If You Really Loved Me Part 10

Cinnamon sat at the defense table, her face a bleak study. It was impossible to tell if she remembered Kim Hicks or any of the statements the young medical student attributed to her.

Kim Hicks explained that Cinnamon had been both a person and a patient to her. Yes, she had gone in every morning at eight to take Cinnamon's vital signs, check her heart, blood pressure, and her general condition, but she had also tried to treat her like a human being. She was scared and alone. "Her mom or dad wasn't there."

On cross-examination from A1 Forgette, Hicks denied that she was trying to elicit information that would be helpful to the police or the district attorney's office. She asked nothing, she said, after the first day. "The first day we all had to find out. We're admitting the patient. We need to know everything we can possibly know about that patient in order to treat that patient effectively."

This was the witness most dangerous to Cinnamon, and Forgette cross- and recross-examined her. He made it plain that Cinnamon had been in a separate part of the hospital, a part operated by the sheriff's department. Barred. Locked.

"The patient can't walk out of there," the defense attorney said. "But you can walk out of there?"

"Yes."

"There's a deputy sheriff on duty to make sure they don't misbehave and that they're shackled to the bed?"

"They do."

"All of these conversations took place in that area of the hospital? Is that right?"

"They did," Hicks agreed.

Forgette tried to stem the damage Kim Hicks had done to Cinnamon's case. "A motion by the defense at this time. The motion would be to exclude and strike all testimony of the previous witness, Kim Hicks, as it relates to statements made by the minor while she was in custody at the jail ward of UCI. My position is that even though this lady is not an argued police officer, but rather personnel of the hospitala" or studenta"her actions . .. make her an agent of the authorities. The records show that this minor was ... in custody, shackled to her bed.

"My position is that absent an advis.e.m.e.nt of rights and waiver by the defendant or minor of these rights, that statements elicited from her under those conditions amounted to custodial interrogation."

Forgette, this kindly bear of a man, was fighting for his client. Newell couldn't help but admire him. Cinnamon didn't seem to understand any of it.

Maguire argued that Kim Hicks had merely been taking a social history. Indeed, although it was not argued, Kim Hicks had never gone to the police. It took Jay Newell's careful page-by-page perusal of Cinnamon's medical records to discover this third confession.

For a moment, the courtroom was quiet; Cinnamon Brown's future was suspended on this one, vital motion.

And then Judge Fitzgerald said briskly, "Motion to strike by the defense the testimony of Kim Hicks is denied. Next witness."

I hroughout her trial, Cinnamon occasionally glanced quickly over the gallery. She did not understand that proposed witnesses were excluded and she wondered where her father was. She could not believe that he wasn't there supporting her, as he had always promised he would. She hoped maybe he was out in the hall. Her gaze swept over the tall man at the back of the courtroom. She had no idea who Jay Newell was, and neither had any idea how entwined their lives would become.

The witnesses moved through the double doors of the courtroom, approached the witness chair, testified, and were gone. Some of them were from Cinnamon's short life before, and some she had met after. She listened to her oldest friend in the world, Krista Tabera"who seemed so nervous and sada"as she told how Cinnamon had been summoned home from Ted Hurath's house, how often she was on restriction.

Fred McLean testified. He identified pictures of the rooms of the house on Ocean Breeze Drive, pictures of the doghouse. He talked about arresting Cinnamon. McLean recalled how and where he had found Cinnamon.

She didn't remember him at all.

McLean identified the suicide note written on pink cardboard, and the purple ribbon wound around it to curl it into a scroll. In his deep Kansas voice, he read aloud, "Dear G.o.d, please forgive me. I didn't mean to hurt her."

It seemed a hundred years ago to her now.

Cinnamon could not follow the trial nor understand all the clipped, official police lingo and the medical testimony by forensic pathologist Dr. Richard f.u.komoto. A homicide trial, the intricate details of forensic science, the sometimes gory explicitness of a pathologist, who has long since grown used to such matters, can be incomprehensible to the laymana"a foreign language to a fifteen-year-old girl.

Hours and hours of testimony from experts on ballistics, on fingerprinting, on gunshot residue, on blood-typing. Blood. Cinnamon had never seen the blood; the house was so dark, and it was easy to think of the sound of the gun and the smell of gunpowder as only part of a nightmare. They were saying that Linda had had type B. That was on the pillowcases. Cinnamon had type O.

What difference did it make? Cinnamon closed her eyes and hunched her shoulders closer together, her mouth set.

All of it was really backup testimony. Cinnamon's future had s.h.i.+fted and twisted like a high bridge in an earthquake the moment Kim Hicks's testimony was allowed to remain on the record.

