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Because the state's next witness is not scheduled to arrive until 11:30am, Judge Ric Howard has called an early recess.
Scheduling witnesses "is an art, not a science," he said.
The state has another witness scheduled to testify tomorrow, but Prosecutor Ric Ridgway said they may rest their case today.
-- Elena Lesley
In his cross-examination of prosecution witness Harry McLaren, Defense Attorney Alan Fanter cast doubt on the motivations of those the psychologist had interviewed to assess Couey's retardation.
Was McLaren aware, he charged, that the owner of Emily's restaurant, where Couey had once worked, knew people in the Lunsfords' extended community? That a live video of the trial was being played in the establishment and a party was thrown when Couey was convicted?
"Anything's possible," McLaren said.
Fanter also questioned the reliability of Couey's sister. As a result of Couey's arrest, his sister's grandchildren had been moved from their mother's care. Anger might sway her to provide misleading information about her brother, Fanter said.
He pointed out that Couey's sister had lied about whether they had used cocaine on the night Jessica disappeared.
"So it doesn't surprise you that she might lie to you?" Fanter asked.
"No," McLaren responded.
-- Elena Lesley
The state's first rebuttal witness Harry McLaren, a forensic psychologist, is creating a far different picture of John Couey than jurors heard yesterday.
Instead of describing Couey as a childlike being, marred by a lack of smarts and abusive upbringing, McLaren has focused on his ability to function as an autonomous adult. He assessed Couey in February of 2005.
After interviewing a number of people who knew Couey -- relatives, former employers, corrections officers -- McLaren determined that Couey's adaptive functioning does not meet the threshold for mental retardation.
This is an important point, in terms of the retardation defense.
To prove retardation under the law, and thus evade the death penalty, attorneys must show that Couey has both a low IQ and insufficient adaptive functioning. In layman's terms, the latter means "a person's ability to get along in the world," Prosecutor Ric Ridgway clarified.
McLaren said former employers told him Couey was an effective construction worker, could move and think quickly on the job and even negotiated his salary. A corrections officer told him Couey checked out books at the jail's law library and he saw him reading them out loud to himself.
-- Elena Lesley
Judge Ric Howard started out the morning by asking John Couey again whether he wants to testify. Couey declined, though his response was barely intelligible.
Court regulars are buzzing this morning about whether the jury might deliberate as soon as today about a penalty for Couey. Jurors walked into the courtroom somewhat bleary-eyed, clutching manila envelopes that hold their notepads.
-- Elena Lesley
During his testimony, psychologist Robert Berland tried to explain why John Couey was not given a current IQ test until a few days before the trial -- even though he was hired by the defense in 2005.
He said he had administered a 1955 version of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale to Couey in July of 2006. This was to assess the defendant for brain damage, not IQ, he said, which was why he used an outdated test.
Couey scored an 85. A 70 is generally considered the cutoff for mental retardation.
However, because IQ tests become outdated around every decade, that means the score of 85 should probably be reduced by around 10 points to become accurate, Berland said. That would put Couey at 75, within the margin of error for the retardation cutoff.
But Berland said the idea of assessing Couey for retardation didn't occur to him until he came across an old "quick and dirty" Department of Corrections test that put Couey's IQ at 71.
"Oh my gosh," he said he responded. We'll have to assess Couey using a current test.
Then, Berland claims, he forgot about it.
Until a week before the trial.
"Something reminded me" he said, and he hurriedly contacted Dr. Richard Carpenter, asking him to test Couey using the most recent version of the WAIS.
Carpenter performed the assessment Feb. 8. Couey scored a 64. The trial started Feb. 12.
-- Elena Lesley
After showing jurors a pre-recorded statement from John Couey's aunt, the defense has rested its preliminary case. Proceedings will continue at 9am tomorrow.
Young John Couey suffered from neglect and exposure to inappropriate sexuality, psychologist Robert Berland testified.
Relatives told him that Couey's mother was intellectually limited, "childlike," and that she had to be given simple instructions in parenting. Rather than supporting her newborn's head, she would let it flop around until corrected. She also insisted on feeding Couey sugar water instead of milk because "he liked sugar water," Berland reported her telling relatives.
