Objection!: How High-Priced Defense Attorneys, Celebrity Defendants, and a 24/7 Media Have Hijacked Our Criminal Justice System

by Nancy Grace

  1 1 1

  computer assigns each case a number up into the tens of thousands.

  The numbers are assigned randomly and evenly to each of the dozens of judges in each jurisdiction. The computer could assign one prosecutor forty cases in one week with only one murder, the rest being car thefts, burglaries, and rapes. The next week could land you another forty cases, fifteen of them being brand-new murder files. The computer understands only the ordered case number assigned to the file—it’s blind to the nature of the case. This is so defense lawyers can’t accuse the state of “judge shopping”—in other words, expressly assigning specific cases to tough judges or strong prosecutors versus the weak links that invariably exist on the bench and in the courtroom.

  This particular triple homicide had evolved out of an ongoing turf battle that took place midway along the direct route from Miami, where narcotics of all types flood into the United States and are then

  “muled”—transported—up Interstate 75 toward New York City, one of the country’s main drug-distribution hubs. Atlanta is the first major stop for traffickers as they flee Miami to escape the city’s heavy DEA presence.

  The most vicious drug-related gang violence goes down in clusters of inner-city Atlanta’s housing projects. This particular housing project, home to thousands of people, was easily one of the most violent.

  The apartments were configured in a horseshoe shape, with entrances at either end. Because of the huge number of drive-by shootings and drug-related activities that occurred there, one entrance had actually been barricaded closed by police. They cordoned it off with barbed wire so suspects couldn’t elude them during chases. I didn’t know that when I went to investigate the crime, but I learned pretty quickly.

  The first time I drove there, I did so naïvely believing that witnesses would actually talk to me just because I asked. The murders went down on a Sunday night at about ten past eleven, on the project’s playground, which was at the center of the U-shaped apartment configuration. Any people who happened to be looking out their windows that night would have had to have seen what happened, but no one would 1 1 2

  N A N C Y G R A C E

  come forward. People broke down into two camps: those who were afraid of retaliation, which was a given, and addicts who couldn’t care less about murders that took place on their own kids’ playground.

  Airbrushing the awful truth in this case was the primary goal of the defense. The crux of the case was that three young black men had been gunned down, execution-style. The youngest one had tried to run when he realized what was happening. He took off, attempted to jump over a chain-link fence, and was shot multiple times in the back. In the first crime-scene photo I saw of him, he was lying flat on his back. I couldn’t make out the unusual markings on his face until I drove to the medical examiner’s headquarters and questioned the doctor who had performed the autopsy. He explained that when the victim was murdered, he was in the midst of climbing over the chain-link fence surrounding part of the playground in his effort to escape. That’s when he was shot, and that’s where he died. His cheek, jaw, and neck were smashed into the fence, and he hung there dead until police took him down. Another shot also took me a while to figure out, until I interviewed one of the crime-scene techs who took the photos. Under the fence was a cement gutter. I didn’t even realize what I was looking at until he explained that it was blood from the body of the teenager literally running down the gutter. The defense team objected to the photos’ coming into evidence, claiming they were prejudicial and would incite the jury. I argued they symbolized the intense level of violence that night.

  The jury never saw them.

  B E A R I N G W I T N E S S

  No witnesses? No case.

  The defense is always thrilled when a state’s witness fails to show, is too afraid to come to court, or can’t be located or convinced to get involved. After being named as the district attorney in the triple-homicide case I went to the scene at many different times of the day and night to try O B J E C T I O N !

  1 1 3

  to get witnesses to testify. Because my name had been in the local papers as the prosecutor in the case, no one would answer the door when I came around. I’m sure I stuck out like a sore thumb, dressed in my court clothes and rumbling up in a huge, county-issued Crown Victoria—

  widely known in practically every state in the country as the unmarked government vehicle. My investigator and I would sneak around the back of the apartments so that the neighbors of potential witnesses wouldn’t see us and word wouldn’t spread that they were cooperating. We would knock on every door and occasionally talk ourselves into someone’s apartment.

