Read Online Bad Blood by Linda Fairstein - Free Book Online Page A

the airway. Same thing happens with a piece of food.”
    Several jurors nodded their heads in understanding.
    “Now, Doctor, what is the third form of asphyxial death?”
    “Compression of the neck, Ms. Cooper — usually by strangulation.”
    “Are there different methods of strangulation?”
    “Yes, there are. Again, we usually break these down into three varieties. Those would be hanging, ligature strangulation, and manual strangulation.”
    “Can you distinguish between accidental, intentional, and homicidal deaths in the case of asphyxia by strangulation?”
    Genco spoke confidently to the jurors farthest from the stand. “Most of the time, of course. The overwhelming number of hangings are suicides — it’s not a method frequently used as a means of killing someone.”
    The jury was following his analysis. “With ligature strangulation, although you do get a few accidents, virtually all the cases are homicides — probably the most common form of homicidal asphyxia.”
    “And by
ligature,
tell us what you mean exactly.”
    “Certainly, Ms. Cooper. I’m referring to a bond of some kind — electrical cord, rope, wire, necktie — an object used to encircle the neck horizontally, occluding blood and oxygen from reaching the brain.”
    “That’s distinguished from manual strangulation, is it not?”
    “Quite easily, in fact. Manual strangulation — death caused by using one’s hands to compress the neck of another — can never be anything but homicide.”
    “Would you please tell the jury why, Dr. Genco?”
    He straightened his glasses and looked earnestly at the people in the box. “It’s not possible to use your own hands to strangle yourself. Pressure on the neck is a very intentional, deliberate action. The first thing such excessive pressure causes is a loss of consciousness. So that if you were holding your own throat until the point at which you passed out, you couldn’t possibly continue to keep the grip on. You’d regain consciousness as soon as your hands dropped away.”
    I wanted him to go through every second of Amanda Quillian’s final agony. I wanted them to understand that her last moments were spent face-to-face with her attacker, at less than arm’s length, while he purposefully squeezed the life out of her body.
    “Can you estimate for us, with a reasonable degree of medical certainty, how long it was that Mrs. Quillian remained conscious while her neck was being compressed?”
    Genco took his time with the answer, trying to explain the dynamic of this death mechanism without drawing an objection for any prejudicial statement. “Strangulation, you must understand, does not cause death as quickly, say, as a bullet to the brain or a stab wound to the heart. There is evidence here that despite her small stature and weight, the deceased put up a struggle — a fierce struggle — for her life.”
    Several jurors began to wriggle in their seats as they followed his testimony. Genco paused, asking permission of Judge Gertz to step to the easel and refer to an enlargement of one of the autopsy photographs I had introduced through him half an hour earlier. I handed him a pointer and he got back to work.
    “These marks on the neck of the deceased represent the force used by her assailant to subdue her, and then to cause her death.” He tapped at several large bruises on her throat as he spoke. “Repeated applications of force, actually, suggesting that she was struggling against him while he tried to fasten his grip more tightly. All of that fighting prolonged the process of the strangulation.”
    The finger marks of the killer looked enormous to me, causing not only the external bruising but the hemorrhaging deep into the musculature that Genco’s dissection of the throat had revealed. I had studied the images for months, thinking constantly of someone with hands big enough, strong enough, to cause that damage. Someone with hands much larger than Brendan Quillian’s, which