We had coffee cake, coffee, juice, and oranges in our little jury room while waiting for the trial to come back into session. Most everyone was afraid to have coffee out of fear that we'd be sitting in the jury box and, like the jingle says "gotta go gotta go gotta go right now..."

Everyone is standing whenever the jury enters the room. After we sit, they do. It's an interesting ritual if you think about it. If effect we're representing the People of the United States, and that the criminal justice system is our servant, not the other way around. You can argue it's a nothing bit of pantomime, I suppose, but though it's a trifle I like it and what it stands for.

First state witness was Dr. K, a young forensic pathologist. He'd been a doctor and a pathologist for 4 years was on duty in his first year as a forensic pathologist as a fellow when the Saunders body came in. (Evidently the Cook County Coroner's office runs a Forensic Pathology school. Thanks to all the bodies coming through Chicago due to all our murders and car accidents you get to see a steady stream of corpses). There was a sidebar and a chambers suspension of the trial before he was certified as an expert witness.

After credentials and coroner's report terminology was explained by Dr. K --he emphasized cause of death which is the medical reason and manner of death which is the legal reason (homicide, suicide, natural causes, accident, and unknown being the choices in Cook County) were two important findings that the coroner, specifically a forensic pathologist, made. Manner of death is often deferred until the Coroner's Office and the police can investigate. The Cook County Coroner's office listed the cause of death as blunt force head trauma and manner of death as homicide. The final report was given in December of 2002.

Basically, he testified (while referring to the coroner's autopsy report) that Saunders died of various kinds of trauma discovered when they opened up his skull and found all the bleeding inside his head. The outside of his head had various abrasions and a cut lip. He also had some congestion in his lungs, which is blood accumulating in the vessels there -- according to testimony it happens when your heart stops.

On cross the defense made it sound nefarious that they didn't determine a manner of death right away, and asked a lot of questions about how much they relied on the police (as opposed to "civilian") investigation. The defense brought up some coffee stirrers and blood that had been found in the victims mouth by paramedics, and tried to get him to say that choking might have caused the death. They made a big deal about some coffee stirrers that were found in the back of the victim's mouth by paramedics. Dr. K stood by the head trauma and explained that there was a good deal of difference between death from choking/aspirating blood and head injuries caused by blunt force trauma.

On re-direct the prosecution just highlighted that according to the Coroner Reginald Sauders' cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head and manner of death was homicide.

We broke for lunch after that, and had the worst meal I've had in a long, long time (The judge kind of joked about the food as he released us for lunch. He wasn't kidding, as it turned out.). They took us over to the cafeteria --Jury Duty is like Kindergarten for the middle aged, you go everywhere in a group and do everything together, all under the supervision of a deputy -- and gave us a plateful of "chopped steak" corn and rice, with a choice of sodas to wash it down. It was an ample but not tasty meal. I have a feeling the prisoners in the various jail facilities around the courthouse had the same thing. It took three lifesavers to get the taste out of my mouth.

After lunch we heard from the second witness, Chief Medical Examiner - Edmund R. Donoghue, M.D, a nice Notre Dame lad who has reached the pinnacle of his chosen profession. He had academic/publishing credentials up the wazoo, runs the Cook County Medical Examiner's Office, and the Cook County Institute of Forensic Medicine, where Dr. K was the sole fellow that year. There was no objection to him being certified as an expert (he'd been certified as an expert in 800 different court cases). Dr. K worked directly under Dr. Donoghue for the autopsy of Reginald Saunders-- they performed it together in other words -- he observed what Dr. K observed and helped him write the report. He was better on the stand than Dr. K, made it very easy for the jury to understand how head trauma causes bleeding, and how the bleeding then causes death, and how blows to the head in various spots caused the injuries. He also testified more about the toxicology report that found no alcohol or drugs in Saunder's body.

