Lobster Boy

by Fred Rosen

  “What did Chris do after he got home?” Donerly asked.

  “He stayed in the trailer until he asked if he could spend the night with [Little] Grady.”

  “No further questions.”

  Once again, Donerly had managed to raise the specter of Dennis Cowell’s participation in the crime.

  The prosecution had little on cross.

  “Mr. Donerly, call your next witness.”

  “Yes, Your Honor. The defense calls Tyrill Berry.”

  Tyrill entered the courtroom and pushed through the divider. He wore a blue long-sleeved shirt and jeans.

  “Mr. Berry, would you describe what you saw the night Mr. Stiles was murdered?”

  “Well, my daughter, Misty, had had a bronchial asthma attack. Anyway, at ten-forty-five, I was [out front] and saw a light blue or silver pickup driving in front of [our] home.”

  The mysterious pickup made a U-turn and traveled south on Inglewood Drive and drove out of view. He never saw who was inside. Later on, he said, Teresa and then Glenn, came over to check on the well-being of his daughter.

  He could add nothing further.

  “Your Honor, the defense rests,” and Donerly gathered up his notes and sauntered back to the defense table.

  “We’ll take a lunch break. Be back at 1:45 P.M. for closing arguments,” said Judge Fleischer.

  With the trial testimony over, the witnesses were allowed into the courtroom to hear closing arguments. Butterworth and Waller huddled in the back, trying to look unobtrusive.

  Chris Wyant slouched at the defense table, arms folded, exhibiting the same sort of nonchalance he had throughout the trial. Maybe he was a sociopath who had no emotions and could kill a man in cold blood without feeling a thing. Or maybe he was just a scared kid trying to look like an adult.

  In the second row on the right side, Janice Lee Wyant looked worried. If her son was convicted of first-degree murder, he was going to jail for a minimum of twenty-five years.

  At 2:03 P.M. on January 19, 1994, Ron Hanes began his closing argument.

  “‘I did it.’

  “‘Did what?’

  “‘I shot him. I shot the man.’

  “A senseless, brutal but premeditated, absolutely premeditated murder.”

  Hanes looked over at the defense table.

  “And he sits there now with his arms folded. Imagine Chris Wyant. That moment. All talking and planning and bragging taken place. Harry Glenn Newman leaves the house. Put the gun down, walk away, run away. Instead, he fired and fired until he held up his end of the bargain.

  “It’s awful to imagine how easy that death came to him. Standing outside the door, just as he’d joked with Harry Glenn Newman, just as he coldly set forth to do it.

  “There’s three things you need for premeditation. Grady Stiles is dead. Chris Wyant caused his death. Chris Wyant killed Grady Stiles with premeditation. Oh, the plans changed. What does Wyant tell Butterworth and Waller? ‘We’re gonna make it look like a robbery.’ When he comes back, he says he couldn’t find the wallet to make it look like a robbery.

  “Surprise! The victim’s not wearing trousers.”

  Then Hanes summed up all the evidence, going back over the testimony of all concerned. Finally, he turned.

  “The person holding the life of a man in his hand was that individual,” and pointed directly at Chris Wyant who at that moment looked more like Macaulay Culkin than John Dillinger.

  “I’m going to ask you to find him guilty, because of the choice he made that night, the conspiracy and murder of Grady Stiles, Jr.”

  Hanes’s closing had taken thirty-five minutes. At 2:38 P.M. Brian Donerly ambled over to the lectern and squarely faced the jury. In a slow, measured cadence, he went back over the evidence bit by bit and poked holes in it.

  Eno had not identified Chris for certain until days after the murder. Both Waller and Butterworth had testified that Chris told them there was someone else in the trailer at the moment he shot Grady.

  “You know, in the hit man’s handbook, it says not to mention the crime before you do it,” Donerly said in a dry tone. “And Christopher Wyant certainly doesn’t act like a hit man.

  “I want you to acquit Christopher Wyant by means of reasonable doubt on both counts he is charged with. I want you to find him not guilty.”

