In 1972 the Houston apartment where Larry Wood and Mary Jo lived was blasted with gunfire. Fortunately the couple was away for the evening. The police report counted fifty-seven bullet holes in the apartment walls and windows.
The kind of work that Larry Wood was engaged in might have contributed to the ferocious attack, but he told Bennett, “That was a wedding present from Lilla. Now do you understand why we left town?”
All of this Bob Bennett wrote down and studied and, eventually, despaired of ever using as evidence of Lilla’s character. None of it would be admissible, not even the woman’s criminal record, not unless her defense counsel made a blunder and opened one of the peculiar legal doors that allows rummaging around in the locked closets of a defendant’s history. But Dick DeGeurin was too smart to do that. On the February morning that the trial began, Bennett glanced over and scrutinized the woman he so desperately wanted to put in the penitentiary. She looked back at him and smiled. A smile! “It’s crazy,” thought Bennett, “but this woman is enjoying her hour at the center of the public stage.” Her childhood vow was now achieved.
Both sides announced ready and Bennett threw his first ball. On face value it seemed a weak pitch, but there was a hidden curve. He proposed that Marcia McKittrick be placed on the witness stand, under oath, and give the court a sort of preview of her testimony. At the defense table, DeGeurin stiffened. What was the district attorney up to? Judge Price, wearing his black formal robes and looking even more like a youngster playing at dress-up, summoned the attorneys to his bench.
“What is the purpose of this?” the judge asked pleasantly.
“I have been given information that Miss McKittrick has changed her mind and will not testify in this case,” said Bennett. “This is in direct opposition to her previous commitment. I have been conferring with Miss McKittrick, and her position seems ambiguous. It does not seem to be a definite refusal.” In other words, continued the prosecutor, let’s put this “yes one day, no the next” hooker on the stand and find out if she is going to testify against Lilla Paulus. If not, then Bennett had no case, and the unspoken implication was that everybody could go home.
The proposal seemed sensible, even generous. But DeGeurin smelled trouble. It was not the custom of the DA’s office to throw in the towel in the first five minutes of a murder trial. The defense lawyer made strenuous objection. He knew of no procedure under which the star witness could be asked in advance of jury selection just what her testimony would be.
Judge Price chewed on the unusual request for a few moments, then ruled in favor of the state. He was a practical judge, anxious to get on with matters, and if this was a timesaving procedure, then well and good. Bring on Marcia.
She was waiting under guard in a whitewashed anteroom, and when she came into the courtroom and took a seat in the now familiar witness box, Marcia looked out and nodded almost warmly to all the people she recognized—Bennett, Jerry Carpenter, DeGeurin—but her gaze resolutely avoided Lilla.
“Prior to last Friday, February 14, 1975,” began Bennett, “you had expressed a willingness to testify in this matter.”
Marcia nodded. Lilla’s head shot up, riveting her eyes to the prostitute in the box. There came a long pause, the suspense of a balloon blown to its limits and due to burst with the next push of breath. “Yes,” said Marcia, “but now I don’t think I’ll be able to testify.” Then that was that. DeGeurin smiled, and Lilla snapped her purse shut, as if the meeting was over and she could get home in time to watch a noon soap opera on television.
Bennett nodded, not electing to argue with his exasperating witness. Instead, he reached into a legal folder and withdrew several copies of a prepared motion, throwing one down in front of DeGeurin, offering others to the judge and the clerk. “In that case,” said Bennett, “I move to grant immunity to Marcia McKittrick and require her to testify.” Judge Price nodded, perhaps in appreciation of a shrewd prosecutorial maneuver. Quickly DeGeurin devoured the brief document. What he intended, explained Bennett, was to guarantee that the district attorney’s office would never use any of the testimony that the prostitute might give should the need arise to try her again. This was a complex offer. It indicated that the possibility at least existed that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals might someday reverse the young woman’s murder conviction—the ten-year prison sentence she was now serving after the five-minute rush job on the stormy Halloween three and a half months before. If that happened, and if Marcia was given a new trial, then the DA promised not to use any of her testimony in today’s trial against Lilla Paulus.
