An Accidental Life (32 page)

A case of nerves, Shauna, Peter’s legal assistant had said. Shauna was certain that Clara would revive after a good night’s sleep. If not, a subpoena would be issued, and a sheriff would deliver her to the courtroom. But Clara Sonsten as a hostile witness was not a happy thought.

When he walked into the kitchen, Peter looked tense. With a quick peck on her cheek and a little pat for the baby, he went straight to the coffeepot.

Rebecca leaned against the counter while he poured coffee into a mug and then turned to her, gulping it down. The lines around the corners of his eyes and mouth were deeper today, she noticed. He said he didn’t think he’d be home until late again, and her heart sank.

The newspaper article about day one of the trial had generated some commotion. There were a few protestors gathering at the doors of the courthouse when Peter arrived on Wednesday, but, for the most part the crowd was polite, quieter than he’d expected.

Some of them were in the courtroom now, the bailiff told him. He saw signs piled against the wall in the hallway.

Judge Morrow was already present, sitting at the bench, dealing with a motion from another case. Peter took his place at the table and opened his briefcase, pulling out the notepad. He saw that Dooney had been here; the evidence boxes were on the floor near her chair. A third chair had been placed beside the boxes.

Shauna was here today, talking to the bailiff. They stood near a small table with a slide projector set up near the jury box, just in front of the witness stand.

Dooney arrived just before nine o’clock, when court was convened. Shauna took a seat in the chair beside Dooney, waiting.

At a nod from the judge, Peter stood.

“The State calls Fred McAndrews to the stand.”

Peter turned his head, watching as the bailiff stuck his head out into the hallway and called to Mac. Peter, Dooney, and Shauna watched Mac walk toward them carrying a large brown paper bag, folded and clamped shut at the top. Mac was wearing his court suit today, Peter saw. The same old dark blue suit that he insisted on wearing for good luck every time he testified as the lead investigator in a case.

He turned to Dooney. “Go find out if Clara’s been rounded up for this afternoon, will you? By the time I’ve finished with Mac, we need to know. If we need to stall, call Stephanie Kand. I’ve got her on standby.”

Dooney nodded.

Peter greeted Mac, and watched as he walked to the table where Shauna had been standing with the bailiff, and set the brown bag on it. After the swearing in, Peter ran quickly through the preliminary questions. Then he moved on and asked the detective to describe what had happened the morning that Glory Lynn Chasson and her father had appeared at the station house to file the initial complaint.

Mac described his interview with the accuser and her father.

“Did you advise her of her rights at that time?”

“No. It wasn’t necessary. She was not a suspect.” He described in detail the process of the interview, then the filing of the complaint, and later obtaining a warrant to search the Alpha Women’s Clinic for the body of Baby Chasson.

“So you executed the warrant immediately after receiving the complaint?”

“That’s right.” Mac established that the warrant was signed by a judicial officer in Jefferson Parish, and executed on the same day, and this was entered into State’s evidence for the record.

Then Peter returned to the witness stand and looked at Mac. “Why the hurry in obtaining the warrant, Detective?”

Mac looked out over the spectators. “Miss Chasson was concerned that the clinic would dispose of the infant’s body right away. These were extenuating circumstances.”

The testimony was clear as Mac explained step by step how he’d developed the case leading up to the defendant’s arrest. He’d attempted to talk to both Charles Vicari and Eileen Broussard, Vicari’s wife, during this process, he said. But both, through their lawyers, had refused.

“Who else was there conducting the search, beside yourself?” Peter asked. As he asked the question, he glanced at the place where Dooney usually sat. She had not yet returned. His heart raced as he turned back to face his witness.

Mac named several officers from the sheriff’s department, Dr. Stephanie Kand—the forensic pathologist from the coroner’s office—her assistant, and others who were present at the time of the search. Peter then turned toward Shauna and she rose and carrying a box of slides, took a seat at the table holding the projector. During the search of the clinic, the team had taken pictures. They waited while the bailiff set up a viewing screen in front of the projector at an angle visible to everyone—including the judge, the defense, spectators, and the press.

The photographs, selected in pre-trial hearings and reluctantly approved by the defense were admitted as State’s evidence. The judge then told Peter to proceed.

And so they began. Shauna stood behind the projector, turned it on, and as Peter introduced each photograph taken by the search team, Shauna slid the matching slide into the projector so that the same photo showed on the screen. With Mac’s testimony, Peter’s plan was to give the judge and the spectators in the gallery a clear picture of the scene that would stay with them throughout the trial. He wanted to burn into their minds that the clinic was a crime scene.

To set the first scene he showed a picture of the procedure room used by Glory Lynn Chason on the night that Infant Chasson was delivered. Mac identified the room. The slide showed a stark room with fluorescent lights overhead casting sharp-edged shadows of a wide, six-foot long metal table onto a white tiled floor. Metal stirrups were attached to the bed at the end nearest the camera.

Peter paused, letting a few seconds go by, giving everyone time to visualize Glory Lynn lying on the big table. Then he asked Mac to describe each item found in the room. The room was designed for precision and efficiency, not warmth and comfort. A table on the left side of the slide held several gleaming instruments, bottles, a glass jar of swabs and cotton, and a stack of folded gauze. Underneath the table were shelves storing sheets, thin blankets, and disposable blue padding and towels.

Moving on to the reception room at the entrance of the clinic, Peter led Mac room by room through the Alpha Women’s Medical Clinic, a tour for the court. With each photograph Mac described the area and if it was searched, and if so, what was found and taken as evidence.

Beyond the reception room, there was another waiting room for patients scheduled for physical examinations, and for those waiting to go into the procedure rooms. This room contained rows of metal folding chairs lined up against a wall. There were lockers for clothing and a dressing area with benches and long mirrors, and a restroom, which was large and appeared clean.

