The Night Swim(69)
But when it came to shredding K’s testimony through cross-examination, Quinn was brutal. Not in an aggressive way. He kept his voice soft; he maintained his “aw shucks” routine. But he hammered away at K with question after question. It felt as if he was very slowly and carefully destroying her.
He asked her whether she got into the car voluntarily. She said, “Yes.”
He asked whether Scott was nice to her. She said, “Yes.”
He asked if she screamed in fear.
“I tried to scream at first, but nothing came out. I was so scared that I was paralyzed,” K answered.
“How was Scott to know that you were paralyzed with fear if you didn’t say anything?” he asked.
“I cried and begged him to leave me alone. And I kept on saying, ‘Please, no, please.’”
“How could you be paralyzed with fear and, at the same time, scream and beg him to leave you alone? Which one was it? Were you paralyzed with fear? Or did you scream and beg him to leave you alone?” He badgered her. “It can’t be all three.
“Isn’t it true that you wanted to sleep with Scott Blair? He’s famous. Good-looking. You wanted to have sex with him. Didn’t you?” Quinn asked her.
K broke down about ten minutes into the cross-examination. Quinn asked a detailed question about the rape. I can’t remember his exact question, but I think it was something about whether she’d moaned in pleasure. K turned deathly white. Her hands trembled. She took in a series of loud, sharp breaths. She was hyperventilating on the stand. Then she made a primal sound that I’ve only heard once before at a slaughterhouse. It was a deep, retching howl of pain that sent chills up the spine.
We all thought K was about to collapse. She was having a full-on panic attack. She had her face in her hands. She sounded as if she was choking. Her father held her mother back while a social worker attended to her.
“Your Honor,” said Alkins. “The witness has been on the stand for over four hours. It’s becoming too much. She’s just a child. Can we adjourn for the day?”
Dale Quinn tried to score points with the jury by showing he was equally concerned about her well-being. He rushed to bring her a glass of water and then made a big show of acting magnanimously by agreeing that she could leave the stand until she was feeling well enough to continue testifying. At the same time, he made it clear that he wasn’t done with her. Not by a long shot.
Quietly, during a sidebar I overheard, he told the judge that he hadn’t come close to finishing his cross-examination. “Eleven minutes, Your Honor,” he said. “The complainant testified for hours. All I had was eleven minutes with her. I can’t defend my client in eleven minutes.”
K is not done yet. She’ll have to come back to court to complete her cross-examination. She barely lasted eleven minutes today. Next time, it could last hours. Perhaps even days.
Mitch Alkins looked extremely concerned as he left court today. This from a man renowned for his poker face. He doesn’t have much of a case without her testimony. He needs K back on the stand. But at what cost?
One of the questions I keep asking myself is whether it’s worth it. When a person goes through a terrible trauma, her mind is conditioned to forget what happened. Memory loss from trauma is a protective mechanism. It helps us stay sane.
In this case, a sixteen-year-old girl is being asked to recount, in front of a large group of strangers, in public, every single traumatic, horrific moment of that night on the beach so that maybe, just maybe, her alleged rapist will be punished for what he did to her.
Is she doing that for herself, or for the public good? Will it give her closure if he goes to prison? Will it vindicate her? Or will it destroy her? The pain and trauma that she has to endure to get him convicted took a terrible toll on K today. She was trembling uncontrollably. Her eyes were glassy. Her expression was agonized.
The trauma of testifying in open court is one of the main reasons why so many rape victims opt not to testify and why so many rapes are never prosecuted.
We saw K barely able to formulate a sentence at times. We saw her grief, and her despair. We saw the way a social worker had to support her so that her legs wouldn’t buckle under her when she took the stand. And how that same social worker almost had to carry her away because she could barely walk when she got off the stand after that brief cross-examination.
We heard her saying “Sorry,” as she passed the prosecutors’ table, because she couldn’t bring herself to answer the horribly detailed and accusatory questions of the defense.
The question now is whether K will return to the stand to finish her cross-examination. If she doesn’t, then Scott Blair may well walk free. This is Rachel Krall on Guilty or Not Guilty, the podcast that puts you in the jury box.
41
Rachel
Rachel could see the spring in Dale Quinn’s step as he arrived in court, brimming with confidence. He would be presenting the first defense witnesses that day: character witnesses to shore up Scott Blair’s bona fides as a card-carrying saint.
The trial had taken an unusual turn. Kelly Moore’s sudden departure from the stand and her failure to return to finish her testimony put Judge Shaw in a quandary. He couldn’t hold up the trial indefinitely while waiting for Kelly. In the end, he ruled the defense would present its case and Kelly would return to the stand later in the trial. It was unorthodox, but judges had some leeway in sexual assault cases.