by Burl Barer
“The beating, kidnapping, the murdering; throwing the body off into the bushes,” Hultman recounted, “going out and getting it the next day, taking it up and burying it, bragging to people that they buried it so good it wouldn’t be found for ten years. That’s Chris talking! Is he the choirboy that sits there?”
David Murdach, although not Christopher St. Pierre’s lawyer, objected to the “choirboy” characterization. “It’s argument, not evidence,” said Steiner. Hultman couldn’t resist taking another potshot at the St. Pierres. “I don’t have any evidence that he really is a choirboy,” he said with obvious sarcasm, “so you can disregard that.”
“I object,” Murdach again complained, hoping for at least some commentary from Judge Steiner, if not a firm reprimand for Hultman. “I won’t comment,” said Steiner, and Carl Hultman continued.
“Chris St. Pierre is a scared, scared young man. He’s a cowardly young man who is afraid of what he did. You can bet it haunts him. It haunts him because he didn’t go to the police. Don’t let Mr. Ladenburg lead you to believe that Chris is a Good Samaritan who went to the police because of what his brother did, or what Andrew Webb was doing. He just happened to get caught, so he took the opportunity to spill his guts—to describe events as thoroughly as he could without implicating himself, and without implicating his brother.” Hultman mocked the assertion that Chris St. Pierre didn’t know Achord had been stabbed to death, and reminded the jury of an obscene absurdity: “Guess who else didn’t talk about the stab wounds? Paul St. Pierre. What a surprise! Maybe that’s because he didn’t know about them, either. Of course, that’s absurd. If anybody knew the stab wounds were going to be discovered, it’s Paul. Why didn’t he mention it? Because he would be confessing to premeditated first-degree murder. He stabbed him in the back to end his life.”
Refocusing on John Achord’s tragic demise, Hultman referenced Dr. Tappin’s testimony about the defendant’s mental condition. “Paul St. Pierre was a man with violence on his mind. He had his gun out, brandishing it. John Achord can’t tell us whether he pulled out his pocketknife, or for what reason. He can’t tell us because Paul St. Pierre shot him in the face. That’s the paranoia that Dr. Tappin talks about. That’s not self-defense. That’s not legal. There isn’t any defense in the world available for that crime.”
Paul St. Pierre was indeed a paranoid personality, agreed Hultman. “The questions you have to answer [are]: Why did Paul kill John Achord by stabbing him in the back? Paul St. Pierre kills people because in his paranoid mind they are a threat to him. Why was Damon Wells killed? The same reason why Achord was killed—Paul thinks he’s in danger because he misjudges situations. It is not a rational process by which he makes these decisions to shoot people in the face or stab them in the back.”
Lest the jury think the prosecution was offering Paul St. Pierre some mental illness excuse, Hultman immediately said, “Just because he can’t control his impulses to kill, and just because he doesn’t have good judgment, it’s no excuse for what he’s done. It’s no excuse at all. But killing John Achord to prevent disclosure of Damon Wells’s murder was not an act of paranoia,” he declared. “It was just plain fear. There is another word for that—cowardice.”
The primary character defect of both St. Pierres was, in Hultman’s opinion, despicable cowardice. “That’s the constant theme in this case, and it is the constant theme because it started with the way Damon Wells was brutally beat by three good-sized young men. The way they slashed his throat, stabbed him in the back, and watched him bleed to death. It’s not paranoia. It’s cowardice. They were afraid of being found out. Not paranoia—fear of facing what they did, fear of facing the punishment for this most horrid crime.
“Cowards. That is the only word for them,” he said, projecting blatant disgust, “except in this instance there is one other word—murderers.” Anticipating Ladenburg’s closing arguments, the prosecutor then asked jurors to seriously question the defense’s assertion that Chris St. Pierre never knew that John Achord was still breathing. “Andrew Webb said Achord was making a horrible gurgling sound. He was making a horrible breathing sound out of his throat—does that sound to you like something that’s barely audible?
