Corrupted (40 page)

“Could you show us on the photograph?”

Bennie rose. “Objection, Your Honor, the photograph is the most prejudicial way to conduct this direct examination. If the prosecutor wants to take the witness through cause and manner of death, he could do that in a much less inflammatory manner by using the standard diagram contained in the autopsy report.”

Martinez faced the judge. “Your Honor, the photograph is properly in evidence and the Commonwealth is entitled to examine the witness any way it sees fit.”

Bennie shook her head. “I beg to differ, Your Honor. The analysis under the evidence rules requires an ongoing weighing of the probative value and the prejudicial nature of the exhibit. It's one thing to admit it, but it's another thing to make us look at it in detail for the next twenty minutes.”

Judge Patterson paused, pursing her lips. “Mr. Martinez, I'm going to have to agree with Ms. Rosato. The jury may have the photograph and take it with them into the jury room, but questions of a technical nature would be much more appropriate using the autopsy report.”

“Thank you, Your Honor.” Bennie sat down, relieved. Even she didn't want to look at the photograph any longer, and she noticed that Jason hadn't let his eyes stray toward it, at all.

Martinez went back to counsel table, shuffled through his papers, and produced an enlarged copy of the diagram that was part of every autopsy report; a black-and-white outline of a male body. It was entered into evidence, then Martinez placed the diagram on the overhead projector, and after some doing, it showed on a white screen. Jurors shifted forward in their seats, eyeing the diagram.

Martinez turned to the witness. “Dr. Chien, could you explain to the jury in layman's terms what this is?”

“It's a diagram of the victim's body, on which I have made notations of matters that I observed during autopsy.”

“Dr. Chien, is that standard procedure in the medical examiner's office?”

“Yes. This is, for want of a better word, I would say a
form
that we use in the medical examiner's office, for each autopsy performed.” Dr. Chien pointed to a pen mark made on the left side of the diagram's neck. “I made this mark, per our procedure, which shows the location of the wound that caused the victim's death.”

“Dr. Chien, what was the cause of the victim's death in this case?”

“The victim died as a result of a knife wound to the neck, which caused exsanguination.”

“Did you find more than one stab wound during the autopsy?”

“No, this was the only stab wound.”

“Dr. Chien, is it unusual for a single stab wound to be lethal?”

“It depends on where the stab wound occurs. Generally, stab wounds to the neck area tend to be lethal because the neck is so dense.” Dr. Chien raised a delicate hand, touching her own Adam's apple. “Interestingly, a wound to the front of the neck is survivable because this is simply cartilaginous trachea.”

“Dr. Chien, could you explain what you mean, in layman's terms?”

“The point I'm making is one can survive a knife wound to the front of the neck.” Dr. Chien turned to the jury again. “You can try this yourself. If you rub your finger up and down on your throat, like this on your windpipe, you can actually feel the rings of your trachea. There are thyroid vessels there in front, and when they perform a tracheotomy, they go for the midline and avoid vessels.”

Martinez blinked as the jury started running its fingers up and down its neck, and Bennie sensed that this wasn't the turn he'd hoped his direct examination would take.

Martinez cleared his throat. “Dr. Chien, you were saying that stab wounds in the neck area tend to be lethal. Why is that?”

“Lethal injuries to the neck are produced on either side of the so-called Adam's apple, on the left or the right. They're lethal on the sides because that is the location of the branches of the common carotid artery, which is a major arterial vessel.” Dr. Chien moved her finger across her throat, which was slim and lovely, so the effect was inadvertently chilling, and Bennie felt Jason shift beside her in his chair.

“Dr. Chien, would you remind us what is the difference between an artery and a vein?”

Bennie didn't see the relevance, but didn't object. The more medical the examination got, the less dramatic would be its impact, and Dr. Chien had a professorial bent, happy to slide into jargon.

