Steve Martini - Shadow of Power

“There were particles, small tufts of dust at or near the area in the crevices where both strands of hair, the one blond and the single brown hair, were found.”

“And what if anything did you conclude from this?”

“That the area of the chair in question, the crevices along the back cushion at the level of the seat, had not been vacuumed recently.”

I would give Prichert the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval if he weren’t doing such a good job undermining our evidence.

“So what you’re saying is that those two strands of hair could have been there for some time?”

“Yes.”

“In your opinion could they have been there as long as a week?”

“Yes.”

“Could they have been there for several weeks?”

“It’s a possibility. At some point you would expect them either to migrate deeper into the crevice of the upholstery or to fall victim to a cleaning, in which case they would be removed.”

“If they were there for a long time, would they disintegrate?” asks Tuchio.

“The hair shaft itself will resist deterioration for years. In this case neither of the evidentiary strands of hair included a follicle or any tissue; they were broken at the shaft. So there is no way to determine when the hair shaft itself was parted from its owner. Determining how long they’d been there at that location would at best be a guess.”

“Did you find any evidence of blood on either strand of hair?”

“Yes. Under microscopic examination both strands of hair revealed substantial evidence of dried blood.”

“And what if anything did you conclude from this?”

“That based on the fact that the victim’s blood had run into the crevices at the site where each of these hair strands was located, I concluded that it was not possible to determine whether either strand was deposited on the chair at the time of the commission of the crime or at some point much earlier and was therefore entirely unrelated to the crime.”

“So is it your opinion that the questioned hair samples found on or in the crevices of the subject chair are inconclusive in terms of any evidentiary value?”

“That would be my opinion, yes.”

“Let’s turn to the unidentified hairs in the bathroom. Where did you find these?”

“Almost all of them were vacuumed from under the toe kick at the bottom of the built-in bathroom counter. There is a tight space there where the wood at the bottom of the counter meets the tile floor. Most of the questioned hair samples found in the bathroom were located there. There were, I think, two loose unidentified hair samples that were just under the toe kick. Both of these I collected with tape. The others I vacuumed.

“And the colors of these samples?”

“Oh, it was the United Nations,” says Prichert. “Bathrooms tend to be that way.”

Everybody laughs.

Tuchio is trying to put as much distance as possible between any of the unidentified hair evidence and the victim or his blood. He doesn’t want any ghost perpetrators popping up on our side of the case, a nameless, faceless killer with three hairs on his head.

“Let’s take the two loose samples of hair that you found just under the toe kick in the bathroom. What color were they?”

“Blond.”

“Anything else you can tell us about them?”

The witness goes back to his notes. “One of the samples was four inches, the other was just under two inches. They were broken at the hair shaft-that is, they were not pulled out of the scalp, and under microscopic examination they appeared to be of similar origin. In other words, under the microscope the characteristics of both samples were sufficiently similar that I concluded they were from the same person. In fact, this was the case with most of the hair samples I found in the bathroom.”

Prichert explains that bathrooms are the place where people routinely comb and brush their hair, often causing breakage or shedding. So you would expect multiple hair samples from the same owner at that location. “I found the samples on the floor under the toe kick of the sink and counter area.”

The prosecutor has the witness describe the area of the counter toe kick in the bathroom. Prichert explains that this is a recessed area running along the front of the bathroom counter at floor level, approximately three to four inches high and the same dimension deep. As the term implies, it is where your toes go when you belly up to the counter to brush your teeth.

“So,” says Tuchio, “if you were standing-say, a maid with a mop-while the mop might fit under this area of the toe kick, would the maid be able to see back into this area to clean?”

Tuchio is trying to go to the same place he went with the chair in the living room, ancient hairs. “Objection. Calls for speculation,” I say. “The witness is not an engineer or an optometrist.”

“The observation is something within common knowledge,” says Tuchio.

Quinn weighs the issue in his head. “The witness can answer.”

“Probably not.”

The inference here again is that the hairs in the bathroom could have been there for some time.

Tuchio knows that the road to reasonable doubt is paved with tiny bricks of imponderables, pesky items in the state’s evidence raising questions for which there are no answers. He’s done a good job diminishing the use of this evidence in our case, but he has missed one point, and I will catch it on cross.

Except for the shoe impressions, much of what follows is window dressing on the state’s case. The heavy hitters will come later, the medical examiner who will testify that the killing was a crime of rage, fingerprint experts who’ll tie Carl to the pinkie print on the hammer handle and the four fingerprints on the floor, and the capper-the two witnesses the cops have lined up, Carl’s former friends who, if Tuchio is to be believed, will step forward with shovels to bury him.

Prichert tells the jury that in addition to the massive amounts of blood in the living room and entry he also found traces, in the form of minute streaks of human blood, on the tiles of the bathroom floor. According to the witness, these resembled similar striations of blood found on the exterior of the plastic raincoat. Prichert discovered that when they laid the raincoat on the tiles in the bathroom, the blood streaks on the floor and those on the raincoat lined up.

“Did you form any opinions or conclusions based on these findings?” asks Tuchio.

“Yes. It’s my opinion that at some point after the victim was killed, the perpetrator entered the bathroom, where an attempt was made to remove blood from the exterior of the raincoat by laying it on the floor and wiping it, probably using a bath towel; that the raincoat was then wrapped in this towel; and that together the two items were then discarded where they were later found by police.”

Prichert also notes that according to housekeeping, though they cannot be certain, it appears that two towels were missing from the hotel suite-a large bath towel, later found in the Dumpster with the raincoat, and another, smaller hand towel that police never found.

Next Tuchio pulls three evidence photos from the cart and has the witness identify them. Two of these are close-ups of items spattered with blood, the large sample case that was on the floor next to the chair where the victim was killed, and a legal-size, zippered, leather portfolio that was on a table near the television. The third shot is of the attaché case that was found open, lying on the couch in the living room out of the line of spatter. Prichert identifies the items in the photos. Then Tuchio brings him to the point.

He directs the witness’s attention to one of the photos, a shot of the attaché case.

“Do you see that mark, that little smudge on the leather right next to the lock?”