Cross-examination -- sheesh. I don't know how to describe it. Like a puppy getting runover by a truck, I suppose. The defense brought up the straws and how the Coroner's office didn't know about them, and Dr. Donoghue said that that information would have been "desirable but not necessary" as Saunders died of head trauma due to blunt force injury. The defense raised the possibility that Dr. K had erred in his autopsy and somehow caused the head trauma missing the real cause of death and Dr. Donoghue stiffened just a little and explained that he was side by side with Dr. K the whole time. After that it was like the gloves were off, because every time the defense asked a question Dr. Donoghue cleverly used the question in some way to re-explain to the jury the real cause of Saunder's death, damage to his head, and the many ways that you can tell he didn't asphyxiate or aspirate blood or die of anything but head trauma. After about five questions the defense attorney saw what was happening (you'd think one or two at the most) and decided to quit giving Dr. Donoghue another opportunity to put the cause and manner of death into vivid, easy to understand terms.

Next witness was a guy name Priest Willis in jail clothes. The prosecution went over his fairly lengthy criminal record beginning with a spell in State of Illinois "boot camp" for drug possession (I guess the cure didn't take). With some effort (he tended to mumble, and quietly at that, and the attorneys kept asking the judge to order him to speak up) the prosecution got him to describe his location on the night/morning of the crime, and what he saw. He did see the defendant (nicknamed "Elbow" -- other colorful nicknames that came up in testimony were "The Big Man" and "Lil' Shitty") beating on someone in a crowd of people where the body was found, but he was a pretty terrible witness. He didn't remember any of the details of the statement he gave to police, he didn't remember picking the defendant out of a lineup, he didn't remember his grand jury testimony in December of 2002, he didn't remember meeting with attorneys. He verified his signature on all the pages of his statement but didn't remember how it came to be written up. I got the impression that when you're serving time, you don't want to be too helpful to the criminal justice system.

We got a brief break and they brought chips and pork rinds and Mountain Dews to the jury room.

Next two witnesses were ASAs - Assistant State's Attorneys. One who helps the police in a specific area with felony cases and oversaw the statement that Priest Willis gave in October 2002 and the other was the ASA who handled the grand jury. The questioning was done by the babelicious second chair (the less modelesque prosecutor got the technical and tough witnesses). Needless to say, ASAs questioning each other helped the prosecution and they were fairly tough on defense. The defense continually tried to work in the little detail that Priest Willis was in fact busy selling heroin the night he witnessed the murder, but every time she did so the prosecution objected and the judge sustained it. She kept doggedly trying, and if there's one thing I do remember about Priest Willis (other than his mumbling) it's that he WAS SELLING HEROIN ON THE NIGHT OF THE MURDER. Though it's not in the record, officially.

Final witness for the day was a Cook County Fireman (who was a paramedic at the time). The guy was huge. If our Condo burns down I want this guy showing up because he could carry me and Chats, the cats, and the fishtank out of the condo in one trip. He had shoulders like a bulldozer, no neck, and a head like a basketball but he was an excellent witness. The jury just plain liked him -- I think people naturally like firemen, and he wore his firefighter's uniform instead of a suit which I thought was a good move, emotional-response wise. He described how in the early morning hours of September 22 he and his partner were called to an address, tried in vain to find the person needing attention until a citizen directed him to the field where Saunders lay. They drove into the field and Saunders was lying face up ("supine" - he was very good with technical terminology and explaining it in easy-to-understand terms). They established that Saunders was unresponsive. He was breathing on his own, but barely. He had a very low pulse and blood pressure. They got him in the ambulance and his condition rapidly worsened. They opened his mouth and extracted a couple of coffee stirrers with forceps and suctioned out about "half a shot glass" of blood. On the ride to the hospital his heart stopped and they put him on a machine that breathed for him and performed CPR.

On cross the defense questioned him about his report, particularly the "severe respiratory distress" notation and the fact that he noticed no "trauma to the head" (WTF? - I'm thinking at this point. A paramedic isn't going to open up your head and look for internal bleeding -- the forensic pathologists both went to a great deal of effort to explain that you could only see the lethal damage to Saunders if you opened his skull. Do they think I'm six?). Our fireman said that when you quit breathing on your own that's severe respiratory distress, it didn't necessarily mean choking. The defense didn't question him too much; I think they knew that the jury liked this guy and would just get pissed off if he was treated with anything but respect.

On re direct the prosecution just verified that both the blood in the victims mouth and the coffee stirrers weren't preventing him from breathing.

That was it for the day.