03.She.Wanted.It.All.2005 (40 page)

“Mr. Beard died of overwhelming infection,” he said in a still strong voice. “His blood cultures showed GAS or Group A strep.”

Both on where the infection started and its relationship to the gunshot wound, Petty agreed with Satterwhite: It began in the rash on Steve’s groin and had no relationship to the gunshot. If the two doctors were right, Steve Beard had died not of homicide, but of natural causes. Perhaps it could even have been malpractice, DeGuerin suggested, since Steve went for a full day after lab tests found the infection before receiving an antibiotic. For this testimony, the jurors sat up straight, and some leaned forward.

As to the blood clots Dr. Bayardo had noted in Steve’s lungs, Dr. Petty saw them in the slides but disagreed about their significance. They were of different ages, some old, he said. They may have been associated with Steve’s chronic lung condition.

“Just because you have a pulmonary embolism, does that mean you’re going to die?” DeGuerin asked.

“No,” Dr. Petty said. “An area of this patient’s lungs was infarcted, dead, the blood supply from the artery cut off. It
had been that way for some time. It indicates that these clots had gone on over a period of time.”

“Can a person survive such clots?”

“If they’re not big enough to cut off the blood to the lungs.”

“Could it cause death?”

“If it is predeath, yes,” he said. “I can’t tell if these were.”

Under cross exam, Dr. Petty said that the last time he’d conducted an autopsy had been seven years earlier and that he knew Dr. Bayardo well and considered him a good medical examiner. Since retiring, Petty had testified at other trials, sometimes for the prosecutors and other times for the defense.

“You lectured at a class with Mr. DeGuerin entitled, ‘You Sure It Was the Bullet and Not the Chili?—Cross Examining the Pathologist,’ didn’t you?’ On getting alternative causes of death in front of a jury?” Cobb asked.

Petty agreed he’d participated, but said he didn’t remember the seminar’s title. Then, while he said he’d discussed Dr. Satterwhite’s findings with him, Petty insisted he’d made up his mind about the cause of death in the Beard case on his own.

“The pulmonary embolism you mentioned, was that sufficient to cause death?” Cobb asked.

“He had an old pulmonary embolism that didn’t cause his death,” Petty said. “I’m just giving my opinion. He died of infection.”

“Could it be that Dr. Bayardo’s opinion is correct and yours was incorrect?”

“Could be,” he said.

“Are you familiar with the case of David Gunby?” Cobb asked, and DeGuerin objected. Shot in 1966 when Charles Whitman fired a high-powered rifle off the UT tower, Gunby lived until 2001, when he died after a failed kidney transplant. The medical examiner ruled his death a homicide,
caused by longstanding complications of his wounds. Kocurek ruled in DeGuerin’s favor, disallowing the line of questioning.

“Can complications of a gunshot wound ultimately cause death even years later?” Cobb asked.

“Yes,” Petty said.

Although she believed Cobb had done well with both physicians, Wetzel worried. If jurors believed the testimony that Steve had died of an unrelated infection, they’d have to vote to acquit.

After the defense rested, both sides brought rebuttal witnesses to the stand, including battling psychologists. Yet, none opened up new territory. DeGuerin didn’t put Celeste on the stand. Instead, the final thing the jury heard was her videotaped deposition from the civil case. On the television screen, she dressed casually, in an orange sweater and jeans, her dyed blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. Wetzel wanted to play only a portion, but DeGuerin insisted the jury hear the entire three-hour deposition.

“Did you ever have any romantic involvement with Tracey Tarlton?” she was asked.

“No, I did not.”

“Why did you leave Meagan at the lake house that night?”

“Because Amy begged me to leave her.”

“How did it come about that Jennifer was at the lake house that night?”

“She had asked to stay there.”

“Did you talk to Tracey on October second?” The day of the shooting.

“She called me on my cell phone.”

“What did she say?”

“That the police had talked to her.”

“Did you ever ask Tracey Tarlton if she shot Steve?”

“I don’t believe so,” she said.

