by Rick Bowers
The classification was wrong. Nash had no record of violence prior to his conviction. She could make the jury see that he never should have been sent to Attica. That the cops and prosecutors had been out to bury him.
Laura read the disciplinary write-ups that got him a day or two in keep-locked, and the fighting beefs that landed him in the Box. I can deal with those, too, she thought. The inevitable hardships of prison life. You fight, or you die.
Then, she came to the bombshell that Wilkes had promised. Documentation of four years of psychiatric tests, conducted by consulting psychiatrist Edward J. Peters.
Dr. Peters painted Nash as a cross between a psychopath and sociopath, a rare breed of madman capable of cold, cruel, unspeakable acts. She cringed as she read:
Edward Thomas Nash exhibits a rare form of antisocial personality disorder that blends the attributes of a cunning psychopath with the qualities of a violent sociopath. The inmate combines the cold calculation and tactical thought patterns of the psychopath with the twisted fantasies and warped delusions of the sociopath. This volatile mix makes him capable of the worst forms of human violence. In my twenty-one years working as a prison psychiatrist, Mr. Nash is the most disturbed and frightening person I have ever examined.
The chilling report didn’t end there.
This dual pathology enables him to present a different version of himself to different people within his social sphere. Nash presents one version of himself to his attorneys, another to his family members, another to his friends, and still another to his fellow inmates. His fellow inmates see the most authentic version of his distorted personality. This accounts for the three signed affidavits from inmates who swore that Nash admitted to them that he had killed Erin Lambert. These inmates knew details of the hanging that the killer—and no one else—could have conveyed. Edward Thomas Nash is a psychopath, a sociopath, and a danger to society.
Laura put down the report, totally dismayed.
41
Laura scanned the framed diplomas on the wall:
Bachelor’s Degree with High Honors
from Harvard University
Doctor of Medicine with High Honors
from Boston University
Certificate of Excellence from
the American College of Psychiatry
Outstanding Achievement Award
from the National Alliance of Mental Health
She looked across the desk at Dr. Charlene Meyers, a renowned psychiatrist, and a sought-after courtroom expert. Laura hoped the forty-six-year-old leader in her field would take the stand and debunk the diagnosis from the prison shrink. She had messengered her a copy of Peters’ report before paying her a visit at her Manhattan office.
“What do you think?” Laura looked past Dr. Meyers and out the window to the bustling street, eight floors below. “Is this report valid?”
“This is an excellent report.” The elegant woman with long, brown hair and tortoiseshell glasses held the report in front of her. “Outstanding analysis. Splendid summary.”
Laura blinked. “What? I thought…”
Dr. Meyers smiled. “Let me clarify. The report is first-rate. For a work of fiction. For a horror script. For a scary movie intended to scare the bejesus out of people. Are you sure this report was prepared by a certified psychiatrist? I would have guessed Stephen King. When is the film coming out? What’s it called? The Two-Headed Monster?”
Laura laughed. “It scared the hell out of me. I mean, a psychopathic sociopath? Although, I guess most people use the words interchangeably. I mean, either way, a psychopath or a sociopath is bad news. ”
“True. Hollywood has blurred the meanings. Pop psychiatry has perpetuated it.” Dr. Meyers rolled her eyes at the ceiling. “The generic ‘psycho’ of the movies might be dubbed a ‘psychopath’ or a ‘sociopath.’ In professional psychiatric terms, however, these terms represent two separate types of antisocial personality disorder. Each of these terms was created by psychiatrists to explain two different mental states. Blending the terms together just distorts the science. To psychiatric professionals, the terms have distinct meanings.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. Sociopaths and psychopaths also exhibit distinct traits.”
“Such as?”
“Sociopaths challenge authority, show aggression, obsess over themselves, and are easily bored. Sociopaths are impulsive, prone to rage, and can be driven to violence. Their condition tends to result from environmental factors, such as childhood physical or emotional abuse. On the other hand, a sociopath does have a conscience and can blend into society. They have a moral compass —they just choose to override it. Sociopaths know that killing is wrong, and that’s why they love doing it.”
