Trial
The trial of John
Norman Collins for the murder of Karen
Sue Beineman began in the Washtenaw
County Court Building on June 2, 1970. He was tried in Ann Arbor, before Judge John
Conlin.
Initial jury selection began on this date, and would
continue until July 9. Several motions by the defense counsel throughout the
jury selection process that the trial should be moved to a jurisdiction outside
of Washtenaw County was rejected by
Judge John Conlin, who ruled on June
29 that the 14 members of the jury selected from Ann Arbor by this date and considered satisfactory by both counsels
would serve as jurors throughout the trial. Upon recommendation from his
lawyers, Collins chose not to testify in his own defense.
The prosecutors at Collins' trial, William Delhey, and Booker
Williams opted to charge Collins only with the murder of Karen Sue Beineman, with the state
contending that she had been murdered by Collins in the basement of the Leik
household. In his opening statement to
the jury on July 20, Delhey outlined the prosecution's contention that the
evidence to be presented would form a clear pattern indicating that Collins had
been in the company of Karen Sue
Beineman at the time she was last seen alive by Mrs. Joan Goshe and her assistant; that he had taken her to the
home of his own uncle, where he had tortured and beaten the girl before
strangling her to death at this location; and that he had then discarded her
body, before attempting to persuade his roommate to provide him with a false
alibi.
The two primary questions before the jury, Delhey stated,
would be the accuracy of eyewitnesses who would be called to testify and,
ultimately, whether the more than 500 hair samples found upon Beineman's
panties matched the hair clippings later recovered from the basement of
Collins' uncle. Delhey also stated the prosecution's intent to prove that
Collins had had sole access to his uncle's home and basement on the afternoon
of Beineman's disappearance, and although he had made concerted efforts to
remove physical evidence from the crime scene, blood samples recovered from
this location was a match for the blood type of the victim. Delhey formally
closed his opening statement to the jury by requesting they return a verdict of
life imprisonment with no possibility of parole.
The defense contended that although the murder of Beineman
was a "vicious, sadistic
attack" which had degraded her body "almost beyond human comprehension,” the prosecution's case
that Collins was the perpetrator of the crime was a weak one at best. Defense
attorneys Neil Fink and Joseph Louisell, in their opening
statement, labeled the eyewitnesses' identification of both Collins and his
motorcycle as flawed and unreliable, and stated their intentions to introduce
several witnesses who would provide an alibi for their client in the early
afternoon hours the prosecution contended Karen
Sue Beineman had been abducted and murdered. Collins' attorneys also
alleged these alibi witnesses had been subjected to police harassment, that the
tests conducted upon the hair samples found upon Beineman's panties were
unreliable, and that Collins' uncle, Sgt.
David Leik had refused to divulge the blood type(s) of his family to
defense attorneys.
Witness testimony
Formal witness testimony began on July 20, 1970. The first
two witnesses to testify were Beineman's two roommates; each of whom discussed
Beineman's character, and her movements on the day of her disappearance. These
two witnesses were followed by the individual who had found her body on July
26, and the medical examiner called to the crime scene, Dr. Craig Barlow. Barlow testified as to the fact that although
Beineman had been deceased for almost 72 hours, her body had only lain in the
location where she was found for 24 hours before discovery.
The following day, Washtenaw
County Sheriff Douglas Harvey testified as to the discovery of Beineman's
body, her subsequent autopsy, and his obtaining an updated composite drawing of
the suspect with whom Beineman had last been seen alive from Mrs. Joan Goshe and her assistant, Patricia Spaulding. Both women had
agreed this composite drawing was accurate and only disagreed as to the structure
of the suspect's chin. Furthermore,
Goshe had identified a photograph shown to her of Collins as being the man she
had seen with Beineman.
To expand on their allegations that certain defense
witnesses had been subjected to police harassment and that eyewitness accounts
had been flawed, defense attorney Joseph
Louisell subjected Sheriff Harvey to a 45-minute cross-examination as to
his contact with the two eyewitnesses prior to completion of this composite
drawing. In this cross-examination, Sheriff Harvey admitted to having driven
Mrs. Goshe and her assistant to East
Lansing to view the updated composite drawing of the suspect in Beineman's
murder, and that he had shown photographs of various suspects, including
Collins, to Goshe, prior to her formally identifying Collins in a lineup.
