The Mad Chopper

by Fred Rosen

  Two months passed. Since the trial in December, there had been changes in the jury selection process that Judge Mitcham hoped would provide a larger and more varied jury pool to choose from.

  Back in December, the jurors had been pulled from voter registration rolls, the usual way it was done in most states, and in Florida as well. But under a new law that went into effect on January 1, 1998, jurors would now be culled from a pool of licensed drivers. It made sense.

  As far as the jury pool was concerned, the only way the new law could work against the prosecution was if the jurors eventually picked were sympathetic to Singleton. Considering the extensive pretrial publicity surrounding the case, including persistent rehash of the California mutilation of fifteen-year-old Mary Vincent, finding a jury that had never heard of the case, or was sympathetic to Singleton was extremely unlikely.

  The public defender had a snowball’s chance in hell of getting Singleton off. Never mind that he had committed the murder and they were prepared to admit that at trial, though the prosecution did not know that at the time. If they had, it still wouldn’t have made any difference. State’s Attorney Harry Coe had always intended to argue for the death penalty.

  The best the public defender could hope for was a jury that was at least willing to hear their case, have a little mercy, convict on second-degree murder and spare Singleton from the death chamber.

  February 1998

  It didn’t take long for the lawyers and judge to select a jury. They did it in one day of voir dire or questioning of jurors, on Friday, February 13. Mitcham wound up seating an eleven-man, three-woman panel that included two alternate jurors.

  The jury was finally seated at the end of the day. “Opening arguments to begin Monday, February 16,” said Mitcham. The lawyers were left the weekend for final preparation.

  Because of the intense local publicity surrounding the case, Judge Mitcham decided to sequester the jury at a downtown hotel. He also ordered that stories about Singleton be removed from their morning newspapers. He even made their drivers responsible, telling the taxi drivers who would transport them to and from the hotel to keep their mouths shut about the case.

  All good and well, of course, and laudable to try and keep the jury’s mind clear. But Mitcham could not be there when jurors turned on the TV or radio. He could not be there to monitor them when TV reports came on with coverage of the trial, the quotes from the prosecutors and public defenders that would accompany most of the reportage, or the sound bites that Tampa’s all-news radio stations would use to lead their coverage. Jurors would be on their honor to turn the TV to another channel or the sound off the radio.

  Monday, February 16, 1998

  The trial of Lawrence Singleton on the single count of murder in the first degree against Roxanne Hayes opened on a sunny, brisk day, the kind of winter day that Floridians treasure. Prosecutors Jay Pruner and Michelle Peden represented the state; public defenders John Skye and Jill Menadier stood for the defense.

  Pretrial motions prevented the prosecution from bringing in the mutilation of Mary Vincent. That would prejudice the jury. However, during the sentencing phase—if Singleton was convicted on murder one, there would be a separate sentencing phase— then, they could introduce the mutilation history.

  Prosecutor Michelle Peden began the day’s proceedings with a stinging opening argument labeling Singleton a cold and calculating murderer, who killed Roxanne Hayes in one single, cold, premeditated act.

  Concerned that jurors might be sympathetic to Singleton because of his age, she brought attention to his weathered countenance. “The defendant might look like an uncle, a grandfather, a neighbor, somebody you sit next to at a baseball game, but looks can be quite deceiving. He very brutally and violently murdered Roxanne Hayes.”

  She made it a point to say that Singleton had already confessed to the crime, to a paramedic who arrived on the scene to treat Hayes, who unfortunately had already expired because of Singleton’s actions. She outlined the evidence against Singleton that her side would present and confidently predicted that at the end, when the jurors heard everything, they would readily come back with a guilty verdict.

  For the defense, the case was not so black and white. Much gray existed and if Assistant Public Defender Jill Menadier could prove that to the jury, she would save Lawrence Singleton’s life.

  “It was a spontaneous eruption of emotion,” Menadier told the jury in her opening statement. “There was no premeditation. Larry Singleton never thought about it, never considered killing Roxanne Hayes.”

  In the scenario the defense lawyer painted, the day of the murder went something like this:

  On February 19, 1997, Singleton, recently released from a psychiatric facility, was depressed. He was also drunk as a skunk. That, plus the medication he was taking for his psychiatric condition, considerably addled his mind. Desperate for female companionship, he found Roxie at her regular bench, and picked her up.

  Singleton fancied himself a gentleman; he wouldn’t have sex before dinner. So he cooked her dinner, and then they had consensual sex. But things did not go well. Roxanne decided that the agreed-upon amount for sex and for a cab ride back to Hillsborough Avenue or her home, whichever she chose, was just not enough.

  “She’s upset because the price of her cocaine had gone up and she needs to make money,” Menadier told the jury.

  She became “agitated” and demanded more money. An argument ensued and Hayes grabbed Singleton’s wallet to get the money she felt he owed her. They began to struggle. She grabbed a knife and kneed Singleton in the groin. It was during that struggle, a totally unpremeditated act, that Singleton eventually got possession of the knife and stabbed Hayes to death by accident.

