A Mother's Trial (45 page)

Ed had been eloquent at the enhancement hearing the month before. He had cited Priscilla’s impeccable record, the support of her many friends and family, and the possibility that the Syntex formula recall would affect the findings in her case. The board had voted unanimously not to enhance her sentence. It had been a victory, and it meant that Priscilla’s sentence could be as little as twenty months. And assuming good behavior, her maximum sentence would not exceed four years. Priscilla had no doubts concerning her behavior, but she was beginning to acknowledge that her time would not be easy, that it would not be simple to avoid trouble.

Problems began, in fact, as soon as she moved from the reception center to Harrison Cottage on Campus. Harrison was known as a rough cottage, and because it was the last cottage on Campus, its inhabitants had the longest walk to meals or to the canteen or the pool, and this was to prove significant.

All the newcomers to Campus passed through an initial period of double-bunking before receiving their own rooms. Priscilla achieved single-room status sooner than most because an inmate moved suddenly to Wilson—the prerelease cottage—freeing her room for Priscilla. Hers was one of the nicest rooms on Harrison B, with extensive wood paneling. But by the time Priscilla moved in, someone had deliberately gouged long scratches in the wood. It foreshadowed Priscilla’s reception at the cottage and on Campus.

It was only later that Priscilla realized she was being set up for persecution. Priscilla’s assignment to work as a clerk for Mr. Williams, the counselor at Harrison, required her to order housekeeping and office supplies for the whole unit. She was responsible for picking up the supplies from the warehouse and bringing them to the cottage. But before she could turn the supplies over to the cottage staff, the inmates clustered around her, taking whatever they wanted from the boxes. She soon understood that the cottage inmates were hoarding the supplies; then they would come to her for more. It was nothing more than stealing; within a few weeks, they were taking things directly from the office, daring her to stop them. The code she was fast learning required Priscilla’s silence, if not her cooperation. But one day a girl reached into the box containing Mr. Williams’s own supplies.

“No,” Priscilla told her in exasperation. “That box is for Mr. Williams. Take it from this one.”

The girl snarled back at her. It had been the opportunity, Priscilla discovered later, that this inmate had sought. From that time on, she was Priscilla’s personal persecutor, taunting her with shouts of “Baby killer!” Others tormented Priscilla, too. Once a group of women called Priscilla over.

“You’re Priscilla, the baby killer, right?” asked one conversationally.

“That’s my name, but I’m no baby killer.”

“Well, no killer is fit to use that name, so don’t let me hear you use it again.”

“It’s my given name, and I’m going to use it,” Priscilla snapped in return, and she walked away, her back tight against the abuse the group hurled at her. At least they had not offered physical abuse, as they had to Kathy. Priscilla was thankful for that, and for her friends on Campus and in her cottage who warned her and tried to protect her.

“Don’t go in the pool without some of us being around,” they told Priscilla. “We’ve heard people talk about trying to drown you.”

“I’m a good swimmer,” Priscilla insisted.

“Yeah, but you haven’t heard about what’s going on around here. Somebody threw shit in a child abuser’s room a while ago, and there’s all kinds of wild rumors about you. One girl said your husband had been killed in Vietnam and you had adopted Korean kids and killed them just to get revenge.”

Priscilla laughed. “Oh, come on!”

“Really! And there’s another one that you’re really a man and had a sex-change operation and you murdered the kids because they weren’t yours!”

Priscilla tried to ignore the abuse, even after mud was thrown through her window, but her problems came to a head shortly before she left for her bail hearing.

The first week in November brought early darkness to the prison grounds. One night after dinner, Priscilla delayed returning to Harrison because she wanted to talk to a friend. When she was ready to leave, she found her usual group of companions had left, and she began to worry about whether she should walk back alone. Finally, dressed in a light windbreaker, she started off, her muscles bunched against the fall chill and the threat of darkness.

They were waiting for her. A group of girls appeared suddenly and fell in behind her.

“There’s the one who killed that Korean kid! Let’s get her!”

Priscilla’s blood stopped dead in her veins. She peered ahead and made out two dim figures. She rushed up. They were from Harrison and she knew them slightly: one was a huge black woman, the other a thin little white girl.

“Please, can I walk with you?” Priscilla was trembling.

