“Yes, I will acknowledge that she could have been a frequent user.”
In a matter of minutes, Pisani had gotten Dr. Swante to completely reverse his earlier testimony.
Continuing, Pisani said, “Isn’t it true, Doctor, that cocaine addicts experience physical exhaustion and depression—wild mood swings. Don’t they exhibit what is known as ‘cocaine blues’ for several weeks after they come down from a high?”
“I object,” I said. “If Mr. Pisani wants to offer testimony, he needs to be sworn in.”
“I’ll rephrase my question. Isn’t it true, to a reasonable degree of medical certainty, that persons who frequently use cocaine often show signs of erratic swings in their moods, including signs of severe depression?”
“Yes,” Dr. Swante said. “That is an accurate statement. Studies have shown that frequent users of cocaine suffer feelings of hopelessness and depression.”
“Now, Doctor, isn’t it also true, to a reasonable degree of medical certainty, that feelings of hopelessness and depression can lead to suicide?”
“I object,” I said. “Doctor Swante is a forensic pathologist, not a psychiatrist.”
“Sustained.”
Pisani looked at me, smiled smugly, and said, “As a forensic pathologist, is there any scientific test that you can perform during an autopsy that would reveal if someone was depressed or hopeless when they died?”
“There is no such medical test,” Dr. Swante testified. “I have no idea about what this woman’s state of mind was when she died. I can only tell you that she died from an overdose of cocaine.”
“Just to be clear. You cannot tell us if this woman was depressed. Also, your testimony now is that there is a possibility that Benita Gonzales was a frequent user of cocaine. Is that correct, sir?”
“I object. He’s already been asked and answered that question.”
“Overruled. Answer the question.”
“In my medical opinion, I do not believe this woman was a frequent user of cocaine, but I will admit once again that there is a possibility that she was one, and I do not know if she was depressed.”
During the next several minutes, Pisani grilled Dr. Swante about various notes that he’d taken during the autopsy. The shrewd defense attorney wasn’t as interested in what Dr. Swante had written as much as he wanted to point out to jurors that Dr. Swante had been rushed and not as thorough as he should have been.
“In retrospect,” the witness acknowledged, “I should have taken more time with this autopsy.”
Satisfied, Pisani said, “You originally ruled that Benita Gonzales had committed suicide either intentionally or unintentionally. You have just testified that you now believe her death was suspicious. What new scientific evidence changed your mind?”
“There was no new scientific evidence. I changed my mind when I reread my notes.”
“Notes that you just admitted had been rushed and were somewhat incomplete, is that correct?”
Pisani had Dr. Swante squirming and he was not about to ease up. “Doctor Swante, who asked you to take a second look at your notes?”
“The D.A.’s office.”
“Because Ms. Fox asked you—that’s why, is that your answer? She told you that she wanted to charge my client so you changed your mind.”
“No, there was no mention of criminal charges.”
“Please, Doctor Swante, are you asking this jury to believe that Ms. Fox would ask you to take a second look at your notes if she didn’t plan on charging my client? After all, she is in the business of prosecuting people, is she not? And you told her what she wanted to hear, is that correct?”
“She asked me to take a second look. I did and I changed my mind.”
Pisani said in a voice edged with disgust, “You looked and changed your mind, I see. I have no more questions.”
In my redirect, I attempted to undo the damage that Pisani had done to Dr. Swante’s credibility. But I knew it was too late. He’d come across as being sloppy and weak-kneed. Still I wasn’t too concerned, because I’d managed to get a key piece of evidence into the record.
Benita Gonzales had drunk milk laced with cocaine. Pisani had not disputed that. My next challenge would be proving who had put that fatal dose of cocaine into her drink.
49
After Dr. Swante stepped down, judge Morano adjourned court for the day. I needed to prepare for tomorrow, so I walked across the street to my office. Everyone had gone home, which guaranteed me solitude. Just before eight p.m., I ordered a pizza, and twenty minutes later, I heard someone knock on our locked front door. Grabbing my purse, I started down the hallway.
My office is in the far rear corner of our suite. The front of our building has plate-glass windows from the waist up because it was formerly a store. We’d painted the glass to protect the privacy of our clients, but our front door was clear glass.
I expected to see the pizza boy waiting, but when I approached the door, no one was there. He must have given up, I decided. I’d been so engrossed in my work, I wasn’t certain how much time had passed between his first knock and me hearing him.
I reached to unlock the door, thinking I would go outside to see if the delivery guy was still lingering around with my dinner. As I began turning the dead bolt, a man leaped in front of the door. He was wearing a black ski mask and he grabbed the door from the outside and jerked on it with his right hand.
Startled, I stepped back and screamed. Although the dead bolt was half turned, it held. The man raised both of his arms above his head and I saw that he had been carrying a baseball bat in his left hand. He swung the wooden bat down into the glass door, sending cracks in a thousand different directions but not breaking through the thick pane. He raised it again.
I remembered the pistol in my purse this time, and I fumbled to find it. The instant I raised the .357 snub nose, the attacker ducked sideways out of my sight.
