Similar Transactions: A True Story

by S. R. Reynolds

  From her new angle, Sasha had a more direct view of Larry Lee, a perfect profile, except for those moments when he glanced nervously back at the group. He also may have been scanning the courtroom for members of his family. As far as Sasha could tell, none were in attendance, not even his sister, Nancy.

  When he faced forward, he kept his lower lip protruding outward, which gave him a determined but pouty expression. And he would habitually inflate his upper lip like a balloon before expelling a gust of breath. Occasionally Larry Lee put on horn-rimmed reading glasses to examine case and court documents on the table before him. At those times, looking at him in his sharp gray dress clothes with his neat, silver ponytail, Sasha could imagine him, perhaps, in a different life altogether. What could he have become, she thought, if he hadn’t become a monster?

  The trial got under way with the prosecution’s opening statement. Nassios slowly moved in front of the prosecutor’s table and paced about the courtroom with a strong and quiet grace. She spoke to the jurors about girls and women, victims who are poor or young or from the “streets.” She viewed these victims with non-judgment and respect—the law required her to—and urged members of the panel to do the same.

  She explained that the outcome of this trial would hinge on the issue of truthfulness and credibility. Ayesha Mack was—and is—young, Nassios said. She had made errors in judgement. She dropped out of school, ran away from home and was living in a bad environment among some questionable characters. There was no doubt about that. But, Nassios pointed out, this victim was still credible. She had the truth on her side. Evidence and witnesses would corroborate her story.

  Nassios then informed the jury that they would learn about the sexual assault of her client, how excess force had been used, and how bodily harm had occurred as a result. She also clarified the definition of rape for the jurors, explaining that the object used in the vaginal penetration did not have to be the penis of the assailant; it could be—as it was in this case—his fingers.

  The state would show that Larry Lee had kidnapped Ayesha, held her against her will and restrained her with the chain of neckties. He’d slapped her and put his forearm against her throat, resulting in physical harm. The pressure on the victim’s throat had been overwhelming; she’d become faint and had experienced painful swallowing for days.

  And as he’d pressed his rotund body between Ayesha’s constricted thighs, forcing them open while threatening to “break [her] fucking legs” if she resisted, she strained against him and pulled muscles in her groin, causing her to limp for several days thereafter.

  Nassios instructed the jurors to imagine the sheer terror of this sexual assault from the perspective of the young, surprised victim as she experienced the violence and looked into the crazed eyes of her rapist attacker, who just a short time earlier had been a friend, or at least a friendly acquaintance.

  On the other side of the courtroom, Larry Lee pursed his lips together, smiled dismissively and shook his head vigorously in the negative. He would continue this animated behavior throughout Nassios’ opening statement.

  When Nassios wrapped her remarks, defense attorney Mitch Harper rose to his feet. “The good part about this case,” he said in his native East Tennessee drawl, “is that we’re going to agree about an awful lot of things that will be testified to.”

  He told the jury they would concur that Ms. Mack came to Mr. Smith’s apartment voluntarily; that she was told the bad news about her boyfriend’s arrest; that she stayed in the apartment even after Khristy left; that while she was there, Mr. Smith tried to comfort her by offering her tea and that Mr. Smith offered her food. “Now at that point in time that Ms. Mack leaves the apartment is where you get the two diverging stories over what happened in that apartment.”

  Ayesha didn’t leave the apartment because she was scared and upset as a result of a sexual assault by Mr. Smith. No, she was upset because her boyfriend, Tam, had been arrested, and Mr. Smith refused to enter into a prescription-selling scheme with her to raise money for Tam’s bail.

  And the interpretation of Mr. Smith’s statement: “What she said happened, happened”—made to KPD Investigator Tipton—was a misunderstanding. Mr. Smith did not mean to imply that he had sex, consensual sex (or any sex), with Ms. Mack. Mr. Smith was just agreeing that he’d offered Ayesha comfort and, in the process, touched her, thereby getting her DNA on his hands.

  At the defense table Larry Lee nodded his head in vigorous agreement. The defense did not plan to call any witnesses, Harper explained. There weren’t any.

