by Chris Leibig
“Sustained.”
“Nothing further,” Sam said.
Sparf stood, hand on his lips. Sam could feel his mind churning. Accentuate Sam’s point, or let it go? But his eyes were on the future of the case. And then Sam felt a strong flicker of something from Sparf that buoyed Sam’s hope that, despite the tough childhood and deep-seated anger, Sparf was a prosecutor for the right reasons. To get the bad guys. He cast his net exceedingly wide by Sam’s standards, but he did not include people he thought were innocent. Sam then saw it clearly—Sparf decided he wanted the press to hear Sam’s point stated clearly, for fairness, and, maybe, to cover his own ass, at least to himself. In the end, Sparf didn’t care about O’Malley or his boss as much as he cared about being the earnest smiter of all that is selfish and mean. Good for the system. Good for Sparf.
“Father Andrada, do you have any idea if Ms. Paradisi actually touched Zebulon Lucas’s hat, thereby inadvertently transferring her DNA onto it, and eventually making it appear that she may have actually been at the scene of his murder that night?” Sparf asked.
“No,” Andrada said.
“That’s all I have, Judge.”
Pens scribbled and the tweets flew as Andrada left the courtroom, smiling kindly at Camille as he passed the defense table.
“One final witness,” Sam said. “I call Juliana Kim.”
Juliana entered the courtroom in a neat business suit. She carried a slim, black, leather folder. She nodded to Sparf as she approached the stand.
“State your name, please.”
“Juliana Kim.”
“Can you tell the court what you do for a living?”
“I’m a scientist at the Virginia Department of Forensic Science.”
“And can you tell the judge a little about your education and experience?”
“Judge, I stipulate to Ms. Kim’s qualifications as a DNA expert, if that’s where this is headed,” Sparf said.
“Thank you, Mr. Sparf,” O’Grady said. “Ms. Kim is qualified as an expert witness in DNA analysis. Nice to see you again, Juliana.”
Juliana, a regular witness for the prosecution, glanced up at O’Grady. “Always a pleasure, Your Honor.”
Sam skipped over a few pages of his notes. Sparf and O’Grady were not going to make him jump through the basic hoops with Juliana.
“Have you had an opportunity to review the DNA certificates and underlying discovery materials pertaining to this case, Commonwealth v. Camille Paradisi?”
“Yes.”
“Did you actually conduct the majority of the DNA tests in this case?”
“I did.”
Sam nodded to the deputy, who walked over and received from him a thick stack of files. He then delivered them to Juliana on the witness stand. “Are these exhibits the DNA materials pertaining to all four victims of the so-called Rosslyn Ripper?”
Sparf rose halfway to his feet. “Objection, we don’t use that term.”
Juliana ignored him. “Yes.”
“Now, with respect to the DNA profile obtained from the hat of victim number four, Zebulon Lucas, and the DNA profile taken from the blood of defendant Camille Paradisi, can you tell me what the results show?” Sam was skipping past the DNA education that Juliana would normally provide to a jury. O’Grady had heard it all before anyway. She didn’t understand it, but she would certainly pretend she did. She understood enough to believe that if a cop scientist said DNA matched someone, it surely did, and that if a defense scientist challenged a cop’s conclusion, he or she was obviously a paid hack.
“The profile from Zebulon’s hat contains one allele—that’s a genetic marker—at each of nine loci. Those are locations on the—” Juliana looked up at O’Grady.
“There’s no jury here, Juliana. You can get straight to the conclusion.”
“Thank you. The hat result shows one allele at each of the nine loci and nothing at the other six loci. As for—”
“Let me interrupt you briefly,” Sam said. “Is that an incomplete result?”
“Yes. Every human’s DNA has a pair of markers at all fifteen of the sixteen Powerplex loci, one from the mother, one from the father. This result is incomplete in that it lacks any markers at six of the loci. It happens sometimes, quite often really, with weak DNA results—when there’s not enough DNA on a crime scene item.”
“Is it not incomplete in another respect?”
