"I'm sorry," the witness replied, cupping his ear. "I didn't hear the question."
Washburn barely heard the response, but came back with his question just a few decibels louder than the first time.
Barnsdale leaned forward, his face scrunched in concentration. "Can I what?" he asked. "I'm sorry."
Behind Washburn, the gallery was getting restive. Tollson brought his gavel down one time firmly. "I want it quiet in this courtroom!" He brought his focus back inside the guardrail that separated the gallery from the bullpen of the court. "And I need you two gentlemen both to speak up, is that clear?"
"Yes, Your Honor," Washburn straightened up and nearly shouted.
Shaking his head-this was rank theatrics, circus behavior-Tollson looked down at the witness. "Doctor?"
Barnsdale looked around and up at him. "Sir?" A whisper.
"Louder, please. The jury needs to hear you."
Back to Washburn. "Go ahead, Counselor."
"Thank you, Your Honor. Doctor." A smile meant they were friends. "You've talked about these bruises on the body of the victim, that we've seen now in these photographs. My question is can you tell the age of a bruise?"
"As I just said, only within very broad limits."
"Please humor me, Doctor. Explain in some detail how you can tell that one bruise is older than another."
Clearing his throat, Barnsdale complied. "Yes, certainly. Bruises begin healing as soon as they are made, so the degree of healing, diminishing of swelling, thickness and solidity of scabbing, color, and so on, can tell you roughly how long it is since the bruise was sustained. We all know that some people bruise more easily than others. And it's also true that the same person might bruise more easily on a different part of his body, at a different time in his life, or depending on his general health. But all things being equal, we can get some idea from the bruises themselves."
Tollson, from the bench, intoned, "Louder, please."
Washburn went on. "And these bruises to the victim, were they all the same age, so to speak?"
"No."
"No? What was the greatest difference you observed between them?"
"Impossible to say."
"Impossible, Doctor. You can't give us any information? Are you telling me one of these bruises could have been inflicted on Mr. Nolan when he was five years old, and another a few minutes before his death, and there would be no difference."
A small round of laughter from the gallery.
"Well, no, of course not."
"Then could some of these injuries been inflicted a month before Mr. Nolan's death?"
"No."
"A week before?"
Some hesitation. "I doubt that seriously."
"But it could have been a week before."
"I doubt it."
"Well, certainly, Doctor, some of the injuries could have been inflicted three or four days before Mr. Nolan's death. That's true, isn't it?"
Washburn knew he had the doctor, and knew what the answer had to be.
"Well, I'd have to say yes."
"And, Doctor, did you make any effort at the time specifically to note in your autopsy the age of the various bruises?"
"I didn't record a specific analysis of that for each bruise."
"Why not?"
"It seemed irrelevant at the time. It certainly was irrelevant to the cause of death."
"Because none of these blows killed him, isn't that right, Doctor? Mr. Nolan died from the gunshot wound, whenever that was inflicted. True?"
"Yes."
"Thank you, Doctor. No further questions."
Next up was Shondra Delahassau, a forensics sergeant with the police department. A dark ebony woman in her early thirties with her hair in cornrows, projecting competence and confidence, she couldn't have been more of a contrast to Dr. Barnsdale.
"We got the call on a Saturday afternoon after the groundskeeper, who was blowing leaves off the back patio, saw evidence of a fight and what looked to be splashes of blood in the living room."
"And what happened next?" Mills asked.
"Well, the first responders to arrive were a patrol team, who entered the townhouse to see if there were injured persons or suspects still on the premises. They found only a dead body and left without disturbing anything. Once the house was cleared, they waited out front for other officers. My unit, which is crime scene investigation, got there about the same time as Lieutenant Spinoza, who had obtained a search warrant, at around four-thirty."
"And what did you find inside?"
"First, of course, the blood, a lot of blood. In the rug and on the walls and so on."
"Did your unit take samples of this blood for analysis, Sergeant?"
"Yes. We took samples from every location for testing in the lab."
Mills spoke to the judge. "Your Honor, I believe the defense is prepared to stipulate that DNA testing matched blood samples from the premises to either the defendant or Ron Nolan."
This was bad news, and a buzz arose in the gallery, but Washburn had been only too happy to enter the stipulation after Mills had told him that the lab tech who had actually done the DNA testing was out on maternity leave. It wasn't to his advantage anyway to have a half day of scientific evidence putting Evan's blood and Nolan's blood all over Nolan's home.
"Thank you, Sergeant," Mills said. "Now, back to the townhouse itself, what else did you find?"
"Well, furniture had been knocked over in the living room and in the office. We found a fireplace poker that was stained with the victim's blood on the floor in the office. Then we discovered the victim's body on the floor in the bedroom. There was a nine-millimeter Beretta semiautomatic on the bed."
"What did you do next?"
"While Lieutenant Spinoza called the medical examiner's office, I supervised while members of my unit started taking photographs of the scene, collecting blood, hair, and fiber samples and fingerprints if any were available. My usual drill at a murder scene."
Mills duly marked and had her identify almost two dozen samples with the trace evidence from Nolan's place. When they'd finished, Mills pulled the gun out of a protective firearms box and gave it to the bailiff to clear, demonstrating on the record that it was unloaded and safe to handle. "Now, Sergeant, did you personally dust the gun for fingerprints?"
"I did."
"Did you find any usable latents?"
"Yes."
"And were you able to identify whose fingerprints were found on the gun?"
"We did. It held the fingerprints of Mr. Nolan, as well as those of the defendant, Mr. Scholler."
Again, a rush of comment swirled across the gallery. Mills let it go on for a satisfying moment before she turned to Washburn and gave him the witness.
Washburn had always believed that there were basically only two ways to defend against a murder charge. The first was to present an affirmative defense case that, on its own merits, created either mitigation or reasonable doubt. This former approach had been Washburn's stock-in-trade over the years and he'd done exceedingly well with it. He would listen to all the prosecution's facts and theories, and then introduce his own defense case, which might include self-defense, diminished capacity, temporary insanity, or any other of the many psychiatric defenses (including PTSD). In San Francisco, over time, these became pretty much slam dunks. But even in San Mateo County, such a strong affirmative defense would often convince a jury to convict only of a lesser charge. Washburn believed this was because people basically wanted to believe in the goodness of their fellow man. Even if they had done something truly heinous, if there was a semiplausible reason that they'd been driven to it by events outside of their control, jurors tended to give them a break.