2009-12-10

State takes death penalty off table in Homicide Trial

By Judith Pannebaker

The capital murder trial of Karl Hodson Jr., a former resident of Lakehills, for the 2007 stabbing death of pizza deliveryman Leon Poe, 27, in Kendall County began Monday, Dec. 7, in Kerrville.

The first day was taken up by jury selection. During voir dire, Assistant District Attorney Lucy Cavazos Wilke, of the 216th Judicial District, told jurors that the death penalty had been waived. She explained that if found guilty of capital murder, Hodson, 24, would be receive automatic life in prison without the possibility of parole.

ME’s findings
On Tuesday, Dec. 8, Bexar County Medical Examiner Jennifer Rulon, MD, offered the most compelling testimony. Due to their potentially prejudicial nature, defense attorney Kurt Rudkin attempted to keep photographs taken by Rulon at Poe’s autopsy from being introduced into evidence. However, 216th District Judge Keith Williams overruled Rudkin’s objections.

Photographs, Rulon said, are routinely taken to reflect accurately the condition of the body at the time of the autopsy. “Knowing they would be viewed by the jury, I selected the least offensive photos,” she said.

However, since Poe’s body had been abandoned in the back of his car covered with plastic trash bags in the July heat for at least 24 hours, Rulon also noted the body was badly decomposed.

“After death, bacteria in the intestine swim in the bloodstream and begin to consume the body. Decomposition is a function of temperature and temperatures in a car in the summer with windows rolled up can reach 120º to 140º,” she said.

To questioning by assistant prosecutor Joe Davis, Rulon related that Poe’s feet had been bound with “ligatures made from black tape wrapped tightly around his ankles.”

To preserve potential evidence, investigating law enforcement officers from the Kendall County Sheriff’s Office had placed paper bags around both of Poe’s hands.

“I opened the paper bags and looked for trace evidence,” Rulon said. She also clipped the deceased’s nails and collected hairs from both hands, which she preserved for later examination at the Texas Department of Public Safety Crime Lab in Austin. She also collected and preserved hair-like fibers from Poe’s apron, left pants leg and one stuck to the duct tape around his ankles, as well as a piece of tape on the back of his shirt.

“My job is to collect any trace evidence from the body and submit it to criminalists,” Rulon explained.

Multiple injuries noted
She noted two stab wounds or “sharp force injuries” on Poe’s body – one in the chest area and another in the back of the right forearm near the elbow.

Others, which Rulon described as “generic blunt force injuries” included minor contusions and bruises on his shins, the back of his left wrist and the back of his left arm.

Additionally, she also discovered five incised wounds, a cut on Poe’s left forehead near the hairline and four cuts on his left palm. “A knife would be consistent with the wounds found on the body,” Rulon testified.

She determined the cause of death to be a stab wound located low on the chest, just above the stomach area. “The knife went straight through the breastbone into the heart, esophagus and the aorta, which caused bleeding into the left chest cavity,” Rulon said. “It took force to get the knife through the bone.”

According to the medical examiner, there was no way to determine how long Poe had remained conscious after the fatal blow. She estimated the heart could continue to beat a minute or two, but eventually, due to a drop in blood pressure, Poe would have lost consciousness. Also, Rulon could not determine the order of the wounds, but asserted that all had been inflicted around the time of his death.

She also characterized the three-inch gash to Poe’s right forearm and the four incisions on his left palm as “defensive-like” wounds, “as if he had put up his hands to defend himself.”
‘Clearly a homicide’

Rulon continued, “The cause of Mr. Poe’s death was a stab wound and the manner of his death was clearly a homicide – consistent with a single thrust of a knife through his heart. Mr. Poe’s death was absolutely not consistent with injuries in an accidental death. I cannot think of an accident scenario that makes sense. This is clearly a homicide.”

Rulon’s findings become problematic for Rudkin’s client. In an interview that has repeatedly been ruled admissible in the trial, Hodson reportedly stated that during the commission of a robbery, he had accidentally slipped on gravel and stabbed Poe.

In his cross-examination, Rudkin failed to elicit from Rulon that death from a single stab wound is uncommon. “In my 13 years as a forensic pathologist, I’ve done between 4,000 and 4,500 autopsies. This is a very common type of homicide in our office,” she explained.

Refusing to split hairs between calling Poe’s death a “homicide” and “murder,” Rulon insisted, “I’m not qualified in that area,” adding, “I’ll let the judicial system do their thing.”

She also said that even with the body’s advanced state of decomposition, she failed to find evidence of facial trauma consistent with a beating or strangulation.

Reasonable doubt?
Rulon also deflected Rudkin’s attempt to characterize the stab wound as having gone through soft cartilage rather than bone. “The fatal stab would went straight in about four inches from the front of the body to the back. It went through the zyphoid process, the bottom third of the sternum, which is made up of a combination of cartilage and bone,” she said.

“It would take force to get through that structure. (A knife) had to be forcefully thrust through that bony structure, but it wouldn’t be difficult to hit the right ventricle of the heart, the esophagus and the aorta along the midline of the body,” Rulon concluded.

In recent media reports, Rudkin and the defendant’s parents have theorized that Hodson’s girlfriend and capital murder co-defendant, Jenilee A. Sheppard, 22, of San Antonio, is the actual killer.

A possible defense scenario – and one that would create reasonable doubt in the minds of jurors – would be to argue that after stabbing Poe through the heart, Sheppard persuaded a lovesick Hodson to take the blame for the murder.

A trial date for Sheppard, who is being defended by Kerrville attorney Harold Danford, has not been set.