“Ted Bundy?”
“Yes. A pillar of society—and a mass murderer.”
“And psychopaths?”
“Psychopaths have no conscience. Psychopaths feel no remorse. They inflict pain—even kill—for personal gratification. Psychopaths are cunning and manipulative. Even charming. Furthermore, psychopaths are made, not born—their conditions are genetic.”
“Hannibal Lector?” Laura asked.
“Exactly. Brilliant. Calculating. Deadly. A true psychopath can torture a human being without feeling the slightest bit of guilt. Killing a person has the moral equivalence of eating a ham sandwich.”
“So, what would you tell the prison shrink?”
“Pick one. Your subject can’t be both.”
“Then, you’ll appear in court to refute Dr. Peter’s findings? You’ll take the stand for the defense?”
“I’ll challenge every word in it. None of this is based on sound medical or psychiatric principles. This whole psychopath/sociopath combo is pure nonsense. For whatever reason, this prison shrink created a fantasy to make your client look like a monster.”
“Thank you.” Laura beamed. “Consider yourself hired.”
The famous psychiatrist held up her right hand—palm up. “I’ll have to examine the patient, Mr. Nash. I’ll have to administer a number of tests, including a series of brain scans.”
“Brain scans?”
“Brain scans typically show that dangerously deranged patients have a much smaller amygdala—the part of the brain responsible for emotion and judgement. Based on what you’ve told me, my guess is that your client will present a normal amygdala. Of course, I can’t guarantee what I’ll find in Mr. Nash, but I promise it won’t be Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”
“No problem examining Nash,” Laura promised. “I’ll set it up.”
“Well, don’t celebrate yet.” Dr. Meyers interlocked her long fingers and took a deep breath. “I’ll have to take on the prison psychiatrist in open court. The battle of the shrinks may end in a draw. It usually does. The science often goes over the heads of the jurors. It might leave them confused. Dr. Peter’s ridiculous narrative might stick in their minds, while my clinical analysis gets forgotten.”
***
Laura’s phone buzzed while she was waiting for the elevator outside the doctor’s office. Delilah Cole.
“Delilah. What’s up?”
“Do we have a psychiatric expert?”
“Yes, and she’s fantastic. She assures me the prison psych report is shit. She’s willing to testify to that in court.”
“I may have more for you on that—the psychiatric report from the prison shrink, I mean.”
“What?”
“Well, I spent the past three nights comparing Peters’ records with prison employee and contractor records in the public domain. It turns out that Dr. Peters is not a full-time psychiatrist at Attica. He’s part-time—not on staff.”
“Okay.”
“The records show that Peters only works in the Attica psychiatric ward two days a week—Tuesdays and Thursdays. The rest of the time, he works at a public health clinic in
Buffalo.”
“Interesting.” Laura let the elevator door open and close. “Go on.”
“Okay. So, Peters based his psychopath-sociopath theory on twenty-four one-hour sessions with Nash in the prison psych ward. The problem is this: Eight of those sessions were supposedly held on days when he was out of the prison. He was not there to conduct those sessions. The records are clear: Peters did not conduct those sessions. Those sessions never happened. Peters falsified his report.”
42
Laura looked at the trial transcripts, appellate briefs, police reports, and crime scene photos piled on the long table.
“I have news,” she told the team gathered in the case room. “Important news.”
“You have our attention,” Charles replied. “Enlighten us.”
Delilah and Lou nodded in unison.
“I hold in my hand a letter from the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.” Laura didn’t let her face reveal her feelings about the content. “This letter will tell us whether the appeal will move forward. Or whether we start banging on the door of the U.S. Supreme Court.”
“This is it,” Charles said. “The moment of truth.”
