Lafair teaches classes in the evenings at a school in the eastern area of the county. It is part of an extension program for special education, serving adults who dropped out of school when they were kids due to learning disabilities and who now find themselves locked out of the system because they lack basic skills.
Under oath and on the stand, she tells the jury that with counseling, encouragement, and sometimes one-on- one tutoring, some of these adults can find their way back to the dreams they once had as children, to learn and to enjoy more productive lives.
Sadly, however, this was not the case for Carl Arnsberg.
Harry was the one who discovered the problem, and he felt bad about it. He’d made a wisecrack about Carl early in the case, just after the three of us had met for the first time at the jail.
Harry and I were talking, and the issue was whether Scarborough’s book might have set Carl off, especially if he were a nutcase. Harry brushed it aside with one of his glib comments.
The comment came back to haunt him two weeks later in a meeting with Carl to go over some items of evidence delivered to us by the D.A.’s office. By that time Harry had some suspicions, but he wasn’t sure. He handed Carl a slip of paper and told him to take a look at it. Harry was busy hunting for other documents in his briefcase.
Carl picked up the slip of paper, studied it for a few seconds, and then put it down.
Harry regarded Carl and said, “What do you think?”
“Oh, it’s fine. Looks good.”
The half slip of paper was a form with some printing on it and some boxes to be checked. Two of the boxes had X’s typed in them. It was the charging document for “special circumstances”-the legal justification, and the basis if he is convicted, for the State of California to execute Carl Everett Arnsberg.
Carl is illiterate. It’s not that he has difficulty reading. He can’t read a word. He never told us, didn’t say anything. Carl has been hiding this from people all his life. We didn’t know the full story until he gave us the name of Kathy Lafair.
This morning she sits on the stand and smiles at him.
Carl’s head is down. He glances up at her every once in a while, but he won’t look her in the eye. Kathy Lafair is just another reminder of failure in Carl’s life, one of many.
“Can you tell the jury how you came to know the defendant, Carl Arnsberg?” I ask her.
“He was one of my students,” she says. “For about six weeks. Three times a week at night, he would come to classes.”
“And what did you teach?”
“Basic reading comprehension.”
“Can you tell the jury what that is?”
“It’s what you call beginner’s reading. What you would normally teach to children in kindergarten and first grade.”
“Was Carl able to read at all?”
“No.” She looks over at him. “Carl, you shouldn’t be ashamed. It’s not your fault.”
“Your Honor, I’m going to object to this.” Tuchio is up out of his chair. “If she wants to testify, that’s fine. But to be having conversations with the defendant…”
“Mr. Tuchio, relax,” says the judge. “Sit down.” He looks at the witness. “Go ahead, Mr. Madriani.”
“When you say he couldn’t read, did he have the ability to comprehend any words typed or written on a page? For example, could he recognize his own name if it were printed or typed?”
“No.”
“And you know this for a fact?”
“I do.”
“Before we go any further, can you tell the court what degrees or special training you have?”
“I hold a bachelor’s degree in education from the University of California at Berkeley and a master’s degree in clinical and educational psychology from UCLA.”
“As a clinical and educational psychologist, can you tell the jury what you do?”
“I do a good deal of testing. I administer standardized tests and conduct evaluations.”
“To what purpose do you do this?”
“To determine whether students suffer from any recognized learning disabilities. It’s diagnostic. There’s a wide range of learning disabilities, from hyperactivity and attention deficit disorder to autism and dyslexia and more,” she says.
“And how long have you been doing this?”
“Twenty-two years.”
“Did you have occasion to conduct any tests on the defendant, Carl Arnsberg?”
“I did.”
“When?”
“Let’s see. That would have been about two years ago.”
“So the tests were not performed in connection with this case?”
“No. They were related to his schooling.”
This is important, to avoid a claim by the prosecution that we had tests conducted and failed to disclose the results in discovery.
“And as a result of these tests, were you able to determine whether Carl suffered from any known or recognized learning disability?”
“Yes. He suffers from dyslexia.”
“Can you tell the jury what that is?”
“Dyslexia manifests itself in an inability to process certain visual signals, usually symbols, letters, and written words. It can affect verbal abilities as well, but that’s not as common.”
“Is it curable? Can it be treated?”
“Not in the ordinary sense. You can’t prescribe medication for it. There’s no pill you can take. It can be overcome in some cases, but depending on the severity it can be very difficult, very frustrating, and in some cases it can take years. Basically what you’re doing is therapy, educational intervention, but it’s usually more effective in early childhood. The older the person is, the more difficult it may be to treat.”
“What about in Carl’s case?”
“Carl had a problem,” she says. “Because no one knew he suffered from dyslexia. He managed to hide it very well. His parents didn’t know. He didn’t know himself until he was tested and diagnosed in our office.”
“And how old was he then?”
“I think he was twenty or twenty-one years old.”
“So he went all the way through school with dyslexia, and he never knew it.”
“Unfortunately, that’s not uncommon, especially years ago. It went undiagnosed in many cases.”
“Can you explain to the jury what it’s like to suffer from dyslexia?”
“The best example I can give,” she says, “is a ciphering machine. It would be as if every written message that you received was enciphered in a code and everyone else in the world was given a decoding machine, except you. They would be getting and sending messages constantly. You would be getting messages, but you wouldn’t be able to understand any of them. And you wouldn’t be able to send any either, because you didn’t understand how to encode them.”
“So I imagine that would be very frustrating.”
“That’s the problem,” she says. “It’s the frustration and constant anxiety that generally overwhelms the person. But it’s a very slow, agonizing process.”
“How do you mean?”
She explains that it generally starts in childhood when the sufferer is just beginning to socialize with other children. As they all begin school, the other children progress, because the learning process is so heavily dependent upon reading skills. This leaves the person suffering from dyslexia looking at those around him and wondering why they’re progressing and he’s not. This results in a multitude of other problems-acting out in an effort to compensate for the inability to learn, aggression, feelings of inadequacy, depression, a whole range of psychological problems. “Depending on the child, many of these attendant problems become worse as the child gets older with major problems in adolescence, in the teenage years.”
