However, such a strict examination of the prosecution's case implies that it would not oppose abortions in which the surgeon's contact with the fetus occurs only after it is dead--as in, say, an abortion by saline infusion--and that the prosecution of Edelin is aimed simply at abolishing abortions by hysterotomy. Still, many charge that the prosecution has a much more purposeful motive: that anti-abortion forces lie behind the indictment.
A hulking man with a sonorous voice and a formidable court presence, Homans builds his defense with a stern precision based on diligent research and a certain irascible doggedness. One prosecution witness who spent five minutes testifying that the fetus breathed before it died found he had to spend another full day in court, being dragged across the forensic coals by the irreconcilable Homans. Dr. Enrique Gimenez-Jimeno, the state's top witness, who said he remembered particulars the hysterotomy operation, was forced to acknowledge under Homans's severe questioning that he could not recall key aspects of the operating room scene that were curiously irrelevant to the prosecution's case.
Last Thursday and Friday, Homans spent hours patiently leading his client through a painstaking description of medical procedure and the treatment of the 17-year old woman, whom Homans protected by dubbing "Alice Roe." Edelin at first appeared nervous or perturbed, but he is a verbal man and responded with lengthy and coherent answers. Alternately furrowing his brow, gazing down at the linoleum floor, or staring sidelong out through a window, Edelin usually paused before answering questions and displayed a calm bemusement when his attorney, the court typist, or the judge stumbled on his scientific terms. He usually called the fetus and placenta "the products of conception" in describing abortion technique, and these explanations lacked the graphic polemicism that marked some prosecution testimony on the same subjects. Edelin employed his hands in controlled and graceful explication of his testimony--"sweeping" the placenta from the uterine wall in the air with the first and second fingers of his left hand and once clenching his right hand to represent the fetus's head.
During the recesses, members of the Edelin Defense Fund stood in the hallway congratulating each other on the convincing testimony, but Thomas M. Connelly, who is active in the right-to-life movement, flitted about anxiously, drawing deeply on a habitual Chesterfield or guessing shrewdly at possible contradictions in the defendant's testimony.
Connelly, who is unemployed and once ran for Boston City Council, has been in court since mid-October, when he was the only one in the gallery during hearings on defense motions. He makes the pregnant pronouncement that he is responsible for Edelin's presence in the dock, but he will not elaborate. A large man with red hair and a great round cheese of a face. Connelly is the banshee of this trial. He can convince you that you have come to a funeral, and even when the gallery is packed, he moves his seat away from the crowd and gazes fixedly at the witness.
Joel Friedman is also unemployed, but he sides with Edelin. He comes to the court room every day and speaks with noisy authority about the trial. During the recesses he holds hands with Lucy Kaufman, who works nights but makes it to the court house every day. She has a lachrymose face, but it is hard to tell whether it is because of her schedule or her sympathy for the defendant. There are other assortments in the court room. On late Friday afternoon, as Flanagan began his cross-examination, the kid from The Harvard Crimson sat between a large black man with a stiff mustache who glared at the ceiling, and an effeminate reporter with a pale mustache who scribbled furiously.
Flanagan is a short, burly, handsome man with a beaverish grin. He wears a different tie to court every day and their florid colors are rivalled in the dull courtroom only by the countenances of his fellow prosecutors. Joseph I. Mulligan, Charles Dunn and Donald Brennan are a trio with vinous-colored faces and gray hair, that has rarely rustled from the branch, inhaling the soporific incense of their sedentary station at the prosecution table. Flanagan does the arguing.
The prosecutor's cross-examination of Edelin was a little haphazard, skipping back and forth from one antagonistic strain to another but dropping constant suggestions to the jury. There is no love lost between Dr. Edelin and Mr. Flanagan, and Edelin appeared a little hectored when he left the stand on Friday. On Monday Edelin grew more confident and stoutly resisted Flanagan's efforts to suggest that he wandered from acceptable medical practice in his treatment of the patient. The defendant answered questions forcefully and sometimes angrily; twice he wagged his right forefinger at the prosecutor; and he never had to plead the fifth amendment under the blustering cross-examination.
The defense attorney has a craggy, hand some face that is the color of boiled beef. The deeply-graven lines from the wings of his nose to the outside of his mouth give him a simian look. You can usually tell how the defense is faring from the mood on William Homans's face. On a disappointing day he is irascible and his forehead is wrinkled. On a good day his eyes light up, and the lines outside his nose become smile lines.
On Monday afternoon, the court recessed at 4 p.m. sharp, 20 minutes after Kenneth Edelin was excused from the witness stand. The jammed gallery emptied slowly, some reporters conferred briefly, and Edelin rose stiffly with a relieved but happy expression. And William Homans, sitting on the defense table, was grinning broadly.