Love Me or I'll Kill You

by Lee Butcher

  Padgett had already ruled that the flower shop robbery could not be used in this trial. Athan was outraged at the answer Santiago had given to her question. “Your Honor, for the record, I find this really interesting that this is the first time after several hours of deposition that she has come up with this big whopper.”

  Padgett told Pruner to ask Santiago if Chino talked about suicide before the robbery.

  “Yes,” she said. “A lot of times.”

  “And is that what you were referring to when you indicated that your son had talked about committing suicide rather than going to jail?”

  “Yes.”

  Pruner finished and Athan rose for redirect examination. Athan elicited testimony indicating that Chino talked often about robbing a bank, adding that Paula did, too. Athan asked if Santiago remembered giving almost five hours of depositions. Santiago said she remembered.

  “And you understood that these depositions were to find out everything that you knew about this case, right?” she asked. “So that I could find out everything that you knew. And nowhere in any of these depositions did you say that Paula Gutierrez ever talked about a bank robbery before July 6, 2001, right?”

  “A bank robbery, yes.”

  Santiago testified that Chino talked about a bank robbery all the time, but she thought he was joking. Athan asked if it wasn’t Chino who did all of the talking. “Not on that day,” Santiago said.

  Athan was exasperated. “Where, in all these hours of depositions, did you say that, Ms. Santiago?” she asked. “Where did you say it?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  Athan asked the question several times and got the same answer from Santiago. Pruner objected that it was all argumentative and Padgett sustained the objection. Neither Athan nor Pruner had further questions for Santiago and she was excused.

  Court was recessed for twenty minutes. Knots of spectators huddled and talked about the case. There was a buzz of excitement as everyone waited for Paula Gutierrez to testify. During the proceedings she had never wept, but with her soft curls and soulful eyes, she projected an almost angelic aura. What would she be like in the witness chair? Especially under Pruner’s astute cross-examination?

  Court reconvened and Paula was called to testify. She approached the witness chair tentatively. She wore a skirt, white blouse, and a pale blue sweater. Paula seemed to float across the floor. She sat down and was sworn in. Athan had to ask her to speak louder so the jury could hear her.

  Paula said that she was born in Colombia and moved to the United States with her parents and sister. She described her childhood as “fun” until she was thirteen. Paula said she had a boyfriend and became pregnant the first time they had sex. After having an abortion, Paula testified, she and her two sisters were sent to live in Colombia with their grandparents.

  Paula described the difficulty she had adjusting to life in Colombia and how her parents returned the three sisters to the United States after Paula wrote them a letter threatening to kill herself if she remained in Colombia. Once back in the United States, Paula said, the family lived in a better neighborhood in Queens.

  Paula said that she was fifteen when she met Chino, who was sixteen. After telling her parents she was going to a movie with Chino, Paula said, she spent the weekend with him. She gave her parents the number of Chino’s beeper. When it beeped two days later, Paula said, she and Chino went to a pay phone. Paula’s parents, sisters, and grandparents were all waiting for her. Paula said her mother “threw” her into the car and told Chino to stay away from her.

  Chino came unexpectedly to her school, Paula said, and got angry because he thought she was flirting with other guys. Paula said she fell in love with Chino, but the relationship went downhill because he was too possessive. She said he told her not to look at anybody. If Chino thought a man looked at her, Paula said, Chino would punch him.

  Paula said when she tried to “cool it,” Chino got mad and accused her of seeing other men. “[He was] in my face. Really loud, upset, angry. When he got angry, he was in my face.”

  Paula described numerous attempts to break up with Chino, but said she always went back to him. She testified about the Thanksgiving dinner where Chino put a razor blade in his mouth, cut his throat, and went into the bathroom after saying he intended to kill himself because Paula wanted to break up.

  She said Chino attacked another guest, and then tried to break back into the house after Paula’s mother asked him to leave. Paula said she went back with Chino because she feared he would hurt the family. Chino became increasingly violent toward her, Paula said, and she described an incident at a train station.

  “He was choking me,” she said. “He was mad. He was like, ‘I’m going to kill you if you don’t want to be with me.’ He just kept repeating that he was going to kill me.” Paula said Chino released her when her family came to join them.

  Chino went home with them, Paula said, and told her parents that she was a slut. She said Chino described their sexual activities in detail. Finally, Paula said, she was so humiliated that she ran out of the house.

  Paula talked about several occasions when Chino was violent and abusive, but he always apologized and promised to change. Chino moved to Florida in 1994 through 1997, Paula said. During that time, Paula said, she felt safe.

  While working at a shop in Manhattan in 1996, Paula said, she looked up and saw Chino. She said it scared her to see him. She told the jury that she said hi and then asked security to make him leave. Paula said Chino went back to Florida and she didn’t hear from him until he telephoned and asked her to testify for him in court.

  “His girlfriend charged him with domestic abuse,” Paula said. “He was hitting her.” Paula said she believed Chino was guilty “because of what he did to me.” She didn’t see Chino again until the beginning of 1998. Goins wrote the date down on a large sheet of paper for the jury to see.

