The Dreams of Ada

by Robert Mayer

  Half an hour passed. It was 5:55. The bailiffs summoned all sides to the courtroom. No one knew if this was for a supper break or a verdict. The jury was brought in. They did not have their coats with them.

  “Have you reached a verdict in the case?” Judge Powers asked.

  “No, sir,” the foreman said.

  There was a moment of wild hope in the minds of the defense attorneys. The longer it went, the better chance they had. A quick verdict, they knew, in this town, in this case, would have to be “guilty.”

  But their hope was short-lived. The judge asked if verdicts had been reached on any of the six counts—the three against Ward, the three against Fontenot.

  They had agreed on four verdicts, the foreman said.

  The judge suggested they take a dinner break, and then resume.

  “We have a few people that’s tired, and some that’s hurting,” the foreman said. “We’d like to retire for the night.”

  The judge honored the request. He sent them back to the Raintree. They were to resume at 8:30 in the morning.

  When the jurors left, the corridors were abuzz with speculation. Four verdicts after eight hours of deliberation. It seemed to indicate a victory for the prosecution.

  “Somebody ain’t walkin’,” Chris Ross said, happily.

  The possible combinations of four verdicts seemed endless. Was one defendant guilty on all three charges, and the other, for now, on one? Or was it two and two? And had they dealt with the lesser charges first—robbery and kidnapping—or had they started with murder?

  The prosecutors, hanging out in the D.A.’s office, were buoyant, almost in a party mood. The defense attorneys, Butner and Austin, seemed resigned now to a conviction, at least of Ward. Leo Austin began to ponder how to handle phase two of the hearing—the death penalty phase—should Ward be convicted.

  Don Wyatt phoned Bill Willett from the hospital in Oklahoma City; Willett told him the news: Wyatt agreed that it sounded bad.

  His father-in-law was still under the anesthetic. Wyatt would be staying there overnight.

  Bill Cathy went to Bud and Tricia’s home, to get some of the religious poems Tommy had been writing in the jail; perhaps they would help the jury show mercy. At the house the family was eating; a TV set brought from Tulsa by Joel, to keep the kids entertained, was on. A sense of weariness pervaded the household. They understood that the worst might be coming; that a quick verdict would mean conviction.

  In the courthouse block, George Butner walked toward his car. Chris Ross pulled up in his own car, at a red light.

  “What do you think?” Ross called out.

  “I’d rather be sitting at your table,” Butner replied.

  “Come on over,” Ross shouted back. “We’ll still trade a life sentence for the body.”

  Butner did not respond. The light changed to green. The assistant D.A.’s car moved away.

  DAY THIRTEEN

  The morning was gloomy, rainy, dark. As the jurors moved in a slow motorcade from the Raintree Motor Inn to the courthouse, the headlights of their cars were on. At the courthouse they parked, walked silently up the stairs. It was 8:30 A.M. when they resumed their deliberations.

  Jannette Roberts was waiting at the courthouse when Tricia, Kay, Joel, and Miz Ward arrived. She had something to tell them. Don’t get your hopes up, she warned. But the night before, one of her daughters had gone to a Girl Scout meeting. A woman there told her that her best friend worked at Anthony’s department store—and that three weeks ago, a check had cleared through the store, signed by Denice Haraway.

  The Wards hurried up the stairs, found Bill Willett. They repeated what Jannette had said. It was a wild notion, Willett thought. The jury was already out; they had already reached four verdicts. But stranger things had already happened in this case; nothing could be taken for granted; nothing was as it seemed. It was worth checking out. Willett hurried to his car across the street, drove the four miles out on Mississippi, out on Arlington, in the dreary drizzle, to Anthony’s.

  Tricia and Miz Ward sat on a bench in the dim second-floor corridor, a floor below the jury room. They speculated about the check at Anthony’s, clutching at this one last straw. Why would someone say that if it wasn’t true?

  But they knew there had been so many rumors, right from the beginning…

  On the first floor, the prosecutors and the police were speculating again about the four decided verdicts. Mike Baskin was confidently expecting six-for-six convictions.

