Authors: M. William Phelps
Cold.
Without saying it, or providing evidence, it was clear that the prosecution believed Roseboro had maybe slipped a few milliliters of Benadryl into the kids’ late-night snacks.
Subtle evidence. It is part of every murder case. Here, Craig Stedman was convinced that the jury could come to only one conclusion based on all of this evidence.
Like the dawn-to-dusk light. How could anyone besides Michael Roseboro turn that light on or off?
It would be absurd to think anyone else killed Jan Roseboro.
And so that is how the next few days, save for the weekend in between, went in the
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
v.
Michael Alan Roseboro:
for those sitting, day in and day out, watching the proceedings, it seemed as though the state won every round. Not one witness or statement had gone against them. Not one piece of evidence disputed or was out of place.
Ending the state’s case on July 27, 2009, Stedman had
Dr. Wayne Ross talk about how Jan Roseboro died. Ross told his tale of pathology as Craig Stedman introduced graphic photographs, showing clearly how deep and brutal that gouge was on the back of Jan’s shaved head. It was no accidental tap. Whatever caused that injury to the back of Jan’s head had struck her with force and anger and violence.
Intruders, the insinuation was made clear, do not kill in this manner.
Ross brought a sense of authenticity to the trial, a true realization that Jan had been murdered in a fit of aggression and rage. This trial was no longer about an affair. It was now focused on murder—the victim no longer a headline in the newspapers, but a homicide victim on a slab of steel being dissected like an eighth-grade biology experiment.
At one point, Ross talked about drowning, saying, “It is a good way to hide murder.”
Then, in a dramatic turn of events, Dr. Ross stood in front of the jury box as Detective Keith Neff got up from his seat and walked toward him. Ross then put Neff into a choke hold like the one he believed Jan’s killer had used in order to demonstrate how, “like a vise, or nutcracker,” Jan’s killer squeezed her unconscious. Neff knew this hold from his jiujitsu experience. There were two or three jurors, Neff said, whom he looked at while under the choke hold, who became emotional watching the display.
“I was not aware we were going to do the demo,” Neff recalled. “So it caught me by surprise. The choke hold is common in jiujitsu, and I have been put in it many times. I never thought I would end up on the receiving end of this choke in open court, in front of a jury.”
After a long morning of medical testimony, wrapped around that one striking moment of Dr. Wayne Ross and Keith Neff acting out the murder, and Allan Sodomsky then trying to trip the doctor up on anything he could
manage (to no avail), Stedman introduced a litany of photographs and additional pieces of evidence. Then the DA stood.
“Judge,” Craig Stedman said, “with that, the commonwealth rests.”
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Jay Nigrini, Allan Sodomsky’s co-counsel, called Dr. Neil Allan Hoffman first. Hoffman was there to dispute how Jan Roseboro had died, and certainly had the credentials to argue an alternative theory. Hoffman had acquired his medical degree in 1967, the year Michael Roseboro was born. He was a pathologist at Reading Hospital. He had conducted over three thousand autopsies.
Hoffman had done a second autopsy on Jan Roseboro’s body. In doing so, he had come to, basically, the same conclusion (strangulation and drowning), agreeing with Dr. Wayne Ross on the cause, but disagreeing on how Jan had gotten her injuries.
Jan’s injuries, he said, “were caused by blunt impact to the head. By that, I mean either the head hit a blunt object or a blunt object hit the head, and there were multiple impacts”—and here came the major difference in opinions—“not necessarily all from the same source, or at the same time.”
The point was then made that Jan could have fallen or been pushed into the water. Hoffman mentioned that some of the injuries could have been “preexisting.”
Nigrini’s direct was brief. No need to bore the jury, or
tire them any more than necessary; the trial was beginning to get long and tedious.
Craig Stedman had the doctor talk about who hired him (Allan Sodomsky) and how much his services had cost the defendant.
“Twenty-five hundred, I believe,” Dr. Hoffman said.
“And are you getting three hundred and fifty dollars an hour today?”
“Yes.”
Stedman thought about that a moment. After calculating, he said, “So you’ve made over two thousand dollars sitting here today?”
“Perhaps, yes.”
“And I guess the longer I keep talking, the more you keep making. Is that right?”
