Steve Martini - Shadow of Power

“Can you tell the jury what that is?”

“It’s what you call beginner’s reading. What you would normally teach to children in kindergarten and first grade.”

“Was Carl able to read at all?”

“No.” She looks over at him. “Carl, you shouldn’t be ashamed. It’s not your fault.”

“Your Honor, I’m going to object to this.” Tuchio is up out of his chair. “If she wants to testify, that’s fine. But to be having conversations with the defendant…”

“Mr. Tuchio, relax,” says the judge. “Sit down.” He looks at the witness. “Go ahead, Mr. Madriani.”

“When you say he couldn’t read, did he have the ability to comprehend any words typed or written on a page? For example, could he recognize his own name if it were printed or typed?”

“No.”

“And you know this for a fact?”

“I do.”

“Before we go any further, can you tell the court what degrees or special training you have?”

“I hold a bachelor’s degree in education from the University of California at Berkeley and a master’s degree in clinical and educational psychology from UCLA.”

“As a clinical and educational psychologist, can you tell the jury what you do?”

“I do a good deal of testing. I administer standardized tests and conduct evaluations.”

“To what purpose do you do this?”

“To determine whether students suffer from any recognized learning disabilities. It’s diagnostic. There’s a wide range of learning disabilities, from hyperactivity and attention deficit disorder to autism and dyslexia and more,” she says.

“And how long have you been doing this?”

“Twenty-two years.”

“Did you have occasion to conduct any tests on the defendant, Carl Arnsberg?”

“I did.”

“When?”

“Let’s see. That would have been about two years ago.”

“So the tests were not performed in connection with this case?”

“No. They were related to his schooling.”

This is important, to avoid a claim by the prosecution that we had tests conducted and failed to disclose the results in discovery.

“And as a result of these tests, were you able to determine whether Carl suffered from any known or recognized learning disability?”

“Yes. He suffers from dyslexia.”

“Can you tell the jury what that is?”

“Dyslexia manifests itself in an inability to process certain visual signals, usually symbols, letters, and written words. It can affect verbal abilities as well, but that’s not as common.”

“Is it curable? Can it be treated?”

“Not in the ordinary sense. You can’t prescribe medication for it. There’s no pill you can take. It can be overcome in some cases, but depending on the severity it can be very difficult, very frustrating, and in some cases it can take years. Basically what you’re doing is therapy, educational intervention, but it’s usually more effective in early childhood. The older the person is, the more difficult it may be to treat.”

“What about in Carl’s case?”

“Carl had a problem,” she says. “Because no one knew he suffered from dyslexia. He managed to hide it very well. His parents didn’t know. He didn’t know himself until he was tested and diagnosed in our office.”

“And how old was he then?”

“I think he was twenty or twenty-one years old.”

“So he went all the way through school with dyslexia, and he never knew it.”

“Unfortunately, that’s not uncommon, especially years ago. It went undiagnosed in many cases.”

“Can you explain to the jury what it’s like to suffer from dyslexia?”

“The best example I can give,” she says, “is a ciphering machine. It would be as if every written message that you received was enciphered in a code and everyone else in the world was given a decoding machine, except you. They would be getting and sending messages constantly. You would be getting messages, but you wouldn’t be able to understand any of them. And you wouldn’t be able to send any either, because you didn’t understand how to encode them.”

“So I imagine that would be very frustrating.”

“That’s the problem,” she says. “It’s the frustration and constant anxiety that generally overwhelms the person. But it’s a very slow, agonizing process.”

“How do you mean?”

She explains that it generally starts in childhood when the sufferer is just beginning to socialize with other children. As they all begin school, the other children progress, because the learning process is so heavily dependent upon reading skills. This leaves the person suffering from dyslexia looking at those around him and wondering why they’re progressing and he’s not. This results in a multitude of other problems-acting out in an effort to compensate for the inability to learn, aggression, feelings of inadequacy, depression, a whole range of psychological problems. “Depending on the child, many of these attendant problems become worse as the child gets older with major problems in adolescence, in the teenage years.”

“Can the frustration result in violence?”

“It can, and there are many documented cases of this. Studies show that a considerable number of inmates incarcerated in correctional facilities suffer from dyslexia. Of course, it’s not possible to know how their lives might have changed had this been diagnosed in early childhood and the disorder remedied.”

“Does dyslexia have anything to do with intelligence, how smart or how bright a person may be?”

“Albert Einstein suffered from dyslexia. Does that answer your question? There is absolutely no correlation at all between intelligence and dyslexia. Go online sometime and check the lists of names-celebrities, inventors, writers. Agatha Christie, if you can imagine. Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison were both dyslexic.”

“How do you account for the fact that some people are able to cope with and overcome the disorder and others aren’t?”

“That’s impossible to say. In some cases it may have to do with the severity of the disorder. In others it may have more to do with the fact that they had someone around them in their early developmental years who was willing and able to spend the enormous amount of time that is required to overcome dyslexia.”

“With regard to Carl, based on your testing and evaluation, can you tell the jury how severe the dyslexia was in his case?”

“Severe. On a scale of one to ten, with ten being the most severe, I would rate Carl at nine.”

I walk to the evidence cart and collect Scarborough’s book, Perpetual Slaves. I show the witness the cover. I call her attention to the bold lettering, the title. In your opinion, if I were to show this to Carl, the title of this book, would he be able to read it?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t mean this in a bad way, Carl.” Then she looks back at me. “There isn’t a chance.”

“And if there was some correspondence-say, a letter, a handwritten letter-and I told Carl to go and find that letter, would he have the ability to distinguish that letter based on the writing from other letters and correspondence that might be at that location?”

“No.”

“Thank you. Your witness.”

Tuchio gets up, looks at the witness. “Ms. Lafair, is it?”

“Yes.”

“Would the defendant’s condition, dyslexia, interfere with his ability to watch television or process visual images such as video, news programs, things like that?”

“Generally, no. But if there was any writing on the screen, he wouldn’t be able to read it.”

“But he could understand the sounds coming from the television, the spoken words and the pictorial images?”

“Generally, yes.”