  Donerly sat down at 3:02 P.M. Hanes rose for his rebuttal. Chris listened to him, arms still folded, but gradually, a different expression came across his face.

  Fear.

  The summations finished, Judge Barbara Fleischer charged the jury. She explained that while the defendant had been charged with murder in the first-degree, the jury had the option of finding the following:

  The defendant is guilty of Murder in the First-Degree.

  The defendant is guilty of Murder in the Second-Degree with a firearm.

  The defendant is guilty of Murder in the Second-Degree.

  The defendant is guilty of Manslaughter with a Firearm.

  The defendant is not guilty.

  She also explained the differences between first and second-degree murder and manslaughter.

  On the charge of conspiracy to commit Murder in the First-Degree, the jury had only one option—guilty or not guilty.

  “Emotions are not relevant, only the facts,” Judge Fleischer concluded. Then as one, the jury stood, and filed out to the jury room directly behind the judge’s bench. Bull the Bailiff closed the door. It was 3:43 P.M.

  Wyant was taken out to a holding cell someplace in the interior of the building. The attorneys stayed seated.

  After a while, Donerly said brightly, “Well, they’ve been out twenty minutes. Looks good for me.”

  Scattered but nervous laughter. Everyone knew he’d had a stinker of a case. Everyone expected a quick conviction.

  By 6:30, the jury was still out.

  By 7 P.M., sandwiches and drinks were ordered in for the jury with a few extra for the attorneys. On sighting the food and drink, the jurors looked positively jovial.

  “Hey, it’s Bud time,” one of the male jurors said, and the rest of them laughed.

  Donerly, Hanes, and Spoto were all sitting together at the prosecution table.

  A few hours later, the angry sounds of the jury’s deliberations could be heard through the closed door. They were screaming at each other.

  The sound of the bell was piercing.

  “There’s a verdict,” the bailiff announced.

  The judge left and came back quickly in her robes. The defense and prosecution attorneys took their places. Christopher Wyant was brought in and took a seat next to Donerly. Janice Lee Wyant held her daughter’s hand tightly. The judge nodded and the bailiff opened the back door. Wearing an expressionless face, Bull led the jurors out to the jury box, where they took their seats.

  “I understand you’ve reached a verdict?”

  “Yes, we have, Your Honor.” The jury forewoman rose.

  The clock on the wall said 10:38 P.M.

  The court clerk read from a slip of paper she had received from the bailiff: “We find the defendant guilty of conspiracy to commit murder in the first-degree. We find the defendant guilty of murder in the second-degree with a firearm.”

  Chris Wyant never changed expression. Donerly leaned over to say a few things to him. The bailiffs converged on Wyant, and attached a pair of ankle shackles and handcuffs. His mother watched as he shuffled away like the two-bit con he’d become.

  “Attorneys, please approach the bench,” Judge Fleischer said with anger in her voice.

  They conversed in hushed tones about sentencing dates. When they’d agreed on a date, the judge said, so all the court could hear, “Ron, be ready to give me arguments to go above the guidelines.”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  According to both Hanes and Donerly, the verdict was a compromise. One or more of the jurors had held out for the reduced charges. The others, tired of sitting in the jury room, acquiesced.

  The judge was
obviously angered by the verdict. Evidently, she had expected two convictions of first-degree. That was why she asked Hanes for sentencing guidelines to go over the maximum. Regardless, Wyant could still be out of jail in ten to fifteen years.

  Donerly had done his job and then some.

  Everyone agreed that the trial of Teresa Stiles was the main event in the case.

  Hanes had already thrown his potential knockout punch when he tried to get the state supreme court to disallow the battered wife defense in Teresa Stiles’s case because it was a contract killing. But the court eventually ruled that Hanes, who had had plenty of time to file his motion, had filed it much too late, in fact, on the eve of Teresa’s trial back in October. Therefore, they disallowed it. The trial would go forward, and Judge Fleischer’s prior ruling allowing the defense would stand.

  Score one for Arnie Levine.

