A pacemaker made by St. Jude Medical (NYSE:STJ) helped reportedly helped clear a son accused of murdering his father by establishing a time death that was covered by the son’s alibi.
Claudio Cara, 56, was stabbed 5 times in the house he shared with his son, Frank Cara, according to the Toronto Star. Although the younger Cara had an alibi – he was visiting family at the time – he still spent 10 months in jail as his father’s accused killer as Canadian police built their case against him.
But the time of death established by a post-mortem interrogation of the elder Cara’s Identity ADx single-chamber pacemaker showed that Frank Cara was miles away from the scene at the moment his father died. The son was released from jail once that evidence was introduced in court, the newspaper reported.
The identity of his father’s killer remains unknown, according to the report.
It’s not the 1st time a pacemaker has been used to provide time-of-death evidence in a murder trial. In another case in Australia turned up by the Toronto Star, however, the pacemaker evidence helped sunder the accused killer’s alibi.
Ivan Jones was convicted of murdering David Crawford, whose 2-month-old pacemaker "showed to the minute the time that he was woken by a disturbance, when he was attacked, and when he died,” according to the Sydney Morning Herald. Although Jones was convicted largely on the basis of forensic evidence, the newspaper reported, the pacemaker evidence helped disprove his alibi during his trial.
