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“The reading of the indictment to the jury in the statement of the case of the state against the defendant cannot be considered as a fact or circumstance against the defendant in your deliberations.

“In deliberating on the cause you are not to refer to or discuss any matter or issue not in evidence before you; and in determining the guilt or innocence of the defendant, you shall not discuss or consider the punishment, if any, which may be assessed against the defendant in the event he is found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

“You are charged that it is only from the witness stand that the jury is permitted to receive evidence regarding the case, or any witness therein, and no juror is permitted to communicate to any other juror anything he may have heard regarding the case or any witness therein, from any source other than the witness stand.

“You are instructed that your verdict must be unanimous and it must reflect the individual verdict of each individual juror, and not mere acquiescence in the conclusion of the other jurors.

“You are the exclusive judges of the facts proved, of the credibility of the witnesses and of the weight to be given to the testimony, but you are bound to receive the law from the Court, which is herein given [to] you, and be governed thereby.

“After reading the charge, you shall not be permitted to separate from each other, nor shall you talk with anyone not of your jury. After argument of counsel, you will retire and select one of your members as your foreperson. It is his or her duty to preside at your deliberations and to vote with you in arriving at a unanimous verdict. After you have arrived at your verdict, you may use one of the forms attached hereto by having your foreperson sign his or her name to the particular form that conforms to your verdict, but in no event shall he or she sign more than one such form.

“There’s two possible forms. One is, ‘We, the jury, find the defendant, Justin Thomas, guilty of Murder as alleged in the indictment.’ And the other is, ‘We, the jury, find the defendant, Justin Thomas, not guilty.’

“State ready?”

The jurors heard closing arguments.

 

 

Gail Van Winkle stood, her business suit buttoned tight. She’d barely touched food in days, always unable to eat during a trial.

“. . . I want to talk to you a little bit about Kim LeBlanc,” Van Winkle said. “Now I do not expect anyone of you to like Kim. I don’t expect you to relate to her. I don’t even expect you to sympathize with her. She did some very bad things. She was involved in murder. She helped dispose of the body. When she got up here and she testified, she seemed detached at times. I don’t know why. I submit that she has gone through rehab. She is no longer living the life of a drug addict that she used to be. Maybe that’s how she copes with her past. Maybe that’s how she deals with her responsibility, the part that she played in her friend’s death. I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter. Because we’ll deal with Kim LeBlanc later.”

“There have been no deals made with Kim LeBlanc other than what Mr. Cox told you . . . No deals have been made,” Van Winkle emphasized.

“In fact, you tell us at the end of this trial what you think should happen to Kim LeBlanc. You tell us. But don’t let your dislike for Kim LeBlanc, or your inability to understand or relate to Kim LeBlanc, distract you from the truth. Don’t let your dislike for Kim let the defendant, a murderer, go free. We’ll deal with her later. Focus on what the defendant did. Focus on the evidence.”

 

 

Patrick Ganne faced the jurors, his suit sharp. “Now I’ve always been taught that it’s inappropriate to talk about the dead,” he said, seriously. “But let’s review just exactly who Regina Hartwell was. A young woman with more money than she needed, more money for her own good, who hung around Club 404, wherever that is,” his tone self-righteous, “somewhere in the downtown business district, and went out, preyed on young freshman girls who came to school here at the University. Right?

 

 

“Something else I want you to know,” said Ganne. His blue eyes were dramatically sad. “Mr. Sawyer and I both have nineteen-year-old daughters. You know, and parents are always the last to know. But I think, I think that a woman who gets on the stand and tells you that at the age of fourteen she acquired the knowledge of the power of her sexuality, that’s scary. That is scary. Kim LeBlanc is a con artist, she’s a user, and she’s only got one thing left to do to walk out of this deal, [and that] is to con you. She’s gotten past Mr. Cox.”

“You’ve got the hardest job of any jury I’ve ever addressed,” said Ganne, “because a person is dead. And I believe it’s through the exercise of bad, immature judgment [that] a young prosecutor decided to go with a pretty girl and blame it on this big hulk over there.” He pointed to Thomas. “When the weight of the evidence, the weight of the evidence, goes the other way. It’s not even a weight. It’s a bulk.”