Court recessed Friday afternoon, August 9. Cinnamon could not understand where her father was. Patti had testified. Where was her dad?

David Brown's name was heard in the courtroom, but he was not there. He sent word to the district attorney's office that he was too ill to attend his daughter's trial. His testimony was offered by stipulation.

Mike Maguire explained that //Brown were called as a witness, he would testify to the events of March 18-19. Whether Cinnamon understood that her father, if he came to court, would have been against hera"not for hera"was unclear.

Maguire droned out the stipulations. "If David Arnold Brown were called as a witness, he would testify that he had kicked Cinnamon Brown out of the house three weeks prior to March 19, 1985, and that it was then agreed upon that Cinnamon Brown would live in the trailer in the backyard ... David Brown would also testify that Cinnamon Brown and Linda Brown were not getting along in the weeks prior to March 19, 1985. .. . David Brown would also testify that Cinnamon Brown was told that either she lived in the trailer or she went back to live with her mother, Brenda Sands."

"Entered."

What did "stipulate" mean?Cinnamon still didn't understand what they were saying, that both sides had just stipulated that her father believed she was guilty.

On Monday morning, August 12, at nine-thirty, they began again. Only two witnesses before Judge Fitzgerald ruled on whether Mike Maguire had proved his case against Cinnamon beyond a reasonable doubt. Bill Morrissey and John Woods testified on their administration of GSR tests.

Cinnamon did not testify. Forgette had decided it would be better for her if she didn't. If she didn't remember anythinga"and she a.s.sured him she did nota"what good would it do for her to go on the stand?

In final arguments, Maguire deemed Cinnamon's alleged crime as premeditated, "cold-blooded murder," committed by a depressed and angry girl. Cinnamon slumped lower in her chair, and all the curves and angles of her face seemed to pull downward as she listened to Mike Maguire. It sounded so ugly the way he said it, the way he described how Linda had been asleep in her bed when shea"Cinnamona"crept beside her in the dark and shot her at close range. He was talking about "cold-blooded murder," and it seemed as if he were talking about someone else, as if his voice were coming from a long way away. Cold-blooded murder.

Forgette talked next, and he seemed to be far away from her too, even though she knew he was on her side. He said she had been insane, legally insane. Otherwise, she would never have shot Linda.

"Why in the world would a young lady who had a great deal of affection for her stepmother have a rational motive to kill her? Most troubling is the complete absence of a motive for this child to murder her stepmother."

Insane, legally insane. Was that the reason Cinnamon had shot Linda?

Why indeed? It was a question that beggared an answer, but there was none.

Monday, August 12, 1985, was to be a long day utilizing all its minutes in court. If possible, Fitzgerald hoped to hear final arguments, give his verdict, and then, depending on that verdict, possibly move on to testimony in the second phasea"the insanity phasea"of Cinnamon's trial.

It seemed to Cinnamon that they were propelling her faster and faster toward ... what?

After Crime Scene Investigator Bill Morrissey's and Sergeant Woods's testimony, Judge Fitzgerald called for a fifteen-minute recess. When he returned, he announced that he had reached a verdict.

"The Court finds as follows: I find beyond a reasonable doubt that the minor known as Cinnamon Brown, in fact, did kill the victim Linda Brown. She did so with premeditation and deliberation, with malice aforethought.

"Court further finds that this was in fact an intentional killing by this minor, specifically the minor intended to kill the victim, Linda Brown.

"The Court then does find the minor Cinnamon Brown to be guilty of murder of the first degree.... Her age at the time of the killing was apparently fourteen."

It had happened so swiftly. A1 Forgette tried to explain to Cinnamon what it all meant. She had just been found guilty of first-degree murder. She shook her head ever so slightly and looked down at her lap.

Now Forgette had to prove to the judge that Cinnamon Brown had been totally unable to understand the nature and quality of her act of murder. He would call witnesses who would testify to the fragility of her sanity. It was the only way he could keep her from going to prison. The murder made no sense to Forgette, and he could not see how anyone else might view it otherwise.

He first called Brenda Sands, Cinnamon's mother, to bolster his contention that Cinnamon had been out of her mind that March night.

Brenda was a bit confused about what she should say. David had been so anxious for her to tell police that Cinny was weird, and she didn't trust David as far as she could throw him. But David could talk so well and make things seem the way he wanted her to believe. He had told her the police were just trying to railroad Cinny. Mr. Forgette too had said it was okay to reveal any emotional scenes. It would help Cinnamon. Brenda knew that Cinny was basically a good kid, and emotionally sound.

