Thomas Fast and the Who Really Did It Defense
I started following CourtTV/TruTV as research for my writing. I had suffered through three excruciating days as a juror and wanted to write about the experience. For weeks, I tried to find a journalistic outlet for my opinions. Then I realized I really needed to put it into a mystery novel. Trials are fraught with unanswered questions that lead imaginative types like me to speculate. (BTW: The novel born of my jury duty, Verdict Déjà Vu, is now available as an ebook at Amazon and Smashwords.)
Surely, one of the most-frequent questions an imaginative juror must ask is, “If not the defendant, who did it?” And I have concluded after following several high-profile murder trials that defense attorneys often try to answer this question, too.
In the trial of Thomas Fast for the murder and dismemberment of his father’s third wife, the public defender has clearly decided to imply that the “whodunit” is the grieving father.
How is the jury taking this? Has this tactic (diversion) ever worked in a murder trial?
I’m hard-put to think of any successful uses of this tactic. Scott Peterson’s defense was very ineffective in implying that either a serial killer of pregnant women or snatchers-of-babies-from-the-womb really did it. I believe I recall that Lawyer Geragos actually promised the jury in his opening statement that he would produce the real killer.
Of course, the “Dream Team” did succeed in the first O.J.Simpson trial, and they did point the finger at drug dealers. I guess I have to call this a success, even though I believe the verdict was mainly produced by reasonable doubt, that is, an ineffective prosecution and possibly corrupt police.
In the recent Noura Jackson trial for stabbing her mother to death, while the defense brought out some intriguing DNA evidence of a third party’s presence at the scene, they failed to specifically suggest alternative scenarios. However, I didn’t follow the case carefully. My memory of this DNA evidence may be faulty or based on TruTV’s commentators, who always try to heighten suspense, even when the trial’s outcome is a foregone conclusion.
I also think the defense of Raynella Dossett-Leath (the Knoxville Black Widow) made a huge mistake by pointing an accusing finger at the victim’s daughter. By doing so, they admitted that the cause of death was homicide, not suicide.
In the Fast trial, if I were on the jury, I would find the defense attacks on the father, Bruce Fast, quite offensive. And if I were the public defender, rather than attacking the father as a suspect in the murder, I would attack him for betraying his son and possibly falsely accusing him—only that, not as a suspect.
The Difference between Celebrity Defendants and Everyone Else
Michael Jackson’s defense was able to turn the tables on his accusers, because Michael Jackson was a celebrity. Every jury member knew a great deal about Mr. Jackson—his complete biography. O.J. Simpson’s defense was able to turn the tables on the cops for the same reason.
Defendants like Thomas Fast are complete nonentities to their juries. As I’ve written many times before, the only way to save such defendants is to give them a biography the jury can empathize with. For example, from TruTV I learned Thomas Fast was once a military medic and a mortician. The defense seeks to keep this information from the jury, possibly to its own detriment.
However, since in my opinion (a distant, uninformed observer) this man is mentally ill, and since the prosecution has implied the motive for the crime was greed (to steal jewelry), I suspect the jury would be more inclined to view the defendant compassionately if the defense filled in the gaps in his past.
Did he develop schizophrenia in adolescence, or is his mental disability the result of PTSD from military experience? Combat medics are generally viewed as brave and heroic (even by juries)—so what went wrong in this man’s life?
The defense certainly needs to destroy the idea of premeditation in this crime. Perhaps they can find evidence that the victim was often unkind to the defendant and might have provoked him to sudden anger. Then the dismemberment would be viewed not as a ghoulish exercise for perverse reasons but as an attempt to conceal the crime. (In other words, they’ve got to go for second-degree murder, not first.)
Now, I realize that lawyers have to do what their clients tell them to some extent. And it seems to me that it is Thomas Fast who has fixated on his father as the culprit; it’s not his lawyer’s brainstorm. But the defense lawyer seems to me to have intentionally adopted his client’s delusion as a tactic. I feel his rhetoric has been entirely inappropriate. For example, his cross-examination of the father was cruel and sarcastic in the extreme. On the other hand, the prosecutor’s rhetoric has been impeccable.
And, in this rhetorician’s opinion, a trial is all about the rhetoric.
At least, that’s this non-lawyer’s opinion of the courtroom rhetoric in the Thomas Fast trial. And I would really—honestly—like it if the TruTV commentators quit teasing each segment with the question: “Or did the father do it?”
I disagree with you that the defense is hammering Bruce Fast to hard. However that is only because I/we have information that the jury might not have such as Bruce asked for the death penalty for his son Thomas.
This trial is so unbelievably interesting in that it could be by the planning of General Contractor Bruce Fast's planning. I get this feeling from how determined Bruce was to find his wife and then he sits back as soon as Thomas is in custody. Then again while Thomas is in jail trying to figure out how he can explain where he was because he was dumped and cannot produce that party, Lo & Behold item are found right beside a road in an area that had been searched 4 times prior and found nothing and he is in jail when this happens!
Come on, something smells hear!
Unfortunately we do not hear all the testimony and therefor how can we determine what the jury can be thinking??
Gerg Brohman, CGVS
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I have noticed that the testimony of prosecution witnesses seems to leave many unanswered questions, such as the ones you raised. But, as you say, we aren't hearing all the testimony. Initially I was confused by what the father said he did upon returning home--the timing, why he was calling his wife from his car, why he called the wife's best friend to meet him at the home late at night, and especially why his wife returned home a day earlier than he did from the Bahamas. It isn't clear, either, why he left the Lexus for his wife to drive, when it was his car.
It seems to me that lawyers often fail to connect all the dots. They either think the connections are obvious or they can't step back and view the case as an objective observer, as the jurors do.
However, the questions you raise don't particularly strike me as odd. The reason he panicked that night when he found his wife missing is that it was late at night and all the lights were on in the house, but the Lexus was gone. Few women would leave a house lighted up like that--certainly not late at night and probably not in the middle of the day, either, because they wouldn't have needed lights.
The fact that items were found in a previously searched area is easily explanable. It happens all the time. Animals smelled the decomposing flesh and dragged the bags around. I believe forensics can prove that.
The fact that he quit searching for his wife after his son was arrested makes sense to me, too. From the state of the house (lights, kitchen knives in the dishwasher when the wife always hand washed them--as I do--a few blood spatters, the missing Lexus) only a very naive person wouldn't think she was already dead and that his psychotic son was the most likely killer.
While you didn't mention it, the TruTV commentators mentioned another odd thing about the father, but I think I can understand that, too. He didn't produce the tapes from the home answering machine until shortly before the trial. At first I wondered about this. Then I decided he produced them only because he learned the defense was going to try to accuse him of killing his wife as soon as he got home from the airport. Most people who lose a loved one save the tapes on their home answering machine, because they contain recordings of their loved one's voice. The father didn't even consider parting with them until he was forced to by the defense.
I agree that the too-frequent breaks in the broadcast make many things about this case seem odd, or suspicious. But the father is clearly very emotional, not at all like a murderer. His wife was nice looking, but not particularly young. They haven't presented evidence yet that she was unfaithful to him. Maybe the defense will. But they were married for over thirty years, and in these times that tells me they loved each other.
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