“You know as well as anyone that John Achord was alive on the floor, seriously wounded, no question about that. Seriously wounded. Anybody shot in the face with a forty-five is going to be hurt, but he was not dead. He was breathing. They knew he was breathing. Paul admitted to the doctor that he knew John Achord was breathing. That’s when he killed John Achord. Is that self-defense? Is it self-defense to stab a man who is so seriously injured with a severe head wound, he’s laying on the floor, he’s making horrible gurgling noises? Is it self-defense to take this dagger and stab him at least ten times in the back? Mr. Murdach is going to explain to you how that is self-defense, I’m sure. I wish him luck.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he concluded, “they killed John Achord to hide what they had done to him and to keep the police from finding out what they had done to Damon Wells. They are calculating killers. Return us a verdict of guilty as charged.”
Hultman stopped speaking, returned to his table, and sat down. The courtroom was dead quiet until Steiner’s voice of authority cracked the silent wall. “It’s time for lunch,” said the judge, and court recessed until 1:00 P.M.
When court reconvened, John Ladenburg stood and addressed the jury. His presentation was flawlessly constructed, and built upon a firm foundation of American law. He focused the jury’s collective attention upon their sworn duty, independent judgment, matters of evidence versus inference, and established every logical reason why Chris St. Pierre deserved exoneration, not execution. In short, Ladenburg summoned his full range of admirable professional abilities to the singular task of ripping Hultman’s negative portrayal and damning emotional argument into tattered shreds of empty rhetoric.
“I approach argument a little differently than Mr. Hultman,” acknowledged Ladenburg. “This is a very serious case, and I can’t possibly go through everything that occurred during the trial. I can only try to highlight areas that I think are the most important.”
In direct contrast to Hultman’s gut-level, go-for-the-throat style, Ladenburg ingratiated himself with the jury by seemingly confiding in them. “I may forget something. There is a danger as an attorney that you live with a case for over a year, and there is really so much evidence in your favor, well ... I think, ‘It’s so obvious the jury can’t miss it. I’m not going to have to harp on that.’ I don’t want to bore you to tears,” he said almost apologetically, “but after all, Chris is on trial for his life here. I don’t want to do anything that would damage or destroy his ability to get a fair trial.”
“Ladenburg is so damn affable,” remarked Marty Webb later, “the jurors practically wanted to take him home and cook him dinner. ‘This supernice guy is doing his best to keep his choirboy client from being wrongfully convicted’—I mean, you could almost hear them thinking that as he gave his argument.”
“The most important thing to think about,” Ladenburg told the jury, was the entire issue of persuasion: Who is trying to persuade them? What are they supposed to be persuaded about? How do they get persuaded? The answers to those three questions form the very crux of American criminal law, and Ladenburg made sure the jury knew those answers by heart.
“First of all, we have the concept of reasonable doubt. The reason everybody keeps mentioning it is because it is the whole concept of criminal law in our country. It is also what each of you has sworn to uphold. You have sworn,” he reminded them, “that you will assure yourself beyond a reasonable doubt that those elements of the crime have been proven in this courtroom, that you will not assume anything.”
Jurors slowly nodded in affirmation, aware of the seriousness of the case, and the ominous responsibility of their forthcoming deliberations. This is exactly the response Ladenburg rightfully anticipated. He quietly took aim and fired his first salvo at the prosecution’s argument. �
�Mr. Hultman said, ‘Look through the instructions and draw inferences.’ Ask Mr. Hultman to read you the instruction that says you may draw an inference in a criminal case. There is no such instruction. It says it must be proven as fact beyond a reasonable doubt.
“There are no inferences to draw,” said Ladenburg in a more authoritative tone. “There are no assumptions allowed in criminal law. This case against Chris St. Pierre is full of so many assumptions that no reasonable person could find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. It is not possible.”
If jurors harbored doubts about reasonable doubt, Ladenburg quickly dispelled them by offering the concept’s concrete definition. “A reasonable doubt is one for which a reason exists.” Simple. If you have a doubt, and you have a reason for that doubt, you have “reasonable doubt.”
“A lack of evidence can give you reasonable doubt,” he said, and offered a relevant example. “One of the most glaring ones in this case is Andrew Webb’s testimony that was presented to you by a written document made in the course of a plea bargain. Then you found out that he made several other statements contradicting that one. Mr. Webb refused to testify. There is a lack of evidence there because there was never an opportunity to cross-examine Andrew Webb.”
