By Reason of Insanity (David Brunelle Legal Thriller Series Book 3)

by Stephen Penner

  “You like movies, doctor?” Edwards started as she took her position at the bar.

  “Movies?” Kat repeated, a bit taken aback. “Sure. I guess so.”

  “Do you like the classics?” Edwards went on. “Gone With the Wind? The Wizard of Oz?”

  “I guess,” Kat said. “I’ve seen those.”

  Edwards hesitated for a moment, a practiced pause. “It was pretty messy when Dorothy threw the water on the Wicked Witch of the West, wasn’t it?”

  Brunelle shook his head slightly. Really? He peeked at the jurors to see if they were impressed. But he couldn’t read their expressions. They were intent.

  Kat smiled at the question. “Actually, as I recall, all that was left was her hat and robe.”

  Edwards nodded. “I suppose so,” she allowed. “What about zombie movies?”

  “Zombie movies?” Kat asked. “No, not really. I don’t like gory movies.”

  Brunelle heard a couple of jurors chuckle at that bit of irony. Good. That meant they liked Kat.

  He looked at her again. Yeah, she was pretty likeable.

  Edwards elected not to be sidetracked by the irony. “Okay, but you’re familiar with those types of movies and TV shows, right?”

  Kat shrugged. “Sure. I guess so.”

  “So what happens,” Edwards asked, “when the heroes shoot the zombie through the chest?”

  “If I recall correctly,” Kat qualified her answer, “the zombies keep coming.”

  “Exactly,” Edwards replied. She stepped over to the projector but didn’t turn it on yet. “Do you know how to stop a zombie?”

  Kat frowned slightly, either in recollection or disgust. “I think you have to blow their heads off.”

  Edwards pressed the projector button and the image of the fractured skull reappeared on the wall. “Kind of like what happened here.”

  Kat pursed her lips as she considered. “I suppose so. Although I believe they usually use a shotgun in the movies.”

  Edwards turned off the projector again. “But those are just movies, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Zombies aren’t real, are they?”

  “Not as far as I know,” Kat answered.

  “And anyone who believes zombies are real,” Edwards asked, “they’d have to be crazy, right?”

  Kat paused, her mouth twisted again in thought. “I don’t know if they’d be crazy, but they’d be wrong.”

  Brunelle smiled. Awesome. The perfect answer. No wonder he liked her so much.

  Edwards narrowed her eyes at Kat, but decided not to fight her. She’d made her point. “No further questions.”

  “Any re-direct, Mr. Brunelle?” Perry asked.

  “No, Your Honor. The witness may be excused.”

  Kat had indeed done better than Chen. He hoped the rest of the trial would go as well.

  Chapter 33

  The rest of Brunelle’s case-in-chief wasn’t quite as interesting. It was a parade of patrol officers and forensic techs who processed the scene and collected the evidence. Somewhat dull, definitely repetitive, and unfortunately necessary. But he knew he needed to finish strong so he saved the most important for last.

  “The State calls Dr. Gregory Thompson.”

  Thompson stepped up to the judge and got sworn in. As he took the stand, Brunelle turned and scanned the gallery for Adrianos. It was standard operating procedure for one expert to listen to the other expert’s testimony, but Adrianos was nowhere to be seen.

  The gallery had mostly cleared out over the course of the last few days. Openings were one thing. The testimony Police Officer Number 7 of 9 was another. Robyn hadn’t been back since the openings, nor any of the other public defenders or prosecutors. The only things left from that first day of trial were the pool camera and Fargas. Fargas hadn’t missed a day of the trial. He was probably billing his clients $300 an hour to sit his fat ass in the gallery and watch Brunelle do the heavy lifting.

  Brunelle turned back to Thompson. Brunelle wondered if maybe Adrianos was just late. Could he really be so cocky that he didn’t sit in on his rivals’ testimony?

  Thompson identified himself and gave his degrees and experience, then Brunelle got right to it.

  “Are you familiar with the defendant, Keesha Sawyer?”