Instantly DeGeurin rose, sputtering with an objection. This was clearly a denial of a witness’ constitutional right to remain silent, he charged. Moreover, he had never even heard of such an out-of-bounds trick. Immunity can be offered to prospective witnesses before a trial, but not after a conviction. “Marcia McKittrick has already been prosecuted, found guilty, received punishment, and is now appealing. We do not think the state can force a person to testify under those conditions.” DeGeurin now felt the thorn in Bennett’s bouquet. If Marcia continued in her refusal to testify, then the judge could hold her in contempt and slap a brand-new prison sentence on that charge against the prostitute. And he could continue resentencing her until the twenty-first century began, or until she saw the light.
Bennett was enjoying the furor. With a mock look of professorial forbearance, he rose to defend his motion. “Our position is that we have removed all future criminal exposure in this case, other than perjury. This is our quid pro quo.”
Through all of the harangues, Marcia squirmed silently, not understanding much of what was swirling about her. But then Judge Price turned to her, handed down the unusual motion, and instructed that she read it carefully. When she was done, he carefully explained its meaning—and potential peril. If she did not testify in this trial, then the bench could hold her in contempt and sentence her, and resentence her, until she elected to purge herself.
Fitfully, DeGeurin objected to the judge’s “threatening” the witness. With a withering look at his old handball partner, the judge announced, “We will begin jury selection.” Marcia was led away, back to the jail, holding the motion in her hand, now faced with Hobson’s choice.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Forty people were summoned from a central jury pool and herded into Judge Price’s courtroom, a place as modest in dimension as traffic court. They filled up the four rows of spectator seats, ten bodies to a row, and waited suspensefully for exactly what the business of the day was to be. Each had been drafted by mail and instructed to return a brief biographical card. Now the opposing lawyers held Xerox copies of the cards and began the crucial task of fleshing out the bare bones contained therein. The procedure—the legal term is voir dire—gave both state and defense an opportunity to interview each of the forty, then retire and decide in private which they did not want to be on the jury. Through weeding out by various challenges for cause and strikes, twelve jurors normally survived. Houston judges do not like jury selection to drag on for days. The generally held attitude is that twelve good men and women can be obtained quickly and fairly out of the original forty. In the trial of Lilla Paulus, the procedure took but three brisk hours. But in that short amount of time, fascinating personalities emerged from the cards. They became real people, creatures of ignorance and sophistication, boredom and intense desire.
Bennett operated gently and easily. He enjoyed the jury selection process, realizing that it was at best a guessing game, that years of investigation and planning led finally to these snap judgments that put people in the box with an attendant prayer that, from the very few pieces of the puzzle the rules of law would permit them to receive, they could assemble enough of the picture to condemn the defendant. The prosecutor usually followed several of the hoary dicta handed down by his elders in the trade—allow no blacks or Mexican-Americans on the jury because the feeling was these minority citizens were programmed since birth to disrespect police aut
hority; and be god damned careful about any women. Here Bennett felt a dilemma: he wanted women on the panel, for he hoped to enlist their contempt for the sordid side of Lilla’s life (if he could squeeze any such information into the record), but at the same time he feared they might be repelled by Marcia’s steamy career. “The best I can hope for,” he murmured to an aide, “is that we can find some reasonably intelligent women who can distinguish between an old bad whore and a repented good whore.” Bennett addressed the jurors en masse. He promised to move along quickly. “I know the mind can absorb only what the rear end can endure,” he said. “But there are some fairly complicated legal issues here.” The state would try to prove that Lilla Paulus aided and abetted the planned murder of Dr. John Hill, and evidence would be presented that “tends to connect the defendant” with the offense. He lingered over the phrase, drawing a line under it verbally for emphasis. These five words would become the most contentious of the trial.
