A Silence of Mockingbirds

by Karen Spears Zacharias

“Cause she wanted to see her and she wanted to say goodnight, goodnight to her and so we walked in there. She was laying there and Sarah ran over to her. She didn’t look right. We took the blanket away and she was not breathing. I put my hand right here and she was not breathing. And I don’t even remember who called 911.”

  “So tell me about this injury to her eye,” Harvey said. “It looked swollen to the officers.”

  “Ha! It’s beyond swollen,” Shawn said. “It’s swollen shut.” Shawn said it was allergies, aggravated by Karly rubbing it, poking it. “She had that damn finger up there and she wouldn’t stop it.”

  Detective Harvey repeatedly asked Shawn what happened that day.

  Shawn repeated the story that Karly had allergies. That she was given a little bit of Benadryl. That he put her down for a nap and Sarah found her dead. He offered no explanation for how she ended up dead, other than that he didn’t do it.

  He told Detective Harvey he had been taking the photos to protect Karly, to prove David was abusing her. Shawn said Sarah had been on edge after suffering her second miscarriage, something no one knew about except Shawn and Sarah. Shawn said Sarah had sent him to get her a prescription for Vicodin. Vicodin and Percocet were Sarah’s drugs of choice according to her medical charts, and Shawn said she had “drawers full of it.”

  “There were only two adults in this household, and there’s no way that those bruises on Karly’s forehead would just appear,” Detective Harvey said. “So did Sarah do this? Did she snap, did she just do it by accident? What happened?”

  “I haven’t ever seen Sarah get mad,” Shawn said. “I’ve seen her get frustrated and just, you know, she always told me, ‘I don’t know how to discipline Karly.’ She would tell me this all the time. And then she’d compliment me, ‘You’re so good with Kate.’”

  Harvey asked Shawn if he would have anything to add if he knew Sarah was across the street with other detectives, talking about Shawn.

  “I don’t know what she would ever say about me. I haven’t done anything. I have never laid a hand on her, nothing,” Shawn whined.

  “Karly basically dies in your care,” Harvey noted. “Something happened at your house, Shawn—it happened there. She’s beaten and she dies in your home.”

  Repeatedly, during that first interview and subsequent ones, Detective Harvey offered Shawn an opportunity to explain who killed Karly. If not him, then who?

  Only once has Shawn implicated someone else. Investigator John Chilcote asked him, “Who hit Karly with the spoons and gave her the bruises if you didn’t?”

  “I guess Sarah did it. She did it,” Shawn said. “It’s hard for me to believe that Sarah would hit Karly, but I guess Sarah did.”

  Karly’s head injuries were such that she died within a couple of hours of sustaining them. That’s what the experts, Dr. Chervenak and Dr. Lewman, told the jurors. Dr. Larry Lewman, Oregon State Medical Examiner’s Office, performed the autopsy on Karly, but it was Dr. Carol Chervenak’s straight-talk explanation of Lewman’s findings that pulled it all together for the jurors and finally gave them the factual information they needed.

  Her own explanation was aided by the Poser Model, a three-dimensional graphic of Karly revealing all of the abrasions on her body, from the bottoms of her feet to the top of her head. The computer-generated graphic allowed the jurors to study the areas in question with objectivity, a sorely needed component in a trial fraught with anger, frustration, boredom, and despair.

  Oregon Law states any child abuse case will be handled in a multidisciplinary way; in other words, it will be staffed by police, child protective workers, and child abuse experts. Dr. Chervenak was the expert Matt Stark called when Karly was first referred for potential child abuse to the state’s child protective services.

  Karly was never seen by Dr. Carol Chervenak, the medical director of the ABC House. The photos of the injuries Karly sustained in December 2004 were never forwarded to Dr. Chervenak. That was Matt Stark’s responsibility, but those photos, provided by David Sheehan, were reportedly lost or stolen, and DHS investigators never asked for replacements.

  A computer graphic of Karly’s injuries helped get Shawn Field convicted, but had Chervenak been provided with the same photos in 2004, photos that DHS had in their possession, Karly would probably be alive today. Well trained in all areas of child abuse, Dr. Chervenak would never have assumed Karly was injuring herself, and she would have known someone was tormenting and abusing the child. She told the jurors that had she seen the photos David provided, she would have immediately identified the cause as child abuse.