  The jurors continued to debate.

  Bill Willett returned from Anthony’s, light drops clinging to his raincoat. He had talked to the manager there. There was no record of any recent check signed by Denice Haraway.

  At 9:30, one hour after they entered the courthouse, the jurors got word to the bailiff: they had a verdict.

  Word spread through the building as if by osmosis. The courtroom filled quickly. Two young girl reporters from KTEN set up a camera just outside the courtroom, with the permission of Judge Powers; until then he had barred cameras or recording equipment above the first floor.

  Steve Haraway and his parents entered, took their customary places in the second row. The Wards sat in the fourth row. Dennis Smith entered, Mike Baskin, Gary Rogers. The OSBI agent, tight-visaged throughout the trial, was laughing, joking with the press, as if the pressure finally were off; as if the quick verdicts must surely be “guilty.”

  The judge summoned the attorneys for both sides into his chambers. The defendants were brought into the courtroom. Ward was wearing the three-piece rust corduroy suit from the Salvation Army that Fontenot had worn the first day of the trial, two and a half weeks ago; Fontenot was wearing the three-piece beige suit that Tommy had worn that day, which belonged to Bud Wolf. Ward looked around the courtroom, a worried expression on his face. Fontenot, impassive, gazed at the empty jury box and yawned.

  The spectator section was full. Courthouse workers, deputies, others stood at the rear; standing, too, had been barred until now. The defendants had their hands clasped in their laps.

  The D.A.s and the attorneys returned from chambers, sat at their respective tables. All rose as Judge Powers entered, then sat.

  “The court will not tolerate any outburst or show of emotion,” the judge told the spectators. “If you don’t think you can handle it, leave now.”

  No one left.

  The jurors filed in at 9:45. All had their eyes cast down as they found their seats. Then they looked at the judge—all except the foreman, Leslie Penn, who stared hard at the defendants, as he had done through most of the trial.

  All seemed impassive except juror number six, Nina Ambrose, a middle-aged housewife, in the end seat, first row—the seat closest to the defendants. Nina Ambrose had tears in her eyes.

  The judge asked the jury if it had reached a verdict.

  “Yes,” the foreman said.

  He handed the bailiff six sheets of paper. A verdict was contained on each. The bailiff crossed the courtroom, handed the papers to the judge. In silence he looked at them, one after the other. The faces of the jurors were blank.

  At 9:47 A.M., the court clerk began to read the verdicts aloud. She began with Tommy Ward.

  On count number one, robbery with a dangerous weapon: “Guilty.”

  The jury’s sentence: twenty years in prison.

  Tommy Ward began to weep. He brought his hands up to cover his face.

  On count number two, kidnapping: “Guilty.”

  The sentence: ten years in prison; the maximum.

  Ward was crying quietly, uncontrollably; his entire body was shaking. In the fourth row, all of the Wards had tears on their cheeks. An occasional sniffle was the only sound.

  On count number three, murder in the first degree: “Guilty.”

  Tommy Ward was shaking his head, his palms pressed to his face, the quiet tears flowing.

  Karl Fontenot, beside him, showed no reaction.

  The clerk read the verdicts on Fontenot.
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br />   Robbery with a dangerous weapon: “Guilty.” Twenty years in prison.

  Kidnapping: “Guilty.” Ten years in prison.

  Murder in the first degree: “Guilty.”

  Tommy Ward could not stop crying, could not stop shuddering.

  Karl Fontenot showed no reaction.

  The judge declared a fifteen-minute recess. He told the jurors to “go back and relax.” Then they would return for the penalty phase, in which the jury would recommend the penalty on the murder convictions: life imprisonment or death.

  The defendants were led out. Fontenot appeared as if nothing unusual had happened. Ward leaned heavily on a deputy.

  The Ward family left the courtroom, all of them crying. Joel had to support his mother. Only Melvin stayed. And Charlene, who wanted to marry Tommy Ward.

