The Color of Law_ A Novel - Mark Gimenez [129]
That day’s picnic lunch featured egg salad sandwiches prepared by Pajamae Jones, wrapped in foil and kept cool in a cooler, along with Vanilla Coke, her favorite. After Scott summarized the morning’s testimony for Shawanda, Pajamae said, “Mama, I stuck my tongue out at Mr. Burns.”
“Pajamae, that ain’t nice.”
“Neither is he. You should hear the things he’s saying about you, Mama. Your ears must be burning!”
“Shawanda,” Scott asked, “are you feeling better? Up to testifying?”
“When?”
“Tomorrow.”
After lunch, FBI Agent Henry Hu, a forensics expert, took the stand. After agreeing with the testimony of Dr. Urbina as to the angle of the bullet’s path through Clark McCall’s brain, Agent Hu, in a long, painstaking, and detailed direct examination, proceeded to offer his expert opinion as to how he believed the murder occurred, according to the forensics evidence and with the help of a graphic exhibit on which was depicted a human figure, halfway between lying down and kneeling up, and standing over him another human figure, holding a gun to the victim’s head. Measurements were noted around the perimeter of the figures, with lines drawn to show various heights and angles and a dark line showing the path of the bullet from the gun, through the skull, and to its impact point in the floor. Dr. Hu pointed to the exhibit with a metal pointer as he testified.
“The victim was in a semi-kneeling position when he was shot. We believe that because, as you can see here, the bullet’s path through the skull must align with the point at which the bullet impacted the floor. The victim was seventy-one inches tall. If he were standing when shot, the twenty-eight-degree downward angle of the bullet’s path through the skull would require that the perpetrator hold the gun overhead and then shoot at a downward angle, a physically difficult act”—Agent Hu demonstrated the difficulty for the jury—“or that the perpetrator be unusually tall.
“So, if the victim were kneeling, the point of entry—his forehead—stands only fifty inches above the floor, still a little high. But if he’s in a semi-kneeling position, as if he were getting up off the floor, with the point of entry approximately forty inches above the floor, which is the approximate height at which a normal-sized person would hold a gun in front of him, like this, give or take several inches”—Agent Hu again demonstrated for the jury—“then the bullet’s path through the skull and the point of impact in the floor align precisely.”
The jurors nodded in agreement with his analysis.
“We also know that the victim’s hair was ripped out by the roots, which requires great force. This leads us to conclude that the murder occurred as follows: the victim was on the floor of the bedroom. The perpetrator grabbed the victim by the hair on the right side of his scalp and yanked him up to approximately forty inches off the floor. The perpetrator placed the barrel of the gun to the victim’s forehead over his left eye and shot the victim. The force of the gun’s discharge knocked the victim to the floor—which is consistent with the location in which the body was found—and extracted his hair from his scalp.”
Clark McCall was a rapist, but he had died a horrible death. By the time Dr. Hu completed his testimony, the jurors were somber. Their sympathies may have been with the little black girl sitting in the front row, but they had to face facts; and the facts pointed to her mother as the murderer of Clark McCall. Ray Burns could barely suppress a grin when he stood and announced, “Your Honor, the prosecution rests.”
Scott noticed that Ray turned and caught Senator McCall’s eye; the senator nodded at Ray, obviously pleased with the prosecution of his son’s killer. No doubt, he had told Ray Burns he would never forget this, particularly