Fox Is Framed by Smith Lachlan

Author:Smith, Lachlan [Smith, Lachlan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, Suspense, Crime
ISBN: 9780802123503
Amazon: 0802123503
Goodreads: 23168303
Publisher: Mysterious Press
Published: 2015-04-07T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

Nina began by describing the crime from the point of view of the defense, telling of the “male intruder” who, after entering the apartment, had raped Caroline Maxwell. “She had bruising on her thighs, wrists, and neck, a skinned knee. The autopsy found a broken nail.

“Afterward, the rapist seized a nearby baseball bat and savagely beat her, focusing his blows on her face. The first few would have been fatal but he dealt her many more.” She gave brief treatment to the fingerprints wiped from the baseball bat and my discovery of the body.

I gave a tiny nod of acknowledgment but kept my gaze focused on Nina. “Despite evidence showing that this murder must have been committed by a stranger, the police from the start focused their energies on Lawrence Maxwell. Within hours, they arrested him. They never considered any other suspect for this crime.

“The presence of the intruder was immediately written out of the story the police and prosecution chose to tell. Mr. Maxwell was inserted in the rapist’s place, the easiest answer for the least possible effort. But an answer without any regard for the actual facts of the crime, and without any thought for the safety of the community in which a killer continued to roam at large.

“In Mr. Maxwell’s first trial twenty-one years ago, there was no mention of the physical evidence showing that Caroline Maxwell had been raped. That evidence, as you’ve heard, was withheld from the defense. The biological evidence, the semen that was found in her body, was subsequently destroyed. We can’t know whom that evidence would now have pointed to.

“We know for certain that the person who raped Mrs. Maxwell was not her husband. The blood type of the individual who left the semen in her body was recorded in the original lab report that was hidden from the defense. Unlike the jurors in the first trial, you’ll have the chance to examine the carbon copy of the original report that was discovered in the medical examiner’s files, and you’ll see that the man who left the semen in Caroline Maxwell’s body is blood type A. Mr. Maxwell’s blood type is O. You don’t need an MD-PhD to see that’s not a match.

“Twenty-one years ago, of course, Mr. Maxwell couldn’t show that the blood types didn’t match, because he didn’t have the evidence or the report. It was hidden from him intentionally by Gary Coles, the DA, who saw that it would undermine his case. The result was that Mr. Maxwell never learned that the semen of another man had been found in his wife’s body, that she’d been raped before she was murdered. Mr. Maxwell was convicted. Of course he was. He was convicted as a result of the worst kind of cynical abuse of power, the kind of miscarriage of justice that simply isn’t supposed to happen in the United States.

“Well, it happened here.”

Next, she summarized Lawrence’s relationship with Bell in prison, including his role in helping free him and the state’s decision not to retry Bell.

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