But she would do anything to save her child from prison, so she brought up all the blowups they had had. Mother-daughter arguments and yes, Brenda had sent Cinny to live with her father and stepmother. Cinny had been so snippy that Brenda had slapped her and Cinny had tried to hit her back.

"We got into a little mother-and-daughter, you know, argument, you know, fighting, you know, because she stayed out late, and it had something to do with her, you know, about obeying rules. .. . Just slapping. I struck her first and then she hit me, but I put my arm up to block her from hitting me."

"And it was thereafter that you sent her back to her father?" Forgette asked.

"Yes." Brenda hastened to explain that she and Cinnamon talked on the phone often and spent many weekends together.

And yes, she remembered that Cinny had called her about a week before Linda died. "She was feeling ill. She told me that her stomach hurt. She wasn't feeling too good. She said she felt like she was going crazy because everybody kept fighting there in the house.

"I just said, well, you knowa"you know, I didn't understand what was going on. And I told her I don't know what to tell you. I can't solve your dad's problems."

Cinnamon had not asked to move back with her mother. Whatever was troubling her remained bottled up inside.

Krista Taber testified that Cinnamon had not seemed as happy as she had before. But she struggled with specifics.

The best Krista could do was to answer A1 Forgette's question "Well, if you saw her five times, how many times was she unhappy in the five times?"

"Once." And that was the time Cinny had been ordered to leave the gathering of friends at Len Miller's house and come right home.

Krista had a vague recollection that Cinnamon had once told her she had taken fourteen aspirin. She didn't know why or when; Cinny had not even gotten sick. It wasn't a big deal.

Patti Bailey testified again, emphasizing how strange Cinnamon had acted the night of the shooting. Patti once more relived her terror as she tried to protect herself and Krystal from a berserk Cinnamon.

Patti stressed how moody and depressed Cinnamon had been, how much time she spent carrying on conversations with imaginary friends. "She'd be talking to them and say, 'What do you think, Maynard?'"

And then, of course, there were the sinister Oscar and Aunt Bertha, all invisible, all imaginary, but according to Patti, very real to Cinny.

Manuela Brown took the stand to testify as to her granddaughter's bizarre behavior. She had taken care of Cinny weekdays when her granddaughter was about four.

"Describe her demeanor when she was with you," Forgette urged, "if you will."

"Very quiet. She very seldom smiled, you know, not as happy as she was when the marriage was happy and everybody wasa""

Forgette cut her off before she launched into a rehash of Brenda and David's divorce a decade earlier.

Asked about Cinnamon's state of mind when she lived on Ocean Breeze Drive, Manuela shook her head and sighed. "Sometimes she'd be happy and sometimes kind of moody, like she was depressed a lot of times."

Manuela too brought up the ubiquitous Maynard, the invisible friend. Members of the gallery stifled giggles as the stout lady explained how Cinnamon teased her.

"She asked me to come upstairsa"she wanted me to meet her friend. And I thought maybe it was a hamster or somethinga"kids usually have hamsters or guinea pigs or something. When I went upstairs, I was going to sit on the bed and she said, "Don't! Be sure you don't sit on Maynard."

Manuela saw no humor in that at all. "We were going to the Target Store in the van once, all of us, and she says, 'Grandma, be sure you don't sit on Maynard.'"

Cinnamon Brown had not slit her wrists nor run naked down Main Street nor babbled gibberish. She had done nothing that any normal teenagera"with a well-developed sense of humora"might not do. Teenagers are moody and often depressed. As hard as A1 Forgette fought to prove Cinnamon psychotic, he had so little to work with.

"Call Dr. Howell!"

Cinnamon Brown's relatives and friends had scoured their memories for remembrances of some significant aberration on her part. And had come up with virtually nothing. Dr. Thomas Patrick Howell, a clinical psychologist employed by the Orange County Department of Mental Health, would be the first professional to testify for the defense.

For almost three years, Dr. Howell had been a.s.signed to do court-authorized psychological evaluations to diagnose disturbed adolescents and help in crisis intervention. In the month after Linda's murder, Howell had examined Cinnamon, and he had also talked to David Brown and to Juvenile Hall staff members. He had worked with only a brief summary of the case and had not accessed police records for more specific details.

"The interview with her biological father, Mr. David Brown, was for what purpose?" Forgette asked.

". . . To get some type of developmental history, family history, and understanding of what was occurring in the family, psychosocial stressors, any problems in the family configuration that thea""

"So you relied on Mr. Brown essentially for family history as much as you could?" Forgette cut in.

"Yes, I did."