  In her nine years as Medical Director of the ABC House, Chervenak said she had personally examined over 1,500 children and had testified in over 200 cases of child abuse. She attended the autopsy of Karla Isabelle Ruth Sheehan on June 5, 2005.

  Using a pointer, Dr. Chervenak highlighted Karly’s injuries on the graphic.

  In addition to the ruptured eye and bruising on her head, there were also bruises on her arms, both where the arm bends and on the exterior surface. Her lip was cut in two places. She had bruises on her calves and her groin, and her feet were badly bruised all over: tops, bottoms, sides, and the middle of both feet.

  “Once the head was shaved, more bruising was seen covering the scalp—and actually, during the autopsy, underneath, inside of the scalp, additional bruising was evident that you could not see on the skin,” Dr. Chervenak said.

  Demarest asked the doctor to explain how that happens.

  “When there is blunt force contact to the scalp there is bruising inside the scalp, but the blood has not had a chance to migrate to the surface of the scalp so it’s not seen on the surface, but during the autopsy.”

  Child abuse experts look for patterns. Dr. Chervenak found a pattern in the bruising on Karly’s back.

  “There were four bruises together, similar in size.”

  “What’s the significance of that pattern?” Demarest asked.

  “That pattern has been documented in child abuse textbooks and is consistent with an adult’s fist: the knuckles of a fist,” she explained.

  “Is there any significance to the bruises on the underside of the arms?” Demarest asked.

  “It’s a location that is unusual to have accidentally injured,” Chervenak said. “These are commonly known as protective wounds. They come from a person who puts up their arms when they’re attacked. Particularly, children will get into a defensive posture, almost a fetal position.”

  Demarest scanned the graphic so jurors could see Karly had bruises on her ears. Pointing to them, Chervenak said, “Ears are very, very rarely accidentally bruised. Less than half of one percent of the time in children this age.”

  And then there was the eye.

  “The redness in the white part of the eye indicates that there was very, very dense bleeding into the whites of the eye on the left,” she said.

  Chervenak told the jury children Karly’s age rarely participate in self-injurious behavior. That was something more common to adolescents, not toddlers. “There’s no way Karly could have done these things to herself,” Chervenak said.

  “What caused Karly Sheehan’s death?” Demarest asked.

  “Traumatic brain injury,” Dr. Chervernak said.

  The most damning evidence against Shawn Field came from his very own camera. He had told Detective Harvey he took photos of Karly’s injuries. He’d even told Detective Harvey where to find the camera. There were two very telling photos, one taken at 7:57 p.m. on Thursday, June 2, 2005.

  In the photos, Karly has a bruise on her forehead and another around her left eye. Her eyes are watery, no doubt the result of tears. Even so, she’s trying to smile. The next photo is dated at 1:21 p.m. on June 3, 2005. It is the last photo of Karly alive. It was taken minutes prior to Sarah arriving home. Karly’s left eye is swollen shut. There’s a sheen to the skin, created by the cortisone Shawn told Detective Harvey he’d been applying. Karly’s head is turned toward the camera
, over her left shoulder. She has a painful smile on her face, as if her abuser told her to smile.

  The reason that photo is so critical is because Karly was alive in it. Demarest showed the photo to Dr. Chervenak, who explained that Karly’s death had to have happened sometime between when Shawn took that last photo at 1:22 p.m. and 2 p.m., when Sarah found her daughter dead. Dr. Chervenak explained that the fatal injury could not have occurred prior to that last photo being taken because in the photo Karly is conscious: she is responsive, she is making eye contact, she is upright, she is holding something, and she is responding emotionally. The sort of fatal injury that caused Karly’s death would likely cause a child to be immediately unconscious.

  “Can you tell how long Karly survived after the injury that caused her death?” Demarest asked.

  “She had a short survival time after that fatal injury. Even if I didn’t have that picture to look at, it would be clear that it was at least less than two hours,” Chervenak said.

