Attorneys paint conflicting portraits of Cal Harris

SCHOHARIE – Over the course of 11 weeks, attorneys on both sides of the Cal Harris murder trial outlined their cases in painstaking detail.

Jurors listened as each witness testimony unfolded and watched as every piece of evidence entered the record: close-up images of bloodstains, remembered conversations and sounds in the night, lab results and maps and framed images of Michele Harris.

Both sides have worked to create a distinct portrait of Cal Harris. On one side is a murderer who refused to cede control in a bitter divorce and showed no emotion in the wake of his wife's disappearance on Sept. 11, 2001. On the other, a devoted father innocent of the alleged crime who has worked to keep his estranged wife's memory intact for their four children.

As early as Monday, the prosecution and defense are expected to deliver their closing arguments, asking 12 jurors to examine those portraits and decide which one conveys the truth.

Cal Harris, 53, has been twice convicted and twice freed in the alleged murder of his wife, Michele, then 35. Neither her body nor a weapon has ever been found.

During Cal Harris' third trial, which began Feb. 5 in Schoharie County Court, teams led by Tioga County District Attorney Kirk Martin and defense attorney Bruce Barket used testimony and evidence to present contrasting accounts of key elements of the case. They include observations made by outside witnesses, the blood discovered in Cal Harris' Spencer home and the preservation of Michele Harris' memory.

Key witnesses testify

Of more than 60 total called during the trial, each side had a witness who provided particularly powerful testimony.

When Binghamton hairdresser Jerome Wilczynski took the stand March 30, he recalled a threat he said he overheard Cal Harris make to Michele Harris in July 2001.

In a loud, clear voice, Wilczynski quoted Cal Harris as saying: "Drop the divorce proceedings. I will (expletive) kill you, Michele. I can make you disappear."

Prosecutors used the testimony to show tensions in the estranged couple's relationship and argued that Cal Harris followed through with his threat in September 2001.

Barket said Wilcyznski misconstrued what he overheard during the phone call, adding that he never mentioned the threat when he was interviewed by police after Michele Harris disappeared.

In reality, Barket said, Cal Harris only implied he would "make things very difficult" for her.

On April 13, Barket called his star defense witness: Kevin Tubbs, whose 2007 account of events on Sept. 12, 2001, led to Harris' first murder conviction being overturned.

If jurors accepted Tubbs' account, Barket argued, it would upend the prosecution's theory of the case.

Tubbs, a Tioga County resident, testified in court that he saw a woman matching Michele Harris' description talking with a man, who was not Cal Harris, around 6 a.m. at the end of the driveway of the Harris residence.

Later in his testimony, Tubbs identified a photo of Texas resident Stacy Stewart as the man he saw at the end of the driveway. Barket said Stewart was a frequent customer at the restaurant where Michele worked as a waitress, and the defense argued he could have played a role in her murder.

The prosecution called into question whether jurors should rely on Tubbs' testimony, mostly because he waited six years to come forward. Tubbs testified that he did so after he read a newspaper article about Cal Harris' first trial in 2007.

"I basically connected what I'd seen that day," Tubbs told Schoharie County jurors.

Bloodstain origins debated

Attorneys turned to their own experts to interpret blood spatters found in Cal Harris' home that form the lynchpin of the prosecution's case.

Jurors have spent much of Harris' trial studying evidence from the scene of where the prosecution contends he murdered his estranged wife.

In a kitchen alcove and the garage floor of the Harris residence in Spencer, investigators found a series of millimeter-sized blood spatter stains, some of which prosecutors say contained Michele Harris' DNA.

Expert witnesses from the prosecution and the defense took the stand to explain what that evidence does or does not show.

Henry Lee, the prosecution's expert, testified March 4 that some force was used to produce the blood spatter in the Harris home.

Blood in the kitchen alcove totaled two to three drops, and in the garage, at least 200 separate stains amounted to less than 10 drops, according to Lee's testimony.

Terry Laber, the defense's blood spatter expert who took the stand April 4, said that had the blood been caused by a fatal assault, there would have been more blood spatter and evidence of force.

Those stains also showed no signs of attempted cleanup, and there is no way to pinpoint what caused them, Laber said in his testimony.

For Martin, the bloodstains are important circumstantial evidence to show Cal Harris incapacitated and killed Michele Harris, then attempted to clean up traces of the blood.

Barket has argued the amount of blood is too miniscule to add up to a crime scene, and it more likely came from a cut to Michele's hand that she received after a previous dispute with his client.

Preserving memories

Both the prosecution and the defense asked witnesses to describe the way Cal Harris handled his wife's legacy after her disappearance in an attempt to link his behavior to his guilt or innocence.

Prosecutors contend Cal Harris tried to rid the house of all of Michele Harris' belongings in the weeks after she went missing, as if he knew she would not be coming back.

Former Harris family babysitter Barbara Thayer testified in February that after Michele Harris disappeared, Cal talked about wanting some of her belongings out of the house. A garage sale was planned.

Thayer told jurors she gave $199 of the garage sale proceeds to Cal Harris and donated the rest of the $1,800 profit to volunteer fire departments and A New Hope Center in Owego, which assists victims of domestic violence and other crimes.

But Barket has said that Cal Harris actually turned the home into a "shrine" to Michele to keep her memory intact for his four children.

Cal Harris' 17-year-old daughter, Jenna, took the witness stand on April 6. She testified she keeps a wedding photo of her mother in her bedroom.

She said her father helped piece together special photo albums with her mother's pictures and other family snapshots, and that those photos have been in the house for as long as she can remember.

Jury will decide

After the defense and prosecution make their final arguments in this case, the jury members will retire to begin deliberating the verdict as early as Tuesday, the judge said last week.

In Cal Harris' first trial in 2007, the jury returned a guilty verdict after deliberating for four hours over two days. The second trial in 2009 produced the same verdict, but jurors took nine hours over two days to reach their decision.

For jurors in Schoharie County Court, the verdict will rest on the same question those juries grappled with after each previous trial: whether the district attorney proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Cal Harris is guilty of second-degree murder in the death of Michele Harris.

Follow Anthony Borrelli on Twitter @PSBABorrelli