Three days after both counsels had begun introducing witnesses;
Joan Goshe was called to testify on
behalf of the prosecution. In response to questioning from prosecution
attorneys, Goshe described how, on the afternoon of her disappearance, Beineman
had informed her she had accepted a lift home from the man waiting outside the
wig shop. When asked to formally identify the individual upon whose motorcycle
she had observed waiting outside her shop, Goshe pointed directly at John Norman Collins. The testimony of Joan Goshe was further supported by Patricia Spaulding, who testified as to
having observed Collins for between three and four minutes as he had waited for
Beineman to return to his motorcycle.
Although subject to intense cross-examination by defense
attorney Neil Fink as to the
credibility of her testimony, Goshe remained insistent in her identification of
John Norman Collins as being the
individual who had waited for Karen Sue
Beineman to return to his motorcycle. In an effort to discredit Goshe's
testimony, Fink diverted questioning as to the model of the motorcycle she had seen
outside her shop, to which Goshe conceded her initial belief as to the model
being a Honda 350 was inaccurate. In
response to questions as to her personal character, Goshe further conceded she
had previously lied under oath on two occasions (one instance of which was
unrelated to the trial).
On July 27, Arnold
Davis testified as to his being in the company of Collins throughout the
late afternoon and evening of July 23, 1969 (hours after Beineman had last been
seen alive). The following day, following a consultation with opposing
counsels, Judge John Conlin allowed
Davis to testify as to having observed Collins hurriedly remove a laundry box
containing women's clothing and jewelry from his apartment and place this box
in the trunk of his car two days prior to his arrest. (The prosecution had initially intended to
question Davis in detail as to each of the contents of this laundry box upon
the grounds that the contents Davis had previously described to investigators
may include Beineman's missing cut-off blue jeans; however, Collins' attorneys
successfully objected to this motion upon the grounds that Collins was solely
on trial for the murder of Karen Sue
Beineman, and this testimony could suggest a link to the six other victims
of the Michigan Murders then-linked
to the same perpetrator. The prosecution was therefore limited to questioning
Davis with regards to whether the contents of this box included women's
clothing and jewelry, without specifically describing any particular item.)
Also to testify at the trial on behalf of the prosecution
was Marjorie Barnes, who testified
on July 30 to having observed Collins leaving his uncle's home carrying a
laundry box covered with a blanket on either July 24 or 25, 1969. In addition, Mrs. Sandra Leik testified to Collins being given a key to the
family home in order that he could feed the family's German shepherd. Mrs. Leik also testified to having cut her
children's hair in her basement two days prior to embarking on a vacation with
her family, and that when they had returned home, she had noticed that several
items from her basement had been moved, that she had discovered a wet, soiled
cloth containing hair aside from a laundry tub, and those other items—including a
nearly-full bottle of ammonia—were missing.
The same day, the head of the state police crime laboratory,
Sgt. Kennard Christensen, testified
as to the results of forensic tests conducted in the Leik family basement: the
results of these tests confirmed evidence of bloodstains in four separate
areas. In response to defense questioning, Sgt. Christensen further stated that
although partial fingerprints had been discovered in the basement of the Leik
family, no full fingerprints had been
discovered in the basement which had not belonged to any Leik family member.
On July 31, the prosecution introduced two forensic
witnesses to testify regarding the physical evidence indicating the victim had
been killed inside the Leik family home. The first witness to testify was the
head of the Michigan Health Department's
Crime Detective Laboratory, Walter Holz, who testified as to the human hair
clippings found inside Karen Sue
Beineman's panties being an exact match to those recovered from the basement
of Sgt. David Leik. Although subjected to intense
cross-examination by Joseph Louisell
as to the reliability of his findings, Holz remained adamant the color, length,
type and diameter of the hair samples found upon Beineman's panties were a
precise match to those found in the Leik family basement. Immediately following the testimony of Walter Holz, a colleague of his named Curtis Fluker testified that the blood
type of the tissue samples recovered from the Leik family basement matched that
of Karen Sue Beineman.