  Paula wrote to Chino in Florida because she didn’t know he was back in New York. Santiago forwarded the letter to Chino and he met her at Macy’s. Chino said he still loved her and that they could make it work. Paula said her old feelings of love for him came back and she decided to give it another try. She believed Chino had matured.

  Paula had an explosive argument with her father about kissing Chino in her family’s home, she said. Her father, Paula said, thought it was disrespectful. She told her father he had no right to make her feel like a slut because he had had an affair. Not able to stay at home after that, Paula said, she went to Chino.

  A few months later, Paula said, she told Chino she was late on her menstrual cycle. Chino was shooting pool when Paula told him she was pregnant. “He just looks at me and he says, ‘Well, I already knew that; I planned it,’” Paula said. “I felt trapped.”

  Chapter 22

  The lawyers argued again at the bench. This time they were fighting over whether the defense could enter into evidence all of the photos that were on the same roll of film that had the damning photograph of Paula holding the MAC-11. Athan wanted the jury to see another photograph.

  “She’s sitting there like a bump on a log,” Athan said earlier. “She looks retarded.”

  Athan’s point was that Paula had no will of her own and was like a zombie until Chino told her what to do. The defense attorney argued hard to have the other pictures admitted because they showed Paula in a different light. But Padgett sustained the prosecution’s objection. The trial was almost finished and the judge had ruled against Athan on every major argument.

  Paula returned to the witness stand and testified at length as to Chino’s volatile nature, explosive temper, bullying ways, his abuse of her, and how she was frightened of him. The testimony was repetitive, but Athan was trying to build a duress defense.

  Athan questioned Paula about her intent to commit suicide and her confusion during the interview she gave to Detectives Black, Hevel, and Lease.

  Shortly after they entered Isaac Davis’s apartment, Paula testified, “Chino
started telling me that we had to kill ourselves. That’s what we were going to do. I didn’t want to, but he kept saying that we had to.”

  Paula said that before March 2001, Chino talked about killing himself “all the time. He told me when I was pregnant, ‘I bet you that I’m not going to live to see my baby after she’s two years old.’ And when we came to Florida, he kept telling me that he just wanted to put a bullet in his head.”

  At Davis’s apartment, Paula said, she was in a state of shock and didn’t remember everything that transpired. Paula remembered that her mother and sister Louisa telephoned and convinced her not to kill herself.

  “So when did you change your mind about committing suicide?” Athan asked.

  “When I had the gun under my chin.”

  Paula said they agreed to commit suicide on the count of three.

  “It was when I’m ready, I kiss him, and then he knew I was ready.”

  “So when you were ready, you were supposed to kiss him? That was your agreement?”

  Paula said that she was in Davis’s room and Chino was in the hall, sitting on the floor so that they could see one another. “He was telling me he was going to let Davis go and then we were going to do it. And I kissed him and—”

  “So you kiss him. Then did you pick up the gun?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened next?”

  “I put it under my chin.” Paula demonstrated how she held the gun with both hands.

  “How did you feel with that gun under your chin?”

  “I don’t know what I felt. Just—I don’t know. I was just scared. And I heard him count two. When he got two, that’s when I screamed and I said, ‘I can’t do it.’”

  “Is that the first time he counted?”

  “Yes. That’s where you heard him say—he said ‘Fuck.’ He cursed. He got mad at me and then he did it.”

  Paula said she didn’t remember Chino saying, “Ready, Paula?” But she remembered him counting:

  “‘One, two,’ and then he pulled the trigger.”

  “Did you watch him kill himself?” Athan asked. “What happened next?”

  “I saw blood coming out of his head,” Paula said. “It was just real slow at the moment and I just remember sitting there watching him die.”

  “Do you remember crying in the room?”

  “I don’t remember. I was sitting there watching him. He was trying to move his arm. I think he wanted me to touch him or something. I remember I couldn’t touch him.”

  Paula’s testimony that she kissed Chino as a signal that she was ready to kill herself conflicts with other testimony. Before Chino’s death, Paula was outside the police surveillance camera’s range when he did the countdown to suicide and the suicide itself. Paula appeared in the video after Chino shot himself. Paula kissed him, and said, “Good-bye, Sweetie,” and patted his arm. Defense attorney Deeann Athan explained that Paula had a garbled recollection of memories because of PTSD.

  Paula said she remembered leaving the apartment and being arrested by the SWAT team. The SWAT team “threw her on the ground,” handcuffed her, put her in a car, and took her to the police station. Paula said the police put her in a small room with a police officer to watch her. She was still handcuffed.

  “How were you feeling when you were surrendering?” Athan asked.

  “Felt relieved that it was over.” At the police station, Paula said, “I’m in shock. I’m feeling, was it true, or was it not true? Was this a dream?”

  Athan wanted to show that Paula had been too tired and upset to give an interview with the police that day. The attorney tried to convince the jury that events of the day and lack of food had overwhelmed Paula, and that her confession was not valid.

  “What had you had to eat that day?”

  “I didn’t eat anything. Ashley and Chino ate oatmeal.”

  Paula said she was terrified when she went to the conference room for an interview with three detectives. “I didn’t know if it was a dream. I just kept playing it over in my head. Did this happen or not? I felt like I just wanted to wake up.”