Ladenburg referenced the tough and demanding cross-examinations they’d seen during the trial, especially that of Chris St. Pierre. “Imagine, if you will, what might have happened if I’d had the chance to cross-examine Andrew Webb on the stand, to cross-examine him about all the contradictory things in his different statements. Imagine what we might have found out.”
As for the prosecution’s “two as one” portrayal of the St. Pierres, Ladenburg again buttressed his rebuttal with the American legal standard that mere presence at a crime scene does not make someone an accomplice. “You know what else doesn’t make you an accomplice of a crime? Being somebody’s brother,” said Ladenburg. “We don’t convict people for being the brother of someone in this country. We convict you for what you do—for your guilty mind, not someone else’s.
“One of the dangers of this case that I warned you about earlier,” Ladenburg said, “was that the prosecution is going to try to tie Chris to his brother so close that you won’t separate the evidence one from another. Mr. Hultman called them twins, trying to get you, in your mind, to wrap these two so close that you won’t separate the evidence, that you won’t do your job as jurors.”
Chris St. Pierre’s previous conviction in the Wells case could possibly poison any juror’s objectivity. Ladenburg faced that problem head-on, recounting the Wells case’s original chronology, his client’s initial cooperation with authorities, and Andrew Webb’s slippery relationship with the Pierce County prosecutor.
“What I don’t want you to do is assume that Chris is automatically guilty of something in this case because of his conviction in the Wells case. Remember what Chris said to Detective Yerbury when he told them everything in the Wells case: ‘I decided to tell you all this information to prove that I wasn’t involved in these two murders.’ He had no idea that he could be convicted of the murder of Damon Wells simply because he was a participant in an assault where another participant killed somebody. Who was that other participant? Andrew Webb.
“Andrew Webb killed Damon Wells,” Ladenburg stated. “Chris was there and got convicted of murder for it. There was just one person standing there who was facing two ten-year prison sentences if anybody knew about what they did to Damon Wells. Not Chris. Not Paul. Andrew Webb. The same Andrew Webb who becomes violent when he thinks people have stolen anything from him, and becomes even more violent when he is on alcohol. Who was it that tackled Damon Wells? Andrew Webb. Who immediately took a knife and slit his throat? Andrew Webb.
“What happened here,” said Ladenburg, “was that Andrew Webb, violent, aggressive person that he was, murdered someone before Chris’s and Paul’s eyes. Then, after Andrew Webb sat there in the pokey for a month, he thought up his story to tell the police and cut a deal. He did. He very cleverly did. I think he may have pulled the wool over some people’s eyes here in Pierce County.
“He very neatly got everyone involved—Paul and Chris—by saying, ‘Then the St. Pierres each stabbed him once in the back.’ Now, however, Andrew Webb tells Mr. Hultman that isn’t true. Instead, Webb now admits that he threw the knife into Damon Wells’s back. Do you think Andrew Webb is saying that just as a favor to the St. Pierres? I hardly think so in light of the fact that Christ St. Pierre is the one that led them to all the evidence and led Andrew Webb to jail to begin with. I hardly think so when Andrew Webb said under oath that one of the reasons he made his original plea-bargain statement was out of vengeance. Why did he have vengeance? Because Chris led them to all the evidence; it resulted in them being charge; it resulted in them facing the death penalty. Andrew Webb made up this statement and got the St. Pierres involved in this thing, and it is not a statement you can believe beyond a reasonable doubt.”
As his closing argument’s purpose was not the exoneration of Christopher St. Pierre in the Wells homicide, Ladenburg swiftly transitioned to the night John Achord was shot and stabbed. A consistent factor in both homicides, he asserted, was the murderous and duplicitous presence of Andrew Webb.
“Who on the night John Achord was shot had a motive to cover this up? Chris, who believed he was not criminally involved in the Damon Wells killing, but only involved in an assault, or Andrew Webb who not only killed Damon Wells, but was involved in another first-degree assault and was still awaiting sentencing for it? In May, when John Achord was killed, Webb was still awaiting sentencing on those felonies. It was Andrew Webb who had the motive to want to keep things covered up. It was Andrew Webb who had the motive to cover things up, not Chris St. Pierre.”