Juliana looked up at the judge as if to stress the importance of this answer. But the answer was for the press.
“I thought so at first,” Juliana said. “When I see only one marker at a locus, there are two possibilities—one is that there is an incomplete profile, like from a weak crime scene sample. Another is that the person received the same allele at that locus from his mother and from his father. When this happens, the sample is referred to as homozygotic at that locus. Here, I initially believed that this sample was incomplete with respect to some or all of the nine loci because I didn’t believe it likely that someone would be homozygotic at nine loci.”
“Why not?”
“Some people are homozygotic at one, two, three, or even four loci, but I had never heard of anywhere close to nine. The odds of it are, well, staggering.”
“Do you still believe the hat profile is incomplete at the nine loci?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because Camille Paradisi is homozygotic at all fifteen Powerplex loci.”
“And just briefly, what is the sixteenth loci?”
“It’s a location used to determine gender. Males are XY. Females are XX.”
“And?”
Juliana smirked. “She’s a woman.”
“What about the comparison?”
“Camille Paradisi cannot be eliminated as a contributor to the DNA profile found on Zebulon Lucas’s hat. She matches at all nine loci—the same homozygotic marker at each.”
Sam was pushing the testimony far beyond what a bail hearing would ever cover, but neither O’Grady nor Sparf nor anyone else in the courtroom—except, possibly, O’Malley, who had no standing in the proceedings—wanted to stop things now.
“How common is it for someone to be homozygotic at all loci?”
Juliana spoke past Sam straight to the gallery now. She was no longer in O’Grady’s courtroom at a bail hearing. She was on a stage at a conference, educating the world.
“I was so curious about this I actually looked into it a good bit. The scientists I work with are, frankly, blown away by it. As far as we can tell, no human being has ever tested homozygotic at that many loci. If we could only do more research, we could find out just how utterly unusual this is.”
“Could the results be fraud?”
“No. She’s been typed with a buccal swab and a blood sample. It’s real. The odds are simply too high for this to occur randomly. It’s as if she has a mother, but no father. For a human being, I consider it categorically impossible.”
“But Paradisi exists.”
“No doubt.”
Sam took a brief break, filled up a cup of water, and handed it to the deputy to hand to Juliana.
“One last point, Juliana—”
“Objection!” Sparf was now playing to the press as well on the point that he believed mattered. “All of these questions have been irrelevant. Fine—she’s a genetic mutant, and ten mega-bazillion times more likely to have touched the hat than we ever thought. What in the world does this have to do with the bail hearing?”
“Your Honor, Mr. Sparf just told you that one of the reasons you should deny bail is that Ms. Paradisi is a serial killer. He has placed the strength of the state’s evidence on this point at issue. I have just a few more questions, Judge. And these get straight to the point.”
O’Grady’s face wrinkled. Sam could tell she suspected a lot of his questions were irrelevant to the bail hearing, but she wasn’t perceptive enough to realize she was right. Before she could figure it out, Sam filled the silence.
“Juliana, did you find any DNA profiles on victims one through three?”
“Yes.”
“Tell us.”
“I found four genetic markers at two loci on the bra strap of Joni West—victim number three.”
“Could this incomplete profile belong to Camille Paradisi?”
“No, none of the alleles match, and the bra result is not homozygotic at either of the two loci for which I achieved a result.”
“Did you have an opportunity to compare that partial profile with the profile of someone else?”
“Objection!” Sparf screamed this time. “Judge, if Mr. Young has conducted testing of a suspect unknown to us, it is not only inadmissible scientific evidence due to lack of notice, but it’s probably an ethical violation, withholding evidence or something.”
“Mr. Young, I’m not listening to testimony about DNA tests unknown to the prosecution. They gave you their results.”
“I hear you, Judge. This question calls for an answer that comes entirely from the Department of Forensic Science’s file, which the prosecution has. It’s nothing new.” Sam did not wait for O’Grady to rule. “You can answer the question, Juliana.”
Sparf grunted and shook his head slowly from side to side while O’Grady stared straight ahead, blinking.
