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a late night street fight left one man dead and contradictory accounts of what took place
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some said the victim was murdered others said it was self-defense it took a member of the wrestling hall
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of fame a blood spatter expert and forensic animation to reveal how a world-class athlete lost one of the most
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important fights of his life [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] san diego california is a mecca for both
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athletes and outdoor enthusiasts and it's where 25 year old dusty harlis settled after his successful college
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career as the aau national wrestling champion dusty was a wakeboard salesman which
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combined his passion for sports with his personality for sales he had so many friends he knew so many
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different groups of people all over san diego and everyone loved him he was just a great person like if
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he touched your life you were a lucky person dusty's stomach tomorrow he'll sit on
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the can for an hour oh no run five miles come back do a couple hundred push-ups [Music]
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just after midnight one saturday night dusty and his girlfriend sky flanders were heading home after an evening on
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the town we were just gonna walk to the liquor store to call a cab [Music] skye ran ahead of dusty seeking shelter
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from the rain [Music] a man in a car pulled up beside her he said something to the effect
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hey baby you want a ride [Music] and i said no i'm with someone like obviously i don't need a ride because
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i'm not alone he hadn't seen dusty right away [Music] dusty walked over to investigate
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he made a statement of the effect of hey that's my girlfriend you know what's
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going on here dusty went around to the driver's side words were exchanged there was an
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altercation [Music] by the time it was all over the car sped away leaving dusty lying on the ground
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bleeding to death i didn't know there was a weapon involved until then and i mean obviously when i saw
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the wound things you know started coming together i was hysterical why did you do this to dusty
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[Music] when paramedics arrived dusty had bled to death i just was in total disbelief i
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didn't want to hear what he was telling me i didn't want to believe it i didn't
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want to hear it i was like here lying to me and i was hitting the wall and freaking out and
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he had to take me outside i was being way too loud skye was able to provide the assailant's
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license plate number two uca167 the car was registered to barbara gensler she told police her son david
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was using the car but she didn't know where he was twenty-five-year-old david gensler was a
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finance student at san diego state university he matched the general description sky
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had given to police about six feet tall thin with glasses three days later gensler turned himself in
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obviously he knew he stabbed someone but didn't know the extent of that wound
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when he learned that this person had died that's when he contacted an attorney
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gensler refused to tell police where the car was and he also refused to give them the
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clothes he wore that night and the knife what his story is i don't know he's
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never given us a statement gensler looked very studious he had the little glasses and there was a tall
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wanky guy that he didn't look like someone he would expect to get into a streetball much
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less kill someone but several eyewitnesses disagreed [Music] hundreds of friends turned out for dusty
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harlis's funeral he was a former wrestling champion and a world-class wakeboarder
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his friends went out into the pacific near his home and dropped wreaths of flowers on the water in his memory he
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knew so many people in san diego different groups of people in different areas and
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he had a lot of friends like a lot of people loved him if you knew dusty you were touched and you were lucky
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[Music] the autopsy revealed the cause of dusty's death was a single stab wound to
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his aorta the largest artery in the body just one stab wound and it went in four
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instances into the body and sliced the the aorta dusty's girlfriend skye flanders didn't
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see everything that happened but she was certain david gensler was a killer he looked kind of crazed he looked
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like a wild animal really he had like a crazy look in his eyes and got in his car and
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left so he didn't say anything [Music] eventually an eyewitness came forward
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his name was scott davis he said he was driving by and saw two men fighting and stopped to try to break it up
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scott davis was a first class petty officer with the navy who was moonlighting as a
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bouncer at a local bar and he drove up just as this was beginning and what he said is as he drove up he
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saw this beginning of a confrontation and he saw the defendant take a hard swing
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and hit dusty on the left side of his head and that dusty went down on his back that
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the defendant jumped on top of him straddled him pulled out a knife with his right hand and stabbed him once in
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the chest [Music] davis said he fled the scene because gensler had threatened him too
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but david gensler's version of events was significantly different he said dusty harliss instigated the
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fight by pulling him out of his car and wrestled him face down to the ground he also said that scott davis the
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so-called witness was in fact an active participant gensler insisted davis kicked him
