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

by Stephen Penner

  Kat faced forward again at the bar they were seated at. It was one of the popular after work spots in downtown Seattle. The restaurant section was full by the time they got there, so it was drinks and appetizers at the bar.

  “Well, at least I did great.” She took a sip of her wine. “That’s what matters.”

  Brunelle surrendered a smile. “Of course. I’ll be sure to lean on that memory when the jury acquits.”

  “You don’t really think they’ll acquit, do you?” Kat turned back to him. “She’s guilty.”

  Brunelle shrugged and took another sip of his drink. “I don’t know. The problem is all these different legal standards for different mental health issues. Competency, diminished capacity, insanity. Each one has its own test, and they’re all squishy.”

  “Yes, well,” Kat cleared her throat. “I believe I’ve already mentioned I don’t like squishy.”

  Brunelle nodded and smiled a bit. He wasn’t really in the mood for it just then. “She might be insane, but I know she didn’t have diminished capacity. I’m just not sure the jury will understand that.”

  “Well, that’s your job to explain it, isn’t it?”

  Brunelle narrowed her eyes at his girlfriend. “Thanks. I know that.”

  She put a hand on his shoulder. “Relax, David. It’s a hard case. You’re doing your best. That’s all that matters. What’s the worse that can happen if you lose?”

  Brunelle took a drink and set down his glass a little too hard. “She gets out and kills or hurts somebody else. Her family sues the prosecutor’s office. To save face, they fire me. I end up homeless. Or worse, working for somebody like Fargas.”

  Kat grinned. “You forgot the locusts.”

  Brunelle nodded. “Right. And locusts. Thanks.”

  Kat looked him in the eye, holding his gaze for several seconds as an appraising smile danced across her lips. Then she looked to the bartender and raised her hand. “Check, please!”

  “What are you doing?” Brunelle asked. “We haven’t even ordered our food yet.”

  “We’re leaving,” Kat answered.

  “Leaving? To where?”

  “Your place.”

  Brunelle cocked his head at Kat. “Why?”

  She leaned forward and kissed him on the lips. A long, hard kiss. “You need some stress relief,” she purred.

  Brunelle started to protest weakly. “You don’t have to…”

  Kat put some money on the bar, then stood up and took Brunelle’s hand. “Of course I do.” She pulled him off his barstool. “If I don’t take care of you, someone else will.”

  Chapter 36

  Adrianos was a complete asshole.

  Brunelle kind of already knew that, but in case he’d had any doubts, all he had to do was listen to Edwards’ direct exam. And, he insisted to himself, he wasn’t just irritated that Robyn had skipped his entire case-in-chief but had suddenly popped up to watch Dr. Asshole’s testimony.

  What is it between those two? he wondered. Then he decided he didn’t want to know. Not the details anyway. He decided to think about Kat and the previous night. After a few moments of pleasant memories, he realized he’d stopped listening to Adrianos.

  Focus, Brunelle. Focus.

  He looked up again at the psychologist. He was addressing the jury, turning toward them like Thompson never had.

  “Mental illness is not very well understood,” he was saying earnestly. “In fact, I would dare say only half of all psychologists truly understand it.” He glanced playfully at Brunelle. “And none of the lawyers.”

  A couple of jurors laughed.

  Yup, complete asshole.

  “Why, doctor,” Edwards feigned offense, “are you suggesting lawyers don’t know everything?”

  “What I would say,” Adrianos turned back to the jurors, “is this. Lawyers know the law. The law attempts to address every aspect of our lives. Therefore, lawyers believe they know everything. In reality, they know how the law thinks the real world works, but often, they, and the law, are wrong.”

  Edwards nodded. “That’s interesting,” she said, as if she didn’t know he was going to say exactly that. “Could you expound a little?”

  “I’d be glad to.”

  Of course you would, Brunelle sneered. More opportunity to talk.

  “We pass laws to address certain problems in our society,” Adrianos posited. “And also to establish certain procedures. Often, the laws do little more than formalize what we already do as a society. For example, I suspect we began driving on the right side of the road before there was a law that required it. To the extent that laws reflect and reinforce our already existing customs, they hold a great deal of force.