 

 

“I don’t have anything else to say to you. I thank you for your attention. It’s been tedious. This has taken a lot longer than I thought it would. On behalf of Justin Thomas, his family, I thank you for your attention. I ask you . . . no, I don’t ask, I demand, society demands, the community demands, that you do the right thing, that you be repulsed by what has happened, that you consider the evidence, that you follow the instructions of Judge Fuller, and render the only verdict that can possibly be rendered in this case, and that is acquit Justin Thomas of committing that murder, even though you know,” and he repeated for emphasis, “even though you know that he’s up to his neck.”

 

 

Court recessed for ten minutes before Jim Sawyer began his closing arguments.

As if meditating and concentrating, Sawyer looked down at his polished cowboy boots, then up at the jurors. “Many years ago now, many years ago when I was around six, a very wise, old man said, ‘Be careful of the lions you meet. They’ll fool you with the truth.’ I had no idea what he meant. That old man never learned to speak English, never drove a car, never flew a plane. I’m fifty-one. I’m beginning to do that. That old man was my grandfather. I tell you that so you can appreciate the source.”

 

 

“What’s the first thing, from all the evidence before us? The first thing we absolutely know is that Regina Hartwell did nothing to deserve in any way, to invoke, to ask for the crime committed against her. The woman didn’t do anything. Her weakness, if it was a weakness, is that she gave. Her weakness, if it was a weakness, is that she cared. Her weakness, if it was a weakness, is that she loved somebody. And whether you love wisely or foolishly, that’s a real emotion. And I think there’s no doubt in what you heard that, for whatever reason, she loved and cared for Kim LeBlanc.

“The converse I think was never true. Ms. LeBlanc with Ms. Hartwell did what she had been doing for all of her short life. What did we hear her say? What did we hear? . . .

“We heard her say sex is power. Sex is power. Sat right here and looked at you and told you so. And she began exercising that power when she was fourteen years old. She gave you one brief burst of tears. Remember? ‘Oh, how can you do this to me?’” he mockingly said, like a schoolboy taunting a girl. “And then didn’t cry again once about the fact that if she would have you believe her stepfather systematically raped her for four years. And she did nothing about it. Knowing what you have learned of her, learned of her here, tell me what you think she really was for four years. Do you think it was a relationship in which Ms. LeBlanc took?”

 

 

Sawyers’s walnut brown eyes pierced the jurors. “You know, if Ms. LeBlanc, if she was less attractive, if she was bigger, [she] wouldn’t cause as great a problem as I think she does. You know, Mr. Ganne told you a few minutes ago we both have daughters. You know, he might have gone on to say we suffered from a bias, one that will probably die out when men my age are gone. But, you know, what that bias is is one that says surely, ‘Please, God, little, attractive girls don’t commit horrible, brutal crimes. Please don’t let that be true.’ Surely not. And we have here, the first man around the corner. What a choice, huh? Whether by design or accident, whether she knew where she was going, could you get a better picture of beauty and the beast?” He looked at Thomas. “Could you? Great big, old, ugly boy, six feet four, 230 pounds.

“You know,” said Sawyer, “my grandfather also told me once, ‘Truth is not complicated. People are. Truth sits there all by itself.’”

Justin Thomas sat there looking like a handsome University of Texas football player.

 

 

Gregg Cox’s shoulders were erect. He knew his game plan. “Now, the defense,” said Cox, “and Mr. Ganne and Mr. Sawyer are very good lawyers. They’re very articulate. They’re very dramatic, theatrical with their closing arguments. But sometimes you have to wonder, were they in the same courtroom as you? They’re spinmasters. They like to put their little spin on the evidence.

“I believe it was Mr. Sawyer that said the weight of the evidence, the bulk of the evidence, points to Ms. LeBlanc in this case. Use your common sense. Does it?

