Blind Conviction (Nate Shepherd Legal Thriller Series Book 3)

by Michael Stagg

  “She’s so hurt,” came the muffled reply. “She’s so hurt.”

  I realized I’d spoken to Abby twice since the attack, had studied pictures of her injuries, had read every medical record on her condition, had been immersed in everything that had happened to her.

  Archie hadn’t seen her at all.

  The isolation from his family and the pressure from the trial had been building for months. Seeing Abby was finally too much. Archie broke down.

  “Danny, make sure the hall’s clear. Then we’ll grab a spare room.”

  As Danny left, Archie’s head stayed bowed. “How could Hamish think I could do that?”

  “Your parents don’t,” Olivia said. “Abby doesn’t.”

  Archie wouldn’t hear it. He just kept his head down and cried.

  Danny returned, nodded, and Olivia and I led Archie out. He could barely walk.

  We found a room. Rather than prepare, the three of us spent lunch pulling Archie back from the edge so he could return to the trial.

  So Stritch was successful in that too.

  40

  After lunch, the answer to my challenge came in the form of Deputy Sharon Reynolds. Deputy Reynolds was in her mid-forties with black hair that she wore up, round cheeks, and a pleasant smile that was disarming and comforting and I'm sure had led to numerous arrests of suspects who couldn't believe that they’d just told this nice woman everything she needed to put them away. Deputy Reynolds wasn't just a twenty-year deputy, though; she was also in charge of administering the rape kits for the Ash County Sheriff's Department.

  Stritch got right to it. “Deputy Reynolds, are rape kits used for other purposes?”

  “Not for other purposes but for other cases,” said Deputy Reynolds. “Basically, what we do with the kit is collect evidence from a person's body and clothes.”

  “I see. And just to be clear, Deputy Reynolds, was Abby Ackerman sexually assaulted in this case?”

  “She was not. She was attacked and almost killed. But she was not sexually assaulted.”

  “I see. And were you part of the investigation into Ms. Ackerman's attack?”

  “I was. I followed Ms. Ackerman from Century Quarry to Mission Hospital and, in conjunction with the medical team, gathered evidence.”

  “What kind of evidence would you typically look for in a case like this?”

  “One of the first things we look for is evidence of the attacker’s DNA. In the case of a physical assault, this can take the form of blood or tissue under the victim's fingernails.”

  “Did you find any such evidence here?”

  “I did not. It did not appear that Ms. Ackerman struggled with her attacker.”

  “What else did you do?”

  “The next thing was to check Ms. Ackerman's clothes.”

  “And what did you find?”

  “We found a variety of fibers and organic material.”

  “What do you mean by organic material?”

  “It appeared from the scene that had Ms. Ackerman tumbled down a hill that was filled with vegetation. We found material from those plants on her clothes.”

  “Is that a surprise?”

  “It is not.”

  “Did you find anything else?”

  “Yes.”

  “What?”

  “We found organic material that did not seem to belong there.”

  “You'll have to excuse us laypeople, Deputy Reynolds. What do you mean?”

  “We found fibers that were not related to the vegetation that Ms. Ackerman was found in.”

  “And what fibers are those?”

  “Corn silk.”

  “Corn silk? What’s that?”

  “You know when you shuck an ear of corn, those hairs or wispy fibers at the top that you have to pick out of the ear?”

  “Yes.”

  “Those.”

  “I see. And you found those on Ms. Ackerman's clothes?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “And did your office run an analysis of the corn silk fibers?”

  “We did.”

  “And what did you find?”

  “That it was a type of ‘no weed seed’ that is planted in Ash County, Michigan.”

  “And as part of your investigation, did you examine what type of corn was planted by Archibald Mack this year?”

  “I did.”

  “And?”

  “He planted the same brand of seed.”

  “So you're saying Ms. Ackerman was found with fibers on her clothes that matched the corn that was planted by Archibald Mack this season?”

  “Yes.”

  “Finally, Deputy Reynolds, did you examine Ms. Ackerman’s wounds themselves?”

  “Not all of them.”

  “Which ones?”

  “Primarily her head wounds. I did not examine her hip and pelvis injuries.”

  “I see. And were you able to reach any conclusions based on those wounds?”

  “Yes.”

  “What are those?”

  “That Ms. Ackerman had an asymmetrical impact contusion on the side of her head surrounding her orbital fracture.”

  “I’m sorry, Deputy Reynolds, what does that mean?”

  “It means we were able to see the rough shape of the object that fractured the bone next to Ms. Ackerman’s eye.”

  “And what did you conclude?”

  “That the assailant hit her in the head with a rock.”

  “No further questions.”

  I stood. “Good afternoon, Deputy Reynolds.”

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Shepherd.”

  “You’re experienced in collecting DNA evidence from victims of assaults and sexual crimes, aren’t you?”

  “I am.”

  “You have collected DNA evidence that has led to the arrest of persons committing such crimes, correct?”

  “That's correct.”

  “You did not find any of Archie Mack’s DNA on Ms. Ackerman, did you?”

  “I did not.”