  “But there are other laws which lose their force as society moves away from the cultural norms which gave rise to them in the first place. Unfortunately, American history is full of such examples. Laws enforcing segregation, banning interracial marriage, excluding women from the vote. Indeed, many states still have laws which ban all but the most mundane sex acts, even between husband and wife. These laws may have reflected societal norms at the time they were passed, but society has evolved. All too often, however, the laws struggle to keep up.”

  “Are there examples of such outdated laws,” Edwards asked, sounding as canned as a sardine, “in the mental health field as well?”

  “Yes,” Adrianos assured the jury. “There are.”

  “Could you give us an example?”

  Adrianos nodded. “I’ll give you an example which pertains directly to this case. In this case, the government has accused Ms. Sawyer of murder. Now, to be guilty of murder, one must intend to kill the victim, and I will address in a moment how Ms. Sawyer does not possess the mental capacity to form such an intent. However, it will be useful to keep in mind that this idea of ‘intent to kill’ has also evolved over the years. Sometimes, the law doesn’t change, but our interpretation of it does. Changes in the law require majority votes in the legislature and the signature of the governor. But changes in interpretation require only the reasoned application of evolved social mores to an existing legal standard.”

  Edwards interrupted. “Are you suggesting that judges or juries should ignore the law?”

  “Oh, no,” Adrianos assured.

  Oh, no. Of course not, Brunelle thought sarcastically.

  “What I’m suggesting,” the psychologist said, “is that our legal standards are made up of words, and the meaning of those words will necessarily change over time.”

  He looked again to the jurors. “Let me give you an example. It was once the case that if a man came home to find his wife in bed with another man, he could very intentionally kill his wife but only face a conviction for manslaughter. There was a court-created doctrine of ‘hot blood’ that essentially lowered the severity of the crime from murder to manslaughter based on a widely held societal belief that a man in that situation would be both understandably distraught and justifiably homicidal. There was never any statute which authorized the murder of a cheating spouse, but that was how the law was applied for over a century.

  “In the last couple of decades however, the doctrine of ‘hot blood’ manslaughter has quietly gone the way of segregation and exclusively male suffrage. Not because the law of murder has changed in any way; it hasn’t. But because we, as a society, have changed our view of such killings. Feminism and the rise of women’s rights have had a direct effect on the way the murder statute has been interpreted. It used to be, the men in the town who were the policemen and lawyers and judges and jurors, would say to the killer, ‘Joe, I understand why you did that.’ Now, the men and women who make up those professions say to the killer, ‘Joe, it doesn’t matter. You can’t do that.’ And that change, I would say, is a good thing.”

  Brunelle had to hand it to Edwards and Adrianos. Not only were they doing a good job educating the jury, they were also setting him up to be a knuckle-dragging, racist, misogynist for daring to want to hold Keesha Sawyer responsible
for her actions.

  “So how does all this apply to whether Ms. Sawyer intended to murder her mother?” Edwards asked.

  Adrianos smiled broadly. He was such an ass. “It applies because our understanding of the human mind has progressed light-years since the original legal standards for mentally ill defendants were established. Terms like ‘competency’ and ‘insanity’ and ‘diminished capacity’ are meaningless. No psychologist or psychiatrist would ever use such phrases. They’re like leeching and bleeding to a modern physician. The only people still categorizing the mentally ill that way are lawyers, applying standards they don’t understand, from an era they’d never want to go back to. Don’t ask a lawyer if a mentally ill person is responsible for her actions. Ask a psychologist.” He pointed at his chest. “Ask this psychologist.”

  And I’m the narcissist? Brunelle shook his head slightly.

  “Okay,” Edwards practically sang. “I’ll ask you. Did Keesha Sawyer possess the requisite intent to commit the crime of murder?”

  Adrianos listened intently, then turned to the jury. “No. She did not. Using the outdated legal terms you are saddled with, she suffered from diminished capacity.”