The 47th and final witness to appear for the prosecution at
Collins' trial was a University of
California chemistry professor named Dr.
Vincent P. Guinn, who testified on August 5 as to his conclusions that the
hair samples retrieved from Beineman's panties bore "a remarkable similarity" to those retrieved from the
Leik household and that, upon statistical calculations he had begun the
previous month, the odds of erroneous matching of the hair samples earlier
testified to by Walter Holz were
considerably low. Upon cross-examination, Dr. Guinn did agree with defense
attorney Neil Fink that a
statistical analysis of hair mixtures had never been attempted in a court of
law, although he remained firm that his applications had been performed via
scientific principles.
Defense witnesses
Five independent witnesses were called to testify on behalf
of the defense as to Collins' whereabouts on the dates Karen Sue Beineman had disappeared and her body had been found.
Four of these witnesses were employees of a motorcycle sales firm which Collins
had visited on the afternoon of Beineman's disappearance. Each testified on
August 6. The timing of these four witnesses' recollections as to when Collins
had actually entered the motorcycle shop varied slightly, although the consensus
among three of these men was that he had entered the premises as they were
eating lunch, which they typically did anytime between 1:00 and 2:00 p.m.
Upon cross-examination, the time factor of these witnesses
as to when they had actually seen Collins expanded to between noon and 2:00
p.m. Two of these employees had signed statements affirming the time Collins
had entered their premises was approximately 2:00 p.m., although one of these
witnesses stated he had been repeatedly harassed by an Ann Arbor Police Sergeant as to the actual time he had seen Collins.
On August 8, Collins' attorneys introduced a renowned
neutron analyst named Dr. Robert Jervis
in an effort to discredit the earlier testimony of the forensic experts who had
testified on behalf of the prosecution. Dr. Jervis testified as to his belief
that insufficient chemical samples had existed in the samples retrieved from
the basement which the prosecution scientists had worked with to form their
conclusions, and that to form a conclusive neutron activation analysis, at
least ten components in a hair sample must be compared, whereas only five
components had been used by the prosecution's forensic experts to determine
their findings. The forensic experts who had testified on behalf of the
prosecution, Dr. Jervis stated, had therefore based their conclusions on "insufficient data".
Dr. Jervis' conclusions were supported by a private
consultant named Auseklis Perkons,
and a Massachusetts-based Director of
Forensic Research named Samuel Golub.
Perkons testified as to his belief that the hair samples retrieved from Beineman's
panties were of a "different
origin" than the hair samples retrieved from the Leiks' basement,[130]
whereas Golub stated that because he had found only one single fiber upon the
victim's panties, the likelihood of her undergarments accumulating these hairs
from a basement was extremely remote. In rebuttal to the testimony of Dr.
Golub, the defense recalled Dr. Walter
Holz on August 12 to testify as to the samples he had himself taken to Dr.
Golub for identification; Dr. Holz affirmed that he had taken twenty magnified
photographic slides of samples retrieved from Beineman's panties to Dr. Golub's
laboratory for analysis, and that they had contained numerous man-made fibrous
materials.
Closing arguments
On August 13, both prosecution and defense attorneys
delivered their closing arguments to the jury (these arguments concluded the
following day). Prosecuting attorney William Delhey argued first, recounting the
evidence the state had presented and Collins' conscious efforts to destroy
physical evidence at the Leik household before telling the jury that their
collective application of common sense could only dictate a guilty verdict.
Following the state's closing argument, both Neil Fink and Joseph Louisell delivered separate closing arguments on behalf of
the defense, describing Collins as a "young
victim of circumstances" and dismissing much of the evidence presented
as "fuzzy allegations,"
with Louisell being particularly scornful as to the testimony of Walter Holz, to whose conclusions, he
asserted, the prosecution hinged its entire case. In a brief final argument on
behalf of the prosecution, Booker
Williams re-emphasized the physical and circumstantial evidence against
Collins, before accusing the defense attorneys of attempting to sow doubt in,
particularly, the forensic evidence presented by the prosecution.
In a final address to the jury on August 14, Judge Conlin
informed the panel they had two choices in the verdict they could render:
Guilty of first-degree murder, or not guilty. The jury then retired to consider their
verdict, and would deliberate for over 27 hours over a period of three days,
with additional five-and-a-half hours devoted to their re-reading portions
of testimony, before announcing they had reached their verdict.
