RIPTA BUS STABBING TRIAL

Fate of defendant in Portsmouth stabbing rests with jury

Jim McGaw
Posted 3/22/16

NEWPORT — A jury in Newport Superior Court will begin deliberations Wednesday morning on the fate of Christopher R. James, who is charged with stabbing to death his ex-wife, Terry Chiodo of …

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RIPTA BUS STABBING TRIAL

Fate of defendant in Portsmouth stabbing rests with jury

Posted

NEWPORT — A jury in Newport Superior Court will begin deliberations Wednesday morning on the fate of Christopher R. James, who is charged with stabbing to death his ex-wife, Terry Chiodo of Portsmouth, aboard a RIPTA bus on Feb. 27, 2013.

A state prosecutor and a defense lawyer made their closing arguments in the trial Tuesday before Judge Sarah Taft-Carter, in a case that hinges on Mr. James’ mental capacity at the time of the killing.

The defense didn’t deny that Mr. James stabbed Ms. Chiodo, a mother of two who later died at Rhode Island Hospital, but attempted to establish that the defendant suffered from mental health issues so severe at the time of the attack that he could not have acted with premeditated first- or second-degree murder as the prosecution claims.

“Chris is guilty of manslaughter,” Assistant Public Defender Phil Vicini told the jury at the onset of his closing argument, adding that the state failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. James acted with malicious intent or with a specific plan to murder his ex-wife.

“Chris isn’t looking for a get-out-of-jail-free card,” Mr. Vicini said. “Chris took Terry Chiodo’s life. He took her from her family, he took her from her children.”

However, the defense attorney urged jurors to consider expert testimony about Mr. James’s background of childhood trauma, his many documented mental health issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), as well as alcohol abuse, which together made him act with “diminished capacity” when he stabbed Ms. Chiodo on the bus.

Last week a psychiatrist called by the defense, Dr. Wade Myers, a specialist in forensic and child psychiatry, detailed a litany of issues Mr. James suffered that he maintained added up to a confused and troubled mind the morning of Feb. 27, 2013.

“He has serious trauma symptoms that he’s been suffering, from many examples of child abuse,” said Dr. Meyers, who’s also the director of the Forensic Psychology Division at Hasbro Children’s Hospital and a Brown University professor.

Sister testifies of abuse

To further bolster that claim, the defense called as its last witness Tuesday Mr. James’s sister, Vanessa. She testified that the defendant’s older brother Charles — 10 years his senior — brutalized the defendant for years.

“Chris would be laying on the couch in my home, where Chris was invited to be, and (Charles) would throw him and punch him and kick him” if he wanted that seat, Ms. James testified.

The abuse had a lasting effect on Mr. James, she said. “I’ve seen Chris go through bad situations. There was a lot of negativity and a lot of disfunction,” she said, adding that shortly before the attack on his ex-wife, her brother isolated himself from everyone, living in his spare apartment “with no lights, no gas, no heat.”

Mind was ‘broken’

During his closing, Mr. Vicini further stated that members of the Portsmouth Police Department were so busy building a first-degree murder case against Mr. James that they refused to put the evidence in context. 

As for the knife that Mr. James brought with him on the bus, Dr. Meyers had testified that was partly explained by the defendant’s “hypervigilance,” an enhanced state of sensory sensitivity marked by increased anxiety. Mr. James routinely carried a weapon on him because he always felt unsafe, the attorney said.

“The state has done nothing to rebut the fact that Chris’s mind is broken,” Mr. Vicini said.

Even the moment in which the stabbing took place proves there was no premeditation on Mr. James’s part, the defense attorney said. Mr. James had heard his ex-wife say, “I just came from my boyfriend’s home,” when his emotions “exploded” and he acted in a compulsive manner, Mr. Vicini said.

“He was grabbing the (stop) cord with his right hand and pushing Terry away with his left, stabbing her in the process,” he said, adding that Mr. James was trying to escape the scene. “This is not the act of a man who had been planning this for an evening, or hours.”

Prosecution responds

In his closing argument, Special Assistant Attorney General John E. Corrigan said the state had proven first-degree murder beyond a reasonable doubt, and he took aim at Dr. Meyers's testimony.

“He brought to you a psychiatric delicatessen of maladies,” Mr Corrigan said.

Mr. James formed “specific intent” to murder his ex-wife when he tried to visit her the night before in Newport, went home and picked out a knife from his apartment, and boarded the bus the next day at Kennedy Plaza.

Although the defense claims Mr. James always carried a weapon with him, it was usually a box-cutter or utility knife, said the prosecutor. 

Then he held up the knife with the seven-inch blade that Mr. James used to kill his ex-wife. “That’s not this,” he said. “He selected an instrument that was adequate to the task he had set himself to.”

Dr. Meyers, he said, based his entire “doctrine” on the fact that a passenger said he overheard Ms. Chiodo tell her ex-husband that she had just come from her boyfriend’s.

“That is not a scientific theory; it should be rejected,” he said.

Mr. Corrigan pointed to the testimony of Dr. Martin Kelly, a Massachusetts psychiatrist whom the state called to rebut Dr. Myers. Dr. Kelly said Mr. James showed no signs of post-traumatic stress disorder or bipolar disorder, nor did he suffer from diminished capacity to the point where he couldn’t form specific intent at the time of the stabbing.

Mr. Corrigan also pointed to a report by Dr. Marvin Bauermeister, a psychiatrist at the Adult Correctional Institutions who’s known Mr. James since 2006. After examining the defendant the day after the stabbing, Dr. Bauermeister said there was no evidence that Mr. James suffered from any “major mental disorder.”

The many letters Mr. James wrote also disprove any major mental health issues, Mr. Corrigan said. “This is a person in full possession of his intellect and all of his faculties,” he said.

That includes the text messages he sent Ms. Chiodo, including this one the previous night, Mr. Corrigan said: “Consider yourself dead. You will ever see your grandkids grow.”

“This is not ambiguous. There is no mistaking what this message means,” Mr. Corrigan said, adding that every word was spelled perfectly. “He had to choose every word, he had to enter it into this device and then press ‘send.’ Terry’s death warrant issued.”

Juror excused

Early during Tuesday’s proceedings, the judge dismissed a male juror after it was learned he had a conversation Friday with Dr. Kelly.

Because of that conversation the defense called for a mistrial but the judge, who said she was not immediately made aware of the situation, declined the motion.

“The cure for this is not a mistrial. The cure is to dismiss the juror,” Judge Taft-Carter said.

The defense had also asked for a mistrial on Friday, after Mr. Corrigan asked Dr. Kelly whether he thought Mr. James was intoxicated at the time of the stabbing. The defense objected, but the jury heard Dr. Kelly’s answer before the judge could rule. (The judge didn’t allow Dr. Meyers to answer a similar question posed by the defense.)

After a lengthy sidebar, the judge sustained the defense objection. Mr. Resini agreed to withdraw his motion for a mistrial if the judge instructed the jury to ignore Mr. Corrigan’s question and Dr. Kelly’s answer, which she did.

Another juror was dismissed from the proceedings Friday because he was suffering from the flu. Two alternates filled in for the jurors who left the proceedings.

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