From Midnight to Guntown

by Hailman, John

  Sadly, as my father always said, you can always find a lawyer who will do anything for the money. For this case the lawyer represented the families of victims murdered by Pruett. He hoped to hit a jackpot fee as a percentage of what his clients got, with Pruett’s help, from the taxpayers and public servants trying to protect witnesses. We were introduced outdoors in the freezing cold. Pruett was even worse than I had expected. He had reddish hair, a scruffy beard and spoke in a loud, shouting sort of voice. He looked and sounded totally crazy. He wore the usual leg irons with a heavy chain around his waist holding his hand-cuffed hands tightly in front of him. He was shouting as several guards looked on, scowling. Looking at us, he volunteered to no one in particular, “I’m Marion Albert Pruett but I’m not a mad dog killer. If you roll up my sleeve, you will see a tattoo I got a long time ago. It will show you the name came from my drinking Mad Dog 20-20 wine. It had nothing to do with that stuff I did later. Reporters just made up all that ‘Mad Dog Killer’ story to sell papers.”

  The lawyer introduced himself to Pruett and shook his manacled hand. When he turned to ask if I represented the DOJ and I said I did, he started introducing me to Pruett. My reaction to the introduction surprised me. The guards later thanked me for it, but I did not do it to show off. I just suddenly got really furious at the whole scene. When Pruett wiggled his fingers at his waist, asking me to shake his hand, I surprised myself and the others by blurting out, “I don’t shake hands with scum like you.” Pruett went crazy, screaming that the deposition was over and demanding the guards take him back to his cell in maximum security. The guards were smiling broadly. The plaintiffs’ lawyer then debased himself even further, “Oh Marion, please Marion, you are such a good man to help these poor people. Please don’t let this government lawyer trick you. You’re doing just what he wants you to do.” Pruett looked at me with his crazy, wild smile and giddily changed his tone. “Ok,” was all he said.

  The guards put us in a small, unheated room. The plaintiffs’ lawyer began to question Pruett. I had been instructed to object where needed but not to ask any questions of my own. As it turned out, that was unnecessary. Pruett needed no coaching. He boastfully told the story of how easily he had fooled the government lawyers. He told which inmates had asked him and helped him kill the witness. As he began to describe the actual stabbing itself, his eyes widened, his voice got louder, and spittle spewed from his mouth as he boasted of all the times he had stabbed the witness and how he bled and pleaded for his life.

  In the middle of the deposition, we took an eerie sort of recess. The in-house Parchman lawyer invited the lawyers and the court reporter to lunch at the nearest restaurant, which proved to be at the country club in an old antebellum house at Sumner. I still remember vividly how delicious the plate lunch was because of the implausible contrast between the white tablecloths, ceiling fans, and delicious food and the dingy, freezing shed we had just been locked up in with a raving madman. The courteous service was so calming that even the plaintiff’s attorney talked about everything in the world but Pruett and his case. After an hour in this peaceful haven, we went back to Pruett and the freezing room and finished the deposition. True to form, Pruett ranted wildly for hours.

  Gerry Shur and my other clients were eventually all cleared individually, but it was obvious there had been negligence somewhere, so whatever amount of money the victim families received from the Justice Department as a settlement they certainly deserved. I owed an apology to their attorney. Getting the madman Pruett to help his victims’ families was a master stroke.

  And the case did have a happy ending. On April 12, 1999, the state of Arkansas put Marion Albert Pruett to death by lethal injection, ending one of the saddest sagas in the history of the American criminal justice system. I never saw Pruett again, but would gladly have helped with his execution if requested.

  Linda Leedom and the Chinese Wall11

  Linda Leedom and Lula Young had been best friends for years. Linda had money problems, but otherwise the two friends were doing well. In 1990 Lula developed breast cancer. After a radical mastectomy and many painful treatments, the doctors told Lula her cancer had metastasized and she had only a few months to live. Lula thought of what useful thing she could do with the rest of her life. A devious and not exactly legal idea came to her: take out big life insurance policies on her life with her best friend Linda as beneficiary.

