by Dan Morse
Six initial questions poured right out, all based on whether Jayna had checked Brittany’s bag the night of the murder. “Tag on item,” McCarthy wrote, using as few words as possible. “You had no receipt,” he added.
He also wanted to ask Brittany about the job interview scheduled for three days after Jayna’s murder, the one at the upscale health club where she wanted to be a personal trainer, the one where she couldn’t afford a bad reference from lululemon. “New job lose—Equinox,” McCarthy wrote.
His next section centered on a bit of courtroom theater. He planned to start by playing recordings of Brittany’s interviews with detectives, then direct Brittany to call out every time she heard something that wasn’t true. “Play tape. Tell me when lie,” McCarthy wrote.
He continued for four single-spaced pages, including what he’d ask after showing Brittany photos from Jayna’s autopsy. “What cause crack to skull . . . What crush skull with . . . Knife used, where put it.”
During another beach session, McCarthy prepped for an insanity defense. McCarthy had tried a handful of such murder cases, and he certainly believed that some killers, no matter what they’d done, needed to be in secure psychiatric hospitals rather than prison. For instance, in 2002, he was given a case in which a twenty-three-year-old man who had shot his parents had also lined up bottles of urine in his bedroom to ward off evil spirits. After McCarthy learned more about the killer’s mental state, he agreed that the man should be sent to the psychiatric hospital without a trial. But in other such cases, the prosecutor had taken aggressive stances. In 1997, he tried to convince a judge that although a forty-nine-year-old man off of his meds may have been legally crazy when he killed his parents, he’d known the risks of not taking his medication and should be held accountable—in prison—for doing so. McCarthy had lost that case, though his novel strategy became the basis for an episode of Law & Order.
Sitting in his beach chair, McCarthy knew that he’d get wide latitude to question Brittany’s doctors if she pleaded insanity—particularly if he asked the questions in the context of how the doctors had formed their opinions. McCarthy quickly starting writing. The opener: “Which weapon 1st?”
His strategy would be to stay away from medical questions, knowing that any doctor hired—particularly someone such as head-trauma expert Williamson—would be way out in front of him. He’d stick with the specifics of how Jayna was killed, even if it was just to detail for the jury all that Brittany had done, such as running around the store picking up weapon after weapon as Jayna was dying. Again, the prosecutor figured, he would ask the doctors what questions they’d asked Brittany. “Where knife/hammer/wrench/rope/Buddha,” McCarthy wrote.
* * *
By late summer, McCarthy still didn’t know the murder weapon that had inflicted the linear gashes in Jayna’s skull, including the ones that turned at a sudden, 90-degree angle. He asked Vosburgh, the blood-spatter expert who had examined the store, to come to his office and review reports and more than 1,000 crime-scene photographs. Vosburgh arrived late on a Thursday afternoon and took a seat at McCarthy’s conference table, sitting in front of boxes of document and photographs.
“Take your time, Bill; I’ve got a million things to do,” McCarthy said from behind his desk.
The two were alone in the office, working in silence. Vosburgh came across a photograph of the red toolbox that had been found resting on Jayna’s shoulder. As he could see from the progression of photos, the crime-scene technicians working the scene had used the toolbox as a container for other bloody items found near Jayna’s head, taking the collection back to the police station. There, they unloaded the contents, took photographs of the items, put them back in the toolbox, and stored the toolbox as a single piece of evidence, labeling it “CS-35.”
A lot of the items stored in the toolbox were random and harmless. Paintbrushes, a bike reflector, part of a paper bag. But in the middle of the collection was a black metal bar, about a foot long and an inch wide. At one end was a thin plate, perpendicular to the bar. This plate was two inches by three inches, and one edge of it turned in a 90-degree angle. Vosburgh looked at the bloodstained middle portions of the bar. Much of the stains were meaningless blotches. But outside the blotches were small oval-shaped droplets. To Vosburgh’s eyes, those were impact spatter. He pulled out the autopsy pictures, finding close-ups of the devastating linear and L-shaped wounds on Jayna’s skull.
