Never See Them Again, page 32
“Well, whatever,” the judge snapped.
“Out of respect to the court, just for the record, I resent any personal insinuation that I would—or Mr. Goodhart or I would—ever hide anything,” Freyer said with a bit of discontent in his voice, obviously upset that DeGeurin would accuse him of such a thing. “And I think that . . . in the hundred-plus felony cases I’ve tried, and in the cases that I’ve tried in this court in front of you, Judge, I don’t think we’ve ever been any more accommodating to the defense when it comes to—and, you know, Mike, if you’re going to make those allegations against me, then don’t do it in front of the jury. I resent it.”
DeGeurin continued bantering about his desire to have the documents marked as exhibits, again insinuating that something might mysteriously appear in them that had not been there when he had used the documents to question Officer Taravella. He went on and on.
The judge explained to DeGeurin that he could mark down any page numbers of documents he wanted to, and then check them against the record posttrial, but he wasn’t going to go through this nonsense anymore, and certainly not after each witness. Concluding with a smidgen of You had better! in his frustrated tone, Ellis asked, “Do you understand that?”
“Yes, Judge,” DeGeurin said.
The judge brought in the jury, sat them, and then Tom Ladd entered the witness stand. Tom had been retired for more than four years. He looked better, healthier, although he walked with a limp because of those bad football knees catching up with him and the sad fact that arthritis had been kicking his ass these days.
Ladd spoke about his career for just a moment and quickly got into how he had arrived at the Clear Lake crime scene “sometime after seven” and ended up staying until “three, four o’clock in the morning, maybe longer.”
The retired detective established many facts for ADA Tom Goodhart. Among those at the scene, Ladd explained, was the notion that a robbery might have occurred. But looking further, he said none of the drawers had been opened and pulled out.
“Did you find any drugs in that house?”
“No, I did not.”
“Did somebody find some drugs in that house?”
“Yes.”
“Who was that?”
“I don’t recall who it was.”
“Did you ever go look at the drugs?”
“No. Yochum, you know, handled that part. He just advised me of it.”
“But it was small amounts of marijuana?”
Ladd spoke of how he came to the conclusion that Marcus and Adelbert had “sold drugs” for a living.
“People came up and started telling us that.”
After discussing the drug scene in Seabrook, Ladd talked about all the Crime Stoppers tips HPD had received and how they had to check each and every one.
When Goodhart asked Ladd who he believed had killed the kids, Ladd did not hesitate, saying, “Dopers!” Dope and dope dealing was, in fact, the definite focus of the investigation in 2003 and even into 2004. He mentioned Jason Uolla by name. He talked about others he interviewed. Once Ladd said he made up his mind about it being a drug-related crime, there was no turning back. He never wavered.
Why?
Because the evidence had pointed to it, time and again.
DeGeurin took his crack at Tom Ladd and could not get the man to admit anything other than the truth as he had uncovered it.
In the end Tom Ladd had been right—the murders, if you believed Christine Paolilla and her version, were the result of a man who set out to steal drugs from a pair of dope dealers.
Next on the witness stand was another officer who was present at the Millbridge Drive scene. He walked in and told his stories, which included more of the same gory and graphic detail.
Then Brian Harris took the stand and related how he had become involved and how the hierarchy of assigning a murder case to the unit operated inside HPD. After that, Harris mentioned how, when he became involved months into the case, he took some time and read through every piece of paper connected to the case in order to get acquainted. And when Tom Ladd retired the following year, Harris said, he took the lead in the case.
Then Katrina happened.
There was a lull. But the case was always in his mind, tugging at him.
Then came the tip.
For some time—perhaps longer than he needed—Harris talked about how large the case was as a report itself, and how much information had been collected throughout the entire length of the investigation.
As DeGeurin kept objecting, citing relevance, Freyer had Harris move on to Crime Stoppers and how important it was to the success of the program for callers to maintain their anonymity if they chose so.
Then they talked about how much media coverage the case had received, and because of all the news stories, several policies had to be changed as it pertained to the way HPD gave out information to the press regarding unsolved crimes.
Harris explained all the red herrings he had chased down throughout the years.
