McMaster rumbled on with the state’s accusations. “The defendant moved back into the house with Joan Hill but continued his extramarital activities. Sometime during the weekend of March 15th and 16th, Joan Hill first displayed symptoms of excessive diarrhea and vomiting which continued and became progressively worse until Joan Hill was completely helpless as evidenced by uncontrolled stools in her bed during the night of Monday, March 17, 1969.”
Here Racehorse started to object, for he knew the state would have a hard time proving either “completely helpless” or “uncontrolled stools,” but he let it pass, waiting until later to savage the state’s case.
“The state’s proof is expected to show that the defendant apparently began to act as Joan Hill’s physician during the period from March 16th to March 18th of 1969.…” Racehorse wrote down the word “apparently” on his yellow legal pad and underlined it. This was an important word, one of the issues to be determined. Was John Hill ever his wife’s physician? Or was he merely acting as a concerned and caring husband? Certainly he surrendered the responsibility of being her physician the moment he delivered her to Sharpstown Hospital.
“It will further show that Joan Hill was hospitalized March 18, 1969, in a state of irreversible shock and died approximately fourteen hours thereafter. The state’s proof is also expected to show that among other diagnoses resulting from autopsies performed on the body of Joan Hill were those of acute hepatitis, acute meningitis, acute splenitis, acute esophagitis, and early bronchopneumonia.
“Further, the state expects to show that the defendant, realizing his wife Joan Hill’s condition, intentionally and with malice aforethought failed to properly treat Joan Hill and failed to provide timely hospitalization for her in order that she would die.”
John Hill shook his head softly, in negation, again and again, attempting to sweep the damnations from his focus. The courtroom spectators, mainly women, eager to hear tales of sex and sorrow, craned to see him. Some agreed with Racehorse that John Hill looked as unlike a murder defendant as any accused who ever sat in a courtroom.
The state began weaving a case based more on style than substance. First they summoned Mrs. Vann Maxwell to the witness stand, she being the beautiful across-the-street neighbor of Joan Hill. Once she had been Joan’s ally, confidante, and co-conspirator in tracking the trail of Ann Kurth and in rifling the trunk of John Hill’s automobile. With hair streaked beige and silver, a slim body bespeaking the pampering of expensive oils and lotions, she was what the bourgeoisie would expect the aristocracy to be. Even her blouse of modern art on a sheer gossamer seemed designed by Picasso, perhaps woven on his own loom. Had Joan Hill been here to speak for herself, it seemed, she would have offered similar elegance and class. It was easy for the women of the courtroom to imagine the bloodlines being discussed here.
Vann Maxwell, whose marriage to a psychiatrist had ended in divorce not long after Joan’s death, was used by the state to introduce the deteriorating relationship between the doctor and his first wife. Telling of the Saturday night bridge game in the music room, with Joan scribbling angry notes and passing them across the table, Vann said, “Joan broke into a crying jag which I did not understand.… She said something like, ‘I’ve had it, it’s just not going to work out, I can’t keep him.’” She said that Joan planned to go to a lawyer on Monday and sue for divorce. “The final thing she said about it was … would I go with her?”
On cross, Racehorse casually wondered, “How did she appear to you?”
“She seemed in good health,” answered Mrs. Maxwell. This was an important exchange, for the state would have to prove that thirty-six hours later this strong, athletic young sportswoman had become helpless and a prisoner in her own dirty bed.
“Mrs. Effie Green, your honor,” said McMaster, and the bailiff led in the aged black maid who had ministered to her mistress in the last hours. A small, birdlike woman, her shoulders bent from a life of hard labor in kitchens and toilets, her hair was steel gray and her hands clutched a handkerchief to dab at moist and teary eyes. It was the first time in her almost seven decades on this earth that she had set foot in a courtroom, and she was as frightened as if she had been told to walk past a graveyard at midnight. I. D. McMaster treated Effie courteously, but businesslike, as superior to inferior, and Racehorse slyly made note of this.
“Did anyone tell you that Mrs. Hill was ill … that she was sick on Monday?” asked McMaster.