When Couey was around six, family members discovered blood in his underwear. Apparently he had not been circumcised and had developed an infection.
Though Berland said it was hard to get relatives to open up about inappropriate sexual matters, several did tell him that Couey had been molested. The psychologist also heard that a family member used to take Couey and his sister into the woods for a walk.
He would send Couey away and then have sex with his sister.
Couey said he always felt guilty about "not being able to protect her."
-- Elena Lesley
A number of incidents, reported by family and John Couey himself, suggest that the defendant could have suffered brain damage.
Even before he was born, Couey was at risk. His young mother was forced out of a moving vehicle around seven months into her pregnancy. Shortly after, she went into labor.
As a child, Couey suffered multiple incidents of abuse. His stepfather was infuriated by Couey's persistent bed-wetting, tying him to the bed and slamming his head in a door jam repeatedly. When he grew older, Couey did significant damage to his own mind through huffing, popping amphetamines and using other illicit substances.
"There is clear evidence of significant brain injury," Berland said.
-- Elena Lesley
Psychologist Robert Berland took the stand again, this time to describe, in detail, John Couey's alleged psychosis.
(Pool photo: Couey continues to etch drawings in the courtroom. Click on photo to enlarge.)
Personality tests, one conducted over ten years ago and the other given to Couey after Jessica Lunsford's death, showed the defendant trying to conceal his mental illness, Berland said. But results indicated he was chronically psychologically disturbed, or had "gotten used to being crazy," as Berland described it.
Despite his attempts to hide his mental illness, Couey did admit some hallucinations to Berland. He told the psychologist he heard voices and thought that an evil spirit had been giving him instructions since he was in his early teens.
Berland classified his psychological disturbance as mild to moderate. He's not standing on the street corner, "with long scraggly hair, talking to the sky." He can put gas in a car, pay the rent.
But that doesn't mean Couey doesn't hear noises that aren't there, or think that people are plotting against him, Berland said. Relatives reported that, from a young age, they saw Couey mumbling to himself.
Berland said that Couey also suffered from manic episodes, during which he would sometimes go days only sleeping a couple hours a night. He told the psychologist these had worsened in the months leading up to Jessica's disappearance.
-- Elena Lesley
In his cross-examination of Dr. Joseph Wu, Prosecutor Ric Ridgway asked what kind of diagnosis a doctor could make from a PET scan alone. In a vacuum. With no corroborating evidence.
Not much, Wu admitted.
Ridgway then asked where Wu had received the outside information he used, along with Couey's raw scans, to make a determination. Wu said the information had come from Robert Berland and Richard Carpenter, both also witnesses for the defense. He had received Carpenter's information only this morning.
Ridgway asked Wu whether he had testified for the defense or prosecution before in death penalty trials. The defense, Wu said.
He ended his questioning by asking whether every person with Couey's brain scan abnormality would kidnap, rape and murder a young girl. The answer was no.
-- Elena Lesley
Making a case for John Couey's "bad brain," Dr. Joseph Wu of the University of California at Irvine, showed scans of the defendant's brain function to jurors, contrasting it with images from a normal adult.
PET scans can be combined with other sources of information to make a clinical diagnosis.
Wu said he noted an asymmetry in the function of Couey's brain, which could be consistent with psychosis, mood disregulation and low IQ scores.
The temporal lobe, where Wu noted the significant asymmetry, can affect impulse control. Abnormalities of this kind are often associated with aggression and hypersexuality.
Inherent flaws in brain structure, combined with a bad rearing environment, can lead to a "catastrophic ability to regulate impulses," he said.
-- Elena Lesley
Judge Ric Howard has called an early lunch break. Court will reconvene at 1pm.
Linda "Susie" Arnett, John Couey's cousin, told jurors that she woke up to find Couey on top of her when he was around 10 years old. He was trying to take off her underwear.
Arnett told her mom what had happened, and Couey was sent to live with other relatives.
Though she was startled at the time, Arnett said she was never afraid of Couey.
Even as he got older "he reminded me of a little puppy," Arnett said. "He was still a child. Mentally, he was still a child."
