Final Exam: A Legal Thriller

by Terry Huebner

  In describing Greenfield’s fatal injuries, Akhter utilized charts, a series of carefully selected photographs agreed to by both sides after extensive argument prior to trial and even a life-sized model of a human skull. The photographs of the murder scene particularly worried Ben because of the graphic and horrifying nature of the carnage displayed. The murder was brutal and savage and the pictures could only serve to turn the jury against Megan, unless, of course, they concluded that a woman, or this woman in particular, could not have committed such an act. In the end, Judge Wilson let them choose from a dozen and a half or so different photographs of the murder scene depicted from various angles. Fahey ultimately chose to use about a dozen.

  Doctor Akhter testified that the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the rear of the head caused by a baseball bat found at the scene. Toward the end of his testimony, Bridget Fahey displayed a thirty-four inch, thirty-three ounce Louisville slugger baseball bat autographed by Sammy Sosa. “Is it your testimony, doctor, that this bat is the murder weapon?” Fahey asked.

  “Yes, Counsel, it is. The indentations made on the skull match the barrel of the bat.” A few minutes later, Fahey displayed a gray cashmere scarf. The doctor pointed to small circular dots at one end of the scarf, about the size of a pencil eraser.

  “Can you identify what these discolorations are?”

  “Yes. They are blood.”

  “Were you able to determine whose blood?”

  “Yes. The blood belongs to the deceased, Daniel Greenfield.” A murmur ran through the courtroom and Bridget Fahey sat down.

  “I have nothing further, your Honor,” she said.

  Ben briefly took the medical examiner through some of his collection methods, then turned his attention to Professor Greenfield’s blood. The witness testified that he had found a small amount of alcohol in the deceased’s blood, probably from a drink at lunch on the date of his death. He also identified trace amounts of a common over-the-counter antihistamine. Ben walked back and picked up a document off the table. He looked at it for a few seconds and then gestured with it in the direction of the witness. “I’ve got your report here, Doctor. It appears from this report that you found some other things in Professor Greenfield’s blood as well, didn’t you.”

  “We did, yes.”

  Ben walked a couple of steps closer to the witness and paused as if reviewing the document carefully. The courtroom grew very still. “You also found marijuana in Professor Greenfield’s system, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, we did. Trace elements of marijuana, yes.”

  “From your knowledge and experience, how many days before his death would Professor Greenfield have ingested that marijuana?”

  “Approximately seven to ten days, given the levels in his blood.”

  “You also found traces of cocaine in Professor Greenfield’s system didn’t you?” Now the crowd murmured again. The doctor looked at him. “Doctor? Isn’t that correct?”

  “Yes, yes, it is.”

  “Based on the levels of cocaine found in the deceased’s system, when would he have ingested same?”

  “Roughly the same time frame, perhaps a week before his death.”

  Ben let the moment and the realization that Professor Greenfield was a drug user sink in to the members of the jury and the gallery, then turned and placed the report back on the counsel table, where Mark picked it up and put it in a pile. He turned back to the witness. “Doctor, you testified at some length about the nature and description of the wounds suffered by Professor Greenfield. In fact, you had diagrams, charts and photographs, as well as that model of a human skull.” Ben shrugged. “Would it be fair to say that his wounds were confined to the rear quarter of his skull from approximately the left ear back around the rear of the skull?”

  “Yes. I don’t know whether I would call it the rear quarter, but the rear of the skull to roughly the section above the left ear would be about correct.”

  “Did he suffer any wounds to his face or the front part of his skull?”

  “Only bruising associated with striking the floor and contact with the floor as a result of being struck in the rear of the head by the murder weapon, the baseball bat.”

  “So it is your testimony that Professor Greenfield was not struck in the face by the baseball bat, correct?”

  “Yes, that’s correct.”

  “And the source of the blood in the photographs, that blood came from the myriad of head wounds, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes, although some blood flow also came from his ears and his mouth as well.”

  Ben nodded and moved a little closer. “We’ve all seen the photographs of the murder scene,” Ben said as he moved a little closer, his head down, his left hand on his chin as though in thought. His voice was low. “This was a pretty bloody scene, wasn’t it, Doctor?”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “There was blood on the carpeting?”

  “Yes, there was.”

  “Blood on the wall behind the desk?”

  “Yes.”

  “Blood on the credenza behind the desk?”

  “Yes.”

  “Blood on the desk chair?”

  “Yes, there was.”

  “Blood on the filing cabinet?” The witness nodded. “I need a verbal answer, Doctor.”

  “Yes, there was blood on the filing cabinet.”

  “There was also tissue from the skull and brain matter at these locations, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes, that’s correct.”

  “And even bits of bone were scattered throughout the area?”

  “Yes, that’s true.”

  Ben moved even closer. He was standing directly in front of the witness now.

  “Now Doctor, you testified about that gray scarf with the blood on it, two drops of blood, I believe you said.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “And this blood matched the blood of the deceased, Daniel Greenfield, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s assume for the sake of my questions, that the person who committed this murder was wearing that scarf at the time of the murder.”

