To Tell The Truth

Monday, 05 September 2011 16:09 Last Updated on Monday, 05 September 2011 16:09 Written by Paul Alexander

In mid-July, I published Accused as a Kindle Single. The piece centers around Tommy Harris, a Houston police officer who was enjoying a decade-and-a-half-long career on the force. All of that changed in the early morning hours of the Fourth of July in 2009 when, through a series of events not instigated by him, he ended up in an altercation in the parking lot of a bar in Stafford, Texas, a suburb of Houston, during which a man, Sylvanus Okhueleigbe, died suddenly.

How he died—and why—would be the focal point of a highly dramatic trial that took place in March of 2011 in Fort Bend County, Texas, where the district attorney is John Healey, an unapologetically controversial public official solidly in the mold of Governor Rick Perry. In the trial, which resulted from a grand jury indictment of Harris for criminally negligent homicide, warring experts argued pointedly over the cause of Okhueleigbe’s death. This was not unusual since most trials find the prosecution and defense disagreeing over the fundamental circumstances of the event that lead to the trial in the first place. What was unusual was this. In a key portion of the trial, the prosecution’s star witness repeatedly committed acts of perjury.

Mary Anzalone, an assistant medical examiner for Harris County, had conducted the autopsy of Okhueleigbe. Five days following the autopsy, well before test results had come back to allow her to render informed opinions, Anzalone had a 38-minute telephone conversation with a police detective assigned to the case. In that call, which she did not know was being tape-recorded, she admitted to being biased against some police officers, suspicious of Harris in particular, and especially angry that he had “lawyered up.” “OK, fine,” she said, “then mine [her final finding] is going to be an asphyxia death, and it’s homicide, and they can explain it later.” Obviously, she had made up her mind weeks before she received all the test results necessary to make an authentic conclusion.

During the trial, defense attorney Aaron Suder asked Anazlone about the conversation. When the tape containing the conversation had been turned over to the defense in discovery, the prosecution had not listened to it, so they did not know the contents. As Suder asked Anzalone a barrage of questions about the conversation, Anzalone answered them enthusiastically but falsely. Once Suder played the tape in open court, Anzalone and the prosecution had to deal with the fact that she had committed numerous acts of perjury. It was bad enough she had failed to wait for adequate information to determine cause of death, but her flagrant willingness not to tell the truth on the stand seemed disturbing. After all, she is a public employee paid by the citizens of Harris County.

On April 7, the Houston Police Officers Union lodged a formal complaint with the Commissions Court of Harris County, the entity that oversees the medical examiner’s office. This prompted an investigation by the Harris County Attorney, Vince Ryan. Robert Soard, an executive assistant county attorney, confirmed to The Houston Chronicle that an investigation of Anzalone was underway. “We are looking into it,” he said at the time, “and interviewing all the appropriate folks.”

Gary Blankenship, the police union president, told the Chronicle reporter Anzalone should be fired. However, Dr. Dwayne Wolf, deputy chief medical examiner, defended her. “There’s nothing wrong with the autopsy report,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with the way she determined the manner and cause of death.” That may or may not be true, but Wolf never addressed what is not open for debate: Anzalone’s alarming decision to commit perjury.

There’s a reason why Wolf could dodge the subject. For some reason, the complaint filed by the police union stops short of accusing Anzalone of committing perjury. “We believe that impeachment evidence that was brought to light during the cross-examination of Dr. Anzalone by Officer Harris’s attorneys seriously underminded her credibility and the basis of her medical opinions.” The complaint did address the phone call about which she falsely testified. “In the phone conversation, Dr. Anzalone made a number of statements and comments evidencing significant biases and prejudices on her part that directly called into question the integrity of her medical opinions. The comments included statements indicating a personal bias against Officer Harris and his actions, certain racial prejudices on her part indicating a bias in favor of the decedent, and premature opinions and conclusions drawn by Dr. Anzalone about the decedent’s cause of death, undoubtedly influenced by her personal feelings and dispositions in the matter.”

Here’s what’s truly disconcerting about this case. If Anzalone committed perjury in the trial of Tommy Harris, how many more times in how many more cases did she not tell the truth on the stand? How many people have found themselves in prison because of her expert testimony? Have any of them ended up on Death Row? The report from the Harris County Attorney into Mary Anzalone will be released in September, but if Anzalone’s behavior on the witness stand is not addressed whatever the report says will remain lacking.

