by John Berendt
The prosecution led off with its by-now familiar repertory company of witnesses—the police photographer, the officers who came to Mercer House the night of the shooting, the lab technicians. Each responded to Spencer Lawton’s questions, then submitted to cross-examination by Sonny Seiler, and left the stand. Judge Oliver nodded sleepily on the bench. The courthouse flack yawned.
“What part did you play in the removal of the body from Mercer House?” Lawton asked Detective Joseph Jordan, as he had in each of the first two trials.
“I bagged the hands,” Jordan answered.
“Could you explain to the jury what you mean by bagging the hands and what the purpose for that would be?”
“Anytime there is a shooting,” said Detective Jordan, “and you have reason to believe that a dead person has fired a weapon, paper bags are placed over the hands to prevent any foreign substance from getting on the hands and contaminating them, or any gunpowder residue—if there is any—from being accidentally wiped off.”
A poker-faced Sonny Seiler cross-examined the unsuspecting Detective Jordan.
“What kind of bags did you use?”
“Paper bags.”
“What did you bind them with?”
“I believe it was evidence tape.”
“Are you absolutely sure those hands were bagged before they left the house?”
“I bagged them,” said Jordan.
When the prosecution rested its case, Sonny Seiler rose to summon his first witness.
“Call Marilyn Case,” he said.
A fresh face! A new witness! A change in the script! The courthouse flack leaned forward in his seat. Judge Oliver opened both eyes. Lawton and his assistant exchanged wary glances.
She was curly-headed and blond, about forty, and she wore a gray suit with a white silk blouse. She said she had worked as a nurse at Candler Hospital for fifteen years; before that, she had served as assistant coroner of Chatham County. Yes, she had been on duty in the Candler emergency room when Danny Hansford’s body was brought in. Seiler handed her a copy of the hospital admissions sheet, then strode nonchalantly past Spencer Lawton and dropped another copy on the table in front of him. While Lawton and his assistant huddled over the piece of paper, Seiler placed a blowup of it on an easel in front of the jury and went on with his questioning.
“Let me ask you, Ms. Case, if you recognize this document.”
“Yes, sir, I do.”
“Is that your handwriting on it?”
“Yes, sir, it is.”
“Tell this jury, Ms. Case, ma’am, whether or not Danny Hansford’s hands were bagged when you received him at the hospital.”
“No, sir, they were not.”
A murmur of surprise swept the courtroom. Judge Oliver gaveled the room to silence.
“All right, Ms. Case,” Seiler went on, “so you bagged the hands yourself?”
“Yes, I did.”
“How did you do it?”
“I got two plastic garbage bags, put them over both hands, and wrapped adhesive tape around the wrists.”
After a brief and faltering cross-examination by a shaken Spencer Lawton, Marilyn Case stepped down from the stand. Seiler next called Dr. Stone, the forensic pathologist. Dr. Stone said that because Hansford’s hands had not been bagged before he was moved to the hospital, all traces of gunshot residue could easily have been wiped off. He then added gently that by using plastic garbage bags instead of paper bags, the well-meaning Marilyn Case had actually made matters worse. “Plastic bags are an absolute no-no,” he said. “They create static electricity, which can actually pull particles from the hand. Furthermore, if the body is then placed in a refrigerated morgue bin for five hours, as Hansford’s body was, condensation forms inside the plastic bag, and water just kinda runs off the hands.”
“In light of all that,” Seiler asked, “are you surprised that there was no gunshot residue on Hansford’s hand?”
“I’d be surprised if there had been any,” said Dr. Stone.
Television stations cut into their afternoon programming with the news flash: “Shocking new evidence has come to light in the Jim Williams murder trial …. The district attorney has been taken by complete surprise …. Word around the courthouse is that Williams will walk ….” Later that night, Sonny Seiler arrived at the 1790 restaurant for dinner and received a standing ovation.
