By Reason of Insanity (David Brunelle Legal Thriller Series Book 3)

by Stephen Penner

  He paused, putting his hands together in front of him and taking on a thoughtful tone. “I think the reason I remember it so vividly isn’t because it was the first time I did something wrong. I’d done plenty wrong before, and I’ve done wrong since. I’m sure I’ll do something wrong in the future too.”

  He resisted the urge to glance at Robyn.

  “No, the reason I remember it is because it was the first time I really decided to do something wrong on purpose. I could have blamed it on my friends. They put me up to it, after all. And I’m sure I would have done that if I’d gotten caught. But since I didn’t get caught, I didn’t have to defend it. I didn’t have to make excuses or blame others. I was left with my own responsibility. And not having had to deny it externally, I had no choice but to accept it internally.”

  Another pause and another sip of water. He set the cup on his table and stepped back in front of the jury to begin the next section of his opening.

  “One way to look at life and growing up, is how we make decisions, and how we accept the consequences of our decisions. When we’re infants, we don’t get to make the decisions. We can cry when we’re hungry, but the parents decide when we get fed, when our diapers get changed, when we go down for a nap. When we’re children, we get to give more input, but the decision is still our parents’. We don’t declare what we’re going to do, we ask if we can. Can I watch TV? Can I have another cookie? Can I stay up late tonight? But each time, it’s the parent who says yes or no. The fact that the child even asks the question shows they don’t even think about having the decision-making power.

  “Then we’re teenagers, and we rebel. Or not. Some of us did, some of us didn’t. Some of us did it hugely, dramatically. Some of us did it quietly, secretly. But this is when we think we’re making the decisions, but we’re not quite there yet. We may be making the decisions, but we aren’t feeling the full brunt of the consequences. Our parents are still there to bail us out. Our teachers and guidance counselors forgive us and try to get us to see things straight before it’s too late.

  “And that’s when you know you’re really an adult. When it’s too late. When not only do you get to make decisions, but you get to live with them. When your decisions hurt other people and it’s not all right and it won’t be okay again. When you own your actions and all of the consequences that go with them. You don’t ask to be fed. You don’t ask to watch TV. You don’t ask for the keys to the car. You make a decision. And if you screw it up, then you live with the consequences.”

  Brunelle lowered his gaze and nodded. “I think that’s why I still remember stealing that candy bar. I didn’t get any consequences from that. No one knew about it except for a few dumb kids who weren’t my friends the next year anyway. But deep inside, I knew I had made a decision to do something wrong. My friends didn’t make the decision. The devil didn’t make me do it. I did it. I thought about it. I planned it. I weighed the pros and cons. Then I did it. Me. And whether there were real life consequences or not, I was responsible for that decision. I still am.”

  He looked up again.

  “In the early hours of August twenty-eighth, Keesha Sawyer got up out of her bed in the basement of her mother’s house. She went to the garage and got the hatchet they kept there with the other yard tools. She went upstairs to her mother’s bedroom and went inside. She stood over her mother and looked down at her sleeping. Then she raised her arm and drove the blade of the hatchet into her mother’s face.”

  Some of the jurors flinched. Good.

  “She pulled the hatchet out of her mother’s face and swung another blow. Again and again. Every time she did, blood and pieces of flesh flew off the blade and stuck to the bedroom walls. You’re going to hear testimony from the medical examiner who performed the autopsy in this case. She’s done literally thousands of autopsies, and hundreds involved what doctors call ‘sharp force trauma.’ Her job is to look at the injuries on a body and tell you exactly what happened. How many injuries, in what order, and what they did to kill the person. She’s going to tell you that she doesn’t know how many times Keesha hit her mother’s face with that axe-blade, because there wasn’t enough of her face left to know.”

  The jurors looked repulsed. Perfect. Time to wrap it up.