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repeatedly while dusty had him pinned down but he managed to get a knife out of his pocket to defend himself
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he's thinking he's getting his ass kicked and he's in fear of his life and
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he just blindly reaches back and stabs him is it likely or unlikely i really can't say
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and that is what made the one stab wound into the pretty much the center of the chest of dusting
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a week after dusty's death police found gensler's car parked in a neighborhood
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on the other side of the city we were able to get dna from the steering wheel from the gear shift from
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the turn signal and that dna that blood came back and matched that of the victim
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dusty harless this tied gensler to the killing a short time later after hearing about
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the incident in the media one of gensler's friends turned over a knife which she said belonged to gensler
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it was consistent with the size of the wound it was basically a four inch single bladed knife and it was
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consistent with the depth of the wound and other dimensions of the wound and the friend also turned over
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a bloody shirt tests revealed the blood on the shirt was that of the victim dusty harless
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the blood was on the front of the shirt inconsistent with gensler's version of
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the incident had gensler been underneath dusty on his stomach when he stabbed him
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dusty's blood would have been on the back of gensler's shirt not the front
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the fact that the majority of the blood is the front it seems a more likely theory that it was a front face-to-face
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confrontation based on the facts of the case based on the eyewitnesses based on the periphery witnesses
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after the fact i felt we had a murder case here i couldn't believe it actually
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i actually took another man's life i only thought i got the guy in the shoulder i didn't know
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i didn't know he's gonna die david gensler was convicted of second-degree murder in the death of
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dusty harless he was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison which in california means life and
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people don't get parole when they have indeterminate sentences like that while in prison
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gensler continued to maintain he had acted in self-defense and he hoped that one day
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he would get a second chance to prove his innocence david genzler couldn't understand how a
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jury concluded he beat a national wrestling champion then stabbed him in the chest without provocation
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gensler appealed his conviction arguing he was denied his choice of counsel the defendant's initial attorney jerry
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blank was ruled not to be able to represent him because of some technical issues the court of appeals said that
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that denied mr gensler his right to the council of his choice and reverse it on that ground
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in preparing for the second trial gensler's new defense team found something in dusty hollis's background
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that made gensler's claim of self-defense more believable numerous witnesses came forward to say
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dusty hollis had a reputation for starting fights they brought some people in that said my
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son was a street brawler i don't know how they found him but they did find some people that weren't really
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in you know a dusty fan in addition toxicology tests showed dusty was legally intoxicated at the time of his
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death with a .12 blood alcohol level there were also traces of marijuana in his system
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and the defense team discovered that sky flanders originally gave police a completely different version of events
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from what she testified to at trial [Music] sky flanders is interesting she told
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police a few hours later that she saw dusty when some kind of a wrestling hole holding gensler and throwing him
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but then she didn't see a lot else until she saw him bleeding later she changed that story on the
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stand in the first trial and and testified that it was gensler who was the complete aggressor
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coming out after skye also admitted that dusty instigated more than his share of fights
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sky flanders did admit that she had committed perjury that she had in fact seen dusty harless
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in one brawl that she had witnessed after she had been insulted in a bar he'd taken the guy out and beaten him
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beating the bad down in the alley and that she had heard about several other fights where he was always
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pretty much the winner and he was a good fighter apparently it was now coming out that i
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had not been completely truthful on my original testimonies and the reason i had said that is because i didn't want
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to feed the defense any information that they would use against dusty in the case
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from the beginning david gensler described in specific detail how dusty held him to the ground
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to see if this was possible the defense consulted ned blass a two-time national collegiate wrestling
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champion and member of the wrestling hall of fame blast said that gensler's description
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was consistent with the classic technique every wrestler is taught and i'm taking the position of
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mr gensler mr harlis over here and i'm probably not wanting to fight as i back up he'll attack my arm
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turn me up i'm going to go to my face because i don't want to land on the back
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of my head drives my head down and keeps me positioned i can't get up he pulls my head back i realized i have
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a knife in my belt i'm taking the knife out plenty of room to take it loose and stab
