A Time to Kill (54 page)

“It didn’t hurt us. Those women were asking for sympathy, but Jake reminded the jury of what their sweet little boys did before they died.”

“The scumbags.”

“If there’s any resentment by the jury, they’ll forget by the time the last witness testifies.”

“Jake’s pretty smooth, ain’t he?”

“He’s good. Very good. He’s the best I’ve seen for his age.”

“Wait till his closing argument. I’ve heard a couple. He could get sympathy out of a drill sergeant.”

Jake returned and poured a small margarita. Just a very small one, for his nerves. Harry Rex drank like a sailor.

________

Ozzie was the first State witness after lunch. Buckley produced large, multicolored plats of the first and second floors of the courthouse, and together they traced the precise, last movements of Cobb and Willard.

Then Buckley produced a set of ten 16 × 24 color photographs of Cobb and Willard lying freshly dead on the stairs. They were gruesome. Jake had seen lots of pictures of dead bodies, and although none were particularly pleasant given their nature, some weren’t so bad. In one of his cases, the victim had been shot in the heart with a .357 and simply fell over dead on his porch. He was a large, muscular old man, and the bullet never found its way out of the body. So there was no blood, just a small hole in his overalls, and then a small sealed hole in his chest. He looked as though he could have fallen asleep and slumped over, or passed out drunk on the porch, like Lucien. It was not a spectacular scene, and Buckley had not been proud of those photographs. They had not been enlarged. He had just handed the small Polaroids to the jury and looked disgusted because they were so clean.

But most murder pictures were grisly and sickening, with blood splashed on walls and ceilings, and parts of bodies blown free and scattered everywhere. Those were always enlarged by the D.A. and entered into evidence with great fanfare, then waved around the courtroom by Buckley as he and the witness described the scenes in the pictures. Finally, with the jurors fidgeting with curiosity, Buckley would politely ask the judge for permission to show the photographs to the jury, and the judge would always consent. Then Buckley and everybody else would watch their faces
intently as they were shocked, horrified, and occasionally nauseated. Jake had actually seen two jurors vomit when handed photos of a badly slashed corpse.

Such pictures were highly prejudicial and highly inflammatory, and also highly admissible. “Probative” was the word used by the Supreme Court. Such pictures could aid the jury, according to ninety years of decisions from the Court. It was well settled in Mississippi that murder pictures, regardless of their impact on the jury, were always admissible.

Jake had seen the Cobb and Willard photographs weeks earlier, and had filed the standard objection and received the standard denial.

These were mounted professionally on heavy poster-board, something the D.A. had not done before. He handed the first one into the jury box to Reba Betts. It was the one of Willard’s head and brains taken at close range.

“My God!” she gasped, and shoved it to the next juror, who gawked in horror, and passed it on. They handed it to one another, then to the alternates. Buckley took it, and gave Reba another one. The ritual continued for thirty minutes until all the pictures were returned to the D.A.

Then he grabbed the M-16 and thrust it at Ozzie. “Can you identify this?”

“Yes, it’s the weapon found at the scene.”

“Who picked it up at the scene?”

“I did.”

“And what did you do with it?”

“Wrapped it in a plastic bag and placed it in the vault at the jail. Kept it locked up until I handed it to Mr. Laird with the crime lab in Jackson.”

“Your Honor, the State would offer the weapon,
Exhibit S-13, into evidence,” Buckley said, waving it wildly.

“No objections,” Jake said.

“We have nothing further of this witness,” Buckley announced.

“Cross-examination?”

Jake flipped through his notes as he walked slowly to the podium. He had just a few questions for his friend.

“Sheriff, did you arrest Billy Ray Cobb and Pete Willard?”

Buckley pushed his chair back and perched his ample frame on the edge, poised to leap and scream if necessary.

“Yes I did,” answered the sheriff.

“For what reason?”

“For the rape of Tonya Hailey,” he answered perfectly.

“And how old was she at the time she was raped by Cobb and Willard?”

“She was ten.”

“Is it true, Sheriff, that Pete Willard signed a written confession in—”

“Objection! Objection! Your Honor! That’s inadmissible and Mr. Brigance knows it.”

