A brief debate followed among the attorneys and the judge. The newsman representing the television station reported that Larry Lee’s image had already been recorded. Cameras are allowed in courtrooms, Judge Tillman concluded; his hands were tied. The television cameras remained.
After instructions were given to the sworn-in jurors, the trial got underway. “I think we are ready for opening statements,” Judge Tillman declared. “You may proceed.”
Both the prosecution and the defense presented their opening remarks to the jury, telling the panel of twelve-plus-one what the substance of their respective cases would be, what the jurors could expect to see and hear presented by each side during the trial, and who would be called to testify. Then the state began presenting its argument for the conviction of Larry Lee Smith of the crimes with which he’d been charged. In all, the state would call ten witnesses and submit thirty-eight pieces of evidence.
Tall, attractive, auburn-haired Elizabeth MacNamara rose from her seat and called Amanda Sanders, the principal and first of the state’s witnesses, to take the stand. After being sworn in, the petite and pretty teenager eased nervously onto the shiny witness chair. “State your name for the record,” MacNamara instructed.
“Amanda Diane Sanders,” she responded, but her answer was spoken too softly to be clearly understood.
“Adjust that microphone just a little bit and lean forward and talk into it, please,” the judge directed.
Amanda repeated her name, this time louder, then answered questions about her age (eighteen), where she lived, where she worked, what kind of car she drove and then finally the events of that day—the day she was kidnapped and assaulted by the defendant. Amanda testified about having a disagreement with her boyfriend, Steve, then walking out to her car, only to find that once it started, it stalled and wouldn’t start again. She went back into the game room before returning to her car.
“What happened when you came back to your car?” MacNamara asked.
“This man approached me.”
“Amanda, look around the courtroom and see if you could point out to the jury the man that stopped and wanted to help you on October the 13th.”
She glanced at the defendant, then away again as quickly as her eyes would avert. The sight of her assailant brought on a flurry of physical sensations: pounding heart, clinched stomach, quickened breath. For a brief flash of a moment Amanda thought she might faint; she gripped the rail of the witness stand. “He’s sitting over there. That’s him. The one with the yellow tie and gray suit.”
Larry Lee twisted around and exchanged looks with his mother and sister. Facing the front again, he wore a crooked grin and shook his head from side to side.
Prompted by MacNamara, Amanda went on to describe the ordeal of the assault.
“Why did you get in the car?”
“Why?” Amanda repeated, a little thrown by the angle of the question.
“Why did you get in the car, Amanda?”
She searched for the words to explain. “I don’t know. It’s just that it was my car… and he was in it. He was going to help me.”
MacNamara pointed to State’s Exhibit #12, a map of the area. Amanda stepped down and used a pointer to trace for the jurors the route her abductor had traveled, marking significant buildings and locations with an X. When she had completed this task, the court recessed for lunch.
When court resumed, defense attorney Davidson rose to begin his cross-examination. He paused and stroked his wide, square jaw as if contemplating his strategy. When he finally began, he zeroed in on Amanda’s reported conflict with her boyfriend on the day of the alleged assault.
“When Larry Lee came up to you, you mentioned that your boyfriend was working in the store, didn’t you? Do you remember him saying that you ought to get yourself a new boyfriend? Do you remember that? You testified that you got in the vehicle voluntarily.”
From there Davidson did his best to portray a different scenario than the one advanced by the state. When Larry Lee reached his hand behind Amanda’s seat, the second time he’d stopped her car, wasn’t he perhaps just “flirting” with her? When he “grabbed” her by the neck, how was her head turned? Hadn’t Larry Lee, in fact, brought Amanda back to the billiards parlor? Couldn’t the whole interaction have been an incident of flirtation blown out of proportion?
“Did he say you were pretty?” Davidson asked.
“Not that I recall, no.”
“The conversation never strayed into what y’all had planned for that evening?”
“No!”