  “Ladies and gentleman, I submit to you that this is both an easy case and a hard case. It’s an easy case because there will be no real disagreement about what happened. This isn’t a whodunit. Keesha done it. It’s not an episode of C.S.I. There aren’t exotic scientific tests that helped crack the case. The facts aren’t in dispute. When this trial is over, you will know exactly what happened. That’s what will make it easy.

  “But it’s a hard case too because even though you will know that Keesha Sawyer murdered her mother, you’re not going to want to convict her. You see, Keesha Sawyer is mentally ill. She hears voices and she has paranoid delusions. She thought her mother was turning her into a zombie, and all the kids in the neighborhood too. She thought she had to kill her mother.”

  Brunelle saw the wave of indecision ripple through the jury box. That was the defense, and it was a good one. He needed to kill it in the crib, so to speak.

  “She was wrong.”

  It was as simple as that.

  “Decisions have consequences. Even when we’re wrong.” He paused and raised a finger for emphasis. “Especially when we’re wrong. Keesha Sawyer may be mentally ill, but she’s capable of making decisions. She’s responsible for those decisions. She killed her mother. She was wrong to do so. And at the end of this trial I’m going to stand up and ask you to find her guilty of Murder in the First Degree. Thank you.”

  Brunelle sat down at his table and looked up at the judge. He wanted to look at the jurors, but he knew better. He could ask Duncan later how they received it. He also wanted to look at Robyn, but he really knew better. He could ask her later what she thought of it. Most of all, he also wanted to look at Edwards, to see if he’d shaken her at all. But it would look smarmy and challenging. He’d know in a moment.

  “Now, ladies and gentlemen,” Perry said, “please give your attention to Ms. Edwards who will deliver opening statement on behalf of the defendant.”

  Chapter 30

  Edwards stood up slowly and thanked the judge. Then she stepped into the attorney well—the area between the counsel tables, the witness stand, the jury box, and the bench—and faced the jury. One more moment of silence to make sure everyone was looking at her.

  Except Brunelle. He was taking notes. He’d need to know what she promised so he could remind the jurors what she failed to deliver. And if he stopped and just listened, it would look like he was as enraptured by her advocacy as she hoped the jurors would be. Confident disinterest was the proper affect, just in case any of the jurors looked his way.

  “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” she began. “Thank you for your service and thank you for your attention. This is a case about how the system is broken. And how it failed not just my client, but my client’s mother.”

  Great, Brunelle thought. Did Fargas write this?

  In any event, he was happy to go down that road. It could be the system’s fault too for letting Keesha go, but that didn’t wash the blood—and bits of flesh—from her hands.

  “Mr. Brunelle just told you a moving story about a youthful transgression of his, and I’ll return to that in a bit, but I’d like to start with the most important thing he said. You can tell it was important, because he barely mentioned it. He just stuck it in toward the end, kind of sandwiched between his walk down memory lane and the actual point he was trying to make. And that most important thing is this: Keesha Sawyer is mentally ill.

  “There will be no disagreement about that in this trial. You will hear from not one, but two different psychologists who will tell you that she suffers from paranoid schizophrenia. Now, contrary to what you see on TV, schizophrenia does not mean multiple personalities. That’s a different disorder. Schizophrenia is when you h
ear voices in your head, and you see things that aren’t there, and you have paranoid delusions that people are out to get you. It’s organic, it’s debilitating, it’s incurable. And it’s a living hell.

  “Keesha’s symptom started when she was a teenager. Voices and thoughts she couldn’t control, taking over her mind. Her parents didn’t have a lot of resources, so she didn’t get the help she needed. She self-medicated with alcohol and street drugs, but that only made things worse. Only made the symptoms accelerate. Only made her lose her mind that much faster.

  “She started getting into trouble with the law. Small things at first. Shoplifting and scuffles. Disorderly conduct. Shouting at the voices when she was waiting for a bus. Prostituting herself to get money for the drugs that made the voices quieter for a few hours. And then one day, tired and hungry, she stole some grapes from a grocery store. That’s theft. When the security guard grabbed her, she punched him. And that shoplift became a robbery. She was arrested and charged with her first felony. But instead of being prosecuted, she was committed to Western State Hospital so she could be treated for her schizophrenia.

