Second Degree (Benjamin Davis Book Series 2)

by A. Turk

  The diagram and the camera and tripod were introduced into evidence. The parties to expedite the trial had pre-numbered the exhibits and stipulated to their admissibility with a few exceptions. This was done so the trial would move smoothly and quickly. Neither side wanted the case to get bogged down in front of the jury. Before the trial began, the judge and the lawyers knew where the evidentiary fights were. The judge ruled on some before the commencement of the trial and preserved them for appeal, while Judge Tanner reserved ruling on others, so he could decide the dispute in context.

  The EMT testified that Ms. Eden was completely naked. The naked pictures of Robyn Eden taken by Whatley were admitted and passed to the jury. Davis and Steine decided they needed to expose the jury to the themes of the case early in the trial. They’d be seeing a lot of strange sexual proof during this trial. The thinking was that they might as well let them know that from the start.

  The pictures showed Robyn Eden lying next to the bed, her large breasts and clean-shaven pubic area for everyone to see. It was interesting to watch each juror’s reaction to the photos. Gretchen Bieber, juror 11, who sang in her church choir, looked particularly uncomfortable. Some jurors passed the exhibits quickly while others, three men in the back row, lingered over them.

  Davis knew that the jury would have some reaction to this evidence because he did when he first saw the photos. He was only human. He’d been both aroused and saddened by them. These photos motivated Davis to take on the special prosecution. Robyn looked so vulnerable. From the photos, he couldn’t see her dark side, her addiction. Admittedly the senator pressured him into the case, but after he examined the evidence, he was glad she forced him into the prosecution. He was convinced that Charlie Garcia was responsible for the death of Robyn Eden. Now all he had to do was prove it.

  EMT Whatley described for the jury the treatment he provided Ms. Eden and the information provided by Dr. Garcia. Davis had to keep correcting him with Mr. Garcia.

  “Did you ask Mr. Garcia if she’d taken any drugs?”

  “My partner did. I was working on Ms. Eden, and he was questioning Dr. Garcia. I mean Mr. Garcia.”

  “Did you hear their conversation?”

  “Yes, I was only a few steps away. I could tell she was on something, but all Mr. Garcia would acknowledge was that she’d drunk a significant amount of vodka, and she’d smoked some joints. He also stated she was an addict, but he didn’t know what she’d taken.”

  “Did that make sense to you as a paramedic?”

  “No, she was definitely on something other than pot or alcohol.”

  “Did you go in any other room after entering the bedroom?”

  “I walked through the living room to the bedroom when we arrived and back out the same way to leave.”

  “You didn’t go into the master bathroom?”

  “No, my partner asked Mr. Garcia if he could, and Mr. Garcia told him to take care of his patient and get her to the hospital.”

  “So he refused access to the bathroom?”

  “I guess you could say that.”

  Whatley described in detail what happened in the apartment and then how they met two Hewes City police officers at the elevator.

  Davis sat down, and Pierce jumped up.

  Whatley admitted that he was a rookie and that he was busy tending to the patient and not listening carefully to his partner’s conversation with Mr. Garcia. He also admitted that Mr. Garcia was most concerned about getting Ms. Eden to the hospital, not wasting time searching the apartment. He agreed that by the time they were at the elevator, Mr. Garcia was anxious to get Ms. Eden to the hospital.

  Under the law, Pierce was allowed to ask leading questions, and she did that very effectively. She made some good points with the younger EMT, who was afraid to disagree. It was a tactic any good lawyer used with a malleable and scared witness. The key was not to go too far to the point that the jury understood what was happening. Pierce stopped just when she should have.

  The next witness called by the state was EMT Louis Mackey. Under Sammie’s questioning, she established that he was a twenty-four-year veteran of the Hewes City Fire Department and that he responded to the July 4th 911 call of Charles Garcia. Using the diagram, he located the patient and the camera. He was not shown the photo. The Davis team agreed to save it for later so as not to anesthetize the jury to its impact.

