Finding Amy (25 page)

As the trial is set to begin, Gorman is quoted in the paper, “I did not kill anyone … the jury is going to see I am innocent.”

My stomach clenches as I read it, thinking about what lies ahead for the family. A jury trial is a peculiar, tedious process, a choreographed progression of information unlike anything that average citizens are ever exposed to. Unless you are exposed to society's true violence and horror, as we are, it's extremely hard to understand that human beings are capable of such hideous behavior as rape and murder, especially with the clinical and structured way they're presented in court.

It's not like in the movies or on TV. You never know what you'll get or what will happen. It's easy to plant “reasonable doubt” into the minds of a jury member, especially if there is a theatrical defense. I've seen the show many times over the years, all the things a jury never gets to hear. There's tremendous pressure placed on these ordinary people.

As a young officer twenty years earlier I was perplexed and bewildered when a judge glowered down at me and shouted that I would be held in contempt.

“Your honor, I am just trying to tell the story … the truth …”

“Just answer the question. Yes or no.”

“Yeah, but I cannot explain it in that manner …”

“Answer,” he orders. “Did you see him in the building?”

“No.” The defense attorney smirks.

And so I saw my first burglary suspect walk away with a smile. Over the years I learned to adapt to this game. I always told the truth, trying to finish my sentences to make things clear for the jury. The objection might come, but they had heard it. In my cynical, jaded, seen-too-much mind, the thing that works best in our overburdened, underfunded, understaffed, and exhausted criminal justice system is the plea bargain. Inadequate and a corruption of the system, but at least there's a sentence and some certainty, and an expression of guilt by the defendant.

We do our best. We train and retrain and we've got good cops. But we all dread the confusion of the courtroom.

Diane is worried about how Amy's younger sister, Julie, will handle the trial, so a week before it starts, Lucille and I take Julie to dinner at Margaritas to prepare her for the realities of a trial and the difficulties she and her family will face. Julie brings her boyfriend, Tim, along for moral support. Two such innocent-looking kids. Seeing them reminds me of something the TV and media portrayals of crime so often miss—the wide ripples a crime like this creates, the pain of the innocent victims. Amy St. Laurent isn't Gorman's only victim.

On the crowded second floor of the restaurant, the four of us are snuggled in at our table. My rocks and salt margarita gradually readies me for the difficult conversation we've come here to have. Lucille is first to speak over the din of the restaurant, trying to lay the groundwork for what I've got to say.

Julie tosses her long blond hair back, apprehensive but brave and curious, staring ahead as she fidgets nervously. Tim gives her what I think is a protective hug. I realize this is the first time I've really looked into Julie's eyes—bright, smart blue eyes. They're usually downcast and sad.

“We wanted to talk about the trial and the realities of what you'll experience,” Lucille says.

I grab my cue, leaning in, trying to be heard over the din without sharing this with the whole restaurant. “Julie, it's not like TV, or in the movies or on the news. A real trial isn't like that. It's going to be hard and frustrating.” But broad strokes like this won't help her. She needs the gritty details in plain talk. “First of all, you will see Gorman up close and have to sit near him in the courtroom every day. I'm sure he will be cleaned up for presentation.”

How many times have I seen it: a brutal thug comes into court groomed and shaved and wearing a suit and tie and the jury just can't believe such a nice person could do a terrible crime?

“You are going to hear things that are not true about your sister. They may try to twist things around … defense attorneys do that … there's very often an attempt to blame the victim. It can get pretty one-sided sometimes. The jury will not hear the whole story. Certain evidence and witnesses may be excluded. The prosecution won't be able to talk about Gorman's past or criminal history, yet the defense can say anything they want about Amy.”

Julie interrupts, wanting to know why Gorman's history gets excluded. I explain as best as I can, and go on with what I think she needs to know, trying to give her a realistic picture of a jury trial without letting my own black cynicism bleed through.

“They will manipulate the truth and you must remain calm and controlled when people lie or turn things around on the stand. You're going to hear about the crime scene and the condition of your sister's body. It will be ugly and upsetting and hard to listen to. It's also a very slow process. Trials take time and you have to be prepared for that. You must be strong for your sister.”

She straightens at that, wanting, as we all do, to get it right for Amy. We go on and take turns and field questions. After a while, we let the subject drop, talking about other things, trying to enjoy ourselves and our Mexican meal. Lucille's staccato laugh interrupts the table near us when I act silly with my watch cap.

Back out on the winter street, I watch Julie walk away with her boyfriend—the bereft little sister who has had to grow up too fast. Young as she is, she has such strong echoes of her mother's dignity.

I go my own way, hoping I've done a good enough job. I'm overwhelmed with guilt telling Diane and Julie that the system will work and the jury will see through the muck and mire. Inside, I don't know what to expect.

Later, Fern LaRochelle would say it was the most amazing thing he had seen in thirty years of trying cases. Often, some members of a jury pool will have heard something about a case. Sometimes, several prospective jurors will have. This time, sixty-seven out of seventy indicated in response to the judge's questioning that they had heard something about the case. During the many weeks Amy had been missing, ordinary citizens all over the state had followed the news, hoping for the best and fearing the worst.

After a very long day of jury selection, which involved individual interviews by the judge and the attorneys with nearly every prospective juror to ascertain what they had heard about the case and whether it had affected their ability to render an impartial decision, a panel of twelve jurors and three alternates was finally seated and instructed to be back at the courthouse on Monday morning by 8:30 a.m. to begin their service as the jury in the matter of
State v. Gorman.
The jurors left with instructions not to read about the case, not to watch or listen to any news programs about it, and not to discuss it with anyone, not even spouses or members of their family. LaRochelle, Stokes, and the detectives left with anxious stomachs and the certainty of a busy weekend ahead.

