Lethal Defense

by Michael Stagg

  “Jeff’s going to put those pictures up every chance he gets.”

  “I know. And his main chance is when Gerchuk is on the stand. You need to get him out of the courtroom.”

  I looked at Cyn. “You agree?”

  She nodded. “I do. You'll be able to explain a few of the breaks. That would still leave about twenty.”

  “Got it. Danny, did you talk to Olivia today?”

  Danny started when I said his name. “I did.”

  “Any more on Purcell?”

  He checked a legal pad. “Still no source of income. Still living in the same apartment he was in before he dropped out of school.”

  “What's the rent on that?”

  He told me. It was about the same as the mortgage on our first house. “That's a lot for somebody with no income. He has to be the local connection, doesn't he?”

  “Sure seems like it.”

  “We don't know that,” said Cyn.

  “No, but we do know that our client beat a man to death and our only chance is talking about the local heroin connection.”

  “I understand that. I'm saying be careful.”

  “Got it. All right, Lindsey get in touch with Sheriff Dushane, tell him we're looking at Thursday for his testimony.”

  “Done.”

  “And the same goes for our toxicologist.”

  “Thursday?”

  “Yes. Cyn, I'll email you the outline of my topics for tomorrow so that you can load any exhibits into the software.”

  “They’re already loaded.”

  “Right. I mean so that you can get to them quickly.”

  She smiled. “I will get to them quickly.”

  A good lawyer knows when to concede the point. “Danny, make sure you add the jury instruction that a witness can’t speculate. We want their testimony limited to what they’ve seen.”

  Danny cocked his head. “Does it matter?”

  “It might on appeal. I'll be working on my cross-examination. Let me know if you need anything.”

  As one, we crumpled our Subway wrappers and scattered to our offices.

  It was just past eleven o'clock that night when I walked into my house. Just enough time for a quick snack and sleep before I had to be up at five and back into the office to prepare for day two. My phone buzzed. A text from my sister-in-law, Izzy.

  Fucking bitch wrote another article about Sarah.

  I sighed and put my tablet case on the kitchen table. What now? I texted.

  It's all about how that flaming asshole Pearson was the officer who investigated her death. Some of his comments from back then on how there are just certain risks for drug addicts that the police department can't protect against.

  I felt a familiar flash of rage and quashed it. Didn't see it. Can't do anything about it right now. Trial prep. Thanks for letting me know.

  Sorry to bother you. Thought you should know.

  A pause of three dots and then, Fuck Pearson.

  I smiled. I could hear Izzy's raspy voice as she typed it. Fuck Pearson, I replied.

  I set my phone down, grabbed a bowl, and poured some cereal. Raisin Bran in case you were wondering. I sat at the table and munched, staring at my phone.

  I couldn't look at the article. I couldn't afford to take the journey it would send me on, not when I had to be back at work in five hours. So I finished my cereal and I put the bowl in the sink and I went to the family room, set my phone alarm, and went to sleep.

  Eventually.

  The next morning we were in the courtroom organizing things for the day’s testimony when Judge Gallon came out of her office. “I want counsel in my chambers,” she said without preamble. “Now.”

  Jeff and I looked at each other and both of us shook our heads and shrugged, not knowing what was happening. Lindsey joined us as we went into Judge Gallon’s chambers with the exact same feeling as when you’d been called to the principal’s office with no idea what you’d done but with a clear impression that it was bad.

  When we entered, Judge Gallon had her computer monitor facing us. The Entertainment Buzz logo was at the top of her screen and underneath it a big, red headline:

  DOUBLE JEOPARDY

  Defense attorney cross-examines officer

  who investigated wife's death

  I expected the headline, or something like it, thanks to Izzy's text last night. I did not expect the picture of my wife smiling back at me. I covered by looking away and sitting down in one of the chairs.

  Jeff plopped his bulk into a chair too. As Lindsey took a seat on the other side of me, we all knew enough to keep our mouths shut until Judge Gallon spoke.

  She let us stew in it for about thirty seconds. I didn't look at the screen. Couldn't was probably a better description but close enough. Instead, I stared at Judge Gallon, waiting.

  She took off her glasses. Many people who wear glasses all the time seem lost when they’re off, as if the focus of their face has changed. Judge Gallon was the opposite—when she took off her glasses, it was like unhooding a hawk. She glared at all three of us before she said, “I think my gag order was pretty clear. No press. No talking about the case.”

  I nodded. Jeff and Lindsey did too.

  “This is a capital murder case,” Judge Gallon said. “It's not a soap opera.”

  I looked at Lindsey, who shook her head and shrugged. “Your Honor,” I said. “I haven't read the article but I haven't spoken to any press and neither has Lindsey.”

  Jeff shook his head. “I haven't either, Your Honor. Your order was very clear.”

  “Well, I've read it and while none of you are quoted, your family is,” she pointed at me, “and your officer is,” she pointed at Jeff. “And that's going to stop.”

  That surprised me. “My family?”

  “Yes.” She turned the monitor back towards her. “One Isabella Shepherd. She's your sister-in-law, isn’t she?”

  Shit, Izzy. “She is. What did she say?”