Lou beat a drumroll on the desktop.
Delilah sat still, eyes closed, hands folded.
Lifting the envelope, Laura let a slight smile cross her face. Holding the letter at eye-level, she began to read. “The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit hereby rules in the case of State of New York v. Edward Thomas Nash.” Enunciating every word drew out the tension. “The Court finds sufficient grounds to grant the petitioner’s request for relief, and hereby orders a new trial.”
Cheers filled the cramped space.
“Was it—?” Charles never finished his question.
“Yep,” Laura interjected. “Unanimous. Three out of three. Chen wrote that the trial was ‘rife with the aroma of prosecutorial misconduct,’ and all of them condemned the use of the stun belt. That’s what put us over the top—the damn stun belt.”
“Yes.” Charles slapped the tabletop. “Bring it on!”
“Damn right.” Lou thrust a clenched fist into the air. “Let’s do this thing.”
“Away we go,” Delilah chimed in. “What next?”
“We prepare for trial,” Laura said. “We prepare to prove that our client was convicted without cause. We build a case for his complete and total vindication.”
43
In the new trial, Nash would be considered innocent until proven guilty. The burden of proof would shift back to the prosecution. Laura felt good about her prospects of winning an acquittal. Discovery suggested that the Assistant District Attorney was essentially planning to rerun the original prosecution. Hair fibers matching Nash’s on the victim’s body. Empty beer bottles found at the scene, bearing Nash’s DNA. Same shit. “This murderer… this madman… this monster.”
True, the prison psychiatrist’s report was new, but it could be torpedoed by the defense’s highly respected shrink. The prosecution did plan to parade out one of the prison snitches, who would testify that Nash confessed the murder to him. No worries, Laura thought. Prison snitches are chronic liars. Prison snitches make terrible witnesses. The jury can smell “slammer world” all over them. The jury can feel the brutality of their crimes and sense their willingness to say anything to get out.
***
Martha Barrack tossed her floral-print, silk scarf over the left shoulder of her red, designer sweater.
“I read your interview in The Columbia Law Review.” She placed her elbows on her redwood desk and flashed a fake smile at Laura. “You are quite the prolific quote machine.”
Laura gripped the arms of the leather chair and pretended to smile back at her rival, her mind circling around the words “jealous bitch.”
“I was pleased with the interview.” Laura held her head high and maintained eye contact. “It set up a strong case for police misconduct.”
“It also alerted to the prosecution to our approach.” Martha lost the smile, her wide eyes glaring under expensive mascara. “You gave away our strategy.”
“Oh?” Laura shrugged her shoulders and looked away. “Really?”
“Yes.” From the corner of her eye, Laura saw Martha running long, elegant fingertips over her auburn hair, making sure no strand had gone astray. “Look. Laura. Let me share a lesson that I had to learn the hard way. This case is not about you, or your career. This case is about your client. You remember him? The guy with the rest of his life on the line? The man who may spend the rest of his life in slammer world?”
Laura looked to the ceiling, as if considering. She had to admit, her more experienced colleague was probably right. Martha had a lot more experience than her—and had exonerated dozens of wrongfully convicted inmates. Conceding the point, Laura muttered, “Let’s get back to forming that strategy.”
Martha leaned back in her swivel chair and issued a list of carefully chosen words. “We let the prosecution dish out its weak evidence, sketchy witnesses, and out-of-date forensics. We let the prosecution feel confident of winning another conviction. We let them overplay their hand.”
“Okay.”
“Then, we launch a withering counterattack. We eviscerate their case. Witness by witness. Exhibit by exhibit. Expert by expert. We play rope-a-dope.”
“Rope-a-what?”
“Rope-a-dope. You know. Muhammad Ali. The great heavyweight boxing champion. He’d let his opponent trap him on the ropes and tire himself out, throwing harmless punch after harmless punch. Then, Ali would lash out, destroying his depleted foe.”