A criminal jury trial is a highly artificial process, circumscribed by a great number of rules that have evolved to avoid any prejudice to the defendant, who is, under our system of justice, presumed innocent until proven guilty. One of the hardest and saddest results of that, from the viewpoint of the investigators in a case and the victim's family, is how little of the story ever actually gets told. By the time the case to be presented in
State v. Gorman
was delineated by pretrial discussion and agreement and by the amount of information about Gorman that was excluded because of its “prejudicial” value, the jury would get only a very diminished picture of his character or the extent of his personal corruption and his propensity for violence, and none of his long history of predatory behavior.

They would not hear about his extensive criminal history. They would not hear, for example, that he had befriended a man in his eighties solely for the purpose of stealing the man's few valuable belongings. They would not hear that he had assaulted his mother during a screaming fight after he had broken into a neighbor's house and stolen guns, nor would they hear he had punched and kicked his pregnant girlfriend and assaulted a teacher at school. They would not hear he had broken into customers' cars at the dealership where he worked and stolen stereo equipment to resell. No one would come to the stand to tell the jury that Gorman was a drug dealer, drug user, and heavy drinker. They would not hear the evidence that had led detectives to conclude he was a sexual predator. None of the women he had drugged and violated would take the stand.

The jury—which was to evaluate whether they could decide, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Russ Gorman had murdered Amy St. Laurent by shooting her in the head—might hear that Gorman didn't like guns. They would
not
hear that Gorman had gone to Alabama, because that might make it look as though he had fled the state. They would therefore not hear that Gorman had immediately acquired a gun in Alabama and had probably had another gun stored in his grandmother's ceiling. They would not hear about Gorman's using one of those guns to threaten a stranger in a Blimpie's parking lot. They would not hear how Gorman had hidden himself and his guns in a house with a small child, nor about the armed standoff that had followed.

Even sadder, they would hear little about Gorman's victim. Although the trial was for the murder of Amy Elizabeth St. Laurent, the citizens called to determine her accused killer's fate would learn little of what the investigators who had worked so hard on her behalf had learned. They would never get to imagine what the world had lost when a self-involved young man with sex on his mind, poor impulse control, and a total lack of empathy had snuffed out a bright light because that principled young woman had resisted a sexual assault.

They would never have a chance to picture the forthright, compassionate, and intelligent young woman Danny Young and Scott Harakles called “Our Amy.” Nor would they have the chance to understand how two hard-boiled detectives who dealt with horrendous crimes and with crime victims every day of their working lives could become so attached to this victim that one kept her picture on his desk while another told people, “She was the kind of girl you would be proud to have raised.”

A jury trial is also a highly scripted event. Because both sides have submitted their lists of witnesses and subpoenaed them to appear, the cast of characters is usually well known. The proposed exhibits have been identified, discussed, and largely agreed on before trial. Areas of potential conflict have also been identified. Experienced attorneys have anticipated legal issues that will be in dispute, often having researched the case law and prepared memoranda for the court in support of their positions.

Even with all this preparation, trial lawyers have to be quick on their feet and intimately familiar with all the details of the investigation and the reams of paper that a complex investigation produces. A case as complex as the Amy St. Laurent murder really needed two prosecutors—one on his feet and another listening, taking notes, ready to quickly produce documents or find a place in a document. For despite careful preparation, witnesses will lie, forget, change their stories, fall apart, and generally produce surprises. And defense attorneys will rattle witnesses, color stories, and muddy waters that will need to be resettled.

For the jury in
State v. Gorman
, Monday, January 13, began with opening statements from the attorneys representing the state and the defendant. But long before the judge greeted the jury, the behind-the-scenes skirmishing about how to handle Tammy Westbrook's convenient amnesia had begun. In midmorning during this first day of the trial, the attorneys held a conference within the judge's chambers in which Bill Stokes told Justice Mills that during the morning break Attorney Lilley had handed him an affidavit detailing Westbrook's lack of memory and asking that her subpoena to testify be quashed and she be allowed to remain in the courtroom during her son's trial.
⁴

The week of the trial I would wear a suit and tie so I could run across the street to the courthouse when my regular duties would allow. I also spoke with Diane, Lucille, Tommy, and Danny each night to obtain details. Sometimes, sitting there listening to the maddening variety of interpretations, I would wonder what the jury could possibly be thinking. I missed the first morning, but everyone reported that Fern had done a wonderful job in his opening remarks as he urged the jury to use common sense in putting the pieces of evidence together. It's a difficult undertaking for them since the evidence comes in in broken fragments from a handful of witnesses gleaned from the many we've interviewed.

The defense, of course, argues reasonable doubt. No murder weapon, no physical evidence, it's a purely circumstantial case, and the witnesses are mixed up in their accounts and memories of events. I'm so cynical about reasonable doubt that I believe I could convince the reader that there is reasonable doubt that you are “reading” this right now.

Gorman's lawyer, Clifford Strike, is an ethical and honorable individual who is doing his job. But when everyone does their job, the result is a process that is perplexing and complex for the jury, the public, and the family. Sometimes, to those of us who know the story, it seems almost ridiculous.

At lunch, Tom tells me to get over to the courtroom. Lilley has filed a motion seeking to prevent Tammy Westbrook from taking the stand.

Around 1300 I meet the family in the hallway outside the old Superior Court room. It's a room I've been in many times over the years—an old-fashioned, formal, judicial-looking room with polished marble floors and beautiful dark wood detailing. Tension is high as we wait outside on a long wooden bench.

Diane is angry that Gorman is paraded within feet of them as he takes his place with his attorney. She is also upset that court security is limiting the number of people inside according to the seats. I try to explain the process to Diane and Julie as I study their tired, strained faces. I have very limited authority in the courtroom, I explain, and these things are out of my control.