Pacemaker Data Sets Jailed Man Free

By Jof Enriquez,
Follow me on Twitter @jofenriq

A Canadian man accused of murdering his father was recently freed from jail after analysis of data from his father’s pacemaker supported his alibi.

Frank Cara, a resident of Durham, Ontario, was the primary suspect in the killing of 56-year old Claudio Cara on the morning of Feb. 15, 2012, according to a report from the Toronto Star. Claudio was stabbed five times in the chest with a knife.

The police initially focused their investigation on Frank, who was living with his father at the time. According to the Star report, Frank told police that he was visiting his grandmother that morning and could not have committed the crime. He said he left home early that morning and did not return until noon, when he discovered his father’s body and called 911.

Frank cooperated with the police, who also tapped his phone calls and text messages to support their case against him. Later, the detectives assigned on the case charged him with second-degree murder. He was put in jail and denied bail.

Ten months later, one of his lawyers discovered pacemaker data among a pile of documents and had the information confirmed by the device’s manufacturer, St. Jude Medical.

As explained in the Star report, “Some [pacemaker] models, such as Claudio’s, have an ‘auto-capture’ feature that allows the pacemaker to record when an electrical impulse delivered to the heart results in an effective heart contraction — or does not. When the heart no longer gets oxygen, no amount of shocking can cause it to beat again. The device records when this happens.”

Analysis of the data revealed that Claudio’s pacemaker recorded two such “loss of capture” events, a minute apart, at 10:35 and 10:36 am. Those events established the his time of death.

Frank’s lawyers then submitted the pacemaker analysis to police and the prosecution. Later, the prosecution told the court that, in light of new medical evidence, there was “no longer a reasonable chance of conviction.” The case against Frank was withdrawn in December 2013, and he was set free after 10 months in prison.

Cara recently filed a statement of claim wherein he is seeking $5 million in damages from Durham police for “wrongful arrest and detention, investigative ‘tunnel vision’ and negligence,” the Star report said. With regards to the pacemaker data, Cara alleges in the claim that police chose to “ignore and bury it.” The case is now before the courts.

According to the Star, there have been other cases in which pacemaker data proved critical in a murder investigation. It cites a case in Australia where pacemaker data helped convict a man in the 2000 killing of a 72-year-old. The Cara case, however, may be one of the first times that pacemaker analysis supported an alibi.

Image credit: "St Jude Medical pacemaker in hand" by Steven Fruitsmaak. Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.