“I told him about the dreams and about what happened that night. I kept getting …” She hesitated, searching for a word. “You know, when you see something from the past?”
“Flashbacks? Is that what you’re referring to?”
“Yes, flashbacks. I would see things in dreams and I would wake up scared and shaking. It got so bad I didn’t get any sleep.”
“Did these flashbacks just start all of a sudden?”
“They started coming a couple of years ago. At first, I would think I smelled smoke and I’d wake up, you know? And then I started seeing someone standing over my bed but nobody was there. Then it started happening all the time and I kept seeing the man over my bed but I didn’t know who it was ’cause I couldn’t see his face. I thought it had to be Harker because he was the one I always thought killed my mother, but I couldn’t see the face. Just a feeling. It got so bad I was afraid to go to bed at night.”
The objective of cross-examination is to undermine credibility. Tearing witnesses apart or dramatic courtroom recantations or confessions may happen on television or movies, but they weren’t the stuff of reality. Careful cross-examination is like pulling a thread on a sweater, tugging gently until the sweater slowly unravels. That was Jamison’s intent. He wanted Christine to focus on Dr. Vinson as the reason she remembered. He had a reason.
“Christine, how many times did you see Dr. Vinson before you remembered that the man standing over your bed was Richard Sample?”
Christine testified that at first, she just told Dr. Vinson what she remembered, and he began to separate it from what she’d been told. She explained that she had an intense feeling that something wasn’t right, something made her feel like she had done something that was wrong, and the feeling was getting worse almost day by day. The dreams were coming more and more frequently. If she smelled smoke it would cause such anxiety that she would get intense headaches. She had begun to forget things and had started writing down even basic things like which days when she was supposed to be at work. She was struggling at her job and impatient with customers who she had helped many times. Her boss had told her that the only reason she kept her job was because she had been there so long, and he was sympathetic. Then Dr. Vinson told her she had a form of what he called post-traumatic stress disorder that needed to be treated. That was when he gave her medications to help her, anti-anxiety drugs. The drugs helped but didn’t stop the dreams.
Jamison decided to interrupt Christine’s narrative with what he wanted to focus on. “Did Dr. Vinson ever suggest hypnosis to you?”
“Yes, and that’s when I began to remember what happened.”
In a low and conversational voice, Jamison asked, “And how did that happen?” Slowly pulling the thread of hypnosis, Jamison didn’t want Christine to feel that he was going to use it as a weapon.
She began to simply talk to Jamison, losing awareness of the others in the courtroom as she explained that Dr. Vinson said that hypnosis would allow her to relax and that it wouldn’t hurt. The first time they focused on the sounds of that night and she seemed to hear the voices in her head and her mother begging Rick to leave her alone. She remembered starting to cry afterward as the fog of memory cleared. Then in another session they focused on who the voice of the men belonged to, but she couldn’t put them together with anyone. All she knew was that she heard the voices of two different men, but one was loud, screaming at her mother. That was the voice she remembered.
“Did Dr. Vinson ever show you any photographs, pictures of men who might have been involved?”
“No, I never saw any pictures of anyone. But he did ask me to focus on the face of the man who stood over my bed and if there was anything about that face that I could tie to some other memory. That’s when I realized it was Tommy’s father. I put the face together with Tommy and that’s when I knew. That’s when the face became clear and I knew that it was Tommy’s daddy who stood over me that night. It was Rick Sample.”
Jamison moved slowly backward as he let her words hang in the stillness of the courtroom before he asked his next question. “And now, because of the hypnosis you believe that the defendant, Richard Harker, was not the man who killed your mother. Isn’t that true?”
“Yes, the hypnosis helped me to remember, but it’s the truth. I don’t remember much about what happened in court when I was a little girl. I know I testified that Mr. Harker killed my mother and all I can say is that I know now that wasn’t true. I don’t know why I did that. I wasn’t very old.”
Jamison took his seat at the counsel table, deciding whether to push further. He drew a random line on his legal pad as he considered his next move. “I have no further questions of Ms. Farrow at this time, Your Honor.” He stood up as Judge Wallace looked at him with a measure of expectancy. “Your Honor, I move to strike all of Ms. Farrow’s testimony as inherently unreliable and the product of improper suggestion.” He hardly heard the murmuring behind him in the spectator section.
Gifford was immediately on his feet, leaning over the counsel table, but before he could get much more out of his mouth than exasperated noise, Judge Wallace held up his hand. “Ms. Farrow, you may step down. I would like someone to escort Ms. Farrow back to the witness waiting room. We’ll take a short recess. I will see counsel in my chambers.” Wallace abruptly stood and walked out of the courtroom.
In his office, Wallace cradled his mug of coffee, obviously cold, sipping it before saying anything to the two lawyers seated in front of him. He pursed his lips and exhaled loudly through his nose before directing his first question to Jamison. “So, Matt, let’s hear it.”
