The Ouija Board Murder Trial

In 1993, London police found the bodies of newlyweds Harry and Nicola Fuller in their home in East Sussex, England.  Although Mr. Fuller, a 45 year old car dealer, was known to hoard “wads” of cash, police found little money at the home. The killer had shot Mr. Fuller once in the back.  Four separate shots took out his 27 year old wife.  The last bullet shattered her jaw and head as she called 999 for help.  The dispatcher thought she was hearing children playing and did not route the call to police.

Stephen Young stood trial for the double homicide.  The night before rendering their verdict, and allegedly after a drunken party at the hotel where they were sequestered, four members of the jury consulted a Ouija Board to ask Mr. Fuller’s spirit to identify his murderer.  Having lost the Board’s planchete, the four used an upturned wineglass to spell out the answer from Mr. Fuller.  The spirit – or spirits – identified Stephen Young as the killer.

Shortly after the trial, the court learned about the Ouija Board verdict and ordered a new trial for Mr. Young.  The second jury – without the benefit of a Ouija Board – convicted Mr. Young.  So, I ask you, based on this evidence, is the Ouija Board reliable?

If you require further evidence of its reliability, consider the manner in which the Ouija Board became patented.  Elijah Jefferson Bond applied to patent the Board in 1890.  The patent official initially refused to issue a patent because he did not believe that the Board actually communicated with the spirit world.  Bond suggested that they put the Board to a test.  The official agreed to issue the patent if the Board could answer a question – how to spell the official’s last name.  Bond put the question to the Board and amazingly – assuming the officer’s last name wasn’t Jones or Smith- the Board correctly spelled the bureaucrat’s surname.  The patent issued.  As you contemplate the wonder of this last tidbit, please disregard published claims that Bond, referred to by skeptics as a “patent attorney,” probably knew the officer’s last name from prior dealings with the office.  The ABA created the Patent Law section in 1893, three years AFTER the Ouija Board’s patent.  Accordingly, Bond was not a “patent attorney.”  It is true, however, that Bond was a lawyer who had previously patented many devices.  

 If you are still not convinced of the reliability of the Ouija Board, consider the recent research of well-respected cognitive psychologists who claim to have discovered the “inner zombie.”  Assume you are driving down one of two familiar routes that you take when you visit a friend.  Along the way, you think about the good times you’ve enjoyed with this person in the past.  When you arrive at her house, you can’t remember which route you took.  Scientists say that the “inner zombie” part of your brain did the driving.

Dr. Helene L. Gauchou, an imminent psychologist from the University of British Columbia, uses the Ouija Board to study this inner zombie.  She builds upon research conducted by Harvard psychologist Dr. Daniel Wegner.  She found that people who used a Ouija Board to answer obscure yes/no questions “got it right” 65% of the time.  Statistically, one would expect a 50% accuracy rate.  Scientifically, the 15% increase is significant.

I have no idea whether spirits or our own hands cause the movements that enable the Ouija Board to give us answers.  Perhaps, as ancient alien theorists have suggested, aliens from a far off galaxy are using the Ouija Board as a communication portal. Even without extra-terrestrial help, however, I can tell you one thing for sure. Although a jury’s use of a Quija Board may bring in the right verdict, it will certainly result in a mistrial.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

A Sudden Emergency

The man had been cheating on his wife for some time. One day, she became suspicious and followed her husband to a local trailer park.  There she saw a scantily clad female welcome him with a big kiss and drag him into the trailer.  After waiting an appropriate time – based on her experience with her soon to be ex-husband - the wife banged on the trailer door demanding to be let in.  The disheveled adulteress opened the door and insisted that she was home alone.  The wife barged past the trollop and stormed into the bedroom at the end of the hallway.  Not immediately seeing her husband among the bed sheets, she threw open the bedroom closet door. 

In the closet stood her naked husband tangled up among numerous coat hangers, shoes and skimpy clothes.  The wife screamed, “What the (numerous colorful expletives deleted) are you doing there!”

Faced with this sudden emergency, the husband answered as best as he could.

“Well,” he stammered, “Everyone’s gotta be somewhere.”

I’m sure he regretted the silly answer, but being cornered in a closet by his homicidal, screaming wife, I think he did pretty well for himself.  However, he wasn’t able to defend the adultery charge and the marriage was over. 

North Carolina law recognizes the “sudden emergency” defense.  If a person is faced with an unexpected emergency, the law considers the nature of the emergency in judging the reasonableness of the person’s conduct.  The defendant is not required to make the “wisest decision”, only a reasonable choice in view of the circumstances.

For example, assume you are driving northward.  Someone driving in the opposite direction on your street suddenly turns in front of you.  To avoid a collision, you swerve left, hoping to miss cars that may be traveling near you in the lane to your right and trying not to hit the car that just turned in front of you.  Unfortunately, you strike the car that turned into your lane.  The court would not hold you liable for damages to the car that you hit.  You did the best you could in the midst of the “sudden emergency.”

The North Carolina courts recently addressed another claim of “sudden emergency” in a medical negligence action.  Ms. Wiggins went into labor in June of 2005.  Hospital policy required a vaginal exam to be performed on a woman in labor before administering Pitocin to her.  The drug Pitocin induces and speeds up labor.  The exam would have made sure that all was well before the drug was given.  Ms. Wiggins’ doctor and nurses ignored that policy.