  Mackey was asked to describe the condition of the apartment.

  “It was a mess. Not to speak ill of the dead, Ms. Eden was no housekeeper. Styrofoam food containers were everywhere. I saw at least two empty vodka bottles, several empty soda bottles, and other garbage all around the bedroom. There was a video camera on a tripod and sex toys and pill bottles on each of the nightstands.”

  He was shown pictures of five different sex toys and confirmed that they were on the nightstand next to the bed. When those pictures were passed to the jury, several male jurors looked at Sammie with either embarrassment or lust in their eyes. This jury was paying close attention.

  No risk of anyone falling asleep, thought Davis. That wasn’t unheard of; it kinda depended on how boring the nature of the subject matter of the case.

  Mackey described Ms. Eden’s condition and the treatment EMT Whatley provided. When asked about his conversation with Mr. Garcia, he replied, “He told me they were having sex, and she went into cardiac arrest. He claimed to have performed CPR. He explained they’d just finished a sex marathon. I asked about what drugs she’d taken. He was vague. He reported that she drank at least two liters of vodka and smoked several joints. I pressed him and he confirmed she was a drug addict, but he didn’t know what her current drug of choice was. He walked over to the nightstand and handed me with a tissue three of the four bottles.”

  “What were the drugs he gave you?”

  “Xanax, Prozac, and hydrocodone.”

  “What was his response?”

  “He indicated that she did take Xanax and Prozac for her anxiety. That she took hydrocodone for headaches.”

  “What was the fourth bottle?”

  “He told me that the Viagra was his and he’d taken several doses over the course of the weekend.”

  Viagra was only recently available on the market, and the manufacturer had conducted an extensive advertising campaign. Davis wondered how many jurors pictured Charles Garcia with a four-hour erection.

  Sammie next questioned Mackey about his request to search the bathroom for medications and why that might be important. He explained that since Mr. Garcia was uncertain about what she’d taken, he put the three bottles in a plastic bag and got back to the patient.

  “He refused to allow me into the bathroom. He told me to tend to my patient and get her to the hospital. I was surprised by his refusal, but I wasn’t going to argue with him. He was her fiancé and her doctor.”

  “Who told you that Mr. Garcia was Ms. Eden’s fiancé?”

  “Mr. Garcia told me. I now know that wasn’t true.”

  Sammie let that lie just sit there. “If you knew what Ms. Eden had taken, how would that have affected your treatment of her at the scene?”

  Pierce objected as leading, and it was sustained.

  Mackey testified that knowing what she overdosed from was critical because depending on what it was, there might be a counteragent.

  Mackey confirmed that Mr. Garcia also refused the Hewes City police access to the apartment when they got to the elevator.

  “What happened when you got to the hospital?”

  “We transferred the patient to the emergency room staff at the door. I spoke briefly with Dr. Mann and provided him with the evidence bag containing three bottles that were on the nightstand. I did tell him that the patient’s doctor accompanied us in the ambulance and that he might want to ask him what she’d taken.”

  “Why did you tell him that?”

  “I guess I wasn’t satisfied with Mr. Garcia’s explanation of what happened and his vague answer concerning what she’d taken. I thought
maybe doctor-to-doctor, Mann might get more information than I did.”

  Pierce on cross went back to the fact that Mr. Garcia saved the patient’s life by doing CPR. Mackey was asked about the three pill bottles, and the witness confirmed he’d placed them in a plastic bag and given them to Dr. Mann.

  “That was the last time I saw them.”

  “You are aware that those pill bottles have been conveniently lost by the Hewes City police?”

  Mackey didn’t respond, and Pierce ended on that question. Davis thought Pierce was skittish with Mackey, unlike with Whatley. When Pierce ended, they broke for lunch.

  Before court, Tanner met with the lawyers in his chambers. He wanted to know whom the state planned to call in the afternoon.

  Davis informed him they would be Hewes City Police Officer Donald Dawson, who’d be a ten-minute witness, and then Dr. Mann, the emergency room physician.

