OCTOBER 1994:
MY TRIAL BEGINS
AN ODD CALM SETTLED over me the morning of October 20, 1994, the opening day of trial. I had been waiting more than two years for my day in court, and it was finally here.
Calvin approached as I sat patiently in the holdover, a small cell set off from the courtroom by a large wooden door. “Anthony, I’ve just spoken with Sebesta,” he said. “Carter has agreed to testify for the state.”
I repeated what I had told Calvin many times before. State’s witness or not, Carter wasn’t going to lie about me to my face. Calvin didn’t share my confidence. He tried to prepare me for what he viewed as an inevitability. Sebesta wouldn’t be putting Carter on the stand unless he was confident his testimony would help the state’s case. As a defense lawyer, Calvin had seen people lie on the stand. I listened to him, but in my idealism I continued to believe that one look at my face in that courtroom would break Carter’s will and stir his conscience.
Calvin urged me to prepare myself. “Anthony, I want you to remember this,” he said. “As Carter testifies, no matter what he says, do not shake your head. Do not show any physical reaction. Don’t do anything that the jury can misinterpret. Just sit still and listen. Take notes if you need to, but don’t show any visible reaction.”
I assured him that I would remain composed. I knew from his expression that Calvin was concerned, even anxious. But before I had time for any further consult with my attorney, I found myself being led into court through that same large door.
I was wearing crisp gray slacks, a starched white shirt pulled tightly across my chest, and a defiant red tie, the color of the fiery shirt Tiger Woods confidently wore during the final rounds of major golf tournaments, in an attempt to urge himself to victory. My blazer was blue with shiny buttons. I felt comfortable in those clothes. They were smart and tailored. My hair, however, was not. Calvin had made what I considered a strange request. He asked that I not cut my hair. His reasoning was that he didn’t want the jury to think I was trying to alter my appearance. I felt certain that with my hair disheveled, I looked like a homeless man who had somehow stumbled upon a suit.
The courtroom was sparsely decorated. A large, bronze-colored star was affixed to one wall. Pictures of ambiguously important men dotted the wall opposite it. There were large tables for the lawyers, while a sprawling bench housed seats for the judge and the witnesses. It felt as though the entire room was against me. Like the football team that looks to its loyal fans in the visitor’s section, I sought out the comfort of familiar faces. Nearly everyone close to me was there—my mom, my brothers and sisters. Most of them just smiled. I nodded back reassuringly. One family friend that I had known for many years went through a series of hand signals, making not-quite-closed fists at ten and two, as if she was steering an invisible wheel. When she pointed at me, I knew what her motions were saying. I’d be driving them home when the trial was through. I imagined it as if it was real. Driving them home might lead to the comfort of my bed or a little couch-sitting with my family after hugs with my mother. I wanted to roughhouse with my sons and talk to them about their lives. I wanted what I had before, and if I had another chance, I knew I would appreciate it in ways most people don’t think about until they lose something precious.
Sebesta began the trial in the same way he’d begun my bail hearing. He called to the stand the fire marshal, who once again described the gruesome crime scene. The fire marshal talked of charred bodies and lingering smoke, of the inexorable smells. He described how he could tell that the fire was started intentionally—something to do with burn patterns. As he spoke, I wondered whether he was right. I knew that the state’s witnesses were lying about my involvement or wouldn’t be able to point to me at all, but I didn’t, at the time, know much about the appearance of the crime scene or the evidence that had been found there. I considered whether the marshal had actually stumbled upon the scene he described, whether his testimony was a nugget of truth or just another in a long line of lies in support of a forgone conclusion.
The state next called a jailer from Caldwell. Calvin had warned me that it might be difficult to hear people lie about me on the stand. I did my best to mute my reactions when false testimony cascaded through the courtroom.
“What did you hear the defendant say?” Sebesta asked.
