Shadow of Power (23 page)

“Yeah, I’d bet that’s the kind of optimistic thinking Tuchio would have laid on them,” says Harry. “With that thought you’re bound to be able to stick your foghorn in somebody’s ear in Washington.”

“The question is, what exactly did the Justice Department tell Tuchio? How much rope did they give him? How firmly does he have Henoch in hand?”

M
onday morning Harry and I hook up at the same corner where we’d parted company Friday afternoon, two blocks from the courthouse. We may be dressed in Armani and wearing cordovan loafers, but inside is that age-old feeling you had in the fifth grade on the way to school when you knew your homework wasn’t done. We are no closer to spinning a defense than we were a month ago.

Outside on the street in front of the courthouse, the crescendo has quieted considerably. The helmeted riot squad is now down to a handful, bracing themselves against their scuffed acrylic shields like farmers leaning on hoes while they talk.

The mob carnival, what’s left of it, is not even a shadow of the beast from the first day. There are a few signs, one small group, maybe twelve or fifteen, walking in a circle chanting some mumbled mantra—St. Apathy’s Order of Indifferent Monks. A few teenagers in baggy pants, their belts down at knee level, are laughing and cavorting, gangsta wannabes, jumping from the steps trying to get on camera. In front of them with their backs to the kids, a line of reporters like victims at a firing squad stand erect, talking into an opposing line of cameras.

It is difficult to sustain the fighting morale of a fevered following when the bone over which you’re snarling turns into cerebral, scientific evidence. Still, Harry and I know that the armies of Hannibal and the
Carthaginians will be back, and in full war paint, just as soon as they hear that a jury is about to boot the ball through somebody’s goalpost.

Tuchio brings on the medical examiner, Dr. Dwight James. The courtroom is filled to overflowing. Judge Quinn warns family members and friends of the victim that they may wish to leave the room, for there will be lurid descriptions and graphic images.

Here things get much worse, for the reason that the M.E. brings along his own set of photos, pictures from the autopsy he performed on Scarborough at the morgue.

While Harry and I fought tooth and nail to keep most of these out, at some point the judge threw up his hands and admonished us once more that after all there was a crime and it involved a dead body.

The problem with many autopsy pictures is that, depending on the case, they can be much more graphic than shots taken at the scene. As they look at the photos on the overhead, I can tell that some of the jurors are having a hard time reconciling these with the person they saw beaming at them from the back of Scarborough’s book during Tuchio’s opening statement.

In the first shot, Scarborough is lying on the slab faceup. The blood from the wounds has been washed away, so that the lifeless complexion of his face is the white pallor of bleached paper. His mouth yawns, dragged open by the dropped chin that seems to hang slack as if it were not attached to the upper part of his head. All resemblance to the living form is gone.

The photos go downhill from there, shots of the scalp severed from the rear of the head and dropped like a flap over the victim’s face so that the M.E. can better examine the wounds.

The pictures are hideous enough that many of the jurors avert their eyes, so that when I look over again, they are staring at Carl. Arnsberg has not been able, since Dr. James began, to even look at the screen. Instead his gaze is fixed on his hands, clasped and resting on the table in front of him. His head and upper body are swaying back and forth as if he were in a rocking chair. Were he the subject of a van Gogh painting, you might title the image
Man Teetering on the Edge.

According to Dr. James’s testimony, his examination revealed seventeen separate stab wounds to the back of the head, neck, and top of the cranial area of the victim. Each of these involved a double set of puncture wounds, one from each of the two claws of the hammer head.

The medical examiner testifies that Scarborough was rendered unconscious by the first blow, the only merciful thing, it seems, the witness has to say.

There are sounds of sobbing coming from out in the audience. Quinn raises his gavel, about to silence it, when he realizes it is coming from Scarborough’s sister, seated in the second row. Instead the judge motions with the gavel to one of the deputies. A moment later she is ushered to the door, the deputy with one hand on her arm, the other over her shoulder to steady her.

