The Reasons I Won't Be Coming, Page 9

  When his solicitor had left the room, Mr. Islington had told him that the relevant events had happened two nights earlier. He had been driving around in his car ever since. His distress could be traced back to two nights earlier when, while at his girlfriend’s house for dinner, he had been alerted to an intruder by her daughter. The intruder had attacked him and a gun wrapped in plastic had been discharged into the intruder. Mr. Islington said he had been horrified. The man had died. Mr. Islington had said that he did not know how this came about and that he had driven around in his car for most of the next two days.

  In Dr. Kravitz’s opinion the patient, the accused, was very upset but was not what he would describe as acutely psychotic. He was tearful and shaking but this was consistent with severe stress and, all things considered, Dr. Kravitz did not think at that time that Mr. Islington posed a substantial risk to either the medical staff or to the police, who apparently had been called by Mr. Islington’s solicitor before he had driven him to the hospital. The doctor had given the distressed man tablets to help him sleep. He said that while he could not attach any specific probability to it, it was possible for shock to give rise to localized memory loss.

  Detective Senior Constable Morgan was one of four police officers to escort Ray Islington from the hospital to the police station, and it was he who had asked the bulk of the questions the jury watched on a television monitor, the interrogation having been recorded on videotape. Ray was exhausted, his eyes wide and red streaked. He wanted to cooperate one hundred percent to get to the bottom of this dreadful mess, this dreadful mistake. He brushed his hair back off his forehead with his left hand, wanting to go with these fellows on their inquiry, but needed them to take it easy because he hadn’t slept for two days. . . .

  The kids had gone to bed and I was on the couch—first sitting, then lying down—with Yadwiga. Carly came out of her bedroom and said there was a prowler outside or something, some guy outside. She was frightened. Yadwiga got up from the couch. So did I but she got up first. Yadwiga was first. She was closest to the edge of the couch so she had to get up first. I couldn’t get up until she had.

  We went down the hall to the back door and into the back garden. Yadwiga was ahead of me and went towards the back garden. I lost sight of her. I went the other way. I couldn’t really see anything. It all happened so quickly. Carly was pretty . . . pretty frightened. I went back into the house to her. Yadwiga keeps wood on the porch for the fire and as I came back in I picked up a log or what I thought was a log. I couldn’t really tell what it was at that time. It was wrapped in something, some material. I don’t know, I just picked it up and when I got to the end of the hall near the kids’ rooms, he startled me and we struggled for the wood, or what I thought was wood. I couldn’t see. I didn’t know it was Geoff. But he struggled with me for the wood. The wrapping was coming off in the struggle. I must’ve squeezed because, as you know—do you mind if I smoke?—I shot him.

  Ray had offered to take Detective Senior Constable Morgan and the corroborating officer to where he thought he had left the car. He couldn’t remember exactly where. He had just driven around without any sense of time or of where he was. He knew more or less where he had left it, or thought that he did, but, after driving around for close to forty minutes and still not finding it, they returned to the police station where the interview was continued. Ray was sorry. He had thought he knew where it was. He must’ve been close to two days without sleep. It had all happened so quickly and Ray was in shock. They had to understand that Geoff was his friend, his and Yadwiga’s. He took another sip of coffee and gently slid an unlit cigarette up and down between his fingers so that it made a slight tapping sound on the table. Detective Senior Constable Morgan was offscreen but his voice was clear. That was probably all for now. The camera closed in on Ray, who continued to tap the cigarette. Then he looked up and heard, “You are being charged with murder.”

  Still angry? Well, you’ll just have to give her more time. I know you didn’t lie. After the trial she’ll be more reasonable, I’m sure of it. No, but when she’s upset she’s liable to say things she doesn’t mean. I was married to her, I know Yadwiga very well . . . very well. I still love you and you know that I want us all to be together again.