  “Yes, I am,” Thompson answered, nodding toward her.

  “How?”

  “I conducted a forensic mental health examination of the defendant.”

  “And how many such evaluations did you either conduct or review?”

  That was the weak part of Thompson’s testimony. He’d only done the one evaluation, and that had been about competency, not diminished capacity. His own attempt at a dim cap eval had been cancelled by the pen to the face. Perry’s subsequent about-face had reduced Thompson’s role to simply reviewing Adrianos’ report.

  “I conducted one exam myself,” Thompson answered. “A second exam was aborted before it began. A third examination was conducted by another psychologist and I reviewed that report.”

  Okay. Brunelle shrugged inside. There was nothing he could do about it except lay out Thompson’s opinions and wait for Adrianos’ testimony. He knew the key to the whole case would be his cross of Adrianos.

  No pressure.

  “Before we discuss your conclusions, doctor, could you explain to the jury what is meant by the term ‘diminished capacity’?”

  Thompson nodded, but he didn’t turn to the jurors to deliver his answer. The psychologists didn’t testify nearly as often as the cops and when they did, it was usually in a pretrial hearing where there was no jury, just a judge.

  “Diminished capacity,” he told Brunelle directly, “refers to a psychological state where a defendant is incapable of forming the intent to commit a particular act.”

  Brunelle tried to get Thompson to engage the jurors. “That’s a bit technical,” he said. “Could you give the jury an example?”

  Thompson nodded again, but ignored the twelve people to his right. “The easiest way to think about it is to realize that diminished capacity can also arise from intoxication, either alcohol or drugs. Not everyone has personal experience with the mentally ill, but most people have had experience with someone who’s had too much to drink.”

  A couple of nods and a snicker from the jury box confirmed the jurors had such experience.

  “So imagine,” Thompson went on, “a man at a party who’s had too much to drink. He’s standing next to an attractive young woman he’s just met. Then he grabs her somewhere inappropriate, say, her backside. Normally that would be an assault. But if he did it because he’s so drunk he can barely stand and he just reached out for the nearest thing on instinct to steady himself, then he has diminished capacity as to the assault. He didn’t intend to grab her there because his capacity to intend that was diminished by the alcohol.

  “On the other hand, if the reason he grabbed her there was because the alcohol lowered his inhibitions and he intentionally did something he might not have done otherwise, well then, he still intended the act and he would be guilty of assault.”

  Brunelle smiled. That was a pretty damn good explanation.

  “Have you formed an opinion as to whether Ms. Sawyer suffered from diminished capacity at the time that she killed her mother?”

  “I have.”

  “What is that opinion based on?”

  “It’s based on my contact with the defendant, my review of the other psychologist’s report, and my review of the evidence in the police reports, including the autopsy report.”

  “And what is your opinion?”

  “It is my opinion that the defendant had the ability to form the intent to commit murder, and that she did intend to kill her mother when she struck her in the face multiple times with an axe. The defendant did not suffer from diminished capacity.”

  No need to check the legal pad. “No further questions.”

  Brunelle sat down and Edwards stood up for her cross exam.

  �
��So my client intended to commit murder, is that your opinion?”

  Thompson thought for a moment, careful to make sure he understood the question. “Yes, that’s my opinion.”

  “Okay,” Edwards said. “We’ll get back to that.”

  Thompson shrugged, there being no actual question to respond to. Brunelle frowned. Edwards sounded way too confident.

  “You’ve had the chance to personally examine my client for mental illness, correct?” she asked.

  “That’s correct.”

  “And your diagnosis was that she suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “That means she has paranoid delusions, correct?”

  “Among other symptoms, yes.”

  Brunelle was impressed. Edwards was actually doing what lawyers were supposed to do on cross examination: lead, lead, lead. Tell the witness the answer and make him agree. It was rude, but effective. And the tension made it that much more dramatic—and interesting—to the jury. He hoped Thompson would come through for him.