“As you may recall, arteries carry oxygenated blood, which is bright red, and veins carry deoxygenated blood, which is blue. Take a look at your hand and rub the top, where you see those bluish veins.” Dr. Chien rubbed the back of her hand, and the jurors followed her example. “If you look on your own hand, you can see your veins and they look bluish, because they carry deoxygenated blood. Many people think their veins look bluish because they're older, but that is simply not the case. Interestingly, veins also are different from arteries in that veins have very thin walls. An artery, in contrast, has a very thick wall. In the case of the carotid artery, for example, there are three layers to the arterial wall. The inside layer is the intima, the middle layer is the muscularis, which contains muscle fibers, and the outermost layer of the artery is the endothelium. In layman's terms, I would say that arteries are very important vessels, and when one is severed, blood will spurt from it in a rhythmic fashion, gushing. In the case of a severing of the common carotid artery, there would be gushing that would reflect the beating of the heart and the pressure of the blood flowing from the heart to the brain.”

Martinez blinked. “Dr. Chien, turning to this case, could you please describe the stab wound to the victim?”

“Certainly.” Dr. Chien pointed to the neck on the diagram. “The knife made an upward-stabbing motion on the left side of the victim's neck, from underneath the jawline to the trachea. The initial motion would have incised the internal carotid artery and the common carotid artery—”

“Excuse me, are those two different things?”

“To be precise, yes, they are two different structures. The common carotid artery carries approximately ninety percent of the oxygenated blood from the heart to the brain, and it branches into the internal and external carotid. That common carotid incision alone could have been lethal, but the knife did much more damage in this case.” Dr. Chien continued moving her elegant finger across the diagram's neck. “It also sliced through the exterior jugular vein, which as you recall, carries deoxygenated blood, not oxygenated blood like an artery. It also severed the vagus nerve, which controls the heartbeat.”

“Dr. Chien, how deep was the wound?”

“About four inches, which is more than deep enough to be lethal.”

“Dr. Chien, what, if anything, did you observe about the angle that the knife went into the victim's neck?”

“I observed that the angle of entry was approximately forty-five degrees.”

“And did you draw any conclusion from that angle of entry?”

“The angle of entry tells me that whoever stabbed the victim was shorter than he was.”

“Dr. Chien, did you measure the height of the victim in this case?”

“Yes, I did. The victim was exactly six feet tall.”

“Dr. Chien, did you have an opinion to a reasonable degree of certainty about the height of the perpetrator of this crime, that is, the person who stabbed the victim to death?”

“It's hard to say with specificity, but I would say somewhere between four and six inches shorter.”

Bennie tried to keep her face forward as some of the jurors looked at Jason, evidently double-checking his height.

“Thank you.” Martinez reached behind him on counsel table and held up the bagged knife. “Dr. Chien, I'm showing you the murder weapon and asking you if your findings during the autopsy are consistent with the wound made from a weapon like this?”

“Yes, they are.”

“In other words, this knife would've made that wound?”

“Yes.”

“Dr. Chien, in your opinion, would that stab wound have taken much force?”

“No, not in such a vulnerable area.” Dr. Chien shook her head. “A stab wound to the
front
of the throat would've taken force, but not to the side.”

“Dr. Chien, was it the initial wound that caused the victim's death?”

“Only partly. The initial puncture and slicing would have done lethal damage in time, but the ripping motion produced by the withdrawal of the knife, as well as the withdrawal itself, created more bleeding.”

“Dr. Chien, is that because there was more tearing of these delicate internal arteries?”

“Please, use the term ‘structures.' Only the carotid is an artery.”

Martinez blinked. “Okay, structures.”

“That's part of the reason, but not all of it. When a knife, or any foreign object, is removed, it creates more bleeding. It's counterintuitive, but very true. If the knife had been left in, it could've acted as a tamponide on the wound, which is a form of compression that can control or slow bleeding. But the fact that it was withdrawn negated that possibility and death was a certainty.”

Martinez paused. “Dr. Chien, you testified that the victim died because he exsanguinated, which means bled to death, is that correct?”

