Jury to Decide if Victim Was Murdered or Let Herself Die

Chance, religion and the law collided with life-or-death consequences on a dark stretch of Sierra Madre Avenue in Azusa in March, when a suspected drunk driver hit a disabled car that plowed into four people standing on the roadside.

Most seriously injured was Jadine Russell, a 55-year-old mother of five and a devout Jehovah’s Witness who died hours later, after refusing a blood transfusion that might have saved her life.

“No blood!” she stated at least 10 times to rescue workers and emergency room physicians. So adamant was she in her beliefs, her family said, that Russell roused herself from unconsciousness and tried to pull out an intravenous line.

Now, in an emotionally volatile case that could make new law, a Pomona Superior Court jury is being asked to navigate nettlesome legal theories, Russell’s religious convictions and conflicting opinions from medical experts.

In a trial that began Wednesday, jurors are being asked to decide if convicted drunk driver Keith Cook was solely responsible for Russell’s death and therefore guilty of murder, or if the woman’s religious beliefs brought about her demise.

“This is a fascinating causation issue,” said Laurie Levenson, associate dean at Loyola Law School. “Did the defendant kill her, or did she kill herself?”

Cook and his defense lawyer will fight for a conviction on lesser charges of driving under the influence, conceding that he caused the accident that injured Russell, her daughter and two law enforcement officers.

The murder conviction would carry a penalty of 15 years to life in prison, compared to a four- to eight-year term that is likely under the DUI charge.

“The key issue here is choice and responsibility,” defense attorney Charles Unger told the jury Wednesday. “People are free to have their religious choice and freedom, but when it has consequences for someone else, that is where the line is drawn.

Unger said an emergency room physician from County-USC Medical Center will testify that Russell acknowledged the risk she was taking, saying, “If it’s my time to go, it’s my time to go.”

That statement drew sighs and vehemently shaken heads from Russell’s parents and other family members in the audience. In interviews, family members said they deeply resent Cook’s lawyers using their religion to protect a man they said shattered many lives.

Emotional Devastation

Deputy Dist. Atty. Larry Larson said that attention should not be diverted from Cook’s behavior. Testimony will show that the 32-year-old auto mechanic got drunk at a party, argued with another guest, then left despite friends’ attempts to take away his keys, Larson said. Tests revealed that the level of alcohol in his blood was twice the legal limit. And Cook was on probation for a 1996 drunk driving conviction.

“He realized the dangers of drinking, but he didn’t really care,” Larson told the jury. “That is how we show the gross negligence and the malice that led to murder.”

Larson said in an interview that an instruction to jurors will make it clear that they can only absolve Cook of murder or a manslaughter charge if they find that the failure to obtain a transfusion was the sole cause of death.

Over the past decade, prosecutors increasingly have charged repeat offenders in drunk or reckless driving deaths with murder under a legal theory known as implied malice.

Russell’s family members said they have been emotionally devastated since Jadine’s death. At the time, she was eight days away from celebrating her 35th wedding anniversary with her husband, James.

They lived for more than 30 years in the San Gabriel Valley community of Azusa and were active in their church. Jadine, in particular, participated in the Witnesses’ trademark door-to-door missionary work.

At her funeral, a special tent erected outside the Kingdom Hall in Azusa could not hold the more than 1,000 mourners.

James Russell, 56, said he can’t understand why the defense insists on making the family’s religious beliefs an issue.

“I don’t know why they’re going to raise the blood issue,” he said.

“He killed her,” Russell said of defendant Cook. “Now quit trying to give the blame to someone else and take your own medicine.”

Cook has been in jail since the March 7 accident. His mother, Katherine, who was in court Wednesday, said her son regrets what he did and will take responsibility but that he does not think he is guilty of murder.

“He’s very sorry, but he also wishes the lady had taken on all the medical help she could get,” she said.

Jadine Russell’s final evening began happily. She went to the movies with her youngest daughter, Jennifer, then 24.

The two were driving home in separate cars along Sierra Madre Avenue, a dark, two-lane road that cuts a path along the base of the semirural foothills. Suddenly a car stopped in front of Jadine, apparently trying to make a three-point turn. She could not stop in time and broadsided the car.

The two Russell women pulled to the side of the road, along with the other driver and, eventually, a California Highway Patrol officer and an Azusa police officer. It was then that Cook came over a hill so fast that his 1972 pickup became airborne before landing on the street. Seeing other cars stopped, apparently to observe the accident, he slammed on his brakes.

The pickup then smashed into Jadine Russell’s car, which in turn hit both of the Russells, CHP Officer Craig Stevens and Azusa Officer Raymond Zamora.

The officers were injured seriously, as was Jadine Russell, who was helicoptered to County-USC.

Along the way, she told paramedics repeatedly that she did not want a blood transfusion, her daughter testified as the opening witness. Jadine Russell was so adamant that she once came out of unconsciousness and tried to pull out an intravenous line.

Jennifer Russell testified that emergency room doctors were upset and became “harsh” when she affirmed her mother’s position on blood transfusions. She said that when she told Dr. Ross Bremner “no” to a transfusion, he responded: “Then you go ahead and kill her.”

Bremner could not be reached for comment. But in an interview after court recessed for the day, attorney Unger said the doctor had been “unfairly besmirched” by the daughter’s testimony and that Bremner had acted responsibly.

Biblical Beliefs

Since she was 10, Jadine Russell had made clear her religious beliefs and her wishes that she not receive blood transfusions, according to her parents. She had reaffirmed that belief at the time of her marriage and in a living trust. Russell and several family members had previously undergone surgery without transfusions.

Such a stance is gospel among the about 1 million Jehovah’s Witnesses in the United States.

“The basis of our beliefs is biblical,” said Danny DeMatteis, a spokesman at the religion’s headquarters in Brooklyn, N.Y. “It goes back to Genesis. God told Noah after the flood, you can now eat meat, but pour the blood out on the ground. We view all of ourselves as descendants of Noah.”

Other sections in the Bible refer to abstaining from blood and other sins to prosper, church authorities said. The religion does not prohibit medical treatment and allows adherents, as a personal matter of conscience, to reinfuse their own blood and receive organ transplants.

Defense attorney Unger said that nonmembers of the church should not be expected to live with the consequences of those beliefs, which he told the jury have shifted through history. Unger said the prohibition on transfusions actually dates only to 1945.

“Sometimes these beliefs change, to the detriment of others,” Unger said.

But some legal experts said the subtleties of the church’s doctrine may not matter in the courtroom. They noted that defendants have been held responsible even in cases where the victim had a hand in his or her own death.

One of the oldest cases on California’s books addressing the issue is People vs. Lewis, in which a defendant was convicted of murder in 1899 after shooting a man who then slit his own throat.

A 1994 case, People vs. Funes, held the defendant in a beating responsible for a victim’s death, though the victim’s family refused to administer antibiotics.

“You take your victim as you find them,” said prominent defense attorney Harland W. Braun, citing a long-held legal tenet.