Head Shot (25 page)
Authors: Burl Barer
“Anthony Youso's testimony isn't very long,” said Hultman. “I know we're expecting Dr. Tappin to begin at one-thirty and that's out of an extraordinary amount of courtesy to the defense.” Tappin, recently recovered from heart surgery, was scheduled for a European excursion. Securing his vital testimony on behalf of Paul St. Pierre required an interruption in the state's case.
“Mr. Youso resides in Colorado. We flew him here Sunday night,” explained Hultman. “I request that Dr. Tappin wait five, ten, fifteen minutes so I can put on Mr. Youso and he can catch his plane. We have reservations for Mr. Youso this afternoon.”
The defense allowed Youso in, but objected to John Achord's photograph. “It's not relevant,” objected Murdach, “and it is not material to any element of this case because I am prepared to stipulate that Mr. Achord was a human being. My client shot this man; this man was stabbed and this man was buried. I'm willing to stipulate that the body that was found in the grave is Mr. Achord and that we are talking about him.”
To Hultman's surprise, Judge Steiner excluded John Achord's picture. “I think the jury should have an opportunity to see who the victim was. We did the same thing in Damon Wells's case. They made no objection to his picture coming in, so I'm not sure why there is a change in position on that.”
“I don't think it is necessary,” repeated the judge. “I'm going to exclude it. Anything else?” There was one more matter, and it also involved photography. Anthony Youso, the next witness for the prosecution, did not want his picture taken.
Tony Youso couldn't remember very much about anything, nor did he want to. He'd spent a good year distancing himself from the St. Pierres and the infamous bucket, both physically and emotionally. Under Carl Hultman's guidance, and after a careful review of his sworn statement, Youso testified. Speaking so softly that he was almost inaudible, Youso haltingly answered the prosecutor's questions.
The courtesy David Murdach displayed concerning Youso's travel arrangements vanished during cross-examination. “Isn't it true that you almost killed somebody in an accident May 18, 1984? Do you remember running into the house claiming that you thought you killed somebody?”
“I don't know,” answered Youso. “I don't remember anything about the accident except that I didn't hit another car; the car hit me. I remember going through a green light and looking over to my left, and that was it. I went to the hospital and had a CAT scan done. They released me and my mom took me home. The doctors just told me to be cautious with myself. If it had been serious, I probably would have been told.”
Following the accident, police originally charged Youso with “hit and run.” The nature of his head injury validated his innocence, placing blame on the other driver. All charges against Youso regarding the traffic incident were dropped.
Murdach questioned Youso relentlessly, demanding he accurately recount conversations had with Paul St. Pierre. “It's been a year and I've just been trying to forget this, so I really don't know. To tell you the truth,” Youso replied, “I have a very short memory span. It's hard for me to remember things.”
“Isn't it true, Mr. Youso, that you told Mr. Paul St. Pierre to go up and cut the head off the body? Isn't it true that you're the one who suggested cutting the head off the body so they couldn't find the bullet?”
“I don't know,” said Youso repeatedly. “I don't know if I did or if I didn't. If I did, I don't know. I'm not sure.” When Murdach asked him why he couldn't remember, Youso became more irritated and less defensive. “How would you feel if you were going through this? You try to forget as much as you can! I didn't kill nobody!
“Yes, sir, I disposed of evidence in this case,” admitted Youso. “What are you going to do when your life might be in danger, or your family's life?” Enough was enough. The questioning stopped and an exasperated Anthony Youso stepped down from the witness stand.
Youso turned his back on David Murdach, squared his shoulders, and walked out of the Pierce County Courthouse.
“I don't think Youso should've walked on those criminal charges, or been treated so lightly even though he didn't actually do the murder,” commented Roy Kissler several years later. “I don't recall all that he was involved in, but if he were involved in digging up somebody that's been murdered, and if he helped decapitate him, put his head in the bucket, then Tony Youso got off easyâhe âwalked' on the whole thing. Walked on the charges, walked right out of sight, too.”