He mentioned that several of the tips late into the investigation he followed up on contained information that had never been reported by the media, including where Christine worked. Or that Snider had moved from Crosby, Texas, to Louisville, Kentucky. Or that Snider was incarcerated. Or that the guns used in the murders could be found inside the safe in Snider’s parents’ house.
Nobody, Harris insisted, but the killers could have known those facts.
And just like that, Harris had given Justin Rott the credibility he would soon need to carry him through what was surely going to be a rough time on the stand. No matter what DeGeurin asked, what Christine said about him, or how many times the guy had been arrested or in rehab, no one and no thing could change the fact that Justin Rott could have never known the facts Harris described without them being passed on to him by his wife.
Then came an important part of Harris’s testimony. His questioning of Christine on that first night she was taken into custody in San Antonio. Harris had to make sure the jury knew that he was well aware of her “condition” and that he’d had experience with questioning “intoxicated” and/or “high” suspects. He knew when the right and wrong time was to question a suspect and made several good points to the jury in answering Freyer’s tough questions.
“Would you expect to be able to successfully or—interview someone who was unable to process in what you were telling them or asking them and then process it and then give an answer, too? If that person was unable to do that, would you interview that person?”
“No. Because my interviews are very complex. Very detailed.”
“Okay. And just jumping ahead before we talk about a couple of other things, did you later perform two interviews of this defendant that you’ve identified here in court?”
“Yes.”
“And without getting into the contents of them right now, did you believe that in doing so that she was unable to understand your questions, or that she was intoxicated and that she could not be interviewed?”
“No. There were numerous occasions throughout the interview I was quite impressed with her coherency and her ability to reason.”
“And when she was arrested, did you see with your own eyes a large amount of evidence in this hotel room of previous drug usage?”
“Yes.”
“And what was that in the form of?”
“Hundreds of needles, blood on the wall, the stench of unclean clothes, and just—it was—”
“Nasty?”
“—filthy. It was almost indescribable.”
“All right. Now, regarding your training in intoxication and observing intoxicated people, I mean, when you’re out on the street doing murder cases, do you often come in contact with people that are high, intoxicated?”
“Yes.”
All a juror who might not have believed Harris needed to do was take a look at that videotape of Harris’s first interview with Christine and it would become apparent that she knew what she was talking about. Heck, she knew enough to lie. Because she did it, over and over again, knowing where, exactly, to place a mistruth, and where, exactly, to tell the truth. In addition, Christine had not made any major admissions during that first interview.
CHAPTER 68
MIKE DEGEURIN NEEDED to go after Brian Harris. He needed to question the guy’s tactics, his skills as an interrogator, his tenacity, his cockiness, and his ability to treat Christine, on that first night she was brought in, not with kid gloves, but with the rough, bare hands of a cop looking to get a confession and close a case that had been cold for years. It was DeGeurin’s job to dig, press Harris on the hard issues, and see if he could expose a mistake or two Harris had made.
The way to begin this assault was to go after what was one of the more pejorative pieces of evidence the state had in its arsenal: Michelle and Craig Lackner’s interviews and descriptions of those two people outside their window. It was their statements that had led to those now-infamous sketches, and the Lackners picking Snider and Christine out of a photo lineup. If the Lackners had seen sketches of the suspects before looking at the photo lineup, their testimony, which Rob Freyer had planned to bring in last, would register as questionable.
“You had with you the—in your offense report—the description that the Lackners had given back . . . on July 18, 2003, is that correct?” DeGeurin began.
“Yes,” Harris said, looking up.
“And when you decided to go to them with a photo array, you had obtained a picture of Christine Paolilla and also one of Mr. Snider, correct?”
“Yes.”
It would be stupid to go to them without a photo of both suspects. What would have been the purpose?
“Did you call the Lackners up and tell them to come somewhere, or did you go to their house?”
“We went to their office. . . . That address, it’s an office complex. We went to their place of employment.”
“You say ‘we.’ Who was with you?”
“Myself and Investigator Tom McCorvey,” Harris said.
“Anyone else?”
Where was DeGeurin going with this?
“No.”
“And when you went, did you have these two exhibits that we’re talking about now—the photo arrays—with you?”
“Yes.”
