The trial of Raynella Dossett-Leath fascinates me: it’s a mystery writer’s dream. I have a great deal to say about the potential of this trial for a true whodunit plot, but today I want to comment on something that happened in the prosecution’s case: some interesting jury questions.

The CNN commentator, Jack Ford (a former prosecutor and defense attorney), commented that no lawyers like it when jurors are permitted to ask questions. He said lawyers often carefully tiptoe around certain issues and are aghast when jurors are permitted to ask questions about those issues, as they are permitted to do in Tennessee where the trial is being conducted. (Those are my words, not Mr. Ford’s.)

If I were a lawyer I would be grateful for these questions, because they reveal what the jury is thinking. A defense attorney, in particular, can use these questions to help shape his case—especially when the questions are asked during the prosecution’s primary case.

In the Dossett-Leath trial, the jurors asked some interesting questions about certain potentially lethal drugs found in the victim’s body (remember, cause of death was a bullet in the brain). Mr. Ford characterized these questions as “pro prosecution.” But I wonder if that is true.

The questions for the most part revolved around certain drugs that are normally used in pre-operative situations (I believe) to sedate a patient. The victim was several times hospitalized in the two or three years before his death for a variety of reasons, one of which was erratic behavior that was investigated as incipient Alzheimer's. The autopsy found potentially lethal doses of the drugs in the victim’s body.

The jurors wanted to explore the ways in which these drugs could have entered the victim’s system, because neither side in the trial had clarified this. Both sides seemed to understand that this information could “go either way.” The prosecution probably fears that the jury will think the victim was self-medicating and possibly even trying to kill himself with these drugs. When the drugs didn’t “work,” he shot himself. The defense probably fears that the jury will think the defendant (a nurse) was slowly trying to poison her husband and when it didn’t work she finally snapped and shot him.

But the wise jury wanted to ask the coroner who performed the autopsy what she thought.

In my humble, non-legal, opinion, the coroner did not answer the jury's questions. But if I were the defense attorney, I would think long and hard about these questions.

When the defense case begins, these questions should be addressed.

To return briefly to my “reasonable doubt” theme, I found an interesting tidbit when researching the history of the phrase:

• The anonymous (1816) The Theory of Presumptive Proof, says, “The fact of poisoning ought to have been established beyond a shadow of doubt, before any person was convicted as a poisoner.”

The prosecution in this Dossett-Leath trial is implying that the defendant is a “poisoner” as well as a shooter. But there is no proof that poisoning occurred. The victim died of gunshot wounds.

Hmm. I can’t help but think of Dorothy L. Sayers’ Strong Poison.