every night and I was working permanent night shift and every night we had different doctors.  I suppose that I had worked with him in the past.  However, I do not recall when.  So far as personally knowing him, no.

FOREMAN:  Which one of his wounds would you have -- would have caused the pneumothorax?

A  It would have been the wound on the right chest below the nipple line.  Would have been -- I believe that was the one that I was suspicious of and put the Vaseline gauze over it.

FOREMAN:  Which one was that?  Say that again.  The one at the lowest on the right?

A  No.  He had a chest wound here on the right thorax, I believe it was right below the nipple line and that was the one that I was concerned about and that I had put the Vaseline gauze over simply as a protective measure, out of force of habit with chest wounds.

FOREMAN:  But that's the one that caused the condition.

A  I really don't know which caused the pneumothorax he had.

FOREMAN:  Would a superficial wound cause that condition?

A  Not a superficial wound.  You have to penetrate into the chest wall into the pleural space to get the air in there.

FOREMAN:  So one of those two wounds was sufficiently deep to cause this condition?

A  This could have been a spontaneous pneumothorax or it could have been caused by a hard blow to the chest.  It didn't necessary [sic] have to be a stab wound to produce it.

FOREMAN:  A hard blow.  A really hard blow, one that would probably have left a mark of some kind.

A  Probably, yes.  Now I don't know whether the stab wound caused the pneumothorax or not.  I really don't.

MR. WOERHEIDE:  Mr. Newman, did you notice any small, circular, round, pinpoint type wounds in the chest area that might have been made by an ice pick?
A  No, I did not.
Q  Is it possible that a very superficial penetration of the skin by an ice pick with a passage, of say a half hour or an hour, would close and not show any indication that it was there.
A  No, it would not have.  There would have been a mark left on the chest.
Q  What sort of a mark?  Just a little --
A  You would have been able to see where the skin was broken.  It would not have closed over within more than a couple of days.
Q  There was nothing [illegible] the time you cleaned him up?
A  No, sir.  I did not notice any other wounds other than the ones that I have described.  And I did wash up his body, the upper half.

JUROR:  Were the blood samples taken on the pajama bottoms before they were thrown away?

A  No, sir.

JUROR:  Was that the army's rules to usually throw this stuff away that quick from a wounded person?

A  These clothes were torn, the pants were torn and were bloody.  They were left laying in the crash room after he had been moved out and I, myself, was respnsible for them being thrown away because they were bloody and they were torn.  It was not a standard procedure to throw them away.  It was simply something that I did that shouldn't have been done.

MR. WOERHEIDE:  And you haven't done it since then, I take it.
A  No.  I haven't done it since then, no.  I didn't feel that anyone wanted them because the CID and everybody else had been there and nobody had said hey, where's his clothes, let me have them.  And after he had moved out they had had ample opportunity to get them if they wanted them.  And nobody had said they wanted them.  And I didn't think that he would want them and I picked them up and dropped them in the garbage can.

FOREMAN:  Did he have any wounds below his chest?  Below his waist?

A  No, he did not.

JUROR:  How about when you said that his breathing was increased.  Do you have any explanation for that at all?

A  Anyone can hyperventilate.  I can sit here in this chair and start hyperventilating.

JUROR:  I am sure of that.  I know that.  But --

A  No, because when I told him he had to slow it down, to get his breathing back to normal, he did.  He was very cooperative.  And he slowed his breathing down and we had no more problems.

JUROR:  Having a -- you know -- damage close to your lungs it looks like even a doctor would know to steady your breathing.  Isn't that usuall a normal thing?

A  Yes.  He started breathing a little rapid and I told him to slow it down ad he did.  He could have been excited and created the rapid breathing.

FOREMAN:  Did you say the wound on his head was on his left side?

A  Left forehead.  Yes, sir.

JUROR:  Were any of these wounds treated with stitches?  Were they sewn up?

A  They were not while I was with him.  I don't know whether they were closed later or not.  But they were not closed while I was with him and when he went to the ward they had not been closed.

JUROR:  Would all three leave scars?

A  Yes, sir, they would.

JUROR:  Did this wound on the head require stitches?

A  No, sir.  It was only an abrasion on the head.  He had a knot there, a swollen area, and the surface of the skin had been abraded.  There was no laceration there that would require stitches.  It would leave no scar at all.

JUROR:  That's what I used to call a pump knot.

A  Yes, sir.

MR. WOERHEIDE:  May Mr. Newman be excused, Mr. Foreman?

FOREMAN:  Only one other question.  If a person had been hit repeatedly, hard enough to say a day or two later, to have had been black and blue would a puffiness or swellingness or redness be present at the time you examined him or would that depend on the person's skin.

A  There would not have been any discoloration other than the skin may have turned a little bit red.  So far as it being black and blue, not that soon.

FOREMAN:   Thank you very much, Mr. Newman.

[MICHAEL DOUGLAS NEWMAN DISMISSED]