  “And so the jury is clear,” Edwards gestured toward the jury box without taking her eyes off her prey, “it’s not that my client claims to hear voices. She actually does hear voices, correct?”

  Thompson nodded. If he hadn’t thought about looking at the jury during Brunelle’s questions, there was no way he was going to now. He, like everyone else in the courtroom, was transfixed on Edwards. “Yes, that’s correct. Auditory hallucinations appear very real to the person experiencing them.”

  “And similarly, she doesn’t claim to think people are after her, she really does believe that, correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “Her fear is real, correct?”

  “Yes, the fear is real,” Thompson agreed, “although the basis for it usually is not.”

  Edwards allowed herself a grin. “Yes, let’s talk about that. There are no such things as witches, correct, doctor?”

  “Correct,” Thompson answered with his own smile. “Unless you count practitioners of the Wiccan faith.”

  Edwards nodded. “I mean old school, magic and toads and pointy hat witches. Those aren’t real, are they?”

  “No,” Thompson agreed. “Those aren’t real.”

  “And zombies aren’t real either, correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “But my client believes they are real, isn’t that correct, doctor? Not just claims to believe they’re real, but actually, truly, honestly believes they’re real, correct?”

  Thompson thought for a few seconds. “Your client verbalized several delusions. I believe witches and zombies were some of them, yes.”

  “In fact,” Edwards pressed, “didn’t she state very specifically that she believed her mother was a witch and she was being turned into a zombie?”

  Thompson nodded. “She did say that, yes.”

  “And she didn’t just say that, she didn’t just claim it, she actually believed it, didn’t she, doctor?”

  Thompson paused again as he considered his response. “Yes, I think that’s true.”

  Edwards paused, tapping her chin and allowing Thompson’s answers to sink in with the jury. “So, how do you kill a witch?” she asked.

  Thompson’s face showed his surprise at the question. “Uh, well, I don’t know. Throw water on them?”

  No laughter from the jury. They’d already heard the Wizard of Oz bit, and they could tell Edwards was on to something.

  “People used to burn witches at the stake, didn’t they?” she pressed.

  “I think that’s right,” Thompson answered. “My area of expertise is psychology, not history, but that’s my recollection from school.”

  “And that’s because you can’t just kill a witch the same way you kill a regular person, right?”

  Thompson shrugged. “I’m not sure.”

  “Vampires need a stake through their hearts. Werewolves need a silver bullet. Right?”

  Thompson shook his head. “I really don’t know. I don’t watch those kind of movies.”

  “What about zombies?” Edward asked. “You have to blow their heads off with a shotgun, don’t you?”

  Thompson was starting to bristle at the questioning. “You know, I can’t really say. These are fictitious monsters, so I don’t know if there really is a correct way to kill them. They’re not real.”

  Edwards smiled and nodded. “They’re real for my client, aren’t they?”

  Then Thompson seemed to understand. He nodded. “I suppose so,” he admitted. “Yes.”

  Edwards nodded. She took a moment to review her notes, a signal to Brunelle that she was about to switch topics. He hoped she was almost done.

  “My client didn’t really have an accurate understanding of death, did she?”

  Thompson frowned. “I’m not sure that’s true.”

  “Well,” Edwards said, “let me remind you. She said, did she not, that her mother was murdering her every night in her sleep?”

  Thompson nodded. “Yes, she did say that.”

  “Yet she woke up every morning.”

  “She did.”

  “So when she said she was murdered every night, that wasn’t accurate, was it?”

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  “But she believed it was true, didn’t she? Because of her mental illness?”

  Thompson paused to consider. “Yes,” he said after a moment. “I think that’s a fair statement.”

  “She thought it was possible,” Edwards put it together for the jury, “for a person to be murdered and still wake up the next morning, isn’t that true, doctor?”

  Thompson shifted in his seat. Brunelle did too. “Yes,” Thompson had to agree. “She did think that.”

