Roth Killed Wife, Expert Says -- But Jury Not Allowed To Hear Claim

Could Randy Roth have held his struggling wife underwater until she drowned?

Yes, according to an expert witness called by prosecutors yesterday in Roth's first-degree murder trial.

But did he?

Dr. Donald Van Rossen, an aquatics expert with 39 years of experience in water safety and accident prevention, believes he did.

But King County Superior Court Judge Frank Sullivan would not allow Van Rossen to present that conclusion in court yesterday.

It's a matter for the jury to decide, Sullivan said.

Van Rossen, though, did provide some of the most riveting testimony thus far in the trial, now into its fourth week.

Roth, 37, of Woodinville, told police his wife of less than a year drowned in Lake Sammamish July 23, 1991, when the wake from a passing speedboat flipped the couple's raft.

Van Rossen, a professor emeritus at the University of Oregon, was asked by King County prosecutors to examine statements made by Roth describing the incident, which occurred east of Idylwood Park near Redmond. He also examined autopsy reports, and concluded in his own report to prosecutors that Roth drowned his wife. To demonstrate how it could occur, he created a videotape of a man attempting to drown a woman.

Without the jury present in the courtroom, however, prosecutors and Roth's defense attorneys argued over whether to allow Van Rossen's conclusions specifically regarding the Roth case to be admitted.

"The video shows that it is very easy for one person to hold another person underwater," said Deputy Prosecutor Susan Storey. ". . . I think it's important for the jury to understand that if the defendant held Cynthia underwater, they should know how it can happen."

With Roth watching intently, defense attorney George Cody objected. "What we have here is a man who is going to testify and invite the jury to speculate with him about what happened on Lake Sammamish the day Cynthia Roth drowned," Cody argued.

Sullivan ruled that Van Rossen could testify, but would not be able to repeat his conclusions that Roth drowned his wife. Sullivan said he would review Van Rossen's videotape, and the judge was expected to rule today on its admissibility.

Once the jury was brought back into the courtroom, Storey began her examination by building up Van Rossen's credentials, then gradually guided his testimony to include his expertise on drowning accidents. By the time she was done, Storey had used Van Rossen's graphic testimony to virtually take the jury under the water with a drowning victim.

There are, Van Rossen said, two types of drowning victims - passive and active.

A passive victim is someone who suffers a heart attack, stroke, blow to the head or some other condition that renders him unconscious. There is no struggle or fight to stay afloat, in that category. The victim in a passive drowning can "simply slip underwater immediately," Van Rossen said.

But Cynthia Roth was not a victim of passive drowning, Van Rossen told the jury. Instead, according to his research, she was an "active" drowning victim, characterized by a conscious person's "flailing of the arms and clawing for the surface. . . .

"In their procedure to survive, they are struggling to keep their head above water (and) there is a time clock that starts where panic sets in," Van Rossen said.

In most cases, active drowning victims are poor swimmers, Van Rossen added. But the jury has already heard a tape recording of Roth telling police that his wife was a good swimmer, even better than he was.

Storey then asked: If a strong swimmer was "in arm's length from a raft, is that person going to experience active drowning?"

"No," replied Van Rossen, who then told the jury that it was possible for one person to hold another person under water.

"How," Storey continued, "does an individual react when they are held under water by another person?"

"I think their first reaction would be surprise," Van Rossen said. Then panic sets in, he said, and the person attempts to fight his way to the surface.

In the tape he produced, which the jury might see today, Van Rossen said the male subject portraying Roth was able to hold the female subject under water "with ease" at least a dozen times.

Further damaging Roth's version of events, Van Rossen told the jury that he had the female subject under the raft as it was flipped over, which is where Roth said his wife ended up.

A large air pocket formed between the raft and the surface of the water, Van Rossen said. The models also showed how rescue breathing could be done in the raft.

Earlier yesterday, jurors watched another videotaped re-enactment, of police trying to flip Roth's raft under conditions he described to them. The raft was stable while several boats created wakes in an attempt to flip it while swimmers were clinging to the side, which is what Roth said he and his wife were doing.

The tape could, however, help Roth's defense because some scenes did show that swimmers tugging and kicking the raft on instructions to try to get it to flip were successful - a point Cody stressed in his cross-examination of police officers who participated in the re-enactment.

Prosecutors, who have called more than one hundred witnesses, plan to wind up their case today by calling Cynthia Roth's two young sons to the stand. The boys, 11 and 9, were at Idylwood Park with Roth the day their mother died.