High degree of idiocy in Karen Read prosecution

In the movie “Animal House,” John Belushi’s character Bluto had only gone to Faber College for seven years.

Turns out, Bluto was a world-class scholar compared to the prosecution’s latest “expert” witness in the Karen Read murder trial in Dedham.

Meet Shanon Burgess, who although he’s claimed on multiple occasions to have a bachelor’s degree, doesn’t have anything close to a BS, although he’s currently full of it. BS, that is.

Under cross-examination Monday from defense attorney Robert Alessi, Burgess was grilled about his fabricated academic credentials.

“If I do the math correctly, sir,” Alessi said Monday, “you have been pursuing a bachelor of science degree for 17 years. Correct?”

“Thass correct,” Burgess said in his Alabama cracker accent.

Alessi: “And you have not obtained it as you sit here today?”

Burgess: “Thass correct.”

Alessi: “And yet there are various documents that we’ve seen that state that you obtained the bachelor of science, correct?”

Burgess. “Again, with errors or misinterpretations.”

Whose errors? Whose misinterpretations?

This preposterous peckerwood was brought in to try to clean up after some of the disastrous testimony of earlier prosecution witnesses. He’s an “expert” on technical matters.

The problem is that the prosecution’s different technical narratives are providing reasonable doubt as to their deranged attempts to railroad Karen Read. The problem, the prosecution claims, is “clock drift.”

But once Shanon began stammering in his backwoods drawl, it became clear the prosecution’s problem was “truth drift.”

He works for a company called Aperture, which rhymes with departure, which will probably be Burgess’ next career move with the company.

The only question is, Hos long until he’s fired?

To a battle of wits, Shanon comes unarmed. As embarrassing as his sworn testimony about his college career was Monday, Burgess doubled down on re-direct. He was being questioned by Mob attorney Hank Brennan, now serving as “special prosecutor” for corrupt DA Meatball Morrissey.

Hank Brennan asked him why he had claimed on his most recent resumes that he was still seeking a bachelor’s degree.

“Because I am currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree,” he repeated.

In this trial, he was filling the technical role played in the first trial by state trooper Joseph Paul. He was the guy who claimed, “The crime scene spoke to me.”

Paul was painfully stupid. But now Shanon Burgess makes him look like Albert Einstein. And with his conehead, Paul cut a less ridiculous figure than the follically challenged redneck.

He purports to be an expert. But his only post-high school diploma is an associate’s degree from world-renowned Wallace State Community College of Hanceville, AL, formerly known as the George Corley Wallace Trade School of Cullman County.

Bet it’s a great school if you want to learn how to butcher hogs. Or, in Burgess’ case, butcher “expert” testimony.

He confused “bytes” and “bits,” which is something any expert would know, or so you would think.

He repeatedly said he extracted data from the cell phone of “Mrs. Read.” That would be Karen Read’s mother, because Karen is not married.

On cross-examination, he told Alessi how important it was to synchronize timelines on cell phones “down to the second.”

Then Alessi pointed out that every date on his “expert” report was off by 24 hours. He had listed the wrong date, Jan. 30 instead of Jan. 29.

In other words, this hillbilly wasn’t off by one or two seconds, he was off by a whole day – 86,400 seconds.

“Parlance!” he howled as his incompetence was shown.

Parlance? He knows what that word means, but when he was asked the previous day by Alessi if he knew the definition of the word, “mendacity,” he drew a blank.

As a graduate of the George Corley Wallace Trade School of Cullman County, I’m guessing there are a lot of other words Shanon doesn’t know the meaning of.

Speaking of mendacity, it is the contention of Shanon that he volunteered his new report, mid-trial, to Hank Brennan, totally unsolicited by Whitey Bulger’s old lawyer.

So Alessi showed him the cover letter, which begins:

“Dear Mr. Brennan, pursuant to your request I have completed an additional analysis….”

Alessi: “This wasn’t done on your own initiative. You put it in writing that you did it at the request of Mr. Brennan. Which is it?”

Burgess: “Uh, so that was on mah own initiative. This is a, uh, a holdover, so a copy-and-paste from mah original ree-port.”

Brennan has had this problem with witnesses in earlier trials. I’ve told you about how he used a drunk ex-FBI agent named Robert Fitzpatrick in the Whitey Bulger trial. That G-man lied himself into a six-count perjury indictment.

Obviously, Brennan is not real good at witness background checks.

Burgess’ veracity problems didn’t rise to the perjury level – he’s just a fork-tongued cracker clown. But Brennan did try to dig him out from under his torrent of resume lies.

Brennan tried to point out all the successful Americans without college degrees – Oprah Winfrey (who does have one), Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, etc.

Of course, none of them ever felt the need to lie for decades about their academic credentials, nor do they hold themselves out as technical “experts.”

Brennan asked Burgess about when one of his fraudulent resumes had been written.

“It would have been mebbe tin years ago.”

He asked who had filled out the phony-baloney resume.

“I don’t particularly remember filling it out but obviously I did.”

Well, that must have certainly helped rehabilitate your witness with the jury, Hank.

And now Shanon Burgess slinks back in humiliation to his new home in Texas. Yesterday in court he was wearing the same suit and tie he had on Monday. Obviously Hank hadn’t given him a heads up on the multi-day beating everyone else knew was coming his way from Karen Read’s defense team.

How can Burgess ever testify as an “expert” again, on anything?

In the movie “Animal House,” when Bluto is on the ropes at Faber, he whines, “Seven years of college down the drain!”

When Burgess gets his Aperture departure, he’ll have his own sad song to sing:

“Seventeen years of college down the drain!”