Effie nodded. “I can’t recall now who told me … but someone did tell me that she was ill and not to go in the room.”
McMaster let this soak in. It was important that the jury accept the portrait of Joan Hill lying gravely ill, with even the maid forbidden to enter the room. At that point something clicked in Racehorse Haynes’s mind, and he whispered to Don Fullenweider to find a certain passage in a deposition. The defense lawyers had wheeled an entire filing cabinet into the courtroom, and every word that had been uttered in the case was instantly retrievable. Seldom had a murder case been so excellently prepared.
“Did Mrs. Hill ever call you to come to her room on Monday?” asked the district attorney.
“No, she didn’t call me.”
At his seat, Racehorse almost put on a smile of contentment. The state was helping his case. If the lady was all that sick, why didn’t she call Effie for help?
McMaster moved to the next morning, Tuesday, the day that Joan was taken to Sharpstown Hospital. Effie told of making coffee and orange juice “fixed up real nice on a tray” and taking it upstairs to her master and mistress.
“When you went in the bedroom … was Mrs. Hill in bed?”
“Yes, she was in the bed.”
“Where was Dr. Hill?”
“He was in the bed, on his side of the bed.”
Another point for the defense, Racehorse felt. If John Hill was all that negligent and murderous, why would he be in the soiled bed? But the jury had not yet heard that unpleasant part of the tale. John Hill’s eyes drilled holes into the old woman. One juror would later say that he thought for a time that the plastic surgeon was trying to hypnotize his former maid. “That man had the coldest eyes I’d ever seen,” said the juror.
McMaster prodded Effie to continue her story. “What did Dr. Hill say when he called you to come up to the bedroom?”
“He tell me, ‘Effie, come clean up this mess.’”
“What was ‘this mess’?”
Effie spoke very carefully here, as if giving testimony before her church congregation.
“I found a bowel movement on the bathroom floor,” she said.
“Can you describe it for us? Anything unusual about it?”
“It was just webby … just had an odor to it.… I can’t describe all the color. It had a little greenish-like to it because I noticed when I was cleaning it up.”
Later she was summoned by Dr. Hill, who gave nursing instructions. “He tell me to take care of Mrs. Hill and give her medicine and give her all liquids, such as tea and Coke and orange juice and things like that.”
In his seat, Racehorse stirred a little happily. This did not sound as if the doctor had “abandoned” his wife to die.
“Where were those medicines? Do you know?”
“They was on the night stand by her bed.”
After the plastic surgeon left that fateful Tuesday morning, hurrying to the elementary school where he would play his tuba solo, Effie said she went back to the bedroom of her sick mistress. She helped Mrs. Hill to the bathroom again and, en route, the sick woman swayed, almost fell, and put her arms around the maid’s waist.
“I tried to carry her, and she told me, ‘Effie, are you going to let me fall?’ I said, ‘No, I am not. You hold tight to me and I will hold tight to you and carry you in.’”
The maid began to describe how her employer looked and felt. Racehorse rose quickly and objected. She was not qualified as an expert medical witness, pleaded the defense lawyer. McMaster tried to justify it by saying such testimon
y related to the symptoms of Joan Hill’s fatal illness. Judge Fred Hooey permitted the prosecution to continue. Racehorse was worried now, not so much over the explicit testimony as over the climate and spell that the old maid was creating. Though uneducated and not at home in grammar, she was a powerful witness.
“Now,” said McMaster, “after you helped her to the bathroom … was she able to walk by herself back to the bed? Or not?”
Instantly Haynes was back up. “Your honor, I hate to keep objecting, but counsel is leading this witness and suggesting answers.”
Judge Hooey shook his head in disagreement. “That objection is overruled.”
“Was she?” asked McMaster again.
“No. I had to help her. She wasn’t able to walk by herself.… Just as we got in the bathroom into the entrance, her bowels moved again on the floor.… I cleaned her up. I asked her to lean herself to the wall, and I got a towel and wet it … and I cleaned it up and carried her and put her back to bed. That’s the truth: And God knows I tell the truth.”