“Why, sure, girl. You come right on.” The black woman pulled her between them. Behind them, the others were still following, taunting.

“Dirty kid killer!”

“You deserve to die!”

“Wait till we catch you alone, baby killer!” Without warning, they were right behind Priscilla.

“How’s that feel?”

It was burning her and Priscilla screamed. Then they were all throwing it at her. The boiling coffee drenched her shoulders and back, the heat slicing through her thin jacket. Some of the liquid flecked the black woman and she turned on the pursuers in fury.

“You burned me, too, you bitches! Get outta here!” she screamed. And in a moment the others were gone, shrieking with laughter.

Priscilla was sobbing as they led her to the cottage. She ran to her room and collapsed on her bed. Soon her friends began gathering.

“It's so ugly. Where does all this ugliness come from?” Priscilla cried. Somebody told the officer on duty and he summoned Priscilla.

“You know who they are?”

She nodded.

“Want me to lock them up?”

Priscilla recoiled in horror. It was the worst thing she could do.

“No, no,” she said. She knew she would soon be leaving for her court appearance; it was only a matter of surviving the next few days. And she was fortunate, as it happened, because the ringleader behind the incident had a court date herself that week, and she never returned to CIW.

The Air Security return flight to Marin County was only slightly more palatable than before. Priscilla was the sole woman on the flight; even the guards were men. She could have demanded the presence of a matron or refused to go, but she would only have hurt herself, and so she said nothing. At Visalia she was again placed in a filthy call, but at least she was alone. With the bizarre logic she now saw as routine in the prison system, the officers at Visalia agreed as a special dispensation to allow Priscilla to keep her book, but they insisted she remove her contact lenses so she could not read it. At Gnoss Field, they handcuffed her hands tightly behind her back, and after a few minutes she was in such pain she thought she would cry. The Marin County jailers released her from the cuffs but they had no clothes that would fit her. The jeans were not even close to her size, and the sweatshirt they gave her to wear was so stretched she was embarrassed to appear in it. Still, she was back in Marin County. She was home.

The next day the courtroom at the Civic Center that had been selected for the bail hearing was filled with Priscilla’s supporters. Some clients were there, the Doudiets, and Dr. Satten. Pat Wrigley had driven over from Vallejo. She and Harry and their two older children had taken a trip to southern California the previous weekend and had dropped by CIW unexpectedly to see if they could visit Priscilla. She wondered how quickly the officials would have denied visiting privileges had they realized the Wrigleys were Mindy’s new parents.

Today’s bail hearing afforded Priscilla her first glimpse of Jonathan Purver, her new appellate attorney. Ed had felt he should not handle the appeal for the new trial himself, that he was too close to see the issues clearly any more. In any case, financial expediency had finally forced Priscilla to request a court-appointed lawyer. They had been lucky with Jon Purver, Ed assured her. He was a respected appellate lawyer with considerable experience and some good results. He was studying the four-thousand-page transcript for grounds upon which to appeal.

“You look terrific, Priscilla! You look like you’ve lost some weight and I like that new hairstyle—it’s softer somehow,” Ed told her.

“I guess prison agrees with me,” Priscilla tried a feeble joke. Around her, her friends laughed. Only Steve looked grim. Priscilla knew how he felt, how much this meant to him. She could not think beyond the plane ride: if she had to go back in that smelly plane, she didn’t know if she could bear it.

The bail hearing was short. Josh Thomas appeared and spoke passionately against granting bail pending appeal. He drew attention to all of Priscilla’s supporters in court.

“She thinks she’s some kind of modern Marin Joan of Arc and a victim of circumstances,” he said scathingly, gesturing around him. “No one who believes her guilty can doubt she is a threat to the community.”

Ed Caldwell had prepared the application for release pending appeal: a bound document the size of the Marin County phone book. Now he argued that if denied this release, Priscilla would undoubtedly be eligible for parole before the appeal could be decided.

“In effect, Your Honor, this would deny Mrs. Phillips the right to appeal. In addition, there is new evidence that may find that the formula consumed by Tia and Mindy Phillips was improperly prepared by the manufacturer and not spiked by the defendant.”

“Mr. Thomas?” Judge Burke turned to the district attorney.