  The Sheriff’s Office had arranged a bus to take the jury to what had been the Quinlan home, but it was late. All the minibuses used for airport shuttles and senior-citizens excursions to the casino were unavailable. The jury waited in the jury room, drinking cups of tea, making small talk about whether or not they were morning people and queuing for the use of the toilet. When their bus finally arrived it was a long sixty-seater perfect for interstate trips but less suitable for frequent turns in the narrow, leafy streets and cul-de-sacs Ricky and Yadwiga Quinlan had once been unable to resist. Position was everything.

  It was a small house, smaller than it had sounded over the previous couple of weeks, and once you had been through it a couple of times, there was only one thing left to do, and together in small groups and one or two on their own, each juror walked the route they had heard described so often. Here was the doorway to the garden where Carly had waited. Here was the lounge room where Ray and Yadwiga had lain together on the couch. Next was the hallway where, just outside the boy’s room, it happened. And off to one side was Carly’s room. Each juror went into Carly’s room, and one by one they put themselves in the triangle that was defined, just as she had said, by her open door and the corner of her room. Each of them looked through the crack between the hinged edge of the door and the wall and, adjusting their positions to approximate Carly’s height, they saw the extent of Carly’s view of the hall where the deceased had been shot. When they had finished they were led as a group back on to the bus by His Honor’s Tipstaff. After they left, the Judge and the Associate came into the house and did exactly as the jury had done, placing themselves at varying heights within Carly’s triangle to see what they could see of the hall, and, like each of the jurors, they could see almost nothing.

  Now that all the evidence had been called, the Prosecutor stood side-on to the Judge and commenced his address to the jury. He started running through the evidence that had been presented. The reluctant juror felt she would scream if he ran through each witness’s evidence again. Was there no one who could stop this colorless man? The blood spattering was consistent with the findings of the postmortem. The angle of the discharge and the manner of firing, with the gun pointing upwards, demonstrated, he suggested, that the firing must have been deliberate. He reminded the jury that Yadwiga Quinlan had testified she did not have a gun in the house. Carly Quinlan had sworn that she had seen Raymond Islington get what had to be a loaded shotgun. It was about a meter long. She had watched him.

  The Prosecutor said the presence of the loaded shotgun in Islington’s car was consistent with premeditation. Islington would have heard Yadwiga Quinlan say that it was Geoff’s car. He would have known when he saw the car that it belonged to Geoff, a man whom he knew and knew to have recently made advances to Yadwiga. Carly had told both of them that it was Geoff who was in the back of the house. She led Islington, who was by then carrying the wrapped object by his right side, down the hall to where the man she had already identified as Geoff was standing unarmed. Islington told the deceased to “Get out . . .” using words which indicated that he knew the deceased’s identity. Carly was by this stage in the triangle the jury had observed was formed in her bedroom when the door was open. Looking between the hinges of the door, she had seen Islington remove the material from around the gun. She saw a push and then heard the shot.

  You should prefer the evidence of Carly Quinlan above all others, even as against that of Yadwiga, her mother. Carly was an eyewitness. She had not only identified the deceased, she had alerted her mother and the accused man as to his identity. She, unlike her mother, has had no relationship with the accused man that might color her view or cloud her memory. Unlike her mother, she did not have any guilt to assuage with resp
ect to the advances of a desperately unhappy man now dead or with respect to the telling of them to a desperately dishonest man now accused. The Prosecutor said the accused man’s disingenuous attempt to assist the police to locate his car amounted to a “consciousness of guilt” on the part of the accused, as did the fact that the murder weapon could not be found. He said that the amount of evidence inconsistent with innocence was overwhelming and that the jury should return the verdict “guilty of murder.” Then he sat down. The juror with the bra strap wondered why he had not moved more, away from the table and over to the jury like they did on TV. He hadn’t really moved his hands much, either. If asked, she would have given him four out of ten.

  After a fifteen-minute break, the jury returned to hear the defense counsel address them. He spoke more slowly. Their task, he said, was not an emotional one but an intellectual one. They should put aside any question of whether they liked or disliked any of the witnesses and they should be vigilant against jumping to seemingly attractive conclusions. The main question they had to consider was whether the Crown had proved beyond reasonable doubt that this tragic event was a murder, with all of the elements required by law to constitute murder. It is not sufficient for the Crown to establish that it was possibly murder or was probably murder. The Crown had to prove all the elements of murder beyond reasonable doubt and those words mean exactly that. “Exactly that what?” the yellow T-shirt juror said to himself.

