Anatomy of Injustice

by Raymond Bonner

  As the first day of the PCR ended, Jensen and Tony Miles picked up their briefcases and started to go, leaving Diana to carry boxes of their files. “I’m not your f’ing file girl, and you’re going to move the f’ing boxes, or the f’ing boxes aren’t moving,” she said. It wasn’t uttered in anger. The men shrugged and helped carry the boxes.

  DUELING PATHOLOGISTS

  THE TONE OF the hearing changed dramatically on the second day, from hard rock concert to classical symphony performance. After Harris and Gilliam, Jensen called Dr. Jonathan Arden, a pathologist, to the stand. His list of degrees and credentials was nearly as long as Gilliam’s rap sheet. He had studied at Johns Hopkins University, graduated from the University of Michigan with distinction, then gone on to earn a medical degree there; spent three years as a resident in anatomic pathology at New York University Medical Center; and became deputy medical examiner–pathologist in Suffolk County, New York, before joining the Office of Chief Medical Examiner in New York City, where he was then employed. On the side, he took consulting work, without any juridical bias it seemed. In criminal cases, he testified for the state and for the defendant; in civil cases, for plaintiffs and defendants. He would acquire international renown a few years later when, as the chief medical examiner in Washington, D.C., he performed the autopsy on Chandra Levy, the congressional intern whose disappearance and murder in the summer of 2001 became front-page news after it was revealed that she had been having an affair with her congressman, Gary Condit. (A decade later, another man was convicted of the crime.)

  Arden was one of the two medical examiners John Blume had recommended to Holt when she was searching for experts to help Elmore. The other was from North Carolina, and she would have preferred him because he lived nearby, didn’t charge as much, and was a southerner. When he wasn’t available, she contacted Arden. Over the phone, she briefly summarized the case. He asked her to send him Dr. Conradi’s autopsy report, her testimony at the three trials, and the photographs the police had taken of Mrs. Edwards’s body. Studying them, Arden reached a conclusion that no one else had, including Holt and Jensen.

  Arden, with a black beard, neatly trimmed hair, and rimless glasses, was on the witness stand longer than anyone else during the PCR. He spoke rapidly, uttering full paragraphs in a single breath like a true New Yorker. Jensen kept trying to slow him down to Judge Kinard’s southern rhythms, just as he had done himself.

  Arden knew Dr. Conradi from various professional organizations and medical conventions, and he was uncomfortable criticizing her (just as lawyers are reluctant to testify against lawyers, and engineers against engineers). But he had to say that Dr. Conradi’s report reminded him of something that might be written by one of his first-year interns (he was a clinical assistant professor of pathology at the State University of New York Health Sciences Center in Brooklyn). For starters, Dr. Conradi had confused lacerations with stab wounds, Arden told Judge Kinard. A laceration is caused by a blunt blow, which splits soft tissue. With a bit of dry humor, he added, “The so-called cut that a boxer receives of course is never a cut—assuming they don’t allow knives in the boxing ring—but the cut that a boxer receives is a perfect example of a laceration.”

  It might seem academic—stab versus laceration—but Arden made clear it was serious. “Obviously, the implication of what the injury means is different and this is the underlying reason that I am so adamant about this point and why maybe I’m getting too worked up about this point.”

  As put forward by the police and the prosecution, aided by newspaper reporting, the public perception was that Mrs. Edwards had been slashed with a butcher knife, à la Hitchcock’s Psycho. That was not what happened. A blunt instrument, such as the ashtray or bottle tongs, and not a knife, had caused most of Dorothy Edwards’s injuries, Arden explained for Judge Kinard’s benefit. This suggested an entirely different kind of perpetrator and crime. Why would a robber or a rapist bash Mrs. Edwards with an ashtray and take bottle tongs to her? And though murderers usually stab their victims violently, the knife wounds on Mrs. Edwards were shallow, all less than an inch deep, suggesting the perpetrator had jabbed her repeatedly, but not in a frenzy.

  Next, Arden dealt another blow to the state’s case.

  “No sexual assault was perpetrated upon her live body,” he testified.

