14
At 9 a.m. Hammond sat on a marble bench in the hallway of the ninth floor of the Criminal Courts Building. He had been told to wait there until it was time for him to testify. On the bench next to him were his notes and charts regarding the case and a cup of black coffee from the snack bar near the elevator alcove. The coffee was terrible. Not the designer stuff he was used to. He needed it because he was dragging after a full eight hours on the graveyard shift, but he was having a hard time stomaching the harsh brew and feared it would give him stomach issues that might haunt him on the witness stand. He stopped drinking it.
At 9:20, Detective Kleber finally stepped halfway out of the courtroom and waved Hammond over. Kleber was the lead detective on the case.
“Sorry, they had to argue a motion before bringing the jury in,” he explained. “But now we’re ready.”
“Me too,” Hammond said.
He had testified many times before and it was now a routine. All except for his satisfaction in knowing that he was the Hammer. His testimony always sealed the deal and from the witness stand he had the best angle on “the moment” — the second when even the defendant was convinced by Hammond’s testimony and the hope went out of his eyes.
He stood in front of the witness stand, raised his hand, and took the oath to tell the truth. He spelled his first and last names — Marshall Hammond — and then stepped up and took the witness seat that was between Judge Vincent Riley and the jury. He looked at the jurors and smiled, ready for the first question.
The prosecutor was named Gaines Walsh. He handled many of the LAPD’s cold cases and so Hammond had testified on direct examination from him many times before. He practically knew the questions before they were asked but acted as though each one was a new one to consider. Hammond was a slightly built man — never played sports while growing up — with a professorial goatee whose reddish whiskers contrasted with his dark brown hair. His skin was paper white after nearly a year on the midnight shift. Vogel’s teasing on the phone call had been on point. He looked like a vampire caught in daylight.
“Mr. Hammond, can you tell the jury what you do for a living?” Walsh asked.
“I’m a DNA technician,” Hammond said. “I work in the Los Angeles Police Department’s bio-forensics lab located at Cal State L.A.”
“How long have you had that position?”
“Twenty-one months with the LAPD. Before that I worked for eight years in the bio-forensics lab for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.”
“Can you tell the ladies and gentlemen of the jury what your duties are in the LAPD lab?”
“My responsibilities include processing forensic cases that require DNA analysis, generating reports based on the conclusions of that analysis, and then testifying about those conclusions in court.”
“Can you tell us a little bit about your background education in the field of DNA and genetics?”
“Yes, I have a bachelor of arts degree in biochemistry from the University of Southern California and a master’s in life sciences with a specialty in genetics from the University of California at Irvine.”
Walsh fake-smiled, as he did at this point in every trial.
“Life sciences,” he said. “Is that what we older folks used to call plain old biology?”
Hammond fake-smiled back, as he did at every trial.
“Yes, it is,” he said.
“Can you describe what DNA is and what it does in layman’s terms?” Walsh asked.
“I can try,” Hammond said. “DNA is short for deoxyribonucleic acid. It is a molecule composed of two strands that twist around each other, forming a double helix that carries the genetic code of a living thing. By code I really mean instructions for the development of that organism. In human beings DNA contains all our hereditary information and therefore determines everything about us, from the color of our eyes to the function of our brains. Ninety-nine percent of the DNA in all human beings is identical. That last one percent and the myriad combinations within it is what makes each of us completely unique.”
Hammond gave the answer like a high school biology teacher. He spoke slowly and recited the information with a tone of awe. Walsh then moved on and led him quickly through the basics of his assignment to the case. This part was so routine Hammond was able to go on autopilot and glance a few times at the defendant. It was the first time he had seen him in person. Robert Earl Dykes, a fifty-nine-year-old plumber, had long been suspected of killing his ex-fiancée, Wilma Fournette, in 1990, stabbing her to death, then throwing her body down a hillside off Mulholland Drive. Now he was finally brought to justice.
He sat at the defense table in an ill-fitting suit his lawyer had given him. He had a yellow legal pad in front of him in case he came up with a genius question to pass to the lawyer next to him. But Hammond could see it was blank. There would be no question from him or his lawyer that could undo the damage Hammond would inflict. He was the Hammer and it was about to come down.
“Is this the knife that you tested for blood and DNA?” Walsh asked.
He was holding up a clear evidence bag containing an opened switchblade.
“Yes, it is,” Hammond said.
“Can you tell us how it came to you?”
“Yes, it had been sealed in evidence from the case since the original 1990 investigation. Detective Kleber reopened the case and brought it to me.”
“Why you?”
“I should have said he brought it to the DNA unit and it was assigned to me on rotation.”
“What did you do with it?”
“I opened the package and examined the knife visually for blood and then under magnification. The knife appeared to be clean but I could see that there was a spring-loaded mechanism in the handle, so I asked for a knife expert from the toolmark unit to come to the lab to disassemble the weapon.”
“Who was that?”
“Gerald Lattis.”
“And he opened the knife for you?”
“He took it apart and then I examined the spring mechanism under a lab magnifier. I saw what I believed to be a minute amount of dried blood on the coil of the spring. I then began a DNA-extraction protocol.”
Walsh walked Hammond through the science. This was the boring technical part where the danger was that the jurors’ thoughts could wander off. Walsh wanted them keenly interested in the DNA findings and asked quick, short questions that required quick, short answers.
The provenance of the knife would have already been testified to by Kleber. The knife was confiscated from Dykes when he was originally questioned in the investigation. The original detectives had it examined for blood by a lab using archaic methods and materials and were told it was clean. When Kleber decided to reopen the case at the urging of the victim’s sister, he took another look at the knife and brought it to the DNA lab.
Finally, Walsh arrived at the point where Hammond provided his findings that the DNA extracted from the minute amount of blood on the spring of the switchblade mechanism matched the DNA of the victim, Wilma Fournette.
“The DNA profile developed from the material on the knife does match the profile from the victim’s blood obtained during the autopsy,” Hammond said.
“How close is the match?” Walsh asked.
“It is a unique match. A perfect match.”
“Can you tell the jurors if there is a statistic associated with that perfect match?”
“Yes, we generate statistics based on the human population of Earth to give a weight to that match. In this case the victim was African-American. In the African-American database, the frequency of this DNA profile is one in thirteen quadrillion unrelated individuals.”