AUBURN — Cleveland Cruthirds’s defense attorney accused retired Lewiston Detective Lee Jones of seizing on his client as the only possible suspect just hours after Naomi Swift was stabbed in 2011, and never looked at other possible suspects.

John Paul DeGrinney described the detective’s investigation as one conducted to convict Cruthirds, not to examine the evidence “in search for the truth.”

Jones denied the accusation several times Thursday during a daylong cross-examination by Portland attorney John Paul DeGrinney, an examination that often became tense as Jones raised his voice.

It was the third day of Cruthirds’ attempted murder trial in Androscoggin County Superior Court. Cruthirds, of Park Street in Lewiston, is accused of stabbing Swift 21 times in her Blake Street apartment, enraged that she was talking by phone to her husband and to other men online.

He is charged with aggravated attempted murder, elevated aggravated assault and burglary.

“Do you understand the concept that you could have been wrong about the original suspect?” DeGrinney asked Jones.

“No,” Jones said.

Earlier in the day, when DeGrinney was pressing Jones on how hard he worked to collect evidence, Jones said he had identified his suspect within hours, and that was Cruthirds.

“If I thought they were innocent, I wouldn’t put them in jail,” he said, of his general practice in moving suspects from interview to arrest.

Throughout his cross-examination, DeGrinney questioned Jones’s investigation of Cruthirds and his investigative techniques in general.

So much so that, at one point when DeGrinney objected to a question posed by Assistant District Attorney Andrew Matulis on redirect, Justice Robert Clifford allowed Jones to answer Matulis’s question based on Jones’s awareness of details of his investigation, even if the details were not specifically noted in his report. Clifford gave the prosecutor some leeway in questioning Jones because “the thoroughness of this investigation by this detective has been called into question” by the defense, he said.

Late in the afternoon, DeGrinney focused on the knife that police believe was used to stab Swift. The knife, a 13-inch butcher knife with an 8 1/2-inch blade, was found Dec. 11, 2011, the day after the stabbing, in a field near Lewiston High School. The first five inches of the blade had been buried in dirt and investigators noticed what appeared to be blood spots on the handle and near the hilt of the blade.

The knife was stored with other evidence collected in the case but was not tested until March 2012. That test showed the blood spots on the knife did not match either Swift or Cruthirds.

“This was believed to be the knife involved until, whoops, it was tested and proved not to be the knife?” DeGrinney asked Jones.

“Yes,” Jones said.

Jones said he did not know the extent of any further search for a knife after the butcher knife was found near the school, or where police officers may have searched.

Jones also acknowledged that he did not collect evidence from Swift’s home, including bedding that appeared to have blood on it, or bloody prints of bare feet and one sneaker print found in the kitchen. He also didn’t gather any evidence from a back door of the apartment. He took just two swabs of the entire crime scene, which he said contained thousands of drops of blood: one off the doorknob of the front door leading out of the building and one of the interior side of that door, collecting what appeared to be spots of blood.

Neither one of those swabs was ever tested.

In testimony Tuesday and Wednesday, first responders to the stabbing described Swift as under the guidance of paramedics when she left the building and it was unlikely that she would have touched that door and left her blood.

“What was on the doorknob?” DeGrinney asked.

“I have no idea,” Jones said.

“It could be anybody,” DeGrinney suggested.

“Yes,” Jones said, acknowledging that whoever handled that doorknob and left blood behind was either the attacker or a paramedic opening the door to guide Swift out of the building.

Jones defended his decision not to collect the bloody bedding, saying it was not necessary because he wasn’t investigating a sexual assault. And, he explained, since bedding isn’t washed that often there could have been any number of people sitting on, bleeding on or having sex on the bed over an extended period of time, and he didn’t consider the bedding to have evidentiary value.

DeGrinney and his co-counsel, Peter Richard Jr., showed the jury at least a dozen photos of the crime scene, including detail shots of blood drops, smears and footprints, and asked Jones to identify the direction of different footprints.

Jones said it was the first time he had looked at the foot patterns in any detail because he had never enlarged the images to examine them and had not taken any notes about the footprints when he photographed Swift’s apartment.

“I took the photos to document the scene, not to examine every corner,” he said.

DeGrinney and Jones examined the photos one by one and while DeGrinney said it appeared to him the bloody footprints were walking toward the bed not away from it, Jones said he thought the footprints were walking in circles around the bedroom and kitchen.

DeGrinney also questioned Jones’ decision not to swab blood samples on doors and knobs on other apartments in the building, asking Jones how many doors had blood on them. “All of them,” he said, because Swift knocked on doors from the first to the fourth floors looking for help.

She was found in the fourth floor hallway by police responding to a 911 call.

Swift’s blood was found on Cruthirds, in the crevices of a ring he wore on his right hand, a smudge on the inside of his right arm and two or three drops on the inside of his jeans, just below the knee. No blood was found on any other clothes, his shoes or his hands, according to testimony.

The defense’s position is that the blood found was the result of sexual contact between Cruthirds and Swift while Swift was menstruating; the prosecution and defense both acknowledge she was in her cycle in the days leading up to the stabbing and on the day of the attack.

Despite bail conditions that he was not to have contact with Swift, Cruthirds was at her apartment several times between Dec. 7 and Dec. 10, the night of the attack, and they had sex between one and three times, according to police records.

DeGrinney suggested menstrual blood was a possible source of the stains found on Cruthirds, which Jones acknowledged was possible but he didn’t believe it was likely.

DeGrinney reminded Jones that his report indicates Cruthirds is alleged to have held Swift down on her bed, kneeling over her, stabbing her head, arms, face and chest. He asked whether Jones might have expected to see more than two drops of blood on Cruthirds’ pants, and Jones said he didn’t know what he might expect.

In response, DeGrinney asked him whether he could conclude what kind of “rare phenomenon (would explain) that a blood drop would fly up, go into the defendant’s pants (above the waistband) and land below the knee while he’s straddling someone on a bed, and that another (drop) would then follow, maybe a third.”

Jones agreed that would be rare.

DeGrinney questioned Jones extensively on how much scrutiny he gave Swift’s statements, and whether he checked to see if she had a criminal background or a history of lying to police.

Jones said, “I don’t research my victims. I research the person that I charge.”

On Wednesday, the Lewiston Police Department’s evidence manager testified that most of Swift’s bloody clothes and a soiled feminine napkin were destroyed rather than kept as evidence, and that for 10 days after the attack Jones never answered emails asking for instruction about what should be kept and what could be destroyed.

Jones defended himself Thursday, saying he didn’t remember getting those emails and “I can’t help it if people are impatient. I might have been on days off and didn’t see” the mail, he said.

In wrapping up his cross-examination, DeGrinney asked Jones whether he was aware of a report taken by Hallowell police about a threat left on a car belonging to Swift’s mother when Swift had driven to that town in that car to visit her husband, or that the Hallowell police were told there was some gang connection to the threat.

Jones said he was aware of the report, which was taken Dec. 20, 2011, or 10 days after the stabbing because Hallowell faxed him a copy. Asked when Jones followed up on that report as part of his investigation, Jones said it was March 28, 2013.

The 911 dispatcher who took the call on the night of the stabbing and Swift are both expected to testify Friday.

The trial is expected to last through next week.

If convicted, Cruthirds faces the possibility of more than 30 years in prison.

jmeyer@sunjournal.com

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