Michael Benson's True Crime Bundle

by Michael Benson

  “It is interesting that they documented this in 1968 and not 1998,” Dr. Sachy said. He noted that while Stephen appeared to develop normally through childhood and into adulthood, the key part of his brain affected by the oxygen deprivation during infancy did not. “Later, that same problem caused him to exhibit antisocial behavior as an adult. Those same problems prevented him from distinguishing right from wrong.”

  Asked to speak briefly as to the legal and medical history of PET scan technology, Dr. Sachy said PET scans were used during a criminal trial in New York in 1994, and had been used to diagnose brain damage and other illnesses since the 1970s.

  “No further questions,” William Diggs said.

  “Mr. Hembree?” Judge Jefferson said, turning toward the solicitor’s table.

  “Thank you, Your Honor,” Gregory Hembree said, and began his cross-examination by establishing that Dr. Thomas Sachy lacked board certification in forensic neurology, and that he worked predominantly in Georgia, where the standards for mental competency differed from those in South Carolina. Hembree argued that Stephen Stanko knew the difference between right and wrong as well as the next fellow, he just didn’t care. He felt no inner conflict when doing bad things.

  “There’s a difference between mental problems and behavioral problems?”

  “Yes.”

  “Isn’t antisocial behavior a behavior and not a mental disease? What’s the difference between this psychopath and that psychopath?” Hembree asked.

  “You’re right,” Dr. Sachy said. “It’s difficult to make that distinction.”

  “Dr. Sachy, you interviewed the defendant about his actions, did you not?”

  “I did.” Stephen Stanko, in fact, had given him details of the immediate buildup to the murder and rape. Stanko said he’d been planning to end his relationship with Laura Ling that night. He’d planned on moving out. He said that Ling’s daughter was the one who threatened him. She said that she was going to expose him as a child molester. Laura became furious after hearing her daughter’s accusations and attacked Stanko, slapping him and burning him with a cigarette.

  “And then?”

  “That was the last thing he remembered,” Dr. Sachy said. “There was a period of amnesia. The next thing he remembered, he was showering, washing blood off.”

  Hembree made the witness admit that, on the night of the violence, Stanko’s behavior remained cunning. He checked the pulse of both of his victims, and stole a bracelet right off the wrist of Laura Ling’s remains. He packed his electric guitar before leaving. He went to an ATM and cleaned out Ling’s account. Cunning, not crazy, right?

  “Dr. Sachy, would you characterize the defendant as a killing machine? Stephen Stanko, he’s a killing machine, right? He’s a great white shark, right?”

  A chorus of objections came from the defense table.

  “Legally, he knows the difference between right and wrong, but mentally, he doesn’t care. Dr. Sachy, is it your position that persons diagnosed as psychopaths are not responsible for criminal acts?”

  “That’s a philosophical question,” the witness replied. “If imagery from brain scans proves abnormalities, then yes, I believe that.”

  Hembree drew Dr. Sachy’s attention to Stephen Stanko’s infant medical reports. He’d earlier testified they indicated brain damage. But the witness had been selective, hadn’t testified as to the contents of those records in their entirety. So now, to be fair, Hembree asked Dr. Sachy to read some passages from the records that he’d previously ignored.

  “What does that say, Dr. Sachy?”

  “‘Neurological OK.’”

  “‘Neurological OK’?”

  “Yes.”

  “Isn’t that good news?”

  “That’s great news.”

  “That’s great news! And the baby was released from the hospital two days later, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you, Dr. Sachy, are a professional witness, are you not?”

  “I wouldn’t characterize myself that—”

  “You are getting paid by the defense for your appearance today, isn’t that correct? You are getting paid right now?”

  “Yes.”

  “And, if I may ask, at what rate are you being paid?”

  “Four hundred dollars an hour,” Dr. Sachy said.

  “Is there a ceiling on your fee?”

  “Yes, up to forty thousand dollars.”