Ozzie nodded affirmatively during the objection.

“Sustained.”

Buckley was shaking. “I ask that the question be stricken from the record and the jury be instructed to disregard it.”

“I’ll withdraw the question,” Jake said to Buckley with a smile.

“Please disregard the last question from Mr. Brigance,” Noose instructed the jury.

“No further questions,” said Jake.

“Any redirect examination, Mr. Buckley?”

“No, sir.”

“Very well. Sheriff, you may step down.”

Buckley’s next witness was a fingerprint man from Washington who spent an hour telling the jurors what they had known for weeks. His dramatic final conclusion unmistakably linked the prints on the M-16 to those of Carl Lee Hailey. Then came the ballistics expert from the state crime lab whose testimony was as boring and uninformative as his predecessor on the stand. Yes, without a doubt, the fragments recovered from the crime scene were fired from the M-16 lying there on the table. That was his final opinion, and with the charts and diagrams, it took Buckley an hour to get it to the jury. Prosecutorial overkill, as Jake called it; a debility suffered by all prosecutors.

The defense had no questions for either expert, and at five-fifteen Noose said goodbye to the jurors with strict instructions against discussing the case. They nodded politely as they filed from the courtroom. Then he banged his gavel and adjourned until nine in the morning.

36

__________

T
he great civic duty of jury service had grown old rapidly. The second night in the Temple Inn had seen the telephones removed—judge’s orders. Some old magazines donated by the Clanton library were circulated and quickly discarded, there being little interest among the group in
The New Yorker, The Smithsonian
, and
Architectural Digest
.

“Got any
Penthouses?”
Clyde Sisco had whispered to the bailiff as he made the rounds. He said no, but he’d see what he could do.

Confined to their rooms with no television, newspapers, or phones, they did little but play cards and talk about the trial. A trip to the end of the hall for ice and a soft drink became a special occasion, something the roommates planned and rotated. The boredom descended heavily.

At each end of the hall two soldiers guarded the darkness and solitude, the stillness interrupted only by the systematic emergence of the jurors with change for the drink machine.

Sleep came early, and when the sentries knocked on
the doors at 6:00 A.M., all the jurors were awake, some even dressed. They devoured Thursday’s breakfast of pancakes and sausage, and eagerly boarded the Greyhound at eight for the trip back home.

________

For the fourth straight day the rotunda was crowded by eight o’clock. The spectators had learned that all seats were taken by eight-thirty. Prather opened the door and the crowd filed slowly through the metal detector, past the careful eyes of the deputies and finally into the courtroom, where the blacks filled the left side and the whites the right. The front row was again reserved by Hastings for Gwen, Lester, the kids, and other relatives. Agee and other council members sat in the second row with the kinfolks who couldn’t fit up front. Agee was in charge of alternating courtroom duty and outside demonstration duty for the ministers. Personally, he preferred the courtroom duty, where he felt safer, but he did miss the cameras and reporters which were so abundant on the front lawn. To his right, across the aisle, sat the families and friends of the victims. They had behaved so far.

A few minutes before nine, Carl Lee was escorted from the small holding room. The handcuffs were removed by one of the many officers surrounding him. He flashed a big smile at his family and sat in his chair. The lawyers took their places and the courtroom grew quiet. The bailiff poked his head through the door beside the jury box, and, satisfied with whatever he saw, opened the door and released the jurors to their assigned seats. Mr. Pate was watching all this from the door leading to chambers, and when all was perfect, he stepped forward and yelled: “All rise for the Court!”

Ichabod, draped in his favorite wrinkled and faded
black robe, loped to the bench and instructed everyone to have a seat. He greeted the jury and questioned them about what happened or didn’t happen since yesterday’s adjournment.

He looked at the lawyers. “Where’s Mr. Musgrove?”

“He’s running a bit late, Your Honor. We are ready to proceed,” Buckley announced.

“Call your next witness,” Noose ordered Buckley.