  We were literally begging people to testify if they had seen anything.

  One apartment we made it into had absolutely no furniture except one sofa lying lopsided, feet missing, in the middle of the den floor. It looked as if someone had set it on fire but not finished the job. The place was filthy. Everyone in the apartment was either already high, smoking pot, or doing lines. It was the first crack house I’d ever been in.

  Although I knew that my investigator packed at least two guns at all times, I, as usual, was unarmed. We knew instinctively that everyone in this place was armed to the hilt. After we “badged” our way in, we asked about the shootout. Everything went silent, and they all looked at each other. I knew they knew more, but nobody spoke. Then they visibly began shrinking away from us and fumbling for words. The end result of our visit: no witnesses.

  I was having a tough time digesting the conditions under which this community (including the little children) lived. I had just witnessed a felony crime right in front of my eyes. In my mind, that called for action. When we got to the car, I picked up the walkie-talkie to report the cocaine. My investigator yanked it away before I could finish. He told me in no uncertain terms that there was no way we could report it or stop it. They’d be out on bond two days after arrest, back in the same dope house, and our chance of a conviction in the triple murder would be shot. Reporting the crack house would certainly have stopped any potential witnesses from ever cooperating. I felt helpless, but I knew I couldn’t do anything to jeopardize the case. I had to find witnesses. To 1 1 4

  N A N C Y G R A C E

  this day, I think of the little kids who lived there. Their clothes were dirty, and they had nothing. I didn’t report the crack house and continued to work the case.

  I finally heard about a witness who allegedly drove a school bus during the day. I knew she would have avoided me if she had any idea I was coming. Late one afternoon, I went back to the projects to try to approach her with a subpoena as she came in from work. I never told people when I was coming, because if they had even an inkling I was on my way, they’d definitely vanish by the time I showed up.

  As odd as it sounds, by this time I had seen many, many crime scenes and never shed a tear. I’d stayed dry-eyed through countless reviews of autopsy findings, bloodstains, dead bodies. All that mattered was getting a true verdict from the jury, putting violent offenders behind bars and away from innocent people, and then tackling the next case. At the time, Atlanta’s crime level was so high that I sometimes tried three cases in one week. My Monday mornings usually started with a murder or rape trial. The minute a jury left the courtroom to begin deliberations, the sheriff would usher in the next panel of sixty to eighty jurors, who’d been waiting in the hall to be struck for the petit jury (twelve people). The second case would usually be something along the lines of a drug possession or trafficking case calling for only five to ten witnesses. After that, a simple burglary or car-theft jury could easily be struck, with only a few witnesses needed to prove the case. When all the cases had been given to the jury, my investigator and I would haunt the courtroom, subsisting on Diet Cokes and crackers until the verdicts came in. I thought I was steeled against emotions that would cloud my focus.

  But the day I went looking for my bus-driver witness, something was different. I had scoured t
he playground where the crime occurred for weeks, digging for ballistics evidence the police might have missed.

  This was the first time I’d been there in the light of day, and the scene stunned me. All over the playground—even under the swing sets and monkey bars—was broken glass, cigarette butts, used condoms, bul-O B J E C T I O N !

  1 1 5

  lets, bullet casings, discarded miniature glassine bags for holding crack. There were even used syringes everywhere.

  I sat there in my car, hunched over the wheel, waiting. And then came the children. I watched in horror as dozens of kids poured off two school buses and onto that playground, running and laughing. I still don’t know why, but suddenly it was too much. I put my head on the steering wheel and cried and cried. I couldn’t stop. Watching those children grow up in that world, swinging high on a swing set over broken glass and glassine bags—it was just too much. All I could see was a whole new generation immune to crime, literally growing up right on top of it. I had seen a million crime-scene photos and not felt a thing.

