Perfect Victim by Carla Norton, Christine McGuire Page B

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    Mcguire started almost immediately with the kidnap, and within a few minutes Janice had set the tone for the rest of the day. Frequently wiping a nervous hand across her face, avoiding her husband’s eyes, she responded after long, empty pauses — or sometimes not at all. She often offered nothing more than, “I can’t remember,” or “I don’t know.” And she spoke so softly that more than once the judge had to ask her to speak up.
    For Mcguire, “it was like pulling teeth.” She finally resorted to leading questions, which only provoked objections from the defense and admonitions from the bench.
    After long and tedious questioning, the prosecutor elicited a recounting of the kidnap and the first several months of captivity, having Mrs. Hooker identify the knife, the head box, a whip, and the Bible. But when she came to the slavery contract, Janice became even less responsive. She replied in hushed monosyllables and claimed to know very little about the contract or how it came to be signed.
    Though she tried to appear calm, the diminutive prosecutor was furious. During the course of her direct examination she had to refresh Janice’s recollection twice, and Jan’s unwillingness to talk at least doubled the time it took to present the case.
    With so many lengthy pauses and dead-end questions, the day dragged by. On the surface the prelim was proceeding at a numbingly slow pace, but Mcguire felt an underlying sense of urgency.
    Slogging through Jan’s testimony, she feared the case against Hooker was coming out as unconvincing and fragmentary. Somehow, she needed to shake Jan up.
    During recesses Mcguire went back to the jury room and tried to bolster some kind of allegiance with Jan, hoping to break down her resistance.
    “I know this is taking a lot of courage on your part, Janice. I know it’s not easy to testify against your husband. But it’s very important that you be clear in your answers and tell the court exactly what you told police.”
    “Okay,” Jan answered dully. “I’ll be careful, think more about my answers before — I say them.”
    Mcguire gnashed her teeth. Did Janice really think she was being cooperative? Or was this just her way of frustrating the prosecutor? Mcguire couldn’t tell, and she didn’t want to risk a confrontation. It was bad enough that Janice was being so mulish; it would be worse to have her hostile.
    Janice Hooker’s attorney, Ron Mclver, a man so warmhearted it’s hard to believe he’s a lawyer, sympathized with the difficulty his colleague was having with his client. He came back to the jury room and tried to lend Mcguire support, joining in the pep talks: “We know you’re nervous, Janice. You’re doing fine.”
    Privately, he told Mcguire that Jan had been vacillating up to the very last minute. The night before, he said, he thought she was going to back down.
    That was the bright side: Bad as she was, at least Janice was on the stand.
    But whatever the two attorneys said, it seemed to have no effect on the torpid Mrs. Hooker. Her testimony resumed at the same wearisome pace.
    When Papendick began his crossexamination, Jan was more responsive. Her monosyllabic responses became complete, if short, sentences. It was if she were testifying for the defense rather than for the prosecution.
    Still, her memory lapses continued, and Mr. Papendick finally zeroed in on the reason.
    “Are you under any medication today?”
    “Yes, I am.”
    “What medication have you taken?”
    “Xanax, Desyrel.”
    Janice had been taking these two drugs-Xanax, a “mood elevator” or antianxiety drug, said to stop spontaneous and situational panic attacks, and Desyrel, an antidepressant-since September. Because appearing in court put her under additional stress, she’d decided to take a double dosage, which explained her excruciating slowness. But Papendick used this information to attack Jan’s credibility.
    “Do you think it affects your ability to remember