Violence (15 page)

Ward took a minute to wolf down the first of his two dogs. He took a long slug from a can of flavored iced tea and then gave Anderson the details. He didn’t hold back. Anderson would eventually get the transcript and would know exactly what had happened. Ward, when he finished his report, characterized the news by saying it was the “usual horseshit.”

Anderson, to Ward’s surprise, took it all in without showing emotion. When Anderson finally looked up from his shoes, he simply stared at the small tree branches overhead where a warm summer wind whipped the abundant, full leaves and made them glisten in the sunlight. Apparently, green things growing seemed to cover up a lot of shit.

Ward let him know what Day 2 should entail. There was also a chance Anderson could be called as a witness, but it was unlikely. Probably Day 3. Maybe Day 4, which might also be the total number of days spent on the trial.

Anderson nodded in acknowledgment, said he’d see him tomorrow, which he would in any event, and walked away.

* * *

         D
ay 2’s first witness came to the stand after a minor delay owing to a temporary medical condition, an upset stomach, by one of the jurors.

Ms. Kayte Conway, the mother who “drove all the girls home that night,” was incredibly nervous on the stand and, after getting sworn in, Judge Marr had to ask if she was alright. She said she gets “so nervous around these kinds of things” and added “I don’t even like going to get my license renewed.”

The jurors all laughed at this, and understood.

There wasn’t much she was expected to testify to except the time she dropped Tristan off “which was a little before ten.” Asked how she knew what time it was she answered, “Because I remember one of the girls had to be home by ten.”

Ms. Henklin asked her, “When you drove up, a short time before ten, to the Anderson residence and dropped off Mr. and Mrs. Anderson’s daughter, did you see anything that disturbed you?”

“Objection, leading and prejudicial.” Calcote protested.

“Sustained.” Judge Marr ruled.

“I’ll rephrase.” Henklin acquiesced and asked Ms. Conway simply, “What did you see when you drove up to the Anderson home?”

“Well, I remember…” Ms. Conway testified. “…seeing an old car parked in front of the house that just didn’t look right.”

The “didn’t look right” comment brought more objections from the defense for “speculation” and for making an “inflammatory statement.” The reasoning given by Calcote was basically what kind of car someone drives does not necessarily predispose them to crime.

These particular objections left a lot of discretion on the part of the judge to rule whether or not they would be disallowed. Judges don’t like to have to instruct the jury to “disregard” anything because while the jurors then won’t have the statement or evidence for review if the case should go all the way to deliberations, stricken from the record admonishments tend to “impress a thing” even more in a juror’s mind and open the door to calls for a mistrial. A good attorney knows to take a scintilla of breathing space and drive a truck through it.

Ms. Henklin argued successfully that “whether something seems out of place from normal, enough to make someone comment on it, or indicate a concern, is entirely relevant to this case” whereupon Judge Marr, who is the referee at the end of everything, ruled its “probative value (evidence sufficiently useful to possibly prove something) outweighed the danger of unfair prejudice” and therefore he was going to allow it.

This decision did lead to Mr. Calcote’s call for a mistrial, saying that permitting it was “highly prejudicial” and accusing Ms. Henklin (and he was right) of wanting to “get it out there and you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube once it’s out.”

Judge Marr denied the motion, but made the standard cover your ass statement that he would reserve the right to rule on a mistrial even up to the time when the actual verdict is read. It was just posturing but he had to pay it lip service if only to avoid his own judicial reprimand down the line.

The judge then called both lead attorneys into his chambers and reprimanded both sides for gamesmanship. He also upbraided Calcote and reminded him he had the transcripts of the depositions the State conducted with of all its witnesses well beforehand, that Ms. Conway’s statements were not materially different, and he could have made clear his intention to object to this testimony in advance.

Calcote apologized, and said he must have “overlooked it.” That was not true. He was just backing off. Calcote had designs on working in the prosecutor’s office and was eager to show he knew his stuff right out of the gate. But why piss off a judge? They all talk, and you might be looking at working with him or her for a long time.