  The state had a list of seven subpoenaed witnesses. The first witness Nassios called was Volunteer Studios Apartment Manager Kathy Brown, a competent-looking blonde dressed in a navy-blue business suit. Given the nature and the lifestyles of many who called the apartment complex she managed home, Ms. Brown, and sometimes her head of maintenance, Scott, found themselves in court more often than might be expected of an apartment manager. The Knox County District Attorney’s office had come to appreciate the credibility that their testimony and demeanor brought to the witness stand.

  Ms. Brown explained that there are one-hundred-sixty-nine units on four floors in the hotel-turned-efficiency-apartment complex. Larry Lee had lived in apartment 263 since May 2011, going on six months at the time of his arrest. On the day in question, Ms. Brown recalled, Larry Lee had appeared downstairs at her office red-faced and sweaty before disappearing elsewhere. Then Ayesha appeared a short time later, crying, nearly-hysterical and saying she had been physically and sexually assaulted by Larry Lee.

  Nassios then had the 911 call played for the court. In the quiet courtroom, everyone heard Ayesha’s trembling, panicked voice sobbing as she described the assault to the KPD emergency operator. When the recording ended, a somber silence permeated the room.

  Nassios then called Scott Brown, maintenance supervisor for Commercial Realty, which owned and operated the complex. He recounted being called to the office on the afternoon of October 24, 2011, and being told to sit with Larry Lee to make sure he didn’t leave. So he sat outside Volunteer Studios with “beet red” Larry Lee and waited for KPD officers to arrive. While waiting, the suspect told him that Ayesha “wanted me to. She wanted it.” From the defense table, Larry Lee again pursed his lips and shook his head in disagreement.

  On cross examination, Mitch Harper confirmed that what Larry Lee did, while under the watchful eye of Scott Brown, waiting for the police to arrive, was roll and smoke multiple cigarettes but in no way attempt to flee. The maintenance supervisor couldn’t disagree with that.

  Nassios’ third witness was the victim. Dressed in a short white jacket and blue jeans, Ayesha, shaking visibly, took a deep breath and made her way to the witness stand. Some of the people in Sasha’s row glanced at each other in nervous anticipation. Nassios began by asking Ayesha to describe her current living situation with her mother and siblings near Atlanta. At first, Ayesha spoke so softly that everyone had trouble hearing her. After a few attempts, she was sufficiently able to elevate her voice and lean in close enough to the mic to be easily heard by the attorneys, judge, jurors and courtroom audience.

  After answering Nassios, she went on to recall the events leading to her arrival in Knoxville a couple of years earlier and how she came to meet Larry Lee Smith and to be in his apartment on the day of the assault. From that point on, the story became more difficult for the soft-spoken teen to narrate.

  Though she occasionally had to stop to compose herself, she managed to walk the jury through Larry Lee’s rapid-fire assault. He had asked her to help him move some things beside the bed, she explained. “That’s when he tied my wrist with the tie.” Ayesha’s chin quivered and her eyes became teary. When she got to the part about the defendant pulling her clothes off, climbing on top of her and thrusting his fingers in and out of her, she broke down completely.

  “His sweat was dripping on me,” Ayesha sputtered through heavy sobs. “It was just so… so nasty.”

  Sa
sha glanced at the jurors. Several were wiping their eyes.

  When Ayesha calmed, Nassios asked her to describe her injuries after the attack. Ayesha explained that she experienced soreness in her neck, difficulty swallowing, discomfort in her groin and thighs, a limp when she walked, and several days of unusual vaginal discharge.

  Nassios thanked Ayesha for her testimony and her bravery and turned the witness over to the defense. Mitch Harper rose from the defense table and walked toward the witness. Despite his challenging of Ayesha’s account in his opening remarks to the jury, he was not overtly confrontational with her on the stand. In fact, Harper was almost gentle in his cross examination.

  He began by asking if she had gotten a physical when she got back to Georgia the day after the alleged rape, as she had reportedly told Investigator Patty Tipton she would. After all, Harper said, she’d described having vaginal discharge for days and limping as a result of the defendant’s weight upon and force against her thighs. Surely she would have seen a doctor.

