Degree of Guilt

by Unknown

  ‘Indeed.’ Sharpe paused. ‘Which brings us to the scratches on Mr Ransom’s buttocks. Did you form a medical opinion as to those?’

  Shelton’s eyes flicked toward the judge, then looked away. As Masters stared down at her, Shelton’s eyes fixed on some middle distance. ‘Yes,’ she answered slowly. ‘I did. After a great deal of thought.’

  ‘And what,’ Sharpe prodded, ‘was that opinion?’

  Shelton turned to her. ‘That the scratches were inflicted after Mr Ransom’s death.’

  The courtroom murmur rose again and stayed suspended between crescendo and diminuendo, sustained by new voices and questions.

  The gavel cracked. ‘This is a courtroom,’ Masters snapped, ‘not an audience participation show. If some of you don’t get that, you can watch these proceedings on television, with everybody else.’ She turned to Sharpe frowning as if the prosecution were at fault. ‘Proceed.’

  Sharpe nodded. ‘On what,’ she asked Shelton, ‘do you base your opinion?’

  Shelton turned to Mary again; this time her gaze was reticent, almost an apology. ‘On the scratches themselves. Unlike the usual scratch, such as those on Ms Carelli, there were no burst capillaries or other signs of bleeding.’ Pausing, Shelton seemed to exhale. ‘From which I conclude that the blood in Mr Ransom’s buttocks had already departed. Because his heart had stopped beating.’

  The courtroom was silent again. For the first time, Caroline Masters gazed not at Elizabeth Shelton but at Mary Carelli. Whose eyes had shut.

  ‘Let us step back,’ Sharpe was saying, ‘and take another look at the medical evidence. A look which follows the evidence itself, not Mary Carelli’s story.’

  Paget rose. ‘Is there a question in there somewhere,’ he inquired, ‘or is Ms Sharpe about to announce her candidacy for higher office?’

  Masters gazed at him. ‘Is there an objection in there somewhere?’

  ‘Yes, Your Honor, to the form of the question. I can’t find it.’ Paget stepped forward. ‘I’ve let Ms Sharpe go on for over an hour, without objection. But when she begins to sound like Charles Laughton in Witness for the Prosecution, it’s time for someone to remind her that she is not the witness and that speeches are not facts.’

  ‘You’ve let Ms Sharpe go,’ Masters rejoined, ‘because her questions aren’t objectionable. But speeches are.’ She turned to Sharpe. ‘No preambles, Counsel.’

  ‘Very well, Your Honor.’ Sharpe faced Shelton again. ‘Based on the medical evidence, Ms Carelli shot Mr Ransom from several feet, is that correct?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So that, in your view, it is also possible that the blow to Ms Carelli’s face was not inflicted in a hand-to-hand struggle but in some other way.’

  ‘Objection,’ Paget snapped. ‘Calls for speculation.’

  ‘I agree,’ Judge Masters said. ‘But for what it is worth, I’ll take Dr Shelton’s speculation.’

  ‘Yes,’ Shelton said to her. ‘It’s possible. In my opinion, Ms Carelli’s bruise was caused by a slap to the face. But there is nothing to say how that slap was inflicted, or under what circumstance.’ She paused. ‘Or even, necessarily, that it was Mr Ransom who slapped her.’

  ‘And in your view, there is nothing to show that Mr Ransom was sexually aroused?’

  ‘Objection,’ Paget said again. ‘These questions have been asked and answered. Only this time they’re leading.’

  Masters nodded, ‘True enough, Mr Paget. But I’ll allow Ms Sharpe some leeway to summarize the evidence.’

  ‘No,’ Shelton said to Sharpe. ‘There’s no evidence of sexual arousal.’

  Sharpe paused. ‘Nor,’ she said, ‘do Mr Ransom’s fingernails suggest that it was he who scratched Ms Carelli.’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘Because the only fingernails with skin beneath them were Ms Carelli’s.’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘And it was under Ms Carelli’s nails, not Mr Ransom’s that you found traces of nylon fiber.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Consistent with Ms Carelli’s panty hose.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Sharpe leaned back. ‘Based on the medical evidence, how would you characterize Ms Carelli’s story?’

  Shelton gave her a considered look. ‘What I would say is that certain parts of Ms Carelli’s story – the gunshot distance in particular – are not consistent with the medical evidence. Everything else but the slap is unsupported.’

