Beyond Obsession (43 page)

“This kid is in a major jam, and he's looking for a way out. He says it was self-defense, either him or Joyce. But then he goes back to Glastonbury and he brushes his teeth and he goes to work. But he never calls Karin to tell her. She calls him at work about the missing car being found. He did it for her and he doesn't call her? He doesn't tell her this is the ultimate expression of his love for her? She begged him to do it? The only begging outside her window is his begging her not to go to Binghamton.

“And Karin's motive? Things had improved with Joyce because she had a relationship with Alex Markov, the same way they improved when she was with Alasdair Neal. Joyce told everyone about Karin and Alex Markov. Is this the diary of a girl planning to murder her mother or a girl who has a relationship with her mother she always wanted and is happy about? This is not the diary of a young girl intent on murdering her mother, but living an imaginary life with Alex Markov and the concert scene and the dinner scene.

“Shannon Dubois is a nice young girl. But she was sixteen. She talked to the police three or four times before and never mentioned Karin. Then her parents get her a criminal defense lawyer who gets her immunity. We've got a frightened young girl of sixteen. We don't basically disagree with what Shannon said. She said Karin told her of four incidents. We admit it. They were fantasy talk with her boyfriend, brought on by the abuse of her mother, not to kill her mother. Shannon Dubois didn't tell about the time they talked about wanting Joyce dead and Shannon said she wanted to push her out of the car. This is teenage talk, anger at the mother, and it isn't serious.

“The only issue in dispute is the testimony that Karin was going home to clean the house. Shannon Dubois said that Karin had a car. But Karin didn't have a car. Don't forget, Shannon had a two-hour conversation with Dennis, and he told her all the details from his demented mind. And don't forget that Joyce had left a list of cleaning on the refrigerator door.

“This is the state's case. If they didn't have Dennis on the witness stand, she wouldn't be here. There is a sickness in this case. Everyone focuses on this little kid and calls her every name in the book. It's sad.

“And where are Kira Lintner and Christopher Wheatley? Did Dennis tell them that Karin had begged him to do it? Do you think they wouldn't have called them if he had? Kira Lintner, Christopher Wheatley, Shannon Dubois and Dennis Coleman, they were on the bandwagon to get this little kid.

“Why did they focus on this kid? Because Officer McKee said she only shed one tear. This is the great manipulator. Don't you think she would have fallen on the floor and become hysterical and shed tears by the bucket?

“Did anyone bother to find out about this kid? This kid showed no emotion, so she had to be part of the plot. Now, after all these years, Karin has been able to tell her story. This kid has been ripped apart. With all the criminals loose on the streets, all the power of the state has been focused on this kid.

“The great manipulator? Why didn't she throw the note away when she was alone in the condo? You know one thing about Karin. She's not stupid. She's smart. This kid was a product of abuse, so terrible she was ripped apart.

“Manipulated Dennis Coleman into murdering her mother? She should have turned Dennis Coleman in sooner. Why didn't she? You must understand Karin, and to understand Karin, you must understand Joyce. We called the witnesses to help you understand why she did what she did after the murder. The kid was filled with guilt, not for being involved in the murder but for introducing Dennis and Joyce and for other things. How desperate does someone have to be to convict this girl on the kind of evidence they introduced here?

“What this child has suffered. Karin never had a chance to be loved by her mother and father, to be the little child, to play with other children, to practice her religion, to return love in a spontaneous way. Ladies and gentlemen, please give Karin a chance to go on in life and get the help she needs to prosper as a young adult. Isn't it time to stop the abuse of Karin Elizabeth Aparo?”

Santos sagged a little, nodded to himself and returned to the defense table. He had spoken for an hour and twenty minutes.

James Thomas now had the final word. He spoke briefly. Santos, he complained, had attempted to mangle the case in his closing argument. “Giving Karin a chance is not relevant. Did she conspire to kill her mother and aid and abet Dennis Coleman is what this is all about. She made a choice. It was her choice. If Mr. Santos's argument was not an attempt to get sympathy, I don't know what is. This kid isn't here because of that but because she was involved in a murder. You must decide on the basis of the evidence, not on sympathy. As much as a human part of us might like to do that, it destroys the whole criminal justice system. The crime here cannot be justified. Can it be understood? Perhaps.

