The judge looked back at Blaine and said, “Please don’t try to tell the court something it already knows. Denied.”
Blaine sat down and glanced at Donnally sitting behind him, who acknowledged the prosecutor’s frustration with a shrug.
The judge then focused on Perkins.
“Please bear in mind, Ms. Perkins, that I’m allowing you to present background information as context, not to make a current argument.”
Perkins leaned down toward her cocounsel, Doris Tevenian, who handed her a handwritten note. She read it, then looked up at Dr. William Sherwyn sitting in the witness box.
“Again, Doctor, what was your impression of Mr. Brown’s demeanor when you interviewed him just after his original arrest?”
“As I recall, the first time I saw him was in the locked ward of the county hospital.”
Donnally’s peripheral vision caught the motion of Brown curling forward as though resisting a painful memory. Tevenian squeezed his shoulder, trying to calm him, but Brown pulled away and yelled, “Not true. Not true.”
Judge Nanston slammed her gavel, then pointed at Tevenian.
“Counsel, control your client.”
Sherwyn held up his twenty-year-old report toward the reporters in the gallery and the news cameras in the jury box as if to say, The records don’t lie, then continued.
“Mr. Brown bore all of the signs of bipolar disorder, what we referred to back then as manic-depression. Racing thoughts. Irritability. Grandiose ideation. Agitation. Delusions.”
Blaine rose.
“Your Honor, is he describing all the symptoms of bipolar disorder or just the ones the defendant displayed?”
Nanston glared at Blaine.
The prosecutor’s hands clenched. He looked to Donnally like a little boy who’d suffered a reprimand from his mother. But his voice stayed even:
“I’ll withdraw that. Objection. Nonresponsive.”
“Objection sustained.” Nanston looked at Dr. Sherwyn. “Please let’s limit yourself to the precise symptoms Mr. Brown displayed when you evaluated him.”
Sherwyn nodded, then said, “He was in a manic state that we would now call bipolar type one.” He scrunched up his nose and smirked at the prosecutor. “All of the above, combined with psychotic episodes.”
Perkins scanned her legal pad, then flipped back a few pages.
“Pardon me, Doctor, I should have asked this earlier. How did it happen that you were chosen to evaluate the defendant?”
“In addition to my private practice, I had a contract with the county to perform these evaluations. A second psychiatrist would be brought in if my conclusions were contested by one side or the other.”
“G ood afternoon, Dr. Sherwyn.”
Blaine stood at the podium, his cross examination laid out in front of him.
The swagger in Blaine’s steps from the counsel table had told Donnally that the prosecutor believed he could win his competency argument through Sherwyn’s testimony alone.
And Donnally hoped so. He didn’t want to be forced to explain under oath how he’d gotten onto Brown’s trail and feared that Mauricio’s original sin might taint the jury’s view of Anna.
“As I recall,” Blaine said, “the majority of your practice in those years was the treatment of sexually abused children. Is that correct?”
Sherwyn smiled at Blaine. “It was the basis of your objection to my qualifications during Mr. Brown’s first competency hearing.”
“Objection,” Perkins said. “Irrelevant.”
Judge Nanston cast a disapproving look at Blaine.
“You already lost that battle, Counselor.” Nanston pointed at his list of questions. “Maybe you should move on.”
Blaine shrugged and made a checkmark on his pad.
“Dr. Sherwyn, did you medicate the defendant at any time during the period he was undergoing evaluation?”
Donnally caught the motion of Brown’s head nodding in quick, precise motions.
“You mean did I attempt to restore him to competency?”
“Dr. Sherwyn,” Judge Nanston cut in. “It works better if the attorney asks the questions.”
Sherwyn reddened. To Donnally, he looked like a scuffling football player a referee had caught throwing the second punch.
“Yes,” Sherwyn said, “I medicated him.”
“And what was that medication?”
“Medications, plural. Lithium and an anticonvulsant to address its side effects.”
“And did these have the result of restoring him to competence?”
“As you well know, his attorney obtained an order preventing his further involuntary medication.”
Blaine glanced at Donnally, then at Perkins, and finally back at Sherwyn.
“Doesn’t that suggest that the defense wanted to ensure that Mr. Brown would remain incompetent so he’d never have to face trial for the murder of Anna Keenan?”
“Objection!”
Chapter 16
“I ’m reminding you again, Ms. Perkins, please stop trying to bootstrap his mental history into an argument for his current competency.”
Studying Perkins from where he sat behind Blaine, Donnally realized that she’d been quicker than the judge and she already had. But he wasn’t sure why.
“I gave you a great deal of latitude in examining Dr. Sherwyn,” Nanston continued, “but they’re separate issues.”
Perkins glanced down at Charles Brown sitting next to her at the counsel table, then back up at Nanston.
“The problem we’re facing is that my client has refused to cooperate with the psychiatrist we hired to evaluate him. We’re in a Catch-22. She can’t even determine whether his refusal to speak to her is an indication of his incompetence.”
Judge Nanston paused for a moment, then said, “If the only evidence you have is historical, then you may need to forgo this competency hearing altogether, proceed to trial, and put on an insanity defense.”
Blaine reached his hand behind his back and flashed Donnally a thumbs-up. It seemed to Donnally that it was too soon to celebrate. Perkins hadn’t made partner at SSB by failing to get what she wanted.
Perkins shook her head. “That’s impossible at this point.”
“Why?”
“There’s no way to recreate the defendant’s mental state leading up to the time of the homicide. Very few of his psych records prior to that date still exist.”
Nanston leaned forward. “Excuse me, Counsel?”
“The county hospital records have long been purged and just a few moldy fragments remain of the file that traveled with him from Atascadero to the various developmental centers. The only complete report that exists is Dr. Sherwyn’s and it contains almost no history.”
Nanston looked toward the prosecutor, brows furrowed, eyes accusing.
“Did you know about this, Mr. Blaine?”
Blaine rose.
“We informed the defense as soon as we discovered the records were missing.” He looked at the defense table, then smiled. “At this point I believe that the most complete record of the defendant’s mental history is contained in the public defender’s file Ms. Perkins received when she entered the case.”
Perkins glared at Blaine, then held up a few handwritten pages and almost unreadable fragments from the Elsa’s Home for Men file Donnally had passed on to Blaine.
“This is all we have, Counselor.”
Nanston’s voice turned harsh. “Ms. Perkins, please direct your comments to the court.”
Perkins looked up at the bench.
“I’m sorry, Your Honor. But I resent the district attorney’s implication that this burden falls to the defense. After all, it was his office that didn’t bother to preserve these records.”
“Your Honor,” Blaine said, “I hardly-”
Nanston held up her palm. “Just a moment, Mr. Blaine.”
The judge turned her gaze toward her law clerk sitting in the jury box taking notes. He didn’t look up, unaware that all eyes in the courtroom bored down on him.