Moving down the rows, Bennett chatted amiably with each of the forty, finding out about their jobs, families, education, previous experiences with the judicial system, and, extremely important, their religions. Judge Price, listening to the process with keen interest, had always been happy to discover a Lutheran on a panel during his years as a prosecutor. “The mere fact that somebody had been indicted was good enough for a Lutheran to vote for hanging,” the judge remarked during a recess.
When Bennett began interviewing a grocer, a grandfatherly man with a kind face, the prospective juror said that something was troubling him. He, in fact, held an opinion that might interfere with fair judgment on Mrs. Paulus. Quickly holding out his hands as a traffic cop to stop the man from blurting the opinion—the danger was he could taint the entire panel—Bennett led him before the judge for a whispered conference. Dick DeGeurin hastily caught up. “I think Ash Robinson should be on trial—before that lady over there,” the grocer said. “And this would bother me in trying to reach a fair verdict.”
Judge Price nodded calmly. He was surprised that Ash’s name had not arisen before, since the lawyers had been asking each prospective juror if he or she had read newspaper reports of the enduring case. “I appreciate your candor,” said the judge, sotto voce, “but you won’t be asked to rule on anybody else’s guilt or innocence.”
“I don’t think I could be fair to Lilla Paulus,” pleaded the man, “because I think Ash Robinson was the ringleader and the fellow who engineered this whole thing.”
Judge Price, with a compliment for his honesty, dismissed the man from the panel.
Bennett’s clipboard filled up with people he did not want. He struck one woman because she seemed “sullen.” Another was rejected because she had an in-law once convicted of murder. A third was eliminated because she told the prosecutor that she had not read local newspaper accounts of the Hill matter. “I only read the New York Times,” she said a little grandly. Bennett felt the answer was pretentious and that she was probably “a militant women’s libber.” She did not fit his needs; he wanted middle-of-the-road people with a sense of community pride and responsibility. The hope was these people would want to cleanse Houston of people like Lilla Paulus.
Defense attorney DeGeurin came on as brusque, a little testy, condescending even, at times waspish—in both definitions of the word. He was a decided contrast to Bennett’s rumpled suit and folksy air of feet propped up on the pickle barrel. His was not the best way to begin courtship of a jury. Three major points must be understood, DeGeurin lectured. In Texas, the prosecution had the burden of proving its case. “And it never shifts, this burden,” said DeGeurin. Moreover, the proof must be beyond a reasonable doubt. Most importantly, he stressed, a juror was required to believe that Lilla Paulus was innocent. “If you feel otherwise, then you shouldn’t be seated in this courtroom,” he said. “The law says that Lilla Paulus is innocent, unless the state carries its burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”
He scattered a few hints of what was to come. Lilla might or might not testify. “But that should not be a factor in your decision, because it is my decision, not hers.” Perhaps, DeGeurin suggested, the state’s case would be so flimsy that there would be no need for Mrs. Paulus to enter the witness box. In his place, Bennett smiled. How he would like to get Lilla on cross-examination! Then DeGeurin waded briefly in the murky waters of corroborating evidence. Though he believed privately at this moment that Marcia McKittrick would keep her silence despite the threat of contempt of court, it was still worth getting out the tarbrush. Should a woman named Marcia McKittrick testify, speculated DeGeurin, then “her testimony is not enough for conviction—even if you believe her.” His tone defined Marcia as the Olympic champion of lying.
DeGeurin also wanted middle-of-the-road people, but he could not live with extreme advocates of law and order. He struck one man because all he did was speak warmly of the Houston police force. Nor could he accept people whose lives were bordered by the Bible on one side and the churchyard on the other.
