Snakewoman of Little Egypt
Page 29
But nobody wanted Jackson on the stand. Stella didn’t want him on the stand because she didn’t want the jury to hear him tell how he’d bought the gun for Sunny and how he’d said he didn’t want medical attention, and the prosecutor—this was Stella’s explanation —didn’t want him on the stand because he didn’t need Jackson’s testimony to make his points about buying the gun and about declining medical attention, and because Jackson would be a hostile witness, a wild card who might say anything.
I couldn’t eat anything at breakfast. Stella ordered her usual poached eggs and ham with real Kentucky red-eye gravy.
I sat at the defense table with Peter Franklin while Stella made a few introductory remarks before asking me to introduce myself to the jury. I kept reminding myself that my assignment was to establish two stories clearly in the imaginations of the jury: the snake shed and the shooting. The one thing I was not to do, until prompted, was mention the trip to Mexico, which the prosecutor had already introduced through the back door, until she prompted me.
I kept it short: “I used to be Willa Fern,” I said. “Now I’m Sunny. I grew up in Naqada as a member the Church of the Burning Bush with Signs Following. I married Earl, after my daddy was killed when Number Five blew up, when I was sixteen years old.”
“And you’ve been divorced for over a year?”
“Yes.”
“So it would be a mistake to refer to the deceased as ‘your husband’?”
“Yes.”
“The State’s Attorney has laid a lot of stress on the pistol that you brought with you to Naqada. Would it be fair to say that you brought a pistol because you were frightened of your ex-husband?”
The prosecutor objected: “leading question.” The judge sustained the objection. Stella wasn’t supposed to ask me questions that pointed toward the answer she wanted. But she’d planned this too.
Stella rephrased the question: “Could you tell the court why you wanted a pistol?”
“Because I was afraid of Earl. The prison must have forgot to notify him when I got out, but he found out where I was and then he wrote to me at TF—that’s Thomas Ford University—and said he was coming to Colesville to take me home. But there was no way I was going back with Earl. I couldn’t live with a man I was afraid of all the time. I never answered his letters and I never signed the permission so he could come and see me.”
We were coming up on the snake-shed story, and I was feeling more confident. I told a little bit about Earl’s background, about him being a fighter up in Chicago, about his felony convictions, about the way he used to slap me around, and Stella introduced half a dozen digitally enlarged black-and-white shots that the police had taken of the snake shed after I shot Earl the first time and asked that they be admitted into evidence. The pictures were mounted on foam core and laminated. Julie passed them around to the jury members.
The prosecutor objected on the grounds that the existence of the snake shed had no bearing on the second shooting, but Stella pointed out that they demonstrated that I had good reason to fear my ex-husband, and Judge Macklin overruled him. The pictures showed the outside and they showed some of the snakes in their aquariums, including a close-up of the big old diamondback that had bit my thumb out in the snake shed.
“The worst time,” I said, giving the jury plenty of time to look at the pictures, “was when he held a gun to my head and made me put my arm in a box of rattlesnakes, just like one of those aquariums in the pictures—the one with that big diamondback in with two copperheads. He wanted to see if the Lord would spare me because he said I’d been going with other men.”
“Let me see if I understand this,” Stella said. “Mr. Cochrane forced you to undergo a medieval trial by ordeal—a kind of witch trial: If you were innocent, then the snake wouldn’t bite you; but if you were guilty, it would bite you?”
The prosecutor objected that Stella was leading the witness. Me. The judge agreed.
“Just tell us what happened.”
“He made me get down on my knees and get right with God. I told him to just shoot me, and he said if I didn’t put my arm in the box he’d force my head down so I could take the bite in my eye.”
Then I went on to the bite, the swelling, the shooting—Earl putting his .22 down on the kitchen table and getting a glass of milk out of the refrigerator and me picking it up and shooting him—and calling Sally, and Sally and DX coming over and calling an ambulance. “We both spent the night in the hospital, but mine must have been a dry bite because I didn’t swell up too bad and they only gave me two vials of antivenin.
“But at the trial I never got to tell what happened, and that’s why I’m telling my own story this time. Earl was saying I’d got a snake out of the snake shed and was trying to get it to bite him while he was taking a nap only it bit me instead. Which was the craziest thing I ever heard of.
“That’s why I had to go to prison. Six years. Because I didn’t get to tell my story.”
“Can you tell the court what you did in prison?”
“It was real hard at first, but then I got to taking classes from the junior college and it wasn’t so bad. Better’n living with Earl.”
Stella introduced a copy of my transcript from Henrietta Hill, which was admitted as evidence. Julie passed around copies of the transcript, and Stella pointed out all the classes I had taken: English Composition, American History I, American History II, Intro to Poetry, Biology, Economics, Banking, and so on. I’d taken one class a semester starting in 1994, and I’d gotten all A’s.
“And how have you been spending your time since you were released?”
“I’m enrolled in Thomas Ford University. I’ve already declared a major in biology. That’s why I went to Mexico with my professor and another student. The meetings of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists. In La Paz, Mexico.”
