Reed could find no injuries except for the cut on the palm of his hand, which she bandaged for him. *340 Skinner stayed with Reed for roughly three hours until the police arrived to apprehend him.
Reed testified that Skinner appeared intoxicated and disoriented and made many inconsistent statements about the causes of his injury and the course of events. Reed tried to call police, but Skinner threatened to kill her if she did. Skinner eventually offered to tell Reed what really had happened if she would promise not to tell anyone; she promised, and Skinner told her he thought he had kicked Twila to death. In a later statement to police, he claimed he woke up on the couch to find someone standing over him with a knifeand that he ran out of the house. He also guessed that Twila might have killed her sons and cut him with a knife, but he claimed not to remember plainly.[1]
At trial, Skinner sought first to show that, because of intoxication, he could not physically have committed the murders. An occupational therapist testified that an injury had deprived Skinner of the hand strength that would have been necessary to strangle Twila in the manner described by the medical examiner. A toxicologist testified that the alcohol and codeine in Skinner's system would have put him in a stupor, and he would not have had the physical coordination to overpower and inflict wounds on the three victims. In rebuttal, the prosecution suggested that Skinner's long history of drug and alcohol