Murder Trial Starts for Woman Who Stabbed Boyfriend in Dispute

Defendant Says She Acted in Self-Defense

Two key questions remain unanswered about the last hour of Dexter O. Richardson's life:

How did his girlfriend, Fawn C. Scott, leave a Fairfax County mental health clinic after being brought there by Fairfax City police with self-inflicted slashes on her arm and hand and a history of bipolar disorder?

And when Scott returned home, did Richardson violently attack her, as her attorney claimed yesterday in Fairfax Circuit Court, causing Scott to plunge a knife directly into his heart?

Fairfax prosecutors don't think it was self-defense. They think it was murder, and Scott's trial started yesterday.

Many of the facts are undisputed, but that hasn't kept the case from taking some strange twists. Richardson, 50, a divorced father of five, and Scott, 32, met in Newport News, Va., and moved to Fairfax City less than two years ago. They lived in a duplex on Warwick Avenue, just off Route 50 behind the Party City store.

On Oct. 18, the two had a fight that resulted in a call to Fairfax police shortly before 2 p.m. Sgt. C.M. Buckley testified that when he arrived at their home, he was approached by Scott, who was bleeding slightly on her right arm and more in her right palm from knife wounds. "I'm not going to lie to you," Scott told Buckley, "I did this to myself."

Scott told Buckley that she had a history of cutting herself and of mental illness and that she had been in treatment for addiction to crack and had recently relapsed. Buckley said he called Fairfax's Woodburn Center for Community Mental Health in the Falls Church area and then agreed to take Scott there.

Buckley said he waited with Scott from 3 p.m. until shortly before 4 p.m., when a doctor took her to another office. Buckley returned to Fairfax City.

Less than an hour later, at 4:55 p.m., Richardson called police again. Scott was somehow already back home, although she had no car.

"I've been stabbed," Richardson said. Who stabbed you? a call-taker asked. "Fawn Scott. She just broke out of Woodburn. They arrested her a couple hours ago."

Richardson was unconscious by the time Buckley arrived and died soon after.

The Virginia mental health department began an investigation into why Scott was released so soon but found that Woodburn had done nothing wrong. Two Woodburn Center employees who handled Scott have been subpoenaed and are waiting to testify in the trial.

After Buckley found Richardson, he arrested Scott. Detective Michael D. Boone then drove Scott to Fairfax City police headquarters for a videotaped interview.

But the jury might never see that. Defense attorneys said Boone began reading the Miranda rights warning to Scott while she was physically ill. In a pretrial brief, the attorneys said Scott never acknowledged the rights or signed anything but continued to vomit and eventually passed out for about an hour during the interview.

Chief Deputy Commonwealth's Attorney Ian M. Rodway gave Fairfax Deputy Public Defender Dawn M. Butorac a written stipulation Friday that Scott's Miranda rights had been violated and that he would not use the statement against her. But if Scott takes the stand, Rodway might be able to use it to impeach her.

Butorac and Assistant Public Defender Teresa McGarrity also objected to the use of Richardson's 911 call, claiming they had a right to cross-examine Scott's accuser -- and he's dead. But Chief Fairfax Circuit Court Judge Dennis J. Smith noted that a Virginia Court of Appeals ruling last month, in another Fairfax case involving Butorac, upheld the use of a 911 tape as an "excited utterance" and therefore made Richardson's call an acceptable use of hearsay testimony.

Butorac said that when Scott returned home in October, Richardson cursed her, grabbed her throat with one hand and beat her with the other, part of a long pattern of alleged domestic abuse. "She had no choice. It was her life or Mr. Richardson's," Butorac said.