  “Okay.”

  Ben walked over to the bench and picked up one of the photographs showing Professor Greenfield and the bloody scene surrounding his body. He held it up in the general direction of the witness. “Given this bloody scene, wouldn’t you have expected to find more than two small drops of blood on a scarf being worn by the killer?”

  Doctor Akhter paused for a long time as if considering how best to phrase his answer. Bridget Fahey rose. “Objection, your Honor, the question calls for speculation.”

  Judge Wilson turned to Ben who was shaking his head. “Your Honor, this is a medical examiner with a vast amount of experience in crime scenes. He has more than enough experience and expertise to answer this question.”

  “I agree,” Wilson said. “Objection overruled. You may answer.”

  Ben figured that Fahey knew the objection wasn’t particularly well-founded, yet she made it anyway in an effort to give the witness more time to prepare an answer and perhaps hint at the answer desired.

  The witness cleared his throat. “Perhaps,” he said, “but it’s hard to say for sure.”

  Ben grinned. “And given the amount of carnage in this scene,” Ben said holding up the photograph again, “wouldn’t you have expected the killer to have blood on his shoes?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “His pants?” Ben was moving forward now, his voice rising.

  “Probably, yes.”

  “His coat?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “His shirt?”

  “Maybe.”

  “And assuming he was wearing them, his gloves?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you or your office have occasion to examine any of those kinds of items belonging to my client, Megan Rand Cavallaro?”

  “Yes, we did.”

  “Did you find any of the victim’s blood on an
y of those items?”

  “No, we didn’t.”

  “Did you find any skull tissue or brain matter on any of those items?”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “Just those two little drops of blood on that gray scarf?”

  “Yes.”

  48

  Ben got home at about ten-fifteen only to discover Libby watching news coverage of the trial on television. She seemed almost giddy. “This is exciting,” she said. “Everything was very positive. All of the experts, including that Stan Goldman guy on Fox, thought you did a great job. They had a lot of good things to say about her opening statement, Bridget Fahey’s I mean, but they said you gained a lot of ground with the cross-examination of the medical examiner.”

  Ben dropped his briefcase and plopped down on the sofa beside her. She looked at him excitedly. “So, what did you think?”

  He looked at the TV then at his wife and then back at the TV. “Can’t we turn this off?”

  “Don’t you want to watch it? You’re a celebrity.”

  He looked back at her, his head cocked, his eyes squinting. “You forget, Lib, I was there. I know what happened in the courtroom.”

  She sighed. “Okay okay,” she said. “I’ve recorded most of it anyway.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Great.”

  “Seriously though, how did you think it went?”

  “About how I expected. I figured her opening would be good and it was probably even better than I expected. Professor Hyatt wasn’t much. Somebody had to find the body and he was the guy who did. The medical examiner went about as well as I could have hoped. They’ve got the blood, sure, but where’s the rest of the bloody clothing? There should be some somewhere.” He got up. “What did you have for dinner tonight?”

  Ben took some grilled chicken out of the refrigerator and cut it up and put it on a salad. Then he grabbed a root beer and sat down in front of the television to eat. They tried to find something unrelated to the trial, much to Libby’s chagrin, and settled on a rerun of Seinfeld and an episode of The Sopranos which Libby didn’t particularly care for. She fell asleep during the show and Ben jostled her awake when it was over. She went upstairs at about ten minutes to twelve and Ben sat down on the couch for a while thinking about the case before joining her a half hour or so later. He knew there was still something he was missing, something that would make everything click into place in his mind. Try as he might, he just couldn’t find it.

  Ben got a good night’s sleep, hopefully his mind was working overtime trying to piece the puzzle together, and got down to the Courthouse feeling refreshed and ready to go. The sun of the previous day had given way to clouds and cooler temperatures and the shadows so evident in the courtroom the day before were now gone. Mark hobbled in a few minutes later, apparently his knee was acting up, but happy with news coverage of yesterday’s events. “A lot of good pub on TV last night,” he said.

  Ben shook his head. “Not you too. Libby wanted to watch that stuff when we got home. Isn’t it enough that we have to live through it all day without watching it all night?”

  Mark shrugged. “It’s still fun to see.”

  “I guess.”

  After the jury was brought in, Bridget Fahey called Charles Powell to the stand. The tall, soft spoken, African American security guard for the law school ambled up to the witness stand wearing his best suit. Bridget Fahey took him through his background and experience working at the law school. He testified that he recalled seeing Meg at the law school on several occasions shortly before and around the time of the murder. This was consistent with what he had told Ben earlier. He also described the security system at the school, including the cameras.

  On cross, Ben forced the witness to concede that he couldn’t pin down Megan’s visits to the law school to an exact date. He also stated that fellow staff members and professors possessed the pass cards which would enable them to go from the hallway outside Greenfield’s office back into the library, a maneuver that might not be easily visible on the security cameras. Finally, the witness conceded that certain female professors, including Angela Harper, had inquired into the security procedures at the law school. Nevertheless, Charles Powell had identified Meg as having been at the law school around the date of the murder. Combined with the blood and the other evidence, this was something for the State to work with. Ben could only hope that he could create enough doubt to cause the jury to see things his way.

