Daniel Wolfe

“Ultimately, was the evidence consistent with a pedestrian interaction between Mr. John O'Keefe and the Lexus.”

Dr. Wolfe described the central question he understood ARCCA had been asked to address.

“We had no say in what material was handed over to us.”

He clarified that ARCCA did not select the materials it received for review.

Dr. Wolfe described his training and professional work in accident reconstruction and human factors as the court examined his qualifications.

Dr. Wolfe testified that ARCCA's team reviewed the listed materials, with his work focused on vehicle damage and Dr. Rentschler's work focused on injuries.

“So as I mentioned, we ran two tests. The target speeds were at 30 and 40 miles per hour. And there was a little bit of variability in terms of what our target was and what we actually achieved. So the achieved speeds were at 31 miles per hour and 37 miles per hour. So just depending on how the glass leaves the barrel and some of the rotation can affect some of the speed or ultimately the end result speed to that. So what I will say, though, is that with the 37-mile-per-hour projectile into the taillight, we noted and observed that there was damage that was consistent with that of the subject tail lamp and that the test tail lamp had the majority of the outer lens fractured and missing, broken into pieces, as well as some underlying damage to some of the internal components, as well.”

Wolfe described the result of ARCCA's glass-projectile test.

“From a damage standpoint, it was inconsistent.”

Wolfe stated his conclusion about the 15-mile-per-hour head-form test and the subject tail-light damage.

Wolfe testified that a 15-mile-per-hour hybrid-head-form test caused significantly more tail-lamp damage than the subject vehicle, and said the subject damage was inconsistent from a damage standpoint.

“I don't believe that's explicitly stated.”

Wolfe acknowledged that a testing condition he described in testimony was not expressly recorded in the report.

“That wasn't a part of my scope in this case.”

Wolfe identified visibility analysis as outside the work he performed.

“There was no events recovered on the black box.”

Wolfe described the result of the EDR review before explaining why pedestrian impacts may not trigger a recorded event.

“Absolutely not.”

Wolfe said the cross-examination references to hair, DNA, taillight housing, and glass material did not change his opinions or conclusions.

“Sir, I'm on the science and the analysis that I've done. That's the side that I'm on.”

Dr. Wolfe rejected the suggestion that he was acting as a defense advocate and described his position as grounded in his work.

“I didn't directly email it to the Court, no.”

Dr. Wolfe acknowledged he did not personally send the requested records to the court.

“I think I just told you that, yes, I did delete the texts.”

Dr. Wolfe directly acknowledged deleting messages after earlier describing the practice as routine.

“I never discussed this with him. This is something that I sent to him that I did on my own and that I sent to him. But he never asked this of me and we never discussed it.”

Dr. Wolfe distinguished sending the pre-testimony outline from discussing it with Mr. Jackson.

“No, I did not inform the Court.”

Dr. Wolfe acknowledged that he did not personally notify the court of the earlier qualification-count error.

Dr. Wolfe testified that he and Mr. Jackson exchanged Signal messages earlier that year, not during the first trial, and estimated four to five brief communications.

“So we were again, because we were still under contract with the Department of Justice, we could not have any other formal agreements, contracts, retainers, anything of that nature because we were still under contract with the Department of Justice.”

Wolfe described why ARCCA could not enter a separate formal agreement while its Department of Justice contract remained in place.

“No. And as I mentioned earlier, again the Department of Justice forbid that, so we could not be retained or in a contract with the defense.”

Wolfe denied that ARCCA had been retained by the defense for the earlier work reflected on the invoice.

“So I think certainly we were on the order of months, not weeks.”

Wolfe characterized the usual time needed to review the disclosed material, conduct analysis and testing, and prepare a report.

Dr. Wolfe said ARCCA's 2024 work remained under its Department of Justice project number and that ARCCA could not have another formal agreement while under that contract.

“I was never made aware of that.”

Wolfe said he had not been informed of the sequestration order Brennan described.

“No, that was not produced, no.”

Wolfe acknowledged that videos of the prior demonstrations and tests were not produced.

Wolfe said the remaining analysis and reports could take about a month or more, depending on the work required and Department of Justice authorization.

Wolfe testified that the Department of Justice gave him verbal information about prior witness testimony, including reconstruction issues and potential DNA evidence, before he testified; he said he had not been made aware of a sequestration order.

“Furthermore, it did not generate, according to my colleague, Dr. Rentschler, enough forces to cause a skull fracture.”

Wolfe described a limitation he drew from the head-impact testing.

“The only question it answers is does the arm align with the taillight.”

Wolfe characterized the limited question answered by the static alignment test he reviewed.

“All of the test data that we did from the laboratory testing moving up to full scale vehicle testing, all of the collected data in terms of the photographs, the observations, all the acceleration data collected, so all of the testing that we've walked through in this PowerPoint along with certainly that was based upon all generally accepted and peer-reviewed methodologies in the accident reconstruction community.”

Wolfe stated the basis for his opinion that the tested arm-impact scenarios were inconsistent with the subject taillight damage.