Five hours after the Pitocin began, a vaginal exam showed that the baby’s umbilical cord had “prolapsed” into the mother’s vagina cutting off oxygen to the baby.  An emergency C-section was performed, but the baby suffered severe brain damage due to lack of oxygen.

The defendants alleged that they were presented with a sudden emergency in this case and that they should not be required to meet the standard of care of a reasonably prudent physician or nurse who had plenty of time to consider the options.

The Court of Appeals ruled that the “sudden emergency” doctrine did not apply.  It reasoned that health care providers are trained to identify and treat possible medical complications and emergencies.  Accordingly, they should be able to make good choices in such instances.

I am a little confused by the case.  It would seem to me that the negligence occurred when the Pitocin was administered without first performing a vaginal exam as required by hospital policy.  When that mistake occurred, there was no emergency.  The emergency circumstances began five hours later when the prolapsed cord was detected.  From that point, it took 16 minutes to deliver the baby.   So, I don’t see why the sudden emergency doctrine ever came into play.

Nevertheless the court came to the same decision that I would have reached – the sudden emergency doctrine is not applicable to the Wiggins case.  But there is disturbing language in the opinion stating that the sudden emergency defense “is not applicable in medical negligence actions.”  We’ll have to continue to watch our courts for further instruction on this issue.

Looking back on it, I’m sure the philandering husband in our case felt he did the best he could when confronted by his “sudden emergency.”  However, like the defendants in the Wiggins case, it was his conduct before that “emergency” that triggered his problems.  As the old saying goes, “You stray – you pay.”

Liar! Liar! Pants On Fire!

The young man sitting in my office faced charges of marijuana possession.  The police had noticed the weed in his car during a routine traffic stop.  My client insisted that the weed wasn’t his and that he had no idea how it had gotten in his car.

“Is the car titled in your name?” I asked.

“Yes, it’s my car and I don’t let anyone else drive it,” he asserted.

“Do you keep it locked when you’re not driving it?”

“Yes, and nobody has the keys but me.”

“Do any of your friends smoke pot?”

“Absolutely NOT!”

“Well, now, Mr. Jones.  I believe you when you say the pot wasn’t yours, but do you think we have much of a chance selling this to the court?  I mean, it’s your car. You don’t let anyone else drive it and you keep it locked when you’re not driving it.  None of your friends smoke pot.  How’re you gonna explain how the pot got in the car?”

On due reflection, my client decided that even he didn’t believe his story.  Just moments earlier, he was ready to place his hand on the Bible and swear that it wasn’t his pot.  In the end, it wasn’t his concern about the morality of lying that slowed him down. It was the realization that no one would believe his lie.  If requiring a witness to take an oath doesn’t deter him from lying, why administer oaths?

Until 1985, North Carolina law defined an oath as a “token of the engagement to speak the truth and  . . . that if (the witness) should swerve from the truth, he may be made liable to that vengeance which he has imprecated on his own head.”  In addition to swearing oaths in court, our laws also require notaries to obtain an oath when they notarize certain important documents.  Affidavits, petitions, and other such documents contain the language “sworn to and subscribed before me.”

In a 1970 Fayetteville case, a patient sued her psychiatrist for false imprisonment when he had her committed to a mental hospital.  The court ruled that the doctor’s failure to actually take an oath when he signed the commitment petition was a violation of the patient’s right to due process and subjected the doctor to liability for false imprisonment. 

A few weeks ago, our appellate court again addressed the issue of administering oaths.  The biological mother of a baby boy signed a “relinquishment” placing the baby for adoption.  Later, she changed her mind and wanted to retrieve her son.  She argued that the document must be made under oath and that the notary had failed to administer an oath to her.

While the notary admittedly did not administer an oath, the adoption agency social worker had read the entire document to the mother – including the signature line which stated “I,   . . . being duly sworn hereby sign this document. . . .”  The court held that reading this language out loud to the mother satisfied the mandate that the document be signed under oath.

Despite this ruling, the court cautioned notaries that “the failure to administer an oath  . . . may result in a defective notarization.   Should this occur, the document  . . . may be invalidated and the underlying transaction voided.”  To administer the oath, the notary must require a “vow of truthfulness on penalty of perjury” while invoking a deity or using any form of the word “swear” or “affirm.”

So why does the law require oaths in connection with important documents and courtroom testimony?  Researchers have found that in a 10 minute conversation most of us will tell about three lies.  Children begin lying by the age of 2 or 3.  Six year old kids typically lie every 90 minutes.  Clearly, we’ve become a “generation of liars.”  Just as clearly, the court can’t throw all of us in jail.  Lawmakers have decided to reserve that punishment – and the jail cell – for those who lie under oath.

 The law defines “perjury” as giving a false statement “under oath” concerning a material fact.  Perjury is a felony punishable by a fine and imprisonment.  Many rich and famous people have been convicted of perjury.  Martha Stewart, head of the “It’s A Good Thing” empire ; Marion Jones, world famous runner; L’il Kim, popular rap star; Michael Deaver, aide to President Reagan; and John Mitchell, U.S. Attorney General under Richard Nixon all endured fines or imprisonment for lying under oath. 

Scientists are exploring ways of using MRI’s and other equipment to detect the liars amongst us.  Most certainly, other geniuses will work just as diligently to “beat” any technology devised to identify falsehoods.  Meanwhile, I probably need to confess that in my dealings with my pothead client, I was less than honest.  The truth is that I didn’t believe him when he denied the pot was his.  I think that was the only lie I told during that 10 minute conversation.  Thankfully, I wasn’t under oath at the time.