  Bridget Fahey’s next witness was her blood expert, who testified consistently with the medical examiner, Dr. Akhter. His primary conclusion was that the blood found on the scarf undoubtedly came from Greenfield and that it hadn’t degraded to such an extent that he would say that it had arrived on the scarf a long time before the tests. Ben didn’t do much with him on cross-examination, even his own blood expert conceded that the blood on the scarf was Greenfield’s, so he let the man off the hook with a token cross-examination, rather than try and achieve something spectacular and fail in front of the jury.

  The following day, Bridget Fahey led off with her expert on hair, a criminologist from the University of Chicago, who appeared overly devoted to his unusual niche in the field. Professor Byron Marks, a quiet looking man in his mid-fifties with a flop of brown hair falling in his face, looked uncomfortable in his navy blue sport coat, tie, gray pants and brown walking shoes. He described the science of hair evaluation and analysis, from root to stem, as though trying his best to bore everyone to tears. After a seemingly endless recitation on the differences between types of hair, with a peculiar focus on Oriental hair and African-American hair, neither of which was present here, he testified that three hairs found in Professor Greenfield’s office were consistent with the samples received from the Defendant. Everyone seemed happy when his direct-examination concluded, especially the jurors.

  Mark handled the cross-examination and sought to undermine the notion that hair analysis was a science in the area of criminology. His only real success came at the end of his cross-examination, when he asked, “Isn’t it true, Professor Marks, that one cannot match hairs in the same way he or she can match fingerprints or blood?”

  The witness fidgeted somewhat in his chair, looking off into the middle distance as if searching for the answer on a cloud floating by the windows to the courtroom. “Although the matching of hair,” he said, “is not quite the same as matching blood or fingerprints, we can nonetheless state that a given hair is consistent with a known sample to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty.”

  The magic buzzwords, Ben thought. Mark strove onward. “Isn’t it true that you found other hairs in Professor Greenfield’s office that do not appear to you to have come from my client?”

  “That’s true. We found quite a few hairs that were consistent with hairs taken from Professor Greenfield himself. We also located three other light brown hairs that seemed to come from the same subject and two darker brown hairs which came from an entirely different subject. We also found one other blond hair that did not appear consistent with the Defendant’s hair.”

  “So, in other words, you have at least three sets of other hairs that do not appear to have come, in your opinion anyway, from either the Defendant or Professor Greenfield?”

  “That’s correct.”

  All in all, a mixed bag, Ben thought. The blond hairs probably placed Meg at the scene of the crime, even if there may have been others there as well. Whether they thoroughly discredited the science or not, Ben couldn’t tell.

  The State’s expert on blood splatters basically supported the testimony of Dr. Akhter, and established that Professor Greenfield was likely bending or leaning over next to his desk when he was struck with the first or the first couple of blows. Ben didn’t really dispute this testimony and focused merely on the degree of splattering in his cross-examination.

  “Given your testimony on splattering,” he asked the witness, “and the amount of blood, tissue and brain matter found at the scene, can you reasonably exp
ect that a person committing this crime could have escaped this scene without getting a significant amount of this material on their person and clothing?”

  The witness paused and then said, “I’m not quite sure what you mean by significant, but I would say that the killer would have likely received some splattering on his or her person.”

  “A lot more than two drops on a scarf?”

  “Yes, I would say so, but clothing could always be cleaned and, perhaps, disposed of somehow.”

  Ben got what he needed. He decided not to push it too far.

  49

  The toughest things about trial work are its relentlessness and its unpredictability. From the moment you begin a trial, it never lets up. Ben had lost ten pounds since the first of July on his slight frame and his regular suits started to feel loose on him. In order to keep from losing too much weight, he forced himself to eat even when he wasn’t hungry, at times sucking down chocolate milkshakes rather than full meals he wouldn’t be in the mood to finish. He slept fitfully, his mind working overtime, and after he showered, he pulled on an older suit that didn’t feel quite so loose.

  When Detective Scott Nelson walked to the witness stand, Ben felt an added electricity in the room and knew he faced one of those moments in a trial where he didn’t quite know what was going to happen next. Nelson wore a tweed sport coat, a light blue shirt, print tie and brown slacks, and looked as much like a college professor as Professor Hyatt had days earlier. As always, he appeared soft spoken and earnest.

  Bridget Fahey led the detective through an unremarkable description of the early stages of the investigation, from his first appearance on the scene through his conversation with the widow to his conclusion that Megan was a suspect in Greenfield’s murder. Shortly before lunch, Fahey turned to the telephone records and asked, “Detective, from your review of these telephone records, did you find any telephone contact between the Defendant and Professor Greenfield?”

  “Yes, we did. We found thirteen possible telephone contacts between the two from October 30, 2001 to December 26, 2001, two days before Professor Greenfield’s death.”