  The silver-haired lawyer won another when Teresa, who had been in jail over a year awaiting trial, was released on bond, but under house arrest. Fleischer also allowed Glenn to be released under the same conditions.

  Score two for Arnie.

  In order to prove battered wife syndrome, Arnie Levine needed to introduce expert witnesses to testify to Teresa Stiles’s state of mind at the time she ordered the hit. Their job would be to testify that in her frazzled state of mind, she had no other choice.

  The state, meanwhile, was struggling to come up with expert witnesses of their own to counter Arnie’s. Problem was, the state’s own expert, a psychiatrist who’d examined Teresa, sided with the defense.

  Score three for Arnie.

  By late May 1994, there still wasn’t a trial date. The two sides were still dueling over other matters. Arnie knew that the longer things were drawn out, the longer Hanes had to find an expert that would side with the state.

  Arnie Levine filed a motion with Judge Fleischer, demanding a speedy trial. Under the law, the court would have to act expeditiously to schedule Teresa’s trial within ninety days. It looked like Arnie would win another one. But in his zeal to push the prosecution’s hand, Arnie had neglected Judge Fleischer’s calendar.

  Because Fleischer’s calendar was full, they assigned it to Judge M. William Graybill.

  Among Tampa’s legal community and around the Hillsborough County courthouse, the sixty-year-old Graybill’s unusual courtroom manner and seemingly eccentric method of eliciting responses from the attorneys had given him the nickname of “The Riddler.” But like his comic-book namesake, behind Graybill’s eccentric facade, there was method to the madness.

  Graybill made his attorneys work.

  More important for the defense, Graybill was not certain that he would allow Levine the option of presenting his expert witnesses. He would rule on that during the trial.

  Sixteen

  Monday, July 11, 1994.

  The Tampa–St. Petersburg metropolitan area has well over a million inhabitants. Given that fact, and the media’s insatiable desire to sensationalize, it came as no surprise that print, TV, and radio reporters converged on the Hillsborough County Courthouse for the first day of Teresa Stiles’s murder trial.

  Parked in front of the courthouse were satellite trucks that allowed the reporters to edit their tapes and, using microwave technology, do live feeds back to the studios.

  The state provided a media room in the corridor next to Judge Graybill’s courtroom. It was filled with broadcast-quality videotape recorders, one for each of the TV reporters present. All the recorders were attached to a central monitor, that in turn was plugged into the pool camera in the courtroom.

  A sign at the back of the media room made it clear which stations were to operate the pool camera and on what days.

  Each reporter was free to record whatever sound bites they wanted from the pool coverage for the evening news. The two radio reporters present could also plug into the central feed.

  With all that technology, there was not much to report on the first day of the trial, which was taken up by jury selection. The reporters spent most of the time doing crossword puzzles.

  July 12.

  It was a hot, steamy day. The courtroom was packed. The print reporters were in the front row, their electronic brethren back in the media room. All the rows in courtroom number six were filled.

  Outside, the witnesses waited, including Cathy, Little Grady, and Glenn Newman, Sr., all in their wheelchairs.

  And then there was Donna. She had been impossible to get a hold of because she was always on the road with Joe, who accompanied her that day to court.

  From the rebellious teenager who had defied her father and paid a frightening price, she had grown into a mature woman. Her eyes and the dark circles underneath them reflected sadness and fatigue beyond her years. She paced nervously, constantly puffing on a cigarette.

  With jury selection completed on the second day, the attorneys gave their opening statements. Judge Graybill watched from the bench, staring alternately at the attorney, and at the computer screen next to him on which were flashed Hanes’s words as fast as the court reporter typed them.

  Ron Hanes outlined the plot to kill Grady that Teresa had conceived and promised to show that Teresa was not in danger as she claimed, and that she was perfectly capable of walking away from her husband instead of killing him.

  Impeccably dressed, Arnie Levine countered that she had no choice and was justified in what she did. He characterized her as a battered wife who had no choice but to pay a neighbor $1,500 to shoot her husband.