  That was a surprise. He was not even using a diminished capacity defense—that the defendant was too drunk to know what he was doing—and she was admitting her client’s guilt, putting it right up front that while he was guilty of murder, it had not been premeditated.

  Clearly, Menadier knew that the facts of the case and Singleton’s background precluded raising reasonable doubt that the crime was committed by him. Better to admit right off the bat that he had done it. Lay it right out there for the jury to see, but make it clear that it wasn’t premeditated. And if the jury bought that, they would have no choice but to come back with a not-guilty verdict on murder one, and guilty on murder two, thereby saving his life.

  Of course, it was Singleton’s version of the crime Menadier presented to the jury. Aware of that, the jury would then have to decide if Singleton was telling the truth.

  With opening arguments concluded, the prosecution opened their case.

  “Call Gene Reynolds to the stand,” said Peden.

  A mild-mannered man, Reynolds came forward through the slatted wooden gate, and was sworn in. He took his seat in the witness box, and when he was settled in, Michelle Peden asked him to describe what he had seen at Singleton’s house on the afternoon of the murder.

  Reynolds explained that he had gone over to Singleton’s house, hoping to do some touch-up work on a previous paint job he had done at the ex-merchant marine’s house. When he got to “Bill’s” house— Singleton had told Reynolds that that was his name— he saw Hayes and Singleton seated on a couch. Both of them were “stark naked,” Reynolds testified.

  “I heard her gurgling ‘Help,’” he continued, in a “weak, muffled” voice. Like watching an accident in slow motion, Reynolds was transfixed by the horror of it and yet powerless to do anything.

  Alarmed, he ran from the house, grabbed a shovel, and was about to go back in the house when his uncle, who had accompanied him, stopped him. Instead, they went around to the other side of the house and peered through the window into the living room.

  “He was standing over her with his hands on her neck,” Reynolds continued.

  Then Reynolds went around to the front door and kicked at it. Hearing the sound, Singleton, he said, looked in his direction. Twice. Hayes turned, t
oo, and said something. He heard him tell Hayes, “Shut up, bitch!”

  “Objection.” And Menadier was on her feet.

  “Your Honor, the witness never mentioned the word ‘bitch’ in his deposition.”

  In most states, all witnesses are deposed before they testify. Menadier then requested that the judge allow her to view Reynolds’s grand jury testimony, which she previously had not been privy to.

  Menadier’s request put the judge in a bind. Because grand jury proceedings are supposed to be secret, he had to weigh revealing them versus the defendant’s right to a fair trial. He decided to review Reynolds’s grand jury testimony in camera (in private), and then rule on the defense attorney’s request. In the meanwhile, Reynolds could continue testifying.

  “What did you see next?” Michelle Peden asked him.

  Reynolds said that as he continued to look in the house, he suddenly saw Singleton’s arm rise up and plunge down, pounding on her head, neck, and chest.

  “It sounded like bones crushing, like chicken bones breaking,” he said.

  Alarmed that something horrible was going on inside that they could not handle, Reynolds and his uncle drove to a nearby Chevron gas station and dialed 911. He reported what he had seen and expected the cops would arrive quickly. But after driving around for ten or fifteen minutes, they returned a second time to the house, only to find that the cops had not arrived yet. Only when they returned a third time did they find a sheriff’s deputy, who had finally responded to the call.

  There wasn’t really much that Menadier could do on cross. Reynolds was positive of what he had seen. But he did admit that he never saw the deboning knife that the police said was the murder weapon.

  In the jury’s mind, Menadier left them with the thought that while Reynolds had seen “pounding-like” motions, Singleton may have just been using his hands. For the jury to then find reasonable doubt, they would have to believe that while Reynolds went to call the cops, Singleton retired to another room, and someone else stole into the house and delivered the death blows.

  After Reynolds finished his testimony, the prosecution called Deputy Paul Robbins to the witness stand. Robbins testified that he was the first officer to reach the house. He had just finished up an assignment in the Clair Mel section of the county when he heard the report of a “domestic disturbance” on his police radio and volunteered to take it because no other sector cars were available. He said that the delay in responding to the call was due to a shift change, heavy traffic, and a large number of 911 calls that evening.

  When he arrived on the scene, it was 6:23 P.M., and he met Singleton at the carport doorway. Singleton had responded to his knock. Peden then wanted to know if there was anything unusual about the defendant.

  “His genitals were hanging out,” Robbins said, referring to the defendant’s naked appearance.

  “How did the defendant appear?”

  “Nervous.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “He said that he was in a fuss or a spat with his girlfriend and everything was okay now,” Deputy Robbins said. “He was insisting over and over again that everything was okay and I didn’t need to be there.”

  Given the blood on Singleton and his state of undress, it was unlikely that Robbins would leave the scene.

  “Did you ask him where the blood came from?”

  “He said that he cut himself chopping turnips.”

  The officer said that just then, the telephone rang. Singleton ignored it, not seeming to hear the sound. When his neighbor Stu Simon pointed out that the phone was ringing, Singleton went inside to answer it. Robbins followed him and found Roxanne Hayes lying on the floor, her life’s blood seeping out of her body.

  Tuesday, February 17

  “Call Lee Miller to the stand,” Peden said.