Wolfe testified that a 37-mph glass-projectile test produced taillight damage he considered generally consistent with the subject taillight; the 31-mph test did not have enough energy to do so.

“Ultimately, I think I received the Court's order in May of this year, April of this year. So it was a year after-the-fact and I had already deleted the texts at that point.”

Wolfe explained why the contents of the earlier text-message chain were unavailable when the court order arrived.

“I was relaying the observations from the testing that we conducted with the ATD. Ultimately, like I said, Dr. Rentschler it's my understanding that he will testify to the abrasions or the lacerations to the arm.”

Wolfe distinguished his testing observations from the injury analysis he said Dr. Rentschler would address.

“The calculations, yes, but in terms of the damage, no, I don't think that 1 pound difference when we're talking about something that's 6,000 pounds striking something that's -- quite frankly whether it's 9.4 or it's 11 something, it's not -- you're not going to get a difference in the damage.”

Wolfe stated his view that the arm-weight difference did not change observed damage in the tests.

“If contact allegedly occurred at some point in that data set, no, you would not be able to pick a row in that data and say this is where that collision occurred.”

Wolfe described a limit on what the recorded vehicle data could establish about the timing of a contact.

“They would have to be going faster. If they're moving at a common velocity with the arm relative to it, they would somehow have to accelerate with more speed to catch up and go beyond the arm, essentially.”

Wolfe explained the physical premise underlying his opinion about whether fragments could overtake the arm.

“No, this is distinctly road rash. There's a clear distinction between the two.”

Wolfe distinguished the damage from the full-impact test from the punctures in O'Keefe's sweatshirt.

“After the impact, the dummy was projected and sliding on the pavement surface. So again, this is consistent with the front side of the body sliding, making sliding contact with the pavement, creating those abrasions and holes and again that asphalt material transfer that you see on the front.”

Establishes that a 29 mph vehicle-pedestrian impact produces extensive road rash damage across the entire body — damage absent from O'Keefe's clothing.

“The test clothing was inconsistent compared to that of John O'Keefe's.”

Direct conclusion that the full-body damage pattern from a 29 mph impact does not match O'Keefe's sweatshirt, which only had damage on the right arm.

“if you double the velocity, you quadruple the amount of kinetic energy. So you get a significant increase from small changes in speed because of that speed differential.”

Explains why velocity can dominate mass in Wolfe's kinetic-energy demonstration. His resulting comparison gave the 29 mph, 9.38-pound arm a higher unitless value than the 24 mph, 11.86-pound hypothetical arm, and he labeled the symmetric percent difference 14 percent.

“It would be more force and more energy in the 29 mph impact test.”

States Wolfe's conclusion that the 29 mph impact test involved more force and energy. In the preceding unitless kinetic-energy comparison, he gave the 29 mph, 9.38-pound arm the higher value and labeled the symmetric percent difference 14 percent.

“I don't have a paper because Dr. Rentschler is addressing the forces and the injuries to the arm.”

Wolfe deflects responsibility to his co-expert, a pattern Brennan repeatedly exploits

“Yes. But again, I don't know where you got that 11.8 from.”

Wolfe maintains confusion about the arm weight figure even after conceding he himself testified to 11 pounds under oath in a prior proceeding

“No.”

Wolfe answered no when Brennan asked whether he had conducted studies concerning sweatshirt damage under the fall-or-landing-with-shards scenario Brennan described.

“A Hybrid III, 50th percentile male. The same that we used in our testing.”

Records Wolfe's statement that Welcher used the same Hybrid III model in a drop test; it does not by itself establish the model's suitability for Wolfe's arm and fabric tests, and Wolfe testified that Welcher adjusted head mass when calculating force.

“No. There was no holes, punctures, fraying, nothing to the material.”

Wolfe's testimony that no tail light fragment produced holes, punctures, or fraying in his test garment.

“There was no test where the tail light caused any type of punctures, holes, or fraying to the material.”

Wolfe's restatement that, in his tests, no tail light fragment caused punctures, holes, or fraying to the material.

“Destroyed.”

The 29 mph full-body impact destroyed the back of the test Lexus — damage far exceeding what was found on Read's vehicle

“Again, my area of expertise is not injuries to the arm. So whether or not those fragments would be embedded or cause any type of damage to the arm, no. What I would say is that I would agree with the tail light being pushed into the arm — it's going to cause the tail light to fracture, and then the arm will move with the tail light.”

Wolfe agreed the tail light would be pushed into the arm, fracture, and move with it, while expressly declining to opine on whether fragments would embed or cause arm damage because injuries to the arm were outside his expertise.

“Well, if it's just the arm, his arm is going to get accelerated to move and then his body will be there still. And that broken tail light — if Randy is not restrained on a forklift — is going to be pushed like this by the broken tail light. It's going to move with the arm.”

Wolfe uses Brennan's own video demonstration to reinforce rather than undermine his common-velocity argument

“The best way I can characterize it is it's moving with the arm, sir.”

Wolfe's repeated refusal to concede Brennan's embedded-fragment premise, maintaining common velocity throughout