“Yes.” Dr. Chien nodded, warming to her topic. “However, when someone exsanguinates, death does not occur because there isn't enough blood to pump through the heart, as is sometimes thought. What happens as a physiological matter is something completely different. Think of blood as a freight train carrying fuel to a destination, and the fuel is oxygen. Red blood cells live about one hundred twenty days, then they get consumed by the spleen and reused. The tissues have to have oxygen, and why is that? Because oxygen is the final hydrogen acceptor.”

Martinez looked like he was about to interrupt, but didn't. The jury looked interested, but no longer emotional, which satisfied Bennie.

Dr. Chien continued, “Any metabolism needs fuel to live, but when the fuel is spent, you have something like spent fuel rods. Unfortunately, these are toxic and the body has to get rid of them. The spent fuel rods are an acid and when they're used up, they leave you with a product which is a hydrogen ion, and that is what lactic acidosis is. If the blood level drops too quickly, like it did in this case, then the body has no way to get rid of lactic acid, and death results. The cells are essentially poisoned. We are merely biological engines and we're not very well designed, in many particulars.”

“Dr. Chien, how quickly would death have resulted, in this case?”

“Death would've resulted in a matter of minutes.”

“Thank you, I have no further questions.” Martinez turned away, and Bennie rose slowly, not to appear disrespectful.

Judge Patterson motioned her forward. “Ms. Rosato, I assume you have cross-examination.”

“Yes, Your Honor.” Bennie walked toward the witness box, but stopped in front of the diagram on the easel. “Dr. Chien, I wanted to direct your attention to your diagram. The diagram shows the pen mark at Mr. Grusini's neck, and that represents the only stab wound on him, isn't that correct?”

“Yes.”

“However, I noticed that the only other pen marks you made on the diagram occur on Mr. Grusini's right hand, here.” Bennie pointed to pen marks on the knuckles of the right hand. “Did you make these pen marks on Mr. Grusini's knuckles?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Dr. Chien, what did you find during his autopsy that caused you to make these pen marks?”

“There were contusions on the knuckles of Mr. Grusini's right hand.”

“Dr. Chien, ‘contusions' means bruises, does it not?”

“Yes, bruises.”

“Dr. Chien, what conclusion did you draw about the cause of those bruises, if any?”

“I concluded that the victim had bruised his hand by impact injury, i.e., impact with a hard object.”

“Dr. Chien, wouldn't the forehead of another person qualify as a hard object?”

“Yes.”

“Dr. Chien, do you have a conclusion about how close in time that impact injury occurred in relation to Mr. Grusini's death?”

“I concluded that the injury to his hand was close in time to the mortal wound.”

“Dr. Chien, isn't that the kind of hand injury that you typically see from someone who had punched someone?”

“Objection,” Martinez said, half-rising. “There is no basis for that conclusion.”

Bennie looked at Martinez like he was crazy. “You qualified this witness as an expert. She can give an opinion to that effect.”

Judge Patterson shook her head. “Overruled. You may answer, Dr. Chien.”

Dr. Chien nodded. “Yes, that is typically the kind of injury we see when there has been a punch thrown.”

Bennie switched gears. “Dr. Chien, did you run tests on Mr. Grusini's blood?”

“Yes, I did, typical panels.”

“Which panels are typical?”

“We always run an initial test for general screening purposes and blood alcohol content. Beyond that, for prescription drugs or other controlled substances, you have to request a test. No such request was made in this case.”

“Dr. Chien, what was the blood alcohol content of Mr. Grusini's blood?”

“It was .16.”

“And isn't that above the legal limit?”

“It's twice the legal limit. The legal limit in Pennsylvania is .08.”

“Thank you, Dr. Chien. I have no further questions.”

Judge Patterson looked over at Martinez. “Mr. Martinez, if you have redirect, please get on with it. I think we can break for lunch after this witness.”

“I'll make it brief, Your Honor,” Martinez said, succumbing to judicial pressure. No trial lawyer wanted to be the one who kept the jury from their free lunch.

Bennie returned to counsel table, sneaking a glance at Karen, who was leaving the courtroom with a distraught Doreen and Declan. She shot Lou a look, and he knew exactly what to do, rising.