“When you got there, did you tell them,” DeGeurin stopped himself and thought a moment. Changing the question, he asked, “First of all, did you tell them on the phone why you were coming by to see them?”
“Yes.”
“By the way, was that recorded?”
Why would a cop record such a routine call?
“No.”
“Did you make a notation of what you told them on the phone?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. You had selected and showed me a few pages that relate to your notes of this happening. Can you show them to me again? Let me look at them?” DeGeurin asked.
“Yes.” Harris showed the lawyer what he wanted.
DeGeurin was smart in the sense that he was breaking down the day Harris spoke to the Lackners into single beats, having the detective talk through every step. In there somewhere, perhaps, was a trip.
“Just give me a start [page] . . . stop. It’s not too many pages, as I recall.”
“Right here,” Harris said, pointing to what DeGeurin was looking for.
“Do you mind if I take this over where I can . . . ?” DeGeurin started to ask, but then interrupted himself. “Did you take with you, when you went to meet the Lackners, a copy of the sketch?”
“The case files, yes.”
“Which included the sketch?”
“Yes.”
“Did you show them the sketch?”
“After the identification . . . we discussed the sketches, showed them the sketches and, basically, reaffirmed their decision.”
“Are you saying you did not show them the sketches before you showed them the photo array?”
“I had them recall what they put on the sketch, what the features were, et cetera.”
“And are you saying you did not show them the sketch when—”
This time Harris interrupted: “As far as examining the sketch, no, no.” He shook his head. “No.”
“No, no,” DeGeurin clarified, repeating himself, “not examining, but just showing them the sketch?”
In other words, did you show them the sketches and the photos together—did you help these people come to a conclusion?
“I don’t think I did. I know we talked about the description. I had the sketches there. It’s now in the file, but as far as saying, ‘Hey, look at this sketch,’ no.”
“No. But laying there for them to look at, if they wanted to?” (Was the sketch on a table somewhere, maybe in view, so they could compare it to the photo lineup?)
“They could have. I don’t know. I don’t know if they did or didn’t.”
“You don’t know whether you had . . . the sketches in a spot where they could look at them before they looked at the—”
“Correct,” Harris said, not letting him finish.
“You don’t remember?”
“Correct.”
“But you think they may have looked at them?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know whether you offered it to them? Or you don’t know whether they even looked at them?”
“I don’t know if they saw it on the desk or a file or something like that.”
“If it was on a desk, it would be on their desk, right, because you’re in their—”
“In their office,” Harris interrupted. “It was some kind of office with, like, a round coffee-table type of thing.”
“You would have had to take them out of your file and put them on their desk, correct?”
“Much like I’m carrying this now, yes.”
“Spread out?”
“Correct.”
DeGeurin made a good point, asking pointedly: “For them to look at it if they wanted to?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know if they did.”
“You don’t know why you had it out on the desk?”
“For the case file! I had them out because of the case file. It’s part of a case file. And finding their statements that they had already made, and for reference for ourselves in getting them to recall the descriptions [they had previously given]. Because in an oral interview, both of them recalled the physical descriptions of the people they saw.”
“So . . . the sketches were to help them remember what their description was?”
DeGeurin was doing his best to make Harris stumble.
“No. The sketches were as a reference for us as they’re describing the descriptions of the two people. It’s reaffirmation to me that these were good sketches.”
“In other words, you . . . had the sketches there for your own benefit, not for them. Is that what you’re saying?”
“Correct. Correct.” Harris nodded his head.
They could have gone on forever, back and forth, discussing this subjective topic until jurors fell asleep and became so confused that Harris’s testimony meant nothing.
In the end DeGeurin was able to get Harris to admit that he had explained to the Lackners that they now had a few suspects and their help identifying them was going to be crucial to the case.
DeGeurin then began to question Harris about a report he had handed the lawyer during his testimony, asking if that was the actual report he had been referring to during his testimony. They argued about this for several minutes. It was rather inconsequential, actually, seeing that Harris had made his point that the Lackners identified Christine and Chris from a photo lineup and there really wasn’t much DeGeurin could do to deny or dispute that simple, detrimental fact of the case.
