Pathologist speaks for the dead, tells jury in Rowland trial how USC student died

It was a struggle to the death.

After 31 witnesses and five days of testimony, pathologist Dr. Thomas Beaver took the witness stand Monday and — in his description of the numerous and horrible wounds on Samantha Josephson’s body— left few doubts about what happened to the University of South Carolina senior when she entered a black Chevy Impala on March 29 2019.

Both the prosecution and defense rested their cases Monday afternoon in this trail that has attracted national attention. The jury is expected to begin deliberating Tuesday.

The testimony of Beaver, one of the final prosecution witnesses, was also crucial in that it linked numerous key elements of prosecution witnesses who testified in five days of testimony.

Previous witnesses have testified about differences in wounds on Josephson’s body, the double-bladed purported murder weapon, the huge pool of blood in the back seat and trunk of what prosecutor’s have said was Rowland’s car and how the USC student’s cell phone cut off mysteriously some 20 minutes after video cameras captured her entering the vehicle in Five Points, a popular nightclub area near the USC main campus. Beaver’s testimony also explained why other witnesses have testified Josephson, whose body was found in a rural woods, likely was killed elsewhere.

But until Beaver, no witness so far in the six-day trial at the Richland County Courthouse has been a forensic pathologist, specialized doctors who perform autopsies, interpret the fatal wounds and whose unofficial credo is that they speak for the dead.

And in Josephson’s case, the doctor’s testimony will now let the prosecution argue to the jury what it has asserted all along: that the young woman, which previous testimony has said was locked in Rowland’s car’s back seat by childproof door and window locks, put up a terrific struggle before she died, battling to get out and likely attacking Rowland over and over while he repeated stabbed her with a sharp double-bladed utility tool.

Josephson had more than 120 stab wounds on her body, in the feet, back, leg, torso, lung, shoulder and on the top and side of her head, Beaver told the jury.

“She was alive when these wounds were inflicted?” asked prosecutor Dan Goldberg with the 5th Circuit Solicitors office.

“Yes, sir,” replied Beaver.

With Beaver’s testimony, prosecutors may be expected to argue that wounds suffered by Josephson, who an earlier witness indicated was unable to kick out a rear door window, admits of various interpretations: Either she began to fight him from the back seat while he picked up his bladed tool and began to repeatedly and quickly stab her, or most of the wounds were inflicted while she was trying to shield herself from the moving knife tool.

Some of the wounds are “what you would expect with someone trying to defend themselves,” testified Beaver. Most of the wounds were on her right side, he testified.

Many of the wounds, especially the ones about her right neck and right shoulder, were close together and most likely from “rapidly inflicted stab wounds,” testified Beaver, who illustrated the type of quick stabbing motions he was describing by bringing his hand up and down as if he was holding a knife.

Other significant wounds were to her head, where the knife penetrated the skull to the brain, and one wound was to the carotid, one of two main arteries that carries blood to the head, and that caused her to start bleeding out.

“The blood would come out immediately, just like a fire hose,” testified Beaver. The wounds to the brain and carotid were likely lethal, he testified.

Cause of death: multiple stab wounds

Not all of the 120 or so wounds would have caused Josephson’s death, but she bled from nearly all of them, profusely, until she died, Beaver testified.

It would have taken about 10-20 minutes before she died, he testified.

The human body has about a gallon of blood in it, and Josephson lost all her blood and had “maybe a couple of tablespoons” left in her body, Beaver testified.

That immense loss of blood jibed with earlier testimony from Columbia police officer Jeffrey Kraft, who initiated the stop on Rowland’s car the next day that led to his arrest, and State Law Enforcement Division analysts that large amounts of blood were found in the back of Rowland’s car.

Other wounds on Josephson’s body were scratches on her face, as if she had been dragged, Beaver testified. The reference to dragging supported earlier testimony by SLED crime scene analysts who recorded their observations of the body, which had been found 14 hours after the abduction in a remote Clarendon County wooded area.

Goldberg asked, “Do you have an opinion on what caused Samantha Josephson’s death?”

“Yes, multiple stab wounds” answered Beaver.

Before Beaver testified, Judge Clifton Newman ruled that only two low-key photos of the autopsy could be shown to the jury, lest the gruesome images inflame jurors against Rowland. Beaver had taken more than 100 photographs.

Citing a 2010 S.C. Supreme Court case, State v. Torres, that warned prosecutors not to appeal to jurors’ passions, Newman said showing more photos would be “pushing the envelope on admissibility in order to gain a victory which, in all likelihood, was already assured because of other substantial evidence in the case.”

At 2:38 pm Tuesday, after Goldberg told Judge Newman that the state of South Carolina would rest its case, lead defense attorney Tracy Pinnock asked Newman to dismiss the case because of a lack of evidence that could convict Rowland. The state’s evidence is all “circumstancial,” Pinnock said.

Such motions are standard on the part of defense attorneys in criminal cases.

Judge Newman refused. Judges rarely refuse to dismiss criminal cases.

“In this case, there is an avalanche of direct and circumstantial evidence pointing to the guilt of the defendant should it be believed by the jury,” Newman told Pinnock.

Rowland, standing in front of the judge, then said he did not want to testify. Judge Newman explained that if he chose not to testify, he had that right and his silence could not be used against him.

Closing arguments by defense and prosecution, followed by the judge’s explanation of the laws at play in the case and the rules concerning various kinds of evidence, is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. Tuesday.

Josephson’s case attracted national attention in 2019 and led to a discussion, publicized on networks, about the dangers of getting in rideshare cars and the necessity of making sure, before one enters such a vehicle, of verifying that the driver is, in fact, a registered driver. National crime and legal networks are livestreaming the trial.

Josephson, 21, a senior, had been out that night celebrating her coming graduation and that she had been won a scholarship to law school in Pennsylvania. Authorities have said she mistakenly got into a black Impala, thinking it was her Uber ride.