  “If you put in one hundred hours on this case, the defense pays you forty thousand dollars?”

  “Yes.”

  Hembree seemed to be having fun as he cross-examined Dr. Sachy. He got the defense witness to say that he had testified in about fifty trials, and in all fifty, he had been a paid employee of the defense. Plus, in those fifty cases, he had never—never once—found a patient to be sane.

  “No further questions,” Hembree concluded with disdain.

  Dr. Evelyn Califf, a Myrtle Beach family counselor, had been employed by the defense to examine Stephen Stanko’s life and come up with factors that might help to explain Stephen Stanko’s behavior. The defendant didn’t just have organic damage, the defense wanted it to be known, but his nurturing environment contributed to his mental disease as well.

  Dr. Califf pointed out that much of Stanko’s family had turned their backs on him a long time ago. She added that Stanko was estranged from much of his family and hadn’t spoken to his father in ten years.

  Stephen Stanko’s defense called Dr. James Thrasher, an older Myrtle Beach psychiatrist who established his expertise by pointing out that he was a professional in a variety of ways: doctor, lawyer, engineer. He testified that he had studied the defendant’s medical records dating back to his birth. In addition to studying the defendant’s past, Dr. Thrasher said he’d examined Stanko not long after the murders.

  Thrasher supported the theory of the previous doctors, that Stanko had a diminished ability to resist the urge to kill because of his severe personality disorder and damaged frontal lobes.

  Dr. Thrasher was a Rennaissance man, no doubt about that. He had delivered babies, and he’d been in the navy. “Everything but an Indian chief,” Gregory Hembree later said.

  Name it, and he was an expert in it. But what Dr. Thrasher wasn’t was good at standing up under cross-examination. Hembree attacked.

  Though Dr. Thrasher had done some ob-gyn work early on in his career, as all medical doctors do, that was not his specialty, was it? No. Despite that, he was the guy the defense picked to interpret the records of Stanko’s birth, correct? Yes.

  Dr. Thrasher acknowledged that Stanko did not show signs of mental problems during his youth, as one might expect when a brain injury was congenital, and that Stanko was raised in a “normal home,” had played sports in school, had regularly dated, and was of above-average intelligence.

  Stephen Stanko claimed during the interview that he’d suffered memory loss. The first thing he remembered after Laura Ling’s murder was taking a shower. First he was covered with blood, and then he was clean and toweling himself off.

  “Dr. Thrasher, did Stanko tell you his actions after his memory kick-started in the shower?”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “What did he say he did?”

  “He said he was very concerned about the condition of his victims. He tried to find a pulse in both victims but couldn’t.”

  “He thought they were both dead?”

  “Yes.”

  Hembree also made Dr. Thrasher admit that—despite Stanko’s claim that he was in la-la land during his violent spree, with a memory that blinked in and out—he was cool and cunning enough to steal a bracelet, $700 in cash, and a red Mustang.

  “These appeared to be steps taken in a sequential fashion by somebody who knows they did something substantially bad,” Hembree said. “Wouldn’t you agree with that, Dr. Thrasher?”

  “It appears that way,” the witness replied.

  Hembree made Dr. Thrasher refer to the defendan
t’s medical history—again and again—looking for any mention of brain abnormalities. Hembree also cited specific points in the medical records in which doctors said baby Stanko’s condition was improving.

  “You don’t have a record of brain abnormalities, do you?” Hembree asked.

  “Only a suspicion,” Dr. Thrasher replied.

  “According to the records, the baby was getting better, isn’t that right?”

  “It appears that way,” Dr. Thrasher said.

  “How much is the defense paying you for your testimony?”

  “One hundred fifty dollars an hour,” Dr. Thrasher replied.

  Hembree later characterized James Thrasher’s appearance on the witness stand as disastrous for the defense. While being grilled by the solicitor, he needed to refer to notes. He couldn’t get through a statement without misspeaking. That resulted in frustration that further diminished his impression on the jury. After a time, he appeared wound “tight as a tick” on the stand.