For the next thirty minutes or so, DeGeurin keyed in on every particular aspect regarding the Lackners’ identification of the photo lineups. By the time the witness and the lawyer finished talking about the Lackners, all the jury could do was anticipate the Lackners’ testimony even more. In a sense DeGeurin’s cross-examination of Harris gave the Lackners more credibility.
Finally Mike DeGeurin passed the witness back to ADA Tom Goodhart.
Goodhart said, “Nothing further.”
The judge recessed until the following morning.
CHAPTER 69
IT WOULD HAVE been a mistake for Rob Freyer not to capitalize on Mike DeGeurin’s obsession, truthfully, with the Lackners’ descriptions of the defendant and Chris Snider. So, on the morning of October 2, 2008, Freyer called Michelle Lackner as his first witness.
The pretty Texan, who had seen two murderers outside her window, walked in and sat down.
Michelle Lackner introduced herself to the judge and jury. She had been at her accounting job thirteen years, married to Craig for ten, and had lived in the Millbridge Drive neighborhood for the past six years.
She then told her tale of seeing two people walk up the driveway toward the Rowell house on July 18, 2003. And beyond all that they would discuss over the next twenty minutes, including how she identified Christine and Chris in a photo lineup, the most important part of Michelle Lackner’s testimony came almost right away, after Freyer asked, “Right now . . . when it comes to the people that you observed, do you happen to see one of the two people that you observed, here, sitting here in the courtroom?”
“Yes.”
“And for the benefit of Judge Ellis, can you identify her by pointing to something that she’s wearing, or a physical trait?”
“A pink headband.”
Christine looked down and away.
Michelle Lackner’s testimony had the impact of an eyewitness placing Christine at the scene of the crime.
Craig Lackner walked in next and backed up his wife, saying almost the same thing, verbatim.
DeGeurin tried, but could not crack the happy couple. One of the only questionable aspects of the Lackners’ testimony came from Craig Lackner, when DeGeurin asked him if Harris and McCorvey had “told them” that their suspects would be in the photo lineup before they looked at the images.
“We were told that—that they were—they were like suspects, but they wanted to show us a lineup. That’s all they said.”
“Out of respect to the court, just for the record, I resent any personal insinuation that I would—or Mr. Goodhart or I would—ever hide anything,” Freyer said with a bit of discontent in his voice, obviously upset that DeGeurin would accuse him of such a thing. “And I think that . . . in the hundred-plus felony cases I’ve tried, and in the cases that I’ve tried in this court in front of you, Judge, I don’t think we’ve ever been any more accommodating to the defense when it comes to—and, you know, Mike, if you’re going to make those allegations against me, then don’t do it in front of the jury. I resent it.”
DeGeurin continued bantering about his desire to have the documents marked as exhibits, again insinuating that something might mysteriously appear in them that had not been there when he had used the documents to question Officer Taravella. He went on and on.
The judge explained to DeGeurin that he could mark down any page numbers of documents he wanted to, and then check them against the record posttrial, but he wasn’t going to go through this nonsense anymore, and certainly not after each witness. Concluding with a smidgen of You had better! in his frustrated tone, Ellis asked, “Do you understand that?”
“Yes, Judge,” DeGeurin said.
The judge brought in the jury, sat them, and then Tom Ladd entered the witness stand. Tom had been retired for more than four years. He looked better, healthier, although he walked with a limp because of those bad football knees catching up with him and the sad fact that arthritis had been kicking his ass these days.
Ladd spoke about his career for just a moment and quickly got into how he had arrived at the Clear Lake crime scene “sometime after seven” and ended up staying until “three, four o’clock in the morning, maybe longer.”
The retired detective established many facts for ADA Tom Goodhart. Among those at the scene, Ladd explained, was the notion that a robbery might have occurred. But looking further, he said none of the drawers had been opened and pulled out.
“Did you find any drugs in that house?”
“No, I did not.”
“Did somebody find some drugs in that house?”
“Yes.”
“Who was that?”
“I don’t recall who it was.”
“Did you ever go look at the drugs?”
“No. Yochum, you know, handled that part. He just advised me of it.”
“But it was small amounts of marijuana?”
