Opinion ID: 2273504
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 18

Heading: Relationship Between the Crime Scene Evidence and the Bryant Evidence

Text: Photographs of the Skakels' property and the Moxleys' property reveal a densely wooded landscape, with trees, tall hedges and bushes running along the diagonal path that the victim would have taken to walk home after leaving the Skakels' residence. The physical evidence at the crime scene indicated that the victim initially was assaulted near the top of her driveway, just after she crossed Walsh Lane. The Moxleys' driveway was horseshoe shaped, with two entrances, one to the east and one to the west. The west entrance was opposite the southeast corner of the Skakels' property. Inside the horseshoe driveway was a large lawn that extended from the street toward the northwest corner of the Moxleys' house. The house was not centered on the driveway but, rather, was situated to the southeast of it, or to the left of the horseshoe driveway, if one were standing in the street facing the house. [93] According to police reports, at the intersection of the west entrance to the driveway and Walsh Lane, approximately [four] feet south of the roadway, a compressed grass area existed, indicating the prior presence of a body. [94] On the lawn in the middle of the horseshoe driveway, a bloodstained Toney Penna six iron golf club was found; the club later was determined to have belonged to the petitioner's mother. [95] Three feet west of the golf club was a patch of blood that measured twelve inches in circumference. Thomas G. Keegan, the Greenwich detective originally in charge of the investigation, believed that the victim either was killed or knocked unconscious at this location. In a letter to Joseph A. Jachimczyk, a forensic pathologist who aided the police in the initial investigation, Keegan wrote: Approximately eight feet west of the point of attack an eight inch section of stainless steel tubular golf club shaft was found, and this piece of metal, as well as the broken end of the club head, indicated that they were both intentionally broken, apparently by bending back and forth. The victim was then apparently carried or semidragged for a distance of fifty-eight feet to the west of the driveway. According to Keegan's crime scene notes, the path through the leaves from the lawn inside of the horseshoe driveway to the west side of the driveway was obvious. . . . A small amount of blood was found on the surface of the driveway along the path. The victim was then apparently carried or dragged for another fifty feet to a point where two [more] patches of blood approx[imately] [eighteen] inches in circumference were found. Keegan concluded that the victim was repeatedly assaulted at this location and sustained at least four stab wounds from the broken end of the [golf] club and multiple blows to the head. About eight feet from [the two patches of blood] another seven inch section of tubular stainless steel golf club shaft was found, again apparently intentionally broken. The victim was then dragged for a distance of approximately seventy-eight feet and placed under [a] pine tree . . . [leaving] a clear and visible drag-pattern measuring thirteen and five-[eighths] inches wide. The victim suffered one [nonfatal] blow where there is a clear impression of the golf club head on her left arm and shoulder. All other blows [were] fatal. . . . A black abrasion on the right side of her nose indicates that her nose came into contact with the driveway. Finally, at some point during the attack, the victim's pants and underwear were pulled down below her knees. According to Lee, a forensic scientist who reconstructed the crime for the state sixteen years after the murder, [96] blood splatter inside the victim's underwear and pants indicated that her pants and underwear were down when some or all of the blows were inflicted. In certain respects, however, Lee's reconstruction of the crime differed significantly from that of Keegan's. [97] Lee theorized that the assault had occurred in the area where the two larger patches of blood were found, on the west side of the driveway, and that, during the assault, the golf club broke from the force of one of the blows, sending the head and a piece of the shaft approximately 100 feet through the air to where they were discovered on the lawn in the middle of the horseshoe driveway. According to Lee, the blood that was found on the driveway and the twelve inch patch of blood on the lawn in the middle of the horseshoe driveway were deposited in those locations from the golf club head and shaft as they flew by. [98] Lee also theorized, and the state maintained during closing argument, that, after the initial assault, the victim ran into the wooded area west of the driveway. Specifically, the state's attorney argued to the jury that [the victim] was first assaulted somewhere by the driveway. . . . She wasn't knocked unconscious there because we learned that she was somehow able to travel from here to . . . the major blood scene, and there is no drag trail between those two points. As I previously mentioned, however, Keegan had observed an obvious path from the lawn inside the horseshoe driveway to the major blood area west of the driveway on the afternoon that the body was discovered. Because defense counsel did not cross-examine Lee about any of his conclusions, he never explained how his reconstruction comported with Keegan's crime scene notes. In light of Bryant's statements that two teenagers, both of whom were wielding