Dr. James picks up where he left off. Based on the autopsy, the witness believes that the first blow was administered to the right side of the victim’s head just below the temporal lobe and below and behind the right ear. Here the hammer’s claws penetrated both bone and tissue to a depth of more than three inches. It may not sound like much, but according to the witness the angle of entry and the location allowed the sharp metal claws to reach the victim’s brain stem, the medulla oblongata, where the spinal column joins the base of the brain.

“From that instant,” says James, “the victim was unconscious and his body was paralyzed.” He asserts that this and the element of total surprise account for the complete absence of any defensive wounds on the hands or arms of the victim. He simply never had a chance to turn and defend himself.

“Was this a mortal wound?” asks Tuchio.

“For all intents and purposes, it was. Within minutes a victim suffering this type of wound would die, since the medulla, the brain stem, controls vital functions such as respiration and heart rate.”

Tuchio then has the witness take the jury on a tour of the rest of the wounds, almost every one of which would have been fatal, as all but two of these punctured the skull and entered the brain at various locations.

According to the wound patterns, it is Dr. James’s opinion that the assailant, who approached the victim from behind, was right-handed and that he used two hands to wield the hammer for maximum force.
This latter conclusion is based upon the torque, or twisting action, evident in the claw wounds as they penetrated the skull. As the doctor puts it, “This was the kind of torque you might see on the head of a golf club from the over-and-under grip on the club’s handle as it turned through the arc of a swing.”

“Could you tell,” asks Tuchio, “whether these separate blows—I think you said seventeen in all—”

“That’s correct.”

“Were they administered slowly over a period of, say, many seconds or minutes, or were they done quickly, in rapid succession?”

“No. No. In my opinion they were administered in rapid succession, in the time it would take to remove the claws from the previous wound, extend the arms fully for the next blow, and swing. The only thing that might slow the assailant down was if the claws got hung up or if the assailant was forced to stop from sheer physical fatigue.”

According to the witness, it was the latter, fatigue, that finally ended the attack. The killer simply became too exhausted to continue.

“Dr. James, can you tell the jury, is there a word or a term for this kind of attack?”

“There is.”

“And what is that word?”

“It’s called ‘rage.’ Sometimes the term ‘rage killing’ is applied.”

“Why is that?”

“Because of the frenzied nature of the attack and the fact that the evident emotional and physical energy expended is far more than anything reasonably necessary to deliver a mortal wound or to achieve the objective of simply killing the victim. The attack in a case of rage reveals a desire on the part of the assailant to destroy the victim, to erase him from existence, not simply kill him.”

As the witness says this, Tuchio is looking at Carl, as if to focus the jury’s attention on the defendant. I can tell by the satisfied expression on his face that the prosecutor has already measured how he can use all this in his closing argument.

“Doctor, is it safe to assume that there could be any number of emotional triggers that might bring on a rage killing?”

“There are.”

“Can you give us some examples?”

“A frustrated romantic liaison, a jealous lover. It could be based on a long-standing feud between the assailant and the victim, something that may have gone on for years seething under the surface.”

“In your experience, in the cases that you’ve seen or studied, would a rage killing require that the victim know his assailant?”

“No.”

“So as far as the victim is concerned, the killer could be a complete stranger, somebody that he or she doesn’t even know?”

“Yes. I’ve seen cases.”

“Could such a rage killing be predicated on or brought on by perceived differences in social or political views between the assailant—”

“Objection, Your Honor.” I’m up out of my chair.

“—and the victim?” Tuchio finishes the question.

“May we approach?” I ask the judge.

Tuchio and I are at the bench off to the side, the court reporter huddling right next to us with the stenograph machine, taking it all down.

“This is beyond the scope of the witness’s expertise,” I argue. “He is not a psychiatrist or a clinical psychologist. And besides lacking the expertise, he has never examined or even talked to my client.”

