What expert testimony did the jury not hear in the murder trial of Erika E. Sifrit?
Sifrit Granted Hearing for New Trial in Ocean City Murders May 16, 2006 – 11:47am Neal Augenstein, WTOP Radio ROCKVILLE, Md. – Nearly four years after the Memorial weekend killings of a Fairfax, Va., couple in Ocean City, Md., one of the killers has been granted a hearing for a new trial. Benjamin Sifrit of Hollidaysburg, Pa., will be back in court June 29 for the hearing. In separate trials, Sifrit and his wife, Erika, were found guilty in the murders of Martha M. “Genie” Crutchley, 51, and her boyfriend, Joshua E. Ford, 32, Their dismembered bodies were found in a Delaware landfill nine days after their May 26, 2002, slayings. The two had been shot to death and then dismembered. The Sifrits were both 25 at the time of the murders. Benjamin Sifrit, who was tried in Montgomery County after the case was moved from Worcester County, requested the new trial, claiming his legal counsel was ineffective in failing to investigate his case and in failing to file to have his sentence reconsider
The defense rested in Erika Sifrit’s murder trial yesterday without Sifrit taking the witness stand, bringing an anticlimactic end to a week of testimony and a day of sometimes angry exchanges in the courtroom. Facing murder charges in the killings of a Northern Virginia couple in Ocean City last year, Sifrit, 25, elected to remain silent as her attorneys called their final witness, a Delaware woman who described a bizarre encounter she allegedly had with Sifrit and Sifrit’s husband, Benjamin, a few days after the killings, which occurred on Memorial Day weekend 2002. http://www.bookrags.com/highbeam/testimony-ends-without-sifrits-witness-hb/ The name Sifrit still elicits shudders from locals and long-time visitors to the resort, while the names of the victims, Joshua Ford and Martha “Geney” Crutchley, evoke sorrow and regret. In either case, the names are forever etched in the reso
Erika E. Sifrit 31, was trying to get a new trial based on claims she had an ineffective defense because jurors didn’t get to hear details about a borderline personality disorder that a clinical psychologist testified rendered her incapable of making her own decisions. Sources: azcentral.
