by Scott Pratt
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The United States of America versus Darren Street began the following Monday morning at precisely nine o’clock. By noon the next day, a jury had been picked. When we came back after the lunch break and Judge Geer asked Ben Clancy to make an opening statement, he said, “The United States waives its opening statement,” which meant he intended to hide his strategy from us to the very end and let the case play out in front of the jury.
Grace stood, and for the next half hour, she began the process of trying to soften the blow of what I’d done. I’d hired a hit man and then reneged, she said. I’d paid him in Jalen Jordan’s own money and left the money with him. Yes, I’d made some ill-advised threats, but I’d done so under great duress. The victim had threatened my son, and I had reason to believe he would follow through. But I was innocent of the charge. I did not shoot Jalen Jordan. I could not have known he was on the trail that day. I did not own a rifle nor had I fired one more than a few times during my entire life. I was innocent.
Innocent.
Innocent.
Ben Clancy began his parade of witnesses with the man who’d found Jalen Jordan’s body. He described the body’s position, and a couple of photos were introduced. Then came the uniforms, the first responders who described the scene in further detail. Next up was the first FBI agent on the scene. He identified Jalen Jordan. Then came the medical examiner, who told everyone what they already knew—the man was dead. He described in detail the massive damage inflicted by the Winchester .270 bullet that tore through Jalen Jordan’s heart. Clancy was excellent, I had to admit it. He was thoroughly prepared and didn’t let the trial drag. He got to the point quickly with each witness, elicited the testimony he wanted, and then shut his mouth and sat down.
Grace cross-examined the witnesses, but there really wasn’t much to question. She was establishing a rapport with the jury, though, and I liked what I saw. She was attractive, confident, polite, and articulate. During her opening statement, she’d made it a point to walk over to me and to put her hand on my shoulder, thereby showing the jury she didn’t think I was a killer, that she wasn’t afraid of me. She repeatedly called me “Mr. Street” instead of “the defendant,” an elementary trial tactic used by defense lawyers to humanize their clients, and I felt that overall, she’d done a good job of downplaying the evidence that had been introduced by the end of the first day. Clancy hadn’t yet tied me to anything, and I walked out of court and went back to the jail feeling a tiny glimmer of hope.
To begin the day on Tuesday, Clancy called a crime scene expert, who reconstructed the killing for the jury. There was a great deal of scientific testimony about bullet velocities and trajectories and the use of a bullet trajectory laser. The expert testified that Jalen Jordan was shot by someone who was sitting in a tree stand (they found marks left by the stand in the bark of the tree trunk and introduced photos) approximately twenty-four feet off the ground at a distance of 103 yards away. Grace attempted to cross-examine him about the skills it would take to put a bullet in someone’s heart from that distance, but the judge cut her off, ruling that the questions were outside the witness’s field of expertise.
The crime scene expert was followed by an FBI agent who had found a rifle in a creek bed not far from the crime scene. The rifle was a Ruger .270 with a stainless steel barrel and a high-powered Leupold scope. I’d never seen it before. The FBI agent, whose name was Riley, said he had learned through his investigation that the gun was originally purchased from a gun dealer in Maryville by a man named Carl Jones ten years earlier.
“Did you speak with Mr. Jones?” Ben Clancy asked Riley.
“I did not. Mr. Jones died three years ago. I went to the address we had listed for him and spoke to his widow. She told me she sold the gun to a friend of her husband’s named Bill Miller three months after her husband passed away.”
Clancy handed the agent a piece of paper.
“Will you identify this document for the jury, please, Agent Riley?”
“It’s a bill of sale for the rifle from Mrs. Jones to Bill Miller. It says she sold the rifle to him for three hundred dollars.”
“And what did you do next?”
“I contacted Bill Miller.”
“And what was the result of your contact with Mr. Miller?”
“Pretty much the same thing,” the agent said. “Mr. Miller said he sold the gun to a friend and fellow hunter.”
Clancy held up another document.
“And will you identify this document, please.”
“It’s another bill of sale, this one from William Miller to James Tipton, Junior. It says Mr. Miller sold the rifle to Mr. Tipton for two hundred dollars two years after he bought it from Mrs. Jones.”
“And finally, Agent Riley, did you participate in a search of the defendant’s home the night he was arrested?”
“I did.”
Clancy held up a photograph and asked the bailiff to hand it to Riley.
“Would you identify this photo, Agent Riley?”
“Yes, this is a photo of the tree stand we found in the defendant’s garage. It was located behind a sheet of plywood against the south wall.”
“And does this photo depict the tree stand as you found it in the garage?”
“It does.”
Clancy then turned and picked up a tree stand from beside his table.
“And is this the tree stand you found in the defendant’s home, Agent Riley?”
The bailiff handed the stand to Riley.
“Yes. This appears to be it.”
Clancy asked the judge to introduce both the photo and the tree stand into evidence, and the judge did so.
“Thank you, Agent Riley,” Clancy said. “Please answer Miss Alexander’s questions.”