 

 

“They said that they were going to show you that there was some kind of secret deal in exchange for her testimony. And because they weren’t able to show that there was a deal, they attack me personally. They say I’m immature, that I have no experience at these things, and that I was conned by someone. Ladies and gentlemen, just you recall the evidence.”

 

 

At 11:17 a.m., on Wednesday, August 21, 1996, the jury retired to deliberate.

The jurors stood in their tiny, fourth-floor jury room. Wire mesh covered the windows that viewed Austin. It was hot. They stared quietly at each other. Their task before them was daunting. A young man’s future was on the line.

Juror Greg Ledenbach watched and worried about doing the right thing. He was a high-tech, California bigwig with Austin’s Sematech consortium. Only a year earlier had he moved to Austin. Never before had he served on a jury.

Ledenbach hadn’t wanted to serve, but he felt it was his civic duty. A devout Catholic with three children to be a role model for, it wasn’t in Ledenbach’s moral structure to lie his way out of jury duty. He felt that the United States had the best justice system in the world, and he had to serve his duty if he expected others to serve their duty.

There he was in that Austin jury room on a hot, August day listening to a tale about lesbians and drugs and murder. “Beyond a reasonable doubt,” he soon discovered, was not as easy as it seemed on TV, especially when he was responsible for someone’s life, perhaps for the rest of that person’s life.

“I believe,” said one male juror, “that as we’ve gotten to know one another over this past week, that no one is going to be offended if I ask this. So, I’m going to ask: Do you mind if we pray together before we start this?”

Everyone agreed, and the juror led them in prayer.

Ledenbach was selected as foreman.

The twelve jurors then sat down to their deliberation; their minds reeled with testimony and closing arguments. They had been impressed with the prosecution’s systematic, undramatic closing.

They had not been impressed by the defense’s. In fact, some considered Ganne’s and Sawyer’s theatrical antics offensive. Like Kim LeBlanc, many of the jurors didn’t understand Sawyer’s perceived need to question LeBlanc, push LeBlanc, seemingly exploit LeBlanc and her alleged victimization by her stepfather.

They also didn’t like the defense team’s constant attack on Cox, particularly his youth and alleged inexperience. In fact, it turned the jurors off.

In contrast, the jurors respected Cox for refusing to drop down to the defense’s street-fighting, mudslinging attorney-against-attorney tactics. They also admired the way Cox and Van Winkle had been professional, courteous, and respectful to the witnesses, even the witnesses for the defense. They were downright impressed by Gregg Cox and Gail Van Winkle.

 

 

“Does anybody feel like they’ve solidly made up their mind?” said Ledenbach.

Six jurors raised their hands, yes. Six raised their hands, undecided.

“We’re going to have to discuss this and figure it out. If you believe he’s guilty, why? What makes you believe he’s guilty? If you don’t believe beyond a reasonable doubt that he’s guilty, why? What do you need to see or what do we need to discuss to make you make up your mind? And those of you who believe beyond a reasonable doubt that he is guilty, what would make you have doubt?”

 

 

Jeremy Barnes had cleaned up blood and it had been no big deal. That just plain shocked the jury. There was a lot of blood, enough to stain the carpet padding, and Barnes had thought it was from a nosebleed.
That much blood doesn’t come from a nosebleed,
thought Ledenbach.

But Dr. Bayardo had said that most of the bleeding had been internal.
You can’t not believe that guy.
His testimony and the autopsy photos had caused many a juror a sleepless night.

 

 

After seeing the police photo of Kim LeBlanc, juror Sheral Cole had thought the defense’s argument that LeBlanc had manipulated Justin Thomas into murdering Regina Hartwell for Kim was hogwash.

Cole, a young attorney with flawless, smooth skin and a big smile, couldn’t even talk her husband, who loved her dearly, into taking out the trash, so how could Kim LeBlanc have talked Justin Thomas into murdering Regina Hartwell?

When Kim LeBlanc took the witness stand, Sheral Cole had been shocked, as were all the jurors.

LeBlanc looked like the kind of girl Greg Ledenbach would agree to let his son go out with. Ledenbach couldn’t believe that the Kim in the police photo and the one sitting in the witness chair were the same person. It made him realize the havoc drugs can wreak on the body.