  Betty Haraway chatted with a friend in the courtroom, the slightest hint of a smile on her face. A girl approached Steve Haraway. “Congratulations,” she said.

  Dennis Smith, the detective captain, was elated; he could not put his emotions into words. He took Steve Haraway into a private office, to talk.

  Downstairs, just outside the courthouse, a KTEN reporter asked Tricia for her reaction. “Just because the jury says he did it,” Tricia said, “doesn’t mean he did it. Only the Lord knows the truth. On Judgment Day, He will decide.”

  The reporter liked the statement. She asked if Tricia would be interviewed on camera. Tricia declined.

  In the penalty phase, to get a death sentence, the state would have to prove one of three things: that the murder had been especially heinous or cruel; that it had been committed to prevent the victim from identifying the perpetrators of a felony; or that the defendants constituted a continuing threat to society. Both sides could present witnesses, who could be cross-examined. There would be closing arguments, deliberations by the jury. Like the verdicts, a death sentence would have to be unanimous.

  When the defendants were brought back in, Fontenot still looked bland; Ward was crying quietly.

  The jurors took their seats. Bill Peterson began his opening remarks. He said the state’s first witness would be a woman named Joanne Price. Mrs. Price, he said, would tell the jury that on July 30, 1984, three months after Denice Haraway was murdered, Mrs. Price had been threatened, and her car attacked, by Tommy Ward and another man, who resembled Fontenot.

  Juror number two, Claudia Mornhinweg, a dark-haired young woman, began to cry.

  “You liar!” Karl Fontenot said, in a fierce whisper to the D.A., who was standing a few feet from him. “Son of a bitch!”

  Ms. Mornhinweg began to cry louder, to sob beyond control. Leo Austin and George Butner leaped up and approached Judge Powers. The judge asked the juror if she would like a recess. Both the woman and the foreman said yes.

  The jurors left the room.

  The lawyers huddled with the defendants. Tommy told Leo Austin he’d been working in Norman at the time of this alleged attack. The lawyers scurried for a 1984 calendar, to make sure July 30 had not been on a weekend. It hadn’t.

  They placed a call to Mike Roberts, Jannette’s husband, who had been Tommy’s boss in the aluminum-siding business at the time; they told him to drive down from Norman as quickly as he could, so he could testify that Tommy had been working that day, and to bring any written proof he might have.

  The jury returned, all of them again composed. Peterson called Joanne Price to the stand; she was a sturdy, blond young woman, wearing a red blouse with white ruffles. She testified that about 5 P.M. on July 30, she had been driving near the town of Allen, about twenty miles from Ada, with her baby, when a pickup drove up behind her. It was gray-primered, she said. She said several times the pickup came close to her rear bumper, then passed her, then slowed down in front of her. About ten miles east of Ada, she said, the passenger in the pickup threw a beer bottle that hit her driver-side window. Frightened, she pulled off the road. The driver, she said, got out and began pounding on her car and calling her names.

  “I told him I had a gun and would shoot him,” Mrs. Price said. “It seemed to enrage him. He started screaming and hollering. He ran back to the pickup and got a board.” She said the man then began beating on her windshield with the board, breaking it.

  The man, she said, she now knew was Tommy Ward. The passenger, who remained in the truck, resembled Karl Fontenot, she said, but she could not be certain it had been him.

  Mrs. Price said she threw her baby into the backseat, put her car in gear, and sped away, knocking Ward down. “He got up, got in the truck, got in behind me again,” she said.

  When she came to a store, she said, she stopped and called the sheriff’s office. She said she gave a description of the two men to the authorities. But she did not know who they were, she said, until October, after Ward and Fontenot were arrested in the Haraway case. At that time she was shown a photo lineup by Dennis Smith, she said, and she picked Ward’s and Fontenot’s pictures from the lineup.

  It was Mrs. Price’s testimony that Judge Powers had barred from the main phase of the trial, because the alleged incident happened after the Haraway case, and therefore was not related to the pending charges.