Vosburgh called McCarthy over, showing him the photographs of the toolbox and the black bar with impact blood on it. Vosburgh showed him autopsy photographs. “You can literally place this weapon into the wound path on her head,” he told the prosecutor. “This is what did it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Skirmishes
The Brittany Norwood trial was shaping up to be as big of a media spectacle as the Montgomery County Circuit Courthouse had ever seen. Bigger than the trial of Samuel Sheinbein, the seventeen-year-old with the circular power saw. Bigger than the trial of Zakaria Oweiss, the obstetrician with the rubber mallet. And at least as big as the Beltway Snipers, whose fates had been sealed by juries in Virginia before they were tried in Maryland.
Yet the presiding judge in the case, Robert Greenberg, fifty-nine, had been on the bench only five years and had spent much of the time presiding over civil suits, never over a murder trial. It just so happened that this case came to him because of the standard rotation process among Montgomery’s twenty-one Circuit Court judges. An angular, six feet two inches tall, Greenberg had a soft-spoken manner that belied a brisk legal mind often one step ahead of the attorneys in front of his bench.
The longtime Montgomery County resident had started his legal career as a prosecutor, working misdemeanor and traffic cases. His biggest claim to fame was securing a drunk-driving conviction against U.S. Representative Louis Stokes, of Ohio, who, like many other members of Congress, kept quarters in Montgomery County. In 1984, Greenberg switched to defense work, opening a private practice and at one point representing boxing legend Mike Tyson in a road-rage incident involving two other motorists. After Tyson, Greenberg took on more and more complicated cases, and was appointed to the bench in 2006.
Few in the courthouse knew of his pursuits outside of the office. As an amateur baseball historian, Greenberg had published a biography of Swish Nicholson, baseball’s best slugger during World War II. As an aging baseball player himself, he still competed in what he termed a local “old-men’s league.” Once a month, he served food at a soup kitchen. And when he really wanted to take his mind off things—about three nights a week—he descended to the basement of the home where he and his wife had raised three kids; sat in front of his drum set; donned a pair of headphones; cranked up the Marvelettes, Otis Redding, Bruce Springsteen, or the Smithereens; and thumped right along. Back in his office, the judge worked among law books neatly lined up next to baseball figurines and a drumstick autographed by Springsteen’s drummer, Max Weinberg.
By late summer, the case against Brittany was heading toward an October 24 start date. Her attorneys filed legal papers asking Greenberg to vacate all five of Brittany’s interviews with detectives, arguing that she had been in distress or not free to leave. The attorneys also asked Greenberg to postpone the trial to give them more time to explore a psychiatric defense—known in Maryland as “not criminally responsible,” or NCR. “Counsel believe that an NCR defense is warranted,” her attorneys wrote, “and an NCR plea is likely.” Greenberg took up the postponement question first, calling an August 30 hearing for the matter. Brittany, wearing a tan prison jumpsuit, was driven over from the jail and led into the courtroom through a side door.
“Good morning, ma’am,” Greenberg told her.
If she responded, no one heard. In the gallery were members of Jayna Murray’s family, seeing Brittany for the first time. Also present were members of Brittany’s family, there to support her and to see whether her attorneys could explain what happened. Brittany’s lead attorney, Doug Wood, spok
e first, indicating that an insanity defense in the case was complicated by the fact Brittany had never been diagnosed with psychiatric problems. “Because someone doesn’t have treatment early on in their life doesn’t mean they don’t need treatment later on in their life,” Wood said. “Your honor, the nature of this offense, I think, cries out for a very thorough investigation of the mental health issues.”
Harry Trainor, a new member of the defense team and an expert on psychiatric defenses, told the judge that Brittany likely “has a history of concussions.” But, like Wood, Trainor was vague on specifics. Greenberg pushed the attorneys, asking why they hadn’t demonstrated at least some psychiatric issues in the five months since her arrest.