  The argument, put forward by the Crown—that Ray Islington had carried the gun around with him in his car and that what you are considering here was a premeditated killing—is clearly ridiculous, patently nonsense. I know you will see it as nonsense. Carly has told the police she saw the silhouette of a person walking up the drive to the sliding door at the back of the house and then back to his car in the street. This frightened her enough to cause her to seek out her mother and Ray and alert them to the presence of someone she accepts she might have described as a “prowler.” Of course, it wasn’t a prowler, it was Geoff. Why didn’t he announce his appearance? And then, a moment later, why did he not say something to Carly inside the house?

  Ray told the police that the instrument he picked up from the log pile on Yadwiga’s back porch was wrapped in material of some kind. Carly said this, too, you will remember. She had seen the wrapping around the object as she walked with Ray down the hallway to confront Carly’s “prowler.” That was the car seat cover which had been left at the scene and was later incinerated by Deli Bishop of Superior Cleaning Services. Had the car seat cover not turned up on the photographs, the Crown would have you believe Ray Islington made that up too. “Yes, I bet they would’ve said that,” the foreman said, nodding, before realizing that his lips were moving.

  Much, the defense counsel continued, has been made by the Prosecutor of Carly’s evidence and the store you should place on it. The events surrounding Carly that night were obviously the most traumatic events in her young life, and while nobody is suggesting any dishonesty on Carly’s part, not all of her evidence is reliable. You know what I am referring to. This young girl, in trying to be helpful, has gone too far and described things that she just could not have seen. You have all had the chance to see the scope and dimensions of the area where these tragic events took place. You might well have found yourselves in the triangular area created in Carly’s bedroom when the door is open. It is not possible, by standing inside that triangle and looking through the gaps between the hinges, to see as much as she says she saw. You know this. It is impossible, and if she has this wrong, what else in her evidence is wrong, mistaken?

  This is a murder charge, ladies and gentlemen, and you will want to be very careful in the jury room when considering the weight to be given to the testimony of a distraught little girl. Under normal circumstances we would all want to give her the benefit of the doubt, but remember, the onus is on the Crown to prove their case beyond reasonable doubt. The consequences of your decision are about as big as they get. They can’t get any bigger for Ray Islington, not when His Honor is wearing the red robes.

  Really? How do you know she’s visiting him if she’s still not talking to you? Well, at least Brian is talking to you. He’s a good boy. She’ll get over it. Yes, after the trial. If he’s found guilty? Of course she’ll get over it. You didn’t do anything wrong. All you did was tell the truth. Christ! Ray killed him, not you. You saw him do it. Don’t be silly! You know you saw him. Come on, Carly. Don’t be upset. If they find him guilty we can all be together again.

  The critical question, the defense counsel continued, is not where the gun came from or whose gun it was. There is no question that what Ray carried under his arm, as he walked down that hallway to investigate the uninvited presence of the man who had frightened his woman’s child, was a gun. The critical question is: What happened at the end of the hallway? Carly has described what she claims to have seen, but you know she did not see it. She could not have seen it. The Prosecutor wants you to accept that Ray’s intention was to murder Geoff and that this was premeditated. He invited you to believe that Ray was motivated by revenge and jealousy on account of Geoff’s advances towards Yadwiga some two or three weeks before. But you will remember Yadwiga’s evidence of Ray’s very calm response, gently advising her that perhaps she had been too charitable in her polite rebuffs. And it seems he was right, doesn’t it? There is no way one could equate his mild response with the type of response consistent with forming the intention to kill. There was, at that time, some prospect that he would be moving to Bruthen anyway. The relationship would have flickered to its extinguishment. You will remember all this, put it all together and find more than reasonable doubts everywhere you look. Ray only needs you to have one.