  “Could striking a three-and-a-half-year-old who is 30 pounds, 38 inches tall with spoons have caused the fatal injury?” Demarest asked.

  “Yes,” Dr. Chervenak said, “if those were directed at her head with enough force. What happens is, when an impact hits the head, the head starts in motion and at some point, it stops. It either stops because it hits the chest or the child’s back, or the head hits a floor, or some other object that’s in the room, and it stops abruptly. All it takes is enough force generated and the head moves rapidly and stops rapidly, and the energy from the force that hits the head goes into the brain, and causes all that shearing and all that damage.”

  It was Defense Attorney Dan Koenig who asked the question that gave Chervenak the opportunity to make it clear for the jurors why they should find Shawn W. Field guilty.

  “Did you observe any damage to the brain itself?” Koenig asked on cross-examination. Chervenak was at the autopsy, but she is not a pathologist. The lawyer was aiming to trip her up.

  “No. And that’s why we know she had a short survival time.”

  Karly did not experience massive brain swelling, a natural result of head trauma, because she didn’t live long enough for her system to respond to the trauma, Chervenak explained.

  “So there was no cellular damage to the brain that you observed?” Koenig asked. The very question implied Chervenak lacked expertise.

  “That’s right,” she answered with confidence. “And no one would observe that, because Karly did not live long enough for that damage— and this is where it gets very, very confusing, and that’s exactly why we know she had a short survival time, because a person has to live two hours to develop those cellular changes that we see on pathology. It’s a vital reaction. And she did not die of massive brain swelling, either, so we know she did not have delayed deterioration. We know that her fatal injury occurred and she died shortly thereafter.”

  When Dr. Chervenak spoke with clarity about Karly’s injuries and the time sequence in which her death had occurred, it was the evidence the jurors needed to convict Shawn Field, without a doubt, for the murder of Karly Sheehan.

  “It was excellent, clear testimony,” said a juror. “Looking at the pictures, it was a clear case of obvious abuse.”

  The evidence to convict Shawn Field, those photos, had been provided by the defendant himself. “The timeline was so specific there was only one person who could have killed Karly, and he was taking the pictures,” said a juror.

  Chapter Forty-One

  At 10:13 a.m. on October 31, 2006, minutes after Dr. Chervenak stepped down from the witness box for the final time, Joan Demarest announced, “The State rests, Your Honor.”

  “Counsel for the defense, you may call your first witness,” Judge Holcomb said.

  “The Defense rests, Your Honor,” Dan Koenig said. His voice steady and certain.

  A stunned silence followed Koenig’s announcement. No one had expected the defense to put Shawn Field on the stand, but to rest without having offered one bit of evidence to the contrary?

  Just the day before, expert witnesses for the defense were milling around the hallway outside Courtroom Number Two of the Benton County Courthouse, waiting for their turn to offer testimony that would help persuade the jury that Shawn Field was innocent of this murder.

  It was a bold, cocky move, a strategy intended to convey to the jury that the defense didn’t think the state had done its job; they had not proven Shawn Field guilty. The defense was banking that the jury would agree on that.

  “I was totally shocked,” Joan Demarest said. “It’s not uncommon for the defense to lead everyone on like that and then ‘Surprise!’ Sometimes it’s the only strategy they have. But I didn’t really expect it in this case. I thought they would have offered some expert testimony regarding their theory of Karly dying from previously inflicted injuries.”

  Perhaps, Demarest reasoned, the testimony offered by Dr. Chervenak was too strong to dispute. “I don’t know if they just gave up or what. They had made so many promises about the evidence they were going to put on. So I was absolutely shocked.”

  Judge Holcomb, however, was not. “The defense is not required to put on a case, and in a lot of cases, they don’t,” she said.

  Judge Holcomb turned toward the jurors. “Members of the jury, that concludes the testimony in the case. It’s now time for lawyers to make their closing arguments. Ms. Demarest, you may address the court, the jury.”

  Discombobulated by the defense’s move, Demarest wasn’t yet ready with her closing arguments. She needed a few moments to gather her thoughts. She asked the judge for a brief recess. Demarest was hoping for two hours; Judge Holcomb gave her twenty minutes.