But not Sheral Cole. Kim LeBlanc, thought Cole, was beautiful, the way Elizabeth Taylor is beautiful. Sheral began to “get” the defense’s argument. Maybe Kim had talked Justin into murdering Regina. Who couldn’t be captivated by such beauty?

In fact, Cole, the mother of two babies, had shivered and shaken in her juror’s chair when Kim had announced that she worked with children. Sheral Cole didn’t buy it. Not one bit. She didn’t buy it that Kim LeBlanc hadn’t been in Regina Hartwell’s apartment during the murder. She didn’t buy it that Kim LeBlanc had been home sleeping or taking a shower. She didn’t buy it because she didn’t believe that someone would participate that much in a cover-up if she didn’t have something to cover up. Sheral Cole believed one hundred percent that Kim LeBlanc had been in Regina Hartwell’s apartment during the murder.

 

 

“I want to know whether or not the chain was used to tow a car. The reason for buying that chain is plausible,” said one juror.

Four notes were sent to Judge Fuller. The jurors asked for a flip chart, the witness list, part of Jeremy Barnes’s testimony, and portions of Justin Thomas’s testimony. They asked for all of the evidence to be brought to the jury room. The photos of Regina’s charred-to-a-black-crisp body. The knife. The trash can. The chain.

The jurors looked at and studied the chain. It was bright and shiny. It wasn’t scratched up. Many of the jurors had towed cars before. Their chains, while towing, dragged on the ground and after towing, were dirty and scratched. The Thomas chain, after allegedly used for towing, was brand, spanking new—pristine condition. The jurors concluded it hadn’t been used to tow anything.

That chain, and its simultaneous purchase with the trash can, also made them conclude that the can had been bought to use for the sole purpose of body disposal, not normal household-garbage disposal.

They discussed the theory of Thomas throwing the can filled with Hartwell’s body in the river behind his father’s home. The river there is shallow enough to walk across, they noted. Thomas had indeed walked across it. That meant, if he had thrown the can in the river, the can would have been visible. “That’s kind of stupid,” they reasoned. “But on the other hand, committing murder is stupid.”

“We’ve never committed murder. So we can’t say this is how we’d feel, but we kind of expect that you’d be rather irrational. So stupid things can seem rational in that case. So that’s totally plausible that that’s what they were going to do.”

“So why didn’t they do that?” asked Ledenbach. “Why did they burn her?”

“I think he panicked.”

 

 

They recalled the length of the knife blade. The wound was longer than the knife found under Hartwell’s body. It would need force to stab that deep. Someone very strong wielded that knife. They looked at LeBlanc’s photo. The young person in it didn’t look strong enough to stab Hartwell. If Ledenbach had passed on the street the Kim LeBlanc in that police photo, he wouldn’t have had any interest in being anywhere near her. She was so emaciated that she looked like she might die.

It didn’t bother the jurors that the knife hadn’t burned, that it only had one small, blackened area on its handle. Not charred like the body. Simply blackened. They reasoned that, since it had been wedged under the body and wrapped in blue cloth, it hadn’t gotten enough air to burn.

The jury continued to talk. They wanted to make sure they didn’t miss anything, that they didn’t misunderstand anything. They talked. They clarified. “How did you perceive that witness? Did you believe him?” They asked those questions back and forth, constantly. “What did you think?”

The facts weren’t what impressed the jurors about Anita Morales. It was Anita Morales herself. Her body language added to her credibility. Anita seemed like she’d really lost a friend whom she had loved. It touched them.

Bonnie Thomas’s coarseness, even if it was well-mannered coarseness, turned them off. Ledenbach thought Bonnie Thomas looked like she’d led a hard life—hard like an undernourished, backwoods Appalachian woman. But that didn’t mean he trusted her. He didn’t. Ledenbach certainly didn’t believe that Bonnie Thomas didn’t do drugs with Justin and Kim. That made him believe Kim’s testimony more.