  Gregory Hembree’s favorite moment came when he approached the witness stand and was helping Dr. Thrasher find his spot in a document they were discussing. One page brushed up against Thrasher’s arm and he almost jumped out of his seat.

  “He looked like I’d just hit him with a Taser,” Hembree said. To make matters worse for himself, he complained to the judge that the solicitor had struck him with the paper, which made some in the courtroom laugh at the poor guy.

  On that negative point, the defense rested.

  The prosecution called a rebuttal witness, Dr. William Brannon Jr., who informed the jury that he had received his M.D. degree at the Medical University of South Carolina in 1961. He served residencies at the U.S. Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, in 1962, and the Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C., in 1965. He was a distinguished professor of neuropsychiatry and behavioral science, with special interests in clinical neurology, headache, stroke, movement disorders, and epilepsy. He had served on the faculty of the University of South Carolina School of Medicine since 1980. Dr. Brannon’s job was to disagree with every scrap of Dr. Thomas Sachy’s testimony. He said that Dr. Sachy was reading the PET scan wrong for one thing, that Stephen Stanko’s PET scan showed normal brain activity.

  “His data is faulty from the start,” Dr. Brannon said. “He based his study on forty-one people.” His intonations made it clear that he found this a ridiculously small sample. Dr. Brannon had looked at Stanko’s PET scans and found them “perfectly normal.”

  BACK PAGES

  On the morning of Friday, August 11, 2006, with the jury out of the courtroom, Judge Deadra Jefferson asked the defendant if he planned to directly address the jury during the closing arguments of the trial.

  Stephen Stanko said he did not, but he added that he had a few questions he’d like to ask the court. “My questions concern the four possible outcomes you said the jury should pick from—guilty, guilty but mentally ill, not guilty by reason of insanity, and not guilty.”

  “Go ahead,” Judge Jefferson said.

  “We have never said I was guilty but mentally ill. There is no treatment in the system for a person who is convicted of that,” Stanko said.

  “I can’t change the jury’s options,” Judge Jefferson explained. “State law says that it is mandatory that we offer that to the jury.”

  Stanko reiterated that at no time did he plan to speak in front of the jury.

  “All right, let’s bring them back in,” Judge Jefferson said. The panel resumed its position along the wall, and closing arguments began, starting with Fran Humphries, the deputy solicitor, speaking on behalf of the people.

  Fran Humphries led with a subject that had gone largely unspoken during the trial. The Lolita factor. Was Stephen Stanko a pedophile? Did he premeditate raping Penny?

  “Where did it begin?” Humphries asked. “Did it begin when the defendant and the victim just met? Did it begin after he moved in? Did it begin night after night when he watched that young girl go to her bedroom? When did his thoughts turn to lust?”

  The jury looked at photos of the teenager’s battered face.

  “Is there any doubt of the defendant’s guilt of assault and battery with intent to kill? Is there any doubt that the girl succumbed to the assault while unlawfully confined? There is no question. None.”

  He asked the jury if any of them really believed that, as the defense maintained, the defendant had a mental disease or defect that prevented him from knowing right from wrong, and reminded them that they’d heard testimony from a forensic psychologist stating that Stanko did not have a mental defect, but rather a personality disorder—and bad, bad personality was simply not a legitimate criminal defense.

  Did Stanko know right from wrong? Here was a man who robbed his victims blind and then partied hardy in Columbia and Augusta before his capture.

  Was he legally insane? Here was a man who called his victim’s boss and said she wouldn’t be in that day because she’d eaten a bad clam the night before.

  “The defendant was clearly trying to cover up for something he knew was wrong,” Humphries said.

  Humphries referenced the defense witnesses who had testified that Stanko was insane. “How convenient a standard that is,” he said. “If your conduct gets really bad, you are insane. When I am really, really bad, when I am evil, you can’t hold that against me.”