“He said, ‘Shut the fuck up! I did the job for you!’” the jailer responded. I wanted to stand up and yell bullshit. I wanted to explain to the jury that in the old Caldwell jail, the creaky fan, yelling inmates, and intermittent television made it so loud that even if I had wanted to communicate with Carter, I’d have had to yell at the top of my voice to do so.
Calvin started in on the jailer, hoping to cast aspersions on his dubious story. “Have you ever heard Mr. Graves speak?” he asked.
“Well, I guess not,” the jailer said. It felt like a win. The jailer had admitted that he was in no position to know what my voice sounded like. He would later admit that the intercoms in the cells were faulty and only worked on occasion. Sometimes the intercom would play audio from Cell 7 while the light indicated that the noise was coming from Cell 9, and so on. The jailer seemed to be working from a script. He quickly took the chance to tell the jury he had tried to record the conversation. His efforts had conveniently failed.
Calvin revealed on cross-examination that the jailer had failed to file a report until many weeks after the alleged conversation. He had, however, filed a detailed report that same night, recalling for posterity that he had given an inmate an aspirin. I looked to the jury to see how they took the news. It didn’t seem as if they were finding fault in this cast of characters. They listened intently as if the next sentence might clear up the contradiction.
It must have been Sebesta’s belief that if he couldn’t get one witness to tell the truth about my time in Caldwell jail, then he could get two half-truths or even three third-truths to add up to one truth. He called two more witnesses, both officers, who testified that they too had heard me at different times talk to Robert Carter about my involvement in the murders. To hear them tell it, I was at once a seasoned criminal, using words to intimidate Carter, and a buffoon, someone stupid enough to admit in a room full of people looking for a way out that I had done the crimes. Caldwell was full of men looking for relief. You’d have to be crazy or suicidal to implicate yourself in front of those willing snitches. I was neither, but it didn’t seem to matter much.
A familiar face came to the stand next—an ex-girlfriend I had been missing when I was arrested at the beginning of this nightmare. I watched as she walked down the aisle, entered the well, and took the witness stand. Even though she appeared as a name on the witness list, I wondered why they might be calling her. I hadn’t been with her in a long time. We’d broken up a few months before the murders.
“Did the defendant keep a knife in your apartment?” Sebesta asked her.
My heart sank as I remembered the intercepted letter I’d written to her earlier in the summer.
She said that I did, but that I hadn’t carried it on my person. Sebesta held up the souvenir knife that he’d gotten from Roy Allen. He put on quite a production, moving the knife from hand to hand while looking intently at its impotent blade. That knife had been tested by Ranger Ray Coffman, or so the state claimed. Coffman took the stand and testified that the knife’s blade was consistent with the wounds of the victims, despite not being an expert on knives, as I would later learn. He moved the knife up and down as he described how the blade matched the puncture wounds in the skull of one of the children. This testimony should have been challenged or disallowed, as again Coffman was not, nor could he have been, qualified as an expert on knives, but I learned all of this too late.
Coffman looked at the jury as he paused for dramatic effect. “Like a glove,” he said. “It fit like a glove.”
The knife became a central prop as it was passed from lawyer to lawyer, witness to witness. Coffman held it closely on the stand, ext
ending it on occasion to draw the jury’s attention. I knew it wasn’t the murder weapon, of course. It wasn’t even a replica of the murder weapon. It was the twin of the cheap blade I’d long ago been given by a friend. But as the Ranger waved it around, it was clear that the jury was fixated.
During his cross-examination, Calvin approached the stand with an array of knives he and Lydia had purchased to make their point. Calvin presented each of these knives, all similar in size to the knife in the state’s custody, to the jury, claiming that they too were consistent with the victims’ puncture wounds. To demonstrate, Calvin held in his hand the actual skull cap of one of the victims. Like a macabre magician, he plunged the various blades into the holes representing puncture wounds. Each knife fit perfectly, despite their different appearances. The point, it seemed, was to demonstrate what experts would (many years) later conclude: almost any knife of equivalent size would conform to the holes in that skull. Though my attorney was allowed to test the fit in the skull wounds to challenge Coffman’s testimony about the knife, it may have done more harm than good to continue to present those sickening images and references to the gruesome murders. Regardless, this paled in comparison to keeping the non-expert knife testimony off the stand, which is what should have happened in a proper legal defense.