  Sharpe nodded. ‘Then let me pose you an alternative, based on the same medical evidence.’ She paused, voice rising in a rhythmic cadence. ‘Is it possible that Ms. Carelli murdered Mr Ransom and did not call 911 until roughly forty minutes later, during which time she pulled his pants down, scratched his buttocks, scraped her own thigh and neck and tore her own panty hose, all the while concocting a phony defense of rape?’

  ‘Objection!’ Paget stood, walking foward amid the shocked murmur of those watching. ‘The question partakes of the fantasy I described in Ms Sharpe’s opening statement. It’s hypothetical, calls for speculation and, because it misstates, distorts, and selectively ignores the evidence, lacks any reasonable foundation. Put another way, it’s moonshine.’

  Judge Masters smiled thinly. ‘And I suppose you don’t like it, either. Most of what you say is valid, Mr Paget – technically speaking. But we don’t have a jury to protect from prejudice here, and I’m capable of according Dr Shelton’s response whatever weight I think it’s worth.’ She paused. ‘And for the record, I do think it’s worth hearing.’

  Turning, Paget saw Mary’s face, suddenly fixed and white. Terri looked down; behind them, Carlo had a wounded, helpless expression. In the silent courtroom, Paget’s walk back to counsel’s table seemed to take too long.

  He sat, arranging his face into a look of bored resignation.

  ‘In my opinion,’ Shelton told Masters, ‘the medical evidence is more consistent with Ms Sharpe’s hypothetical description than it is with Ms Carelli’s version of events.’

  Sharpe nodded. With evident satisfaction, she said to Caroline Masters, ‘That’s all I have, Your Honor. At least for this witness.’

  ‘Very well.’ Judge Masters looked at Paget. ‘Does the defense have questions of this witness?’

  ‘Yes, Your Honor. Quite a few, actually.’

  The judge glanced at her watch. ‘We’ll take a lunch break, then. Back at one-thirty.’

  Without ceremony, Caroline Masters rose and walked off the bench.

  The courtroom erupted. Paget stood there a moment, lost in thought. When he turned, Carlo had come to Mary and stood gazing down at her, trying to smile as she tried to smile back. They looked so much alike that it hurt Paget to see.

  ‘Come on,’ he said to Teresa Peralta. ‘We’ve got work to do.’

  Paget rose from the defense table, walked forward a few feet, stopped to face Elizabeth Shelton. The spot that he had chosen was on the other side of Caroline Masters; as Shelton turned to face him, the judge watched them both. Until Paget spoke, there was no sound at all.

  Quietly, he asked, ‘You don’t know what happened between Mary Carelli and Mark Ransom, do you?’

  Shelton appraised him for a moment. ‘No,’ she answered. ‘I wasn’t there. I can only assess the medical evidence.’

  ‘So that you can’t testify to whether or not there was a struggle.’

  ‘No.’

  Paget paused. ‘Or, for that matter,’ he asked softly, ‘to whether Mr Ransom attempted to rape Ms Carelli.’

  ‘No.’ Shelton paused. ‘All that I can determine is whether the evidence tends to support Ms Carelli’s claim that an assault occurred.’

  Paget gave her a sideways glance. ‘Among that evidence is the swelling and bruise on Ms Carelli’s face, correct?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And at the time you examined her, you determined that this bruise had been forcibly inflicted.’

  Shelton paused; her intelligent face held a trace of puzzlement that
she did not try to conceal. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And to your knowledge, the prosecution does not claim that Ms Carelli arrived at Mark Ransom’s suite in that condition, does it?’

  ‘To my knowledge, no.’

  Paget nodded. ‘In your opinion, was the damage to Ms Carelli’s face inflicted by an open hand?’

  ‘So I understand.’

  ‘By someone using his right hand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And was Mr Ransom right-handed?’

  ‘So I understand.’

  Paget glanced up at Judge Masters. She was watching Shelton with an air of dispassionate interest; Paget imagined her remembering, perhaps without fondness, cases where Elizabeth Shelton had doomed Masters’s clients to a verdict of guilty. He turned back to Shelton.

  ‘Do you have a view,’ he asked, ‘as to whether the person who struck Ms Carelli was right-handed?’

