Last Dance, Last Chance

psychiatric witness for the prosecution, Dr. Jack Klein, was questioned by prosecutor Lee. Klein, who had talked to Tuohmy on December 26, six days after the two murders and the kidnapping, found no overt evidence of abnormal mechanisms in the mind.
    “I would not have recommended that he be committed.”
    During rebuttal, Dr. Jarvis, the final witness for the prosecution, said that he had also talked to Denny Tuohmy on December 26. In subsequent years, he had talked to him five more times. Jarvis’s basic assumption was that the defendant was a psychopath—or, in current terminology, an antisocial personality.
    “If Tuohmy was as disturbed as he claims to have been, close associates would have noticed it. Even strangers would have noticed,” Jarvis said flatly. “Nobody saw it.”
    The day after Christmas, Tuohmy had admitted his crimes to Jarvis, saying he wanted to talk about them. In discussing his capture by sheriff’s deputies, he had remarked, “If I’d really wanted to hurt somebody, I could have kicked out the back window and shot the patrol car. I’m not insane, but I will be if things keep going like they have.”
    One aspect in the marathon courtroom debate on mental illness was brought out by the prosecution. All the psychiatrists agreed that the mere fact that an individual suffered from schizophrenia did not mean that he was unable to differentiate between right and wrong.
    Asked if they had ever been “fooled” by a patient mimicking mental illness, each doctor in turn admitted that he was sure he had been.
    The time had come for final arguments. Darrell Lee walked to the bar to speak for the prosecution.
    “In making your decision on this case, you must operate on a premise of reasonable doubt. A reasonable doubt can be written down: The defendant had a girlfriend; her mother was trying to drive them apart. He went to the woman’s house to get the right answers. He knocked her down. He fought her. He choked her. And then he heard her gurgling. He went to her and placed his full weight with his knees on her chest, and as Dr. Wilson says, he choked her for two minutes. He knew Cherie Mullins was not living with her mother, because he called her the minute she arrived at work the next morning. He packed all his clothes. He bought shells for his gun. He called Cherie’s place of employment and found she’d already left. He called Fritz Donohue and wanted to go to Kent. He led him up a lonely road—Denny Lee Tuohmy wasn’t lost; he knew all those roads, but he wanted a car. He couldn’t steal a car. Stolen cars are reported, but not if you kill your best friend and take his car.
    “Then the car wouldn’t start, so he took his gun and his shells and he ran. Why was the rifle loaded? He picked up that rifle and lifted it to his shoulder. He says that gun fired when he slipped, but the bolt action of that rifle takes many steps. Fritz was 5’7" and that gun was held five feet above the ground. Tuohmy shot him right through the head at a range of four or five feet.
    “The defendant once told Cherie Mullins that he had faked insanity in the Army because the hospital was more comfortable than the stockade. Why not then fake insanity again and wait in the hospital in comfort for seven years for witnesses against him to die and disperse?
    “You, as jurors, represent King County; you are six women and six men, a cross-section of our community. Capital punishment is an individual question for an individual case. When you think of Denny Lee Tuohmy, consider the safety of state employees, of fellow prisoners, of you and me. Consider what will happen when he escapes…because he has a history of escape. Think what it will mean to our fellow citizens if he should make another rampage throughout the county.”
     
    Tony Savage was a large, sardonic man with a wry sense of humor, and he lumbered like a bear when he walked. Now, he rose to address the jury for the final time on behalf of his client.
    Once again, he recounted the defendant’s history of mental aberration.
    “It borders on the ridiculous to say these killings were premeditated acts. He strangles the mother so he can resume the relationship with the daughter. That is supposed to be the act of a sane, rational, man? He wants to ‘escape’ to Tacoma so he can get a divorce from his wife and come back and marry his girlfriend.”
    Although the defense had contended that Tuohmy had now regained his sanity, Savage conceded, “I’m