What I Think

Tuesday, 05 July 2011 16:02 Last Updated on Sunday, 10 July 2011 17:16 Written by Paul Alexander

Why The Casey Anthony Case Haunts Us

I am not a Texan but I’m the father of a Texan.

I’ll never forget the telephone call. I happened to be on the set of Urban Cowboy, which was shooting in Houston in the fall of 1979, when I checked in by phone with my wife, as I had been doing periodically all day, to learn that she had gone into labor early. I sped across Houston—not a small city—to arrive at Rosewood Hospital just in time to be whisked by the nursing staff into the delivery room. In no time, there she was—my daughter! After a nurse cleaned her off, she handed her to me. She felt so small and fragile as I held her in my arms. The moment—the first time I held my daughter—was and remains the defining event of my life.

I am not unique. Anyone who makes parenthood one, if not the, central focus of his or her life feels the same way. Because of this, from the day of her birth virtually until the day she went off to college, I could tell you, at any given time, where she was and what she was doing. I certainly could for the first three years of her life.

That’s why, I believe, the Casey Anthony first-degree murder trial captured the public’s imagination the way it did, making it a national, even international, sensation that became perhaps the most famous case in American legal history. At the core of this fascination is what Casey Anthony did for the 31 days after either her daughter Caylee went missing, as the disappearance of the child was first reported, or drowned accidentally in the family swimming pool, as the defense argued in the trial itself.

Her actions in those 31 days are actually well documented. On June 16, 2008, the last day Caylee was alive, Casey rented two movies with her boyfriend at Blockbuster, watched them with him at his apartment, and then spent the night with him, as if nothing unusual at all had transpired in her life. Then, over the next month, Casey continued to proceed in a normal fashion. She spent weekends and other nights with her boyfriend, visited nightclubs, entered a Hot Body contest on one night out, went shopping at stores like Target and Ikea, indulged in manicures, and got a tattoo on her shoulder that read “Bella Vita”—the Beautiful Life.

And sadly that’s what Casey thought she was doing for that month after her daughter’s demise—living the Beautiful Life. She never called 911 to report her daughter missing or accidentally drowned. Indeed, she avoided the subject of her daughter at all costs, repeatedly lying about Caylee’s whereabouts when asked by friends. Her mother finally called 911 herself after Casey had eluded her for a month, habitually sidestepping the issue of where Caylee was.

In the trial the defense argued that people respond to tragedy—and express grief—in different ways. Here is the problem. What Casey Anthony did for those 31 days is not an expression of grief, not according to any psychological model I’m aware of for a parent whose child held the central focus of his or her life. And that’s what’s haunting about this case, the reason why it has become the object of such emotional reactions. No loving parent I’ve met would ever—ever—act the way Casey Anthony did for 31 days starting on June 16, 2008. And, for me at least, that fact is not open to debate.

Nancy Grace, the in-your-face, no-holds-barred television personality who has driven much of the coverage of this case for the past three years, has been criticized for being an unapologetic advocate, especially after declaring at the time the Not Guilty verdicts were handed down, “Somewhere out there, the Devil is dancing tonight!” In her life, Grace has filled many roles—lawyer, prosecutor, author—but since November of 2007 she has been a mother. Today, her twins are slightly older than Caylee Anthony was when she died.

Murdered by Paul Alexander

For nearly a quarter-century, the Los Angeles Police Department considered the brutal 1986 killing of Sherri Rasmussen — a beautiful 29-year-old newlywed — as the byproduct of a botched robbery. But this true account reveals a cold case detective's startling discovery in 2009: Sherri had been murdered. And nothing could have shocked the detective more than the identity of the killer — a cold-blooded murderer that the LAPD already knew only too well.

Accused by Paul Alexander

In this true account, Accused introduces us to Tommy Harris, the 14 years veteran of the Houston Police force, his fight with a man outside a bar, a death, and the ensuing homicide trial. The district attorney had boasted, "Anyone can convict a guilty person, but it takes someone really good to convict an innocent one." Did Harris apply a naked chokehold or did the district attorney and his forensics team set up Harris?

Homicidal by Paul Alexander

Bestselling true-crime author Paul Alexander (Murdered, Accused) unravels the sordid narrative of the notorious "Grim Sleeper" serial killer, who left at least 10 women dead and terrorized Los Angeles for more than two decades.

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