By Reason of Insanity (2 page)

Annie hears the doorknob turn and she closes her eyes. The smell is real now. She senses her father at the threshold, lingering there for a perverse moment, breathing heavily. He turns off the light. Even with her eyes closed, Annie can feel the darkness deepen, and terror overwhelms her.

2

Quinn stopped pacing and turned to the jury, fighting back emotions that threatened to undo him. He swallowed once, twice . . . but he could not dissolve the lump in his throat or calm the slight tremor in his voice. He knew he was close to losing it altogether, right there in the courtroom for everyone to see. In the past he had made jurors cry and had even summoned a few manufactured tears of his own. But this time, the tears were real.

Quinn Newberg, legal magician, in danger of not being able to finish his closing argument. Juror number five, a single mother of two, had tears welling in her eyes too. Every juror stared intently at Quinn. The courtroom was as still as the house that Quinn had just described.

Slowly Quinn returned to his counsel table and placed a gentle hand on his client's shoulder. She had been stoic throughout the trial, but now he felt Annie's silent sobs, the small trembling of the shoulder. She dabbed at the tears with a worn-out tissue.

"Who can begin to understand what such abuse does to a young girl's soul? to her mind? to her psyche? The home is supposed to be a safe place. A father is supposed to be a protector." In control again, Quinn squeezed his client's shoulder and returned to the well of the courtroom, never taking his eyes off the jurors.

"If she had shot her father in self-defense that night--July 4, 1986--who would have blamed her? Who would have been so bold as to charge her with murder?"

Quinn lowered his voice, searching the faces of the jury. "You heard the testimony of Dr. Rosemarie Mancini," he said, motioning toward the witness stand. He knew they could still picture his diminutive but flamboyant psychiatric expert--her sharp wit and confident demeanor had captured the entire courtroom. "Dr. Mancini explained that Annie did what most children would have done--she repressed those horrible acts and partitioned them off in her mind. She created an alternative reality even as her father abused her--a dreamworld where her mind could go and leave the horrors of abuse behind."

Quinn stood in front of the jury now, so close he could reach out and touch the rail. "Some say that most women marry men who are just like their fathers. For Annie, it was true. Blinded by love, she gave herself to Richard Hofstetter Jr.--a man ten years her senior. He could turn on the charm, and she fell for it. And yes, she fell for the lure of his money. He was the heir apparent to his father's Vegas empire. Annie knew he had a temper, but nobody's perfect. And he had never raised his voice at Annie, at least not until Annie and her ten-year-old daughter, Sierra, moved into the Hofstetter estate."

Quinn reached down and grabbed the poster board leaning against the jury rail. He placed it on the easel, displaying large photos of Annie's face after the second domestic disturbance call. "You remember the testimony about this 911 call," he said. His voice stayed composed, but he felt his blood pressure rising. "Richard made some calls of his own before the police arrived. I'll give him this much--the man had connections. He begged Annie to forgive him. He promised to get counseling. The police officers, instead of arresting Richard, agreed to let the couple work it out." Quinn shook his head, disgusted. "We saw how well that worked."

He sensed the jury was tiring. They had been at it for three straight weeks. Rehashing all the evidence now would probably do more harm than good.

"And you know from the testimony that it wasn't just the physical abuse," Quinn continued. "Hofstetter flirted with other women right under Annie's nose--purposefully humiliating her. He threatened to turn her in for a younger model, a smarter model. For her thirty-fifth birthday, he scheduled Annie an appointment with a plastic surgeon.

"It's a wonder she didn't snap earlier--what Dr. Mancini referred to as a psychotic break. The prosecution says she should have worked through the system. She should have called family protective services. She should have filed for divorce.

