Perfect Victim (41 page)

Papendick was encouraged to try again. He added several more details to his hypothetical, asked Dr. Lunde if he could render an opinion, and again Mcguire objected that the facts were incomplete.

Judge Knight sustained the objection.

“Your Honor,” Papendick protested, “the facts that I have presented are the identical facts the prosecution presented for their expert on direct examination.”

“No, they are not,” Judge Knight asserted, “not to my recollection. I find them lacking as to rather material points.”

Now Papendick had reached the point of exasperation. Thoroughly frustrated by this line of questioning, he abandoned the hypothetical completely, much to the relief of the courtroom, and turned to other issues.

“Doctor,” he asked Dr. Lunde, “in your opinion, can you have coercive persuasion without captivity?”

“No, you can’t,” Dr. Lunde stated. “Continuous physical captivity is a requirement.”

“And in your field of psychology and psychiatry, how is physical captivity defined?”

“It’s defined as either being locked up in a prison or a cage or whatever kind of device in which somebody has no reasonable chance of escaping; and/or being held continuously under armed guard. That is, somebody with a lethal weapon, usually a gun.”

“What is the significance of the Patty Hearst case in your evaluation of this case?” Papendick asked.

“The significance,” Lunde began, “is that there are a lot of similarities in that she was also a white female in her early twenties at the time she was kidnapped; that she was subjected to confinement at first — threats, sexual abuse, deprivation of various sorts — and was, at least for approximately five weeks, subjected to the conditions we have talked about as under the rubric of coercive persuasion. On the other hand, after approximately five weeks of captivity she was free to leave and —”

Mcguire interrupted Dr. Lunde with an objection: “The Patty Hearst case has nothing to do with this case.”

After some bickering between the counsels, Judge Knight sustained the objection, saying, “The Patty Hearst case is dealing with the question of whether Patty Hearst was responsible for her actions. We are not dealing with that question here.”

Again having had his line of questioning frustrated, the defense counsel turned to Dr. Lunde’s area of expertise: the physical effects of captivity. The court learned that suspending someone by the wrists more than about twenty minutes can cut off the circulation.

“Beyond that period,” Dr. Lunde said, “there can be physical damage to the limbs and also damage to the cardiovascular system.”

“At what point would you expect to see damage occur in crucifixion, simply to hold somebody still.”

“In a period of an hour, in terms of the limbs, in particular. It takes a matter of several hours in a person otherwise healthy, for cardiovascular problems to show as, fluids actually accumulate in the toes.

“If a person were confined in a box for twenty-three and a half hours a day for three years, what physical problems would that person suffer?”

“Persons confined in a close space, whether it’s a box or even a hospital bed, for that amount of time, would suffer very serious muscular damage and skeletal damage,” Lunde said. “The muscles, within a matter of about six weeks, will start to lose mass — wasting of the muscles as they start to shrivel up and get smaller. There is decalcification of the bones, so that the bones become more and more brittle. A person in a matter of months, much less years, would have serious and visible muscular and bone damage. And in the period of time you speak of — years — such a person would have great difficulty walking, maintaining an upright posture, maintaining balance. There would also be some horizontal dysfunction, probably. That would be quite visible.”

“Would the person’s speech be affected?”

“Probably, yes.”

“In what way?”

“Well,” Lunde continued, “a person confined in a box for three years on end, separated from contact with other people, whether it’s in a box or an isolation cell, usually begins to hallucinate at some point, so their speech might reflect them talking to imaginary people. It might reflect the hallucinations. If they actually don’t do much talking, after a period of time, you would probably notice some speech impediment, some difficulty simply with normal speech because, like any other complex learned activity, if you go for several years without using it, you lose the skill, the complex brain-to-muscle kind of skills that are involved in simply forming words. Memory might be affected as well.”

“What is the physical effect of electric shock administered to the human body from house current attached to a person’s thighs?” Papendick asked.

Mcguire objected that it hadn’t been established that it was house current Colleen was shocked with, but she was overruled.

