“Yes.”
“And you also conclude that the floor could not have caused the bruise. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“Before the pills knocked Mr. Evans out, would they have made him groggy?”
“Certainly.”
“Could he perhaps have staggered around the room, walked into a cabinet or something else, and then fallen to the floor? Could he have sustained the bruise that way?”
“That was not the prosecution version at trial.”
“And there were, and are, experts and evidence to support that version. But if they were wrong, and you are right, could it have happened as I describe?”
He’s trapped; Coletti is very good. “It’s possible.”
“Thank you,” she says. “Now, to this mysterious campene. Are there other ways for campene to enter one’s system? Is it contained in shellfish, for instance?”
“Yes.”
“Could he have ingested it that way?”
I can almost see Dr. King salivate at this; maybe Coletti is not so good. “If he did, he would have been dead when the Coast Guard got there.”
“Why is that?” she asks.
Here comes a great moment, and I envy Dr. King that he gets to say it. He waits a beat; his timing is perfect. “Mr. Evans is severely allergic to shellfish; it’s in his medical records.”
Coletti flinches; she had clearly not known this. She recovers quickly and gets Dr. King to agree that the campene could have been a preservative in another drug that Richard might have taken. Dr. King points out that there were no other drugs in his system, but has to admit that some drugs leave the body faster than others.
All in all, he has been a very good witness. He won’t carry the day, but he’s moved the day along nicely.
Next up is Dr. Ruff, Reggie’s veterinarian. She shows the X-rays of the plate in his leg, as well as the missing teeth and the cut marks. Coletti establishes on cross that none of these issues could possibly be unique to Reggie, that the pulling of teeth and the repairing of broken legs in this manner are quite commonplace.
Dr. Ruff is a less accomplished witness than Dr. King, and she’s too willing to concede facts to Coletti. The truth is that the combination of health issues would represent a mind-boggling coincidence if the dog is not Reggie, but Dr. Ruff doesn’t come off as that certain.
Next up is Lieutenant Michele Siegle of the Asbury Park Police. I use her to recount the testimony of the witnesses who saw the boat at various times that night. This establishes the locations as far from the shore.
“So it’s your opinion that Mr. Evans’s dog could not successfully have swum to shore if he had been thrown from the boat?”
“That’s correct, and it’s not just my opinion. There was expert testimony to that effect during the trial.”
I introduce the expert testimony from the original trial transcript as a defense exhibit and turn the witness over to Coletti. She gives only a cursory cross-examination, designed to elicit the fact that the murder case was ironclad with or without the dog’s involvement.
Since Reggie’s “testimony” will be kept completely separate, Judge Gordon invites Coletti to bring forward any rebuttal witnesses now. She calls Dr. Nicholas Turner, a toxicologist of some renown who was not the prosecution expert during the trial.
She takes him through a point-by-point rebuttal of Dr. King’s review of the blood work. He claims that Amenipam in liquid form is very hard to find, and that the empty bottle of pills showed traces of Amenipam, lending credibility to the theory that Richard overdosed on conventional pills.
He also talks about how quickly liquid Amenipam works, and that the Coast Guard would have had to appear very quickly after any injection, or Richard would have died.
Finally, Coletti takes him through Dr. King’s testimony about the presence of campene. “Is campene used only to preserve Amenipam?” she asks.
He smiles a condescending smile. “Certainly not. It’s used very commonly with all kinds of drugs. I’ve actually never heard it used with Amenipam, though it’s possible that it would be.”
I start my cross-examination by asking Dr. Turner if he has ever done any acting.
He seems taken aback by the question. “What do you mean by acting?”
“I mean playing a role… pretending. I don’t mean professionally; have you ever been in a school play or anything?”
“In high school… once or twice,” he says.
Coletti objects, asking where this could be going. Judge Gordon tells me to get to the point.
I nod. “Okay. Dr. Turner, I’d like you to act something out for me. Imagine you’re sitting at a table, and you’ve decided to swallow a whole bottle full of pills. Show me how you would do it.”
“How I would swallow the pills?” he asks.
“Yes. Do it like you’re acting it out, or playing charades.”
Coletti objects again, but Judge Gordon lets it proceed. Dr. Turner pours some imaginary pills from the imaginary bottle into his hand, then puts them as far back in his mouth as he can. Then he takes a drink from an imaginary glass and swallows the imaginary pills.
“Very nicely done,” I say. “For the court reporter’s sake, let the record show that you pretended to take pills out of a bottle, put them in your mouth, pretended to take a drink from a glass, and swallowed them. Is that accurate?”
He nods. “Yes.”
“You weren’t undecided about how to do it, were you? That was the obvious way?”
“It was the obvious way,” he agrees.
“Except there was no glass,” I say, taking some papers from Kevin. “Your Honor, here is an inventory of the boat that night. All the glasses were clean and put away in the cabinet. There were none on the table or on the sink. There were none anywhere except the cabinet.”
“Maybe he cleaned it,” Dr. Turner says, making the classic mistake of answering a question that wasn’t asked.
I nod. “Right. He was willing to have someone find his own dead body, but a dirty glass would have just been too embarrassing.”
“Perhaps he took the pills over the sink, cupping water in his hand.” Dr. Turner is feeling trapped, even though he has no reason to be. He’s a scientist, not a cop, and he shouldn’t feel that he has to defend the investigation. But that’s how he feels, and I’m going to take advantage of it.
“A whole bottle of pills?” I ask, not bothering to mask my incredulity.
“It’s possible.”
“There were no traces of Amenipam found in the sink. Do you find that desperate suicidal people who’ve just committed a violent murder are usually that neat?”
I move on to the pill bottle itself, which we have asked to be brought to court. I show it to Dr. Turner and ask him to read the label and tell me what pharmacy it came from.
“There is no label,” he says. “It’s been torn off… There are traces of the back of the paper.”
“According to the police reports, the detached label was not found on the boat, and seventy-one pharmacies nearest to Mr. Evans’s house were canvassed. None had provided the prescription. Can you explain that?”
He shrugs. “He didn’t want anyone to know where he got it.”
“Is it illegal for a pharmacy to dispense Amenipam?”
“Not with a prescription.”
“Is it hard to get a prescription for it?”
“Depends on the doctor, and what the patient tells him.”
I nod. “How about ‘I’m not sleeping well’? Might that do the trick?”
“Depends on the doctor,” he repeats.
“In your experience, is it likely that a suicidal murderer would care if people knew where he got his prescription?”