The Code of Last Resort

By Peter Finn December 16, 1996

{snip}

DNA. It promises us truth through mathematical certainty. Proof, a scientist has written, "is a simple and clear-cut constellation, not a scattered cluster in the Milky Way." But sometimes there is no clarity, no Perry Mason moment, no Southern Cross in the night sky. The scientists continue to debate. The attorneys continue to argue. The accused continues to plead. The mourners continue to grieve. Because of the power of the Internet, human rights activists have become involved in this case, including Sister Helen Prejean, the nun on whose story the movie "Dead Man Walking" was based. Last week, the Pope weighed in.

It is a fascinating fact of forensics that the greater our level of technological competence, the more questions are raised. Used to be, a man was convicted because someone saw something, or he left a trail of blood, or he confessed. Now, the tools are more sophisticated. Things are better. Or are they? ... It would be an interesting abstract debate, except for one extremely concrete fact. On Wednesday, a man is scheduled to go to the electric chair, based in part on these tests and what they do or do not show.

Last Call

Widen the frame.

Helen Schartner spent the last night of her unhappy life in a drab honky-tonk in Virginia Beach. Her boyfriend arrived late, and when he did show up he danced with someone else. Around 11:30 p.m., Schartner made her excuses to the women she had come with and left. The pining country music faded in the cold March air as the doors of the County Line bar closed behind her and she walked toward her car, and her death. ... Someone approached her, gun in hand. She was forced into another car and beaten with the butt of a gun. Her head began to bleed profusely, the blood staining her white blouse, her burgundy skirt and the white slip underneath. The sexual assault may have started in the car. It ended in a field behind the After Midnite club across the street where the rain-streaked body of 44-year-old Helen Schartner was found dumped the next day, March 6, 1985. She had been raped, sodomized and strangled. ... There were no witnesses.

Schartner's last night alive was Joseph Roger O'Dell III's last night of freedom. O'Dell was also 44. His romance was also sputtering. His girlfriend had kicked him out of her home a few days earlier and he had been living in his car. Hard-featured and unkempt, he, too, was at the County Line, nursing a beer and a cold at the bar in the hours Schartner was sitting nearby in a booth. O'Dell left -- when is in dispute. ... A few hours later he walked into a convenience store, blood blotching his face, jacket, jeans and shirt. A fight, he said, at the nearby Brass Rail in Oceanview. He washed up in the bathroom. After leaving the convenience store, he changed his clothes, stuffing them in bags. He went to his estranged girlfriend's house, put the clothes in the garage and slept in the house most of the day. His girlfriend, who heard about the Schartner killing on the news, found the bloody clothes while he slept and called police.

{snip}

Peter Finn
Peter Finn is the national security editor at The Washington Post. He was part of a team of editors on the Pulitzer Prize-winning stories based on the documents leaked by Edward Snowden and oversaw the reporting on Russian interference in the presidential election and its fallout that won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. Follow https://twitter.com/PeterFinnWP