What about the bed itself? wondered McMaster. Was anything unusual there? Effie nodded in recollection. Specifically, demanded the district attorney, was there any sign of bowel movement in the bed?
“It was. Some towels had been put underneath her … about three towels.” The bottom towel, next to the sheet, “was soiled pretty bad” and “it had a little blood stain on it.” Racehorse Haynes could feel the vibrations turning hostile toward his client. He knew that when it was his turn to cross-examine the maid he could damage this part of her testimony. He could confuse her, make her describe specifically the substance of the bowel movement. Hard? Soft? Mushy? Loose? Color? Are you a doctor, Effie? How do you know it was two hours old? Twelve hours old? Ten minutes old? Are you sure they were bloodstains on the sheets? Ever seen rust marks from water on sheets, Effie? How old were these sheets, Effie? You only worked for the Hills two or three months, didn’t you, Effie? How do you know these sheets were white and new? Couldn’t they have been old and rusted? All of this and more he could ask, until Effie was but a discombobulated fly on the end of his pin. But he would run the grave risk of alienating the jury. Elderly blacks in the South earn a measure of respect. A bit of crustiness is not only allowed but appreciated.
Racehorse Haynes made more than twenty objections to Effie’s testimony, all variations on the same theme: that Effie Green was repeating hearsay conversation and that she was making medical judgments on Joan Hill’s condition. But sitting beside McMaster was Ernie Ernst, considered to be “the fastest legal gun in the South,” and he had quick and winning responses to the defense’s objections. A sample:
McMaster: Based on what you saw when she came back from the bathroom—based on what you saw, did you form any opinion of her condition?
Haynes: We would object to that answer. It would be strictly speculative, conjecture, prejudicial, and inflammatory.
Ernst: May it please the court, it is our position that this witness’s opinion … goes to the condition of the deceased at that very moment when she was in an acute time. Mrs. Green’s opinion as to her condition and what she said is evidence of her opinion as to her condition. We must prove her condition and her opinion of the condition.
Judge Hooey: All right. I will let her answer the question.
When Racehorse Haynes rose to cross-examine Effie Green he treated her with great respect in the Southern tradition. She was “Miss Effie” in all of his questions, never did he raise his voice disrespectfully, never did he behave in any manner save that of the plantation’s eldest son, home from the war, making fond small talk with the woman who perhaps nursed him at her breast. Yet his purpose was to so rattle her as to impeach her credibility as a witness. A fine line to walk. But Effie was sixty-nine years old, and the events she was remembering had happened two long years before.
To begin, Effie could not even remember how long she had worked for the Hills when Joan died. She said she “thought” it was three or four months. In fact, countered Racehorse gently, it was about six weeks. But that was all right. My land, it was such a long time ago. Casually he moved along. Now, about the morning when the two house guests from Dallas left. Effie began to repeat her story, and she began confusing that Monday, and the next day, Tuesday, sometimes in the same sentence.
Racehorse sympathized. “I know how hard it is to keep from confusing those days,” he said. Effie nodded vigorously, grateful for his support.
“Do you remember on Monday morning that the Avalon drugstore delivered some medicine for Mrs. Hill?” asked the lawyer.
“No … I don’t rightly remember that.”
Racehorse put on a face of mock puzzlement. He referred to a mass of papers on his table. “But, Miss Effie, on that Monday,” he asked, seemingly in clarification, “you went up to her room, didn’t you? And you saw Mrs. Hill sitting in the chair, didn’t you, ma’am?”
“Mrs. Hill?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“No.” Effie was positive. She did not see Mrs. Hill on the next to last day of her life.
Racehorse hesitated, racing an idea through his head, wondering if it was worth the risk. He deemed that it was. He picked up a thick document from the table and began to read from it. The testimony therein was Effie’s sworn statement, taken only six weeks after the death of Joan Hill. Surely Miss Effie remembered the lawyer who questioned her, the nice, gray-haired Mr. Briscoe, used to be the district atorrney? The old woman nodded. She remembered.