  But seeing those children living in that world and never having a chance was more than I could take.

  That night at home, and for days afterward, I tried to figure out why I was still prosecuting. What was the point? After this case, there would just be more—a never-ending stream of violent crime. I wanted desperately to quit. I felt lost. My mission had run aground. Everything about the case left me with a horrible feeling of hopelessness. Then I heard about a possible witness, a hooker named Shorty, who I’m sure is dead by now. She had been on the edge of the playground that night but was afraid to speak out. Somehow we talked her into it. I’ll never forget what awaited me when I went to her apartment. When she opened the front door, I saw what had to be about twenty babies lying on the floor in front of a television. They were all infants, some wrapped in blankets, some not—but not one ever cried out for care or affection. I discovered she made extra money as a part-time baby-sitter. I tiptoed around them on the way to the kitchen, where she asked me if I wanted something to drink. She gave me some green Kool-Aid. While I was sitting there, I happened to look up at the clock on the wall behind me. It took all I had not to shriek and leap out of my chair. There had to have been eighty roaches running up and down the wall like ants. I set the glass down, opened up my file to work, and pretended to drink so I wouldn’t be rude.

  1 1 6

  N A N C Y G R A C E

  On the day Shorty was to take the stand, things dragged on and on.

  Suddenly it was five o’clock. I could see that the jury was drawn and tired. My investigator thought we should stop, but my gut told me we had to get this woman on the stand now. The jury had to be there, in that moment, on the playground the night of the killings, before they went home for the day. Up until this point, the day had been filled with one “expert” after another, plus a couple of cops.

  On the stand, Shorty described what she had seen that night, and she was growing more and more agitated as she went on. She testified that all of a sudden she heard the shouting, and when she looked over through the darkness, she saw the three young men gunned down. Her fear was a palpable presence in the courtroom. Before I could stop her, she half stood at the witness stand and screamed at the top of her lungs,

  “He shot them! Shot them dead!” She then pointed to the defendant as she cried out in the courtroom, “I looked and saw him! He turned and looked at me in the dark, and I was so afraid that I ran.”

  You could have heard a pin drop in the courtroom. The jury finally got it. The truth was raw, and it hurt. I stopped and turned to the judge.

  We were done. The jury went home with Shorty’s cries ringing in their ears. As much evidence as the defense had managed to keep away from them, this was one witness it couldn’t airbrush.

  When the jury delivered their verdict, they found the triggerman guilty on all three counts of malice murder. I forced myself to look directly at him to “publish the verdict”—read it aloud in open court. After leaving the courthouse that afternoon, I was standing at a crosswalk waiting for the light to change when I turned and saw that a member of the jury had come up next to me. He was a tall black man in his early fifties. During the trial, I had connected with this juror and directed much of my argument and questioning of witnesses directly at him. He didn’t speak but held out his hand to shake mine. My eyes filled with tears as we gripped hands. He disappeared into the crowd crossing the street, and I never saw him again. The defendant in the case remains behind bars serving three consecutive life sentences.

  O B J E C T I O N !

  1 1 7

  The level of violence and lack of regard for human life displayed during that case, combined with tactics used by the defense, were just plain wrong. I needed an armed escort to take me to my car every night after court. My tires were slashed in the county court’s parking deck, and my back door was kicked in. My mailbox was run over and knocked down three times. Things grew worse as the investigation and trial wore on. I finally had to stop staying at my own home during the trial.

  In the course of prosecuting this case, it all became overwhelming.

  The ugliness of the truth exposed an intense level of violence and hatred that was saturating my life. It’s impossible to slog hip-deep through mud every day without tracking some back home with you. I felt lost, and I wanted to quit. In my closing statements to the jury, I argued with all my heart that they were the voice of those who have no voice—the victims who are all too often the poor and uneducated. If they didn’t speak out against injustice, I reasoned, then who would? As I argued to the jury, my own words rang in my head. I knew at the time that I was just weary, weary with the weight of the trial. I knew I wasn’t ready to stop fighting the only way I knew how—as a prosecutor. After the trial, my mother gave me a ring with three rows of diamonds: one for each of the three victims. I wear it to this day.