  “This time, the drugs helped. They weren’t street drugs. They were prescription pharmaceuticals, dosed and administered by trained mental health professionals. She got better. Not perfect. Not like you and me. But better. And they sent her home.”

  Edwards paused. She stepped back to her table, but instead of picking up a cup of water like Brunelle had, she picked up a red and orange neck scarf. It didn’t match her dark suit and white blouse at all. She draped it loosely over her neck and continued her presentation.

  “Mr. Brunelle told you that Keesha killed her mother. That’s correct. She did. There will be no argument from us about that. She absolutely did it, and she did it pretty much the way Mr. Brunelle described. But ladies and gentleman, that’s not the whole story.

  “Mr. Brunelle said she did it and that’s that, and she’s guilty of murder and that’s that. But, ladies and gentlemen, that is not that, because you will need to find that Keesha intended to do what she did, and you will hear from Dr. Peter Adrianos, the director of Cascade Mental Hospital, who will tell you that Keesha couldn’t have formed that intent because of her schizophrenia.”

  Brunelle frowned. Edwards had steered directly from statement into argument. Opening statements were supposed to orient the jury about what they were going to hear. Arguing any specific legal conclusions from that evidence was argumentative and objectionable. But Brunelle didn’t object much, especially during openings. The judge was unlikely to sustain it, Edwards was unlikely to change her script, and the jury was guaranteed to be annoyed. So he kept taking notes and tried not to look concerned.

  “Mental illness can be a difficult thing to truly understand. You and I know there are no such things as witches and zombies, but for people like Keesha, they don’t know that. In fact, they might believe it just as strongly as you and I believe the sky is blue. So rather than tell you what Keesha thought and look at this case from the outside, I’d like to try something. I’d like us all to enter her world, and look at this case from the inside.”

  She grabbed the ends of the scarf. “When I tie this around my neck, we will enter Keesha’s world. Whatever she believes will be the truth, and we’ll try to understand the case through her eyes.”

  Brunelle had to look up for this. It was one thing to casually take notes. It was another to completely ignore what he had to admit was a pretty good parlor trick. He’d have to remember this one and figure out if he could use it himself somewhere down the road.

  Edwards tied the scarf, then looked up at the jury, her eyes a little too wide, her shoulders set off just a little strangely.

  “Keesha Sawyer was released from Western State Hospital to the custody of her mother, the woman who raised her from a babe. The woman who took care of her as a young child and tried to tell her right from wrong. But Keesha remembered how, when she was sixteen, the angels came and warned her about her mother. They spoke directly into her mind so her mother couldn’t hear. They told her the truth. They were angels. They wouldn’t lie. Her mother was a witch, and she couldn’t be trusted. No one could be trusted. Except the angels. Thank God for the angels.”

  Brunelle forced himself to look down again. Edwards was doing a damn good job of creeping everyone out. He’d gotten sucked in too.

  “The angels were quieter at the hospital. They were still there. They were always there. They were her friends. Her only friends. The only ones who would never leave her. Sometimes they were mean. Sometimes they yelled. But they never abandoned her. And they never lied. Never.

  “When she got home, the voices got louder. The doctors said that might happen if she didn’t take her pills every day, but it was hard to remember. And the voices needed to get louder. Because she was home again. With her mother. The witch. She loved her mother. She was supposed to. But the angels didn’t love her mother. And the angels were always right. Always.

  “Then it started happening. She didn’t know about it at first because she was asleep when it happened, but the angels told her. They told her that every night when she went to sleep, her mother would kill her and turn her into a zombie. She didn’t want to be a zombie.”

  Edwards tugged at her scarf. “Remember: zombies are real. Real. And so are witches and angels. These are all as real as birds in the sky or worms in the ground.”