Over at the prosecutor’s table, John McCarthy and Marybeth Ayres certainly wanted the trial to start on schedule; the less time Wood had, the better for them. But the prosecutors had figured Greenberg would likely grant the postponement, given the trial’s visibility and forensic intensity. Still, McCarthy hoped he could at least use the hearing to take advantage of Dr. David Williamson’s well-earned reputation, which McCarthy figured was important to him. McCarthy wanted to publicly link the doctor to a defense strategy that to the lay public wouldn’t make sense—soccer injuries leading to murder. “He’s a reputable guy,” McCarthy had told Ayres. “Once his name gets mentioned, his family, his neighbors, his colleagues are going to go: ‘What, are you kidding me?’ I think there’s going to be this subtle pressure on the guy to back away from this case.”
Before the hearing, McCarthy already had made a point to identify Williamson in court filings. Now, as McCarthy listened to Greenberg bore in on the defense attorneys, he sensed opportunity—both to go to trial on time, and to put more pressure on Williamson. When he spoke, the prosecutor described how calm Brittany was after her arrest. Mental illness, he noted, doesn’t just turn off and on like a light switch.
“I know who their doctor is. We’ve been doing research on this guy. I’m looking into his background,” McCarthy said, as a row full of reporters took notes. “What are we going to say? Soccer injuries? Because she did too many headers that now she has a psychiatric condition, because of soccer injuries?”
Judge Greenberg denied Brittany’s attorneys’ request for a postponement, giving them two weeks to come up with a specific reason for a psychiatric defense. Wood balked, arguing that the whole process was moving too quickly. “I’ve done a lot of homicide cases and to try a homicide case of this magnitude within five months of an indictment is quite a rush.”
He asked the judge to reconsider.
“Mr. Wood, with all due respect, I’ve ruled, and I’m not going to change my mind,” replied Greenberg.
* * *
Three days later, the attorneys returned to Greenberg’s courtroom to debate the defense attorneys’ request to disqualify all of Brittany’s statements to detectives.
In documents filed before the hearing, Doug Wood and Chris Griffiths detailed the detectives’ five interviews with Brittany: two from her hospital bed, one in her apartment, and two at police headquarters. At the hospital, Wood and Griffiths wrote, Brittany was in distress and hadn’t wanted to speak with Detective Deana Mackie. Two days later, according to the attorneys, Detectives Jim Drewry and Dimitry Ruvin already considered Brittany their prime suspect when they called on her at home. Both there and when she later came to the police station, they questioned her in a way that made her feel she wasn’t free to leave, the attorneys wrote, meaning she should have been informed of her rights to remain silent and call a lawyer.
State’s Attorney McCarthy brought in all three detectives to testify at the hearing. Wood gamely went after them on his cross-examinations, making a U-turn in his case by arguing that Brittany’s cover-up story was so ridiculous, she must’ve been the detectives’ only suspect from the beginning. But the detectives wouldn’t bend, telling Wood that information in the opening days was being delivered in bits and pieces by various people, not all of them communicating in real time.
Wood’s questioning of Drewry lasted over half an hour, evolving into a sharp duel between two gray-haired veterans who’d worked homicide cases for three decades. “Essentially,” Wood charged at one point, “you’re trying to elicit more facts to get more contradictions with what you knew the forensic evidence would show, right?”
“There’s a saying, okay?” Drewry replied, going back to his mantra. “‘Lie to me. Please lie to me.’ Sometimes a provable lie is as good as the truth.”
“So you need a conversation,” Wood added. “You don’t need a confession.”
“Yes.”
“That’s another saying?”
“Yes.”