The doctor didn’t answer.
Stedman, having made his point, moved on.
He ripped apart, medical report by medical report, every possible aspect of Dr. Neil Hoffman’s argument, leaving the jury to draw one conclusion: This guy was being paid to have a different opinion, which, when the facts were further explained, wasn’t all that much different from what the state’s medical examiner had uncovered. Jan Roseboro was murdered violently and died in that water, still breathing.
Allan Sodomsky called Zach Martin, one of Sam Roseboro’s friends, who was with Sam on July 22, 2008.
Zach testified that nothing seemed out of whack when he saw Mr. and Mrs. Roseboro by the pool. They seemed happy. They seemed at ease. Just an old married couple enjoying a night out at the pool.
Craig Stedman smartly focused on one item during
his cross-examination, asking Zach, “You didn’t see any scratches on the face of Mr. Roseboro during the period of time that you were there, did you, sir?” “No.”
A few more questions and Zach Martin was excused.
Jay Nigrini called Scott Eelman, the state’s forensic examiner. Nigrini was concerned about two hairs found by the pool that the state police’s forensic lab had refused to test.
Eelman explained that the hairs were found on the coping of the pool, and the lab refused to test them.
On cross, Eelman explained why.
There were no roots in the hairs. Testing them would be fruitless, a waste of taxpayer money.
Talk inside the courthouse as Michael Roseboro’s defense put on witnesses the following day, July 28, 2009, a Tuesday, was
When is this thing going to end?
There was not a chance Roseboro would be acquitted. Save for a stranger, walking into the courtroom, who proclaimed his guilt, Roseboro was finished.
Allan Sodomsky called Brandi Walls. She was as nervous as a child sitting outside the principal’s office. Sodomsky told Brandi to take a deep breath and relax.
Brandi had been a fire hall volunteer at the time Jan Roseboro was murdered. She was on the Roseboro property that night. Not yet eighteen years old, she was in training, and knew the Roseboro family.
The young woman told the jury that all the lights were on when she arrived, including the tiki torches. She said the time was 11:05
P.M.
when she got there, just minutes after Michael Roseboro had phoned 911. She
said Roseboro was “slightly calm,” and became much more stable after Sam arrived.
At one point, Brandi said she believed Michael was wearing “boxer length–type shorts.” And so, with that, Brandi’s presence had been established: she was there to toss out the claim that Roseboro was wearing his swimsuit, as nearly everyone else had testified.
When Craig Stedman questioned Brandi, she admitted she wasn’t sure if Roseboro was wearing boxers, shorts, or a swimsuit. She just didn’t know.
If this was all Roseboro had up his sleeve, he had better hope for that stranger to show up right about now; because a wet swimsuit was the least of his problems heading into the homestretch of this trial.
LCDA’s Office detective David Odenwalt took a seat in the witness stand next. Allan Sodomsky tried to get Odenwalt to admit he screwed up a report detailing that scream Cassandra Pope said she heard on the night Jan Roseboro was murdered. Odenwalt never backed down from what he reported. He had created a facsimile of what Cassie had told him.
Craig Stedman had Odenwalt reiterate this point.
Michael Roseboro’s defense called three more witnesses, then rested. It wasn’t even three o’clock yet. Still plenty of time left in the day.
The judge recessed until the following morning.
On Wednesday, July 29, 2009, court resumed. The judge announced that closing arguments were about to begin.
Allan Sodomsky went first.
Within the first two minutes, Sodomsky said “reasonable
doubt” eight times, hammering home his point that if jurors had
one
qualm of uncertainty, they would have to acquit.
“Let’s talk a minute about the
lie,”
Sodomsky said. “Let’s talk for a moment about the
big
lie. And I do not mean that facetiously…. Mr. Roseboro, Michael Roseboro, lied, and he cheated. But … he only lied about cheating.”
Craig Stedman smiled.
“I’m not asking you to go over there and pat him on the back and say, ‘It’s okay, don’t worry about it,’” Sodomsky continued. “Because it’s a disgrace. It’s a disgrace when you lie. It’s a disgrace when you lie, and, of course, when you lie about cheating—it’s even worse. But it isn’t cheating and lying, I guess, unless you lie about the cheating. And that’s what you have.”