  The defense counsel paused to clear his throat and take a sip from a glass of water. After the shooting, Ray panicked and ran away. One can imagine him thinking, How the hell am I going to explain this? So he ran out of the house barefoot with the gun. What do we really learn from this, ladies and gentlemen? Ray Islington was scared out of his mind. Wouldn’t you be if you had just shot a family friend by accident with a gun you had not even known existed? When you think about it, this would certainly have been the most nightmarish thing that had ever happened to him. He said as much, you will remember, to Detective Senior Constable Morgan in the videotaped record of interview. He told him that he had not slept for close to forty-eight hours. You will remember Dr. Kravitz, the Psychiatric Registrar who examined Ray at the hospital. Dr. Kravitz told you that Ray was tearful and shaking, consistent with him being in a state of severe stress. Everything adds up, doesn’t it? Where are all those brilliant lies the Prosecutor wanted you to find?

  You would know from your own lives that when people experience trauma they are most likely, most prone, to act irrationally. He told the police he didn’t know where the car was. Was that a lie? The Crown wants you to think it was. But why should he lie about the car? It was only a means for leaving the Quinlan home. He had already told the police that he had shot Geoff and, in panicked horror, driven away in shock. When the police found the car, there was nothing of any forensic value in it. If there had been, you can bet the Prosecutor would have told you about it.

  “Yeah. I bet he would have, too,” the foreman said, nodding again.

  Ray had admitted that his clothes had blood on them, the defense counsel went on. That is because he had been involved in a shooting accident. He told the police about this. Nothing dishonest about it. His clothes had blood on them. Of course they did. These are not the actions of a dishonest man. This is the behavior of an hysterical man, a man made hysterical by the sudden and accidental shooting of his friend.

  So, let her visit him. What do you care? Don’t be so silly. Anyway, he’s not going anywhere for a long time. Because he killed your friend’s father. Yeah? Who’s going to believe that he found a shotgun in the woodpile and picked it up without knowing what it was? You testified that you saw him get the gun from the boot of his car. Yes, of
course they’ll believe you. What’s the alternative: that Ray squeezed a thin log into poor old Geoff what’s-his-name?

  The Judge adjourned the court temporarily for the jury to take a break between the end of the defense address and his charge to the jury. The Tipstaff gently guided them into the jury room, but they did not need any guidance by this stage of the trial. They were veterans, knew the system. The reluctant juror took it upon herself to start making the tea. By now she had almost memorized how everyone took their tea. Three sugars for the bra strap, one for the foreman, none for the yellow T-shirt. The Tipstaff closed the door behind him and went back into the court. The television journalists had come down to the fourth court sensing the trial was nearing the thirty-second-grab part of the judicial process. They had come briefly for the prosecution opening and had only now returned, it seemed, to say hello to the Tipstaff. How was he? What does he think? Come on, you always know something, Trevor. But the Tipstaff, who said nothing, was named Bert.

  The Associate had been thinking about manslaughter, the critical word the jury had never heard mentioned in court. Neither the Crown nor the defense had mentioned it, and to the Associate, unnecessarily qualified as a lawyer, this was fascinating to say the least. The common law, the law of precedent, regards all unlawful homicides which are not murder as manslaughter. There were two main types of manslaughter, voluntary and involuntary. For an accused person to be found guilty of voluntary manslaughter, there may be the same intention or malice aforethought required for murder, but the presence of some defined and specific mitigating circumstance will reduce the murder to manslaughter. Provocation was one such mitigating circumstance.

  The Associate was thinking about Ray Islington and about provocation as a defense to murder. As a student he had rote-learned Devlin J.’s classic definition from Duffy (1949) for his criminal law exam: “Provocation is some act, or series of acts, done by the dead man to the accused, which would cause in any reasonable person, and actually causes in the accused, a sudden and temporary loss of self-control, rendering the accused so subject to passion as to make him or her for the moment not master of his mind.” What was Geoff’s act or series of acts? There was none and Ray was not suggesting that he had lost control.