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“The shirt and boots they found in Alice’s compost bin are pretty damning,” Darla said. “They were covered in blood. There’s a note here that they checked with Joe’s PCP, and it’s his blood type. Same as the blood found on the car.” “Not a big surprise,” I said, “given that it was his car.” “Joe didn’t put those clothes in the compost bin himself,” Darla said. “If he somehow survived the shooting, he would’ve gone to a hospital, not home. And why would he want to hide his own clothes?” I looked at the police report again. It didn’t tell much of a story, other than where the shirt and boots were found and whose blood they had on them. I dropped it back on the desk. “By the time we get to trial, they’ll have additional evidence that the clothes were Joe’s. They’ll be covered in his DNA, and they’ll match the size of other items found in his closet. Still, it’s curious. Exactly how does the presence of the clothes suggest that Alice shot her husband?” “What do you mean?” “Start with the question of what, if anything, the shirt and boots imply about whether Joe is alive or dead. If he’s dead, and the body was disposed of somehow, why weren’t the clothes disposed of the same way? If Alice shot him and hid the body, why bring the clothing back to her own house? On the other hand, if he’s alive and hidden away somewhere, maybe his assailant got him a change of clothes and had to get rid of the bloody ones. But again, if that was Alice, why bring them home?” Darla thought for a minute. “Maybe there was no time to do anything else. Maybe stashing them in the compost bin was a temporary measure, and the plan was to take them someplace else later, or burn them. That’s possible, isn’t it?” “Yes. There are a lot of possibilities. I guess my point is that this is only one piece of evidence, and it’s hard to tell what it means without looking at the rest of the evidence, which we don’t have yet.” “What about the blood-soaked driver’s seat? What do you make of that?” “I’ve only seen a picture and haven’t examined the car itself. But based on my forensics background, I’d say there was a hell of a lot of blood there. I doubt anyone could have survived its loss without hospital care. If the police forensics examiners come to that conclusion, Alice is going to be looking at a murder charge.” “What else have they got?” Darla asked. “Alice’s gun was at the scene. Without Joe’s body, we can’t know if he was shot with it. Even without that evidence, though, the presence of the gun is very bad for her. The police are still processing evidence from the scene, so we’ll have to wait to see what else they may find. And then there’s her statement during questioning.” I picked up the transcript I’d received and flipped through it. “This is terrible. We’ll have to try to get it suppressed. Perhaps they didn’t adequately advise her of her rights, though I doubt it. That’s such a simple step, and something they do every day. Absent that, I’ll have to argue that the statements were involuntary.” “What do you have to show to prove that?” “That her free will was overcome. We might be able to make a case there. I read the transcript of the interrogation, and it was lengthy. They did give her breaks, food and water, and opportunities to use the restroom, but she didn’t have anywhere to lie down, so she could never get sound sleep. It’s very unusual to keep someone in an interview room for two days, and I’m curious why they took that approach. Still, whether we have enough to convince a judge to throw the statement out remains to be seen.” “I notice you don’t call it a confession.” “Absolutely not. Language is important, even here in private. The business about throwing the body in the ocean is highly equivocal. Stanford will call it a confession. We’ll say it’s impossible to tell what it means. One of my first orders of business is to draft a motion and a brief to argue that it should be excluded.” An hour later, the DV advocate, Paula Shafer, arrived to report on her interview with Alice. I got her a cup of coffee from our kitchen and asked her what she thought of the client. Paula was a social worker who was a survivor of domestic violence herself. She was short and thin, with long gray hair tied back in a ponytail, and looked to be in her sixties. She had founded a local shelter for abused women and had testified numerous times in various courts around New England. At this point, I didn’t intend to call her as a witness, but I wanted her opinion on Alice and her relationship with her husband. “I only had an hour with her,” Paula said. “There was some snafu at the jail with her visitor list. Nonetheless, I can tell you that Alice has definitely been a victim of domestic violence. She has classic symptoms: loss of appetite, poor sleep, doesn’t go out much except for work and to her parents’ house with her child, often voices her husband’s opinions instead of her own, feels like she is walking on eggshells when he’s in the house, feels powerless—I could go on. She also told me that he’s very critical of her and often threatens to divorce her and take the child, which is common behavior for abusive husbands.” I made notes on my yellow pad as she talked. “This will all be in my written report,” she said. “You need to be aware that some might describe the situation here as mutual abuse. Alice fought back, and even shot Joe once. In my experience, however, true mutual abuse is very rare. The abusive partner, usually the male, wants power and control over the other partner. A victim who fights back is not seeking power and control. She simply wants the abuse to stop. Violent resistance is a response, not a means to control the other partner. When the police come and find evidence of violence and yet fail to make an arrest, it’s almost always because they have failed, often due to poor training, to identify who the aggressor was.” “What if a woman kills her husband to stop the abuse?” “In Maine, evidence of battered woman syndrome is admissible in support of a self-defense claim. Whether the killing was self-defense will be up to the jury. Of course, to rely on a self-defense argument, Alice would have to admit that she killed him. A defendant can’t argue ‘I didn’t kill him, but if I did, it was self-defense.’” “So far she’s adamant that she didn’t kill him,” I said. “I don’t know whether she’ll stick to that.” “I can’t help you with that. As I said, we only talked for an hour, and she was tired and unwell. But I’d bet that if she did kill Joe, she did so in a state of fear or panic, either for her life or because he was planning to take their daughter away. In our conversation, she kept coming back to his threats to take Rebecca. She even went so far as to suggest that Joe might’ve staged a fake assault on himself so he could pin it on her and then come back later and take the child. That’s a pretty high level of paranoia. I don’t know if that was due to exhaustion after the long interrogation, or if there is some mental illness involved.” “You think she may be insane?” Paula shook her head. “I’m not saying that, certainly not in the sense that might support a legal defense. She’s been through a lot, though, and has a history of addiction. She may have some untreated PTSD she needs help with. I’d recommend that you have her evaluated by a psychiatrist.” One more thing to put on my to-do list.

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A Legal Thriller

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