They all felt the same thing. They all agreed.

To them, when Thomas took the stand, he seemed to say, “Well, I’m a really good farm boy and all this stuff is really ridiculous and I can pull the wool over your eyes and just listen to me how truthful I am.” To them, he seemed to say, “If you believe this stuff, you’ve gotta be dumb.”

They thought Thomas had told them what he believed they wanted to hear. It didn’t matter if his testimony was consistent or inconsistent—they were still going to believe what he said. He contradicted the testimony of other witnesses. He even contradicted the statements of his own attorneys. The jurors noted that.

The young Texas Aggie juror, not much older than Thomas himself, picked up on what his fellow jurors didn’t notice, what Ganne and Sawyer acted as though they didn’t notice, and what the prosecutors didn’t seem to notice.

He noted the contradictory testimony regarding the date of the scooter accident and the date Justin Thomas had given the black leather recliner to Regina Hartwell.

That’s when the jurors sent the fourth note to Judge Fuller requesting “Jeremy’s testimony of when scotter [sic] accident happened,” and “Justin’s testimony regarding when scotter [sic] accident happened.” That portion of the note was written in one juror’s handwriting. The last portion was written by another juror. “Justin’s testimony regarding purchase of chair for Regina.”

Time and again, Justin Thomas had blown it with the jurors. The blood evidence, tied to the defendant’s own testimony, contributed to the verdict.

The reading of the verdict was postponed until 2:15 p.m., until Ganne and Sawyer could be retrieved from lunch.

 

 

“We, the jury, find the defendant, Justin Thomas, guilty of Murder as alleged in the indictment.”

Just three hours after the jury had begun its deliberations, Justin Thomas heard his conviction. Mark Hartwell wept. Melody Mann, Thomas’s teenaged girlfriend, broke down. Regina’s friends watched, and they felt guilty themselves. Jeremy Barnes walked over to hug and hold Melody. He knew what it was like to lose someone you love, no matter how good or bad they were.

 

 

On Friday, August 23, 1996, two days after the guilty verdict had been read, the jurors finally returned to the courtroom for the penalty phase of the trial. It had been postponed at the defense’s request—they wanted to study the audio tape of Dorothy Brown’s statement to the Riverside County, California authorities. Brown was the state’s key penalty-phase witness.

Dorothy Brown stepped up to the witness stand. She was overweight and wore a sundress that was too tight, with straps too loose. They fell off of her shoulders. She had long, greasy, blonde hair. It wasn’t natural blonde. She wore flip-flops on her feet.

A former speed freak, she looked, to put it in Texas terms, like she’d been rode hard and put up wet.

Dorothy Brown told her story about watching Thomas murder Rafael Noriega. Thomas smiled a few times. Dorothy looked scared. She focused her gaze on her questioner, with one, sole glance at the jurors.

Bonnie Thomas thought Dorothy Brown had been so geeked out on drugs that September night in California that there was no telling whom she thought she had seen pull the trigger on the gun that had murdered Rafael.

Jeremy Barnes thought Dorothy Brown looked like an Amazon.

Greg Ledenbach thought she was absolutely believable. She had no reason to lie. She had nothing to gain. He understood why she had told a slightly different story earlier to the police. But he didn’t see that those same reasons applied in 1996.

 

 

Kim LeBlanc stepped up to the stand one last time. “Did [Justin Thomas] tell you why this murder [of Noriega] had occurred?”

“He told me it was because he thought Rafa might have been a narc.”

 

 

Once again, the jurors were back in the jury room. Unmitigated relief relayed from face to face. Their guilty verdict had not been a mistake. There wasn’t any room left for any nagging doubt. They were totally convinced, no shadow of a doubt, that Justin Thomas was guilty of the murder of Regina Hartwell, and even that Justin Thomas was guilty of the murder of Rafael Noriega.

They believed Thomas had had the exact same reason for murdering Noriega as he did for murdering Regina. They had not overlooked anything in the trial evidence and testimony. Even though there was no evidence that said he had done it, there was no evidence, either, that said he hadn’t done it.