  But Mrs. Edwards had suffered injuries to her vagina. What explained those? Jensen asked

  Probably the bottle tongs, Arden said. He also said these injuries were inflicted “postmortem.”

  After she died?

  Yes. Apologizing for the “the long-winded introduction,” he explained how he had reached that conclusion. There were no bruises of the vagina. “And of course you need to be alive in order to have a bruise, because a bruise simply represents the escape of blood from the blood vessels that are damaged by the trauma. So in the strictest sense, dead bodies do not bruise.”

  Jensen handed Dr. Arden two photographs that Dr. Conradi had taken while conducting her autopsy. One was of Mrs. Edwards’s torso, with the bottle tongs next to it. Dr. Conradi had placed them there and then taken the picture, to demonstrate that the tongs had caused the injuries.

  Arden agreed with Dr. Conradi that the “short, superficial, pink and yellow injuries” were caused by the bottle tongs. But, he added, they had been inflicted “postmortem or at best perimortem.” Perimortem, Arden patiently explained, means at or near the time of death.

  Why a robber or rapist would take the bottle tongs to Mrs. Edwards after she had died wasn’t for Arden to answer.

  Arden had been on the stand for over an hour and was now about to deliver an even greater shock to the state’s case. It had become a given that Dorothy Edwards was murdered on Saturday evening. No one had challenged it. The foundation had been laid at the first trial when Dr. Conradi, in answer to Jones’s questions, testified that Mrs. Edwards had been murdered from twelve hours to three days before she received the body for the autopsy, and that her best estimate was sixty-five hours before she examined the body.

  Sloppy, at best, Arden said about her parameters. Yes, he said, determining the time of death is not an exact science, and medical examiners should couch their conclusion in ranges. But twelve hours before examining the body as one boundary? How could that even be theoretically possible? Dr. Conradi performed the autopsy at 11:00 a.m. on Tuesday. Twelve hours before that would have meant that Mrs. Edwards was murdered Monday evening. That was several hours after Holloway and the police found her body.

  Well, if it had not been twelve hours before, when was she murdered? Jensen asked.

  Arden explained that medical examiners use several factors to determine time of death: the state of decomposition of the body; the presence of soft, or “mushy,” tissue; fly eggs, or body maggots; green discoloration; a foul odor. All of these generally begin to appear a couple of days after death. Yet Dr. Conradi mentioned none of these in her autopsy report. That would mean Mrs. Edwards had been dead less than two days when Dr. Conradi performed the autopsy at midday Tuesday.

  The principal medical factor in estimating time of death is rigor mortis, or the degree of stiffness in the body. Dr. Arden now delivered a medical primer.

  “To begin with, the nice textbook generalizations of rigor mortis tell you that it begins—well, the process begins right after death, but it is not clinically—it is not apparent.” Within five to six hours, it is visible. It reaches its maximum in the neighborhood of twelve to possibly eighteen hours. It then begins falling off and is gone within forty-eight hours. Those are the general parameters. But various factors affect rigor mortis—age, level of fitness, and physical exertion prior to death hasten the passing of rigor mortis—and Mrs. Edwards, a few weeks shy of seventy-six and fit, had been in a hell of a fight with her attacker, from all the indications.

  Judge Kinard interrupted. How much longer was this going to take? he asked.

  Jensen said he was nearly finished. “I know the reporter has indicated she�
��s fatigued and the witness speaks very rapidly. It’s difficult testimony to take.” Perhaps a break would be appropriate.

  The court reporter said she could go on.

  Jensen resumed his questioning. In light of everything—the temperature in the house, the degree of rigor mortis, the state of decomposition of the body—did Dr. Arden have an opinion based on a reasonable degree of medical certainty as to the time of death of Mrs. Edwards?

  Arden’s answer was, of course, lengthy.

  “I can tell you that having considered all of those factors, and I will not reiterate them here at this point, my initial impression was that she had died approximately twenty-four hours prior to the time she was discovered,” he began.

  That would be Sunday afternoon. She was most likely murdered between two and three o’clock on Sunday afternoon, though it could have been as early as 10:00 a.m., he said.