Grace leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Okay, for once and for all, do you swear to me you’ve never seen that rifle?”
“Never,” I said.
She stood and moved to the lectern.
“Agent Riley, during your search of Mr. Street’s home, did you find any documentation that Mr. Street had ever purchased a tree stand? No receipts, credit card statements, things of that nature?”
“No, we didn’t.”
“And I assume you looked thoroughly. That would have been a nice little piece of corroboration, wouldn’t it?”
“I think it’s a pretty solid piece of evidence on its own.”
“Were my client’s fingerprints on it?”
“No.”
“DNA?”
“No.”
“And do you have any way of proving that this particular tree stand is the same tree stand that was used during Jalen Jordan’s murder?”
“The measurements match up generally with the marks on the tree, but we can’t definitively say it was the same tree stand that the murderer used, no.”
“Thank you. And in your search of Mr. Street’s home and office, did you find any other single piece of evidence that would implicate him in this killing?”
“Nothing that I’m aware of.”
“Now, moving to the rifle, were Mr. Street’s fingerprints on it?”
“No.”
“DNA?”
“No.”
“And your investigation revealed that the rifle used to kill Mr. Jordan passed from a gun dealer to a man named Carl Jones, who subsequently died, correct?”
“That’s right.”
“And then Mrs. Jones’s widow sold it to a man named Bill Miller, correct?”
“Correct.”
“And then Mr. Miller sold it to a man named James Tipton?”
“Yes.”
“And you have bills of sale proving this chain of ownership.”
“We do.”
“And the chain of ownership stops with Mr. Tipton, correct?”
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��Not exactly.”
The tone in his voice caused me to sit up immediately. I wanted to stop Grace, to get her attention, to tell her to be careful. Something was up. She was about to be snagged in a trap.
“I don’t understand,” Grace said. “Do you have further documentary proof that the rifle changed hands again?”
“We don’t have documentary proof, but we have other proof.”
Don’t ask him anything else, I thought. Stop right now and sit down.
“Proof of what?”
“That the rifle changed hands again. James Tipton sold it to your client two days before Jalen Jordan was murdered.”
There was a gasp in the courtroom, followed by an extended murmur. My head dropped involuntarily, and I felt as though I was deflating.
“I move to strike his answer,” Grace said.
“On what grounds?” Judge Geer said.
“Since the agent obviously has no documentary proof, his answer must be grounded in hearsay. He’s repeating what he heard from Mr. Tipton. It’s inadmissible.”
“She led him right to it,” Clancy said from his table. “And besides, Mr. Tipton is on the witness list; he’s going to testify that he sold the rifle to Mr. Street. We also have an expert who is going to tie Mr. Street to the money he paid for the rifle through fingerprint evidence.”
So that was it. The big lie that would convict me. The essential piece of the puzzle that Clancy needed to put me on the convict train. They were saying I bought the murder weapon from James Tipton two days before Jalen was shot. I felt like I was going to vomit.
“I’m going to withhold ruling on your objection until I hear these other witnesses the government is planning to call,” the judge said to Grace. “Technically, I suppose you’re right about the statement being hearsay, but if they put on the evidence they say they’re going to put on, I believe the issue is moot.
Grace nodded and looked back at the agent.
“I don’t have anything further for this witness,” she said.
That was how the second day ended. I walked out of court in a shock-induced daze. Up to that point, I hadn’t really believed Clancy would be able to tie me directly to the murder. But he’d done it, and in spectacular fashion.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Grace came to my cell that night around eight. She looked as though her favorite pet had just been run over by a car.
“I’m sorry, Darren,” she said as soon as she walked in. “I can’t believe I made such a stupid mistake.”
I knew what she was referring to. She’d asked the FBI agent, Agent Riley, a question when she didn’t know the answer. It was a cardinal sin for a trial lawyer. You simply don’t ask witnesses questions, especially on cross-examination, to which you don’t know the answers.
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “Clancy was right. They were going to get it in through Tipton eventually. All Riley did was speed up the process.”
“And create an ‘oh my God’ moment in front of the jury. He might as well have hit me in the face with a shovel.”
She was right about that. It had been one of those rare moments in a court proceeding where everyone in the room was figuratively knocked off their feet.
“I guess the circumstances could have been better,” I said. “If we’d known it was coming we could have tried to lessen the blow a little, but we didn’t have any way of knowing.”
“We should have gotten to Tipton.”
“You know how it is, Grace. Prosecution witnesses don’t have to talk to defense lawyers in criminal cases.”
“He’s going to lie, isn’t he?”
“Of course he’s going to lie. I didn’t buy that rifle from him and I’ve never seen that tree stand in my life. The question at this point is why is he lying? And the answer has to be that Clancy is coercing him somehow. He has something on James, something that must terrify him. He’s one of those old school thugs, or at least he used to be. One of those guys who would rather cut off an arm than talk to the police. Have you checked him out thoroughly?”
Grace shrugged.