  “That the police haven't done enough to find out who poisoned her sister-in-law. And the object of her particular scorn is one Chief Detective in Charge of Serious Crimes, Mitchell Pearson who, when asked for his comments, said that we'd all be better off if junkies stopped blaming others for what they do to themselves.”

  Hate is a strong word. I felt a surge of it toward Pearson.

  “Your Honor, I—” said Jeff.

  Judge Gallon raised a hand. “Oh, there's more—quotes from the sister-in-law about the failure to stop the flood of heroin into Carrefour and from the detective about individual responsibility and hard choices and self-determination. Do I need to go on?”

  Three voices said, “No, Your Honor.”

  “One man’s life has been taken and another’s is at stake. I will not have it played out in a Hollywood tabloid, do you understand me?”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  Judge Gallon pointed at me again. “You will button up your family until this trial is over.”

  She turned to Jeff. “And you will button up all law enforcement witnesses. I know you don't have control over laypeople, but if you call a witness, I expect you to direct them not to comment until after the trial is over and to make sure that it happens.” We nodded.

  Finally, she turned and pointed at Lindsey. “As far as I can see, you’re the only one I'm not mad at. Don't make me start.”

  “Understood, Your Honor,” said Lindsey.

  “All right,” Judge Gallon said. She put her glasses back on and waved a hand. “We’ve delayed the jury long enough with this nonsense. Are you ready to go, Mr. Hanson?”

  “I am.”

  “Who do we have next?”

  “Ray Gerchuk, Your Honor.”

  “Nothing like an autopsy first thing in the morning. I hope they ate.”

  I cocked my head.

  “Usually doesn't sit well on a coffee stomach,” she said.

  I nodded and we went out into the courtroom to take the testimony of the Carrefour coroner, Ray Ge
rchuk.

  Ray Gerchuk’s testimony was even worse than I expected. He was taller and he was tanner than he had seemed in his office and his blonde-white hair had a distinguished surfer look to it that made him seem accessible and smart. He was congenial and charming and it made no sense that he was a coroner until he started talking about his qualifications—about how he went to undergrad at the University of Michigan and got his medical degree from Penn and served a tour in Afghanistan as a physician before coming back and diving into his true love of pathology and investigation—and then you got a clear sense of his intellectual curiosity and of his love of figuring out how things had happened to people. Ray was immensely talented—he’d investigated hundreds of cases that were unclear, had put together subtle physical evidence from victims’ bodies that led to arrests where the police were stymied, had solved mysteries where the police hadn’t even realized that there had been an intentional killing.

  This was not one of those cases.

  Ray Gerchuck, with a devastating mix of charm and respectful seriousness, took the jury through each and every one of Dillon Chase's fractures. He showed them how he knew that the skull had been fractured in seventeen places. After showing them a raw picture, he worked from a diagram that showed each crack and indentation in Dillon Chase’s head. He gave an elegantly simple explanation of what those fractures would do to a person's brain and why any one of them alone would likely be severe enough to kill a person. He described his eminently reasonable basis for thinking that the seventeen fractures were caused by six blows, linking five of them to Hank's fist or furniture, and candidly admitting that the last one might have been linked to the impact of Chase’s head smacking the tile floor but that he wasn’t certain.

  He showed the jury how both of Chase's arms had been broken, the right one at the humerus above the elbow and the ulna below, and the left one across both bones in the forearm. He opined that these were typical defensive injuries that happened when a person raised their hands to protect their head but the blows continued.

  He led the jury through the eight rib fractures, explaining that it wasn't clear whether this was done by a fist or an elbow or a boot but acknowledging that it was certainly possible that half of them had come, if an upcoming witness's testimony was to be believed, when the body of Dillon Chase had been lifted and slammed over Hank Braggi's knee. He showed the internal damage the slam had caused, how two of the ribs had punctured a lung, how the liver had been lacerated, and how Dillon Chase’s spleen had exploded in a way that you only saw when someone ran into a semi-truck at sixty miles an hour.

  After leading the jury through all of these injuries, Ray Gerchuck opined that the internal chest injuries probably happened after Dillon Chase was dead. He was able to tell this from the way the blood pooled and they didn't hemorrhage the way they should have if Dillon Chase had still been alive. And when he was done with the scientific explanation, he stopped using animated diagrams and switched to the external photos. He testified that the pictures of the bent and twisted arms were indeed accurate, that the solid wall of bruise on the ribs was consistent with what he had found, and that, even though the face was an unrecognizable pulp which made visual identification impossible, he had identified Dillon Chase from his dental records and fingerprints.

  It took all morning. When he was done, the jury looked nauseated. And angry.

  As Jeff sat down, Judge Gallon looked at the clock and then looked at me. “Mr. Shepherd, how long are you going to be?”

  It was 11:45.

  Lindsey leaned into me. “You cannot let this go into the afternoon.”

  “I don't have much, Your Honor,” I said. “I can finish with Dr. Gerchuk before lunch and let him get back to work.”