The pathologist from the state crime lab was located in the rotunda and entered the courtroom. Normally, he would have been much too busy for a simple trial and would have sent one of his underlings to explain to the jury precisely what killed Cobb and Willard. But this was the Hailey case, and he felt compelled to do the job himself. It was actually the simplest case he had seen in a while; the bodies were found as they were dying, the weapon was with the bodies, and there were enough holes in the boys to kill them a dozen times. Everybody in the world knew how those boys died. But the D.A. had insisted on the most thorough pathological workup, so the doctor took the stand Thursday morning laden with photos of the autopsies and multicolored anatomy charts.

Earlier in chambers, Jake had offered to stipulate to the causes of death, but Buckley would have no part of it. No sir, he wanted the jury to hear and know how they died.

“We will admit that they died by multiple wounds from bullets fired from the M-16,” Jake had stated precisely.

“No, sir. I have a right to prove it,” Buckley said stubbornly.

“But he’s offering to stipulate to the causes of death,” Noose said incredulously.

“I have the right to prove it,” Buckley hung on.

So he proved it. In a classic case of prosecutorial overkill, Buckley proved it. For three hours the pathologist talked about how many bullets hit Cobb and how many hit Willard, and what each bullet did upon penetration, and the ghastly damage thereafter. The anatomy charts were placed on easels before the jury, and the expert took a plastic, numbered pellet that represented a bullet, and moved it ever so slowly through the body. Fourteen pellets for Cobb and eleven for Willard. Buckley would ask a question, elicit a response, then interrupt to belabor a point.

“Your Honor, we would be glad to stipulate as to the causes of death,” Jake announced with great frustration every thirty minutes.

“We won’t,” Buckley replied tersely, and moved to the next pellet.

Jake fell into his chair, shook his head, and looked at the jurors, those who were awake.

The doctor finished at noon and Noose, tired and numb with boredom, awarded a two-hour lunch break. The jurors were awakened by the bailiff and led to the jury room where they dined on barbecue specials on plastic plates, then struck up card games. They were forbidden to leave the courthouse.

________

In every small Southern town there’s a kid who was born looking for the quick buck. He was the kid who at the age of five set up the first lemonade stand on his street and charged twenty-five cents a cup for four ounces of artificially flavored water. He knew it tasted awful, but he knew the adults thought he was adorable. He was the first kid on the street to purchase a lawn mower on credit at the Western Auto and
knock on doors in February to line up yard work for the summer. He was the first kid to pay for his own bike, which he used for morning and afternoon paper routes. He sold Christmas cards to old ladies in August. He sold fruitcakes door to door in November. On Saturday mornings when his friends were watching cartoons, he was at the flea markets at the courthouse selling roasted peanuts and corn dogs. At the age of twelve he bought his first certificate of deposit. He had his own banker. At fifteen, he paid cash for his new pickup the same day he passed his driver’s license exam. He bought a trailer to follow the truck and filled it with lawn equipment. He sold T-shirts at high school football games. He was a hustler; a millionaire to be.

In Clanton, his name was Hinky Myrick, age sixteen. He waited nervously in the rotunda until Noose broke for lunch, then moved past the deputies and entered the courtroom. Seating was so precious that almost none of the spectators left for lunch. Some would stand, glare at their neighbors, point at their seats and make sure everybody knew it was theirs for the day, then leave for the restroom. But most of them sat in their highly treasured spaces on the pews, and suffered through lunch.

Hinky could smell opportunity. He could sense people in need. On Thursday, just as he had on Wednesday, he rolled a shopping cart down the aisle to the front of the courtroom. It was filled with a wide assortment of sandwiches and plate lunches in plastic containers. He began yelling toward the far end of the rows, then passing food down to his customers. He worked his way slowly toward the rear of the courtroom. He was a vicious scalper. A tuna salad on white bread went for two dollars; his cost, eighty cents. A
plate lunch of cold chicken with a few peas went for three dollars; his cost, a buck twenty-five. A canned soft drink was one-fifty. But they gladly paid his prices and kept their seats. He sold out before he reached the fourth row from the front, and began taking orders from the rest of the courtroom. Hinky was the man of the hour.