Throughout the trial, Ladenburg not only gave his client the obligatory “best defense,” he vociferously assaulted the very concept that any defendant could be subject to conviction based upon “testimony” given by a “witness” who could not be confronted, questioned, or cross-examined. Ladenburg, and Connelly before him, were drop-jawed with amazement that such an apparent violation of the United States Constitution would be allowed in an American court of law.
Allowed, however, it was. And that meant Ladenburg had to assault the statement’s reliability from every possible angle. It also meant that were his client convicted, the odds of reversal upon appeal to a higher court were greatly in his favor.
“You are asked to convict Chris St. Pierre in this case on Andrew Webb’s testimony alone,” Ladenburg said to the jury. “The law says you should act with great caution. You should not find the defendant guilty upon such testimony alone unless you are satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt of its truth. You can’t be convinced of anything Andrew Webb said in this case beyond a reasonable doubt. It just can’t be done.
“The first reason you can’t believe Webb’s plea-bargain statement beyond a reasonable doubt,” argued Ladenburg, “is Carl Hultman. I think Carl is a reliable person. He said that Webb told him there were inaccuracies in that statement.” Again and again, Ladenburg assaulted any shred of reliability in Webb’s plea-bargain statement. Having placed the entire issue of statements in the forefront of the jury’s collective conscience, he then turned their attention to the statement of Paul St. Pierre.
“Remember, there is an instruction from the court that says there is one thing you cannot consider with regard to Chris St. Pierre, and that is anything Paul said to anybody. Paul’s statement that he made to the police, the statements he made to anybody else. All of those things that Paul said are absolutely not evidence against Chris. That’s the law. So what are you left with? You’re left with two things: what Chris said about what happened, and what Andrew Webb said about what happened.”
No matter whose statement the jury believed, Chris St. Pierre’s active participation in the decapitation and burial of John Achord was beyond dispute. Ladenburg didn’t deny his client’s involvement in that ghoulish and reprehensible
behavior. Rather, Ladenburg was defending Chris St. Pierre against a charge of premeditated murder. “Going out and decapitating the body is not the crime charged here. It is some other criminal activity,” he acknowledged, “but it’s not aggravated murder. It’s not murder of any kind. When you are deliberating as a jury, don’t let someone tell you that Chris’s involvement in events that occurred afterward means that he’s guilty of a crime that took place earlier.” A crime, it was often noted, that Chris believed transpired before he even walked in the door.
His client, John Ladenburg insisted, entered the residence and saw what he believed was the dead body of John Achord sprawled on the dining room floor. Chris saying, “Let’s bury the body,” the defense reasoned, didn’t mean “Let’s kill him.” Even if the jurors believed every contradictory word of Andrew Webb’s recanted statement beyond a reasonable doubt, what Webb said about Christopher St. Pierre did not prove his client guilty of murder.
The horrific nature of the case, the unsettling, gruesome details, and the often nitpicky nature of thorough cross-examination could wear down the jurors’ patience. Eager to “get it over with,” a jury might rush to judgment for the sake of their own collective comfort. Not a pleasant thought, but one that trial attorneys must seriously consider and occasionally address.
“You all promised me that you would uphold your oath as jurors, and that you would not compromise to reach a verdict, not just cave in,” said Ladenburg, “not say, well, ‘This crime is too awful. I don’t want to think about it. I just want to go home. I think Paul did something wrong and so therefore Chris did.’ Do one of those things that are clearly prohibited in the law, and you will not be able to live with yourself. You will not be able to sleep at night. I think you are the kind of people that want to do the best job you can and uphold the law. That’s what we ask you to do.”
The law to which he referred precluded relying upon assumptions as proof of guilt. Ladenburg returned to that theme for his well-crafted conclusion. “If you are to convict Chris St. Pierre, there are many things you have to assume. Remember that you are not allowed to assume anything. They have to be facts, not assumptions.”