Well then, on page 11 of this deposition was the following question from Mr. Briscoe. “On that Monday, did you ever go up to her room and see her?” And your answer, “I went up there one time. And she say, ‘Just some coffee.’ She’s sittin’ in a big chair.”
At this Effie shook her head in vigorous disagreement. “Somebody must’ve put that there. I didn’t say nothing.”
“The fellow that took this down put it down wrong, Miss Effie?” asked Racehorse in mock bewilderment. But it was sworn testimony. Under the penalty of perjury.
“I didn’t give Mrs. Hill no coffee Monday morning,” harrumped the maid.
Okay, if that was wrong, wondered Racehorse, then how true was Miss Effie’s remembrance that she was told—presumably by John Hill—not to disturb the sick woman that entire Monday? He read from the transcript, from Effie’s words two years prior. “‘… That Monday, I went up there to her room and I knocked on her door again. And those women [the house guests] say, “She can’t be disturbed. She’s resting, and let her rest.”’”
Effie shook her head in bewilderment. “That was two years ago,” she said softly.
“But it was within a month or so after it happened?”
“I know that.”
“So, Miss Effie, your memory may have been better at that time about those little details than it is today.”
“I’ll tell you I was so upset when Mrs. Hill passed that I didn’t know nothing hardly. I really were.”
“This leads me to believe that one of those two women told you to let Mrs. Hill rest.”
Effie searched for her answer. “I told you … I don’t recall who did. I don’t remember if they did or not. Someone told me not to disturb her, and I did not. I didn’t ask her about no coffee, because I didn’t go to no room.”
Racehorse nodded, satisfied. He had scored two points. First, he had cast doubt on the memory of the old woman and her ability to recollect crucial events. Second, and more important, he had shifted the blame of leaving Joan alone in her sick room from the shoulders of her accused husband to, perhaps, the Dallas women.
The lawyer next produced a bottle of Kaopectate from the Avalon drugstore, dated March 17, 1969, with instructions on the label “Tea-spoonful after each loose B.M.” Then he introduced as defense evidence a bottle of paregoric and a vial of pills labeled Mysteclin-F 250 mg. The drugstore records indicated that Dr. Hill called in the order on March 17 at 8 A.M., the Monday before Joan died. This date contradicted Effie’s testimony
that she could not remember medicine being delivered that day. But she did verify that the medicine was beside Joan Hill’s bed, and this was the same medicine which she tried and failed to administer to an unwilling sick woman. This would further place Effie in the room on Monday.
One more question, Miss Effie. “I suppose you wouldn’t hesitate in going back to work for Dr. Hill today?”
“He haven’t did nothing to me,” said Effie. “I wouldn’t mind going back if he needed me.… I like him.”
Smiling, pleased, Racehorse felt this was the perfect exit line. He sat down.
Promptly I. D. McMaster leaped up and asked to introduce Effie Green’s entire sworn deposition. It would not have been admissible had not Racehorse “opened the door” by reading from it to impeach her credibility. “This is the document referred to by Mr. Haynes in his examination of Effie Green, and we offer it in rehabilitation of Mrs. Green,” said the prosecutor.
Racehorse objected for a full quarter of an hour, for he desperately wanted to avoid having the jury read this document in full. Though there were discrepancies and inconsistencies, the emotional impact was shattering. Bits and pieces in open court were not too harmful, but over all it was damaging to John Hill.
“I will admit this statement in evidence,” said Judge Hooey. McMaster and Ernst were elated. That one victory at the end of the day was worth more than all the previous testimony.
That evening, as was his custom, Racehorse held his own court, in his office, over good whiskey, for the young Turks who liked to drape themselves over the leather chairs and couches and reconstruct the trial session. John Hill usually listened briefly, then dozed on the couch before he rushed out to a hospital and made brief rounds. He was trying to sustain the image of a working surgeon, though his practice had dwindled to very little in the months leading up to the murder trial. In 1968, the last full year of his marriage to Joan, he earned $168,000. In 1971 his gross would be less than one third of that. He had even gone back to his post-resident custom of haunting hospital emergency rooms, hoping to pick up a smashed face from an automobile wreck.
Blood and Money Page 30