When Davidson was done, MacNamara stood for redirect; she had a thing or two she wanted to clarify. “Amanda, when he first grabbed you by the neck, was he holding you anywhere else?”
“By the hair.”
Then MacNamara had Amanda come down from the stand to demonstrate for the jurors just how Larry Lee had grabbed and held her. “You pretend that I am you and show the jury how it was that he was holding you.”
Amanda complied.
“You didn’t interpret his grabbing you by the throat and pulling your head down as his just making a pass at you, did you?”
“No, he was hurting me!”
“You have no doubt in your mind that he wasn’t just asking you to go out on a date?”
“No, I knew he wasn’t. That’s not how somebody goes about asking somebody out on a date!”
Next up to testify for the state was Professor Michael Decker. He described what he had witnessed on that Friday—a young girl being choked by a young man in a car that pulled up behind him at a traffic light. He identified the “young man” as Larry Lee. The defense had no questions for Mr. Decker.
MacNamara then called Steven “Steve” John Redmond, Amanda’s handsome, dark-haired boyfriend. He also identified Larry Lee as the stranger who’d offered assistance to his girlfriend and subsequently returned her to the billiards parlor in a terrible state. Steve recalled the events of that tumultuous day. He confirmed that he’d been the one to write the defendant’s tag number on the box of Marlboro Lights and that he’d put in the call to the DeKalb County Police Department. The defense had no questions for Steve.
Donny Harbin, the young man who had retrieved Amanda’s badly scuffed shoe from the roadway, was next on the witness stand. He’d been among those that spilled out of the billiards parlor, pool sticks in hand, as Larry Lee raced toward his car.
“Do you see anyone in the courtroom that you saw on October the 13th?” MacNamara asked.
“Yes, ma’am. That dude right there in the yellow tie.” The defense had no questions for Donny.
DeKalb Police Officer Philip Cresti, who first responded to the call that evening, testified next, followed by Rockdale Sheriff’s Deputy Michael Stapp, the officer who spotted and arrested Larry Lee in the pre-dawn hours on the day after the assault. Davidson did have a question for Deputy Stapp. He asked if Larry Lee had run through an actual red light—or was it merely a caution light?
“No, it’s a red light there,” the deputy replied with certainty. Davidson then established that Larry Lee had cooperated once Deputy Stapp pursued him onto the highway. Yes, the deputy confirmed, the defendant had surrendered without further resistance.
The seventh witness called by the state was Detective L. M. Moore, an eight-year veteran of the DeKalb County Police Department and the lead detective on Amanda’s case. She testified that on the evening of Saturday, October 14th, she had interviewed Larry Lee at Central Headquarters in the Criminal Investigation Division. She’d Mirandized him using the department’s Miranda Rights form.
“And did the defendant agree to make a statement?” MacNamara asked.
“Yes, he did.” She went on to testify that Larry Lee’s statement—actually written down by Detective Moore at his request—was given freely without the use of threat, intimidation or coercion.
“If the defendant wanted to write that statement, could he have done it?” MacNamara asked.
“Yes,”
the detective answered, further stating that after it was written, she’d read it back to him, and he had neither posed questions nor made corrections before signing it.
At this point, MacNamara presented States Exhibit #40, Larry Lee’s police statement, dictated at eight o’clock Saturday evening, October 14th, and written down by Detective Moore:
I request that Detective L. M. Moore write this statement for me; It was around 5:30 to 6:00 PM yesterday evening 10-13-89, when I came out of Eddie’s Trick Shop, located on Memorial Drive. I saw this Amanda Sanders crying. Something was wrong with her car. I asked her if I could help. She said she thought she had dropped the clutch. I told her I would take a look. I got in and started the car. I told her let’s take it around the block to see what’s wrong. I pulled over twice because of the noises I heard in it. This is when I started thinking I could take this car and go home. I was thinking of my home Tennessee. Her car had a full tank of gas and I was thinking of some way I could get her out of the car somewhere, so she would have to walk, before she called the police. I began thinking about going on the interstate. I told her to lay down on the seat, and she started fighting. I grabbed her by the neck, and put her down in my lap. My pants were buttoned, and I started the car back up and took off. She told me to take her back to the billiard place. I told her that I would. She started screaming and I didn’t want to hurt her. I told her the only thing that I was going to do is rob her. I took her back, and jumped out of the car and ran. I got into my car and drove off. I got scared and I couldn’t take anything that wasn’t mine.