“I think Youso really agonized over the whole thing,” said a more sympathetic Marty Webb. “It was much more devastating to him to be involved in something like that than it was for Paul St. Pierre. That's probably because Tony had some brain cells that still worked, while Paul was a few clowns short of a circus. Shrinks were checking him out all the time, and I believe the doctors finally determined that he was âterminally uptight and dangerous as hell.' ”
The official diagnosis by learned psychologists and psychiatrists was couched in more professional parlance than Ms. Webb's colloquial rendering, and that was the primary purpose of Dr. Tappin's testimony. Before the doctor took the stand, Murdach asked Judge Steiner if Paul St. Pierre could be excused from the room.
“We could have him sitting on the bench out in the hall, Your Honor,” said Murdach, and kindly offered his mathematical equation for the redistribution of courtroom guards. If Paul St. Pierre voluntarily waited outside while his doctor explained the depths of his depravity, delusions, and dangerousness, St. Pierre would be waiving his constitutional right to attend any and all proceedings. Judge Steiner saw numerous problems in that eventuality.
“I would prefer for him not to be here,” reiterated Murdach. “If the court is afraid of his competency to waive his right to sit here, then I think we should look into competency more. If he is incompetent now, he shouldn't be here.”
Steiner emphatically disagreed. “I think he should stay here,” the judge ruled. “Bring in the jury.”
David Murdach insisted his client was not guilty by reason of insanity. To verify Paul St. Pierre's tragic mental condition, Murdach enlisted several respected and accomplished mental health professionals, including Dr. Charles Tappin. Jurors were somewhat mystified when Tappin gave defense testimony in the middle of the prosecution's presentation.
“Under normal circumstances, the defense would not call witnesses or present evidence prior to the state resting its case,” explained Murdach. “For the record, and so the jury understands, Dr. Tappin is being called out of order. We would normally wait until the conclusion of the state's case to present any evidence whatsoever. But in an effort to let him keep his time commitments to go to Europe, and the length of this trial, counsel has consented, and we've agreed, to have him testify now rather than later.”
Tappin previously provided pretrial reports to the court concerning St. Pierre's competency to stand trial. Determination of diminished mental capacity, however, was another medical and legal matter altogether. Per Murdach's request, Dr. Tappin conducted extensive testing, interviews, and evaluations of Paul St. Pierre's mental condition.
David Murdach knew that Dr. Tappin's prestigious professional credentials, coupled with the physician's pleasant, self-effacing manner, would make a profound and positive impression upon the jurors. A graduate of the University of Kiel in Germany, Charles Tappin opened a private practice in Seattle, Washington, following his psychiatry residency at the University of Washington.
“I am a private practicing psychiatrist at Fairfax Hospital, as well as Cabrini Hospital, in Seattle,” said Dr. Tappin. “I am also on the instruction staff at the University of Washington, and considered an associate staff member at Harborview Hospital,” he added. Dr. Tappin, a member of the American Psychiatric Association, is board certified in psychiatry, and the published author of works dealing with forensic medicine in psychiatry. There was no way the jurors could doubt his diagnosis.
“What kind of examinations did you perform on Paul St. Pierre in connection with my request to determine whether or not he suffers from mental illness?” asked Murdach.
Dr. Tappin smoothly explained that the examination usually takes the form of a lengthy interview. “One goes into the history of the individual and his adjustment to life, to school, to work, and to his relationship with individuals,” answered the doctor. “I also had at my disposal information from various sources dating back to the time he was in school. As a rule,” he explained, “we try to get as much data as possible. I think psychiatric evaluation entails talking with the individual for quite a considerable length of time.
“Mr. St. Pierre suffers from what we call a paranoid personality illness. This diagnosis has been substantiated by all of the examiners who have seen him,” testified Tappin. “We all agree that he suffers from a rather severe mental illness. He would like to see himself as being a big individual and therefore he has attempted to fortify himself by surrounding himself with dangerous weapons.”
