Attorney criticizes pathologist’s homicide ruling in Cayce doctor’s shooting trial
A defense attorney tried to rip apart the credibility and investigation of a pathologist who ruled the 2017 shooting death of a salesman in Lexington County was a homicide.
The trial of Adam Lazzarini, a surgeon accused of killing medical equipment salesman William Player Holland while the two were in the doctor’s home, continued Friday with testimony from Dr. Janice Ross, who performed Holland’s autopsy. Lazzarini is charged with involuntary manslaughter.
Greg Harris, who is one of three attorneys defending Lazzarini, spent about 15 minutes grilling Ross about the police investigators she spoke to, the reports she read, and the notes she made.
She didn’t ask for or review federal or state agent reports or medical reports, Ross testified. She also didn’t didn’t talk to gun experts or the gun manufacturer. Ross didn’t speak with Lazzarini or his wife.
Harris told the court that the 9 mm pistol that killed Holland was known to ”under limited circumstances ... delay fire after the trigger is pulled.”
Those circumstances were later explained by a manufacturer’s gun expert on the stand. Those circumstances of a delayed gunshot going off always included a person having to pull the trigger and also included having to hit the gun with a hammer, which was found to be an extremely rare circumstance by independent testers. The circumstances of a delayed gunshot was only observed in testing situations and not during field use.
Ross said she was not aware of that before ruling the death a homicide.
Lazzarini is accused of shooting Holland while the two were looking at guns in an upstairs bedroom of Lazzarini’s house.
Harris asked Ross if she had spoken to more than a dozen investigators who had worked on the case, though he didn’t describe the scope of their involvement. She answered that she hadn’t.
Harris drove home the point to the jury that Ross had nearly eight months to investigate Holland’s death.
Holland was shot in October 2017 but police didn’t charge Lazzarini until May of the next year.
Ross eventually told the court that she made the homicide determination based on her medical examination, talks with the lead Cayce Police Department investigator and Lexington County Coroner Margaret Fisher. During those talks she was told that Lazzarini’s story about happened when Holland was shot had shifted. But the main factor in her determination was a video recording of a forensic interview with Lazzarini’s daughter that was conducted months after the shooting.
Prosecutors played the video in court. In it, Lazzarini’s then-5-year-old daughter says she was in the room when Holland was shot.
“One of the guns was loaded and my dad was holding it and he accidentally pulled the trigger,” the daughter said.
She was close enough to the gunshot to inhale some smoke, she said.
The forensic child interviewer, who testified after Ross, asked the daughter, “Did you see with your own eyes” the shooting?
Lazzarini’s daughter said yes, and “my dad accidentally did it.”
Harris said basing the homicide ruling on the daughter’s interview was inadequate.
“Your report changed based on one videotape you were provided,” he said.
Harris asked the judge to throw out Ross’ testimony because he believed it lacked expertise and depth. Judge Debra McCaslin didn’t bite, ruling that Ross’ testimony could remain for the jury to review.
A long unanswered question
The interview with Lazzarini’s daughter answers a long pondered question: What changed in the near eight months between Holland’s shooting and police charging Lazzarini?
Police initially did not charge Lazzarini in Holland’s death. But on May 1, 2018, paramedics were called to the home again, where they found Lazzarini’s wife, Vanessa Biery, unresponsive and were unable to revive her. An autopsy by the Lexington County Coroner’s Office into Biery’s death could not determine a cause of death.
But investigators then charged Lazzarini with Holland’s death. Cayce Police Department then-chief Bryan Snellgove said investigators discovered new evidence and that Lazzarini had not been truthful about someone in the house. It appears that his daughter’s location when the shot was fired was the lie that Snellgrove asserted.
Lazzarini had told investigators that his daughter was downstairs or elsewhere in the house when the shooting happened. It’s unclear from the testimony how investigators determined the daughter was in the room.
Prosecutors and the defense foreshadowed in opening statements that the trial would reveal how Lazzarini shot Holland. The daughter’s video is the first evidence presented to jurors indicating that Lazzarini pulled the trigger.
Shawn Graham and Luke Pincelli with the 11th Circuit Solicitors Office are trying the case. Along with Harris, Jack Swerling and Alissa Wilson are defending Lazzarini.
This story was originally published February 25, 2022 at 12:35 PM.