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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 muchof 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 onGuilty or Not Guilty,the podcast that puts you in the jury box.
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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.
Alkins looked grim when he walked into the courtroom. Rachel thought that he had good reason to be concerned, if there was any truth to the rumors that Kelly Moore had suffered a breakdown and might not return to the stand at all. That would be a death blow to the prosecution’s case. Without Kelly’s testimony, it was hard to imagine a scenario in which Scott Blair did not go free.
While Rachel waited for the court session to start, she checkedher messages. There was a text from Dave, an old boyfriend, telling her he’d be in Philadelphia the following week for work. He asked if she was free to meet for dinner. Rachel found it charming that Dave didn’t listen to the podcast and had no idea that she was away covering the Scott Blair trial. She responded asking for a rain check. There were several other texts from close friends telling Rachel how much they loved the new season.
Finally, Rachel reached a text message from Pete, saying that he’d gone through the podcast’s clogged inbox and found an email from Hannah, sent two days earlier. He’d just forwarded it to her. Rachel was about to open the email when the bailiff called on them to rise for the judge. She had no choice but to turn off her phone and drop it into her handbag as she stood up.
Dale Quinn’s first witness was Pastor Mark Fleming of the First Southern Baptist Church, which the Blair family attended. Quinn’s questions stuck to the guidelines set by Judge Shaw, who had ruled that character witnesses could testify only about Scott Blair’s truthfulness, his general morality, and his past treatment of women. Quinn was not allowed to ask the character witnesses whether they believed Scott Blair had raped Kelly Moore, or whether they thought he was capable of such an act.
Pastor Fleming told the court that he’d known Scott since he was a child. He described Scott in glowing terms and insisted there had never been any suggestion that he behaved inappropriately with girls, including when he was the water polo coach for the girls’ team while in high school. “Those girls couldn’t say enough good things about that boy,” said the pastor.