  But there was an obvious problem. Insurance companies required medical exams before issuing life policies, and with her cancer, Lula could never pass such an exam. So she suggested to Linda a nice, simple solution. “You take the exams in my place.” Since they were the same age and lived near each other the switch was simple. With Lula’s agreement and connivance, Linda Leedom took out several life insurance policies in Lula’s name with Linda as beneficiary: One was with Met Life for $75,000; another was with Met Life for $200,000; one was with Nationwide for $500,000; and there was a Credit Life policy for $38,000.

  Linda took the medical exams for Lula, passing with flying colors. She signed the applications “Lula Young.” No one is immortal, so despite her own good health Linda made her daughter Jennifer Leedom Dotson the second beneficiary just in case Linda somehow died before Lula. Both friends were satisfied with the arrangement for several months. Then the unexpected happened. Lula Young failed to die. The doctors could not say she was in remission, but for some reason she just kept on living.

  Linda’s financial problems worsened. Finally, she decided she could not wait any longer. Linda hired a local hit man to kill Lula by opening a propane gas tank in her house and setting fire to it with an electric heater to blow up the evidence and create the impression of an accident. The hit man convinced Linda the explosion would kill Lula instantly, and her friend would not suffer. Unfortunately, as in most criminal schemes, nothing went according to plan, and Linda’s friend Lula apparently suffered a slow and painful death by fire. The arsonist’s plan for destruction of the evidence did not go too well either. The fire marshals immediately suspected arson. Linda Leedom did not delay in claiming the insurance proceeds, however, mailing and wiring proofs of claim to insurance companies in Florida, Ohio, and Rhode Island. One of the Met Life offices was ironically located on “Boy Scout” Drive in Tampa. Insurance checks began to roll in, then were halted as suspicion focused on Linda.

  Local District Attorney John Champion, son of the respected law professor Bill Champion and a former student of mine in federal trial practice at the Ole Miss law school, began a murder and arson investigation. He ran into some problems, however, and asked us to help apply pressure to the defendants by doing a parallel federal investigation for fraud by wire and mail against the victim insurance companies. John had problems with the admissibility of some of his evidence, which was illegally seized beyond the scope of his state search warrants. His undercover tape recordings of the hit man also looked inadmissible, so John asked if we could prosecute Linda first on federal fraud charges while he sorted out the legalities on his murder case. We all worried about how we could keep his tainted evidence from tainting our case.

  Fortunately I had first attended and then taught seminars dealing with tainted evidence. The approved way to keep our case clean was to erect what is called a “Chinese wall,” after the famed Great Wall built to keep out barbarian invaders. The way a legal Chinese wall works is that “taint teams” act as “cut-out” men who examine possibly tainted materials before giving only the admissible items to the trial prosecutors. In Leedom, I assigned a separate prosecutor, Paul Roberts, to handle the case. I received all of John Champion’s evidence and reviewed and screened it, giving Paul only what I judged was clearly untainted and admissible.

  Former U.S. Attorney Bob Whitwell had joined the best-known local criminal defense firm, Farese, Farese & Farese, to handle only civil litigation. Bob swore on leaving he would never handle a criminal case against us. But Bob was a very religious and kind-hearted man, and when Linda Leedom came to him with a s
ob story about how John Champion was persecuting her while she was still mourning the death of her best friend, Bob agreed to handle her case in state court for nothing. When we joined the case, it put Bob in the box of having committed himself in writing to defending her, even against us.

  As always, Bob was a perfect gentleman. He challenged the admissibility of our evidence, and when that failed, he asked for and received a federal mental exam for Linda. Unfortunately for her, the psychiatrists found nothing wrong with her mentally other than a disorder associated with unusual levels of cold-hearted, self-centered greed. Seeing no chance of acquittal on the fraud charges, the insurance agents having testified they recognized Linda as the person who had posed as Lula during the insurance exams, Bob pled both Linda and Jennifer guilty to mail fraud, hoping to avoid much more serious state murder charges. Each received a two-year sentence, typical for fraud cases. Judge Glen Davidson also ordered Linda to make restitution to insurance companies of the $250,000 they had already paid her, a debt which would follow her and punish her for the rest of her life since debts incurred in frauds are not dischargeable in bankruptcy.