  “Can you explain how it can possibly be true that she didn’t intend to kill her mother,” Edwards asked, “when she struck her mother over a dozen times in the face with the blade of a hatchet?”

  Adrianos nodded, his expression one of a soldier accepting his charge. “That’s a very fair question. One any untrained mind might reasonably ask. But to a trained psychologist, the answer is simple. Keesha’s subjective reality is also objectively real, at least to her. She didn’t believe she would kill her mother because she didn’t believe her mother could be killed. Accordingly, her intent could not have been to kill, for a person cannot intend to commit an act which she believes is impossible.

  “In addition, to whatever extent she may have intended some form of harm to her mother, it was, for her, self defense. That is, she wasn’t doing anything more than what her mother was doing to her, and accordingly, she was justified to do so.”

  “So she had no intent to kill?” Edwards parroted. “And it was self defense?”

  “Precisely.”

  A lesser defense attorney would have stopped there, but unfortunately for Brunelle, Edwards didn’t stop. She addressed the real concern the jury would really have back in the jury room once they began deliberations. “So what do we do with her? Do we just let her back out on the street so she can hurt someone else?”

  “Let me answer your question with a question,” Adrianos said. “Do we send an innocent person to prison just because we don’t have anywhere else to put her?”

  “No,” Edwards nodded somberly. “No we don’t.”

  She looked up at the judge. “No further questions.”

  Brunelle suppressed the urge to applaud. He may have found it rehearsed and trite, but Edwards had a point and there were likely several jurors who agreed with her. Or were willing to, contingent on how his cross exam went. This was the whole case. Brunelle knew it. He took a deep breath and stood up.

  “Cross examination, Mr. Brunelle?” Perry asked.

  “Yes, Your Honor,” he replied. “Thank you.”

  He stepped forward and took a position one step too close to Adrianos. It acknowledged their adversarial position without being totally confrontational. He hoped it made Adrianos uncomfortable. He thought it probably didn’t.

  “So we apply the law if it leads to an acquittal,” he started, “but we ignore it if it leads to a conviction, is that right?”

  “Well twisted, counselor,” Adrianos sneered. “But we both know that’s not really what I said.”

  “Oh, I think you did.” Brunelle replied. “Let’s go through it. If the law says she’s not guilty, we shouldn’t convict her just to put her someplace safe. But the only reason the law allegedly says she’s not guilty, is because you’ve interpreted a legal standard in a way that makes her not guilty, ignoring both the original intent and the plain language of that standard. That is, if the law says she is guilty, well then, the law is outdated and should be ignored.”

  “I never said we should ignore the law, counselor,” Adrianos insisted. “I said we have to interpret legal standards like ‘diminished capacity’ using modern psychology, not the voodoo that passed for psychology back when these standards were first adopted by the courts.”

  “So under your interpretation,” Brunelle pressed, “Keesha Sawyer suffered from diminished capacity when she killed her mother?”

  “Under any interpretation that applies modern psychology,” Adrianos refused to relent, “she had what you lawyers call diminished capacity.”

  Brunelle tapped the bar. He wasn’t really getting anywhere. “You’re very confident in your opinion.”

  Adrianos demurred. “I’ve had more direct interaction with Ms. Sawyer than any other doctor. Three in-person interviews, plus a full review of her mental health history, which, I can assure you, is quite extensive.”

  Brunelle frowned. Again, if only Perry hadn’t cancelled Thompson’s evaluation. If only Keesha hadn’t used Robyn as a pen-holder.

  “Well, yes, I suppose that’s true. Although, it’s routine for other doctors to review…”

  Wait.

  “Did you say three in-person examinations?”

  “Yes,” Adrianos confirmed. “Three.”

  Brunelle spun and looked at Edwards.

  She whispered, “Fuck” and cinched her eyes shut. A split-second later she stood up and addressed the judge. “Your Honor, may we excuse the jury? I have a matter I need to raise outside their presence.”