  A P I C T U R E S P E A K S

  A T H O U S A N D

  ( U N H E A R D ) W O R D S

  I was reminded of that triple-homicide case when I learned that the trial judge in the Laci Peterson murder case had warned potential jurors that they would likely see graphic and upsetting crime-scene photos. There would likely be photos of Laci—or what was left of her, which was her bones with a little flesh on them, wearing a maternity bra, washed up against a rocky beach. Her skull and portions of her limbs were never found. Compared to the vibrant images of the smiling and 1 1 8

  N A N C Y G R A C E

  happy young brunette we came to recognize from television, the contrast is nearly impossible to erase from your mind.

  As awful as the crime-scene photos are, they depict the truth. Murder is an unsettling and gory reality. Crime-scene and autopsy photos are the closest things attorneys have when it comes to sharing that truth with the jury. Words alone cannot do the truth justice. The jurors, however, never learn the harsh reality of crime, and they never will under the current rules of evidence. I believe that all crime-scene and autopsy photos showing the victim’s injuries must be admissible. It has been ruled repeatedly by appellate courts that such photos would inflame and prejudice the jury. Of course a jury will be inflamed. Of course jurors will be prejudiced to the extent that the evidence of the murder itself is inflammatory and shocking. Is there a way to pretend that the violent taking of a human life isn’t shocking? All evidence pointing to murder is prejudicial. The defense argument that evidence in a murder trial is prejudicial to the jury is a ridiculous and disingen-uous game played with words.

  I have gotten certain autopsy photos in under very limited circumstances. I prosecuted the kidnapping, rape, and murder of an unknown woman whose body was found dumped in an empty field. We didn’t have much to go on, but part of the proof that made it to the jury was an autopsy photo of the victim’s skull showing violent bruising under the skin. Because the wound was apparent to the naked eye only in the autopsy photo, it was allowed. And it was in fact inflammatory. When I first sa
w the photo, I didn’t even realize what I was looking at. All you could see was blurry pinkish tissue, bordered in black. The medical examiner pointed out, “That’s her head. This is her hair.” It didn’t really hit me then, because I was looking at a discoloration of tissue just beneath her skull. In that context, the photo came in to show the nature and degree of a blow to the head and the subdural (beneath the skull) bleeding. Autopsy photos are often the only method to explain certain injuries, but more than that, they are the only way in which the true horror of the crime is ever known to a jury. The stark reality is that this O B J E C T I O N !

  1 1 9

  victim ended up at the county morgue with her body dissected. Harsh?

  Yes. True? Yes. It is part of the nature of the crime and must not be hidden from the jury.

  T H E S C E N E O F T H E C R I M E

  I also firmly believe that all crime-scene photos must be admissible.

  Defense attorneys try their best to have as many as possible excluded from evidence, so as to distance the jury from the reality of the crime.

  It’s much better from the defense’s point of view to reduce the murder, rape, or child molestation to a clinical evaluation as reported in the notes of a doctor, nurse, or medical examiner. I say, “No!” Crime has nothing to do with a black-and-white, printed version of injuries and analysis. It is all about the assault on human dignity, on the human psyche—and it’s about the victim. The human equation must not be airbrushed out of the courtroom.

  The courtroom is no place for the weak-kneed, and the jury must see the reality and intensity of crime. To show the truth to a jury, prosecutors must know the rules of evidence backward and forward, using those rules as their swords and their shields. A superior knowledge of the application of law is the only hope for the reality of crime to make its way to a jury. Being able to use those rules to your advantage, to lay the groundwork as to why photos must be admitted, is essential. Reviewing the crime scene and victim and autopsy photos with a fine-tooth comb often reveals strategies to allow the truth before the jury.