ENDING MANNER-OF-DEATH TESTIMONY AND OTHER OPINION DETERMINATIONS OF CRIME Keith A. Findley* & Dean A. Strang** INTRODUCTION In January 2011, Ellen Greenberg’s fiancé and her apartmentbuilding manager broke down her apartment door after she failed repeatedly to respond to attempts to contact her.1 They found her dead in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor, the victim of 20 stab wounds to her chest, torso, head, and neck, including stab wounds to the back of her head and to her body through her clothes. They found a half-eaten fruit salad on the kitchen counter along with an overturned knife block. By all appearances, Greenberg was the victim of a grisly homicide, and the medical examiner (ME) initially ruled it as such. Eventually, however, the ME changed the finding to suicide. It was a curious determination, especially given the nearly two-dozen stab wounds—including wounds atypical of suicide, such as through the clothing and to the back of the head—along with the absence of a suicide note, the appearance that her death had interrupted her dining on the fruit salad, the fact that she had expressed no thoughts to anyone of harming herself and appeared happy to family. Moreover, she had behaved normally earlier that day by, for example, filling up the gas tank in her car before returning home that morning. So why did the ME change the manner-of-death determination to suicide? The answer lies not in any medical evidence or in anything the ME was specially trained to consider, but in ordinary circumstantial evidence—the fact that Greenberg’s apartment was locked from the inside with a swing bar, and the only other entrance, an exterior balcony on the sixth-floor apartment, was covered with fresh, undisturbed snow. Moreover, Greenberg had no defensive wounds, nothing was stolen from her apartment, and she had been on anxiety medication and a sleep aid, Professor of Law, University of Wisconsin Law School; Co-Founder and President, Center on Integrity in Forensic Sciences; Co-Founder, Wisconsin Innocence Project. I am grateful to Dan Simon and Kathy Pakes for helpful comments on a draft of this article. ** Distinguished Professor in Residence, Loyola University Chicago School of Law; Of Counsel, Strang Bradley, LLC; Co-Founder, Center on Integrity in Forensic Sciences. 1 The facts in this case narrative are drawn from Jessica Lipscomb, A woman with 20 stab wounds died of suicide, an autopsy found. Her parents are unconvinced: ‘It makes no sense.’ WASH. POST, 10/27/2021, available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/10/27/ellen-greenbergsuicide-stabbing/. *
1 Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4019606