Last Dance, Last Chance

Joel Daniels about Debbie’s “mental instability.”
    Ralph and Lauren’s court-appointed guardian, Theresa Lorenzo, asked the judge to bring them to court so that they could tell her what their wishes were, but Judge Mix said she was already aware that they wanted to come home to live with their mother. “I have to strive legally to keep them from risk,” she explained as she denied the request.
    But it was Debbie who testified endlessly. She answered every question put to her to the best of her memory, telling the truth, because if she lost her children, she would have no reason to go on.
    There was no disagreement that in February and March 1999, Debbie had been unstable—depressed, anxious, grieving, angry, and hopeless. The husband who had declared his undying love in December and remarried her the day he walked out of prison had left her after only a few months to be with another woman. For the purposes of these family court hearings, she had done the worst thing possible. After Anthony left her once more, to relieve her severe stress, she had taken ten to twelve Xanax capsules. Even though she had immediately realized that she’d done something foolish and dangerous and phoned for help, her “suicide attempt” kept coming back to haunt her again and again.
    It didn’t matter that a psychiatric examination she had submitted to found her reaction “transient and expectable” given the situation. That one act of desperation, quickly over, clung to her like moss on a tree in deep shade.
    Now, as Debbie testified, the questions grew more and more daunting. Joel Daniels asked her a dozen ways who had poisoned her, while Denis Scinta and Frank Sedita objected to his attempts to slide over into the criminal case. Debbie could not prove who had poisoned her, but she answered, “I don’t believe my children did this to me, and I don’t believe my mother did this to me, and I did not do it to myself. The only other person was my husband.”
    So many attorneys were in the room that it made Debbie dizzy. Denis had told her that she didn’t have to answer questions about things she didn’t remember, and so much of the summer of 1999 was obscured by a fog of pain and disorientation.
    The examination by Joel Daniels would have confused even a seasoned witness, and Debbie struggled to keep from giving the wrong answer to his rapid-fire questions. He wanted to know who had told her that her husband had poisoned her. He suggested that her cousin Denis Scinta had put the idea into her head.
    Through discovery, Daniels had Debbie’s medical records, and he went tediously—and accusingly—through all the pills and capsules she had taken over the past several years while she had five neck surgeries and was in severe pain. As the hours wore on, it was as if she were somehow guilty because she had been injured in the boat accident and then because she had been poisoned. She could not remember each incident of visits to a doctor, emergency room treatments, surgeries, hospitalizations. No one could have.
    Denis Scinta reminded the judge that Debbie needed to change position because the blood would not circulate in her legs if she sat too long in one spot. Debbie’s hand shook so much that when she needed water, her cousin had to hold the paper cup to her mouth.
    Ironically, she had been called by Anthony’s attorney, and it was her attorney, her cousin Denis, who cross-examined her. It was a relief when Daniels sat down and Denis walked toward her, smiling. Denis managed to move deftly as he questioned her so that he blocked her view of Anthony, who stared at her as if he could hypnotize her into retracting her statements. But even for Denis, Debbie could not recall much of the previous summer. She had been so sick. Her memory cleared somewhat as the questions moved on to the autumn.
    “When you went home in October,” Denis asked, “what were you able to do with your hands?”
    “Basically nothing.”
    “And how about your feet? What were you able to do in terms of walking or using your legs?”
    “They sent me home with a walker…it wasn’t a regular walker.”
    “Would you try to describe for the Court what walker you were on at the beginning of your return home?”
    “The walker was probably twelve inches higher than a regular walker, and my hands had to be strapped into it. I couldn’t grip.”
    “When you went home, were you able to feed yourself?”
    “No, I was not.”
    Debbie explained that