“As thoroughly as we can, I suppose,” she said. “I’ve followed up on everything you’ve told me. My investigator has poked around some. Tipton’s grandmother is apparently some kind of Ma Barker or something. The story is that she and her grandsons runs an oxycodone smuggling operation from her farm in Sevier County. But we haven’t been able to get anything out of the DEA about a drug investigation into Tipton or his family. I talked to Clancy right before I came here, and he swears there is no drug case pending against anyone in Tipton’s family and that they haven’t offered Tipton anything in return for his testimony. The only reason he got involved was because they traced the rifle back to him.”
“I wonder if Tipton killed Jordan,” I said, “and if he did, why?”
Grace shook her head and sat down next to me on the bunk.
“I don’t even want to think about the answer to that question,” she said, “because it’s just so frightening. Is Ben Clancy capable of manipulating all of this? Could he possibly have set all of this in motion just to frame you for a murder?”
“You’re damned right he’s capable,” I said. “I think he’s a straight-up sociopath.”
“Then may God help us,” Grace said, “because the legal system isn’t going to.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Clancy’s first witness the next morning was a ballistics expert who testified that the bullet that killed Jalen Jordan was fired from the rifle that James Tipton had supposedly sold to me. The testimony was almost entirely well-established science. There was nothing Grace could do to refute it. After the ballistics expert was excused, Clancy began the process of methodically stepping on my throat.
My paralegal and secretary, Rachel, was trembling and nearly in tears when she described the encounter with Jalen Jordan in my office that day, how she brought me a fee contract and placed $50,000 in the office safe only to bring the money back to me later and see me tear the contract into pieces. She described me as “extremely upset” and admitted to Ben Clancy that I answered a question she asked me about Jalen Jordan with, “Before or after I kill him?” Grace objected on the grounds that the evidence was hearsay, but the judge allowed it as an “excited utterance,” which is an exception to the rule against hearsay. Grace tried to cauterize the wound by having Rachel tell the jury what a wonderful guy I was, but it didn’t seem to work well.
My old friend, Knoxville Police Captain Bob Ridge, reluctantly testified that I was “highly agitated” when I spoke with him on the phone and that I told him my son had been threatened by Jalen Jordan. Same objection. Same ruling. When Grace cross-examined him, Bob took the opportunity to tell the jury how highly he thought of me. It seemed to sit better with the jury than Rachel’s remarks, and for a few moments, at least, I once again felt a tiny glimmer of hope.
Officer Olivia Denton testified that I called her and told her my son had been threatened by Jalen Jordan. She met with me, she said, and during the meeting I told her that I was going to have to “deal with him outside the system.” Grace again objected on the grounds that the evidence was hearsay, but the judge again allowed it, calling it an “excited utterance” and a “statement against interest.” A pattern was developing. Grace wasn’t able to do anything else with Officer Denton because the judge had ruled before the trial that any mention of the underwear found in Jalen Jordan’s van was inadmissible. When he made the ruling, I knew he was right, but at that moment, I wished we could turn the jury’s attention to what a scumbag Jalen was. We desperately needed to stop the bleeding.
Next up was my beloved Katie, looking perfectly cosmopolitan in her designer duds.
“State your name, please,” Clancy said.
“Kaitlyn Street. I go by Katie.”
“And what is your relationship to the defendant, Mrs. Street?”
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“I’m married to him for the time being, but I filed for divorce right after he was arrested. The court has delayed the divorce until this trial is over, but as soon as it’s over, I’ll be changing my name back to Kaitlyn Reece, which was my name before we were married.”
“And you and Mr. Street have a child together, correct?”
“Yes. His name is Sean. He’s six years old, almost seven.”
“Miss Street, do you recall a day back in April when you received a telephone call from your husband regarding a threat that had been made against your son?”
“I’ll never forget it,” Katie said. “Darren threatened to strangle me with his bare hands.”
“Objection,” Grace said. “Hearsay.”
“Sustained,” the judge said.
“Is it fair to say that your husband was upset during that phone call?” Clancy said.
“I’ve never heard him more upset,” Katie said, “and believe me, I’ve heard him say some crazy things.”
“What did your husband want when he called?”
“He wanted me to walk out of my job and go to Sean’s school and pick him up. He said Sean had been threatened by some man who came to his office.”
“Did you go immediately and pick up your son?”
“No, of course not. Darren has a tendency to overreact to things. He goes nuts sometimes, and he’s overprotective of Sean. Darren’s father was hard on him, so he’s the opposite with Sean. He won’t discipline him or anything.”
“So after you told him you weren’t going to pick up Sean that day, what happened?”
“You mean after he threatened to come to my work and strangle me with his bare hands?”
“Objection!” Grace said.
“Sustained. Disregard the answer,” Judge Geer said to the jury.
“What happened after you hung up?”
“He disappeared for three days, that’s what happened,” Katie said. “He took Sean with him. This was on a Tuesday, and I didn’t see either one of them again until Friday night.”