“Who’s this expert you want to put on the stand, Ms. Cooper?” Gertz asked.
“Her name is Emma Enloe. Dr. Enloe. She’s a physician with the New York City Department of Health.”
“I thought you told Mr. Howell the deceased was never treated for any injuries?”
“That’s correct, Your Honor. Dr. Enloe neither met nor examined Amanda Quillian. Her expertise is the subject of intimate-partner violence.” The law had come late to respect and recognize this area of specialty. In most courtrooms all over America, as recently as the 1980s, domestic assaults had most often been considered private matters. Husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends, ex-lovers whose quarrels had escalated to physical abuse were told by prosecutors, police, and judges to go home and work out the problems between themselves. Rarely was the known assailant considered the same risk to the victim as a stranger, and rarely was any attempt made to consider the lethality factor-the potential for future harm-in setting bail or issuing a protective order.
“What’s to know about it?” Gertz asked. “The crime is the same on the books-homicide, assault, rape-whether the bad guy is married to the victim or never saw her before.”
“It may read that way in the penal law,” I said, “but the fact is that most people don’t treat victims of domestic abuse in the same manner. Not in law enforcement, not in the criminal justice system, not in the medical community-and not in the general public, the people who make up our jury pool.”
“So what’s this lady going to tell us?”
“Mumbo jumbo,” Lem Howell said. “Gibberish. She’s not going to tell you anything you don’t already know.”
“Dr. Enloe issued a formal report two years ago, which was the result of a research project conducted under her supervision. Scientific research, if that makes Mr. Howell any happier. She used a four-year period before that to study the causes and manner of death of every woman murdered in New York City.”
“How many was that?”
“More than twelve hundred killings in just that time range-femicides-all women over the age of sixteen. And in more than half of those cases-the ones that were solved-they were able to establish what the relationship was, stranger or acquaintance, between the victims and their killers.”
The landmark report had been front-page news in the New York Times and widely disseminated in the legal community, but Gertz cocked his head and looked at me in a way that suggested he hadn’t read it.
“Go on, Ms. Cooper.”
“Half the women in the study had been killed by their husbands or boyfriends. Fifty percent of them.”
“I think the judge knows that fifty percent is half, Alexandra,” Lem said.
“I’m not done, Mr. Howell,” I said. “This isn’t psychobabble, Your Honor. Enloe’s findings are based on autopsy reports, crime-scene photographs, toxicology, and ballistics. It’s completely fact-driven.”
“What’s the relevance here, Ms. Cooper?” Gertz asked.
“There is a lot of information in regard to domestic violence-a number of things that are well beyond the general knowledge of the jury, or, may I say, most respectfully, even of the court.”
Lem was pacing behind his client now, trying to distract the judge from the points I wanted to make. He chuckled in a blatantly artificial way. “Something the court doesn’t know? I taught you a long time ago never to dis the judge like that, Alexandra.”
“First of all, while the rate of every other violent crime in this city decreased steadily throughout the years of the study, the rates of domestic homicides did not.” I checked my notes to begin my list of the project’s findings. Effective community-policing efforts cut down street crimes and crack dealing with enormous success, but were useless at reaching beyond the closed doors of an intimate relationship.
“Last year, the NYPD responded to 247,000 incidents of domestic abuse-that’s almost seven hundred calls a day.”
“But Mrs. Quillian never called the police nor did she report any crime. Not last year nor any other year. I’d object, Your Honor, to Ms. Cooper even bringing that useless little factoid to the jury’s attention.”
“Well, then, I’ll move on to something about which Mr. Howell, in his opening-and in his cross-examination of my first witness-made a big fuss. Something he’s put at issue in this case. That’s the fact that Brendan Quillian has no criminal history, no known violent behavior prior to this arrest. In Dr. Enloe’s study, in thirty percent of the murders the offender had exhibited no previous physical violence.”
Judge Gertz rested his chin in his left hand and started to take notes with his right.
“Women are actually murdered in different ways than men,” I went on. “Male victims of homicides are most often shot or stabbed to death. They are killed on the street or in the workplace or in any kind of public space, while women are attacked inside the privacy of their homes. When women are killed by a partner, it’s usually in a very personal manner-hands on, if you will-exhibiting far more force than necessary to cause death, and far more rage. They are beaten and burned and thrown out of windows,” I said, glancing at the defendant. “And they are most frequently victims of strangulation.”
Quillian took advantage of the jury’s absence to smirk at me. His good eye cut through me like a laser.
“In addition, Your Honor, Enloe’s study identifies two times in intimate relationships when women are at greatest risk of victimization. These findings have been confirmed, in fact, by all of the data available nationally.”
“Let’s have them,” Gertz said.
“The leading cause of death for pregnant women in America is homicide, Your Honor-which is a fact not generally known-”
Lem Howell stepped up to the table and slammed his hand against it. “That has nothing to do with this case, Judge. Nothing at all to do with my client or Amanda Quillian.”
The door to the holding pen opened and a court officer waved to Artie Tramm, summoning him out of the courtroom.
“Calm down, Mr. Howell. Ms. Cooper, you’re not suggesting that the deceased was pregnant, are you?”
“No, sir. Not at all. The autopsy report is clear on that.”
“But it’s quite a claim you’re stating. Makes us sound like a third-world country. The numbers back you up?”
“Yes, Your Honor. That’s my point. Again, I’m trying to demonstrate for you that the latest studies in this field have had some astounding results. Certainly, if this court isn’t aware of the facts, I would hardly expect a jury to know them. Most people assume that pregnancy is an event to celebrate, while the maternal mortality studies prove that the stressors added to the intimate relationship put the woman at far greater risk during those nine months if she is in an unstable situation.”
“You said there were two bad times, Ms. Cooper.” Gertz pointed his finger at me. “What’s the other one?”
“Separation, Your Honor.”
Gertz held up his hand-palm outward-to stop another outburst from Howell. “But the Quillians were living together.”
“Amanda Quillian had told the defendant the marriage was over, Judge. Dr. Enloe’s study proved that seventy-five percent of the women who’d been murdered by their partners or exes had tried to terminate-or had announced their intention to terminate-the relationship.”
It was clear from the expression on Fred Gertz’s face he was hearing this information for the first time. Had the facts been so well-known-say, such as Madison Avenue is one block due east of Fifth-that the court could have taken judicial notice of them, I’d have no need to introduce them through an expert. But the study was new enough, and shocking enough, to warrant my effort to do it this way.