At one end of the hallway leading from the interior waiting room was a storage closet which Mac referred to as the utility room. The camera view from the doorway, from right to left, showed it to be about twenty feet by ten, with a narrow cabinet running the length of the wall facing the doorway. Above the cabinet were rows of somewhat narrower steel shelves reaching to the ceiling. Folded sheets and towels and other such items were stacked along the shelves. To the left of the doorway, in the interior of this room, the camera swung to a large, round metal container with a top held closed with clamps. A large label on the side said Medical Waste.

At a signal from Peter, Shauna then showed a picture of a large square freezer. The room housing the freezer looked like a garage with boxes and large cans and tools scattered around.

Peter took a deep breath. “Please tell the court what we’re looking at in this photograph, Detective McAndrews.”

“This is a photograph of a storage room at the back of the clinic.” He pointed, looking at the screen. “And over to the side, there, that is a large storage freezer.”

“Was this area included in the search warrant?”

“Yes, it was.”

Peter nodded to Shauna and then turned, looking directly at the defendant. Shauna clicked on the next slide. On the screen the photo loomed. Behind him, Peter heard the gasps. He waited for the gavel, but Judge Morrow was staring from the matching photograph in his hand to the enhanced one on the screen. On the screen, he could clearly see the frozen body in the slide.

“Please identify this photograph for the court, Detective McAndrew.”

“This is a picture taken inside the freezer.” He leaned forward, peering at the screen. “You can see, there on a shelf to the right side, wrapped in that blue towel, you can make out the body of a premature infant.”

“Oh.” Someone in the gallery cried out. “Oh, no. No!” Judge Morrow banged the gavel. “Order in the court. If there’s another outburst, I’ll clear the courtroom.”

Turning to Mac, Peter took a step back. “Please continue.”

Mac nodded, leaning now toward the screen. “The infant in this photo has been matched by blood type to Glory Lynn Chasson. It . . . he . . .” Mac paused, glancing at Peter. “The infant is a male, approximately a foot long, and as described in the autopsy report, weighing one pound, eight ounces.

“The body in this photograph is frozen. As you can see, it’s partially wrapped in a blue towel, similar to the ones stacked on a shelf of the small table in earlier photographs of Miss Chasson’s procedure room.”

In pre-trial hearings, McConnell had fought hard to keep this picture out, arguing that it was inflammatory. Peter had wanted to show several photos from different angles, but Judge Morrow had allowed only this one from the initial search, and two others from the autopsy which Dr. Kand would later introduce in her testimony.

“Who was the forensic pathologist at the scene?”

“Dr. Stephanie Kand, from the coroner’s office.”

Mac described the procedures used by Dr. Kand to bag and preserve the body, three fibers, and the blue towel. Shauna clicked the slides to a photo of the fibers.

“At this time the State would like to introduce into evidence the blue towel you saw in the slides and fibers seized under warrant.” Peter looked at the judge.

Morrow nodded. “Go ahead.”

Mac stood and walked to the table. From an inside pocket of his jacket he pulled two gloves and slipped them onto his hands. Opening the brown bag, he lifted two plastic bags from inside, one large, one small. These he placed on the table. He identified the large bag as containing the towel; the smaller bag as containing three fibers.

Carefully he picked up the larger plastic bag, unsealed it and pulled out a small blue towel. He held this up by the top two corners, turning, so that everyone could see.

The towel was wrinkled, with dark stains, and worn around the edges. Mac turned the display once more to the judge and the defense before returning it to the plastic bag. He then placed the plastic bag inside the large brown bag and after resealing it, handed it to Peter. Peter had the clerk admit the evidence into record for the State, than took it back for later use if necessary.

The process was repeated for the smaller bag containing the fibers. Here, Shauna clicked a new slide onto the screen, showing magnification of the fibers.

When Mac returned to the stand, Peter stood beside him and asked him to describe the fiber evidence. The fibers were identified as coming from the blue towel, Mac testified. When the defense objected, Peter assured Judge Morrow that Dr. Stephanie Kand’s testimony would support this conclusion.

Two of the fibers were found in the freezer in the storage room in the location of the body, Mac testified. Peter turned slightly so that he could see Vicari’s reaction to his next question.

“Please tell the court, Detective McAndrews, where the third fiber introduced as evidence was located.”

“The third fiber was found in an empty procedure room at the end of the hallway,” Mac said.

Neither Vince nor Charles Vicari showed any emotion; even though Clara Sonsten had refused to talk to them prior to trial, as was her right. He turned back to Mac, and they followed the same procedure to introduce the fibers into evidence.

“Detective, was another warrant issued to search the clinic?”

“Yes,” Mac said. “Subsequent to discovering the body, we obtained a warrant to search the clinic records, with specific limitations.”

Because of health privacy restrictions, the warrant limited the State’s search of records to particular entries evidencing only Glory Lynn Chasson’s visits to the clinic. Peter took Mac through a description of copies of pages from the clinic appointment book, redacted to show only Miss Chasson’s name, confirming her three visits to the clinic as described in her testimony, as well as the brief records of her procedure, but with no notation of a birth.

Peter, standing before the witness stand, fixed his eyes on Mac. “Just to clarify, Detective. There was no mention of a live birth on the Alpha Women’s Clinic records of Miss Chasson’s abortion procedure on May 13 of this year?”

“None at all.”

Peter nodded. “Thank you, Detective.” He turned toward the bench. “That’s all for now, Your Honor. The State may want to recall this witness later.”

Judge Morrow glanced at the clock on the wall. Mac’s testimony had taken almost three hours. “Now’s as good a time as any to break for lunch,” he announced. “We’ll reconvene at one thirty, and at that time”—he glanced at Vince—“you may take Detective McAndrews on cross-examination.”