Last Dance, Last Chance

court-watchers. They would not be disappointed. Stuntz ran a tight ship. Still, tempers flared and old hatreds among witnesses revived as special prosecutors Paul M. Acheson and Darrell E. Lee and defense attorney Anthony Savage, Jr., elicited testimony.
    The opposing attorneys had the most astute minds in criminal law in the county. Paul Acheson, who had resigned his position as assistant chief criminal deputy on January 1 to form a law partnership with two other winning ex-prosecutors, William Kinzel and C. N. (Nick) Marshall, had prosecuted over 200 felony cases during his tenure in the prosecutor’s office. He and Darrell Lee, another former assistant prosecutor, had been rehired to prosecute this case, which they had spent so many years preparing.
    Tony Savage, arguably the top criminal defense attorney in Seattle, had been appointed to defend Denny Tuohmy, who was now 36, by the office of the public defender. Savage was a most worthy opponent. He too had once been assistant chief criminal deputy in the prosecuting attorney’s office.
    Tony Savage was totally against the death penalty. He always would be. Some thirty years later, an older—and grayer—Savage would be appointed to defend Gary Ridgway, the man accused of being the infamous Green River Killer. Savage would be just as adamantly against the death penalty as he was when he was a young attorney.
    In his opening statement, special prosecutor Acheson recalled the grim events of December 19 and 20, for the jury. He said the defendant had confessed to King County detectives that he had strangled Mrs. Gladys Bodine, 58, in her Kent home because he believed she had broken up his romance with her daughter.
    The next day, Tuohmy had driven to a desolate road outside Kent and “accidentally” shot his best friend in the head. Fred Garfield “Fritz” Donohue, a hospital orderly, had been found with his skull literally “blasted to small fragments.” Tuohmy’s initial confessions had been enhanced, however, Acheson said, when he told a detective he had committed both murders “on purpose.”
    After shooting Donohue, Tuohmy had admitted that he ran through the densely wooded Kent area with his rifle and forced his way into the home of Mrs. Patricia Jacque. He had threatened her with the powerful gun and forced her to drive him from her house, leaving her three young children behind.
    With the rifle aimed at her head, Mrs. Jacque had been forced to drive a meandering route through the back roads of South King County until she was rescued uninjured by several sheriff’s deputies, who forced her automobile off the road and disarmed Tuohmy.
     
    Defense attorney Tony Savage, who had entered a plea for his client of innocent by reason of insanity at the time of his crimes, told the jurors that his client was mentally ill and that there would be no evidence from the state to show premeditation—an essential factor in proving first-degree murder.
    “From the day Denny Tuohmy was born, he lived anything but a happy life,” Savage told the jury, and the eloquent attorney promised that he would produce lengthy records supporting his contention that Denny Tuohmy was, and had been, a schizophrenic for many years. With voluminous medical and Army records, and with testimony from the defendant’s family, he would attempt to show that Tuohmy had acted as a man medically and legally insane. The diminutive defendant viewed the proceedings with equanimity as Tony Savage rose to present the case for the defense.
    The most difficult questions facing the jury were whether Denny Lee Tuohmy had been legally insane in December seven years before. Was he unable to distinguish right from wrong at the time he killed Gladys Bodine and Fritz Donohue?
    There is no machine, no recording device, no computer that can accurately evaluate the condition of the human mind at a specific time in the past. The jurors who would decide Tuohmy’s fate would have to rely on testimony from friends and relatives who knew the defendant before and after his crimes, testimony from strangers who dealt with him during that period, and testimony of expert witnesses in the field of psychiatry.
    Three questions had to be answered by the statements of witnesses: (1) Was Denny Lee Tuohmy legally insane at the time of the murders, insane during his stay at Eastern State Hospital, and still insane at the time of his trial, or had he recovered to a point where he could move freely within society? (2) Was