Jamison started to stand until Wallace told him to stay seated. He slumped back in the heavily padded leather chair. “Your Honor, you know the rules better than I do. Testimony that is the product of hypnosis is inherently unreliable. There is a procedure that has to be followed if hypnotically refreshed recollection is admissible and it wasn’t used here. At least there’s been no foundation. What we have here is this poor woman now believing that she sent an innocent man to prison years ago. She testified close in time to her mother’s murder that Harker was the one. She told that to the detectives who talked to her. You and I both know that memories of children can get very confused with the passage of time. She was cross-examined at the time. Even if the court were to seize on this testimony as a basis of a new trial, the consequence would be the same; it wouldn’t be admissible. The US Supreme Court has made it clear that hypnosis creates inherent unreliability. So have the high courts of this state. There’s even a statute which says that the testimony of such a witness is not admissible unless very specific procedures are followed. And even then, this court has to conclude by clear and convincing evidence that the hypnosis did not impair the witness’s prehypnosis recollection. Christine Farrow was very clear that her ability to say that she was wrong about her mother’s murderer being Richard Harker is totally due to hypnosis. It should be stricken and disregarded. Defense counsel obviously knew about the hypnosis. He didn’t bring it up and he didn’t even try to lay a proper foundation.”
Wallace swiveled his chair to directly face Sam Gifford. “Sam, did you know about the hypnosis?”
“Yes.” Gifford’s voice was firm and unapologetic. “Your Honor, these cases are very difficult. I had nothing to do with Christine Farrow being hypnotized. When I got the call about her, this was already done. But you can’t ignore it. We’re talking about a man’s life here. I’m not going to apologize for putting her on the stand. I’m asking the court to deny the prosecution’s motion. His office bullied Christine as a child and they railroaded Richard Harker. Somebody has to stop this.”
Gifford’s voice had risen so much that Wallace’s bailiff knocked on the door and stuck his head in. Wallace waived him off. “Sam, there’s big problems with hypnotically refreshed testimony. You know that.” Wallace put his head down on his chest, accentuating the growing rolls of his neck. Jamison started to respond but Wallace lifted his mass
ive hand and stared him down. “All right, I will not grant Mr. Jamison’s motion at this time. I’m not saying what I may ultimately do. But I will allow you, Sam, to put Dr. Vinson on the stand so we can get a better picture of what happened and if there is some proper foundation.” He swung his chair back to face Jamison. “And, Matt, I will take your objection under submission but, gentlemen, and I damn well mean this, that young woman has been through enough. I am not going to be a party to both of you tearing at her like rampaging dogs. Do I make myself clear? She’s suffered enough. Now let’s get on with it.”
Before they left Wallace’s chambers, Jamison stood at the door, directly confronting Gifford. “Who called you and told you about Christine Farrow? You said you knew nothing about this? Who called you?”
“Dr. Arnold Vinson called me.”
Back in the courtroom, Gifford remained standing. “Your Honor, I will excuse Ms. Farrow at this time subject to recall. Based on the discussions in the court’s chambers I will need some time to get my next witness here.”
Chapter 33
By midafternoon, Vinson was available. Gifford looked over his left shoulder as the bailiff escorted Vinson in the courtroom. It was evident from his expression that he didn’t want to be there. As he raised his right hand to be sworn he interrupted the clerk. “Your Honor, I wish it to be known that I will be asserting the psychotherapist-patient privilege. I do not intend to testify to matters discussed between me and my patient.”
Wallace waved Vinson up to the witness stand. “One thing at a time, Dr. Vinson. We’ll cross that bridge when and if we come to it.” Wallace looked questioningly at Gifford. “Your witness.”
Gifford went through Vinson’s educational background, including his medical degree and board certification as a psychiatrist as well as his many articles and speeches on recovered memory. He avoided asking a direct question about his discussions with Christine Farrow. Given the center stage to elaborate on his studies, Vinson talked at length about the issue, initially explaining that it wasn’t a recovered memory as opposed to a repressed memory of a traumatic event involving something extremely stressful. His work, which he maintained had been corroborated by other studies, showed that the brain blocked the memory so that the person could function without the memory continuing to cause stress. He referred to this as dissociative amnesia. In his experience, people who had been exposed to severe trauma frequently began to experience memory flashes and other physical symptoms as the memory struggled to get out. The repression of the memory was the method by which the person maintained the ability to function.
Jamison listened intently, occasionally objecting and being overruled by Wallace as the judge focused on Vinson’s explanations. Finally, Gifford moved to Christine Farrow, asking how she came to his attention. Vinson explained that he taught at the graduate school of psychology, and one of his former students had met Christine and referred her to him based on his initial reaction that she might be a person who would fit into his area of study.
He asked whether Vinson had done any independent study into the events surrounding Lisa Farrow’s murder. Vinson explained that he had read the articles about the murder before talking to Christine and that was how he found out about the fact that there were several suspects, including both Harker and Sample. The newspaper articles about the trial had gone into great detail about Harker’s defense attorney, Alton Grady, cross-examining both Christine and Foster about Sample.