“We counterpunch.” Laura narrowed her eyes. “We play defense.”
“Yes. Until we launch our violent onslaught.”
Laura had to give it to her. Martha knew her stuff. The strategy was sound. Even so, Laura had her doubts about the final outcome.
“No matter how effective we are, questions remain,” she told Martha. “Can a new jury give the benefit of the doubt to a man once convicted of such a brutal homicide? Can a new jury see the defendant as anything other than The Hangman of Eden? Can the new judge apply the law without bias or prejudice?”
“Time will tell,” Martha replied. “Time will tell.”
***
Team Nash gathered in their new, high-tech case room that hummed with digital power. A FASTRA II desktop supercomputer sent images to a one hundred-eight-inch curved plasma monitor. The screen was suspended from ceiling cables in the back of the room. Six high-powered laptops shared software designed for researching legal precedents and storing electronic evidence files. The walls of the room were coated in a film that served as an electronic erase board, allowing the team to mark up the surface with schematics and plans. High technology would power the investigation: Criminal databases, electronic legal files, automated evidence searches. The same technology used by leading police labs and law firms. Those tools would be backed up with good, old-fashioned legwork. The probe should lead to new evidence, witnesses, precedents, and theories of the crime.
“We will reassess every word of testimony and shred of evidence from the first trial,” Laura told the team. “New witnesses will be uncovered and new evidence unearthed. We’ll use all that to undercut the prosecution at every turn. We’ll have to shed light on the underlying question: If Eddie Nash did not kill Erin Lambert, who did?”
“A SODDI defense,” Charles said.
“What?” Delilah asked.
“SODDI,” Charles repeated. “Some Other Dude Did It.”
Lou grinned, and Charles continued. “We’ll also have to answer this question: What motivated the Erie County Police Department, and the Erie County Prosecutor’s Office, to frame Nash in the first place? We’ll have to find out just how deep the corruption went. Then, we’ll have to share that knowledge with the new jury without having the jurors
think we’re trashing the authorities. Blaming the cops always backfires.”
44
The glow from the concave computer monitor moved like fog through the darkened office. The time signature in the upper-righthand corner of the screen read 11:26 PM.
Rain pelted the long, rectangular windows like projectiles. Thunder crashed in the distance.
Laura studied each word and each phrase in the gruesome police report that flashed on the screen. Certain words and phrases bore into her brain like starving parasites. “Blunt force trauma. Severe rope lacerations. Severed vertebra.” Her mind’s eye pictured the killer—the Hangman—slipping the noose over the victim’s head, yanking the knot tight around her throat, and hurling her body into the abyss.
The rain stopped. The thunder died.
A noise broke the eerie silence. Laura scanned the abandoned workstations. She looked into the empty offices. Were there telltale glimpses of a figure moving in the shadows? Or was it just the settling of an old building? She tried to ignore the distractions and gazed back at the screen.
The hunt was on. The police reports shimmering in front of her had secrets to share. She was certain of it. Clues hid in the rambling text and gruesome photos. She just had to find them.
She studied the next document on the screen. Under the letterhead of the Erie County Police Laboratory, the title read, “Forensic Tire Imprint Analysis.” The findings were set in bold type:
The tire imprints taken from the crime scene indicate the heavy-duty pickup truck used in the commission of this crime was equipped with the Goodyear 1500 Series tires. The imprints at the scene were a direct match for the tire/tires on the defendant’s 1996 Chevrolet Silverado.
Laura keyed on the words tire/tires.
Strange. Did they check all four tires, or just one? Tire/tires. What strange wording. She called up images of the tire tracks imprinted at the scene. Four distinct crime lab photos filled the four quadrants of the screen. Each photo showed a tread imprint from an individual Goodyear 1500 Series tire. Oh, of course; the tread on each imprint matched the other three tires. Goodyear 1500s. Standard for the make and model of Nash’s truck.