“Can you explain ‘herpetologists’?”
“ ‘Herp’ means ‘crawl’ in Greek. ‘Herpetologists’ are scientists who study things that crawl.”
“Like snakes?”
“Yes. I came home in the morning and there was a message on the answering machine.”
“Did you recognize the caller?”
“Yes. It was Mr. DX Wilson.”
“And then what did you do?”
“I called the hospital in Rosiclare to see how much CroFab antivenin they had, and I called Professor Cramer and he signed for me to get some more antivenin from the herps lab at Thomas Ford University, and then I drove straight to the hospital in Rosiclare.”
“How long did it take you?”
“It’s a six-hour drive. I got to Rosiclare about six o’clock.”
“And when you arrived what did you discover?”
“I discovered that Earl had sent the ambulance away when it came to get Jackson, so Jackson never got to the hospital.”
The prosecutor objected: “Hearsay.”
“Overruled.”
“Did the paramedics talk to Mr. Jones?”
The prosecutor objected because we’d already heard from the paramedic in charge. The judge sustained the objection.
“I thought Jackson must be okay,” she said, “or he would have been in the hospital, so I drove over to Earl’s trailer and there were people all over, outside and in the living room, drinking coffee and praying for Jackson. I went right to the bedroom and Earl was in there with Jackson. Jackson’s eyes were closed and he wasn’t moving. I picked up the phone on a little table next to the bed to call nine-one-one and Earl knocked it out of my hands. ‘He’s in the Lord’s hands now,’ he said. ‘Nothing you can do.’ ”
“I said I should call nine-one-one. Earl kept saying Jackson didn’t want medical attention and that if I didn’t believe him I could ask DX or anyone. ‘He’s in a coma,’ I said.”
The prosecutor objected. I was not a doctor.
Stella intervened: “She’s testifying about what she said.”
The judge overruled the objection.
“He couldn’t talk. I couldn’t wake him up. I wanted to go out to get help, but Earl wouldn’t let me leave the room.”
“Were you afraid?”
“Of course I was afraid.”
“Did Mr. Cochrane have a gun?”
“He didn’t need a gun.”
“Did he threaten you?”
“I told you. He knocked the phone out of my hand. He wouldn’t let me pick it up. He said if I touched it he’d he was going to whup my tail till it wouldn’t hold shucks.”
“Do you mean he was going to spank you? Like a little girl?”
“Worse than that.”
“I told him I had to go to the bathroom …”
Stella asked that the diagram of the trailer, which had already been entered as evidence, be placed on the easel, and used a pointer to refresh the jury’s memory while she asked questions: this is the bathroom? this is the hallway? this is the bedroom where Jackson was lying unconscious? Yes yes yes.
“Can you tell us what happened?”
“When I came out of the bathroom, I kept the gun on Earl. I told him not to come near me, I told him I was going to phone the hospital, but he kept coming after me, and I backed into the bedroom, and he kept coming till I was back in a corner.”
Stella indicated the corner of the bedroom where I’d been standing when I shot Earl. “There was no place for you to go? You were trapped?”
“I told Earl I’d shoot him if he tried anything, and he lunged at me and I closed my eyes and pulled the trigger.”
“Did you intend to kill Mr. Cochrane?”
“I did not. I just wanted to stop him, but he kept coming at me.”
Stella asked permission to approach the witness, which Judge Macklin granted, and then approached me. “Would you say he was this close when you started backing down the hallway?”
“A little farther away.”
Stella took a couple of small steps backward. “Like this?”
“That’s about right.”
“The record will so reflect that Mr. Cochrane was about ten feet away from Sunny when she started backing down the hallway.”
“And then, as you were backing up, he kept coming closer. Would you say he was about this far away from you when you reached the bedroom door?” Stella came closer.
“Yes.”
“Let the record show that by the time Sunny reached the bedroom door, Mr. Cochrane was about six feet away from her. Julie,” she said to her assistant, “would you show the bedroom door?” Julie used a laser pointer to indicate the way I backed down the hall. Stella approached closer. “And when you’d backed up as far as you could go, into a corner in the bedroom where your fiancé was lying unconscious …” She waited for Julie to point out the bedroom corner on the screen. “Would you say he was this far away from you?”
“Yes.”
“Let the record show that when Sunny had her back up against the wall, Mr. Cochrane was about four feet away from her”—she paused. “And when he lunged at you …” Stella startled everyone by lunging at me, striking out at me with one arm to knock an imaginary pistol out of my hand. I let out a little scream.
“Let the record show,” Stella said, before the prosecutor could object, “that Mr. Cochrane lunged at Sunny from a distance of about three feet. No more questions.”
The prosecutor took his time getting started on the cross. He fiddled with his papers. He whispered in the ear of his paralegal before stepping up to the lectern.
“You’ve just heard a pretty fantastic story,” he said to the jury. “Let’s put aside for now the fact that the defendant was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon in September nineteen ninety-three for shooting her husband and was sent to prison for six years. We’ll come back to that later. Right now let’s take a look at the events leading up to the second time she shot her husband, this time fatally.”
