Nobody Knows But You by Anica Mrose Rissi

Author:Anica Mrose Rissi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2020-08-03T00:00:00+00:00

November 2

Maplewash County Post-Gazette

THE JURY HEARD OPENING STATEMENTS MONDAY IN the trial of Elaine Baxter, the sixteen-year-old who stands accused of killing her sometimes boyfriend, Jackson Winter, at the teen camp where they met last summer.

Prosecutor Marsha Davis told jurors she expected witnesses would describe Elaine Baxter, known as “Lainie,” as “behaving erratically” in the days leading up to the morning of August 14, when Jackson Winter’s body was recovered from Jaspertown Lake along Camp Cavanick property, hours after he apparently suffered a fatal blow to the head. “Over the course of this trial, a picture will unfold,” Davis claimed, of Baxter as a “charismatic, beautiful, and seemingly fun-loving teenager” who is “deeply troubled and deceitful” beneath her appealing surface.

The prosecution promised to establish a pattern of Baxter’s alleged “untrustworthy” behavior and submit “relevant evidence” that she has “a disturbing history of elaborate deceptions,” “lying for fun,” and “obsessive, jealous behavior exhibited toward Jackson Winter before his death.”

Davis ended her opening statement by telling jurors they would hear testimony that Baxter’s own initial statements given to police officers the morning after Winter’s body was found, were “by her own later admission, fully misleading and untrue,” and “clearly reveal that, that morning, Elaine Baxter had something significant to hide.”

Baxter’s defense attorney, Michael Desir, told jurors that the prosecution’s case “is built on rumors and speculation.” He urged jurors to pay close attention to the “actual facts and real evidence,” and predicted the state would be “flailing” in its efforts to establish a reasonable motive for the alleged attack.

Desir acknowledged the defendant wasn’t always “a perfect angel or even an ideal girlfriend,” and that she sometimes “made things up out of regular teenage boredom” and “the normal and healthy adolescent temptation to push boundaries, and see what one can get away with.” But that doesn’t, he insisted, make her a murderer.

“What teenager hasn’t at some point found themself the subject of cruel, untrue rumors they’d be hard-pressed to disprove?” Desir asked, while reminding jurors, “We are trying this case in a court of law, not a high school hallway or an internet bubble.” He ended his opening statement by saying, “The state must be held to a higher standard of proof. When pressed for real evidence, for hard facts that add up, their case will fall short—and you, the jury, will surely find the obvious choice is to acquit.”

Jackson Winter’s family sat quietly in the center of the courtroom throughout the opening statements. Their focus, a spokesman said later, was “on the enormous loss of their beloved son Jackson, who can never be returned to them, and their hope for the deliverance of justice.”

Davis is set to begin presenting her case against Baxter when the trial resumes on Tuesday.

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