Sodomsky toned down the swimsuit angle, arguing plaid versus patterns of colors that witnesses had described, asking if they were truly certain about what they had seen?
He said Michael’s daughter most certainly scratched his face in the pool that afternoon while they were playing basketball—only problem with this was that everyone else had disagreed, and Michael Roseboro was having sex all afternoon with Angie. He was not swimming with his kids.
He talked about how Michael was comforting and consoling everyone during those first few days after Jan’s death, which was why he never had a chance to grieve himself. He was in work mode, being the skilled undertaker even when it was his wife lying in the morgue awaiting preparation for cremation.
“Ladies and gentlemen, Michael Roseboro is a funeral director. Guess what he does for a living? He comforts and consoles others.”
The worst thing a defense attorney can do is carry on and on during his closing when the trial that jurors
have witnessed is leaning the way of the prosecution. There’s a pleading, begging quality to the argument, turning jurors away. Not to say Sodomsky could not fight for his client—and, boy, did he ever; the outcome here would not be a reflection on the quality of defense or the expert trial lawyer Sodomsky was and will always be—and a jury needed to understand that and be patient. But there comes a time when an attorney must consider that less is more. Sodomsky kept referring back to the state not proving motive. He did this, mainly, by mentioning Angie Funk as little as possible. (That lust Roseboro had for this woman. It overpowered him. Overtook his emotions. He was going to do anything to make it work and not lose all he had worked for. This had been clear throughout the trial. Not addressing the subject was an insult to the intelligence of jurors.)
When he finally did talk about Angie, Sodomsky said he couldn’t make sense out of a dream and lust turning a guy into a murderer.
“Six sexual rendezvous, thirty-nine days, ladies and gentlemen, and for
that
“—he raised his voice and then paused—“you orphan your children?”
No mention of the baby. Or that beach wedding with flowing gowns and the sun and surf and wind in their hair. Or of the fact that Roseboro was communicating with Angie, on some days, hundreds of times.
Sodomsky finished his closing where he started:
reasonable doubt.
It was stamped, he suggested, all over this case. Anywhere you looked. Questions unanswered. Evidence missing. A lot of he said/she said, lights on/lights off nonsense. None of it amounted to a man killing his wife as their children slept mere feet away inside the house. There is only
speculation
as to what occurred between that witching hour, ten to eleven, Sodomsky asserted.
“There is no
reason,
ladies and gentlemen. There is no
reason.
That’s your reasonable doubt.”
Allan Sodomsky’s closing had eaten up most of the morning session.
Court would resume, the judge said, at one o’clock.
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Craig Stedman had listened open-mindedly to Allan Sodomsky’s closing. The DA had even agreed with Sodomsky on one major point. Sodomsky had told the jury during his closing that it made little sense for a killer to “stop the carotid neck hold” once he had gotten his victim into it. That theory, proven by both doctors, flew in the face of common sense. Reasonably speaking, a random killer would have grabbed Jan by the neck and choked her to death, tossing her limp (dead) body into the pool, before stealing that jewelry Michael Roseboro had claimed went missing.
Thus, in effect, Stedman believed, Sodomsky had argued for the state’s case in bringing up this idea. Addressing the jury early into his closing, Stedman said, “It makes no sense for a random killer to stop the carotid neck hold once you’ve got your victim in that. It makes absolutely
no
sense!”
Then the prosecutor sketched out the scene for jurors.
“You’re a random killer. You’re there to kill her. You do kill her. You’ve got her in a position where she’s unconscious … keeping [the choke hold] going until she is dead. Absolutely. [Mr. Sodomsky] is
absolutely
right! It
makes no sense for a random killer to
stop
once he’s got her in that position.”
Then the drumroll and cymbal crash…. “But it
does
make sense,” Stedman said, raising his voice, “for
one
person to stop the carotid neck hold.
This
person,” he said thunderously, pointing to Roseboro. “You know why? Because he wants to make it
look
like an accident. You’ve got to stop the … neck hold before she dies so you can get her in the pool so she can gulp in water. If you kill her before—if you kill her
before
you put her in the pool … there’s no water in her lungs. There’s no drowning. There’s no accident.” He paused and lowered his voice. “You don’t get away with murder.”