When Ms. Conway’s testimony resumed she was shown a photo of the LTD by Ms. Henklin and was asked if this was the car she saw when she dropped Tristan off.

“Yes, that’s the car.” Ms. Conway replied, and continued. “And it sort of bothered me because it didn’t look like any of the Anderson’s cars, so I asked Tristan if she wanted me to wait until she got into the house. And Tristan said ‘no,’ so I drove off.”

“Why didn’t you wait?” Henklin asked.

“I don’t know.” Ms. Conway replied, tears forming in her eyes.

“But you didn’t?” Henklin inquired but it was more of a statement.

“I just didn’t and I’ll regret it for the rest of my life!” Ms. Conway blurted, voice quavering as she began to weep openly, talking now in a tortured torrent in that way the witness stand tends to propel repressed emotions to the surface. “I shouldn’t have let her go in there alone! I knew that sweet little girl since she was five! She went to school with my little girl! They were in Girl Scout’s together! I knew Karen all that time! She was so wonderful and helpful! Both of them were just like angels! Nice to everybody! Maybe If I went in there with her maybe I could have stopped it! For them to be-” She wiped her tears, shoulders shaking, head sagging from shame and torment. “I’ve gone to therapy about this. My daughter, too. We can’t-” Ms. Conway couldn’t face the prospect of finishing that sentence, and finally just said. “I’m sorry. I’m just so sorry.”

Calcote didn’t dare stop her through all this with any objections, though her emotional display was hurting him and he knew it.

Several of the women in the jury were tearing up as well as a couple of the male jury members.

Judge Marr asked Ms. Conway if she would like a recess to gather herself.

“I’m alright. I’m alright.” Ms. Conway assured him, but it was clear she never would be and that the damage from this chapter in her life would be an etching of self-recrimination on her soul forever.

“Thank you. That’s all the questions I have.” Ms. Henklin finished and sat down.

Calcote stood up and went right at it as Ms. Conway dabbed at her tears with some tissues. He didn’t have the maturity yet to have real empathy or the ability to fake it.

“Ms. Conway, do you ever see old cars parked in your neighborhood?” Calcote inquired with an air of condescension.

“Yes.” Ms. Conway replied.

“Do you normally get upset when you see an old car parked in your neighborhood?” Calcote asked.

“’Upset?’” Ms. Conway repeated, confused.

“Do you think about calling 9-1-1?” Calcote clarified, staring down his nose at her.

“No.” Ms. Conway answered simply.

“Thank you. No further questions.” Calcote curtly concluded and sat down. He had made his point but was showing his irritation which wasn’t a positive trait. He kind of knew it, but he was young, and it was a mistake he figured he would self-correct with future witnesses. He was well aware of the old axioms: Never bully a witness and never look like a lawyer.

Ms. Conway was excused and the next three witnesses were gotten through with surprising alacrity considering the arcane nature of their testimony. In order they were: Lead Homicide Detective Wayne Crotty (who didn’t have to spell his name for the court reporter), Gunther Schauspieler, a forensic pathologist, and Dr. Khadeeja Azzam from the Medical Examiner’s Office who was the only one who took some sort of a grilling.

Detective Crotty, after the standard queries about his professional history and qualifications, went through what was encountered when he and the first patrol officers arrived at the Anderson residence. He testified that it was quickly ascertained that there were “two female victims, one minor, one adult who were DRT, dead right there.”

Crotty continued, relating how, after a complete check of the premises “found no other persons present” it then “turned into a situation possibly concerning public safety” and “dispatch requested an ATL, attempt-to-locate, due to the 911 call from an adult neighbor who reported hearing a gunshot and witnessed three individuals who may have been involved in the deaths fleeing the scene in a tan LTD. All units were advised to use caution, to wait for assistance if possible and treat any traffic stop as high-risk.”

Crotty went on telling those in the courtroom how the scene itself was then secured and access carefully controlled. There was the official pronunciation of death, and evidence was collected. He calmly answered questions from the prosecution and defense about the procedures his team followed for sample collection, proper record-keeping, storage, and chain of custody to securely protect the integrity of all the items being tested. It was fairly clear the police took reasonable protective measures to ensure the evidence collected from the Anderson residence and the LTD was the same evidence tested at the State crime labs.