Stella was on her feet. “Is there a question here?”
The judge told the prosecutor to get on with it.
“Besides,” Stella said, still on her feet. “He was not her husband.”
“Sorry,” the prosecutor said. “Former husband.” He turned to me. “You’ve heard testimony from Mr. DX Wilson that when Professor Jones arrived in Naqada last summer—on June fifteenth—he was in ‘pretty bad shape,’ and you’ve heard Mr. Wilson testify that you told him that Professor Jones couldn’t have been serpent bit because he was in Paris, France. Could you please explain your answer to the jury?”
“I thought he was in Paris.”
The prosecutor continued to stare at me. More of a glare than a stare. “You’ve been living with Mr. Jones for over a year, isn’t that true?”
“Yes.”
“How is it that you thought he was in Paris when in fact he was right here in southern Illinois?”
“He was planning to go to Paris. He must have changed his mind at the last minute.”
“Without telling you?”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Jones wasn’t just a casual acquaintance, was he?”
“No.”
“In fact, several times in the course of this trial he’s been described as your fiancé. Would you say that’s an accurate description of your relationship? That you were engaged to be married?”
“Not officially.”
“I see. Or, maybe I don’t see. Was Professor Jones your fiancé or not? Yes or no?”
“We didn’t use that word.”
“What word did you use?”
“We were good friends. We loved each other.”
“I see. You loved Professor Jones so much that you’d do anything to protect him, including shooting your former husband?”
“Yes.”
“Did he give you an engagement ring?”
“No. We didn’t need a ring.”
“Isn’t it true, Ms. Cochrane, that you and your ‘fiancé’ were planning a trip to Paris together?”
“Yes.”
“And isn’t it true that instead of going to Paris with your ‘fiancé,’ you went to Mexico with another man?”
Stella got to her feet and objected: “Irrelevant. My client is not on trial for attending a professional conference in Mexico.”
“Your Honor,” the prosecutor protested. I’m trying to clarify the defendant’s intentions when she shot her husband. Her former husband. If she canceled her plans to go to Paris with one man at the last minute to go off to Mexico with another man …”
“I’ll allow it.”
“And isn’t it true that you used your fiancé’s injury as an excuse to shoot your husband?”
Stella was on her feet again, but before she could object the judge had silenced the prosecutor. “Enough.” But he’d made his point. And in fact in my own inner courtroom I was on trial for going to Mexico with another man.
“Did your former husband have a gun?”
“He had lots of guns.”
“At the time you shot him was he armed?”
“No, but he didn’t need a gun.”
I thought the prosecutor had lost his way, because he suddenly turned back to the snake-shed episode.
“Let’s go back to the beginning, to the first time you shot your husband. He was your husband at the time, is that correct?”
I nodded and he told me to answer out loud.
“You’ve told this court today that your husband forced you to put your arm in a box of rattlesnakes.”
“Yes.”
“And you were very frightened?”
Stella objected: “Leading question.”
“Can you tell the court how you felt at this time?”
“I was very frightened.”
“But isn’t it true that you’ve been handling rattlesnakes all your life?”
“In church.”
“And have you had occasion to handle rattlesnakes recently?”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t it true that
you’ve been working on a project to move an entire colony of rattlesnakes from one place to another?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re not afraid to handle these rattlesnakes?”
“My professor doesn’t hold a gun to my head, like my husband did.”
The prosecutor looked surprised. “Your husband held a gun to your head. No wonder you were frightened. But that’s a pretty serious accusation. It seems to me that you would have mentioned it at your first trial. But you didn’t mention it, did you? You didn’t say a word about it.”
“My lawyer didn’t want me to take the stand. I kept telling him …” The prosecutor cut me off.
“Did he explain why he didn’t want you to take the stand?”
“He said a good defense lawyer never lets his client take the stand.”
“You could have overruled him. It was your decision, wasn’t it? You’ve taken the stand in this trial.”
“I didn’t know any better back then. Besides, he was in cahoots with the city council. The public defender was. They didn’t want any stuff about serpent handling coming out. It was bad publicity.”
“Please answer the question, Ms. Cochrane.”
The prosecutor introduced the transcript of Earl’s testimony and asked me to read the part that he’d circled, about getting a snake out of the snake shed and trying to get it to bite Earl while he was taking a nap. He passed around copies of Earl’s testimony.
“That isn’t what happened,” I said.
“Please,” he said, “just read the passage.”
I read it. “ ‘I was sleeping on the couch, it was about three o’clock in the afternoon and we was watching TV, I don’t remember what. I woke up and Fern was shouting that she’d got bit. I didn’t know what was going on and I could see she had aholt of a rattlesnake. We’d been fussin at each other for a long while and she got it out of the shed and was trying to get it to bite me, but it bit her instead.’ ”
“That’s the craziest thing I ever heard,” I said. “It was crazy then and it’s crazy now.”
“No further questions.”
The prosecutor went back to his table, and Stella asked permission to re-call DX.
DX took the stand. He was still under oath and didn’t have to be sworn in again.