David Murdach repeatedly asked Dr. Tappin if Paul St. Pierre's condition was truly a mental illness. “Oh, yes,” Tappin repeatedly said, “it's a mental illness.” Further, Tappin described St. Pierre's condition as “extreme.”
The main point Murdach wanted Tappin to communicate was that Paul St. Pierre was incapable of forming rational judgment, especially under the influence of LSD and alcohol. If his client was not able to form the conscious intent of murder, Paul St. Pierre could be considered not guilty of aggravated first-degree murder.
“As a result of your examination of Mr. Paul St. Pierre,” asked David Murdach, “do you have an opinion within a reasonable certainty whether or not Mr. Paul St. Pierre would be capable of consciously forming an intent to murder or kill Mr. John Achord?”
“Yes, I have,” responded Dr. Tappin. “Paul St. Pierre is suffering from a chronic paranoid condition, and having taken alcohol and LSD was not in a position to process in a rational manner what was going on around him, and therefore was unable to form any rational judgment with respect to his responses toward the individual concerned. In the formation of intention to harm someone, I feel it is necessary that the individual be in control of his intellectual and cognitive capacities.”
When David Murdach inquired as to his client's mental condition during the grave site decapitation of John Achord, the extremity of Paul St. Pierre's mental illness baffled even the imminent Dr. Tappin. “Despite my psychiatric expertise,” he admitted, “I am bewildered by the bizarreness of this whole incident, and really question to what degree this individual is disturbed. This is a disturbance beyond paranoia. It comes closer to a severe mental illness, more toward a schizophrenic type of thing.”
Carl Hultman's cross-examination targeted the concept of “intent”âthe rational process of which, according to Tappin, Paul St. Pierre was bereft. Hultman continually used the word “intent” in the colloquial meaning. In describing St. Pierre's shooting of Achord, Hultman asked Tappin if this took place because St. Pierre imagined Achord was a threat. “So he intended to stop whatever threat he saw, didn't he?” asked Hultman.
“Oh, yes. He told me that he feared for his own life. In order to protect himself, he reacted in this manner,” said Tappin, referring to Paul St. Pierre's shooting of John Achord. The doctor also testified that Paul told him that it was Andrew Webb who handed him the knife to stab Achord in the back.
“Mr. St. Pierre was aware that the individual appeared to still be alive. To use his own words,” said Dr. Tappin, “there were gurgling sounds and he described to me in extremely sick terms what he saw of [the] brain coming out of the individual's head, and sometimes he used terms which did not seem to really coincide with the pathologists' findings. I'm aware of the fact that there was no brain damage to Mr. Achord from the gunshot. That's why I'm saying his description of this whole thing to me, it seems almost as though he was experiencing some sort of visual hallucinations at the time. He spoke of brain coming out of the back of the individual's head and so on. Then he was handed this knife and proceeded to finish him off.”
“So Paul St. Pierre intended to kill Mr. Achord when he shot him?”
“He intended to protect himself,” responded Tappin, “when he shot John Achord.” Hultman immediately pounced on the doctor's use of “intended.”
“So,” asked the prosecutor, a hint of triumph in his voice, “he
intended
to shoot him to protect himself?” Dr. Tappin remained unruffled, and quickly clarified his response. “Even though one can consider this an intent to protect oneself, the process was not a rational one. It was an instantaneous response to a delusion.”
intended
to shoot him to protect himself?” Dr. Tappin remained unruffled, and quickly clarified his response. “Even though one can consider this an intent to protect oneself, the process was not a rational one. It was an instantaneous response to a delusion.”
Hultman kept at it, repeatedly forming his question so that Tappin's answer would confirm the prosecution's use of, or definition of, “intend.” Another technique Hultman employed was to stop Tappin's answers before the doctor was done answering, especially if the doctor was attempting to explain or clarify his response. Judge Steiner finally intervened. “You're going to have to allow him time to answer,” admonished the judge, “or you're going to send him off to Europe with a stutter!”
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