  “No, sir,” Ayesha said.

  “Why not?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said, her voice a near-whisper. “I… I just didn’t.”

  “No further questions, Your Honor.”

  The next witness to be sworn in was KPD Forensic Technician Rebecca Doell Byers, a young, attractive, chestnut-haired woman dressed in her KPD uniform blues. After earning a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice, Byers had completed additional training at the University of Tennessee National Forensic Academy in Knoxville. She’d been employed at the KPD for a couple of years when she accompanied Investigator Patty Tipton to Larry Lee’s apartment on the day of the assault.

  The photographs taken by the forensic technician were now projected onto the blank white wall on the right side of the courtroom. Everyone stared up at enlarged images of the inside of Larry Lee’s efficiency apartment while Byers gave an explanation of each. There were several images of two empty tea cups—empty, Nassios pointed out, even though Ayesha clearly stated that she had not drunk her tea. A bottle of Benedryl, Byers noted, was also found in the apartment.

  From the witness stand, Byers then displayed a bag of neckties retrieved from behind the bed. Wearing latex gloves, she took them out and held them up for inspection by the jurors. Nassios pointed out that the ties matched, in color and design, the description given by Ayesha of the ones used to bind her wrists.

  Officer Byers also displayed a bag containing a white T-shirt worn by Ayesha the day of the assault, onto which had dripped her assailant’s sweat. It had been collected for DNA testing. But DNA testing had not been done on any of the evidence gathered that day. With Larry Lee’s statement made to Investigator Tipton that what Ayesha said happened, happened—and that the officer would find Ayesha’s DNA on him—the state had reasoned that testing for DNA wasn’t really necessary in this case. They had assumed that Larry Lee was going to claim consent as a defense.

  Next, Nassios called KPD Internet Crimes Investigator Melvin Pierce to the stand. It was Investigator Pierce who had examined the cell phones confiscated from the defendant. There were sixty-four pictures and four videos found on the Verizon phone, but Investigator Pierce reported that the photos of a woman (or women), bound by neckties on Larry Lee’s bed, which had been shown to Investigator Tipton on the day of Ayesha’s assault, were no longer there.

  The sixth witness called by the state was Patty Tipton, Investigator in the Crimes Against Persons Unit at the KPD. The veteran officer, with wavy, shoulder-length hair the color of copper, was sworn in, settling confidently onto the sturdy wooden chair from which she had borne witness many times. Attired in a black pant suit paired with a crisp white shirt, she testified about her interview with both the defendant and the victim in the late afternoon and evening of October 24, 2011.

  Ayesha was “upset, shaking, highly distraught,” Tipton testified. In her professional observation and opinion, Ayesha’s emotional state was consistent with someone who had just experienced a sexual assault. After taking Ayesha’s statement, the investigator then met with Larry Lee.

  At this point the video of Larry Lee in the KPD interview room was projected onto the wall. It depicted the defendant being questioned by Investigator Tipton and showing her images on his phone, being swabbed by Forensic Technician Byers, and then sitting alone in the interrogation room, at times talking to himself.

  From the defense table Mitch Harper rose to begin his cross examination. He noted that the defendant had been cooperative with the investigator, had he not? Tipton confirmed that Larry Lee had been cooperative. So Harper continued, “When Mr. Smith said, ‘What happened, happened,’ did you ask what he was referring to?”

  “I knew what he was referring to.”

  “But you didn’t ask him to clarify.”

  “No,” Tipton answered firmly. “I didn’t need to. It’s what we were talking about: vaginal DNA on his hands. I knew what he meant.”

  “No further questions for this witness, Your Honor.”

  The seventh and final witness was KPD Lieutenant Steven Patrick, who described the Knox County Jail Paytel inmate phone system into which prisoners are required to enter an assigned, twelve-digit number. Phone calls are then recorded.

  The state played a portion of a phone conversation between Larry Lee and his sister, Nancy, captured on the Paytel phone about a week after he’d been arrested. This exchange began with Larry Lee asking her to get a certain phone number stored on a phone.

  “Oh, you don’t know Daniel’s phone number?” Nancy said.