“Jeez, Your Honor, I’ve not mentioned the defendant’s name,” says Tuchio. “It’s a simple hypothetical question, put to an expert. The witness should be allowed to testify as to whether he has seen or observed such cases, within his own experience or from scientific journals in his field: Can a rage killing be triggered by political or social disagreement? Simple question,” says Tuchio.

Quinn thinks about it for a second or two. “Reframe the question,” he says.

I start to argue.

The judge puts his hand up and sends us back.

Tuchio restates the question and mentions the words “scientific journals” in the field of pathology, the ticket to passage for an inferred head job by the county coroner on Carl and his presumed motive for murder.

The question isn’t even finished, and James is leaning so far forward in his chair he nearly falls out of it before he can answer. “Yes, there are documented cases involving political and social triggers for rage
killings. I have personally been involved in cases involving homophobia and racial hatred. Based on studies in pathology journals, acts of genocide—often in times of war, but not always—have been documented to involve rage killings almost by definition. Any form of deep-seated emotional and oftentimes utterly irrational hostility can form the basis for such a killing.”

“Thank you.”

For a second I think Tuchio is done with the witness. Then he stops. “There’s one more issue I’d like to cover.”

Quinn wants to know how long this is going to take. The judge is looking at his watch, wondering if we should break for lunch.

“Five minutes,” says Tuchio.

“Keep it short,” says Quinn.

“Dr. James, when you arrived at the scene, the hotel room, I assume that you attended the body at the scene?”

“I did.”

“When you arrived there, where was the victim’s body situated?”

“On the floor in the living room,” says James.

“On the floor, not in the chair?”

“That’s correct.”

“Could you tell how long the body had been there, in that position, on the floor?”

“No.”

“But you testified earlier that the initial attack on the victim had taken place when the victim was seated in the chair, is that correct?”

“That’s right, judging from the position of the body on the floor at the base of the chair, the location of wounds, and the blood evidence at the scene.”

“So based on your testimony, can we assume that at some point after the initial attack the victim was either pushed or fell from the chair onto the floor?”

“I doubt if he was pushed from the chair. Or if he was, it was with a minimal amount of force.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because of the position in which the victim came to rest on the floor. The upper part of his legs and the anterior midsection of his body, the
area at his midsection in the front, were actually elevated just off the floor, and the body was twisted. That was because the lower part of his body, his feet and lower legs, were wedged against the front of the heavy chair when his head, shoulders, and upper body hit the floor. If someone had pushed him forcefully out of the chair, it’s my opinion that he would have landed clear of the chair in a prone or more-prone position on the floor.”

“So is it more likely, in your opinion, that the victim wasn’t pushed but that he fell from the chair onto the floor?”

“Probably. I would say so. At some point, from whatever force, I believe that he tilted forward and fell.”

“And would this necessarily have occurred—the victim falling from the chair, I mean—either during or immediately following the assault?”

“Not necessarily.”

“But you said earlier, did you not, that the victim was unconscious, paralyzed, and that he died almost instantly or within a very short period of time following the initial blow from the hammer?”

“That’s correct.”

“So how is it possible that he could have fallen from the chair later?” says Tuchio.

“Lividity,” says the witness.

James explains that after death unclotted blood in the upper extremities of the body begins to move, due to gravitational forces, toward the lower portions of the body. For example, a body that is leaning at the edge of a bed at death can actually be tumbled or rolled by the gradual force of lividity so that it ends up on the floor.

“Just as the victim here ended up on the floor?” Tuchio’s leaning toward the witness, urging him on.

“It’s possible. If the victim here were leaning slightly forward and his weight were stabilized at the time of death, held up or balanced by, say, the arm or the side of the chair. In this case the right side of the chair, since he fell to that side. Then lividity as the blood settled—in this case toward the anterior or front of the chest and stomach, since he would be leaning slightly forward—might very easily cause the body to topple forward out of the chair.”

“Would this explain the awkward position on the floor in which the body was found?” asks Tuchio.

“It could.”

“Could this happen as soon as, say, four or five minutes following death?”

The science may be garbage, but I can see where Tuchio is going with this, backfilling one of the holes in his case.