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wherever i can stab prosecutors scoffed at this notion as did dusty's family
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david ginsler would have us believe that he was laying face down on the ground and dusty was sitting on his back
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and that david ginsler actually stabbed dusty like this up over the back of his head
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and stabbed him in the chest while he was sitting on his back i mean there's
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just so many things that don't wash here but if genzler was telling the truth
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why was the blood all over the front of his shirt and not the back david gensler spent six years in prison
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for the murder of wrestler dusty harless but he eagerly awaited his new trial his hopes were raised when dusty's
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girlfriend sky flanders changed her story and now admitted that dusty had been in
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several previous fights with others while they were out as both sides prepared for the second
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trial they each had very different explanations for how dusty's blood got onto gensler's shirt
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we have a blood spatter interpretation expert look at it from our crime lab the defense hires a blood spatter
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interpretation expert to look at it from their end and not surprising at all their opinions are
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diametrically opposed the shirt had a large stain on the right front shoulder since dusty's aorta had been severed
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both defense and prosecution experts agreed the blood would have been spurting from the wound in the same
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cadence as his heartbeat you now have a victim that is bleeding and spurting with the maximum blood
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output that could be under stress 20 to 30 liters of blood per minute are going to be coming out of
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this wound either in the body or spurting out the body this meant that the blood flow
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wasn't continuous with an aortic wound blood doesn't generally spill out it spurts out or
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sprays out because of the pressure under the aorta defense experts believe this would have
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given gensler enough time to rotate his torso to face dusty as the blood spurted
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from the wound but gensler's attorney had to find some way to show the jury how this could have
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happened and for that he turned to the new field of forensic animation forensic animation has a
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specific application within the court system and those animations have to be conformed to the rules of the court
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and what are expected in terms of rules of evidence there's a videotape made with david
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ginsler and i think it was the attorney who played the role of dusty harless and we videotaped that
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from an angle that we were going to do the animation from so i could use as reference
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to create the animation and create the poses to get as accurate as possible the computer takes several of these key
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frames and then calculates the most likely way the bodies would move from one key position to another
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it's called pose to pose animation which was developed in the 30s by disney where they would make a pose and then
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you draw the next major pose and then you fill in in between later a layer called a texture map was then
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created to show the movement of the blood to gensler's shirt we wanted the eye to focus on
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this almost in a clinical frame of mind rather than an emotional frame of mind a frame by frame sequence was created
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corroborating gensler's story by showing how the blood got on his shirt in august of 2000
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six years after dusty harlis's death david gensler went on trial a second time for murder
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the defense presented a much different account of the incident than the prosecution did
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the defense said gensler innocently offered sky flanders a ride because he thought she was alone
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and the toxicology reports prove dusty harlis was intoxicated gensler said dusty pulled him out of the
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car and in short order pinned him to the ground and that the witness scott davis helped
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dusty by kicking gensler while he was pinned gensler says the fight was two against
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one and that he pulled the knife from his pocket stabbed blindly behind him and quickly turned around so that the
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blood hit the front of his shirt scott davis admitted leaving the scene of the incident but strongly denies
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attacking gensler [Music] this interpretation of the forensic evidence the forensic animation and
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testimony of a hall of fame wrestling coach resulted in a very different conclusion
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david gensler was found guilty of the much lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter
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his sentence was reduced to time served and he was released from prison his life could never be ruined now he's
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a free man i don't know what he's doing now but i understand he wanted to become
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a lawyer [Music] the case shows the limits of what answers science can provide questions about exactly what happened
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the night of dusty hollis death remain most likely the main reason why there was more forensic evidence than second
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trial is because there was literally years in between to prepare and to really go ever go through everything
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with a fine-tooth comb and to present all evidence that you possibly could i've learned that
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in a fight in a physical fight things don't go always according to plan the guy who's supposed to win the fight
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ends up losing anything can happen and i think that's what happened in this case
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exactly what happened i don't think anybody will really know except possibly the defendant
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[Music] [Music] [Music] you