“Is there any evidence for half of what Mr. Santos said? He acted like he was at dinner with Joyce Aparo and Dennis Coleman. It is not proper to argue, to interpret things that are not part of the case.

“There is ample evidence that Karin Aparo lied about many things. Was she formulating a plan to turn in Dennis Coleman? I don't know. But she knew there was a plan to kill Joyce Aparo, and she was involved in it.

“Mr. Santos closed by telling you about abuse. The abuse is very sad, and I don't know to what extent it existed. But it's not a defense. Joyce Aparo was not on trial, and it's not my job to defend her. Karin set herself up as the judge and the jury of her mother, and she sent out the executioner. There is no death sentence in Connecticut, and Joyce Aparo didn't deserve to die.

“Much as your hearts may go out to the defendant, you must decide on the facts and the evidence presented in this court. Whether or not you convict, I wish I could take a different position with this young lady, just as I wished I could have with Dennis Coleman. But I can't.”

And then it was up to Judge Corrigan to explain the law to the jury. He warned the panel that it was not to speculate about evidence or witnesses that were excluded or not presented. He took a moment to castigate Santos for some of the things he said during his close. Asking the jury to give the kid a chance was a blatant appeal for sympathy, and it was not proper. It was not proper to discuss who had made deals and who hadn't; it might be true, but it must also be remembered that neither the state nor the defense had put into evidence what negotiations may have taken place between the defendant and the state. Santos should never have talked about possible sentences for the crimes charged; that is something for the judge to decide, and the jury is not to consider it.

The jury, he instructed, was to give equal weight to eyewitness testimony and circumstantial evidence. “If a fact, a piece of circumstantial evidence is logical or reasonable, it can be as weighty as direct evidence and can be credited. For example, if you go to bed at night and the sky is clear, and when you wake in the morning, there is snow on the ground, though you did not see the snow fall, it is logical and reasonable to assume that it snowed during the night. Remember, a crime is not usually committed before eyewitnesses; therefore, circumstantial evidence may often be the only evidence available.”

The rules the jury must follow, he instructed, were that the defendant is presumed to be innocent until and unless the jury was satisfied about her guilt; her past had no bearing on the deliberations. If there are two reasonable constructions to a piece of evidence, the jury is to take the one that favors the defendant.

As for reasonable doubt, “It is not a slight doubt, or a possible doubt, or a surmise, conjecture, or guess, or sympathy, or pity. It does not arise because a fact has been contested. It flows from the evidence or the lack of evidence, and it must be based on reason.”

He proceeded to summarize the evidence, telling the jury to examine closely the testimony of conflicting witnesses, especially Dennis Coleman's since he “is a self-confessed criminal and all things being equal, you would not believe him in relationship to others who gave conflicting testimony.”

If the jury found that the state had proved that Joyce Aparo was murdered, that Karin intended to kill her, that she solicited Dennis to do that deed and that she joined him in the murder by helping him plan it and do other acts in concert, then the jury must convict her of accessory to murder.

If the jury found that Joyce Aparo was murdered, that there was an agreement between Dennis and Karin to cause that murder and that one of them, Dennis, carried out that agreement even though the other, Karin, was not present and did not play a role in the actual commission of the crime, she was, nevertheless, guilty of conspiracy to commit murder, and the jury must return that verdict.

At eleven-thirty on the morning of June 18, 1990, on the eighteenth day of the trial, the jury retired to deliberate on a verdict.

34

The jury deliberated, and deliberated, and did not reach a verdict, and the days passed.