  He knew the jury could see through the defense’s medical smoke screen, see the truth: “Stephen Stanko is antisocial. He’s mean. He’s narcissistic. He wants what he wants when he wants it. He has the ability to conform his conduct, but what’s to gain from that? He is not insane.”

  During his closing, Bill Diggs characterized his client as a man “forsaken by his family,” a man who hadn’t talked to his father for more than a decade, who would probably never talk to his father again.

  “What is more telling than for Stephen to be rejected by his own family?” Diggs asked the jury. “He grew up with these people. He loves these people.”

  Diggs described his client as a man who was “a victim of brain abnormalities.” Stephen Stanko’s condition could be compared to a patient with Alzheimer’s disease, in that he “couldn’t control himself” when he murdered and raped.

  “He was insane, and that is the only verdict that is justified by the evidence in this case.”

  Diggs stood beside a TV screen that showed the PET scan of Stanko’s brain and his visibly inactive frontal lobes. In case the jury didn’t quite get it, there was also a PET scan of a normal brain, frontal lobes glowing with conscience and inhibition.

  Because of a frontal-lobe defect, Diggs said in his final argument, his client lacked the ability to control his limbic system, his “fight or flight” emotions. Maybe it was jaundice, maybe the early vomiting. Oxygen supply was diminished causing a variety of lifelong brain difficulties.

  Diggs summed up, “The only explanation is insanity. You can see it in his birth records. The brain controls our conduct. It’s that simple. It’s not hard to understand. His brain made him do it. It’s on its own. Just goes and does things. And while I’m over here, my brain’s out running around, murdering and raping people.”

  Diggs again pointed to his own brow, reminding the jury that this insanity defense wasn’t a last-ditch effort, wasn’t just a load of psychobabble, but also had a measurable—indeed, photographable—physical component. “That’s where the brain defect, the mental defect, is,” Diggs said. “That’s where the ability to distinguish between right and wrong is. He doesn’t have the brain function to do that, to make that distinction.”

  TWO HOURS IN JURY ROOM #1

  Judge Deadra Jefferson addressed the jury, explaining that the time for deliberation had arrived, and that they were to choose one from four possible verdicts: guilty, guilty but mentally ill, not guilty by reason of insanity, and not guilty.

  She instructed the jury that in order for Stephen Stanko to be found not guilty by reason of insanity, the defense had to
demonstrate “by a preponderance of the evidence” that Stanko had a mental disease or defect that rendered him unable to distinguish right from wrong.

  She dismissed the two alternate jurors, thanking them for their service and apologizing that, after all their hard work, they did not get to deliberate with the others.

  The jury retreated to Jury Room #1 and took only two hours to reach its verdict. The only interruption came when they sent a note to Judge Jefferson asking her to define “guilty but mentally ill.” Everyone assumed their normal positions in the courtroom, the judge last to enter. Law enforcement was present and alert. Verdicts were emotional moments.

  Judge Jefferson called for the jury and the twelve jurors filed in. The foreperson, a diminutive African-American woman, wasted no time reading the decision.

  “‘ The State of South Carolina versus Stephen Christopher Stanko, as to count one, we the jury by unanimous consent find the defendant guilty.” Stanko stood motionless with his hands clasped in front of him as the verdict was read. There was emotion in the courtroom—a sign of relief, a relaxing of the shoulders, knowing it was over—but it was quiet and subdued.

  The defense immediately moved for the routine bench ruling regarding Stanko’s sanity. Judge Jefferson promptly upheld the jury’s decision, saying, “There is sufficient evidence in the record that Stanko was sane.”

  William Diggs asked the judge for a new trial. The jury needed one of the charges defined during their brief deliberations. That was a solid indication that they were confused.

  Judge Jefferson said it was no such thing. It was a sign they were careful, not confused, and denied Diggs’s motion. She reminded the fulminating jurors that the penalty phase still lay ahead, and that they were to return following the mandatory cooling-off period. The judge pounded her gavel and court was adjourned.