The court listened closely to learn why Papendick had questioned Colleen so rigorously on this point.

“Shock of house current can cause contraction of the muscles around the thigh area, the quadriceps or hamstring muscles, and this can be painful,” Lunde said. “It doesn’t cause permanent damage. Once a person is grounded, which in a usual house is carpeting or floor or something which doesn’t conduct electricity, it simply causes contraction of the muscles, you know, a feeling, literally, of shock. But that’s about it.”

“What exactly do you mean by contraction of muscles?”

“The muscles go into spasm, involuntary spasm.”

“What effect does whipping have on the physical body?”

“Well, people I have seen who have been subjected to actual whipping, usually on the back, have visible scars from the lacerations, usually vertical scars.”

During Lunde’s testimony, Mcguire kept watching the jurors for reactions. If they believed the Stanford psychiatrist, they believed Colleen had lied. Except that they were attentive, she couldn’t read them.

Papendick took the noon recess to reframe his hypothetical.

When court reconvened, he addressed the witness: “Dr. Lunde, I would like you to assume, in addition to all the facts I have previously given you, the following facts.” With that, in a slow, steady voice, Papendick added a lengthy list of various incidentsfrom the shotgun “obedience test,” to the water-skiing trip. At its conclusion Papendick asked the doctor to render an opinion.

As everyone expected, Mcguire again objected.

A discussion ensued among both counsels, the judge, and the witness.

Looking vexed, the judge asked Dr. Lunde: “Doctor, do you really think you can answer that question from the hypothetical given you?”

“I think so.”

“Wouldn’t you have to know which time the questions referred to?”

“To my understanding, the question began sometime ago with an assumption that we were talking about the time period of the spring of 1978 to 1981.”

Still, the judge remained unconvinced that a responsible witness could answer the question as it was framed. With the judge’s permission, Papendick added several time elements to his hypothetical question.

When Papendick finished, Mcguire objected, prompting another discussion.

Judge Knight turned to the witness. “Do you mean, Doctor, that you can tell this jury, based upon the hypothetical given you, whether or not, during that whole period of time, this person was subjected to coercive persuasion; or whether, during any part of that time she was subjected to coercive persuasion?”

“Part of the time,” Dr. Lunde replied.

“That’s the problem,” said the judge. “It’s so broad that it’s almost meaningless. Do you understand, Mr. Papendick?”

“I understand what the court is getting at,” Papendick allowed.

Still, he maintained: “The witness understands the question and is able to answer it.”

Judge Knight, looking annoyed, finally relented, overruling Mcguire’s objection and allowing Dr. Lunde to give his opinion.

Dr. Lunde dove in: “My opinion is that during those periods of time when this person is not in a state of captivity as I defined it earlier — either confinement or being directly held at gunpoint or knifepoint — one of the essential conditions for coercive persuasion does not exist.

“It would be different if you were talking about a child, if you were talking about a mentally retarded person, a seriously mentally ill person, somebody continuously under the effects of certain drugs. But I believe that, when this all started, you asked me to assume a person of at least average intelligence.

“Somebody who goes jogging for fifteen minutes out on the road without the presence of an armed guard is not in [captivity]. Surely somebody who goes home to meet with her family and is not in the presence of the captor is not in a condition where they would be subject to this kind of phenomenon.

“The safest place, psychologically, for human beings, is the family,” the doctor explained. “Even if you believed in the existence of a company — which is not something that a person of normal intelligence in this society would be likely to believe — here, you are at home. You could write them a note and say. ‘Help. I am being tortured. I am being held captive.’

“I don’t know of anybody who, if given the opportunity to go home and spend twenty-four hours, would have returned to the place of captivity, whether you are talking about a prison in North Korea or the settlement in Guyana in Jonestown or the SLA headquarters in Berkeley. It is simply not consistent with everything we know about human behavior in psychology and behavior of people in captivity who don’t want to be there.”