Conviction and
incarceration
On August 19, 1970, John
Norman Collins was unanimously found guilty of the first-degree murder of Karen Sue Beineman. He remained impassive upon hearing the jury
foreman announce the verdict, although many spectators gasped audibly, and his
mother and sister left the courtroom in tears. Formal sentencing was scheduled
for 8:30 a.m. August 28. On this date,
Collins was formally sentenced to life imprisonment with no possibility of
parole. Prior to his passing sentence, Judge Conlin asked Collins if he wished
to address the court before mandatory life sentencing was imposed. In response,
Collins rose from his chair and made the following speech:
I have two things to
say: I think they [the jury] conscientiously tried to give me a fair trial. The
jury did not take its task lightly, but, I think things were blown out of
proportion. The circumstances surrounding this case prevented me from getting a
fair trial. It was a travesty of justice that took place in this courtroom. I
hope someday it will be corrected; second, I never knew a girl named Karen Sue
Beineman; I never had a conversation with her. I never took her to a wig shop;
I never took her to my uncle's home ... I never took her life.
Collins was then informed by Judge Conlin that if the
jurors' verdict was wrong, the error would be corrected in due course. He was
then sentenced to serve a term of life imprisonment with hard labor, in
solitary confinement, at Southern
Michigan Prison.
Upon receipt of the guilty verdict against their client,
Collins' defense attorneys announced their intention to appeal upon the grounds
of "tainted identification and the change
of venue question." The first
motion by Collins' attorneys, contending denial of defense motions to move the
trial outside of Washtenaw County
and the prejudice of prosecution witnesses was filed with the Michigan Court of Appeals on December
14, 1970. This first appeal was formally
rejected on October 24, 1972.
Post-sentencing
appeals
Between 1972 and 1976, Collins appealed his murder
conviction on four further occasions; citing contentions that the Michigan Murders had received extensive
media publicity in Washtenaw County,
and that five separate motions for change of venue had been submitted by the
defense counsel (two of which had been filed throughout the actual jury
selection process) upon the grounds of pretrial publicity minimizing any chance
of obtaining an unbiased jury in Washtenaw
County. Each motion filed had been reserved or, in the final instance, denied.
His lawyers further argued that, at an evidentiary hearing
in April 1970, shortly before jury selection had begun, Collins' indictment for
the California murder of Roxie Ann Phillips had likewise
received extensive media coverage in Washtenaw
County—further reducing the chances of potential jurors being unbiased.
Moreover, a psychologist retained by the defense had testified as such on April
20, 1970. This psychologist had been adamant that Collins' trial should be held
outside Washtenaw County, and this
motion had likewise been reserved. Furthermore, Collins' lawyers argued issues
such as the admissibility of testimony relating to the microscopic analysis of
hair samples presented at his trial, and the denial of defense motions to
suppress prosecution witnesses testifying against their client.
In each appeal instance, Collins' conviction was upheld,
with successive appellate judges of the Supreme
Court announced in October 1974, their refusal to review his conviction
and the Court of Appeals for the Sixth
Circuit announcing their own satisfaction with the earlier findings of the
district court. Each ruling stated no evidence existed to suggest extensive
publicity had interfered with pretrial or trial proceedings, and that police
had not broken any protocol in showing two eyewitnesses photographs of Collins
prior to his arrest and their being asked to identify him in a police lineup.
At his 1972 appeal hearing, Collins' lawyers did succeed in
securing the partial striking of the testimony of Dr. Vincent P. Guinn, the final prosecution witness at his trial,
who had testified as to the odds of erroneous matching of the hairs found upon Karen Beineman's panties to those in
the Leik family basement being "more
than a million-to-one." This
appeal motion was partly upheld upon the basis that Dr. Guinn's testimony
relating to probabilities was based upon on the statistical probability of
another prosecution expert, and therefore, this part of his testimony was
impermissible. Nonetheless, the three appellate judges at this appeal hearing
concluded thus: "In our view,
improperly admitted testimony that is merely corroborative of properly admitted
evidence is not the basis for holding the error reversible."
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