Although I was armed, I wasn’t going to risk unlocking the door and going out after him. With my pistol still aimed at the shattered door, I moved to the reception desk and, with my left hand, picked up the telephone, dialing 911.
“This is Assistant District Attorney Dani Fox,” I said breathlessly. “I’m at the Domestic Violence Unit office across from the courthouse and someone has just smashed our front door with a baseball bat! He still might be outside!”
The dispatcher told me to stay on the line, so I continued to stand next to the reception desk with my left hand holding the phone to my ear and my right hand on the .357’s trigger. Within seconds, I heard the sound of a siren, and then the shape of a figure appeared at the door. Because of its shattered glass, I couldn’t make out who was outside, so I kept my finger on the trigger, resisting the urge to fire blindly.
Flashing red lights suddenly appeared. Someone yelled, “Drop it! Hands in the air!”
“The police have a suspect,” the dispatcher told me over the phone. Lowering my handgun, I unbolted the half-locked door and stepped gingerly into the evening air.
Two White Plains police officers had a young man in handcuffs. Next to him on the sidewalk was a pizza box. He was not wearing a black ski mask or dark clothing. By the time O’Brien arrived, the frightened pizza boy had been freed and the officers were checking the area for the masked attacker.
“Glad you found your gun?” O’Brien said.
“Glad I didn’t just shoot the pizza guy.”
Examining the cracked door, I said, “Do you think he was just some angry husband or was he trying to break in because he knew I was here?”
“Did he look familiar?”
How did I know? I wasn’t used to seeing men in black ski masks. Besides, it had happened so fast. I had a new appreciation for witnesses when they were asked in court to describe their assailant.
“He was dressed in black—black boots, black jeans, black jacket, black gloves, and black ski mask with two holes for the eyes and one for his mouth. Obviously, that means he’d planned this beforehand
and didn’t just show up with a bat. But I have no idea if I’ve ever seen him before.”
“Height, weight?”
“I remember the bat. It was a Louisville Slugger.”
“Did he look like Rudy Hitchins or Juan Lopez?”
“I wish I knew. If it had been one of them, I would have shot first and asked questions later.”
O’Brien said, “Just wondering. When Hitchins was in high school, he played a lot of ball. In fact, he was a pretty decent player. His pals used to call him Slugger.”
50
Day two of the murder trial began precisely at nine a.m. on a Thursday with me calling my second witness, Benita’s stepson, Hector. I called him because I needed to get the Polaroid photograph of Benita Gonzales on the day that she’d died introduced into evidence.
As required by New York law, the photograph of Benita holding little Adolpho while sitting on the lap of a shopping mall Santa Claus had been shown to Paul Pisani during pretrial discovery.
Hector had taken the snapshot with the family’s Polaroid camera, so I asked him if he had seen the picture, where it had come from, and whether it was the photo that he had taken of his deceased stepmother. He correctly identified it. Hector further testified that he was familiar with the scene depicted in the photograph and that it was a fair and accurate representation of his stepmother at the time taken. These were all procedural steps that I had to undertake in order to get the snapshot admitted.
When I offered the photograph into evidence, Pisani asked the court for a voir dire examination of the young photographer to determine if there were any inaccuracies or misleading features in the photograph. Pisani interrogated Hector, asking if the photo had been magnified or reduced in size to create a distortion. To a casual observer, these questions might have seemed redundant and a waste of the court’s time. But Pisani was doing a thorough job. He asked Hector whether Benita had put on makeup or combed her hair or otherwise “freshened up” for the photograph. Hector replied that she had not—it was taken spontaneously after hours of shopping.
When he finished, Pisani objected to the photograph’s introduction on the grounds of relevance. But the judge overruled him and the photograph was admitted.
I then asked Hector a few questions about the night that his stepmother had died but didn’t keep him on the stand long and neither did Pisani. He had been only twelve years old at the time. When Hector stepped down, I suspected the jurors didn’t have a clue why we had made such a fuss about the Polaroid.
But I knew the photo would be significant later in the trial when I planned to take full advantage of the photograph’s hidden importance.
My next witness was Dr. Susan Treater, a New York psychiatrist with an impressive background. A petite woman in her early forties, Dr. Treater had worked at the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas, before moving east to join the psychiatric staff at Bellevue Hospital. I quickly established her as an expert witness in matters regarding suicide, which was her specialty.
“What is depression, Doctor Treater?”
“Depression is a serious mental disorder. Any of us can suffer from occasional depression, such as sad feelings that happen when a relative or pet dies. But ninety percent of people who die by suicide have clinical depression or another diagnosable mental illness, such as manic depression or schizophrenia. That is much different from feeling badly because your dog Rover died.”
“What are the signs, typically, of clinical depression?”
“Clinical depression negatively affects how you feel, the way you think, and how you act. Individuals with clinical depression are unable to function as they once did. Often they have lost interest in activities that were once enjoyable to them, and they feel sad and hopeless for extended periods of time. It can change your eating habits, how you think, your ability to work, and how you interact with people.”