What Dr. Howell had gotten from Cinnamon's father was akin to a miner striking a vein of pure golda"a profusion of mental pathology. Brown had arrived an hour late for his appointment, seemed frazzled, disheveleda"but clean. He had explained his many ailmentsa"hypertension, ulcerated colon, allergies, bronchitis, and he was obviously anxious.

Brown praised his father and d.a.m.ned his mother, blaming her for most of his own emotional problems. Although he could not reconstruct dates for Dr. Howell, he talked of his suicidal thoughts and three hospitalizations. He blamed Brenda as much as his mother.

As for his marriage to Linda, he described it as "perfect, a good marriage without any real problems."

Testifying now, the psychologist talked of that interview with Brown. "Mr. Brown provided me with an extensive history of patterns of physical abuse, s.e.xual abuse, and violence and drug abuse contained within his own family and within himself."

"Well, are these things relevant to evaluating Cinnamon?" Forgette asked.

"Yeah, I think they're relevant because they had some impact upon her emotional makeup in terms of learning how aggression is to be handled and in learning how to deal with crisis situations.. . . One area that was specifically important was that he [Brown] had three psychiatric hospital admissions ... he indicated that he had threatened to kill himself and to also kill Cinnamon's mother with a gun at one time during this period after their divorce. And that he had a propensity for using guns, and that on the request of friends and ... his therapist, he decided to place those in the custody of the Orange Police Department.

"Additionally, in terms of history, he was raised in a very physically abusive home, a home that provided very poorly for his needs and forced him to leave his home at the age of fourteen, a very young age for someone to be out on his own. So poor parental discipline, how to function normally in society ... As it applies to Cinnamon, parents learn how to deal with their children, how to discipline them, primarily from their experiences, from their own parents.

"He was probably a poor disciplinarian and was, in fact, probably physically abusive himself. I had to file a child abuse report on his statements to me that he had struck his daughter when she was twelve years old, pulling her pants down and spanking her with a belt so forcefully that he was trying to get her to cry and she steadfastly refused to do that.

"That experience shows once again a perpetuation of the poor parenting techniques that he had experienced, and in fact, that was found and doc.u.mented also by Cinnamon's statements to me."

Dr. Howell's information on his family background, on Brenda's, and on the Bailey family, all came from David Brown. In one sense, Howell seemed to have believed all of it. In another, he found Brown's statements contradictory.

"I feel that the father felt that his daughter was incapable of committing such an act [murder], and his quote was 'Cinnamon is about as capable of hurting others as I am!' And in my opinion, he is capable. His past history doc.u.ments that. So it was kind of a strange statement for him to make."

Dr. Howell did not think David Brown was dangerous, although his past history indicated a definite pattern of physical violence.

"Would Mr. Brown's mental state or mental status have any bearing, in your opinion, on Cinnamon or the way she would react to given situations?" Forgette asked.

Over a half dozen objections from Mike Maguire, and several rephrased questions from Forgette, Howell was allowed to answer. "Basically, you have an individual modeling different types of behavior. The child would notice her father. How does he handle conflict? How does he handle stress? How does he respond to the demands of the reality of living? And in fact, you might see the expression of inappropriate angera"you get angry and threaten to harm yourself. ... I think that was part of his pattern that he was sharing with me, that he had come from a disturbed family."

Few would argue that Cinnamon's family life had not been exactly normal. Yet, no one yet knew to what degree it was dysfunctional or what effect it had really had on her.

Dr. Howell had administered a number of psychological tests to Cinnamon herself: the s.h.i.+pley Inst.i.tute of Living Scale, Wide Range Achievement Test, the Benton Visual Retention Test., the Hand Test, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, the Thematic Apperception Test, and the Kinetic Family Drawing Test. They were given first to determine if there might be a need for an EEG or CAT scan to check for a possible organica"physicala"cause for her sudden eruption of violence.

Dr. Howell explained that he had found Cinnamon's behavior appropriate, and he detected no psychosis, no audiovisual hallucinations. Her intellectual functioning appeared to be within the average to above-average range.

But Cinnamon could not remember anything from the time she was watching television in the living room on Ocean Breeze Drive until she woke up seeing "doubles" and "triples" of everything. She denied to Howell that she had ever made a confession of murder to anyone.

She balked at the psychological tests Howell asked her to complete, and by the third one, she refused to continue, saying, "What are you going to do? Hit me?"

"She was able to regroup," Howell said, "contain her anger, and go on with the testing and complete it."

The test results convinced Howell and the chief psychiatrist, Dr. William Loomis, that Cinnamon was not suffering from any neurological damage and did not require the EEG or the CAT scan. To be on the safe side, she was given both.