  “And so the jury is clear, DNA can be in the form of skin or hair or blood or spit, correct?”

  “That's correct. Any physical material from a defendant.”

  “And so, in an assault case like this, you’d specifically be looking for any skin or hair or blood or spit that was left behind by the attacker, right?”

  “That's right.”

  “Deputy Reynolds, there's been evidence presented in this case that my client left blood on the railing of the abandoned stairs at Century Quarry. Are you aware of that evidence?”

  “I am.”

  “You’re aware that he had a cut on his hand the night of the incident involving Abby Ackerman?”

  “I am.”

  “Yet, you didn't find any of my client’s blood on Ms. Ackerman, did you?”

  Deputy Reynolds shifted in her seat. “I did not.”

  “Not one microscopic drop, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You didn’t find any of my client's hair either, did you?”

  “I did not.”

  “Or skin?”

  “No.”

  “People who have been assaulted often have the DNA of their attacker under their fingernails, don't they?”

  “Only if they had an opportunity to struggle or fight.”

  “You didn't find any DNA material under Ms. Ackerman’s nails, did you?”

  “I did not.”

  “You mentioned that you found corn silk on Ms. Ackerman’s clothes?”

  “I did.”

  “You testified that this corn silk matched the brand of seed that Archibald Mack uses on his farm, am I remembering that correctly?”

  “You are.”

  “Did you investigate how many other farmers in Ash County plant that brand of seed?”

  “I did not.”

  “Do you know if Abby Ackerman went to the supermarket before she went to the concert?”

  “I do not.”

  “Do you know if she had bough
t corn or shucked corn recently?”

  “I do not. But I know from her earlier testimony that she had showered and worn clean clothes to the concert.”

  “I see. You know that Ms. Ackerman met three friends at the concert, right?”

  “I do.”

  “Do you know if any of them had been around corn in the previous twenty-four hours?”

  “I do not.”

  “Have you ever been to a concert, Deputy Reynolds?”

  “I have.”

  “Would you agree with me that you can bump into hundreds of people at a concert? Physically bump into them?”

  “Dozens certainly,” she said.

  “Were you able to eliminate all of the people that Ms. Ackerman bumped into at the concert as the source of the corn silk fibers?”

  “I was not.”

  “You mentioned that Ms. Ackerman was struck with a rock by her assailant?”

  “I did.”

  “You never found any of my client’s DNA on the rock that struck Ms. Ackerman, did you?”

  “It’s my understanding that we never found the rock in question at all.”

  “So, again, you never found a rock with my client’s DNA on it, true?”

  “That’s true.”

  “Thank you, Deputy Reynolds. No further questions, Your Honor.”

  T. Marvin Stritch stood. “Deputy Reynolds, if a victim is surprised by an attack, she would not have an opportunity to fight with the assailant, would she?”

  “If she was surprised, she would not.”

  “Victims of an attack do not always have tissue under their fingernails, do they?”

  “They often do not.”

  “And just so the jury is clear, the corn silk fibers you found exactly match the seed that Archibald Mack planted on his farm this year?”

  “That’s what the lab tests indicated, correct.”

  “No further questions,” said Stritch.

  I stood. “Deputy Reynolds, you mentioned you're aware that Archie Mack had a cut on his left hand on the night of the incident?”

  “I am.”

  “Yet no blood was found on Ms. Ackerman, correct?”

  “None of Mr. Mack’s blood, that's correct.”

  “So if my client surprised and attacked Ms. Ackerman, he would have had to have done it one handed, right?”

  Stritch stood. “Objection. Speculation.”

  “It goes directly to their theory of the case, Your Honor.”

  “Overruled. You may answer, Deputy Reynolds.”

  Deputy Reynolds thought. “I can tell you that Mr. Mack never touched Ms. Ackerman in a way that left blood on her.”

  “Yet he was bleeding enough to leave blood on the railing.”

  “That's correct.”

  “So isn't it reasonable to assume that he never touched her with his left hand?”

  “It could have been wiped off during her fall.”

  “Deputy Reynolds. Please.”

  The cheerful eyes above the round cheeks went hard. “It's reasonable to assume that he never touched her in a way that left blood that we could find.”

  “Thank you, Deputy Reynolds. That's all I have.”

  Judge Wesley looked at us and then said, “You may step down, Deputy Reynolds, thank you.”

  Archie leaned near me. “Is that all he had?”

  I stared at Stritch, who didn’t seem disturbed. “Let’s see.”

  41

  Lawyers are paranoid. If you know one, I'm not telling you anything new. If you don't, trust me, it’s true. When you're around one long enough, there will come a time he—or she—becomes fixated on a phrase that you said, or sometimes just a single godforsaken word, and spend hours deciphering the accurate meaning of what you uttered as opposed to understanding what it is that you truly meant to say. There’s a simple reason for this—any lawyer who’s been around for any length of time has gotten pounded at some point because of the meaning of that simple word or phrase that everyone thought meant something else. It makes them prone to overkill, to leaving no stone unturned, and to reflexively driving their point home again and again and again.

