Worship You

Chapter Eighteen - The CSI Stuff

After that, we spent short days in the courtroom. The DA brought in a lot of forensic evidence - you know, chemistry, blood, things like that - and more scientists to show how it was me that did the killing and probably Cassie helped though they couldn't prove how. Nevertheless, the DA repeated every chance he got that she told me to do it. And then the judge would bang his gavel down and the DA would say sorry and we would go on. It was really very boring all the scientific stuff. And I nodded off more than once. I wasn't the only one. The jurors heads were nodding up and down like bobble head dolls. More than once one of the court bailiffs had to go over and wake one of the jurors up because they were snoring.  

So the DA decided to make some excitement. He put the psychiatrist who had talked to Cassie and me on the stand. He testified of course, that I was under her spell. Whatever that was supposed to mean. He had a special psychiatry term for it. It was French. He surrounded it with a lot of other gobbledygook, but the basic idea was the same as the DA's in his opening statement: I was Cassie Cioukowsky slave. 

Cassie's lawyer made the shrink sound like a real quack. First she asked about his education, which was not that impressive: local schools, even community college at the beginning.  

Then she asked about his "theory" of the case. Under her spell? What did that mean? Did he actually think that this high school girl could cast spells? Did he actually believe in witchcraft? She was smirking straight at the jury the whole time. 

The shrink squirmed in his chair, pulled his collar, and looked up at the ceiling. He went into a long rambling speech that he didn't mean these things literally. He was using the metaphor and that it had nothing to do with magic. One form of it was called folie à deux. (I caught it that time.) He said that this was a real and recognized psychological condition and the results were pretty much the same as if it were witchcraft. By this theory, I shared her psychosis. I was under her control. I would do whatever she told me to do. That's all he meant by being under a spell. He was using a metaphor. 

Cassie's lawyer asked if the shrink could give us some examples of this "spell" he was talking about. She snuck another quick grin at the jury, like, "Get this, folks." 

He quoted a lot of stuff I had said, mainly things out of context but to be honest it probably sounded pretty weird. I had said how great I thought Cassie was, how much I loved her and all that. But I never said that I would do anything for her or that I was her slave or anything like that. Even though it sounded that way when he told it. But some of the stuff he quoted me as saying sounded bad. He got me to talk about football a lot. How, in my view, that it was basically a game about violence in which the main point was to hurt other people. Things like that. Out of context, I sounded pretty crazy. 

One-Way couldn't do much about that. He couldn't shake the shrink's testimony. He may have made things worse. 

Cassie's lawyer was interested only in what Cassie had said. And Cassie had had enough sense to say very little. She sounded like an ordinary high school girl that had gotten mixed up in something that was not her fault. I sounded like the violent creep on trial for murder. 

The Prosecutor put a few more witnesses on the stand but they didn't really hurt us much. They were just people who could place us at this or that location at this or that time. He basically showed that we could of done the murder. We had plenty of time. 

Then the state rested its case. 

That night One-Way said he thought we were in pretty good shape. Considering. We talked for a while about whether I should get up on the stand and testify. I said I didn't want to do that. I didn't think there was anything I could say or do that would help my case at all. I'd probably get upset and start yelling or something and that would strap me onto the lethal injection table. One-Way agreed. He had a few technical things he could bring up about the evidence and the messy way the cops collected it but basically he thought we should just let the jury decide. 

In other words, he gave up. 

Later, the CO on our floor, Hocking, a short squat batch of sadistic tendencies, told me that he'd heard that tomorrow Cassie's lawyer was putting her on the stand.  

He said, "Yeah, they'll be dusting off Old Sparky for you after that." 

"What's Old Sparky?" I said. 

"Electric chair, whaddaya think. Sparks is gonna jump outtta your head." 

"I thought it was lethal injection." 

"Not in this county. We still do it the old fashioned way. We use the hot seat in this county." He took my uneaten dinner tray away.  

"Yep. Girlfriend goes on the stand and straps you in tight tomorrow. And then it's goodbye, buddy boy. Zzzzzzzzzzzzt."  His eyes bugging out of his head.

Funny guy.