  Edwards narrowed her eyes and pointed directly at him. “So how can you say that my client—who truly believes her mother is a witch, who truly believes a witch needs more than a regular killing to actually die, who truly believes people can be murdered and wake up the next morning—how can you possibly say that she actually intended to kill her mother—for good, dead and gone, the way you and I think about death? How can you possibly say that?”

  It was a long question, with too much information and too many subordinate clauses. But it was exactly the right question, artfully posed by a passionate advocate.

  Thompson was boxed in. There was only one answer. He knew it. Brunelle knew it. And the jury knew it.

  “How can you say that?” Edwards demanded.

  “I can’t say that,” he admitted. “Not for certain.”

  Edwards had the knife in. She twisted it. “It’s possible, isn’t it doctor, that my client’s intent was something less than murder? It’s possible, isn’t it doctor, that my client believed her mother would wake up the next morning? It’s possible, isn’t it, doctor, that my client believed this would get her mother to stop killing her too and all would be forgiven?”

  Thompson frowned. He let out a sigh. “Yes. That’s possible. All of that is possible.”

  Edwards stared at him for a moment. Brunelle looked back down at his notepad.

  “No further questions,” Edwards said.

  “Any re-direct, Mr. Brunelle?” Perry asked.

  “No, Your Honor,” Brunelle replied, standing up. He decided to cut his losses rather than add to them. “The State rests.”

  And his case-in-chief ended not with a bang but with a whimper.

  Chapter 34

  Brunelle was walking down the hallway to the elevators when he heard a shout behind him.

  “Brunelle!”

  It was Fargas. Brunelle considered ignoring him and continuing toward the elevators. But he knew that wasn’t the professional thing to do. And Fargas did represent the victim’s family after all. Damn it.

  He turned around to see Fargas waddling toward him. “Why, Mr. Fargas. What a pleasant surprise. Have you been watching some of the trial?”

  “Fuck you, Brunelle,” Fargas spat as he reached him. �
�You know I have. What the hell are you doing in there?”

  Brunelle straightened up a bit. “I’m trying to hold a killer responsible.”

  “Well, you’re doing a shitty job of it.”

  Brunelle kept the saccharine smile pasted on his face. “Thanks for noticing.”

  Fargas was turning red behind his moustache. “Are you trying to lose? Is that it?”

  Brunelle might have been offended if he hadn’t already been briefed by Duncan. He knew Fargas was just trying to insulate his own case from an increasingly likely not guilty verdict. He didn’t really believe Brunelle would throw the case. Probably. “I wouldn’t do that.”

  Fargas frowned at him. “Because you’re just so much better than anyone else.”

  Brunelle was a bit surprised by the comment. It seemed overly personal. “No, because I’m a prosecutor.”

  Fargas sneered at him. “No, you think you’re better than lawyers like me. You have your cushy tax-payer funded salary and your guaranteed pension, while I have to be not just a damn good lawyer but an even better businessman. You wouldn’t last two weeks in private practice, Brunelle.”

  Brunelle narrowed his eyes at Fargas, He didn’t understand why Fargas was attacking him like that. He decided not to engage in the fight. He needed to keep his eye on the prize: convicting Keesha. “I don’t know,” he said.

  Fargas’ sneer unfurled into a rueful grin. “Well, you lose this case and I hear you may get to find out.”

  Subtle, Brunelle thought. He was done. “Goodbye, Mr. Fargas.”

  He turned and walked toward the elevators. Fargas muttered something after him. It was hard to hear, but it sounded like it rhymed with ‘good luck.’

  Chapter 35

  “Cheer up, lover,” Kat patted Brunelle’s arm. It sent ripples into the glass of Jack Daniels in his hand. “I’m sure it went better than you think.”

  Brunelle frowned and took a sip of his drink. He didn’t drink much, but when he did, it was whiskey.

  “No, it didn’t,” he assured her. “You did great, but Chen said the scene looked ‘crazy’ and my doc admitted the defendant might not have had the requisite intent after all. I’m not sure how that could have been worse.”