  I try to keep it in check. T. Marvin Stritch, though, couldn't resist doing exactly that in Archie’s case. In fact, he did it twice.

  First, Stritch called Officer Harold Stern of the Michigan State Police. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on his testimony because it was redundant and ultimately didn't prove anything. The reason it's important is because it shows how a prosecutor, even a good one like Stritch, can get fixated on things that, in the end, aren't all that important. Or at least not in the way that you think.

  Officer Harold Stern was a specialist in cell phone tracking and, yes, he looked exactly like his name. Officer Stern spent two hours explaining how to ping cell phones and triangulation and all sorts of other location-tracing spy stuff that the police rely on when they can't get a search warrant. Or, in this case, when the suspect was a farmer who didn’t use any sort of location services on his cell phone because he was paranoid about his privacy. In the end, with the help of a map and a chart and a PowerPoint graphic, Officer Stern proved conclusively and without question that Archie Mack was in Century Quarry the night Abby Ackerman was attacked.

  You know, just like the blood, the security video, the ticket stub, the phone call, and everything else.

  I’d had trial room courtesy drilled into me from the time I started practicing so I stood, but I didn't take the time to walk over to the lectern. Instead, I said, “Officer Stern, based on the cell phone tower configurations, you can put my client in a 1.3 square mile radius of Century Quarry between eight o'clock and midnight on the night of the Big Luke concert, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “However, you can't pinpoint Archie Mack’s location to a specific place within the Quarry at a specific time, can you?”

  “Well, when our data is combined with other evidence—”

  I raised my hand. “Officer Stern, I respect what you do very much and the technology you spent all this time explaining to us is very useful when you have a thief fleeing across the country or a child is missing, but let's be real clear to the jury—what you just described cannot pinpoint whether Mr. Mack was at the abandoned stairs or the bathroom or the amphitheater at any given time on the night of the Big Luke concert, can it?”

  “We can place him at the Quarry.”

  “Well no, actually, you can’t. What your technology will do is put him within a square mile of the Quarry, right?”

  “The overwhelming likelihood is that he was at the Quarry.”

  “Based on other evidence, sure. But my client didn’t have any location tracking apps or software working on his phone, did he?”

  “No.”

  “And the police weren’t monitoring him at the time, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So all you can do is try to recreate his location from which towers his phone was pinging off, right?”

  “Right.”

  “And all that does is give you, in this case, his location within one square mile, true?”

  “Well, with the other evidence, we know—”

  “I’m not interested in the other evidence. I’m interested in your cell phone evidence.”

  “I'm not sure how that's important.”

  “It's important, Officer Stern, because everyone already knows that Archie Mack was at Century Quarry for the concert.”

  Officer Stern looked uncomfortable, but he wasn't going to back down. He just stared back, so I said, “Okay. You can't tell us where Archie Mack was within the Quarry at any given time, right?”

  “Well, if we had his location data—”

  “But you don't, so you can't, true?”

  Stern shifted in his seat. “That's true.”

  I started to sit, then stopped. “Officer Stern there were almost three thousand people at the concert that night, were you aware of that?”

  “No, but that sounds
right.”

  “Did you run your data to find out how many of them were still in or around the Quarry between 11 o'clock and 12 o'clock on the night of the concert?”

  “I wasn’t asked to.”

  “So the answer is no?”

  He stared. “I wasn’t asked to do that.”

  “Have you ever heard of confirmation bias, Officer Stern?”

  Officer Stern straightened and bristled. “I don't see how that's relevant.”

  One juror laughed, then covered her mouth.

  I put my hands out to the side. “Well, there you go. No further questions, Your Honor.”

  Next, Stritch called a farming supply company rep named Scott Baden, a thin man with an enormous bushy brown beard that was second only to Hank Braggi’s in ferocity. He wore khaki pants, a blue button-down shirt, and a dark blue tie. As he sat down, he gave a smile broad enough to be visible through the beard.

  After getting the basics from him, Stritch said, “Where do you work, Mr. Baden?”

  “At Ash County Agricultural.”

  “And what is Ash County Agricultural?”

  “We sell farming equipment and supplies.”

  “What sort of supplies?”

  “The whole range. Everything from seed to herbicide to pesticide to fertilizer.”

  “I see. How big is your operation?”

  “We are the largest agricultural supplier in the Tri-County area.”

  “Do you sell seed corn?”

  “We do.”

  “Do you sell No Weed Seed for corn?”

  “We do.”

  “And do you do business with Mack Farms?”

  “We do. My uncle started doing business with Alban Mack almost fifty years ago.”

  “Mr. Baden, at my request did you examine the purchases Mack Farms made from your company this past year?”

  “I did.”

  “I'm handing you what's been marked as State’s Exhibit 58. Do you recognize this document?”

  Baden looked. “Yes. It's a printout of everything that Mack Farms purchased from Ash Agricultural over the past year.”

  Stritch put a copy of the invoice up on the screen. “Mr. Baden, could you explain this print out to me?”

  “Sure. The first column you see there is the product. The second column is the quantity, the third column is the unit price, and the fourth column is the total price.”