Hubert Santos was, he said, not optimistic. He looked dour. He wandered the corridor, back and forth between the empty courtroom and the locked small office a hundred feet away where his client waited. He had taken a big chance. He had not used an insanity defense; he had not used all that evidence on abuse as mitigation, to ask that the jury be allowed to consider a lesser charge, manslaughter. He had decided to go for broke, either conviction on the indictment or acquittal. Now he was worried.

John Bailey kept coming up from the state's attorney's office and paced nervously about the area around the court. He couldn't understand what was taking the jury so long. There was no question in his mind what the verdict ought to be and would be. If he had been on the jury, he said, it would have taken him ten minutes. He was confident, but he was puzzled.

Reporters and court personnel sat around, read books and newspapers and magazines, engaged in idle conversation and waited. And speculated. Like much of the public outside, they were nearly unanimous in the view that Karin was guilty. Most thought a conviction would come. Some thought Karin would go down on both the accessory and the conspiracy counts. Others weren't so sure. All that testimony on abuse, despite Corrigan's charge, would have an effect. The jury, they said, would not want to send Karin away for sixty years; that was what conviction as an accessory would probably mean. Not after all those stories. It might acquit her on that. But surely it would convict on conspiracy. After all, there was all that testimony, and even if one had hesitations about Dennis, who could not believe Shannon, or Warga, or the meaning of all those letters?

By the end of the first week there was still no verdict, and the jury was sent home for the weekend. It was to resume deliberations on Monday. An acquaintance remarked to Santos that he found this practice a little odd. In New York, in other states, once a jury begins deliberations it continues to deliberate, weekends included, until it reaches a verdict or is hopelessly deadlocked, and it is usually sequestered during the process, taken to lunch and other meals by a bailiff, the food and lodging on the state. In Connecticut the jurors go home every night, take weekends off, join the crowds of spectators, reporters and court personnel for lunch at fast-food wagons parked outside the courthouse or at other fast-food joints down the block, the neighborhood lacking good restaurants, and pay their own way.

Santos replied that he thought the Connecticut method the right way. Unbroken deliberations and sequestering, he said, might lead to a verdict but not necessarily to justice.

Since when, the acquaintance said, did courts and trials have anything to do with justice? That might be a by-product, but in reality they had all to do with what evidence got in and what was kept out and with the relative abilities of opposing counsel. Courts were a stage on which the lawyers played the leading roles and vied for the best reviews.

Another week passed, and still no verdict. Now and then the jury asked for rereading of testimony, for rereading of Corrigan's instructions. But that was all. There was little sense that the jury was coming close or even that it might be so deadlocked that it would never reach a decision. Observers began to try to read meaning into the way the requests were framed, into the way this juror or that looked at Karin during those brief court appearances. Was that young juror actually ogling her? Was the scowl on that one's face indication of displeasure with her or with something else? Were the yawns and fidgeting yet another indication of boredom or impatience or what?

At midafternoon on Thursday, June 28, the third week of deliberations nearing an end, the word suddenly resounded. The jury was coming in. There was a verdict.

Thomas and his assistants took their places. Santos, his assistant, Hope Seeley, and Karin moved to the defense table. Reporters and spectators rushed in to grab every seat. Judge Corrigan in his black robes appeared and settled behind the bench.

The door opened. The jury filed in. The foreman, a burly man in his late thirties, an engineer for Northeast Utilities, looked at Karin, gave her a smile and a wink.

“Has the jury reached a verdict?” Corrigan asked.

“We have, Your Honor,” the foreman said.

“As to count one of the indictment, accessory to murder, how do you find?”

“Not guilty.”

Karin Aparo let out a gasp, clutched Santos's hand, began to cry.

Among the spectators there was stunned silence, heads began to shake in disbelief.

“As to count two, conspiracy to commit murder, how do you find?”

“We are deadlocked. We are unable to reach a verdict on that charge.”

The vote on conspiracy, jurors later said, was seven for acquittal, five for conviction; among those five were three of the four women on the panel. A few days later one of the jurors who had been for acquittal on the conspiracy charge said he thought that he had made a mistake, that he should have voted for conviction, but “Well, I guess I'll have to live with that.”