Wood questioned whether Drewry really had poor hearing and a bad back, both of which the detective had mentioned repeatedly during his interviews with Brittany. Wood suggested that Drewry invented the maladies so she’d speak loudly enough for the hidden microphone to pick up her words, and so that he could sit in the more comfortable chair farther from the microphone. Quietly taking all this in from the bench was Greenberg, the judge, who already had watched hours of interrogation video in the case.
“Are you hard of hearing?” Wood asked the detective.
“No,” Drewry said.
“Okay,” Wood said, chuckling at the candor. “So during the interview when you tell her you’re hard of hearing, that’s just to get her to speak up into the microphone, so to speak?”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t have a bad back, right?”
“Yeah,” Drewry said, pausing. “I do have a bad back.”
“Okay, so that part was true.”
“That much is true.”
Greenberg interjected. “You had me convinced you were hard of hearing.”
“Oh, he’s good, your honor. No question about it,” said Wood.
Greenberg listened to the attorneys’ final arguments, took a brief break, then came back to issue his ruling. He opened with remarks that he acknowledged went beyond the legal issues at hand: “Let me begin by saying that there’s been a suggestion here that the police conduct in this case indicated that very early on, they should have known, or did know, that their suspect was in fact Ms. Norwood.”
The judge went on to list the immediate pressures the detectives had been facing.
“We had a community, a rather affluent part of our county, which was in an uproar. This appeared to be the work of some unknown assailants on a night when people typically are out at restaurants or shopping. It was shocking in its nature and immediate police action was required. Now, police action in a case such as this, by its very necessity, takes a while to unfold. We sit here today and look back in hindsight at what investigative techniques were used and what leads were pursued and so forth. But hindsight is twenty-twenty. And what we learned here today was that not every police officer investigating this case knew everything that was going on. Indeed, there were forensic tests that were being conducted, the results of which didn’t become immediately available. And it strikes me as taking a somewhat cynical approach in the society in which we live, where we are trying to be more sympathetic to victims than perhaps we’ve been in the past, that immediately we ought to suspect a young woman who appeared to have been, by all accounts, the victim of a heinous crime.”
From there, things only got worse for Wood.
Greenberg said that when it came to detectives’ interviews of his client, it didn’t matter that at some point the detectives considered her a suspect. What mattered was what the suspect thought. And in this case, Greenberg said, the suspect thought she was in control.
“What really struck me in all of these interviews was the expansiveness of the defendant,” Greenberg said. “This woman is a woman of frankly striking intelligence and lucidity. And at appropriate times, as was also pointed out by the state, she could tug on your heartstrings.”
The judge ruled that the interviews could be played almost in their entirety to jurors. He
tossed out part of the final interview, agreeing that Drewry had kept asking questions without informing Brittany of her rights even as she insisted she wanted to go home. But prosecutors would be allowed to use key statements Brittany made earlier that day, including her dubious explanation of how the masked men had forced her to move Jayna’s car and return to the store.
But Greenberg’s larger message seemed to be that Brittany thought she had the detectives duped until the end.
“It just came across as very calculated,” he said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Without Conscience
The two hearings had an immediate impact on both Brittany Norwood’s and Jayna Murray’s extended families.
To the Norwoods, Judge Robert Greenberg had forcefully declared that Brittany was in full command of her faculties, and had not been in some kind of psychotic daze after spending all night in the middle of a bloody crime scene that made her incapable of being herself. Nor had any evidence been presented supporting Brittany’s claims about masked attackers. In fact, her own attorneys had argued that the story was such nonsense that detectives should have seen through it immediately.
But her family’s support, steadfast since the arrest, didn’t waver. They visited Brittany at the jail and talked with her on the phone. As was their legal right, prosecutors and detectives listened to recordings of the calls, hoping she’d say something incriminating, but instead heard only encouragement from her parents and siblings. One of Brittany’s sisters, who was engaged to be married, told Brittany she wouldn’t have bridesmaids because Brittany couldn’t be her maid of honor.
“No, have bridesmaids,” Brittany said. “I don’t want to take anything from you.”