Calvin also argued to the jury that the knife presented to the state, weak and flimsy as it was, made for an unlikely murder weapon. Of course, I don’t know whether Roy’s knife or the twin he gave me could have cut through a human skull. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to put it to the test. I do recall that knife having a hard time cutting its way through butter, and it broke so soon after I got it that I had to question Roy’s gift-giving skills.
The testimony surrounding the knife had surely been dramatic. The question was, what would the jury make of it?
Listening to the proceedings, I was convinced that the state’s case, though sensational, wasn’t strong. The prosecution needed Robert Carter’s testimony. And I was holding on to the belief that Carter, when face to face with me in the courtroom, would be compelled to tell the truth, as he had before the grand jury.
You’ve got to see the good in a man, I thought to myself. There’s some honor in everyone, even those the state has sentenced to die.
It seemed to take forever for Robert Carter to walk to the stand. He looked down, never breaking stride to glance at me or the jury. I was happy to see him. I just wanted to look him in the eye. I fixed my eyes on him, studying the contours of his face as he settled in to speak. He never returned my stare.
Sebesta started with the basic questions before moving on to the meat of Carter’s testimony. My anticipation built as the DA began digging in to Carter’s recollection of the night of the murders.
Carter spoke in a low monotone as he confessed what he had done. I hung on his every word until the words fell from his mouth with impressive torque: “Graves and I committed the crime.”
I fought a sense of shock. Deep down, I’d known it was possible that he might say just that, but as a survival tactic, I hadn’t let myself believe it, even though my attorney had sought to prepare me for this very outcome. My eyes blurred as the room zoomed in and out of focus.
Sebesta followed Carter’s claims with a simple request. “Is that man in the courtroom today? Can you point him out for the record?”
For the first time, Carter barely glanced my way. He extended the index finger of his right hand, pointing in my general direction. I felt like I’d been punched in the gut. With the speed of some shamed admirer who’d been caught fawning for too long, he looked away. He wasn’t going to tell the truth. In fact, his lies had grown bolder, his testimony placing me at the center of the murders.
My belief in the goodness of the system was underpinned by my belief in the goodness of men. Carter smashed all of that. The system was exposed as a beast just as flawed as the humans it depends on. I felt the tangible weight of hopelessness. I wore it like a blanket, or worse, a straitjacket. Carter continued to speak, and I couldn’t do a thing in my defense. In fact, doing anything would have enhanced the effect of the words he spoke.
“I finally came into the house where Graves was and all I could see was blood. There was blood everywhere.”
I didn’t envy Calvin’s task as he cross-examined Carter. Of course, there was room to do so. But Carter’s statements had saddled the courtroom with a certain heft. Calvin trudged on.
“Mr. Carter, haven’t you given many different versions of your story to investigators?”
This, of course, was a fact. Carter had spun quite a few yarns in the two years since the murders were committed. In one of his tall tales, from his fourteen-hour interrogation with the Texas Rangers on the day of his arrest, he’d said I killed the family because I wanted to have sex with one of the victims. In another, my motive was less sinister—Carter said I was taking revenge against Bobbie Davis, one of the victims, for being promoted to a job my mother was passed over for. Carter made up a total of seven different stories on the night that he was first interrogated. The Rangers picked the story that they felt they could best build a case around. Clearly, Carter was willing to say or do anything in the hope of being released.
