Defense Calls Expert in Death-by-Mercedes Case : Trial: A specialist testified that the car’s windshield was damaged by ‘a small, hard object’--possibly a cordless phone--not the victim’s head.

A defense expert testified Wednesday that a Costa Mesa man killed in a confrontation with his wife’s stepmother may have thrown a cordless telephone at her Mercedes-Benz, cracking the windshield.

Prosecutors contend that the stepmother, Betty Young Davies, 59, of Newport Beach, drove the Mercedes into James Ward on Dec. 19, 1989, a short distance from his home and then left the scene. He died three days later.

Davies is charged with vehicular manslaughter and hit-and-run driving.

Prosecutors contend it was the victim’s head, after the impact from the Mercedes threw him onto the hood, that cracked the windshield.

But defense witness Charles Thompson, who specializes in reconstructing traffic accidents, said he believed that the windshield was cracked by “a small, hard object.”

While Thompson did not say it was the cordless telephone that Ward had carried outside that cracked the windshield, he said he had viewed a videotape of a reconstructed scene which “fortified” his opinion that it could have been caused by a telephone.

“He (Ward) was not struck and knocked up on the windshield,” Thompson testified.

On cross-examination, Deputy Dist. Atty. Lew Rosenblum asked Thompson if he examined the telephone. Thompson said no, explaining that his job was primarily to determine whether a human head had caused the windshield crack.

“Weren’t you even curious?” Rosenblum asked him.

Thompson said examining the telephone was not part of his assignment.

Prosecutors contend that if anyone had thrown the telephone against the windshield, the phone would have broken. Prosecutors put on evidence that the telephone was not damaged.

Thompson is scheduled to continue his testimony today. Davies has not yet taken the witness stand and defense attorney Marshall Schulman has not said whether she will testify.

Wendy Ward, 31, has testified that Davies raced the motor and then ran into her husband, throwing him on the hood of the car. But the defense contends that Davies was leaving the scene because she was scared and was not aware that Ward had climbed on the car.

Prosecutors have said that Ward and her stepmother had been feuding for years. Before he died, James Ward apparently confronted Davies near his house and demanded to know why she had been harassing them.