Read Michael Benson's True Crime Bundle Online
Authors: Michael Benson
Michael Benson's True Crime Bundle (67 page)
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Certainly, brain injury patients when stressed lost the ability to inhibit inappropriate acting out.
King’s medical records, Wu said, indicated permanent brain damage in other ways. They showed two IQ tests—one before and one after his childhood accident, and a fourteen-point drop in his score. That disparity, in combination with the previously mentioned deteriorating cognition, was a solid and reliable indicator that King’s childhood brain injury was permanent.
Today he measured seventy-one in the verbal portion of an IQ test, which was only barely “normal.” A score of seventy or below would have qualified King as “mentally retarded.”
Would King have been able to “deal with the law”?
The doctor replied that the defendant would be challenged to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law. Dr. Wu’s diagnosis: Michael King suffered from post-concussive syndrome, an impaired ability to distinguish reality, with an increased chance of depression, dementia, and psychosis.
“No further questions,” Carolyn Schlemmer said.
After a fifteen-minute break, court resumed. Dr. Joseph Wu returned to the stand, was reminded that he was still under oath, and faced the cross-examination of Lon Arend.
Dr. Wu listed all of the elements he’d used to come to his conclusion: the PET scan, interviews with brothers Rodney and Gary, interviews with King’s friend Tennille Ann Camp, and his former girlfriend Jennifer Robb. He also used school and medical records, and the results of a legal evaluation done following King’s arrest. He’d shown the jury two PET scans, one King’s and the other a “normal” scan. Arend asked if Dr. Wu was allowed to identify the person whose brain represented “normal.” The witness replied that he didn’t think he was supposed to, but it made no difference, as he’d forgotten the name of the “normal” patient, anyway.
“Outside of those elements, you used nothing else to come to your conclusion, Doctor?”
“Not that I recall.”
“Okay. You talked about conforming his conduct to the requirements of the law. That sounds like legalspeak. Could you explain what you mean to the jury in simpler terms?”
“That difficulty to conform to the law would be caused by an individual’s neurological capacity to regulate his behavior to the degree that the law demands.” The answer to the question obviously was no; he couldn’t describe it in simpler terms.
Could he quantify King’s inability to conform? Was it slight, mild, medium, or substantial?
“Substantial,” the witness said.
Didn’t he look at all of that time—Michael King’s whole life, for example—when Denise Lee’s murderer
did
follow the law?
did
follow the law?
“I was aware that he was capable of following the law,” Dr. Wu said.
“The fact that he was, for many years, a law-abiding citizen—that came through in the interviews you read?”
“Yes.”
Arend asked where the witness got copies of those interviews. Dr. Wu received them from Carolyn Schlemmer.
“In order for those interviews to be helpful in formulating your opinion, Dr. Wu, you have to assume that they are factual and truthful. Isn’t that right?”
“Yes.”
Dr. Wu admitted that he had not received any medical records from the past that supported his diagnosis of a head injury. He had not received any medical records from King’s distant past.
“Did you see any documentation that King had even gone to a hospital after his childhood accident?”
“No.”
“Did Michael King’s ex-wife provide you with medical records from shortly after his accident?”
“No.”
“If you had received those records, would they have been helpful to you?”
“Yes. More information is always helpful.”
Arend forced Dr. Wu to gauge the credibility of the information he did use. King’s brother Gary, for example, was somewhere in the vicinity of twelve years old at the time of the snowmobile accident. Had Dr. Wu taken that into consideration when he used Gary’s statement to formulate his opinion? The witness said he “was aware” that the brother was a child when the accident occurred.
Dr. Wu told Arend that he’d come to Florida in August of 2008 for the specific purpose of making a PET scan of King’s brain. He met King at that time and the two had an opportunity to “chat.”
“When you formulated your opinion, Dr. Wu, did you take into account that the defendant had been a successful plumber?”
“I knew he was a plumber.”
“And raised a son?”
“I knew he was a good father.”
“And a good worker?”
“My information was not specific regarding his work success.”
“And all you know about his accident is what you read of Rodney’s and Gary’s statements?”
“That, and his PET scan, which shows a lesion at the top of his head, where he would have struck his head.”
Arend induced the witness to admit that he had testified in thirty murder cases—always for the defense—and in the great majority about diminished activity in the frontal lobe of the defendant’s brain.