Lawton, having lost the use of his leading piece of evidence, shifted gears for his final argument. “We don’t need the gunshot-residue test to prove that Jim Williams is guilty,” he said. “It’s only one piece of evidence among many.” Point by point, he enumerated the surviving evidence against Jim Williams: the placement of bullet fragments, the bits of paper on the gun, the trajectory of fire, the chair leg on Hansford’s pants, the blood on Hansford’s hand but no blood on his gun. In particular, he focused on the thirty-six-minute gap between the time Hansford was shot and Williams’s call to the police. “What did Jim Williams do in that thirty-six minutes?” Lawton asked. “I’ll tell you what he did. He got another gun, went over to where Danny was lying, and shot a bullet into the desk. Then he pulled Danny’s hand out from under his body and put it over the gun. What did he do for the balance of the time? I’ll tell you what he did: He went around the house selectively destroying furniture!”
Lawton held up the police photographs of the interior of Mercer House. “This is the grandfather clock Danny Hansford allegedly knocked over. It’s facedown in the hall. Notice how the base of the clock is still very close to the wall. I submit that’s not where it would be if a strong twenty-one-year-old like Danny Hansford had thrown it over in a violent rage. It would have hit that tile floor and skittered down the hall. But it’s barely moved out from the wall. That’s because Jim Williams did it. He leaned the clock over carefully and let it drop from a few inches off the floor, high enough to crack the case and break the glass. But not high enough to damage it beyond repair. If you recall, Jim Williams told you he was able to restore it and sell it.
“Now let’s see what other damage was done. A chair and a table were turned over. A silver tray was knocked off a table. An Atari set was stomped, and a half-pint of bourbon was smashed. The total damage being, what, a hundred twenty dollars and seventeen cents? I don’t know. But I ask you to look at all the expensive antiques that weren’t broken, chests, tables, paintings—worth fifty thousand dollars, a hundred thousand dollars. Ask yourself whether a young man on a murderous rampage, tearing up furniture in the home of somebody who loved antiques, would have stopped at the trifling damage he did. Of course not. That furniture was broken, if you will, by a man who loved it—by Jim Williams.”
The solemn faces in the jury box gave every indication that Lawton had recouped at least some of the ground he had lost earlier. Lawton’s voice was heavy with sarcasm. “What Jim Williams didn’t do in those thirty-six minutes was call for an ambulance. He’s been described as a compassionate man who makes contributions to the Humane Society. Well, he didn’t even call the Humane Society to come check on Danny Hansford.” A young female juror wiped her eyes with a handkerchief. “We can spot them the gunshot-residue test,” Lawton said. “We don’t need it to convict Jim Williams.”
By the end of the day, the palpable shift in the jury’s mood had alarmed Sonny Seiler. Lawton had effectively rebuilt his case around the surviving pieces of physical evidence, diverting attention from the embarrassment of the bagged hands. There was nothing Seiler could do about it now; he had already rested his case and delivered his closing argument. The judge sent the jury home for the night. The next morning he read his instructions, and the jury retired to consider its verdict.
Back at Mercer House, the Williamses finished their sandwiches in silence. Mrs. Williams folded her napkin and gazed out the window. Dorothy fidgeted with a spoon. Williams flipped through the Sotheby’s catalog, not really reading.
The telephone rang. It was Sonny Seiler reporting that the jury was having hamburgers for lunch. A
t four-thirty, Seiler called again to say that the jury had asked to have a dictionary sent in. One of the jurors did not know the meaning of the word “malice.”
At five-thirty, Judge Oliver sent the jury home for the weekend, still deadlocked. Seiler had learned from the bailiffs, who were notorious for prying and telling tales, that the jurors were evenly split. Deliberations resumed at ten o’clock Monday morning. Around noon Seiler noticed that the bailiffs had suddenly stopped talking to him. They averted their eyes when he passed in the corridor. It was an ominous sign. “That means a decision is coming down in favor of the prosecution,” he said.