  Shelton paused. It was a moment, Paget knew, where she could choose to hurt or help him: only Shelton knew whether or not she had an opinion, and unless she volunteered it, there was nothing Paget could do. His tension rose with each second of her silence.

  ‘Yes,’ she said quietly.

  ‘And what is that opinion?’

  Shelton seemed to draw a breath. ‘That it is much more probable than not that the blow to Ms Carelli was inflicted by a right-handed person.’

  Paget nodded. ‘And what are your reasons for that?’

  ‘There are two, really. As a matter of habit, a right-handed person would strike such a blow with his right hand. The fact that it also involves violence, which in turn suggests spontaneity, reinforces the likelihood that the assailant was acting on instinct.’ Shelton paused. ‘The instinctive reflex of a right-handed person is obvious.’

  Paget watched her face. ‘There was a second reason, you said.’

  Quickly, Shelton glanced at Sharpe. ‘A more marginal one,’ she answered. ‘The blow was struck with considerable force. A right-handed person will have more power in his, or her, right hand and arm.’

  Paget tilted his head. ‘Incidentally, is Mary Carelli right- or left-handed?’

  Shelton turned to Mary. In a cool, clear voice, she answered, ‘Left-handed, I believe.’

  Paget nodded. ‘In your opinion, could Mary Carelli have inflicted this kind of damage by slapping herself?’

  Shelton kept looking at Mary. ‘That’s conceivable,’ she finally said. ‘But no, it’s not very likely. It’s never been my hypothesis that Ms Carelli did this to herself.’

  On the bench, Caroline Masters looked from Shelton to Mary. ‘How many such blows,’ she asked, ‘would it take to inflict more serious damage?’

  Shelton turned, her face pensive. Paget sensed that, like Marnie Sharpe, Shelton was troubled by the thought that Mary was using the issue of rape to cover an act of murder but that, more than Sharpe, Shelton was also troubled by doubts she could not name. ‘It’s hard to say,’ she told Judge Masters. ‘With repeated blows, the possibilities range from a fractured cheekbone, broken teeth, nose, or jaw, and, of course, a concussion.’ Shelton looked back to Mary. ‘If the victim loses consciousness and falls, other injuries could result. Perhaps more serious.’

  ‘What effect on the victim’s consciousness and perceptions might such a blow cause?’

  The judge was engaged now, Paget thought; Caroline Masters had not wholly lost the defense lawyer’s habit of mind, and the question was a good one.

  ‘Again,’ Shelton answered slowly, ‘it’s hard to say.’

  ‘Would the possibilities include shock and an impairment of vision?’

  Shelton considered her. ‘Shock is a medical term, Your Honor, involving a cluster of symptoms I did not observe in Ms Carelli. But some degree of disorientation is clearly possible.’

  ‘So that the victim’s perception of events, or memory of them, might be less precise?’

  ‘That could happen, yes.’

  ‘Thank you, Dr Shelton.’ The judge turned back to Paget. ‘Excuse me, Mr Paget. The court was curious as to those points.’

  ‘As were we.’ Paget wondered whether the judge’s intervention was on Mary’s behalf, out of concern for a possible victim, or whether Masters was settling some intellectual score with Shelton from another case. He moved closer to the witness stand, stopping when he had found his next line of inquiry. ‘Following up on the court’s questions, you take issue with Ms Carelli’s memory that the gun fired two or three inches from Mr Ransom’s chest, correct?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you concede that it could have fired from two or three feet?’

  Shelton’s voice turned colder. ‘That would be the minimum distance, yes.’

  Paget nodded. ‘It is also true, is it not, that you cannot determine the angle from which the bullet was fired.’

  ‘Not in this case, no.’

  ‘Nor can you tell whether, at the moment of impact, Mr Ransom was recoiling.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or leaning back for any reason.’

  ‘No.’

  Paget paused. At the margin of his vision he saw Mary hunch forward, as if to help him. ‘So there is nothing in the medical evidence,’ he said, ‘which precludes the possibility that in their struggle, the gun became pointed at Mr Ransom and that he recoiled, shrinking away from it at the moment of discharge.’

  Shelton gave him a calm, level gaze. ‘I can’t preclude it,’ she answered, ‘but there are things which argue against that. Ms Carelli claims that Mr Ransom was wrestling her for the gun, and yet the only fingerprints we found on it were Ms Carelli’s.’ She paused, frowning. ‘Also, were he falling back with his hands in front of him, a shot from two or three feet would likely leave a residue of powder on his palms and fingers. We found none.’