  Davis was true to his word. Officer Dawson took a total of ten minutes. He testified he and another officer met the gurney at the elevator, and he requested access to the apartment, which Mr. Garcia refused.

  Asked what he did next, he testified, “I called the station and spoke with Detective Haber, who instructed me that the apartment was a potential crime scene. I was to deny anyone access, return to my patrol car in the apartment complex parking lot, and await further orders.”

  On cross Pierce asked, “So Detective Haber, at the time of your call-in, thought a crime had been committed?”

  “She told me to treat the apartment as a potential crime scene.”

  “And she thought that Mr. Garcia was a suspect.”

  Before Davis could object, Officer Dawson answered, “You’ll have to ask her.”

  Pierce sat down.

  Dr. Randolph Mann took the stand. He was a tall black man with a deep, smooth, polished voice. Under Steine’s questioning, it was established that he was born and grew up in North Carolina, attended the University of North Carolina, and went to Meharry Medical School in Nashville. He was board certified in emergency medicine.

  He described Ms. Eden’s condition upon arrival in the emergency room. “I could go into a long medical explanation, but she was barely alive. She already had a line in, and I administered epinephrine.

  “I’d spoken to EMT Mackey, who’d told me that her doctor was transported with the patient. I stepped out of the treatment room and met Dr. Garcia.”

  “That’s Mr. Garcia, not doctor.”

  “What do you mean? He represented himself as a doctor.”

  Steine stopped and looked at the judge for guidance. When he got none, he offered, “Well, he was a doctor at that time, but he no longer holds a medical license. Tell us about your conversation with Mr. Garcia.”

  “He asked me about her condition. I provided him with her vitals and told him I’d given her epinephrine. I asked him what drugs she’d taken. He told me that over the long weekend she drank at least two liters of vodka and smoked several joints. I asked him what other drugs she’d taken. He admitted that she was a drug addict and that she’d abused a number of drugs, but he wasn’t certain what she’d taken over the weekend. He claimed that she’d disappeared into the bathroom several times and must have used there.

  “I asked him about the pill bottles provided to me by EMT Mackey, and he begrudgingly admitted that she’d probably taken the Xanax, Prozac, and hydrocodone over the weekend and that he’d taken the Viagra. He volunteered that they’d engaged in a sex marathon, which at the time I thought was a very odd thing to say. It wasn’t in the context of our conversation. I took his remarks as almost bragging.”

  Steine paused, letting Mann’s testimony and observation linger.

  “Why do you say it was odd?”

  “I was fighting to save Ms. Eden’s life. Trying to get critical information about her drug use to determine what protocol to follow to save her life, and this clown is talking about a sex marathon!”

  Mann actually got mad. Steine paused for effect.

  Pierce objected to the use of “clown.” Davis smiled to himself. He was sure that several of the jurors agreed with the description. Steine knew exactly what he was doing. He was the master.

  “What happened next?”

  “I went back into the treatment room to try to save the patient. At that time I made two important discoveries. The first was that the patient was pregnant. The fetus never had a chance. It expired before the patient reached the hospital. It was a blessing. There was no way the fetus would have survived to birth because of the drug use.”

  Davis and Morty decided that in light of the fact that the state lost its motion to exclude pregnancy, they’d better bring it out at the earliest possible opportunity.

  “What was the second important discovery?”

  “The patient had a linear set of puncture wounds in the femoral or groin area.”

  “What’s the importance of that discovery?”

  “Before I’d spoken to Mr. Garcia, I’d checked the patient’s arms for track marks and found none. That is the most common place for IV drug use. Those small puncture marks at her groin were evidence of IV drug use through the femoral artery, which is a highly unusual site. I’d actually never seen it used by a drug addict before. In fact it’s a very dangerous site to inject.”

  “Why is that?”

  “A punctured or torn femoral artery can be fatal. It’s an area that is not as accessible or visible. Someone had to have injected her. I’d say it was someone with medical training.”