Ladd spoke of how he came to the conclusion that Marcus and Adelbert had “sold drugs” for a living.
“People came up and started telling us that.”
After discussing the drug scene in Seabrook, Ladd talked about all the Crime Stoppers tips HPD had received and how they had to check each and every one.
When Goodhart asked Ladd who he believed had killed the kids, Ladd did not hesitate, saying, “Dopers!” Dope and dope dealing was, in fact, the definite focus of the investigation in 2003 and even into 2004. He mentioned Jason Uolla by name. He talked about others he interviewed. Once Ladd said he made up his mind about it being a drug-related crime, there was no turning back. He never wavered.
Why?
Because the evidence had pointed to it, time and again.
DeGeurin took his crack at Tom Ladd and could not get the man to admit anything other than the truth as he had uncovered it.
In the end Tom Ladd had been right—the murders, if you believed Christine Paolilla and her version, were the result of a man who set out to steal drugs from a pair of dope dealers.
Next on the witness stand was another officer who was present at the Millbridge Drive scene. He walked in and told his stories, which included more of the same gory and graphic detail.
Then Brian Harris took the stand and related how he had become involved and how the hierarchy of assigning a murder case to the unit operated inside HPD. After that, Harris mentioned how, when he became involved months into the case, he took some time and read through every piece of paper connected to the case in order to get acquainted. And when Tom Ladd retired the following year, Harris said, he took the lead in the case.
Then Katrina happened.
There was a lull. But the case was always in his mind, tugging at him.
Then came the tip.
For some time—perhaps longer than he needed—Harris talked about how large the case was as a report itself, and how much information had been collected throughout the entire length of the investigation.
As DeGeurin kept objecting, citing relevance, Freyer had Harris move on to Crime Stoppers and how important it was to the success of the program for callers to maintain their anonymity if they chose so.
Then they talked about how much media coverage the case had received, and because of all the news stories, several policies had to be changed as it pertained to the way HPD gave out information to the press regarding unsolved crimes.
Harris explained all the red herrings he had chased down throughout the years.
He mentioned that several of the tips late into the investigation he followed up on contained information that had never been reported by the media, including where Christine worked. Or that Snider had moved from Crosby, Texas, to Louisville, Kentucky. Or that Snider was incarcerated. Or that the guns used in the murders could be found inside the safe in Snider’s parents’ house.
Nobody, Harris insisted, but the killers could have known those facts.
And just like that, Harris had given Justin Rott the credibility he would soon need to carry him through what was surely going to be a rough time on the stand. No matter what DeGeurin asked, what Christine said about him, or how many times the guy had been arrested or in rehab, no one and no thing could change the fact that Justin Rott could have never known the facts Harris described without them being passed on to him by his wife.
Then came an important part of Harris’s testimony. His questioning of Christine on that first night she was taken into custody in San Antonio. Harris had to make sure the jury knew that he was well aware of her “condition” and that he’d had experience with questioning “intoxicated” and/or “high” suspects. He knew when the right and wrong time was to question a suspect and made several good points to the jury in answering Freyer’s tough questions.
“Would you expect to be able to successfully or—interview someone who was unable to process in what you were telling them or asking them and then process it and then give an answer, too? If that person was unable to do that, would you interview that person?”
“No. Because my interviews are very complex. Very detailed.”
“Okay. And just jumping ahead before we talk about a couple of other things, did you later perform two interviews of this defendant that you’ve identified here in court?”
“Yes.”
“And without getting into the contents of them right now, did you believe that in doing so that she was unable to understand your questions, or that she was intoxicated and that she could not be interviewed?”
“No. There were numerous occasions throughout the interview I was quite impressed with her coherency and her ability to reason.”
“And when she was arrested, did you see with your own eyes a large amount of evidence in this hotel room of previous drug usage?”
“Yes.”
“And what was that in the form of?”
“Hundreds of needles, blood on the wall, the stench of unclean clothes, and just—it was—”
“Nasty?”
“—filthy. It was almost indescribable.”
“All right. Now, regarding your training in intoxication and observing intoxicated people, I mean, when you’re out on the street doing murder cases, do you often come in contact with people that are high, intoxicated?”
“Yes.”