-- Elena Lesley
Making a case for John Couey's limited mental capabilities, the defense called witnesses who knew Couey as a child, as well as experts who could testify to his deficiencies.
Couey's uncle, whose testimony was pre-recorded, said Couey was a shy child and suffered from an ear deformity.
Linda "Susie" Arnett, Couey's first cousin, described Couey as "small in stature" with "floppy ears" when he came to live with her family. He couldn't speak clearly and Arnett and her mother spent hours trying to teach him verbal skills.
Even after Arnett's mother had Couey's ears fixed surgically, "he just didn't fit in," Arnett said.
Couey and his sister were both in special education courses because of learning disabilities.
Dr. Richard Carpenter testified that a recent test put Couey's IQ at 64. A score of 70 is generally considered the cutoff for mental retardation by the American Psychiatric Association.
-- Elena Lesley
The state has rested its preliminary case. The defense will begin after a short recess.
Jessica's disappearance and death left other children terrified, said Debra Harmon, a guidance counselor at Homosassa Elementary School.
Though Harmon never actually knew Jessica, she was called as a victim impact witness by the state.
Homosassa is generally a sleepy community, not the kind of place where children are abducted from their own homes, buried in a neighbor's yard, she said.
"It is a horrible reality," Harmon read from a prepared statement, her voice breaking.
After Jessica's death, many young students slept on the floors of their parents' bedrooms, or even in their beds. They no longer felt protected, and began to question their own mortality.
"It affected the innocence of our children's lives," she said.
-- Elena Lesley
John Couey committed a horrible act.
But it was just the most gruesome chapter in a life marred by abuse, neglect, mental illness and even brain injury, Defense Attorney Alan Fanter told jurors in his opening statements.
"Nothing's going to undo what happened to Jessica," he said. At this time, members of the jury must assess where to go from here. In doing that, they need to consider how Couey got where he is today, Fanter said.
Couey was born premature to a 16-year-old mother unable to cope with parenthood. His father, an abusive alcoholic, once even pushed the child from a moving vehicle, and the only stable influence in Couey's life was his sister.
"He lived a life you wouldn't want for yourself," Fanter said.
Moreover, Couey suffers from untreated mental illness and has a functioning IQ of 64, he continued.
Sitting here today is a man "48 years old with the mind of a child," Fanter said.
Reporter John Frank has chronicled much of Couey's traumatic past in his article "Early pain set Couey on path of perversion"
Another recent story explores the defense's claims about Couey's mental capabilities: "Which Couey will they sentence?"
-- Elena Lesley
As Prosecutor Pete Magrino made his opening statements to the jury, he pointed out that he had failed to wish them a "good morning."
It's never a good day, he said, when the state goes before 12 citizens and asks them to put a fellow citizen to death. But in some cases, this request is necessary.
What John Couey did to Jessica Lunsford was "heinous, atrocious and cruel," Magrino said. It was also premeditated, he claimed.
The aggravating circumstances surrounding the case -- Couey's kidnap and rape of Jessica, her youth, his decision to bury her alive to hinder law enforcement -- far outweigh any mitigating factors that will be presented by the defense, Magrino said.
Some cases "cry out for a death recommendation because it's legally the right thing to do," Magrino said. This, he asserted, is one of those cases.
Jurors will hear both new and old evidence related to aggravating circumstances and listen to testimony from those who have been affected by Jessica's death.
Prosecutors say they should be finished presenting their case by lunch today, though they have one witness who won't be available until Thursday morning. Mark Lunsford will not be testifying.
-- Elena Lesley
After a respite from court proceedings, jurors are back in Courtroom 4-1 today for the start of sentencing. Judge Ric Howard is questioning them to make sure they weren't exposed to new information involving the case during their break.
So far, they've proved to be a reliable bunch.
After Howard welcomes jurors back, in his typical paternal manner, he rattles off a long list of queries: Have they done any independent investigation of the case? Have they discussed it with anyone? Were they able to avoid any related media coverage?
Whether out of a sense of civic responsibility, or a commitment to the case itself, these Miami jurors have stringently followed Howard's orders.
-- Elena Lesley
 Follow the latest developments in the murder trial of John Couey as compiled and reported by the staff of the St. Petersburg Times and tampabay.com. |