golf clubs, are responsible for the victim's murder, Keegan's description of the crime scene and his theory on the manner in which the victim's murder occurred would merit serious consideration at a new trial. [99] As I discussed previously, Keegan believed that the victim was first assaulted on the lawn in the middle of the horseshoe driveway, where a golf club broke or was intentionally broken. The victim then was carried or partially dragged to the more secluded wooded area west of the driveway, where the attack resumed. If Keegan is correct, and a golf club broke or was intentionally broken on the lawn in the middle of the horseshoe driveway, there would have to have been more than one golf club involved in the attack because, according to Lee's reconstruction and Keegan's crime scene notes, the victim sustained multiple blunt force injuries in the area west of the driveway, where the two large patches of blood were found. Furthermore, on the basis of the nature of the drag marks, John Solomon, the state's chief investigator in the 1980s and early 1990s, concluded that the perpetrator was disoriented, if not unfamiliar, with the location of the neighborhood houses in relation to each another. The autopsy report is in no way inconsistent with a two assailant theory and, in some respects, appears to support it. Harold Wayne Carver II, the state's chief medical examiner who testified at the petitioner's criminal trial regarding the findings of the original autopsy report, stated that the victim had sustained at least eight blunt force injuries to her head. All of those injuries were consistent with having been caused by the head of a golf club. Three such injuries were inflicted to the front of the victim's head, three were inflicted to the back of her head and two were inflicted to the left side of her head. Each of the blows, according to Carver, could have been fatal, and the victim likely would have lost consciousness relatively quickly. The victim also sustained a broken nose, [100] blunt force trauma to her left shoulder and at least four stab wounds to the neck and head, consistent with having been caused by the broken shaft of a golf club. When the state asked Carver to explain the order in which the injuries were inflicted, he emphasized that his answer was predicated on the assumption that only one golf club had been used in the murder. He explained that, [provided] only one golf club [was] involved, all of the blunt force injuries to the head would have to have been inflicted before the head broke away from the club's shaft. Just as with Lee, however, the defense did not cross-examine Carver, and, consequently, he was not queried as to whether so many potentially fatal blows to the front, side and back of the victim's head were consistent with the state's theory of a lone assailant or whether they were as or more likely to have been inflicted by two assailants, wielding golf clubs from different directions. Furthermore, despite Keegan's conclusion that the attack was initiated where the club head was found, neither Lee nor Carver was asked whether the petitioner, who, by all indications was no bigger than the victim; see footnote 45 of this opinion; would have been physically capable of carrying or dragging the victim's body from the lawn inside the horseshoe driveway to the second assault area approximately 100 feet away. Hasbrouck and Tinsley, however, each of whom Bryant described as weighing at least 200 pounds and standing approximately six feet, two inches in height, clearly would have been capable of doing so. Indeed, in my view, the most troubling aspect of the state's theory of the crime stems from the fact that it is predicated on the assumption that the victim fled to the more secluded area west of the driveway, where the major assault occurred. Thus, the state maintained during closing argument that, after the initial assault, the victim somehow was able to get away from her killer and run to that location. It is counterintuitive, however, that the victim, seizing on the opportunity to flee, would have opted to run in a direction that would leave her more vulnerable and isolated than she already was. As between the two possible escape routes, one being the wooded area west of the driveway and the other being the safety of her house to the southeast, common sense strongly suggests that she would have tried to run toward her house, which would have taken her across the lawn in between the horseshoe driveway, directly over the area where Keegan theorized that the assault had begun. If that were the case, and the victim had been subdued or knocked unconscious at that location, as Keegan believed that she had been, then someone would have had to have carried or dragged her body more than 100 feet to the other side of the driveway. It is hard to imagine, and the state's experts were not asked to explain, how the petitioner could have managed such a feat in the dark, carrying not only the victim but also a golf club or pieces thereof in his hands. Finally, as I indicated previously, two hairs that were recovered from the sheet that was used to wrap the victim's body where it was discovered provide additional corroboration of Bryant's statements. One of the hairs was identified by the FBI forensic crime lab as possessing Negroid characteristics, and subsequent testing on the other hair revealed that it possessed Asian characteristics. Hasbrouck and Bryant are of African-American descent and Tinsley, according to Bryant, is of mixed race origin, possibly of Asian descent.