  “Right.’

  “I don’t know when I can get the phone.”

  “Okay,” Larry Lee responded. “Because all I have to do is send word out to Khristy to tell the girl that I’ll give her a thousand dollars and—”

  “Don’t even say nothin’ like that over this phone!” Nancy snapped. Moments of silence followed with neither the defendant nor his sibling speaking, and then the recording ended. At the defense table Larry Lee sat red-faced, sporting a nervous grin and shaking his head.

  The state rested its case.

  At that point, Harper rose and asked the Court for a dismissal, citing a lack of sufficient evidence to move forward. Judge McGee ruled that the testimony of Ayesha Mack and the corroborating evidence provided sufficient verification to continue with the trial. Then he sent the jury out of the room and adjourned court for the day.

  28. THEATRE OF THE ABSURD

  Part I: Whoa, whoa, whoa!

  On the morning of the trial’s second day, Tuesday, February 26, 2013, Bert made the coffee run and picked up a copy of the Knoxville News Sentinel. On page three, he saw what he was looking for:

  Woman testifies she was attacked: Convicted rapist contends sex consensual

  For these Knox County jurors, it may seem a classic case of he-said, she-said. But what jurors do not know is that Smith has prior convictions in Florida and Georgia for sexual assaults—one of which sent him to prison for nearly 20 years—and is the chief suspect in the 1987 slaying of a 15-year-old Fulton High School student.

  The article, written by the paper’s court reporter, Jamie Satterfield, described Ayesha’s account of being bound, assaulted and raped by Larry Lee, escaping only when someone knocked on his apartment door. And it reported on the defense attorney’s opening-statement claim to the jury: “When Smith refused to give her money, Harper said the teenager accused him of rape.”

  Sasha and Bert made their way down Main Street toward the courthouse on the cold and misty winter morning, where they met up with their group and entered the courtroom together. They were joined by Ayesha and KPD Investigator Tipton, who had completed their testimony. The group had no idea what to expect this second day. The prosecution had exhausted its witnesses and the defense had no witnesses to call. That left only the lawyers’ closing statements. Sasha was sure Nassios had successfully presented her case, but she still had doubts. Had enough been said? Had enough been done? Would the jury be con
vinced of Larry Lee’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt?

  But Sasha didn’t need to worry. Larry Lee was, by nature, a self-destructive character. And he was about to take this trial to an absurd new level.

  Against legal advice, Larry Lee decided that it was in his best interest to testify. It was, he explained, the only way to vindicate himself. The judge informed him that no one could prevent him from testifying, but that it wouldn’t be held against him if he did not.

  “I understand that,” Larry Lee responded. “I did think about it, and I’m all alone. There are no other witnesses. Therefore, I’m going to testify.”

  “You’re not suggesting that you’ve been unfairly precluded from bringing witnesses in,” the judge clarified. “They just can’t be found.”

  “There are a few,” Larry Lee said, “but this comes down to what she says and what I say. I believe that if I don’t testify, I’m going to be found guilty. I want the jury to hear my side of the case.”

  “The fact is that you will be cross-examined,” the judge warned, “and some things can go bad for you.”

  Mitch Harper quietly consulted with his client.

  For Sasha, this was thrilling news. Nassios had told her that Larry Lee would most likely not testify, that he could be destroyed if he did, so this turn of events was an unexpected gift. Sasha watched Nassios, looking for a reaction. The DA remained characteristically composed, but Sasha wondered if she wasn’t squirming with delight inside that sharp, navy blue suit.

  Harper and Larry Lee wrapped their discussion and Larry Lee was still determined to proceed. So the jury returned to the courtroom and Larry Lee was sworn in.

  “Were you born here in Knoxville?” Harper began.

  “No, sir,” Larry Lee responded. “I was born in Warren, Michigan. I was raised here in Knoxville.”

  “Okay. When did you move to Knoxville?”

  “I believe I was about four-years-old. My mom and my brother and I moved down to Knoxville. My mom was originally from Knoxville. I was raised in South Knoxville. I lived in the same house most of my life over there. My son still owns that house.”