"But you don't think rationally when your thirteen-year-old daughter says that her stepfather touched her private parts. Maybe you can take your husband's abuse yourself, but you can't let him hurt your daughter the way your father hurt you. Your past comes rushing back in full Technicolor--those nights you begged God to make it stop. You thought you had worked through the painful memories, but you had only caged them in for a while. And now your abusive husband feeds the beast every time he abuses you, every time he humiliates you in public. The beast grows, and the anger feeds on itself. You drive the shame and humiliation into that same cage, and they only make the beast stronger."

Quinn was talking faster now--the words coming in an unscripted torrent that flowed from his own troubled past. "You manage the beast until your husband threatens the one thing you hold dear, the one undefiled thing in your life, the only thing worth living for. The rage and fear consume you and overwhelm your inhibitions until you become the monster your father and husband have created. Your husband becomes your father. Threatening you. Abusing you. Abusing your daughter. To protect yourself and Sierra, you must act. You must do what your own mother could not. For the sake of Sierra, you
must make it stop
."

He paused, lowering his voice. "And you do."

Instinctively, Quinn did something that violated every rule of advocacy--something that ran counter to every defense strategy he had ever learned. He reached down and grabbed the poster board that contained two large photos of the victim. The first showed a bloody close-up of Richard Hofstetter's face--the entry wound in the forehead, execution-style. According to Annie's confession, she had made him kneel and beg for his life. Only then had she pulled the trigger. The second photo showed Hofstetter lying on the living room floor in a pool of his own blood. He placed the two photographs on the easel, side by side.

"Do you punish a mother for protecting her daughter?" Quinn asked. "Do you punish that abused thirteen-year-old girl for finally, twenty-two years later, pulling the trigger on this new abuser? As you've heard from Dr. Mancini, at that pivotal moment in Annie's life, all of her separate realities merged into an explosive fusion--the little girl and the protective mom, the harsh reality of the past colliding with the present, the real world merging with a dreamworld of make-believe justice. In her mind, her father and husband became one.

"Did my client pull the trigger? Yes. But is she
guilty
? Not under the law. Not when she acted under a delusion so strong that it annihilated her ability to understand the nature and consequences of her actions."

Quinn surveyed the jury, trying to read the looks on their faces. He suddenly felt drained. "My client was legally insane when she pulled the trigger," he said softly. "The only thing more insane would be to make her pay for it. Her father abused her. Her husband abused her. Don't let the system abuse her too."

He waited there for a moment before he turned and started back to his counsel table. He stopped halfway and turned to face the jurors again. This time, he felt the tears resurface, stinging the backs of his eyes.

"Twenty-two years ago, that ten-year-old boy tried to help his sister but couldn't summon the courage to act. Instead, he listened to his dad's menacing footsteps and, alone in the dark, begged God for justice. But justice never came."

Quinn looked down, wishing he could have done more. "Today, he's begging again."

He turned in the quietness of the courtroom and took his seat. He folded his hands on the table and stared straight ahead.

Annie reached over and placed her hand on top of his. "You did everything you could," she whispered. "Nobody could ask for a better brother than you."

3

For what seemed like an eternity, Quinn could feel the eyes of the packed gallery--and the ubiquitous television camera--boring into him and Annie. The proceedings, like a modern Shakespearean tragedy, had captivated the nation's fleeting imagination. Before this case, Quinn had been a rising star in the Las Vegas trial lawyer community, but nothing had prepared him for this. The insanity plea and sibling act had turned an already high-profile murder case into a national media obsession.

"Ms. Duncan?" Judge Strackman's calming voice seemed to release the hypnotic trance Quinn had beckoned. "Do you have rebuttal?"

"Yes, Your Honor. Thank you."

Carla Duncan rose to her full height and stepped confidently in front of her counsel table in the small Vegas courtroom. She was the very picture of credibility--a fifty-year-old career prosecutor who didn't try to hide her age. Tall and thin with hair streaked gray, she conveyed the sort of gravitas that age confers on leading actors and actresses. To Quinn's great regret, she had tried a nearly flawless case, an Oscar-worthy performance.

