Isom trial testimony focuses on evidence list

Kevin Isom. | Provided Photo~Sun-Times Media

Updated: February 24, 2013 6:26AM

Prosecutors spent Tuesday continuing to lay out the path of evidence in the Kevin Isom capital murder case and fighting to get some of the evidence admitted.

For most of this 14th day of testimony, the focus was on evidence sent to the Lake County Crime Laboratory and the Indiana State Police Crime Laboratory in Lowell. Defense attorney Casey McCloskey argued against a 13-page list of evidence from the state police showing who all had accessed it and when.

McCloskey said the list included several pieces of evidence that had not even been talked about at trial, such as a handwriting sample from his client, and that there was no guarantee the evidence would ever be introduced.

Lake Coutny Superior Court Judge Thomas Stefaniak Jr. agreed, saying he wouldn’t even submit the list on the condition the evidence was submitted.

“It’s putting the cart before the horse,” the judge said.

Deputy prosecutor Michelle Jatkiewicz redacted some of the evidence from the list and said that McCloskey was trying to create a “catch-22” of keeping the chain of evidence from being submitted prior to the evidence when she has to establish the chain to get evidence admitted.

Stefaniak eventually let the redacted list in, although he said it could not be published to the jury yet.

Lake County Lt. Henry Hatch, a firearms and tool marks examiner at the Lake County Crime Lab, also testified Tuesday, telling the jury about his process of reviewing bullet shells and guns to determine which gun they came from.

Isom is on trial in the killings of his wife, Cassandra Isom, 40, and her two children, Michael Moore, 16, and Ci’Andria Cole, 13, on Aug. 7, 2007, in their apartment in Gary’s Miller neighborhood. He could face the death penalty if convicted. He is also charged with three counts of attempted murder in connection to Gary police who responded to the shootings.

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