“Yes, I compared the bra strap profile to the only male profile contained within the Rosslyn Ripper DFS file. It matched perfectly at all four alleles at both loci.”
“And what are the odds of this occurring by chance?”
O’Grady looked confused. Sparf was shifting around in his seat.
“One in several hundred chances that someone other than the male at issue left the DNA on the bra,” Juliana said.
“And whose profile was it, the male profile you compared?”
“It was the profile of victim number four—Zebulon Lucas.”
“What is your conclusion about whether or not Zebulon Lucas took part in the murder of Joni West?”
“The chances that he didn’t touch that bra are one in several hundred. That night, she’d merely been walking home from the subway after a late day at work. That leads me to the conclusion that Zebulon touched her bra around the time she was killed. They had no prior acquaintance and didn’t live or work near each other. Common sense, you know. I wouldn’t convict someone on it, but you can pretty much figure it out.”
Sparf stood up to object but ended up saying nothing. Instead, he started shifting through papers on his table, perhaps looking for Zebulon’s profile before he opened his mouth.
Sam plowed ahead. “Do you mean to tell us that the Virginia DFS has had in its possession DNA evidence that shows it was extremely likely Zebulon Lucas took part in the murder of Ms. West, and no one has noticed it?”
Juliana smiled sweetly at Judge O’Grady, who now looked a little less enamored but didn’t understand the evidence well enough to know how to feel.
“Things were happening so fast. There were different crime scenes, different files, and again, it was only a two-locus match. No one would ever think it was suitable for comparison. I did not even notice it, did not even think of it. The idea of Lucas being involved with the West murder simply never occurred to me.”
Sam gathered his papers. “That’s all I have.”
Sam could feel Sparf’s brain chewing through the evidence about Zebulon at the West crime scene. He had exactly two cross-examination choices with respect to this new information. He could approach Juliana and require her to show him the DNA profiles in his own file to see if they depicted a match between the bra and Zebulon. If he did so, and Juliana was right, it would do nothing but re-establish that he had never thoroughly looked at the evidence himself. His second choice was to do nothing. Juliana stared at him coolly, a sliver of a smirk that Sam knew to be a masked sign of fun.
“No questions,” Sparf said.
Despite the fact that courtroom procedure dictated Sam speak first, Sparf began to argue his position as soon as Juliana stepped off the witness stand. He took a typical prosecutor’s strategy, ignoring the bad and focusing on the good. His best point: The law.
“Your Honor, as I discussed earlier, a murder defendant should never be released on bail. The evidence also doesn’t support the contention that Ms. Paradisi or her child are placed in danger by a jailhouse delivery. You have every right to order that a doctor of Ms. Paradisi’s choosing be brought into the jail with the equipment he needs. If it’s Dr. Torres, so be it. In any event, nothing that has happened at this hearing amounts to a reason to bend the rules. That being said—”
Sparf paused. Sam could feel the tension between Sparf and O’Malley sitting right behind him. The chief’s eyes bore into Sparf’s back, a smug look on his face.
“I believe this hearing has brought out factual issues which deserve,” he paused again, “some attention. I plan to fully discuss this with the investigators in this case as soon as possible.”
Sam looked at O’Grady. This is what it came down to. Guilt or innocence aside, would a judge like O’Grady break the obviously written law or lurch out on her own to help somebody? Normally, O’Grady utterly lacked that sort of creativity, even if the person who needed the help was a baby.
“I will hear from you, Mr. Young.”
Instead, Amelia stood.
Sam sat down and looked at Camille for the first time since the hearing had begun. She leaned back, one hand on her stomach, the other gripping the armrest of Sam’s chair. Their eyes met. The normal energy was gone, replaced by an inward-looking despair. He could feel her squeeze the arm of his chair. Her wrist, always thin, now seemed pale and bony—not like the appendage of a beautiful woman, but a desperate prisoner. Sam turned back to the podium.