  I knew Ray well enough to know that he would typically crack a joke about his patients dying to see him or cooling their heels in the waiting room but, since it was a capital murder trial, he kept a straight face and simply nodded when Judge Gallon said, “Proceed then, Mr. Shepherd.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor. Dr. Gerchuk, you testified a little bit ago that Mr. Chase's broken arms were defensive injuries, correct?”

  “I did, Mr. Shepherd.”

  “The forearm injuries could have been offensive injuries as well, couldn't they?”

  Dr. Gerchuk thought for a moment. “They could have been. Defensive is more likely though.”

  “You examined Mr. Chase's hands and knuckles as well, didn't you?”

  “I did.”

  “His knuckles were scraped and torn, weren't they?”

  “They were.”

  “That’s consistent with an injury from striking someone, isn’t it?”

  “It is.”

  “You would agree with me that although there are other possible causes of the abrasions on his knuckles, striking someone is the most likely explanation, true?”

  “That’s true.”

  I pointed at the back of the prosecutions’ blow-ups. “Dr. Gerchuck, you and Mr. Hanson spent several hours going over the detail of Mr. Chase’s injuries this morning.”

  Ray nodded. “We did.”

  “Is it fair to assume that the skull fractures are the cause of death?”

  “It is.”

  “Could one of them alone have done it?”

  “Yes. But to kill him as quickly as it did, it was probably more than one.”

  “How many was enough? Three, four?”

  I wouldn’t normally ask an open-ended question like this of an opposing expert but I knew Ray would give the jury an objective opinion. He thought, then said, “Judging from my examination, I’d say any three of the fractures would have hemorrhaged his brain, causing his death.”

  “Three punches are all it would have taken?”

  “Or two,” said Dr. Gerchuck. “If one of the punches also caused Mr. Chase to hit his head on the floor or the wall.”

  “Let’s say three. Bam, Bam, Bam.” I hit my fist into my palm each time. It took about two seconds. “You’re saying that’s all it took?”

  “Most likely.”

  I nodded and moved to the next topic. “Dr. Gerchuk, when you're performing an examination, you can fingerprint the body, can’t you?”

  “I can. Usually, I do it in association with someone from the police department since they fingerprint more than I do.”

  “Sometimes it's done for identification purposes, right?”

  “It is.”

  “That fingerprinting was done in this case, wasn't it?”

  “It was.”

  “Was that done for identification purposes here?”

  “We had his ID and other witness testimony about who he was so it wasn't strictly necessary for identification. I assumed the police wanted it as part of their investigation.”

  Jeff stood. “Objection, Your Honor.”

  Judge Gallon nodded. “Please limit your thoughts to what you knew, Dr. Gerchuk.”

  “Sure, Your Honor,” said Dr. Gerchuck. “At the request of the police department, I assisted in taking Chase’s fingerprints.”

  “And you delivered those fingerprints to the police department, didn't you?”

  “I did.”

  “Immediately? Before your examination was complete?”

  Dr. Gerchuck nodded. “Yes, I gave them fingerprints before I had completed my report in case they needed them.”

  “And you were able to get good clear prints, weren’t you?”

  “I was.”

  “Sufficient to use for identification, correct?”

  “Assuming you had an accurate sample to match, yes.”

  “Now Doctor, as part of your examination you performed a toxicology study on Mr. Chase, didn't you?”

  “I did.”

  “And Doctor, so that the jury understands what we’re talking about, by toxicology we mean that you analyzed the level of certain drugs and alcohol in Mr. Chase's system, true?”

  “That's true.”

  “You tested for opiates?”
/>
  “I did.”

  “You tested for marijuana?”

  “Yes.”

  “Amphetamines?”

  “Yes.”

  “Heroin?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you tested for alcohol too, didn't you?”

  “I did.”

  “Doctor, I’m handing you what’s been marked as State’s Exhibit 52. That's a copy of your autopsy, correct?”

  Dr. Gerchuk flipped through the pages. “It is.”

  “And on page twelve, that’s a copy of your toxicology report, isn’t it?”

  “It is.”

  “Cyn, could you blow that up for the jury please.” The toxicology page of the autopsy went up on the big screen. “Doctor, you didn't have any significant findings on toxicology, did you?”

  “I did not.”

  “That means Mr. Chase didn't have any marijuana in his system, did he?”

  “He did not.”

  “He didn't have any alcohol in his system, did he?”

  “He did not.”

  “He did not have any heroin in his system, did he?”

  “He did not.”

  “He did not have any amphetamines or fentanyl or any other drug in his system that you were able to find, correct?”

  “That's true.”

  “In other words, he was sober in the hours leading up to his death, wasn’t he?”

  “He was.”

  “He was not under the influence of any drugs, medications, or alcohol which would have inhibited his judgment in any way, was he?”

  “He was not.”

  “So he would have known exactly what he was doing, wouldn't he?”

  Jeff stood. “Objection, Your Honor.”

  “Sustained.”

  “Let me put it another way, Dr. Gerchuk,” I said. “I want you to assume that people in the hotel suite that night were drinking alcohol or using drugs. Mr. Chase was not one of them, was he?”

  “Based on my testing, Mr. Chase did not drink alcohol or use drugs in the hours before his death.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Gerchuck. That's all I have, Your Honor.”

  “Redirect, Mr. Hanson?”