All a juror who might not have believed Harris needed to do was take a look at that videotape of Harris’s first interview with Christine and it would become apparent that she knew what she was talking about. Heck, she knew enough to lie. Because she did it, over and over again, knowing where, exactly, to place a mistruth, and where, exactly, to tell the truth. In addition, Christine had not made any major admissions during that first interview.
CHAPTER 68
MIKE DEGEURIN NEEDED to go after Brian Harris. He needed to question the guy’s tactics, his skills as an interrogator, his tenacity, his cockiness, and his ability to treat Christine, on that first night she was brought in, not with kid gloves, but with the rough, bare hands of a cop looking to get a confession and close a case that had been cold for years. It was DeGeurin’s job to dig, press Harris on the hard issues, and see if he could expose a mistake or two Harris had made.
The way to begin this assault was to go after what was one of the more pejorative pieces of evidence the state had in its arsenal: Michelle and Craig Lackner’s interviews and descriptions of those two people outside their window. It was their statements that had led to those now-infamous sketches, and the Lackners picking Snider and Christine out of a photo lineup. If the Lackners had seen sketches of the suspects before looking at the photo lineup, their testimony, which Rob Freyer had planned to bring in last, would register as questionable.
“You had with you the—in your offense report—the description that the Lackners had given back . . . on July 18, 2003, is that correct?” DeGeurin began.
“Yes,” Harris said, looking up.
“And when you decided to go to them with a photo array, you had obtained a picture of Christine Paolilla and also one of Mr. Snider, correct?”
“Yes.”
It would be stupid to go to them without a photo of both suspects. What would have been the purpose?
“Did you call the Lackners up and tell them to come somewhere, or did you go to their house?”
“We went to their office. . . . That address, it’s an office complex. We went to their place of employment.”
“You say ‘we.’ Who was with you?”
“Myself and Investigator Tom McCorvey,” Harris said.
“Anyone else?”
Where was DeGeurin going with this?
“No.”
“And when you went, did you have these two exhibits that we’re talking about now—the photo arrays—with you?”
“Yes.”
“When you got there, did you tell them,” DeGeurin stopped himself and thought a moment. Changing the question, he asked, “First of all, did you tell them on the phone why you were coming by to see them?”
“Yes.”
“By the way, was that recorded?”
Why would a cop record such a routine call?
“No.”
“Did you make a notation of what you told them on the phone?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. You had selected and showed me a few pages that relate to your notes of this happening. Can you show them to me again? Let me look at them?” DeGeurin asked.
“Yes.” Harris showed the lawyer what he wanted.
DeGeurin was smart in the sense that he was breaking down the day Harris spoke to the Lackners into single beats, having the detective talk through every step. In there somewhere, perhaps, was a trip.
“Just give me a start [page] . . . stop. It’s not too many pages, as I recall.”
“Right here,” Harris said, pointing to what DeGeurin was looking for.
“Do you mind if I take this over where I can . . . ?” DeGeurin started to ask, but then interrupted himself. “Did you take with you, when you went to meet the Lackners, a copy of the sketch?”
“The case files, yes.”
“Which included the sketch?”
“Yes.”
“Did you show them the sketch?”
“After the identification . . . we discussed the sketches, showed them the sketches and, basically, reaffirmed their decision.”
“Are you saying you did not show them the sketches before you showed them the photo array?”
“I had them recall what they put on the sketch, what the features were, et cetera.”
“And are you saying you did not show them the sketch when—”
This time Harris interrupted: “As far as examining the sketch, no, no.” He shook his head. “No.”
“No, no,” DeGeurin clarified, repeating himself, “not examining, but just showing them the sketch?”
In other words, did you show them the sketches and the photos together—did you help these people come to a conclusion?
“I don’t think I did. I know we talked about the description. I had the sketches there. It’s now in the file, but as far as saying, ‘Hey, look at this sketch,’ no.”
“No. But laying there for them to look at, if they wanted to?” (Was the sketch on a table somewhere, maybe in view, so they could compare it to the photo lineup?)
“They could have. I don’t know. I don’t know if they did or didn’t.”
“You don’t know whether you had . . . the sketches in a spot where they could look at them before they looked at the—”
“Correct,” Harris said, not letting him finish.