  Miller came forward, took the oath from the court clerk, and took his seat in the witness box to the right of the judge. He was testifying as an expert witness.

  In the first set of preliminary questions, that any expert is asked, Miller identified himself as the associate medical examiner of Hillsborough County. “I’ve conducted more than five thousand autopsies,” he testified.

  “Would you please describe the wounds to the decedent?” Peden requested, and Miller produced a graphic photo of the dead Hayes, her wounds evident.

  Miller proceeded to describe and then point out seven stab wounds to the chest and abdomen. Specifically, a two-inch wound pierced Hayes’s heart and caused her to bleed to death, though she probably remained conscious from five to twenty minutes before death. Two other wounds perforated her liver and one of those was “… six to seven inches deep,” he testified. Miller then showed the jury photographs of Hayes’s hands, on which it was obvious that she had deep cuts.

  “How were those cuts caused?” Peden wondered.

  “They were caused,” Miller responded, “by Roxanne Hayes grabbing the knife blade in an [unsuccessful] effort to defend herself.”

  Such defense wounds were common in stabbing cases when the victim had an opportunity to fight back as Hayes did.

  “These wounds,” Miller added, “are consistent with her attacker standing over her, stabbing, as she struggled to survive.”

  Then Peden introduced a key piece of evidence: a photograph of Lawrence Singleton taken shortly after the crime was committed.

  The years had not treated Singleton well. Like many of the retirees in Florida, he had a sagging belly, liver spots on hands and face, a balding head with fringes at the side. But he also had the nose of a drunk, reddish with burst veins, and the effect of that bulbous protuberance was to make him look like some punch-drunk fighter who had seen too much action. As for his body, Singleton was stark naked.

  On his limp penis was a condom, the one he had used when he and Roxanne Hayes had sex, right before he killed her. His arms and legs had impressive muscles from the years of physical work as a merchant marine, but he was obviously growing soft from booze and age. His posture was slightly bent, arms that once had tied knots at sea in a seaman’s expert manner, hung like dead weights. Still, he looked more than a match for the six foot, 170-pound Hayes.

  Police had taken the picture for a reason. Singleton had made statements when he was arrested that he had been defending himself against Hayes. In case he claimed that at trial, they wanted the photo to prove that he had a nary a mark on him.

  How could he struggle with Hayes, holding a knife no less, and not even have one cut on him, let alone a bruise?

  Miller’s testimony was gripping, graphic, and lethal. The photos showed what looked like a sexual deviant, and his victim, a woman killed in a horrible manner by a strong, seemingly cold-blooded killer. Menadier needed to temper the testimony in two ways.

  First, she needed to use a tactic that lawyers used for rape trials: she needed to put the victim on trial, so that the jury would see her true character and lose their sympathy for her. Second, Menadier needed to show that the crime was absolutely, positively not premeditated, that essentially the victim and the accused were partying before the crime occurred.

  “Dr. Miller, did the victim have cocaine in her system?” Menadier asked.

  “Yes,” Miller responded, “but there’s no way to tell how long it had been there. She could have taken the drug from an hour to several days before her death.”

  “Dr. Miller, what did you find in the victim’s stomach?”

  Singleton had told Menadier that they had had dinner before the crime occurred. Miller said that Hayes had eaten beans, rice, and chicken thirty minutes to an hour before she died.

  What kind of killer feeds his victim before killing her? Menadier hoped that in the jury’s mind that would signal that the killing was actually an eruption of uncontrolled violence. In other words, second-degree murder.

  After Miller finished his testimony, the state called Walter Brown, a sheriff’s deputy who was on the scene the night of the murder.

  “Did the defendant say
anything to you about the events of that night?” the prosecutor asked.

  Brown said that Singleton told him, “‘We had an argument and she threw something at me so I killed her.’”

  “Did he say anything else?”

  “Yes, he said, ‘I guess that makes me a murderer, so you’ve got me now.’”

  It was damning testimony—the defendant admitting to the crime. The prosecution already had fifty percent of its work done because the defendant had admitted he did it. They didn’t even have to prove it.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Wednesday, February 18

  The prosecution’s case was drawing to a close, but they believed in the big-bang theory of conclusions.

  “The prosecution calls Detective Larry Lingo.”

  A Hillsborough County sheriff’s detective, Lingo was one of the first detectives on the scene the night of the murder. His role, however, was to testify as a narrator.

  A television was wheeled over to the jury box and set right in front of the fourteen members of the panel. A videotape was popped into the machine, turned on, and suddenly, the crime scene burst to life in living color.

  The camera moved through the beautiful new kitchen with its marbled counters, and into the bedroom where the bedclothes appeared in disarray. Suddenly, the camera moved into the living room. What the jury saw was the type of inflammatory material defense lawyers hate—a graphic tape of the crime scene.

  “There’s the victim,” said Detective Lingo.

  She was lying on Singleton’s plush blue carpet stained red by her blood. Her eyes were open. The girlfriend, prostitute, and drug user, wearing no clothes, was posed in that awkward manner that could only mean death. Her legs were crossed at the ankles, and her hands hung limply at her side.