  In stentorian tones, Arnie told the hushed courtroom, “She honestly believed she had no other alternative but to participate in this terrible act.”

  Arnie told the jury that even though Grady was deformed and confined to a wheelchair, he was an alcoholic brute who beat his wife and kids with his claws, head butted them and repeatedly threatened to kill them.

  At the defense table, Teresa wept quietly.

  Ron Hanes presented essentially the same case that he had at the Wyant trial.

  There was Eno again, telling what he’d seen and heard, the police officers and lab technicians testifying about the results of their investigation, culminating with Teresa’s and Glenn’s confessions.

  Levine was much more aggressive in his cross-examination of the prosecution witnesses, but it’s hard to try a case when your client has confessed to the crime she’s charged with. His only hope of winning was to get Judge Graybill to allow his experts to testify that Teresa was so afraid Grady would kill her, she had no choice but to arrange to have him killed.

  “The state calls Christopher Wyant.”

  And there he was, the shooter himself, Chris Wyant. Dressed in blue prison garb, he already looked harder and heavier than the teenager who’d been sentenced six months before to twenty-seven years. Judge Fleischer had indeed gone over the sentencing guidelines.

  He did not look boyish anymore, but more confident, more of the Chris Wyant that Ann Butterworth had described on the stand.

  During his testimony, Chris related how he had been drawn into the murder plot by Glenn Newman and Teresa Stiles. He claimed to have spent the money for the hit that Glenn had given him, and then Teresa and Glenn wanted the job done. So he went through with it. He had been high when he stole into the house and killed Grady Stiles.

  On cross-examination, Arnie poked holes in his credibility by establishing that he’d been a dope dealer and user.

  Hanes stood, curtly announced, “The prosecution rests,” and sat, leaning over and saying a few words to Sandra Spoto.

  With Chris’s testimony and the prosecution’s case wrapped up, the reporters hustled to put their stories together. But it had been a boring day. Sound bites were scarce. There was a collective hope that the next day would be more interesting.

  That night on TV, all the news reports of the trial were supplemented with a short home video supplied by Arnie Levine: Grady and Little Grady wrestling on the floor of the trailer. There was no sound on the tape.

  July 1
4.

  The defense was scheduled to open its case at 9 A.M. but Judge Graybill was preoccupied with another matter.

  Graybill seemed torn, wanting to give Teresa every break he could, but at the same time doubting the veracity of her defense. He didn’t agree fully with Fleischer’s ruling allowing the battered wife syndrome defense in this case, and granting the experts permission to testify. But this was his court. He wasn’t bound by what Fleischer had done. Now, it was up to him to rule.

  Arnie had given him legal briefs citing precedents, and throughout this early part of the trial, it was clear from Graybill’s acidic tongue and Arnie’s mock deferential tone that these two did not get along.

  “The court has had time to read Judge Fleischer’s order,” he said in a pronounced Southern drawl. “I’m going to return to my office and read everything cited by Mr. Levine and whether I will allow or not allow further argument [on battered wife syndrome] to be seen.”

  He adjourned court until noon so he could have time to read the case law on the matter. Precisely at noon, he came back with his response. As with all rulings from the bench, the jury was not present to hear it, for fear it might prejudice them.

  “Battered wife syndrome is not in and of itself a legal defense for murder and conspiracy to commit murder. Mrs. Stiles must first take the stand before evidence of battered spouse syndrome is offered.

  “In order for Mrs. Stiles to claim self-defense, she must first take the stand and admit she arranged his killing and then if she wishes, to testify that she did so for fear of great bodily harm to herself. I will allow their [the experts’] testimony if Mrs. Stiles admits that she arranged to have her husband killed. Failing that, I will not allow that defense to be used, nor will she be entitled to self-defense instructions [to the jury].”

  Arnie Levine didn’t flinch, but Teresa looked down at the table, trying to maintain her composure. When she had been examined by Levine’s experts, she claimed that she only had a hazy recollection of the plot, and no real specifics. Unless she regained her memory quickly, Arnie’s carefully framed defense would wind up on the garbage heap.