In his cross examination, Davidson had weighty questions to ask. How long had Detective Moore spoken with the defendant in the interview room before beginning to write his statement? About ten minutes, she replied. As Larry Lee talked, she wrote.
Davidson seemed skeptical. “Do y’all have tape recorders?”
“Yes, we do.”
“Did you tape this conversation?”
“No, I did not.”
The defense attorney challenged the idea that Larry Lee launched into a long narrative that resulted in the signed statement. With no tape recorder or police or court recorder documenting the interview, Davidson cast aspersions upon the authenticity of the detective’s version.
“Did you investigate the psychological background of Amanda Sanders?
“No, I didn’t.”
“Thank you.”
The state’s final witness would not be available until the next day. She was being flown in from out of state even as the court decided whether to allow her to testify. Calling this witness had been a late-in-the-game decision for the prosecution and one that met with considerable resistance from the defense. MacNamara wanted to introduce a witness from a “similar transaction.”
As a general rule, proof of independent crimes is inadmissible against a defendant at trial, which is why Larry Lee’s recent conviction for the assault of Caroline Leigh Bronti was not introduced during his current trial. But Rule 403B of the Federal Rules of Evidence—a code of law enacted in 1975 to increase uniformity and fairness of evidence admissible in the U. S. federal court system—allows for admission of “similar transaction” testimony, testimony from a prior offense that is similar to the current offense. Although states retain the authority to determine their own evidence codes, most are based, at least in part, on the Federal Rules of Evidence. Even so, it’s seldom black and white: while Georgia employs a more liberal policy in allowing similar prior convictions for sexual misconduct into trial evidence, Tennessee exercises a more restrictive and cautious approach. Ultimately, Larry Lee Smith would be impacted by both.
In authorizing the state to present evidence of a similar prior offense, the Court must weigh against permitting unfair prejudice, confusing the issues, misleading the jury, or wasting time and causing delay. To qualify as admissible, this “similar transaction” evidence must meet certain criteria: it can’t be used to establish character, but it can be used to establish proof of motive, opportunity, intent, preparation, plan, knowledge, identity, or absence of mistake or accident. In other words, it establishes a pattern.
Davidson objected to MacNamara’s move to introduce evidence of this “similar transaction,” because it would certainly hurt Larry Lee’s case. MacNamara had reached out to Katherine McWilliams, Larry Lee’s kidnapping and rape victim in 1981. While the lawyers quibbled over the admissibility of her testimony, Katherine was on a flight from Florida.
Davidson acknowledged that he’d been served with notice of a “similar transaction,” but only two weeks prior to the trial (when MacNamara had learned about it herself, from the phone call she’d had with Agent DeVuono). Davidson argued that since the state hadn’t made it clear pretrial that they intended to call this witness, it was unfair to do so now.
Because there was still plenty of time remaining in the afternoon, Judge Tillman dismissed the jury so he could hear arguments and rule on the admissibility of the “similar transaction.”
MacNamara presented him a summary of the 1981 Florida kidnapping and rape case that led to the arrest and conviction of Larry Lee. She argued for the admissibility of this evidence based upon the many similarities. She pointed out that the defendant’s pattern was to assist young women in distress, especially when that meant the opportunity to offer a ride with the intent to get them alone in a vehicle, ideally his. As part of his plan, he used choking to disable his victims.
Judge Tillman was persuaded.
The next morning, April 17, 1990, Elizabeth MacNamara stood before the jury and announced that she would be calling the prosecution’s final witness. She also informed the ury that she “would tender into evidence the information, change-of-plea and judgement in the case of State of Florida versus Larry Lee Smith.”
