Tuchio tries to have Detrick testify as to particulars, the actual content of what was said during the interrogation.
In a snap I’m on my feet objecting. “The document speaks for itself, Your Honor.”
“So it does,” says Quinn. “Sustained.”
The state moves it into evidence, and we spend the next twelve and a half minutes listening as Ruiz, Quinn’s clerk, reads the statement aloud to the jury. This avoids all the inflections, comments, and inferences that you can bet would slip in with Detrick’s color commentary.
When R2-D2 finishes reading, Tuchio turns and looks at me. “Your witness.”
13
By the time the prosecutor finishes with Detrick, the morning has already crawled past noon and is edging toward one-thirty. Quinn adjourns for lunch. Harry and I scramble to find quick sandwiches and a quiet place where we can closet ourselves. We compare notes, trying to find loose threads from Detrick’s testimony, anything to tug on in cross.
So intense is our focus that, as it does for a patient under anesthesia, the dimension of time seems to disappear. In what seems like seconds, the lunch break is over and we’re back in court.
“Detective Detrick.” I start my question standing behind the counsel table and slowly move around it toward the witness stand. “Do you recall whether-when you entered the hotel room that morning, the scene where the body was found-whether the television was on or off?”
He gives me a kind of quizzical look, raised eyebrows that the jury can clearly see, as if perhaps next I might ask him if the evidence techs were busy channel surfing, looking for reruns of CSI with the remote as they mulled over the body.
He shakes his head, smiling. “No, I think the set was off,” he says.
“You can see it in several of the photographs.”
“And when your officers arrived on the scene, the first responders, was it on or off then?”
“They’re trained not to touch anything in a situation like that. Unless it’s something that threatens to disturb the scene or destroy evidence, they wouldn’t touch it.”
“So we can be fairly confident, then, that the set was off when they arrived?”
“I’d say so, yes.”
“How big is that set, would you say, Detective? Just the size of the screen?”
“I’m no expert on televisions. I’d have to put a tape on it and measure it,” he says.
“I’m sure you watch television once in a while-football games, baseball?”
“Sure.”
“So you have a television at home?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll bet you have one of those big-screen sets?”
“I guess you could call it that.”
“How big is the screen on your set?”
“I get the feeling I’ve stumbled onto the Home Shopping Network,” he says.
Lots of laughter in the jury box.
“I hate to tell you this,” he goes on, “but I don’t know how big the screen on my set is. My wife bought it.”
The jury laughs again. By now we’re all smiling.
“You’ve got a good wife,” I tell him.
“Yes I do,” he says.
“She probably won’t mind, then, when we all come over on Sunday to watch the game?”
More laughter.
“She might draw the line at that,” says Detrick.
We smile and laugh, jocularity all around. Then I drag him back to the point: the size of the screen on the television in the living area of Scarborough’s hotel room.
He finally concedes that it’s a good-size screen.
“And when it’s turned off, as you testified it was on the morning that you arrived at the scene, the screen surface on that set would appear as a dark, glossy glass. Is that a fair description?”
“Yes. I suppose.” I can tell by the look in his eye he’s starting to see it now, where I’m going.
“If you were to stand or sit in front of that big, dark, glass screen when the set was turned off, as it was when your men arrived, is it possible that you could see your own reflection in that screen?”
“Sure. It’s possible.”
“In fact, when that set is turned off, for all intents and purposes the screen acts like a mirror, doesn’t it?”
He looks at me but doesn’t answer. He wants to think about this.
“Yes or no?”
I turn back to my counsel table and pick up a copy of three of the photographs now in evidence.
“I don’t know if I’d go that far,” says Detrick, “but you could probably pick up reflections.”
“May I approach the witness, Your Honor?”
Quinn waves me on.
“Like the reflection in this photograph?” I hand it to the witness as I identify it so the prosecutor and the court can look at their own copies.
He looks at it quickly. “I suppose. Yes.”
I retrieve it from him and hold it up for the jury to see.
“Am I correct that this is a photograph taken by one of your crime-scene technicians?”
“That’s right.”
“And can you tell the jury what you see on the television screen in that photograph?” I show it to him again.
“I’d say that’s the reflection of the photographer and some flash from the strobe on his camera as he shot the picture.”
“And this one?” I hand him another photograph and identify it. “Tell us what you see on the dark television screen in that photograph.”
He puts on a pair of reading glasses now and holds the photo up to the light. “It looks like the reflection of one of my technicians.”
“And where is that technician standing, in relation to the chair that you marked in the diagram? The chair you believe the victim was sitting in when he was struck from behind?” I point to the chair in the scaled mock-up.
“Looks like he’s behind it,” says Detrick.
“Based on what you can see in that photograph, the reflection captured off the television screen shows one of your technicians standing behind the chair where the victim was murdered, is that right?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Detective Detrick, based on what you’ve seen in these two photographs, if you were sitting in that chair, looking at that dark television screen, and someone approached you from behind, wouldn’t you see his reflection in the screen?”
“I suppose if I was looking directly at the screen at the time.”
“Even if you were doing something else-say, reading, looking at some information on paper while seated in that chair-and someone approached you from behind, isn’t it likely that the reflection of the person’s motion on that screen would draw your attention?”
“I don’t know. Can’t say. Too many variables,” he hedges.
“Like what?”
“Well, like how focused his concentration was on whatever he was doing. Whether he was looking down at the time, maybe reading something in his lap. Maybe the victim’s peripheral vision wasn’t that keen,” he says. “Maybe he was snoozing at the time.” Detrick smiles just a little.
“Let’s suppose that he wasn’t snoozing. Let’s suppose that instead the victim was reading, looking through some papers. By the way, while we’re on the point, besides blood, did you or your officers collect anything else from the area directly around and under the victim’s body?”
“Yes. Some typed pages,” he says.
“Do you remember whether you or your officers examined any of those pages as to their content?”
“We did.”
“And what did you determine with regard to those pages?”
“The victim appeared to be going over notes, apparently in preparation for a television appearance that was scheduled for later that day.”
“Ah, so let’s assume that the victim wasn’t sleeping, that instead he was reading these papers at the time he was killed. Don’t you think if he was doing that and someone approached him from behind, the victim might see that movement in the television screen?”
“As I said earlier, I really can’t say. The answer would depend on too many things that I don’t know.”