Devlin’s first witness of the afternoon is Ari Weintraub, the deputy chief medical examiner. As he did with Matthew Stone, Devlin has the medical examiner pull up photographs of Jennifer’s body. Unlike the CSU officer, Ari doesn’t leave the stand. He uses a laser pointer to direct the jurors’ attention to specific parts of the photographs. He begins the meat of his testimony with a detailed discussion of the autopsy. Reading off the postmortem reports, he begins with the personal data: thirty-one-year-old female, Asian, single; address 1792 Addison Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. “She was pronounced dead at the scene and taken to the medical examiner’s office. The following day, I performed the postmortem examination myself,” Ari says, and begins by describing the clothing he removed from Jennifer’s body. Continuing to his external examination, Weintraub describes Jennifer’s body as “measuring sixty-two inches and weighing one hundred and five pounds.” He continues in this clinical vein as he describes the reporter’s hair color and length, the color and clarity of her eyes, and other routine details.
Then Ari gets to the head wounds, and the picture show begins. The first photo he chooses is a middle-distance shot of the back of Jennifer’s head, to give the jurors an idea of what they’re looking at. He pauses for a moment, then switches to a much closer shot, showing a tangle of matted black hair and dried blood littered with bloodied particles of gray and white. Again, reading from his report, Weintraub states, “There were two overlapping wounds to the parietal area of the skull, right of center. The first wound was the big one. It consisted of a visibly depressed, comminuted fracture measuring five-point-two centimeters by four-point-four centimeters, with extrusion of bone. The wound extended through the skull bone and dura and into the subdural space. The second was a one-centimeter fracture just below the first wound.”
“Would you explain to the jury what it was about these wounds that caused the massive blood loss?”
“Yes. The first blow severed the right occipital artery. That’s a branch of the external carotid artery, responsible for supplying blood to a good portion of the posterior scalp, along with some muscles in the neck and back.”
“And what does the force of that first blow tell you about what caused the wounds?” Devlin asks.
“The first wound, the large one, is consistent with the victim’s head-strike to the steps after she’d been pushed.”
I object. “There’s no direct evidence the victim was pushed, as opposed to having fallen.”
Devlin smiles. “Dr. Weintraub, please address Mr. McFarland’s remark.”
Ari pulls up an autopsy photograph of Yamura’s upper torso. The photograph depicts two large brownish marks just below each shoulder and above each breast. “What you’re seeing here are two large bruises. They would not, could not, have been caused by the fall, as she landed on her back. They must have been caused before she fell, and they are consistent with someone using the palms of their hands to push the victim, hard. Very hard.”
Devlin pauses to let this sink in. “Would it have been possible, with the victim’s blood loss, for her to have retained sufficient consciousness to get herself off the steps and crawl along the floor?”
“She likely would have been unconscious for some period of time after the first blow. But given her youth and fitness, it is entirely possible that she regained some level of consciousness, appreciated her predicament, and sought to save herself.”
The jurors take this in and exchange glances among themselves.
Weintraub takes the jury through the scenario of Jennifer, spilling blood from the back of her head, crawling across the basement floor, scraping her knees as she moved. Then Devlin asks if it was possible that Jennifer herself crawled back onto the steps in an attempt to get upstairs but didn’t make it and fell down again.
“Highly unlikely,” Ari says, “given that she ended up head down, on her back. If she’d tried to crawl up the stairs and lost consciousness while doing so, she would simply have stopped moving and ended up lying facedown with her head at the top and her feet at the bottom.”
“Dr. Weintraub, would the blood loss from the fall have killed the victim had she not been placed back onto the step, head down?”
Ari takes a minute to think about this. “Eventually, perhaps. As I said, the first wound severed the occipital artery. But what’s certain is that her death was guaranteed when she was placed back onto the steps, head down, and allowed to bleed out.”
Devlin pauses, pours himself a glass of water, drinks. Then, as if he’d just thought about it, he asks, “Given that the victim was sufficiently conscious to crawl off the steps and to appreciate what was happening to her, could she have had the presence of mind to have been pleading for her life at this point?”
I object immediately.
The judge correctly sustains my objection, and Devlin continues. But Jennifer’s mother is sobbing again, and the jurors are looking at her. The jurors are also looking at David, and they’re not hiding how they feel about him. I know now for certain that we’ve lost the jury. The image of the bloodied young woman, crawling across the floor in a desperate attempt to flee, probably begging for her life while David drags her back to the steps and positions her there to die is simply too much.
“And finally, Doctor, would you tell the jury your opinion as to the time of death?”
“Yes, certainly. Based upon the victim’s weight and the temperature of the liver taken at the scene, and the advanced degree of rigor mortis, the ambient air temperatures in the house are consistent with a time of death between noon and two o’clock on the day the victim was found.”
“So, then,” Devlin asks, “if the defendant left his office at 11:50 and it took him fifteen minutes to walk to 1792 Addison Street, his arrival time of 12:05 would be within the time of death?”
“Yes.”
Devlin asks a few more questions, then thanks the witness and turns him over to me.
I rise, walk around the defense table, and move to within a few feet of the jury. I turn to face the witness so that the jury is now on my left. In a quiet voice, I begin. “So, Doctor, we’re all agreed—both the prosecution and the defense—as to how this young woman died. She died of massive blood loss from the artery severed as a result of blunt-force trauma to the back of her head.”
“That’s what I testified to, yes.”
“But this trial isn’t about how the victim died—we all agree on that—it’s about who killed her, true?”
“It’s about both.”