By three o’clock, the split had widened to 11-to-1 in favor of conviction. The forewoman of the jury sent a note to the judge. “There is one person who refuses to change her mind no matter what we say or do.” Within minutes, the bailiffs let it be known that the lone holdout was a woman named Cecilia Tyo, a feisty divorcée in her late fifties. Mrs. Tyo had told the other jurors that years ago she had found herself in a life-and-death situation not unlike the one Jim Williams described. Her live-in boyfriend had come into the kitchen in a drunken rage and tried to strangle her while she was cooking dinner. Just as she was about to black out, she grabbed a fillet knife and stabbed him in the ribs, wounding but not killing him. Mrs. Tyo said she understood the meaning of “self-defense” better than anyone else on the jury, and she would not change her vote. “My three children are all grown up,” she said. “I don’t have to go home and cook. I don’t have any responsibilities. I can stay here as long as any of you can.”
At five o’clock, the judge summoned all parties into the courtroom. Williams came from Mercer House, Seiler from his office. The jury took its place in the jury box. Mrs. Tyo, her white hair wound in a bun, sat with her jaw set, staring sullenly at the floor. She neither looked at nor spoke to the other jurors.
“Madam Foreman, have you arrived at a verdict?”
“I’m sorry, Your Honor,” the forewoman said, “we have not.”
“Do you believe that if you deliberate further you will get a verdict?”
“I’m beginning to believe, Your Honor, that we could deliberate until hell freezes over and not get a verdict.”
Sonny Seiler moved for a mistrial, but Judge Oliver brusquely denied it. Instead, over Seiler’s objections, he read a “Dynamite Charge” to the jury, which essentially told them in blunt terms to stop dawdling and come to a unanimous decision. He then adjourned the proceedings until ten o’clock the next morning, admonishing the jurors, as he had done many times before, not to read, listen to, or watch news reports of the trial, and not to discuss the case with anyone.
Jim Williams drove home from the courthouse, but instead of going inside, he walked across the street into Monterey Square and sat down on a bench next to Minerva.
“My lawyers have fucked up again,” he said. “There’s only one juror who’s still on my side. It’s a woman.”
“How strong is she?” Minerva asked.
“I don’t know. She’s pretty ornery, I think, but she’ll be under a lot of pressure tonight. The D.A. knows who she is, and he’s desperate to break her. We’ve got to stop him.”
“Do you know where she live at?”
“I can find out. Can you protect her?”
Minerva gazed into space. “There’s things I can do.”
“Well, this time I want you to use your most potent weapons.”
Minerva nodded. “When I git through layin’ down my shit, she’ll be safe all right.”
“Do me a favor,” said Williams. “When you do whatever you’re going to do, use something that belonged to Dr. Buzzard. Like one of his old socks, or a shirt, or a comb. Anything.”
Minerva gave Williams a look of irritation. “I didn’t keep none a his socks. And if I did, I wouldn’t know where in hell to start lookin’ for ’em in that mess I got in my house.”
“Well, but you have other things of his.”
“I don’t know. I didn’t keep nothin’. I didn’t really know the man that good.”
“Now, Minerva, we’ve known each other too long for that.” Williams spoke as if he were addressing a recalcitrant child. “Those are his purple spectacles you’re wearing, aren’t they?”
Minerva heaved a sigh. “Let’s see. I think I ran across a pair a his shoes the other day. Oh Lord, I don’t know what I done with them shoes.”
“It doesn’t have to be a shoe. What else have you got?”
Minerva gazed up into the tree. “Well, somewhere, if I have the strength to look I might find something. Yeah … something.” She smiled. “I think I even got his false teeth somewhere.”
“Well, now’s the time to use them,” said Williams, a note of urgency entering his voice. “I don’t want anybody messing around with that woman tonight.”
“They may try messin’,” said Minerva, “but if they do they gonna fall sick real quick. May even die.”
“That won’t do me any good,” Williams said. “I don’t want anybody getting to her at all. Period. What can you do about that?”
“I will go to the flower garden later tonight,” she said. “At dead time. I’ll talk to the old man.”
