Cry Rape: The True Story of One Woman's Harrowing Quest for Justice

33. Closing Arguments

33 Closing Arguments Judy Schwaemle kept it as simple as she could. The jury, she said, had just two issues to decide: were the crimes in this case committed, and did Joseph Bong commit them? The evidence, she assured, led to only one answer. As to the first issue, Schwaemle staked her case on the credibility of a single witness. Patty, she said, had come to court and told the same story she had told before to the 911 operator, to Jill Poarch, to the police, to her friends and family, in depositions, and at the preliminary hearing. For six and a half years, she had stuck to this story, with only one exception : October 2. She stuck to it despite all of the hardship it entailed. “If these crimes hadn’t happened to her,” Schwaemle told the jury, “she could have given it up a long time ago. And frankly, who could have blamed her?” Patty sat in the courtroom’s front row, with Misty and other family members, throughout these closing arguments. Yes, there were “trivial inconsistencies” in Patty’s account, admitted Schwaemle. But this was to be expected for a story told so many times to so many listeners, each of whom interpreted things differently. All these perceived inconsistencies were then used against her. Still, the hardest thing for Patty to bear were the words she had “uttered in a moment of hopelessness, isolation, and despair.” Of course she knew, as well as anyone , that her recantation had undermined her credibility. And still, said Schwaemle, she continued to seek justice, enduring the humiliation, “because she wants you to find the truth.” Consider how Patty had cried spontaneously on the witness stand, recalling what the rapist had said about her daughter. Consider the 911 248 call. How could that have been an act? And then there was the crime scene itself. “Let’s look at the physical evidence,” said Schwaemle. “Let’s do what Tom Woodmansee should have done, but didn’t.” First, there was the empty bottle of Body Splash, which in the photo shown to jurors was partially covered by a sock. “Who left that there?” The rapist, she speculated, had used this sock to wipe fingerprints off the items he touched—the alarm clock, the phone, the money bag, and, finally, this bottle. But Woodmansee could not have considered this possibility because the crime scene photos were not even developed until 1998, long after he abandoned work on the case. If Woodmansee had done his job, argued Schwaemle, he would have realized that the bottom fitted sheet that had been on Patty’s bed was not among the items collected from the crime scene, nor was it left behind . Didn’t it make sense, she said, that a rapist who pulled the sheets off the bed may have taken this with him to avoid leaving evidence? Maybe he used it to wrap up the knife, condom, and condom wrapper. Maybe this is why there was not more blood found from the cut on Patty’s hand. This was a rapist who knew what he was doing. He wore a condom. He wore sweatpants that could easily be pulled down with one hand while the other held a knife. He took the fitted sheet with him when he left. Said Schwaemle, “This is a smart, calculating, careful predator.” But instead of realizing this, Woodmansee botched the investigation and leapt to the wrong conclusion. He decided there “should be blood everywhere” because there was blood on the pillow and on the phone, but he never even asked what phone Patty used. And he never had the top bedsheet collected from the crime scene examined. When this was finally done, the following April, a crime lab analyst spotted visible semen stains the first time she looked at it. Even the fact that it was a tiny amount of semen corroborated Patty’s account. If Woodmansee had considered the physical evidence, he would have realized that Patty was telling the truth. “Instead,” said Schwaemle, “his disregard of that evidence led him to a false conclusion [and] led him to create bad evidence”—Patty’s recantation. He brought all of his mistaken beliefs and false assumptions and dumped them on her during his interrogation. It was no surprise that Patty gave in. “People have confessed to a lot worse than lying,” said Schwaemle. Closing Arguments 249 • “People have...