  Paula said she was tired, exhausted, and in shock when she was interviewed. It never occurred to her that she could stop the interview, Paula said. When Black read her constitutional rights, Paula said, she understood them. Athan asked if she remembered being told she had the right to talk with a lawyer before questioning.

  “Yes. I started thinking about a lawyer.” Athan asked why. “Because he told me I could have a lawyer.”

  Athan asked why she wanted a lawyer. “To help me. I was alone in there. I wanted help.” Paula said she thought the police would get a lawyer for her when she asked for one.

  Athan established that Black gave Paula the form to sign, but he didn’t ask her if she had any questions first. “But, you say to him, ‘Okay, I have a question’?”

  “Yes. I wanted a lawyer.”

  “Did you think you were entitled to one?”

  “He just told me I could have one.”

  “You say, ‘I don’t know. I’ve never been in this situation. I don’t know if I should talk to a lawyer first.’ Were you kind of asking for his advice?”

  Paula said that she was.

  “And then you say, ‘Yeah, I want to cooperate, but I don’t want to go to jail.’” Black told her she would go to jail if she didn’t talk to them “right now,” Paula said. The defendant said she thought that cooperating with the police would keep her out of jail.

  “Then you ask, ‘Do you have a lawyer here?’” Athan said. “Do you remember that?” Paula said she did. Athan continued: “And he says, ‘No, we don’t have one here. That’s the only problem.’ This is all on tape and there’s a twenty-second pause. Were you thinking? What were you doing?”

  “I was confused,” Paula said. “They’re telling me that I can have a lawyer and then when I ask about one, I can’t have one. So then I said, ‘Well, I have no choice then.’”

  “Talk or get a lawyer?” Athan asked.

  “Talk. There’s no lawyer, so I have to talk.”

  “But he had just told you, you had a right to a lawyer.”

  “That didn’t matter because he said I couldn’t.”

  Paula said that on the day of the bank robbery, Chino woke up “real stressed” and “told” her they were going to rob a bank. Chino didn’t ask her, she said, he “forced” her. Because of shock, Paula testified, she wasn’t able to explain this very well during the interview with Black.

  Athan asked what Paula meant when she told Black that Chino told her they “needed” to rob the bank. “He forced me,” Paula replied. Athan asked, “So he (Black) said, ‘So he (Chino) asks you to go along.’ You started to say, ‘Said that we . . .’ and he (Black) says, ‘So he asked you to go along with him.’ And you said, ‘Yeah.’ Did he ask you or did he tell you?”

  “He told me.”

  Paula said she went into the bank and held the gun because she was afraid of what would happen if she didn’t do as Chino told her. “What are you afraid of about him?” Athan asked.

  “Everything about him.”

  Paula implied that Black put words in her mouth and didn’t let her explain things the way she wanted. In the days following the interview, Paula said, “I started hearing like devil chanting and gospel music,” she said. “A week passes and it gets louder. It gets louder by the end of the week. It was real loud. I could tell it was devil chanting and gospel music together, and with that music, I heard a voice talking to me, telling me that he was Chino and that he was just apologizing, that he was sorry for putting me in this situation.”

  Paula said she talked with the voice for about two weeks because it got worse. “Every time I looked at the TV, I would just see flames and the floor would turn like a bright red. It was driving me crazy, because it was just demons, just laughing at me, would shake my mattress at night, and wouldn’t let me sleep. It was just twenty-four hours a day.”

  When Chino shot Lois, Paul
a said, she didn’t know he was going to do it. “I just couldn’t believe he did that,” she said. “I kept thinking, ‘Please don’t do it, don’t do it.’ Every time she (Lois) said, ‘Put your gun down.’ I wanted to scream it out, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t say anything. I was stuck.”

  Athan had no more questions for Paula and turned the witness over to the state. Jay Pruner, who tried only homicide cases for the state, was a master at cross-examination. Both Pruner and Ober had been listening to Athan’s direct and advising one another. Pruner was nothing, if not prepared.

  He said, “You helped Nestor DeJesus rob the bank, didn’t you?”

  “No.”

  “You’re telling this jury that by going in with a gun when your unarmed boyfriend is snatching money and you’re telling patrons and bank employees to stay down that you aren’t helping him commit the robbery?”

  Paula said that was the case, but that Chino made her do it. Pruner asked if she did anything in the bank that helped Chino with the robbery. “The reason I told people to keep their heads down,” Paula said, “was because they kept looking up and I was scared for them.”

  Pruner asked if Paula felt so desperate and despondent from having been in the bank that she was ready to put a bullet in her head. Paula said yes.

  “You knew you were in deep trouble for being part of this bank robbery, right?” Pruner asked.

  “I was thinking about the murder he did.”

  “That’s not what you told your parents on the tape that you left for them. You said, ‘We went to do a bank robbery.’ You didn’t say anything about a cop, did you?”

  Pruner hammered relentlessly on Paula’s testimony about the interview with Black. Paula admitted that she knew she could stop talking at any time. She wanted a lawyer before she talked, but said Black left her no choice.