Crime Scene

James Cooke insisted at his Delaware “murder trial”:http://www.lohud.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070223/NEWS02/702230384/1017 yesterday that he did not kill Lindsey Bonistall, the White Plains college student who was raped and strangled in her Newark, Del. apartment two years ago.
But he allegedly confessed to the killing during a jailhouse session with a minister last year.
Jurors will not hear of that, however, because Cooke yesterday refused to waive the confidentiality of statements he made to the Rev. James Beardsley.
The so-called religious privilege, or priest-penitent privilege, protects conversations that defendants have during confession or other situations when a member of the clergy is ministering to them.
Beardsley is a former aeronautics engineer turned Christian minister who led a church in Newark for several years and now oversees several satellite churches. At the urging of Cooke’s aunt, he began meeting with Cooke in jail in July 2005, a month after the defendant was arrested.
The twice-monthly, two-hour meetings involved discussions of Scriptures and gradually Cooke would talk about his personal life and the charges against him, Beardsley said.
But before he could talk about what Cooke said, prosecutor Steven Wood objected that such disclosure would be hearsay. During the ensuing conversations, Judge Jerome Herlihy decided he needed to hear from Cooke that it was okay for Beardsley to proceed.
Cooke was brought into the courtroom (he had been banished to a holding cell because of frequent outbursts) and told the judge he didn’t want Beardsley testifying.
Cooke is at odds with his lawyers about the mental illness defense they are presenting. They wanted Beardsley’s testimony because it would corroborate the testimony of a psychologist who said Cooke had confessed to him as well. Also, Beardsley had the same observations about lack of eye contact and gestures Cooke made that helped form the psychologist’s diagnosis that Cooke suffers from schizotypal personality disorder.