"How dare he?" she asked. "I spent my first twelve years as a prosecutor trying child- and spousal-abuse cases. I
cried
with those moms and daughters. I
hated
those monsters who did this to them. I've been called every name in the book by bombastic defense lawyers. I've been threatened by defendants. I've had midnight calls from victims, and I've cried myself to sleep after visiting them in the hospital. . . ."

Quinn had heard enough. "Objection, Your Honor. This case is not about Ms. Duncan and her career as a prosecutor."

"You're the one who put the system on trial," Carla Duncan shot back. "And I'm part of the system you're so quick to condemn."

Judge Ronnie Strackman stroked his beard, a mannerism Quinn had grown to detest. A few months from retirement, Strackman had been reluctant to rule throughout the trial--like a referee who swallows his whistle, leaving the competitors to slug it out. When he did rule, he often favored the prosecution, which Quinn found unsurprising given the amount of cash Quinn's firm had thrown at Strackman's opponent in the last judicial election.

But even Judge Strackman could stumble onto the right ruling once in a while. "This case is about the defendant's mental state at the time of the crime," Strackman said, surprising Quinn. "I will not allow it to degenerate into a referendum on our criminal justice system."

Carla Duncan thrust out her chin. "With respect, Your Honor, you already have. Mr. Newberg's defense really has very little to do with temporary insanity and much to do with whether his sister was entitled to take the law into her own hands. The system is already standing trial, Your Honor. The only question is whether you'll permit me to defend it."

When Strackman hesitated, Quinn knew another objection was lost. Sure enough, Strackman ignored Quinn's protests and Carla Duncan spent the next ten minutes lecturing the jury about vigilante justice and the rule of law. Anne Newberg could have called protective services or the prosecutor's office, Carla said. The prosecutor promised the jury that, regardless of how much money an abuser's family might have, no matter how much clout,
she
was prepared to prosecute him to the full extent of the law. There was no reason, Carla said, for this defendant to take matters into her own hands.

"Even a victim as despicable as Richard Hofstetter is entitled to his day in court," Carla argued. "Abused women can't just appoint themselves judge, jury, and executioner, shooting a man in cold blood while he begs for his life. Ms. Newberg's attorney and Dr. Mancini claim the defendant was delusional when she pulled the trigger. But the evidence shows a crime carefully planned right down to the smallest details.

"Ms. Newberg says she used her husband's own handgun to shoot him, a gun he supposedly purchased on the black market and kept unsecured in his closet. Does that not sound a little too convenient to you, a little too contrived? And why did the defendant send her daughter to a friend's house on the night in question, ensuring that she would be the only one there when Richard Hofstetter arrived home? Immediately after the shooting, the defendant called 911 and then her brother. Why call her brother? Because she knew she needed a lawyer. She knew she had done something terribly wrong.

"The insanity defense is designed to protect someone so delusional that she cannot appreciate the difference between right and wrong. But it was never intended as a ticket for murder. Or a get-out-of-jail-free card for somebody who has been abused.

"Find Ms. Newberg guilty of first-degree murder. You know in your hearts it's the right thing to do."

For three days Quinn and Anne Newberg waited for a verdict and took turns encouraging each other. During the first two days, Quinn stayed at the courthouse, talking off the record to reporters and just being there for his sister. On day three, Judge Strackman allowed the lawyers to go back to their offices while the jury deliberated.

When the third day ended without a verdict, Strackman sent the jury home for the weekend. As usual, the judge admonished the jury not to talk with anyone about the case and to avoid all press coverage. "Try not to even think about the case this weekend. Come in Monday with a fresh and open mind. I'm sure you'll have no problem reaching a verdict."

Monday came and went without a verdict. On Tuesday, the jury reported they were hopelessly deadlocked, and Strackman gave them a conventional Allen charge, also known as a "dynamite charge." He reminded them how much the trial had cost everyone. He told them that no other jury would be better able to render a verdict than they were. He admonished them to keep an open mind and to reevaluate every piece of evidence. He sent them back for further deliberations.