  John Champion had not been idle. As he had told us, federal prosecutions can scare new witnesses into testifying, and this one did. His investigators also uncovered a second insurance fraud/murder scheme, this time against a retarded ward of Linda’s innocent parents, who were his guardians. The ward, unlike Lula Young, had no knowledge of the plot against his life. Using the same modus operandi as in Lula Young’s case, Linda had forged the signature of the ward on a life policy for $250,000, another for $200,000, and a third for $200,000. Linda was a beneficiary on the first two with her husband secondary beneficiary on the second policy and her daughter beneficiary on the third policy. It was a true family insurance plan.

  Unfortunately for Linda, her daughter’s boyfriend lost his nerve about killing the ward and confessed and agreed to testify against Linda and her whole family in both cases. DA John Champion obtained an indictment on Linda for capital murder, using the federal fraud conviction to make her a habitual offender. The jury convicted, and Linda was sentenced to life without parole plus twenty years. On appeal, Justice Fred Banks delivered an eloquent opinion detailing the intricate web of Linda’s cruel and devious murder schemes. The opinion is well worth reading as an example of our Mississippi justice system at its best. The case was also an example of federal-state cooperation at its best. And no one breached our Chinese wall.

  Killing the Killer of Sheriff Harold Ray Presley12

  Nicky Hall was for several years our LEC, or law enforcement coordinator, serving as liaison with state and local investigators. It was a critical job and Nicky, former chief deputy sheriff in Tupelo, did it to perfection. Shot twice in the line of duty, Nicky still had the slugs in his leg and back, joking he “had more lead in me than most pencils.” He was also a great storyteller.

  One of his favorites concerned Harold Ray Presley, a local butcher and young cousin of Elvis. One night, Nicky got a call from a bartender saying Harold Ray had had too much to drink and someone needed to get him home. The bartender knew he could never handle him and figured the diplomatic 240-pound Nicky, an old friend of Presley’s, was the man for the job. Nicky drove over to the bar and walked up to joke with Presley, who immediately said, “Now, Nicky, I know they called you to drive me home, but I’m not ready to go. I’ll let you know when I’m ready.” Nicky hung around and waited.

  Presley soon began to get really rowdy but stared at Nicky as if to say “Not yet.” Finally Presley punched a couple of guys and offered to fight everyone in the bar. No one took him up on it. He went back to the bar and ordered another drink. The bartender refused to serve him. Presley objected. Nicky made up his mind. He couldn’t whip Presley, but he had to do something. It was what they paid him to do. He discreetly pulled out his nightstick and slipped up behind Presley. As he told me later, “John, I drew back and hit him as hard as I could on the very top of his head, but he didn’t go down. He just turned around and looked me right in the eye and said, ‘Nicky, that hurt. Don’t do that again.’” Nicky stood around while Presley got another drink. After about ten minutes, Presley came over to him and said, “Nicky, can you take me home? I’ve got a headache.”

  Nicky and Harold Ray remained good friends when Harold Ray was elected sheriff several years later. Although rough around the edges, Presley was making a pretty good sheriff. Then one night I got a call from Nicky at home. He told me someone had killed Harold Ray, and Nicky wanted my approval to join the investigation. I told him to go straight over there. By the time he got there, not only had the local deputies caught Presley’s killer, they had killed him too, stomping him to death. According to Nicky, his head “looked like a busted watermelon.”

  The story, as it unfolded in subsequent trials, was like a TV detective story. A convicted felon fleeing the law had kidnapped a young black woman and was driving up the highway north of Tupelo when he ran upon a police DUI roadblock. Knowing he was drunk and had kidnapped a woman and had a gun illegally while on parole, he ran right through the roadblock. Sheriff’s deputies and highway patrolmen gave chase. During the pursuit, he pushed the woman out of his truck, her hands bound with duct tape. The officers accidentally ran her over, killing her.