The frontal lobe provided humans with the capability to plan. That was where we formed our understanding and appreciation of “civilizing and socializing” behavior. It was that part of the brain that made us people, that allowed us to rise above the animals. Dr. Wu agreed that a PET scan in itself couldn’t be used to diagnose anything. The image needed correlation, to be used in conjunction with other data, and was predominantly used to confirm other data. And yes, despite the fact that King had spent the great majority of his life abiding the law and staying within the social parameters of civilized behavior, it was Dr. Wu’s testimony that, due to brain damage, Michael King was barely capable of following rules. And yes, because his opinion was based on cross-modality, it was to a large degree dependent on the credibility of the historical statements.
Arend tried to get the witness to simplify his explanation of the technology of PET scans, this time offering his own language. The red dots on the PET scan were sparks of heat caused by the brain breaking down sugar, right? Dr. Wu said that was basically correct. The colors on the image were not real; they were assigned by a computer to make the image easier to read and interpret.
“Can PET scans, by themselves, predict violent behavior?”
“No, only that there is an increased likelihood of violence.”
“Isn’t it true that experts disagree regarding the limitations of PET scan technology?”
“There are different perspectives, yes, of course.”
“Some experts, for example, believe that we simply do not know enough about the brain to gauge impulse control from reading a PET scan, true?”
“Some hold those views, yes.”
“And the PET scan in no way excuses Michael King’s behavior?”
“I am not trying to excuse his behavior,” Dr. Wu replied firmly. He was merely saying that this was a man who had suffered a significant head injury as a child, and thereafter had episodes of fantasy/reality confusion, and an episodic inability to regulate impulse. He wasn’t basing this solely on the fact that Michael King had raped and killed a woman, but also on the chain saw and bow-and-arrow incidents as well.
Arend asked if it wasn’t true that there were a considerable number of people in the world whose PET scans would resemble those of King, with its diminished frontal-lobe activity, with a similar history of brain injury, who did
not
have trouble regulating their impulses and were never violent.
not
have trouble regulating their impulses and were never violent.
Dr. Wu agreed that was true. The witness added that there were other variables that would increase the likelihood of violence, such as drug use and sexual abuse. No, he had no reason to believe King was a drug user, or that he’d been abused.
On redirect, Dr. Wu noted that he had received money from the government for PET scan research. The reason he usually testified for the defense, rather than the state, was because they were the ones who hired him, Dr. Wu stated. The reason he always testified that PET scans supported brain injury was because in cases where the PET scan came back normal, he simply did not testify, he reasserted.
The witness was excused, and court broke for lunch.
In retrospect, Lon Arend was pleased with the way things went with Dr. Wu: “I felt like after I was through cross-examining him, anyone who believed anything he said would be naïve.” In the days and weeks that followed, Arend would receive many letters and e-mails from people who had seen the cross-examination on TV and thought the same thing. “Holy cow, you destroyed Dr. Wu” was a common sentiment.
“That made me feel good,” Arend later said, “that we were able to do what we were supposed to do. I don’t know if PET scans show anything or not. I do know that his interpretations of them were subject to debate.”
When court resumed, a television with speakers was set up. Judge Economou explained that the next witness, Tennille Ann Camp, would testify via teleconference. Under Carolyn Schlemmer’s questioning, Tennille said she was thirty-three years old, formerly of Ellenton, Florida, and currently living in Michigan. She was unable to testify in person because her grandfather was ill, and she’d spent the last several weeks caring for him.
Tennille said she met Michael King sometime during the summer of 2006 through his mom, and had an off-and-on relationship with him for the next year and a half.
She never knew him to use drugs, became close with the defendant’s son Matt, and helped him move his stuff back to where he was staying, in November 2007. He had just broken up with his girlfriend, which didn’t seem to upset him. He was determined to go back to Michigan and start a new life with his family.
Since she only knew him for a year and a half before 2008, she had no firsthand knowledge of his childhood accident, or the chain saw incident—but she did know that he suffered from headaches and regularly complained about buzzing in his head.
“Did you notice that he had more headaches after he broke up with Jennifer?”
“Yes.”
“Did he take medicine for his headaches?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“He didn’t like to take pills.”
Yes, King returned to Florida on January 13, 2008, and she saw him in person. No, he didn’t seem spaced-out or anything. He seemed normal to her. There were instances when he seemed a little out of it, preoccupied. She remembered once she had to snap her fingers to get his attention after he was unresponsive.
“On January 15, 2008, did the defendant seem paranoid?”
“Yes, he talked about people looking in the windows to his house on Sardinia.”
“Any other reason to think he was paranoid?”
“He had a brown gun, and he kept it under his pillow at night.”
“No further questions.”
Cross-examination began: “Did the defendant seem normal when you talked on the phone on January seventeenth?”
She’d even talked to him around six o’clock on the day of the murder. Very normal. Yes, he was intelligent, good with money, outgoing at times, and she still couldn’t imagine him doing what he was accused of doing.
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