“You don’t remember?”
“Correct.”
“But you think they may have looked at them?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know whether you offered it to them? Or you don’t know whether they even looked at them?”
“I don’t know if they saw it on the desk or a file or something like that.”
“If it was on a desk, it would be on their desk, right, because you’re in their—”
“In their office,” Harris interrupted. “It was some kind of office with, like, a round coffee-table type of thing.”
“You would have had to take them out of your file and put them on their desk, correct?”
“Much like I’m carrying this now, yes.”
“Spread out?”
“Correct.”
DeGeurin made a good point, asking pointedly: “For them to look at it if they wanted to?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know if they did.”
“You don’t know why you had it out on the desk?”
“For the case file! I had them out because of the case file. It’s part of a case file. And finding their statements that they had already made, and for reference for ourselves in getting them to recall the descriptions [they had previously given]. Because in an oral interview, both of them recalled the physical descriptions of the people they saw.”
“So . . . the sketches were to help them remember what their description was?”
DeGeurin was doing his best to make Harris stumble.
“No. The sketches were as a reference for us as they’re describing the descriptions of the two people. It’s reaffirmation to me that these were good sketches.”
“In other words, you . . . had the sketches there for your own benefit, not for them. Is that what you’re saying?”
“Correct. Correct.” Harris nodded his head.
They could have gone on forever, back and forth, discussing this subjective topic until jurors fell asleep and became so confused that Harris’s testimony meant nothing.
In the end DeGeurin was able to get Harris to admit that he had explained to the Lackners that they now had a few suspects and their help identifying them was going to be crucial to the case.
DeGeurin then began to question Harris about a report he had handed the lawyer during his testimony, asking if that was the actual report he had been referring to during his testimony. They argued about this for several minutes. It was rather inconsequential, actually, seeing that Harris had made his point that the Lackners identified Christine and Chris from a photo lineup and there really wasn’t much DeGeurin could do to deny or dispute that simple, detrimental fact of the case.
For the next thirty minutes or so, DeGeurin keyed in on every particular aspect regarding the Lackners’ identification of the photo lineups. By the time the witness and the lawyer finished talking about the Lackners, all the jury could do was anticipate the Lackners’ testimony even more. In a sense DeGeurin’s cross-examination of Harris gave the Lackners more credibility.
Finally Mike DeGeurin passed the witness back to ADA Tom Goodhart.
Goodhart said, “Nothing further.”
The judge recessed until the following morning.
CHAPTER 69
IT WOULD HAVE been a mistake for Rob Freyer not to capitalize on Mike DeGeurin’s obsession, truthfully, with the Lackners’ descriptions of the defendant and Chris Snider. So, on the morning of October 2, 2008, Freyer called Michelle Lackner as his first witness.
The pretty Texan, who had seen two murderers outside her window, walked in and sat down.
Michelle Lackner introduced herself to the judge and jury. She had been at her accounting job thirteen years, married to Craig for ten, and had lived in the Millbridge Drive neighborhood for the past six years.
She then told her tale of seeing two people walk up the driveway toward the Rowell house on July 18, 2003. And beyond all that they would discuss over the next twenty minutes, including how she identified Christine and Chris in a photo lineup, the most important part of Michelle Lackner’s testimony came almost right away, after Freyer asked, “Right now . . . when it comes to the people that you observed, do you happen to see one of the two people that you observed, here, sitting here in the courtroom?”
“Yes.”
“And for the benefit of Judge Ellis, can you identify her by pointing to something that she’s wearing, or a physical trait?”
“A pink headband.”
Christine looked down and away.
Michelle Lackner’s testimony had the impact of an eyewitness placing Christine at the scene of the crime.
Craig Lackner walked in next and backed up his wife, saying almost the same thing, verbatim.
DeGeurin tried, but could not crack the happy couple. One of the only questionable aspects of the Lackners’ testimony came from Craig Lackner, when DeGeurin asked him if Harris and McCorvey had “told them” that their suspects would be in the photo lineup before they looked at the images.
“We were told that—that they were—they were like suspects, but they wanted to show us a lineup. That’s all they said.”
