You know he was the one who hit her in the head that morning…The heat of passion caused grave injury to her head. But that’s not what killed her, is it? She was still alive when he threw her in that pool…But then instead of getting her any help after, you know, in the heat of passion as he told Folsom, hitting her like he did, he finishes her off. And that’s first-degree murder. And in some ways, what he did was very smart. He was smart to put her in the pool….
After listening to Cappleman’s 28-minutes of telling them that it was Doc and only Doc who could have killed Samira, Doc’s defense lawyer, Clyde Taylor, addressed the jury to deliver his closing arguments. He failed to explicitly point the finger at Gerald Gardner, but he certainly drew their attention to all the evidence that demonstrated that Samira had died minutes, not hours, before the 911 call came in. He began with the following:
Good morning ladies and gentleman…I appreciate, as does Dr. Frasch, the attention that you all have paid to everything that has gone on during the past three and now day four of this case. The case is one that is based upon reasonable doubt. His Honour has instructed you as to reasonable doubt and while all the jury instructions are important that you will have, I can’t help but have to go back and highlight again what His Honour told you what a reasonable doubt is. He said a reasonable doubt is not a mere possible doubt, a speculative, imaginary or force of doubt. Such a doubt must not influence you to return a verdict of not guilty if you have an abiding conviction of guilt.
On the other hand, if after carefully considering, comparing and weighing all the evidence, there is not an abiding conviction of guilt, or if you have a conviction, it is one which is not stable, but one which waivers or vacillates, then the charge is not proved beyond every reasonable doubt, and the instruction then says, and you must find the defendant not guilty because the doubt is reasonable.
… Reasonable doubt as to the guilt of the defendant in these cases may arise from the evidence, from conflicts in the evidence, or lack of evidence.
The jury disregarded this. But surely there were those among them who must have wondered how to reconcile the testimony of the jailhouse snitch who told them that Doc had confessed to him that he had struck his wife with a golf club with the testimony of the State’s own medical examiner who didn’t think that was what had caused the injuries.
In the two and a half, three years, that the State has had to put this case together, what you have is an awful lot of circumstantial evidence and speculation by the prosecutor as to what went on during the days before the death of Mrs. Frasch.
It was true. In her closing arguments, Cappleman had created a dramatic timeline for the jury of the weeks leading up to Samira’s death, peppering it with conflict.
Hard evidence, that we suggest to you, clearly leaves reasonable doubt after reasonable doubt after reasonable doubt in this case.
The jury didn’t think so, though, despite facts like when first responders did an accu chek to test Samira’s blood glucose levels, it caused bleeding. People who have been dead for over three hours don’t bleed. But they will if they have only been dead for a short period of time and the blood has not gelled yet.
Clyde Taylor, Doc’s lead defense lawyer, didn’t point out the implications of all of Gardner’s lies on the stand, but only made the case that his client couldn’t have done it. But Cappleman’s give-me-a-break-attitude was sufficient to convince the jurors that nobody else would have wanted to kill Samira, so despite all the evidence that Doc was over a hundred miles away at the time of her death, it still had to be him.
For my own part, the whole thing gave me the dismal sense that one can’t trust the State when it comes to justice. And one can’t trust the media when it comes to truth, since they just parroted the prosecutor, and after the verdict came back guilty, created numerous fabrications of their own to explain why Dr. Adam Frasch had killed his wife that day.
But everyone, as far as I could tell, was missing the obvious. Adam and Samira Frasch were a perfect match. They had tastes that matched, their house was their dream house, they were living like celebrities, travelling the world to promote Hyrah’s high end baby fashion line.
Everyone who knew Adam and Samira got a sense that this was a couple who might fight at times, but they always reconciled. The worst that could be said was that they had a love-hate relationship. Samira, as a former professional model, and Adam, as a successful podiatrist doing cutting-edge work in wound care for diabetic patients, were a combination that truly could live the American Dream.
They were soulmates in the realest sense, and even seven years after her death, Doc still referred to Samira as his beloved wife. His tragedy was that they were truly irreplaceable in each other’s lives.
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