Trial opens in Walmart parking lot killing
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Jonathan Bruno (left) appears in Rutland District Court on Thursday afternoon during opening arguments. Cassandra Hotaling / Rutland Herald |
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By Brent Curtis Staff Writer - Published: December 4, 2009
The killing of John Baptie two years ago was presented in Rutland District Court on Thursday as both a cold-blooded, deliberate act or a drug-addled attempt at self-defense that went awry.
It will be up to a jury to decide which depiction is the right one and whether Jonathan Bruno, the man accused of using a knife to cut Baptie's throat in the Rutland Walmart parking lot, is guilty or innocent of second-degree murder.
After two days of jury selection, Bruno's two-week trial began Thursday with opening arguments that agreed it was Bruno's hand wielding the knife that killed Baptie but which differed greatly in terms of motive and intent.
"The evidence you will see and hear about describes a senseless and violent killing," Rutland State's Attorney Marc Brierre said during his opening arguments to the jury. "It's before you to judge exactly what happened and how it happened."
Brierre said a disagreement between Bruno and Baptie had been escalating days before the pair encountered each other at the Rutland Shopping Plaza on Nov. 1, 2007.
In front of Baptie's friends and a number of witnesses Bruno cut Baptie's throat and then fled on foot.
"It's important to pay attention to the time frame and the quickness of events," Brierre said. "I would ask you to pay attention to what the witnesses say and they will tell you that neither one had a weapon when they were walking together but one was left with a wound to his neck."
But Bruno's attorney, Kerry DeWolfe, said her client believed Baptie was armed and working in concert with at least two other people to assault him.
That belief, she said, was a byproduct of a cocaine addiction that had unhinged Bruno's mind at the time of the killing.
In the months before the incident, she said Bruno had tried to wean himself of a heroin addiction through both medical and illegal means. DeWolfe said that in addition to a prescription for Suboxin — an opiate blocker used to treat heroin addiction — Bruno "traded one addiction for another" by developing a cocaine habit.
By the start of November that year, Bruno's cocaine habit had expanded to using crack cocaine, DeWolfe said, with Bruno using an average of 10 grams of the drug a day.
The drug use induced a "manic" state of mind in Bruno, DeWolfe said pointing to conclusions reached by Bruno's doctor and staff at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H., who observed the Rutland man days before the killing.
"He was hyper-verbal, irritable, up all night, arguing a lot, paranoid, accusing (his girlfriend) of unfaithfulness," DeWolfe said, adding that Bruno had smoked crack cocaine the morning of the killing.
On top of the drug's effects, DeWolfe said Bruno was living in fear of Baptie's father, Thomas Baptie, who she said threatened to shoot Bruno for trying to collect $40 from his son.
DeWolfe said Bruno had sold Baptie $40 worth of heroin and had made repeated calls to the home he shared with his parents trying to collect the money. In a civil lawsuit filed in Rutland District Court, Baptie's family contends the $40 debt owed to Bruno was over a baseball card.
When Bruno met Baptie in the parking lot, DeWolfe said Bruno believed Baptie's father was in a pickup nearby even though he wasn't — Baptie's friend was in the truck.
DeWolfe said Bruno also believed that an off-duty security guard was also planning to jump him as he tried to walk away from Baptie. When the 24-year-old Castleton man followed Bruno, DeWolfe said her client thought he had grabbed a pipe from the truck and was planning to club him from behind.
"In Jonathan Bruno's mind he was being pursued by three people," she said. "Bruno thought Baptie was going to swing at him with a pipe so he swung around with a knife to back off Baptie … tragically, his throat was cut. Jonathan Bruno never intended to kill John Baptie. This is a tragedy but it's not a murder."
The trial continues at 8:30 a.m. today with witnesses to the event, including the first city police officer on the scene, an EMT who treated Baptie and other bystanders taking the stand.
brent.curtis@rutlandherald.com