Finally, at nightfall, the court clerk examined the list of challenges from both sides and drew black lines through the names of those who were not wanted. Five women and seven men survived as the jury that would hear the matter of Lilla Paulus. En bloc, they seemed an intelligent and unusual jury in this city. Among them were two master’s degrees, an educational plateau rarely reached by jurors in murder cases, tradition holding that neither side wants too much intelligence. There was an oil company art director, a librarian, a chemist. There were also two young, naïve, and exceptionally pretty young women in their early twenties, pleasing both the judge and the lawyers. “The rule of thumb,” drawled Bennett while considering his list, “is never knock off a pretty girl unless it is absolutely imperative. Remember you have to look at these people for a week.” Even a Mexican-American was seated, breaking the tradition of no minority jurors. This man owned a concrete business, and he struck Bennett somewhat romantically as “being like an Old World craftsman who worked hard to get where he is and he wants the town safe from hired killers.” DeGeurin chose him for different reasons, probably feeling that he would be subservient to the will of the others.
Judge Price told the jurors they could go home and urged them to sleep well for the difficult work facing all on the morrow. He chose not to sequester them, a decision he would regret. “They seem like a good bunch,” he said as he watched the dozen agitated people leave his chambers. Into twelve ordinary lives a mortar had just fallen.
The judge always relished this moment, seeing how citizens responded to the awesome and frustrating job of dispensing justice. “It’s imperfect, this way we do things,” he mused. “But it’s the best of a bad lot. Somebody once suggested having twelve judges act as jurors, but that would be insane. The defendant would expire from old age before twelve judges could agree on anything.”
At that moment he noted both lawyers—Bennett and DeGeurin—rushing downstairs to interview Marcia McKittrick in the women’s jail. Hopefully, he remarked, they would not bump into one another.
The state of Texas had to prove (1) that a murder was committed, (2) how the murder was committed, and (3) that Lilla Paulus planned, aided, and profited from said murder. It was easy enough to establish points 1 and 2. The lead-off witness for the prosecution was the coroner of Harris County, Dr. Joseph Jachimczyk, who spent as much time testifying in murder trials as he did standing over corpses with a dissecting tool. On this day, rushing from a dawn autopsy, he had as usual forgotten to change his shoes, and spots of mahogany-colored blood flecked their whiteness. Dr. Joe, as everybody called him, brought a thick folder to court and secreted himself in Judge Price’s office to refresh his memory. The folder began with the death in 1969 of Joan Robinson Hill and continued through her exhumation and the murder of her husband. He flipped across the saga and paused in reflection. Six years earlier he had felt that a grand jury should investigate the circumstances of Joan Robinson Hill’s sudden death, and his position had been a major factor in the
plastic surgeon’s indictment. Now the passage of the years had changed his mind—too late to do the dead doctor much good. “From what I had to work with,” he said, “there was no murder case against John Hill. Nor could I say in all conscience that there was any conspiracy or maliciousness to cover up her death.” He turned back to his folder, perhaps coming across a passage of criticism of John Hill’s choice of hospitals, taking Joan to Sharpstown rather than a major institution.
“You know,” he said, beginning an anecdote, “doctors do the damnedest things. I consider myself to be a careful man, but once I was sitting in this very courthouse waiting to testify in a trial, and I was chewing on a toothpick. This old judge was quite a storyteller and he delivered himself of a very funny tale. At the punch line I laughed, and the god damned toothpick fell into my throat and stuck there. Tried to cough it up. It wouldn’t budge. I got on the stand, and in a few minutes I realized I was in danger of strangling. I apologized to the court and said I had a personal emergency. Well, I got in my car, practically turning blue, and drove all the way over to St. Joe’s Hospital, a couple of miles from the courthouse. And not until after they got the toothpick out did I realize that I could have gone to Memorial Hospital a lot quicker. It’s only a few blocks and has a fine emergency room. But I was so panicked, I didn’t think clearly. Could have killed myself.”
His point, the coroner began in amplification, was that perhaps John Hill was so distraught over various events that he made an unwise decision. “It could have been that …” he began. But then the bailiff summoned him to the box, and he never finished his story.
Blood and Money Page 52