2022 Fall Meeting & Training Seminar

Court Room Testimony

DESCRIPTION: John B. Kwasnoski, a Professor Emeritus of Forensic Physics at Western New England University in Springfield, MA will be presenting valuable information and quick tips for court room testimony that will be beneficial to both criminal and civil matters. Please bring a calculator for some “lite” project work. Topics will include:

• Comments on giving effective testimony
• Defenses involving application of Newton’s Laws
• Defenses involving time-distance-speed analysis
• Ped crashes - when is it the peds fault?
• Attacking the State’s EDR evidence
• Defense attacks on the speed from skid evidence
• Defenses in cases involving the CSY calculation
• Handling the defense “throw away” question
• Investigation comments

This course has been approved for 6 ACTAR CEU’s.

There will also be a brief presentation by our very own Bob Clarke about the benefits of ACTAR certification.

WHERE: Middlesex County Fire Academy (not the Police Training Center)

1001 Fire Academy Drive

Sayreville, NJ 08872

WHEN: Thursday, September 15, 2022

8:30 am – 3:30 pm

Coffee & Registration: 8:00 am

Meeting & Presentation: 8:30 am – 3:30 pm

COST: The course fee is $20 for members and $50 for non-members.  Electronic payments for the cost of the course plus a $2.00 convenience fee are offered via PayPal through the links below.

Coffee and a boxed lunch and drink are included in the cost of the course.

Professor John Kwasnoski

John B. Kwasnoski is Professor Emeritus of Forensic Physics at Western New England University, Springfield, MA after thirty-one years on the faculty. He is a certified police trainer in more than twenty states, and has instructed prosecutors, police, and civil attorneys on more than 330 occasions across the U.S. He is the crash reconstructionist on the “Lethal Weapon – DWI Homicide” team formed by the National Traffic Law Center to teach prosecutors how to utilize expert witness testimony and cross examine adverse expert witnesses.

Prof. Kwasnoski has reconstructed more than 1,300 crashes since 1985, including multiple and single vehicle, pedestrian, motorcycle, and train crashes, and has given sworn testimony on more than 200 occasions; he has trained with the NYPD collision reconstruction unit since 2001, and continues to serve as a consultant to prosecutors nationwide on MV homicide cases. He has worked for more than twenty major insurers as a consultant/expert witness and has conducted training for the claim’s adjusters and special investigators of a number of insurance companies.

He has served as an expert in several cases of national significance including S. Carolina v. Susan Smith (a mother’s drowning murder of her two children) in which he participated in the re-enactment of the drowning in a submerged automobile and the creation of a video used in the sentencing phase of the trial. He was the reconstructionist for the plaintiff in the case of Ulm v. Ford Motor Co. in which a Vermont jury awarded the plaintiff more than one million dollars.

Prof. Kwasnoski has authored The Handbook of Collision Reconstruction, Kwasnoski’s Little Red Book, and Crash Reconstruction Basics for Prosecutors, and has co-authored three best-selling books for Lexis Law Publishing: Investigation and Prosecution of DWI and Vehicular Homicide, Courtroom Survival, and The Officer’s DUI Manual. Prof. Kwasnoski has published more than 80 journal and newsletter articles on collision reconstruction and maintains an active national speaking schedule.