“Good.”
A smile spread itself across the moonscape of Minerva’s round face. “And then when I git through dealing with your business, I’ll make him give me a number.”
“Oh, don’t do that, Minerva! You know he won’t give you one. You’ll just make him angry. No, no. Tonight’s not a good night for that.”
Minerva’s smile withered to a pout. “But I need a number to play so I can git me some money,” she said.
“All right, goddammit, I’ll give you the number myself right now!”
Minerva looked sharply at Williams.
“You’ve always said I was ‘wise,’” he said.
“Yes, I know. You was born with a veil over your face, baby. You do have the gift.”
“Tell me how many numbers you need.”
“I need a triple number—like one, two, three. It can be the same number three times or three different numbers.”
“All right,” said Williams. “Let me concentrate for a second. Then I’ll give you a number that will win you a handful of money.” Williams closed his eyes. “The numbers are … six … eight … and one.”
“Six-eight-one,” Minerva repeated.
“That’s right. Now, how much money does it take to play it? A dollar, five dollars, ten dollars?”
A flicker of doubt crossed Minerva’s face. “You might be teasin’ me.”
“I don’t tease,” said Williams. “But you haven’t answered my question. What does it take to cover the bet?”
“Six dollars.”
“How much would you win if you won?”
“Three hundred. But hey, this thing play two tracks,” she said. “Which track to play? New York or Brooklyn? Me, I play New York track. I don’t want to play six-eight-one on New York and have it come Brooklyn. Which one to play?”
“Can’t you play both?”
“Hell, no. That would take another six dollars. And listen, the man that writes the numbers for the other track, for Brooklyn, he live seventy miles from me. So I got to have a number for the New York track.”
Williams closed his eyes again. “Okay. I see it now. It’s the New York track. Play six-eight-one on the New York track. You’ll win three hundred dollars for sure. I’ll give you the six dollars to cover the bet.”
Minerva took the money.
“But remember one thing,” said Williams. “Six-eight-one will work only if you leave Dr. Buzzard alone tonight and don’t hound him for a number. If you bug him, six-eight-one will automatically become worthless.”
“I’ll leave him be, baby.”
“Good,” said Williams. “I want the two of you to concentrate on only one thing tonight. Keeping Mrs. Tyo on my side. I don’t want you or the old man wasting energy on numbers again until this thing is over.”
Mine
rva nodded solemnly.
“And don’t you worry about the three hundred dollars. It’s as good as in your pocket. Do you follow me?”
Minerva stuffed the six dollars into her bag. “Yeah, baby, I follow you.”
The third floor of the Chatham County Courthouse was a scene of turmoil and confusion at ten o’clock the next morning. The doors of Judge Oliver’s courtroom remained chained and pad locked. The crowd of spectators milling around in the corridor was augmented by the presence of Sheriff Mitchell and a half dozen of his deputies. The sheriff and his men had come to the courthouse in anticipation of a guilty verdict; afterward they would escort Williams through the underground passage to jail. But the padlock on the courtroom door was unusual. It meant that the session would be delayed in starting. Something unexpected had happened. This is what it was:
At seven that morning, Spencer Lawton had received a telephone call from a paramedic who worked for LifeStar, an emergency medical service. The paramedic said that at two-thirty an anonymous woman had called the service and asked medical questions pertaining to “a shooting between an older man and a younger man.” How long would it take blood to congeal on a person’s hand? How quickly would a person die if he had been shot in the aorta? Though she refused to identify herself, the woman eventually admitted she was a juror in the Jim Williams case and that she was the only one who believed Williams was innocent. She added that the other jurors had commented that the case was about a couple of faggots and that they should just convict Williams and go home.
Lawton immediately called Judge Oliver and demanded that Mrs. Tyo be expelled from the jury for discussing the case outside the jury room and be replaced by one of the alternate jurors. This would all but guarantee a guilty verdict. Seiler, when he heard about it, insisted the judge declare a mistrial.