“While it is true that some of the formula has been recalled by the manufacturer, as Counsel well knows—or should have found out—the lowered chloride content was not instituted until after Mindy’s formula was contaminated,” Josh Thomas argued in rebuttal. [Although early reports indicated that the defective formula had been manufactured solely between March 1978, and August 1979, more recent data suggest that the formula may have lacked sufficient chloride as early as 1968. Syntex resumed sales of Cho-free and Neo-Mull-Soy in January 1980, with the chloride deficiency corrected. A class action suit against Syntex is currently in litigation.]

When both prosecution and defense had finished their arguments, Judge Burke paused for a moment and the courtroom stilled. Then he rendered his decision. He began by recounting some of the testimony that he said proved Priscilla Phillips had repeatedly poisoned her two daughters.

“However,” he noted, “there are no infants presently in the Phillips household. Mrs. Phillips has always manifested strong family and community ties, so I cannot believe she is a threat to flee. I have read and strongly relied on a report submitted by the psychiatrist at the California Institution for Women, Dr. Roh. As did many of the psychiatric experts who testified in the trial, Dr. Roh found no evidence of mental illness in Mrs. Phillips.

“Furthermore, as to the grounds for the appeal, this was a very complex case. I feel the issues are without merit. The jury verdict was sound. But I cannot say the appeal is frivolous. The points raised are seriously argued—they are not simply for purposes of delay. And they are debatable.

“In the light of these circumstances, I cannot say that she represents at this time a potential danger to society. For that reason I’m going to admit her to bail. Bail is fixed at five thousand dollars. The defendant is remanded to the custody of the sheriff while bail is rendered.”

Priscilla burst into tears. All about her, people leaned and hugged, surrounding her. Ed’s face split in a monstrous grin. The bail was a token only. They had all expected a much higher bail—perhaps a hundred thousand dollars or more—if the judge agreed to release her at all. It was a demonstration of such leniency in the face of what Priscilla had considered extreme severity at the time of her sentence, that Priscilla was shocked almost into speechlessness.

Within an hour, Priscilla was released. Jim Doudiet put up five hundred dollars and a bondsman the balance. Cyndy Hamilton offered her house as collateral for the bondsman. “We’ll get lunch—”

“Yeah, McDonald’s—”

“Right, and meet you at the house,” said Steve. “It's gonna be the biggest damn party Terra Linda's ever seen! C’mon, Pris, let’s get the boys. The principal will let them out early!” Later that afternoon, Priscilla called CIW. “I’m out! I’m out!” she cried over and over as her friends came on the line.

That evening, Steve sat comfortably in the family room with his arm around Priscilla.

“How do you feel now, honey?” he asked.

“Like I’m human again,” she said. “After five months, I’m a person.”

Steve stroked her shoulder and neck, his fingers soft on the scars of her old burn.

“You’re never gonna go back there, Pris. I can sense it. We’ve turned the corner,” he said.

5

Steve shifted slightly, so weak that the movement required an effort of will equal to any he had ever been called upon to make. He opened his small brown eyes beneath their straggly black brows and tried to focus. There was nothing to attract his attention beyond the limp tubing of the IV and the peaks of white sheet stiff beneath his chin.

Then Priscilla was there, smiling down at him.

“Are you feeling any better?” she asked. He made an attempt at an answering smile.

“Now that they know what it is,” he whispered. Then he closed his eyes. He still might die. He was dangerously ill, Dr. Werschky had told him.

“You’re in here for a month, kiddo, on an IV with a constant drip of antibiotic right to the bloodstream. That’s thirty days and you don’t get out a day sooner,” Werschky had said.

Steve had accepted this without argument. He was conscious mainly of a feeling of relief. He had started feeling lousy within two weeks of Priscilla’s release on bail, the beginning of December. He could put the pieces together now that he knew what was wrong.

But for a long time no one had suspected the cause of his worsening health. Steve had attributed it to heavy smoking, poor eating habits, and worry. When his condition deteriorated, everyone assumed he had the flu. So did he. In any case, there were too many other things to worry about after Priscilla was released on bail. Finances continued to be a chronic problem. Priscilla had realized immediately that she needed to find work, but she did not want to leave the boys so soon after her return. And she worried about what sort of job might be available because everyone knew who she was. Problems and tensions continued.