I showed Dr. Treater the autopsy report, amended report, autopsy photographs, and the Polaroid that I’d already gotten introduced as evidence. “Have you seen each of these exhibits before, Doctor?”
“Yes, at your request, I read the autopsy report and examined the photographs. In addition, I conducted interviews with Benita Gonzales’s children, her mother, and several neighbors of the Gonzales family who knew Benita before she died, and I spoke to the police officers who responded to the emergency call.”
“Does a person have to be depressed in order to commit suicide?”
“Ninety percent of people who die by their own hands have clinical depression or another diagnosable mental illness. Suicide is not something a person just wakes up and decides to do one day. There are warning signs.”
“What are these signs?”
“Traditional warning signs would be talking and always thinking about death, trouble sleeping and eating, loss of interest in things that a person once cared about, making comments about being hopeless, helpless, or worthless. Visiting or calling people to say good-bye.”
“For the record, Benita Gonzales was not your patient, correct?”
“That’s true, I never met her.”
“But you did study the exhibits that I just introduced, plus you interviewed her children and her neighbors. Did you interview the defendant, Carlos Gonzales?”
“No, he declined to talk to me.”
“Did you reach any conclusions based on your research?”
Turning and looking squarely at the jurors, Dr. Treater said, “Because of Benita Gonzales’s personal appearance, her actions immediately prior to her death, and interviews I conducted as a mental health professional, I do not believe this woman was clinically depressed or suicidal on the day she died.”
Pisani attacked quickly. Because he knew it would be difficult to undermine the facts that I’d presented, he went after Dr. Treater’s credibility.
“Doctor Treater, does the name Randy Rollins mean anything to you?”
The psychiatrist, who had been poised, suddenly looked uncomfortable. “Mr. Rollins was a hospital patient of mine. But I am not at liberty to discuss his case, given doctor and patient confidentiality laws.”
Pisani smiled and I knew why. Lawyers love it when nonlawyers try to hide behind the law. “Doctor Treater, I have not asked you to divulge confidential information. I merely asked if you knew him. Now, isn’t it true that his parents filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against you and the hospital?”
I objected, claiming that such questions were not relevant, but I knew Judge Morano would overrule me because Pisani had a perfect right to attack her credibility and professional qualifications through a prior malpractice case.
Still trying to outmaneuver Pisani, Dr. Treater said, “I was sued but confidentiality agreements were signed so I can’t discuss it.”
Pisani smirked and said, “Those confidentiality statements only apply to the settlement. I have a copy of the original lawsuit if you would like to refresh your memory.” He lifted up a four-inch-thick file.
“That won’t be necessary.”
“Why did this young man’s parents sue you?”
“Their son committed suicide after being discharged from the hospital.”
“And who signed his discharge papers?”
“I did.”
“When you signed them, did you believe he was suicidal?”
“I did not.”
“Did his parents try to stop him from being discharged?”
“They did.”
“How long was it between the time when you discharged him and the moment when he stuck a twelve-gauge shotgun into his mouth and pulled the trigger?”
Dr. Treater looked as if she was about to become teary eyed. “Fifty-five minutes.”
“This young man killed himself fifty-five minutes after you declared, in your professional opinion as an expert on depression and suicide, that it was safe for him to be discharged from the hospital because he was not depressed and not suicidal, even though his own parents said otherwise?”
“Yes,” she said in
a sad voice.
“Based on what you’ve just testified, I would conclude one or two things happened—either it is impossible to predict when someone is going to commit suicide or you are not very good at your job, wouldn’t you agree?”
“He was not showing any traditional signs or symptoms of clinical depression and suicidal thinking when I discharged him.”
“For the record, this young man was someone who you were treating and personally knew. You never met Benita Gonzales. And you were wrong about him, isn’t that right?”
“Yes.”
My next witness was White Plains police officer Whitey McLean, the first patrolman to respond to the Gonzaleses’ house. After I asked him some rudimentary questions, I had his official police report introduced as evidence. I then asked Officer McLean, “What was the defendant’s demeanor when you got to his house?”
“To me, he didn’t seem that upset. He seemed more nervous. I got the feeling he wanted us to hurry up and get her body out of there. He didn’t want to leave his kids alone with us, which, at the time, I assumed was because he was protective of them.”
I asked him if he had found an empty drinking glass in the room or any evidence of illegal drugs.
“No, the place was really tidy.”
Had he questioned any of the Gonzaleses’ children? He said that he’d talked to both Carmen and her brother, Hector.
“What did they tell you?”
“They said they had a good family.”
“Was the defendant in the room when you questioned them?”
“Yeah, that was probably a mistake in retrospect, but he was standing right there with them. At the time, I didn’t think anything of it.”
“Did the defendant mention how his wife used cocaine?”
“Yeah, I remember exactly what he said because I thought most people snorted it or shot it in their veins, but he said she used to chew it like candy, like rock candy. That was a new one to me.”
Sly Fox: A Dani Fox Novel Page 24