Besides all the standard cross-examination questions required to be asked by Calcote, the one central question he had for Crotty that he made sure he highlighted was “who is the registered owner of the gun found in Mrs. Anderson’s hand?” Calcote had laid the foundation for this subject in his Opening Statement and was now making sure the focus was being placed squarely on “The Gun” by asking Crotty insinuating additional questions around this same theme.

“Detective Crotty, in your investigation did you discover a secure area where it looked like
the gun
was kept?”

“Was ammunition for
the gun
found?”

“Was
possession of the gun
a legal ownership? In other words, did
Mr. Anderson possess
an FOID, a Firearm Owner’s Identification Program card for
the gun
?”

Crotty answered the numerous questions on the subject of
the gun
to the affirmative without irritation but the same couldn’t be said for Ms. Henklin whose patience was tested.

Ms. Henklin especially got peeved when Calcote tried to slip in a couple extra times the core to his objective with follow-ups after other questions: “And this is the same gun owned by Mr. Anderson?” and “To be clear, this is the same .38 found at the scene that was registered to Mr. Anderson?”

Henklin jumped in both times with, “Objection, your Honor, asked and answered,” and she was “sustained” each time, but Calcote was still getting his point across.

Calcote wanted the jury left with one lasting impression. Crotty represented “law enforcement.” And when jurors in this case were to think about “The Law,” Calcote wanted the next thing called to mind to be “Gun Ownership” and the final impression to be “Mr. Anderson.”

Mr. Schauspieler was next on the stand after a prosecution team member’s “family home emergency” was “handled” during a short rest.

Schauspieler went through a mass of physical evidence using reports and testified as to the accuracy of the test results. It was his supplementary use of photographs, specifically Karen and Tristan’s remains, which sickened several of the jurors prompting an early dismissal for lunch. Many of the jury members just sipped sodas during the break.

When everyone returned, Schauspieler explained how trajectory rods were used to determine the angle and direction of the single bullet that took the life of Karen Anderson, the projectile’s path being altered somewhat by passing through the skull before embedding itself in the family room ceiling. He also went through a blood spatter interpretation and showed diagrams that laid out the crime scene.

Damning somewhat to Derek, Schauspieler related how there were shoe impressions in the soil around the exterior foundation of the Anderson home that matched Derek’s footwear. Additionally, there was evidence of “Derek Lysander’s fingerprints” on the exterior bathroom window leading to the master bedroom bathroom as well as latent print evidence on the interior latch and in the bathroom itself along with “several strands of the defendant Derek Lysander’s hair.”

Soil samples from the dirt outside the window also matched an ”abundant deposit” of the same soil “on the master bedroom bathroom floor,” the “base of the bathroom window frame,” and “in the bedroom itself continuing into an interior hallway leading away from the bedroom.” This evidence indicated a direction of travel and possible mode of entry “suggesting the defendant Derek Lysander could have entered the premises through the bathroom window.”

Ms. Henklin asked him if he could be more specific about these soil indentations and composition matches. It helped to diligently elucidate these details.

“Yes, as stated…” Schauspieler replied. “…only defendant Derek Lysander’s shoe impressions were found in this area outside the master bedroom bathroom window and the geological composition from the soil just outside this particular window had an abundance of pine needles, sawflies and larvae that differed from other areas around the residence but was consistent with the soil found deposited over the base of the bathroom window frame and on the bathroom floor itself, again suggesting that same person, Derek Lysander, stepped through that window frame.”

The prosecution was pleased. Schauspieler was skilled as a courtroom educator. He made it easy for the jury to understand the nature of his job and this was important testimony.

However, Calcote was ready for him on cross-examination. Derek had provided his public defender with diagrams and Calcote related the same to the jury showing how Derek had to cut through the bushes next to the house looking for an exterior outlet to plug in their “boom box radio music player.”