  Nice touch, Brunelle thought. Worms in the ground. Nice and icky. Like this story.

  “So when the angels told Keesha that her witch mother was killing her in her sleep and turning her into a zombie, Keesha didn’t know what to do. The angels couldn’t stop it. All they could do was talk. Talk and talk and yell and talk. It was up to her. But what could she do? It was her mother. She was a witch. And she was her mother. So just like she always did, she suffered and hoped and cried and wished it would all just stop. But she didn’t do anything.

  “Until the angels told her about the children.”

  Edwards paused. Brunelle looked up. The whole damn jury was on the edge of their seats. Fuck. He looked down again.

  “Her witch mother had started killing the neighborhood children too. She was turning them into zombies too. She couldn’t let that happen. The angels told her and they wanted her to do something. She never would have done it to save herself. But she had to save the children. Because otherwise,” again Edwards tugged on her scarf, “those innocent children would be murdered by a witch and turned into zombies. For real.”

  Edwards stopped again. She slowly undid the scarf and balled it into her fist. She looked straight at the jury. “And then Keesha Sawyer did exactly what Mr. Brunelle said she did. Only now, you know why.”

  Edwards turned and dropped the scarf on her table, right in front of Keesha, a brilliant maneuver to make the jurors look at her very real client instead of ignoring her like the formality of a criminal trial tends to suggest everyone do. She stepped back in front of the jury and delivered the coup de grace.

  “Mr. Brunelle told you when he was nine, he stole a candy bar, but never got caught. But what he left out was that if he had been caught, he wouldn’t have been prosecuted. He was too young. He would have been sent home to be grounded. And even if he had been charged, it would have been in juvenile court, not adult court. The juvenile system is separate because it’s about education and rehabilitation. He would have taken a couple of classes and written a letter of apology. He would have learned his lesson and it would have been over and that would have been the right way to handle it.

  “You treat kids differently because they don’t understand like adults do. You treat the mentally ill differently for the very same reason.

  “Keesha Sawyer is not guilty of murder.

  “Thank you.”

  Edwards sat down.

  Touché, thought Brunelle. The battle was joined.

  Chapter 31

  “The State may call its first witness,” Perry announced.

  The ch
oice of first witness was always an interesting one. There were different theories about how best to lead off a homicide case. Some prosecutors always began with a member of the victim’s family, to remind the jury that a real live person was dead. Some prosecutors always started off with a neutral witness—a bystander or passerby—someone who could just tell the jury what happened without being cross examined about their biases. Some prosecutors always started with the first cop on scene, to give the case a ‘whodunit’ feel, and get the jury invested in the investigation.

  Brunelle had learned over the years that every case was different and to listen to the case. It would tell him who to call first. For the Sawyer case, the decision was easy. Often, the main parts of a case had to be broken up over several witnesses, which could be confusing to a jury. But in this case, there was one person who responded to the scene, observed the body, and heard the confession.

  “The State calls Detective Lawrence Chen.”

  The judge swore Chen in and Brunelle quickly laid down the introductory stuff. Larry Chen. Seattle P.D. Detective. Nearly thirty years on the force. Fifteen as a detective. Ten in major crimes.

  “Were you on duty in the early hours of August twenty-eighth?”

  “I was on call,” Chen corrected, turning to deliver his answer to the jury, not Brunelle, like they’d taught him three decades earlier at the academy. “I wasn’t on the clock. I was home sleeping. But if I was needed, I’d get a call.”

  “Did you get a call?” Brunelle stood almost behind the jurors, at the very end of the jury box, to make sure even the last juror could hear the witness, just like they’d taught him two decades earlier in law school.

  “I sure did,” Chen answered.

  “What kind of call?” Brunelle didn’t have a script of questions. Just a legal pad he left on his counsel table with a bullet-point list of the information he needed to elicit. He could form a question on his feet; it was the answer that mattered. So when he was done, he’d double check his list, make sure he hadn’t missed anything, then sit down with a confident, ‘No further questions.’