  Could Mrs. Edwards have been killed on Saturday evening? Jensen asked.

  No. That was the short answer, but Arden didn’t give short answers. “In my opinion, and I hold this opinion and every other one that I have expressed to a reasonable medical certainty, that is extraordinarily unlikely and improbable really in the extreme. It would be unfair and unreasonable for me to say that that is physically impossible. But it is so incredibly unlikely that I cannot believe that that was the case. I strongly hold the opinion that Mrs. Edwards was not killed Saturday night as claimed.”

  Jensen pushed him. Would Arden say the possibility she was murdered on Saturday night was 20 percent? Ten percent?

  “If you forced me to assign a number to something that is really not numerical, I cannot imagine going as far or any farther than one percent possibility,” Arden responded. Then he added, “I think one percent may be overestimating.”

  “I have no further questions,” Jensen announced.

  It was four o’clock and everyone was tired, but Judge Kinard wanted to keep going. After a fifteen-minute break, Arden retook the stand.

  The burden of trying to salvage something from the damage wrought by Arden’s testimony fell to Salley Elliott, an associate of Don Zelenka’s in the attorney general’s office. Elliott was at least one person who could claim not to be an outsider. She was born, raised, and educated in South Carolina. Now forty-two years old, she had started working in the attorney general’s office in 1982, the year of Elmore’s first trial. Diana liked her.

  “Mr. Arden, you testified—” Elliott began her cross-examination.

  He corrected her. “It’s Dr. Arden.”

  Elliott had to address the matter of what caused the injuries to the vagina. The state’s theory was that Elmore had raped Mrs. Edwards. In his summation to the jury at Elmore’s trial, Solicitor Jones had asserted, graphically, “When he put his part of his body into the part of her privates, it was so repulsive to the lady that she, then, grabbed down there for the first time and came out with forty-something of his pubic hairs.” Yet Dr. Conradi had found no sperm, nor an increased acid phosphate level, both generally present in instances of rape or sexual intercourse.

  Elliott asked Arden, “We don’t always have sperm present when there has been penile penetration, do we?”

  Correct, he said.

  “We don’t always have acid phosphate present when we have sexual intercourse, do we?” She quickly corrected herself. There was no evidence of intercourse. “Penile penetration,” she said.

  That is correct, Arden said, but he reiterated that a blunt instrument, the bottle tongs, had most likely caused the injuries to the vagina.

  “You would agree with me, would you not, that a penis is a blunt object that can cause an abrasion?” Elliott asked.

  “In the general sense, an erect penis is a blunt object which can cause some sorts of abrasions,” Arden agreed, deadpan.

  Elliott left this topic and turned to the time of death, which was a far more serious issue for the state. Once again, Elliott wanted to remind the court that the witness was an outsider, not one of them. Arden had just testified that a body dead for more than two days would show evidence of eggs, maggots, and decomposition. “At what point in time after death would you expect to find in South Carolina fly eggs when the body is inside the home?” Elliott asked him. Arden had to concede that he was “not intimately familiar with the flies of South Carolina.”

  That little exchange aside, Elliott asked Dr. Arden if his disagreement with Dr. Conradi about the time of death was significant. Wasn’t this a customary difference among pathologists?

  No, Arden said, most pathologists agree on time of death, at least the ranges. “I cannot recall with certainty any other case where another forensic pathologist has testified and disagreed with me on a time of death estimate.” In fact, this was the first time he had ever reached an opinion about the time of death that varied from that of the doctor who conducted the autopsy.

  Had Dr. Arden discussed with Dr. Conradi her findings about the time of death? Elliott asked.

  No, he had not.

  “You did not ask her what she meant by sixty-five hours?” In her autopsy report, Dr. Conradi had estimated the time of death at sixty-five hours before she examined the body.

  “I think I understand the concept of sixty-five hours without clarification,” Arden responded drily.