Calvin pulled from his folder a trump card. It was the grand jury testimony in which Carter told those members that he had acted alone, something we confirmed by gaining access to his grand jury testimony in preparation for trial. Carter read it aloud. Calvin was satisfied. He excused Carter right then and there. I couldn’t believe it. I’m not sure what more I wanted Calvin to ask, but there had to be more. I started scribbling. I wanted him to ask Carter how we knew each other. Where did we hang out? Where was our meet-up place on the night of the crime? Calvin could have asked him anything about me, and if Carter answered correctly, it would only have been the result of a very good guess. Those questions went unasked and unanswered as Carter stood, adjusted his shirt, and ambled off the stand. When Calvin returned to our table, I pushed my questions in his direction. “Call him back and ask him these questions,” I whispered.
“Anthony, we just want to hurry up and get Carter off the stand.”
“He doesn’t know me,” I said.
“Don’t question the legal strategy,” Lydia chided.
I was no longer sure Calvin had a legal strategy. I felt a little like a deckhand asking a captain why he’d cut loose a trophy-sized catch. I wasn’t the expert, after all. Maybe there was something that Calvin planned to introduce later that would bring it all together, make sense of it all. At this point, there was nothing I could do. He was my attorney; he must have known what he was doing, right? If I didn’t have faith in my attorneys, where would I be? They were all I had, and I had to believe they knew best how to defend me. I’d wanted Carter grilled long and hard, and exposed for what he was—a lying piece of shit. It didn’t go down that way in court, and I could only hope that there was a reason for that.
With Carter’s exit, the state rested its case. I imagined what I might be thinking if I were sitting in the jury box. I imagined the jury box filled with reasonable people, and I hoped those reasonable jurors might see through the implausible jailers, the flimsy knife, and the ever-changing chronicles of Robert Carter.
Calvin had been thrown off by Carter’s latest story. We had prepared for a version that included a trip to the gas station. After all, the state had called me in for a lineup those many months ago. Sebesta presumably had an eyewitness willing to testify that she had seen me filling a gas can on that night. But when Carter stated on the stand that he already had the gas when he picked me up, Calvin wasn’t sure where to go. Our mistake was in trusting that a liar might stick to one lie. Sebesta had cleverly manipulated Carter to move the goalposts after Calvin spent weeks preparing to combat the gas station identification.
After the state rested its case, it was our turn. Calvin called a man named John Isom to the stand. Isom thought his cousin Keith could have been involved in the crime. Keith’s da
ughter Denitra—Lisa Davis’s eldest child and half-sister to Carter’s son Jason—was one of the victims. Isom had seen Keith the night of the murders and thought he had acted strangely. For us, Isom’s role was simple. Jurors are human at their core. They don’t want to believe there are murderers roaming the streets. Shrewd defense attorneys understand that when you present the “I Didn’t Do It” defense, you must give jurors a plausible alternative. In this case, the jurors believed that Robert Carter was involved, either as the main actor or an accomplice. Sebesta had been convincing in his argument that the crime had involved two perpetrators. We needed to present a viable theory to the jury.
“Did your cousin come to your house on the night of the murder?” Calvin asked.
“He did,” Isom said. “He came and I consoled him because his daughter had been one of the victims. He seemed almost unaffected, as if he was indifferent. Maybe he was in shock, but something didn’t seem right.” Isom went on to say that his cousin Keith left the house abruptly when he’d stepped out of the room for a minute.
We next called Wanda Lattimore to the stand. Carter had testified on direct examination earlier in my trial that I killed Bobbie Davis and her family because Bobbie had beaten out my mom for a job promotion. I had to have some motive, after all, if I was going to kill six people. That story was the state’s college try.
Wanda was my mom’s supervisor. “The two of them worked very well together,” she said on direct examination, referring to my mother and Bobbie Davis. “They certainly got along.” She also testified that my mother had never applied for the job in question. This seemed to dispense with any “revenge” motive on my part, but I questioned whether that would matter to the jury. Calvin had told me that the state doesn’t have to prove motive. It only helps to fill in any gaps that jurors might have. I wondered if Wanda’s testimony would be of any help to me.
Infinite Hope Page 11