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McCowen murder trial, day 14
By Michael Iacuessa
Banner Correspondent
In his closing argument, defense attorney Robert George asked jurors to consider the possibility that Christa Worthington was alive on Saturday morning, Jan. 5, 2002.
He referred to the dark truck reported by one witness as leaving her house that afternoon. He noted the medical examiner's testimony that the later timeframe more closely coincided with the time of her death.
He also suggested Christopher McCowen had consensual sex with Worthington on Thursday, the day before she is alleged to have been murdered. He noted the low sperm count found in the semen sample indicated it was several days old. He also threw in that McCowen has three children.
"If that story makes any sense, that is reasonable doubt," he said. "That story makes more sense than any crock of bull the Commonwealth will put before you."
The latter comment drew a short conference with Judge Gary Nickerson but George made his point clear. He believes it is speculation that Worthington died on Friday night and that his version is no less plausible than the one being pushed by the prosecution.
He also went down the list of other suspects - Tim Arnold, Tony Jackett and Jeremy Frazier — and asked jurors how they would vote if one of them were on trial instead.
"Would you have convicted anyone the Commonwealth has put before you just because they did," he asked?
Jurors will begin deliberating Tuesday morning. In addition to first-degree murder, McCowen faces charges of aggravated rape and armed burglary.
That there is no evidence of sexual trauma is something that has not escaped the defense attorney's scrutiny. George claimed police never suggested Worthington had been raped the three years the murder was unsolved. When they matched McCowen's DNA, he said police had to claim it was a rape.
"Once it was straightened out that he had consensual sex with her, they didn't have a case," he suggested.
Asst. District Attorney Robert Welsh followed George, getting the last word in to jurors.
He suggested another account of how Worthington had been murdered, using bits from McCowen's own statement but adding his own more plausible sequence of events.
McCowen's statement to police, the result of a six-hour interrogation, is the foundation of the prosecution's case. Although McCowen said he was at Worthington's home on Friday night, he stopped short of admitting to killing her, claiming Frazier did it. He also gave at least eight different accounts of what he did that evening, none of which fit the evidence perfectly.
However, Welsh pointed out McCowen did describe the crime scene in detail. He accurately described how she was stabbed. In one version, he describes having sex with Worthington in the hallway where her body was found. Drag marks in the driveway also coincided with McCowen saying he and Frazier dragged her inside.
"Would an innocent man say these things," Welsh asked?
The prosecutor, who believes Frazier was not present and the "perfect patsy" to blame, suggested to jurors "the truth lies somewhere in the middle of [McCowen’s] statement."
He also reminded jurors Worthington was found naked from the waist down, legs spread with McCowen's semen in her.
In the end, jurors will likely rule as to whether they believe any of McCowen's statement. It was not recorded, shown to him or signed by him.
On Monday morning before closing statements, Dr. Richard Ofshe, an expert on false confessions, detailed how such a phenomenon can occur.
The Berkeley professor said police first try to create a feeling of hopelessness in a suspect and then break down a person's confidence in their own memory. Once a person feels they are not certain, that person often offers possibilities just to give an answer to the questions given.
"You just makeup a story and it's clear what story you make up because suggestions are given," he said.
Ofshe said analyzing what went on in an interrogation room without a recording or a transcript would be impossible.
"The recording tells you how the result came about. Without the recording, how can you know," he said.
He did say a transcript from six hours of questioning would generally total 300 to 500 pages. Trooper Christopher Mason, who wrote up McCowen's statement, summarized it in just 27.
Ofshe also cited a Northwestern University study that found 50% of miscarriages of justice in Illinois over the past 50 years involved innocent people falsely confessing. Another study, by the Innocence Project, discovered 25% of those exonerated from death row by DNA actually confessed to the crime.
"It is a problem that is well recognized," he said.
Judge Gary Nickerson was tentative, however. He limited Ofshe's testimony to general knowledge and did not let him analyze McCowen's statement directly. He also cut him off in mid-sentence several times. Ofshe said it was the first time in a career including hundreds of trials that he was not allowed to testify fully.
Nickerson, while the jury was in recess, called false confessions "an area of learning that is still very much evolving" and inferred it was not an exact science.
The defense rested with Ofshe. Before closing arguments, Welsh called several rebuttal witnesses.
Clearly concerned about Girard Smith's testimony of seeing a truck leaving Worthington's home the afternoon after police say she was murdered, Welsh called Mason, Truro Police Chief John Thomas, State Trooper Kimberly Squier and Marilyn Miller of The Cape Codder.
It was a curious decision as all four echoed what Smith said in his testimony. Welsh may have been trying to show police did investigate Smith's story.
Miller said Smith also told her he saw a man searching through the weeds near Worthington's home six months after the murder. Smith said the man was driving a truck with some kind of fishing insignia on it.
George wasted no time on cross-examination to suggest whether Jackett, a shellfish constable, or Truro Police Sgt. David Costa had a truck with a similar insignia.
Welsh also called Eric Williams to counter testimony by Keith Amato that police had been psychologically abusive toward him during a interrogation shortly after the murder. Williams said Amato told him police "had acted in a highly professional manner." However, Williams said he did not actually remember any conversations he had with Amato. He only acknowledged the quote appeared in an article he wrote for the Cape Cod Times four years ago.
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Nov 2nd, 2006