Then he was asked about his conversations with Christine Farrow. Vinson was very explicit that without her express approval or an order from the court he had no intention of discussing what she had told him based on the privilege of a psychotherapist to refuse to disclose communications between himself and a patient. Gifford argued that Christine had already disclosed what had happened and that was an exception to the privilege. It would mean the conversations were no longer confidential. Wallace shook his head. “Why don’t you just bring her in and we will see if she has any objection? If she does, then I will make a ruling on the privilege and if she doesn’t, then we don’t need to go there, do we?” Like most judges, Wallace wasn’t going to make a ruling unless he had to, having learned early on that it was better not to create an issue by ruling on it than seeing if the whole thing could be avoided.
Fifteen minutes later, Vinson informed the court that Christine Farrow had permitted him to discuss her sessions with him.
“Dr. Vinson,” asked Gifford, “when Christine Farrow came to see you, did she discuss with you why she was there?”
“Yes. She was experiencing what she described as nightmares with glimpses of a man standing over her bed the night her mother was murdered. She said she kept waking in a cold sweat and could see the image of a man, but he was unclear. She was experiencing increasing anxiety and the feeling that she had done something bad, as she described it. She told me she had no clear memory of the night her mother was murdered and that she wasn’t able to recall it, except that she had become afraid if she smelled smoke. She felt like she was, in her words, going crazy.”
“And have you seen this type of thing before?”
“Yes, I’ve done many studies of adults who experienced severe trauma as children, including sexual abuse and violent events. These people often become increasingly anxious as the memory forces its way to the surface. It is my conclusion that the memory never actually disappears, and the brain is in a constant battle to control the memory. Much depends on the individual. Some people are better able to handle the anxiety than others. In Christine’s case, it was simply tearing her apart.”
“And did you have an opinion as to why she felt this increasing anxiety? Was it only the memory of that night coming back?”
“No, Christine seemed to feel great guilt about that night and what happened, even though it didn’t appear that she remembered it in detail. Obviously, she was a small child. There was nothing she could have done to stop it. She clearly had nothing to do with the crime itself. But the intensity of her feelings of guilt made me suspect that those feelings related to something that deep in her mind she believed was wrong or had been done wrong related to the murder.”
“And did you attempt to find out what that was, that she thought was wrong?”
“Yes, I read a great deal about the crime itself. The horrific nature of it was such that it didn’t surprise me that it had a life-shattering effect on Christine, but what was very disturbing to me was that she had testified as a child. That can be a traumatic event for an adult, but for a child it had to be frightening. I concluded that her anxiety stemmed from that testimony.”
“And did you make any determination of the best way to deal with that?”
“I decided on hypnosis therapy to help Christine unlock her memories of what happened that night, so we could deal with them. Hypnosis is a recognized and accepted method to help people remember things that they saw but can’t clearly remember. It’s used all the time to help police sketch artists get more accurate descriptions or to recall license plate numbers. While it is very complicated, the mind records what the person sees but it doesn’t record it all the same way. Some things are trivial and register only as short-term memory if they register at all. Other things make a long-term memory. We’re not sure how it all works but we do know that if we can unlock the mind, sometimes people can retrieve repressed memories. Then we can treat the real problem.”
“And did you do hypnosis on Christine?”
“I did over several sessions. Ultimately it became clear that she had identified the wrong man as murdering her mother. She told me it was Tommy’s father standing over her bed, and it became immediately apparent that Tommy’s daddy was Richard Sample and not Richard Harker. She had identified the wrong man as her mother’s murderer. While she had not consciously remembered that it was Richard Sample, she had recognized him, and that conflict was still operating in her subconscious—that she had said it was one man but knew it was another. Why she knew it was Sample but ide
ntified Harker in court is not fully defined for me, but I suspect suggestibility.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that young children, and even older children, can be very susceptible to suggestion. They trust or defer to authority figures who intend to, or unintentionally, influence their memory of events. Ultimately the suggestion becomes the memory even though it isn’t what actually happened. There are many reports in the publications on this subject and experiments that bear it out.” Gifford slowly took Vinson through various studies and experiments that had demonstrated that a child could have something repeated to them or suggested to them to the extent that they would begin to repeat the suggestion until they simply accepted it as their own story, and would then relate it to other people when asked about the experience, even though it had never happened.
Satisfied that he had made his point, Gifford abruptly changed course. “Did you contact me when you concluded that the wrong man had been identified?”
“Yes.”
“And why me and not the district attorney?”
“Because I had heard you speak at a conference on eyewitness identification that I attended, and it seemed logical to ask you what should be done. So, I did.”
Turning to Jamison, Gifford said, “Your witness.”
Jamison sat silently for a moment, staring at Vinson with a thoughtful expression on his face before standing and carrying his legal pad to the well of the courtroom in front of the counsel table. He made a show of flipping through the pages, holding the tablet in a way that would show the witness pages of notes before abruptly flipping the tablet, causing the pages to flatten out again. He laid the tablet on the counsel table.
“Dr. Vinson, are you aware of how Mr. Gifford became aware of Christine Farrow’s statements that Richard Sample was her mother’s murder?”
Shades of Truth Page 22