For the record, defense attorney Davidson objected.
“Your Honor, we call Katherine McWilliams,” MacNamara said.
An attractive, petite twenty-three-year-old was sworn in and took the stand. MacNamara began her direct questioning: “Would you state your name, please.”
“Katherine McWilliams.”
“Katherine, how old were you in 1981?”
“I was fourteen.”
“On the evening of July the 11th of 1981, where were you?”
“I was on Clearwater Beach with a few friends from the New Port Richey neighborhood that I lived in.” Katherine described her dilemma nine years earlier when she was in danger of missing her curfew and her subsequent acceptance of a ride from a stranger. She then described how this stranger had assaulted and raped her before delivering her back to her neighborhood.
“Do you see the man that you ran into in Florida back in 1981?”
“Yeah.”
“Could you point him out for the jury, please?”
Katherine pointed to Larry Lee. She could easily recognize him, but she later admitted that she couldn’t get over how much he had aged in just nine years. The weight, the prematurely graying hair; he already looks so old, she thought.
For Katherine, now an adult, being called to testify in the Amanda Sanders assault trial brought a kind of closure for her. She was a young teen when her own assault had occurred, and Larry Lee had dodged a trial by accepting a plea deal. This trial was the first time she’d been able to testify about her own ordeal.
“Katherine, have you discussed your testimony with anybody else in this case other than telling me your story?” MacNamara asked.
“No, I haven’t.”
The witness was instructed to step down.
Photocopy of Dekalb County, Georgia, Mugshot of Larry Lee Smith, entered as evidence in the trial for the 1989 assault on Amanda Sanders.
12. OKAY. THEN WHAT HAPPENED?
The State of Georgia rested its case in the trial of Larry Lee Smith, and the defense began theirs. Larry Lee was their only witness. The defense argument was primarily twofold: first, Larry Lee was just helping this damsel-in-distress, good guy that he was; and second, his misleadi
ng police statement was given under duress.
The poor girl, Amanda, had been crying about her car and her boyfriend wouldn’t help, so the defendant stopped to lend a hand, although he claimed he wasn’t much of a mechanic. Still, he helped—against his better judgement, because ever since he made that mistake, that error in judgement in Florida where he kidnapped and raped Katherine McWilliams, Larry Lee had been fighting an uphill battle against prejudgment.
On the stand Larry Lee admitted that it was his idea that he and Amanda take the car for a test drive. But he insisted it was Amanda who directed them down side streets away from heavy traffic. When prompted to explain why he had pulled behind buildings and shut off Amanda’s car twice, Larry Lee explained: “I heard some kind of noise, and I thought, well maybe the brakes or something, you know, were going to give her some problems, so I pulled into one shopping center and I opened my door and she opened hers. I turned off the car and I just shook the car a little bit with my foot to see if I could hear any noise and I didn’t hear anything. But all this time—”
“What do you mean, shook it with your foot?” Davidson interrupted.
“Well, you know, like I kind of stepped out. I was halfway out and holding onto the steering wheel and just seeing if I could move it a little bit.”
“I see.”
“And then she shut her door and I shut mine, and I started up the car and drove across the street into the parking lot on the other side. All this time, though, we were talking about her boyfriend, how he shouldn’t drink, and I was telling her about how I had quit drinking because of bad experiences, you know. I just tried keeping the conversation going, because I didn’t know… I really didn’t know her that well.
“And we pulled over behind another shopping center and I stopped and I said, did you hear any noises? And she said no, and then I… I just kind of flirted with her. And I put my hand over on the back of her seat, and she panicked. I mean, it was like… okay, one minute she was real nice and talkative and the next thing I know, she’s like, What are you doing? What are you doing? You know, and started pushing on me and hitting on me. So I grabbed her. I said, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa… Let me take you back to where we were and let me get my car and leave.’”
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