  On cross-examination, Leo Austin brought out that no charges had ever been filed in the alleged attack. Butner emphasized that Mrs. Price had seen the passenger only in a passing glance, and was not sure it had been Fontenot. Neither attorney raised the question of how this mysterious gray-primered pickup was capable of disappearing and reappearing and disappearing again despite the constant efforts of the police to find it.

  The witness was excused.

  “The state rests,” Bill Peterson said.

  The judge ordered the noon recess. Betty Haraway hugged the district attorney. Jack Haraway shook his hand, a big smile on the dentist’s face. “It feels better,” he said.

  The Ward family had not remained in the courtroom during this penalty phase; they stood outside the courthouse, under skies that had brightened, and waited, and talked, and tried not to cry. As they stood there and the noon recess was ordered and the jurors began to move down the stairs, a florist delivery van from Donaghey’s Greenhouse pulled up and double-parked in front of the main entrance, near where the Wards were standing. A delivery man got out, moved to the rear of the van, opened the rear doors. From the van he took a large green wreath, about four feet across, and a metal stand. He carried them to the grass in front of the entrance. He set the stand up beside the walkway, and placed the wreath on it, facing the entrance. Then he walked back to the van to get another.

  A large ribbon across the front of the wreath bore the words: IN MEMORY OF DONNA DENICE HARAWAY.

  Tricia, Miz Ward, Kay, Joice, Joel, standing about fifteen feet away, were horrified. Tricia began to cry.

  Dennis Smith, down from the courtroom, had entered the D.A.’s office. He looked out the window, saw what was going on. He became infuriated. He hurried outside, approached the delivery man, who was in the process of flanking the walkway with a second wreath, a duplicate of the first. The detective told the man to get the wreaths away from the courthouse. He could leave them inside the police station, a block away, if he wanted; but he should get them the hell away from here.

  Upstairs, Leo Austin telephoned Don Wyatt at the hospital in Oklahoma City, and told him of the guilty verdicts. Wyatt, knowing the jury had reached four verdicts the night before, had been prepared for the worst; he was not surprised.

  Tricia went home. She called Maxine, to tell her of the outcome. Maxine was crying when she answered the phone; she had already heard, on the radio.

  Tricia told her of the incident of the wreaths. Maxine felt sudden warmth for Dennis Smith; but she was furious at the greenhouse; she was a regular customer, buying all her plants, her flowers there, for celebrations, for sick friends. She phoned the greenhouse, and spoke to a clerk.

  “There are two families involved in this,” Maxine said. “We may not have the money the Haraways have, but we have the f
eelings.”

  The woman was apologetic. “We should have had second thoughts about that,” she said.

  “You should have had first thoughts,” Maxine said. “I feel sorry for the Haraways. They can send anything they want to their home. But not to the courthouse like that.”

  At the courthouse, one of the ladies of the press, hearing of the wreaths in memory of Denice Haraway, asked if the Wards had sent them.

  Mike Roberts arrived during the recess. He told Austin that he and Tommy had been working in Norman the day Joanne Price said she had been attacked. He would gladly swear to it. They always worked, in the summer, till dark, he said. But he had no written records. They installed siding together, he said; they did not punch a time clock.

  Austin decided it would be useless to put Mike on the stand. The D.A. would point out that he was a friend of Tommy’s; that he was Jannette’s husband; and that he had no proof. The lawyer decided to call only Miz Ward.

  The afternoon session began. Tommy looked destroyed as he sat, pale, his whole body shaking. Karl looked unmoved.

  Don Wyatt was still in Oklahoma City; his father-in-law had survived the operation, the anesthetic, but was still in critical condition; he might die at any time. Leo Austin would make the opening remarks for the defense, seeking a life sentence instead of death.

  Austin pointed out what he said were mitigating circumstances in the case: that no body had been found; that no pickup had been found; that the defendants did not have previous criminal records; that Ward had a loving, supportive family; that he had a steady job when he was arrested. Over and over he repeated his theme: the state had introduced no physical evidence of the crime.

  George Butner made the same points, adding that not a single witness had even identified Karl.

  The defense called its only witness: Susie Ward.