  “Is that speculation or with a reasonable degree of medical certainty?”

  “I’m not speculating. The linear nature of the injection sites indicates that whoever helped her was very precise, almost surgical.”

  “Like a trained surgeon?”

  Pierce objected, and Judge Tanner turned to Dr. Mann.

  “Dr. Mann, I’m going to let you answer the question, but don’t speculate. Any opinion you testify to must be with a reasonable degree of medical certainty.”

  “Your Honor, I can state with a reasonable degree of medical certainty that whoever injected Ms. Eden had medical training. I can’t testify that the person was a surgeon.”

  Davis thought that was a good place to stop. So did Steine because that’s just what he did.

  Pierce moved slowly. She didn’t like that last answer. It satisfied by circumstantial evidence a critical element of the state’s case.

  “You didn’t mention the injection sites near the femoral artery to Mr. Garcia, did you?”

  “I discovered them after our conversation.”

  “But it was you who notified Mr. Garcia that Ms. Eden had died?”

  “Yes.”

  “So after you’d seen the sites, you still didn’t mention them?”

  “What would have been the point? She was dead. I needed that information when she was alive.”

  “How many IV drug users have you treated?”

  “Not many. Most of the addicts I’ve dealt with were pill abusers. IV drug use isn’t that common in Hewes County, thank goodness.”

  “Do you understand how IV drug users inject oxycodone?”

  “Yes. They crush the pills into a powder, then mix it with a liquid, usually water, and inject the mixture by syringe.”

  “Do you understand why they elect to inject the drug rather than ingest it?”

  Davis thought that Pierce was being a little condescending with the doctor.

  “Drugs administered intravenously render the user a high more quickly and more intensely. If you ingest the pill, it must first go through digestion before the brunt of its effect can be achieved.”

  “Do you know what’s in oxycodone?”

  “The active ingredient is the same as hydrocodone, and there are some fillers. But I don’t know what they specifically are.”

  “So there are things you don’t know about the drugs and addiction?”

  Steine objected, and the judge sustained on the grounds that the question was argu
mentative.

  “So you’re not an expert in addiction, are you?”

  “No, but I’m a medical doctor, and I’m board certified in emergency medicine. Addiction is part of the study of medicine.”

  “There’s not a course in addiction?”

  “There are courses that touch upon it.”

  “But there are experts in addiction. You’re just not one of them.”

  “Yes.”

  Pierce defiantly asked, “Have you ever heard of Dr. Lawrence Porter?”

  “He’s a professor at Vanderbilt who is an addiction expert,” Mann responded.

  Davis objected, but he knew the damage had been done. Mann’s testimony bolstered Pierce’s own expert’s testimony. Davis admitted, Smart move, bitch.

  Steine looked at Davis, without using words, asking him if he should keep going. Davis thought about whether he wanted to end the day’s proof on that note. Unless Steine or he could think of a great comeback, they needed to quit while the quitting was good.

  Steine stood, whispered to Davis, “Here goes,” and slowly walked past the jury. As he did, he gazed at each juror, trying to gauge where they were in formulating their verdict.

  He smiled at Dr. Mann and asked, “Did you work last night?”

  “Yes, sir, twenty-four hours.”

  “When did you go to bed?”

  “I got home at 8:00 a.m. and spent two hours with my family unwinding. I slept three hours and then came here.”

  “Save any lives yesterday?”

  “I brought two people back. An eighty-year-old man and an eleven-year-old boy.”

  Pierce objected as to relevance and outside the cross. Tanner sustained the objection.

  Davis smiled. The old man was about to make a great point. The two men thought alike. Steine was a very good teacher.

  “You don’t deal with addiction every day?”

  “No.”

  “But you do work daily with persons who were in an emergency situation, like Robyn Eden on July 4th?”

  Mann looked straight at the jury and in a strong and convincing voice guaranteed, “That’s exactly what I do every day. I’m board certified in emergency medicine. Those are the types of people I treat and save every day.”