  Maybe Dr. Arden and Dr. Conradi disagreed about rigor mortis, but in estimating the time of death, Dr. Conradi relied on more than just the condition of the body, Elliott noted. Hadn’t she also relied on the so-called historical information—the fact that Mrs. Edwards was supposed to leave on a trip on Sunday, the ringing alarm clock, the turned-on coffeepot, the TV Guide open to Saturday night?

  Yes, but that did not change his opinion.

  Elliott finished.

  Now it was Jensen’s turn again, and he picked up on the matter of this “historical information,” which Dr. Conradi testified she had relied on when setting the time of death. Yes, Arden said, he was aware of testimony that the alarm clock was ringing, that the coffeepot was on, that newspapers were found in the driveway. Those were interesting bits of information, not to be dismissed lightly. “But most of those conflict, seriously conflict, with the information provided by the body. I cannot explain away her rigor mortis. I cannot explain away her postmortem condition. I cannot explain away what the body is telling me because the TV Guide was open to a certain page.”

  After Jensen was finished and Arden stepped down, Jensen said to Judge Kinard, “Your Honor, it’s been a long day.” He had been on his feet more than two hours with Arden. He was losing his voice. He wanted to recess for the day. Kinard, however, was possessed with the same desire as the judges at Elmore’s trials, to get it over with quickly. He had expected the hearing to last three days, wrapping up by Wednesday. It was Tuesday, Jensen still had several more witnesses, and then Zelenka would be calling his.

  “I don’t want to punish anyone,” Kinard said, but it was only five thirty, and perhaps they should take one more witness, then quit for the day. “But if you are physically drained and your perspicacity is slowly leaving, we can delay until in the morning,” he told Jensen. “Whatever. Your call on that.”

  “I have to confess to being a little tired,” Jensen said. He leaned over to confer with Holt.

  “All right, if you don’t feel up to it, we can easily be out of here and cranked back up in the morning,” Kinard said. “Seven fifteen, quarter to eight.”

  Jensen blanched. “Well, I like to—”

  “No, I was kidding,” Kinard said. Tomorrow morning, 9:15.

  HOLT AND JENSEN walked in the dark back to the Inn on the Square, where they were staying. The inn’s motto was “Southern Elegance at Its Best,” but “Functional, Comfortable, and Clean” was more like it. At $50 a night, the inn was to be their home and office during the PCR. The receptionist and staff would often ask Jensen about the hearing. One day Jensen had a question for them. He had noticed not a word about the hearing in The Index-Journal. Why was that? Jens
en asked. Willy T. has given the order, someone said. Jensen didn’t know if it was true or not, but it was a reflection of how much power Solicitor Jones, even retired, exercised in Greenwood. And it was a reflection of the town’s attitude. The newspaper had covered the three trials when the state presented damning evidence against Elmore; most of the stories were on the front page. Now, when Jensen and Holt were presenting evidence favorable to Elmore, the newspaper was silent.

  At the hotel, Elmore’s legal team would change into more comfortable clothes and then meet in their hotel “war room,” which housed boxes with the records from Elmore’s trials and the exhibits. They would go over what had transpired in court that day and look forward to the next. Holt would frequently call John Blume for advice, and she would coach Jensen on the next day’s witness. She had put together the structure of the case and had practically memorized the trial transcript. In the morning, after Jensen ate breakfast—hominy grits and scrambled eggs—and Holt gulped coffee, they would head back to the courtroom. Jensen was terrified, given that Elmore’s life was at stake.

  The battle of the pathologists was suspended while Jensen and Holt called other witnesses and then Zelenka began calling witnesses for the state. It resumed on the fourth day of the hearing when Zelenka put Dr. Conradi on the stand. She, too, was a native New Yorker, but any traces of her origin were largely gone. She was raised in upstate New York and attended nearby St. Lawrence University and the University of Rochester before being admitted to the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, followed by an internship and four years of residency at Cincinnati General Hospital. After that, she and her husband, Edward Conradi—they met in medical school—went to Germany, where he fulfilled his military obligation. After the army, he got a job in South Carolina, and she began working as a forensic pathologist for the state. She later became a professor of pathology at the Medical University of South Carolina, in Charleston.