  After the recess, but before the jury was brought back, Dan Koenig asked Judge Holcomb to dismiss all twenty-three counts against Shawn Field, from aggravated murder to torture, to the last two counts of growing the marijuana Shawn had been so panicked about hiding.

  “We ask for a judgment of acquittal due to a lack of evidence,” Koenig said, going through each count, one by one.

  Judge Holcomb denied his repeated requests. The jury was brought back and seated around ten o’clock that last day of October, 2006. For the next hour they would listen and take notes as Joan Demarest, her voice sometimes thick with emotion, presented her closing arguments.

  “You have heard a lot about what kind of child Karly Sheehan was, about how she touched a lot of people’s lives,” Demarest began. “She liked to play princess until the defendant entered her life. Toward the end of her life, Karly told her daddy she didn’t think she was a princess anymore.”

  That was because as soon as Shawn Field entered her life, a marked change came over Karly, Demarest said. “She stopped wanting to spend time with her mother because when she was with her mother, Karly was exposed to the defendant.”

  Demarest continued, detailing the ways in which Sarah Sheehan was manipulated by Shawn Field. “She was freshly single, a single mom, who was desperate for approval, desperate for a successful relationship,” Demarest said.

  Sarah was neither newly single nor a single mother, given that David did the bulk of parenting, but the point Demarest was trying to make was that Shawn preyed upon the unwitting Sarah. “The defendant trained Sarah Sheehan not to question him,” Demarest said.

  But, the prosecutor added, it’s your job as jurors to do just that: to question Shawn Field and judge his intent.

  “It’s one of your toughest roles as jurors, because a number of the charges you are considering require proof of intent, and there’s no magical tool that allows you to see into someone’s mind to determine intent. You have to determine intent by the evidence of the crime,” Demarest explained.

  Then, in order to emphasize the evidence one last time, Demarest put up the poster-sized photos of those pictures of Karly taken on Shawn’s camera.

  “What evidence showed you is that even after Karly looked like this on Thursday night, Shawn kept going. Karly ended up wi
th sixty external injuries. She’s got at least ten in these pictures. Each one, according to Dr. Chervenak’s testimony, caused Karly significant harm and pain. Dr. Chervenak told you how children recoil when they are in pain to protect themselves and withdraw. Karly might have been scrambling away from the defendant on the floor, trying to get away, covering her head, trying to protect her internal organs. But the defendant kept going. Blow after blow after blow to her little body,” Demarest said, pounding her hands together on the first mention of the word blow. “Shawn Field kept going. Karly was likely screaming, crying, recoiling, and even twenty minutes, before she was dead, Karly was trying to please the defendant, responding to a likely command to smile for the camera. Up until the very end, Karly Sheehan was trying to please the defendant to try and stop him from abusing her. But we know after this picture was taken, the most brutal injury of all was inflicted upon her—the injury that killed her.”

  Some of the jurors were weeping. Demarest, pregnant with her second child, allowed the tiniest bit of emotion to sweep over her as she envisioned Karly cowering. The prosecutor maintained her professional demeanor, but the wrongness of what Karly suffered could be heard in the slightest quiver of Demarest’s voice.

  “The defendant had told Sarah Sheehan that someday it’s all going to come down to who lies the best,” Demarest said. “Ladies and gentlemen, the defendant engaged in an ongoing pattern of abuse, mistreatment, and torture of Karly Sheehan. After the defendant entered her life, never again was there a picture showing the joy in her eyes, the smile on her face, and her carefree nature. The defendant destroyed Karly’s life, and he tortured the soul out of her, and we ask that you find him guilty.”

  Judge Holcomb excused the jury for a short break. When court resumed it was Clark Willes, co-counsel for the defense, who stood before the jurors.

  Not that Sarah Sheehan was on trial, Willes was quick to point out. She wasn’t, but perhaps she should be, he suggested. Willes displayed various exhibits that included details of Shawn Field’s bank statements, and what Willes considered some of the most damning evidence against Sarah Sheehan: copies of the text messages she sent during the last hours of her daughter’s life.