“May it please the court,” Amelia began in a soft, unassuming voice, almost too passive, too quiet for the moment. But as she began her argument, Sam’s mind launched, somersaulting once on the way before hitting the judge at the same time as Amelia’s words.
“Judge, I am handing forward three additional exhibits for your consideration during my argument.”
The deputy retrieved the exhibits and delivered them to the judge, who merely stared at Amelia with a pleasant, anticipatory look on her face. She reached for the files mechanically.
“Mr. Sparf mischaracterizes our position by claiming we seek bail in this matter. What I am asking for is not bail, but a furlough, a temporary release for an important reason, which the Circuit Court of Bennet County has granted eighty-six times in the last ten years. If you will please look at Defendant’s Exhibit B.”
Amelia paused. Sam peered into O’Grady’s eyes as she picked up the exhibit.
“Exhibit B is a list of every furlough granted in the past ten years. Seventy-five of them have been temporary releases for an inmate to attend a family member’s funeral. Ten of them have been to attend important family events such as graduations, and one of them was so that eighteen-year-old robbery defendant Russell Hackmann could play in the Regional Basketball Championship for Yorktown High School. If there are two things we can agree on here, it would be that one, this court routinely grants furloughs, and two, this court routinely grants furloughs for reasons far less important than the life of a child.”
Amelia paused again. She waited for O’Grady’s eyes to leave the exhibit and return to her. Sam focused intently on O’Grady without staring at her too hard.
“How long a furlough?” O’Grady asked. Sparf sighed loudly with annoyance.
“Only until Dr. Torres clears her as safe to return to the jail. Exhibit C is a letter from John Joseph Rogers, the head administrator of Bennet Hospital. He estimates that the cost of temporarily outfitting the Bennet County Adult Detention Center with the proper staff and equipment to safely deliver Ms. Paradisi’s child on an emergency basis by C-section would be approximately two hundred eighty thousand dollars. All of which, as I am sure Mr. Sparf would agree, would have to be paid from the state’s criminal fund, if you ordered such adjustmen
ts to be made.”
Sparf sighed deeply but not ostentatiously.
“Finally, Judge, Exhibit D is the defendant’s proposed delivery plan, which includes transportation of Ms. Paradisi this evening, by a properly equipped ambulance, to Bennet County Hospital. I have attached the names and social security numbers of everyone involved, from the ambulance tech people, to the driver, to the staff, and the nurses who will take part in the delivery. All the parties are aware that they would be escorted by Bennet County Sheriff’s Department vehicles, and that as many deputies as the court so orders will be permitted to secure the maternity ward in any reasonable manner they see fit during the delivery. Once Dr. Torres declares Ms. Paradisi fit to travel, the same personnel, under the same circumstances, will return her to the jail.”
Amelia paused again and shuffled through some papers on the podium. Sam felt O’Grady’s mind turning over slowly. She wasn’t bold enough to decide quickly on her own what the Zebulon evidence meant. But she knew Sparf was. If he thought the evidence warranted further investigation, so did she.
“I have a question,” O’Grady said, her face slightly contorted as she glanced back and forth between Sparf and Amelia. “Was your evidence designed to demonstrate that Ms. Paradisi is innocent? Or that Zebulon Lucas had it comin’?”
“Our evidence was designed to show that Chief O’Malley and his investigators need to take a thorough look at their case,” Amelia said. “My final point is that all of the personnel and equipment required by the defendant’s delivery plan will cost the state absolutely nothing, as Ms. Paradisi has insurance and private funding to cover all expenses if the services are provided pursuant to this plan. She cannot make the same commitment if the court orders the hospital maternity ward to be transplanted into the county jail. For that, the hospital requires a full, up-front payment. To conclude, there is simply nothing for the prosecutor to worry about here. Ms. Paradisi is a sick woman who will be under heavy guard, and whose DNA profile is formally filed as an exhibit with this court. As the court well knows, its anomalies render it the most unique human DNA profile ever found. Given that, and the publicity of this case, no person could escape justice under our plan, even if the sheriff’s office fails to maintain proper security, and—”
