Barnes trial: Clash of the celebrity medical experts

In this corner, for the defense, from Pittsburgh, coroner of choice in the deaths of Elvis Presley, JonBenet Ramsey, and Vincent Foster: Cyril H. Wecht.

And in the opponent's corner, for the prosecution, from New York, star of the HBO series Autopsy and expert for the congressional probes of the murders of President Kennedy and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: Michael Baden.

With just seven weeks until trial, the case of William J. Barnes - accused of murdering Philadelphia Police Officer Walter T. Barclay Jr., who died 41 years after he was shot - is shaping up as a battle royal of medical experts.

"This is a real duel of experts. That's what it's all about," Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Renee Cardwell Hughes told prosecution and defense attorneys yesterday during a contentious two-hour hearing on pretrial motions.

Hughes warned Assistant District Attorney Edward Cameron and defense attorney Samuel W. Silver that she did not want to waste a jury's time proving that Barnes had shot Barclay, then 23, during an East Oak Lane burglary Nov. 27, 1966.

Barnes, 73, was convicted of attempted murder and related charges and served 26 years in prison for the shooting and for several escape attempts.

"We don't need days and days of testimony," Hughes said. "We just need to set the stage for the experts."

The main question is whether the gunshot wound, which paralyzed Barclay from the waist down, directly resulted in the urinary-tract infection that killed him at 64 in 2007.

Prosecutors say it did, and Barclay's family has described 41 years of recurring infections and constant pain that ended only when the former officer died.

But Silver and his team contend that the medical trail from the shooting to Barclay's death was muddied by Barclay's post-shooting life.

That included a fall from his wheelchair in which Barclay further injured his spine and several accidents in his modified automobile.

The case was further complicated after the city's deputy medical examiner, Ian Hood, ruled Barclay's death a homicide without an autopsy because of "respect for the [victim's] family" and Barclay's decades of documented treatment.

Seven months later, the District Attorney's Office had Barclay's body exhumed and autopsied, and the results of that examination will become the object of Wecht's and Baden's testimony.

Lawyers and the judge argued vociferously about the legal issues. Perhaps the only thing all parties agreed on was Silver's remark that "this case is unique in this country and probably in the world."