  Paget hesitated. Shelton had just hurt him; lulled by her air of candor, he had forgotten how good she was. He struggled to find another question before he looked too rattled. ‘But you don’t know,’ he managed, ‘whether Mr Ransom was grasping the gun itself or Ms Carelli’s wrists.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nor do you know the position of his hands at the instant that the gun went off.’

  ‘No.’

  It was, Paget thought, the best he could do. ‘Let us move,’ he continued, ‘to other points of your direct testimony. You testified, did you not, that Ms Carelli seemed lucid at the time that you first spoke to her.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you weren’t present when Mr Ransom died.’

  ‘No. Of course not.’

  ‘Then you have no understanding as to whether, from the moment of death until she called 911, Ms Carelli was in shock. Or at least, as you put it, disoriented.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So that, in contrast to Ms Sharpe’s hypothetical scenario, in which Ms Carelli spent that time in a state of hyperactivity, creating evidence and mutilating corpses, it is entirely possible that Ms Carelli was seized by torpor and confusion.’

  ‘Objection’, Sharpe cut in. ‘Mischaracterizes the prior testimony.’

  Masters gave her a quizzical look. ‘Does it? If so, not by much. Overruled.’

  ‘That is possible, yes.’ Shelton’s voice became firm. ‘My answer to Ms Sharpe’s question was based on anomalies in the physical evidence. Anomalies which did not support Ms Carelli’s account of events between the time of Mr Ransom’s death and the call to 911.’

  ‘Speaking of which,’ Paget said, ‘have you ever heard the 911 tape of Ms Carelli’s call?’

  Slowly, Shelton shook her head. ‘No. I have not.’

  Paget turned to Masters. ‘Your Honor, the prosecution has already stipulated to the admissibility of that tape. I would ask leave of the court to play it for Dr Shelton.’

  ‘For what purpose?’ Sharpe interjected. ‘Everyone acknowledges that Ms Carelli placed the call and, moreover, that the call was not to Dr Shelton. I don’t know what you could possibly ask her about.’

  ‘It’s simple,’ Paget
responded. ‘Dr Shelton has testified to Ms Carelli’s lucidity at the time of her arrival, based partly on her tone of voice and the content of her speech. I’d like her to compare her impressions of Ms Carelli then to Ms Carelli’s earlier call to 911.’

  ‘I object,’ Sharpe answered. ‘We have not attempted to qualify Dr Shelton as a voice interpreter. Or, for that matter, as a mentalist. Her earlier testimony was based on a doctor’s physical impression of a woman sitting right in front of her.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Masters answered, ‘but you also attempted to use Dr Shelton’s impressions, at least by implication, to cover Ms Carelli’s mental state for a good half day. I’m going to allow the tape to be played.’

  When Paget turned, Terri already had the tape recorder on the table in front of him. She smiled with her eyes: this line of questioning had been her suggestion. Beside her, Mary stared at the tape machine with a somewhat haunted look; Paget could not tell if this was because she did not wish to relive the moment of her call or was thinking of another tape, which she hoped never to see.

  Terri switched on the tape recorder. As it spun, Paget suddenly saw Carlo, listening intently for the sound of his mother’s voice.

  The courtroom was silent.

  ‘San Francisco Emergency,’ the male voice called out.

  No one answered. The voice snapped again, ‘San Francisco Emergency.’

  There was yet more silence. Then, quite softly, Mary said, ‘There’s been an accident.’

  In the courtroom, her tone was thin, uncertain. It was as if she were repeating a dream she vaguely remembered, to someone she did not know.

  ‘What happened?’ the man asked.

  ‘There’s been an accident,’ she repeated. Her voice was weary; its tone said that her explanation was perfectly adequate and that he should listen more closely.

  Listening, Caroline Masters narrowed her eyes, as if at some subtle alteration in her perception. The expression on Shelton’s face was one of deep concentration.

  On the tape, the man became more patient. ‘What kind of accident?’ he asked.

  There was a long pause. In a tone of disbelief, Mary said, ‘A gun went off.’

  Paget turned to Mary. Staring down at the table, she slowly shook her head. To Paget, the gesture bespoke a tragic wonderment, the helpless desire to reach back in time, change what had happened.