  Perry glared down at her. There were few things a judge disliked more than having to shuttle an entire jury in and out of the courtroom during testimony. His expression suggested, ‘Is this really necessary?’ but his sigh showed that he knew it was. And why.

  “Bailiff, escort our jury to the jury room, please. This may be an extended delay.”

  As the jurors rose and the bailiff carried out his orders, Brunelle stepped over to Edwards’ table. “Three?” he whispered.

  “Shit, I’m sorry, Dave,” Edwards whispered back. “I forgot to tell you. I had him meet with her again after Thompson’s testimony. I meant to give you his report. I just forgot.”

  Brunelle sighed. It was irritating, but he knew it was true. Edwards didn’t play dirty pool. They were all busy and in full-on trial mode. Sometimes things slipped your mind.

  Perry waited for the jury room door to close, then turned directly to Edwards. “Do we have a discovery violation, counselor?”

  Edwards hung her head. “Yes, Your Honor. It was an oversight. I just explained to Mr. Brunelle that Dr. Adrianos met with my client after Dr. Thompson’s testimony. I meant to provide Mr. Brunelle with Dr. Adrianos’ report, but forgot to do so until just now.”

  “Actually, I hadn’t drafted a report yet, You—” Adrianos started to interrupt.

  Perry still didn’t like him. “Be quiet, Mr. Adrianos.” He looked to Brunelle. “What do you want to do, Mr. Brunelle? Do you want a mistrial?”

  A mistrial. Yes, he wanted a mistrial. The trial was going terribly for him. Kat was weak, Chen was weaker, and Thompson was the worst of all. Now Adrianos was the knight in shining lab coat, rescuing the world from medieval medicine. A do-over sounded great.

  Except that the State never got a do-over. Mistrials granted on State’s motions were automatically subject to double jeopardy review by the appellate courts. If Perry gave him a mistrial, odds were better than even that an appellate court would find that she’d already been tried once and he’d asked for the mistrial because the case was going so poorly. They’d dismiss the case out from under him before he ever got a second bite of the apple.

  “No, Your Honor. I don’t need a mistrial. But I need that report. And I think I should have it before I have to do any more cross examination of Dr. Adrianos.”

  Perry frowned, but nodded
. He knew the dangers of a State-requested mistrial as well. He looked back to Edwards. “Can you get him the report tonight?”

  Edwards looked to Adrianos. “Can you draft it by tonight?”

  Adrianos nodded. “Absolutely. He can come to the hospital tonight and I will deliver it to him personally.”

  Brunelle bristled at having to go back to that asylum. Adrianos must have noticed the involuntary shudder.

  “That way I can also show Mr. Brunelle the video of the interviews.”

  “Video?” Brunelle repeated. He turned to Edwards. “Did you know there was video? I never got any discs of video.”

  “We video everything,” Adrianos explained. “But our system is proprietary. It can only be viewed on site, using our equipment.”

  When Brunelle hesitated, Adrianos assured him, “They’re very short.”

  Brunelle sighed and turned to Edwards. “Wanna go to a movie tonight?” he joked.

  She laughed lightly. “Sorry, Romeo, I have to wash my hair.” She lowered her voice. “Besides, I’m done with my direct exam. I’m not going to that fucking nut house again. Especially not at night. Have fun.”

  “Great,” Brunelle replied. Then he turned back to Adrianos and Perry. “Fine. I’ll pick up the report and watch the videos tonight. Then I’ll be ready to pick up my cross exam where I left off first thing in the morning.”

  Perry agreed to the plan. He looked at his bailiff. “Tell the jury they are excused until nine o’clock tomorrow morning. Court is at recess.”

  He banged that gavel of his and left the bench. Brunelle frowned at Edwards.

  “I’m really sorry, Dave.” She shrugged. “Brain fart.”

  “No worries,” he replied. He was actually glad for the development. His cross had been going nowhere. Maybe he’d think of something effective overnight. “I’ll see you tomorrow, rested and ready to kick your doc’s ass.”

  Edwards shook her head and smiled. “Don’t be so cocky, Dave. I think you may need some psychoanalysis of your own.”