Having finally succeeded in getting his expert witness to render an opinion on his hypothetical question, Papendick turned Dr. Lunde over to the prosecutor.

Deputy DA Mcguire opened her crossexamination by attacking Dr. Lunde’s familiarity with the case.

“Besides interviewing the defendant, Doctor, who else did you interview?”

“I did not personally interview anybody else.”

“You have never been to Red Bluff for the purpose of this case, have you, Doctor?”

“No.”

“And you haven’t been to the basement on Oak Street?”

“Well, I have seen the photos, but I have never been there.”

“You have never seen this box before today?” she asked, gesturing to the waterbed which still stood before the jury.

“It was disassembled when I saw it last.”

“And you have never been to the mobile home on Pershing have you, Doctor?”

“No.”

“And you have never been inside what has been referred to as the ‘hole’ under one of the sheds?”

“No.”

Mcguire established that when Dr. Lunde reviewed the evidence, he hadn’t bothered to open several boxes.

“I think it’s true that some boxes contained magazines and certain things we did not go through,” he said.

“Handcuffs?”

“Right.”

“You didn’t see any of those?”

“No, because there were photographs of some of them, and I looked at the photographs.”

“You haven’t seen the photographs of Janice being hung in various positions, have you, Doctor?”

“No. Mostly, they were destroyed, I understand,” he answered.

“You reviewed Dr. Hatcher’s report, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Did you prepare a report?”

“No.”

Mcguire had made some points, but at times she completely lost control of the witness, who went off on long narratives expounding the very theory she wished most to avoid.

In answer to a question concerning the influence of the Company in keeping Colleen from leaving, the psychiatrist said: “Based on the evidence I have seen, which includes reading Colleen Stan’s statements, listening to hours and hours of tape-recorded interviews, and seeing letters written by her, given what I know, and having read statements of Janice Hooker and Cameron Hooker as to jealousy between the two women and the attachment of the children to Colleen, I think the more likely explanation is that Colleen fell in love with Cameron Hooker, became attached to the children, and that subsequently this created your basic triangle situation where you have two women very angry at each other or vying for the attention of some man in the household, who happened to be Cameron Hooker. I think that’s why she returned to him from her family.”

“Are you telling me, Doctor, that given the hypothetical this morning, that person was not, to use the lay term, ‘broken’?” Mcguire asked.

“No. I don’t know what that means,” Dr. Lunde said. “I’ve heard of horses being broken, or dishes being broken, but people… people may become depressed. That’s a clinical term, and maybe it’s closest to what you’re trying to describe.

“People who [believe that] their situation is hopeless — and I have seen some people who have been held prisoner for a long time — may become depressed, and the symptoms of that include certain patterns of sleep disturbance, feelings of hopelessness, worthlessness, and eventually suicidal thoughts, and sometimes an actual suicide attempt.

“This person may or may not have become depressed. I don’t know of any evidence that she became suicidal or even entertained thoughts of suicide, which would tend to indicate to me that she did not become that depressed or ‘broken, if you want to use that term.”

Mcguire was incensed. “So what you are telling us, Doctor, in a nutshell, is: Given all the torture, the isolation, and the result of the techniques employed, all we have is a depressed person. Is that what you’re telling us?”

“Oh, I don’t even know,” he answered nonchalantly. “As I say, we don’t have a lot of evidence she was profoundly depressed.”

Mcguire asked if it would make a difference in his opinion if the victim were subjected to “attention drills.”

Dr. Lunde compared this to his own basic training in the Marine Corps in the fifties, saying he “would have traded places.”

“Were you stripped naked and forced to stretch your arms to the top of an archway and then whipped until you finally admitted to something you didn’t do?” she demanded to know.

“No, but just about,” he said, his chin in his hand, talking into his fingers. “Certainly there were obstacle courses and things of that sort one had to go through and underwater situations that were life-threatening. And then, in between, one had to run in pretty hot summer Virginia weather to the point of exhaustion, and then people were, in fact, struck by the drill sergeant if they stopped or fell down.”