3 experts say cyanide test was faulty as Robert Ferrante seeks new trial
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The attorney for the University of Pittsburgh researcher convicted in 2014 of poisoning his wife with cyanide has bolstered his request for a new trial with conclusions from three experts that a cyanide test done in the case was faulty.
Former Pitt researcher Robert Ferrante, 71, is serving a life sentence in state prison for the 2013 murder of his wife, former UPMC neurologist Dr. Autumn Klein. His attorney, Chris Rand Eyster, filed a 44-page amended petition with the court Sunday night that includes the three expert opinions that the cyanide test used to determine Klein’s cause of death provided an unreliable result.
“They all agreed that the Quest blood test result and the methodology employed was faulty, and it provided an unreliable result,” Eyster said.
Klein, 41, died April 20, 2013, three days after collapsing at their home in the Schenley Farms section of Pittsburgh’s Oakland neighborhood. In a 2014 trial, Ferrante was found guilty of first-degree murder for killing Klein with cyanide hidden in creatine supplements she took for fertility.
In July, Eyster filed an initial petition seeking a new trial for his client and, in an August response to the petition, Allegheny County Judge Jeffrey Manning dismissed many of the claims that were outlined, but asked for Eyster to bolster his petition with further explanation.
“We believe we’ve met the threshold,” Eyster said.
The Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office declined to comment.
If prosecutors can’t prove that Klein’s death was caused by cyanide poisoning, then she died of natural causes and was not murdered, Eyster said.
In the filing, he also included a transcript of a segment on the NBC television show “Dateline” where Manning said he wouldn’t have been surprised if the verdict was not guilty or guilty. Eyster said that bolsters the appeal because if the errors he claims were made by initial defense attorneys weren’t made, then the verdict may have been different.
“The case was close, so any errors that counsel committed could have made it. If it’s a close case, that error is more likely to effect the outcome,” Eyster said.
The revised petition also questions whether testimony from Klein’s mother and a friend were given to elicit sympathy and not to prove the case for murder, Eyster said.
Although the court initially dismissed most of the claims made in Eyster’s initial petition, it is the “totality of the circumstances” that merit a new trial for Ferrante, the attorney said.
“Look at the big picture. We think all of the claims have merit and, cumulatively, they merit a new trial,” Eyster said.