Jury weighs Higgs’ fate in wife’s death

The case went to the jury at 5:13 p.m. after the chief prosecutor, Chief Deputy Washoe County District Attorney Thomas Barb, questioned how anyone other than Higgs, a critical care nurse, could have injected the 50-year-old Augustine with succinylcholine, a drug used when breathing tubes are placed down the throats of patients.

The controversial Augustine — the first politician in state history to be impeached and a woman ostracized by her own political party — died July 11, three days after Higgs said he found her unconscious in the bedroom of their Reno home.

“If the (succinylcholine) is there, who else put it there?” Barb asked. “The only person around to put it there is Mr. Higgs. He hated her. His quest was to make her go crazy. He said to people if it wasn’t for his daughter, he would kill her and throw the body down a mine shaft.”

The jury will resume deliberations at 9 a.m. today, the 10th day of the trial.

Tests at the FBI’s National Crime Laboratory in Quantico, Va., in September found traces of succinylcholine in Augustine’s urine. Higgs then was arrested and charged with her murder. If convicted, the 43-year-old Higgs could receive life imprisonment without parole.

Higgs told jurors how much he loved Augustine, but Barb said Higgs was seldom around Washoe Medical Center in Reno during the three days his wife was hospitalized before her death.

During those days, Barb said, Higgs was buying doughnuts for fellow nurses, hanging around his wife’s Carson City office and signing papers with the Public Employees Retirement System so that he would receive her $1,100-a-month pension. Higgs was a nurse for 2 1/2 years at the hospital where Augustine was treated.

Barb also said Higgs bragged to his brother in an e-mail that Augustine had paid cash for a $41,000 BMW and taken him to Paris and Rome.

“You tell me he didn’t care about her money,” Barb said.

Michelle Ene, the assistant in the controller’s office, said she spoke by phone with Augustine at 10:12 p.m. the night before she was found unconscious in her Reno home on July 8.

She said Augustine told her she had an upset stomach and was feeling bad because she had argued with Higgs when he said he was leaving her.

When she visited Augustine in the hospital two days later, Higgs was calm and unemotional, Ene said.

“I was holding her hand, and I was hysterical,” Ene said. “He said they had worked it out (after the argument). I didn’t believe him for one minute. He committed murder.”

Barb acknowledged that Augustine was not always nice to her staff and others.

“But even if she wasn’t nice, the penalty for (being) a bitch isn’t death,” he said.

Higgs took the stand early Thursday with bandages around his wrists. Barb immediately brought up the fact the nurse had slashed his wrists early Tuesday in the Reno apartment he shared with his mother.

Barb asked Higgs to draw the layout of the home he shared with Augustine. That forced Higgs to show his bandages to the jury and demonstrate his injuries were not so severe that he could not write.

His lawyers, David Houston and Alan Baum, did not object to Barb’s line of questioning.

When asked by Barb, Higgs admitted that nurses sometimes joke among themselves about patients who fail in their suicide attempts because they do not know how to cut their wrists.

District Judge Steven Kosach temporarily halted the case Tuesday while Higgs was recovering. The judge told jurors only that Higgs had suffered an injury.

Barb immediately asked Higgs in the presence of the jury Thursday whether his wounds were self-inflicted.

“Yes,” replied Higgs, showing no emotion and looking pale.

“Some people might think it is a ploy for sympathy,” Barb replied. “Others may think it is a guilty conscience.”

Barb said Higgs also attempted suicide on July 14 in Las Vegas. He missed Augustine’s funeral.

Barb suggested that if Higgs really wanted to kill himself, he should have gone off in the desert by himself and not made the attempt where he could be easily found.

During cross-examination, Barb presented e-mail that Higgs sent to two women soon after Augustine’s death. He asked the women to move in with him. Barb also cited Higgs’ passion.com Web page in which the nurse spoke of his sexual abilities and desire to meet new women.

“I thought you mentioned in your suicide note that you loved Kathy?” he asked.

In earlier testimony, Linda Ramirez, a former employee at Washoe Medical’s South Meadows branch, testified that Higgs wanted to run off with her after Augustine’s death and that they frequently wrote e-mail love letters.

In his closing argument, Houston maintained that if succinylcholine were found in Augustine’s urine, then it might have been placed there accidentally by nurses who tried to put breathing tubes down her throat when she arrived at the hospital about 7 a.m. on July 8.

“When Kathy got there, they were preparing to intubate her,” Houston said. “One of them might have started putting it (succinylcholine) in the IV line.”

Paramedics testified that they revived Augustine before she reached the hospital and that she did not require succinylcholine for placement of breathing tubes.

During earlier testimony, Dr. Anton Sohn, a professor at the University of Nevada School of Medicine, testified that mistakes often are made by hospital staff and that shots are given to patients and not recorded on medical charts.

Sohn also testified that an unexplained mark found on Augustine’s buttock had been placed there during the time she was hospitalized.

“How could Chaz Higgs be guilty of injecting Kathy Augustine with succinylcholine?” he asked jurors. “It is not possible.”

But Sohn’s testimony was challenged by Dr. Ellen Clark, the forensic pathologist who did the autopsy. She said doctors cannot precisely date when a bruise or needle mark was placed on a body.

But Clark said there was only a 51 percent chance the mark on the buttock was from a needle. She said a good nurse can deliver an injection without leaving a needle track.

Houston also challenged the effectiveness of the FBI test. Succinylcholine can occur naturally in the body, he said.

Barb later questioned that assertion.

Baum and Houston have maintained Augustine died of a sudden heart attack brought on by stress from her job and a mitral valve prolapse, a relatively common condition in which blood can leak from the heart. Doctors testified that in rare cases the condition can lead to heart failure.

“She was overweight, stressed to the point she could not stand it,” Houston said. “She was not a happy, healthy woman.”

“Sometimes people just pass away,” he said.