  The man eventually stopped the car and fled on foot. Sheriff Presley, always a man of action, responded to the call. He led a group of officers behind a house where witnesses saw the man flee. As Presley opened a door, he was suddenly face-to-face with the fleeing felon, who shot him several times in the chest before Presley could reach his gun. Other officers quickly subdued the shooter and took him outside and handcuffed him face down. First one deputy then another walked by and kicked him and stomped him and hit him with nightsticks. By the time paramedics arrived to help Sheriff Presley, the shooter’s face was unrecognizable. Deputies drove the sheriff to the hospital, but left the shooter lying in his own blood for a good hour before carrying him to the hospital. Ironically, medical witnesses later testified that if Sheriff Presley had been flown by helicopter immediately to the hospital, his life would likely have been saved. By spending their time beating the shooter to death, his officers probably cost Presley his life.

  State DA John Young believed there was no way a Lee County jury would convict law enforcement officers of murdering the murderer of Sheriff Presley. We agreed with the FBI, however, that as a civil rights brutality matter, the evidence looked strong, and we might well get a conviction. We had EMTs, highway patrolmen, nurses, even other deputies giving statements that they saw the beatings, that they were totally unnecessary, and they named the officers who did the killing. Even though the shooter deserved what he got, he deserved to get it from the legal system, not law enforcement vigilantes.

  Then the Civil Rights Division insisted on stepping in. For years we’d had excellent relations, but this time a flammable mixture of bureaucratic arrogance and rookie zeal combined to screw up our case. I started the case, and after a dozen or so excellent preliminary interviews, I stepped out to handle other cases, leaving the Presley case to Bob Norman and Chad Lamar, two outstanding veteran AUSAs I felt sure would have our best chance of winning the case at trial. But the Civil Rights Division continued to interfere. They called our witnesses liars if each witness didn’t make his or her testimony match perfectly with every other witness’s story. The officers were not just offended, they stopped cooperating. The Washington prosecutors repeatedly impeached our own witnesses before the grand jury, not only alienating the witnesses but creating damaging statements for use on cross-examination by defense counsel at trial.

  By the time trial was scheduled, Bob and Chad had gone from angry to despondent. They said the case was wrecked. I tried to encourage them, saying that jurors in predominantly black Greenville, where the case was transferred to be tried, did not usually take kindly to officers abusing people, whether black or white. But Bob rightly pointed out that our victim, a hardened criminal who had jus
t murdered a sheriff, was white and had also caused the death of an innocent black woman he had kidnapped. The crime was thus in a sense white-on-white, but with a black victim thrown into the mix.

  When the defense attorney was announced, we were not surprised. Joey Langston of Booneville had joined Steve and Tony Farese to take up the mantle of “Big John” Farese after his death by volunteering to represent for free any officer sued for use of excessive force. By this means they hoped to earn the officers’ goodwill and business, as in auto accident cases where they are often the first witnesses on the scene. Langston’s partner was none other than young Zach Scruggs, sent there by his father to be trained by Joey in how to handle cases. After several excruciating days and many unhappy witnesses, came the verdict on all defendants: not guilty. The widow and children of Sheriff Presley promptly brought a civil wrongful death suit against the county for what its employees did and won a good financial settlement. Another Elvis Presley cousin named Larry Presley was promptly elected sheriff, continuing the Lee County Presley dynasty.

  The Tohills of Beaumont13

  Charles Wiley Spillers deserves his middle name, however you spell it. A born-and-bred Cajun and former Marine Corps sergeant with a purple heart from Vietnam, he came home to south Louisiana to become an undercover narcotics officer in Baton Rouge, then moved on to the same job with the MBN and on to the Ole Miss law school and a job as a federal prosecutor in Oxford. Charlie was never an ordinary prosecutor. I never knew him to have an ordinary case. Whatever case Charlie tackled always had some kind of twist.