On the screen, Celeste contradicted points that DeGuerin had laboriously pushed during the seven weeks of testimony, including that Steve had ill feelings for Tracey. About one thing she held firm: “Tracey and I didn’t have a relationship. We had a friendship.”

Then, after more than one hundred witnesses, both sides finally rested. Judge Kocurek dismissed the two alternates and sent the jury home for the night. The following morning, closing arguments would begin.

“I
t’s been a strange and weird trip, hasn’t it?” Gary
Cobb began the following day, March 17, as he opened closing arguments. Agreement murmured through the overflowing room, spectators standing in the aisles for lack of seats.

The front rows behind the prosecution were filled with Steve Beard’s grown children and their families. They’d sat through painful testimony about their father’s last years. At the same time they abhorred what Tracey had done, they pulled for her. “We believed she’d been manipulated, like our dad was,” Paul says. “She was used by Celeste.”

Among them sat many of the witnesses, including the twins and their friends, who held hands in solidarity. Their protectors, Anita and Ellen Halbert, were with them. Both the twins were on edge. For weeks Jennifer had been having nightmares in which Celeste called out to her from the street in front of her house. If she went to meet her, she felt certain her mother would kill her.

More than anyone in the courtroom except their mother, the twins’ futures rested on the twelve jurors seated in the box. If Celeste were found not guilty, they were prepared to leave Austin and run, they believed for their very lives. Kristina feared they’d never be able to stop running, for she knew Celeste had a long and vengeful memory.

As they laid out their closing arguments, Cobb and Wetzel had split up tasks. Cobb would explain the law and how it pertained to this case. Then the defense had the floor for their closing, arguing the defense haiku: Celeste was better off with Steve alive; lifestyle was not proof of guilt; and Celeste did not kill her husband. Finally, Wetzel, the lead prosecutor, would close, summing up evidence she said proved Celeste Beard Johnson had committed murder.

“To judge the defendant is guilty of capital murder,” Cobb began. “You must find that she had her husband killed for remuneration. That’s easy, for the only motive for this murder was Steven Beard’s money.” Effortlessly, he moved from topic to topic, explaining the criteria for judging Celeste guilty of murder and injury to the elderly. Sizing up their star witness, he said: “Tracey Tarlton was a credible person on the stand, the same credible person people saw in September and October of 1999 … She’s not the first person to do something crazy for love.”

The defense said Steve didn’t die of the gunshot wound or anything related to it, but Cobb argued, “Dr. Bayardo was in the best position to determine cause of death. He conducted the autopsy…

“The love of money is the root of all evil. People loved Celeste Beard, but all she loved was money,” Cobb said, picking up the white placard that held the defense’s exhibit of Celeste’s money with and without Steve. On the front, their expert had listed houses, jewelry, cash and investments,
arguing Celeste was better off with Steve alive than dead. The trip to Europe was a test, to see if the marriage could be saved. If it couldn’t, “he would have divorced her skinny butt,” Cobb said, flipping the chart over to a blank, empty white. “And this is what she would have gotten, a big pocketful of nothing.

“Listen to the witnesses who do not have Celeste Beard’s money in their pockets,” he urged, “and come to a verdict: Celeste Beard Johnson is guilty of capital murder.”

Beginning the defense’s closing argument, Catherine Baen took over the courtroom floor. She set up a computer for a PowerPoint demonstration, and then her voice filled the courtroom for the first time since the trial began.

“Celeste Beard Johnson is not guilty,” she began. In the four weeks of evidence the prosecution presented, she maintained, they’d been unable to make their case. To make her point, she brought up the secret cell phone and the phone records. “The only person who put that cell phone in Celeste’s hands was Tracey Tarlton,” she said. And Tracey, she went on, was not to be believed.

Even if the jury believed Celeste was involved in the shooting, she said, it couldn’t be proven that she’d done it for money. Even Kuperman had testified that Steve didn’t want a divorce. If they did divorce, she argued, the state gave a wrong impression as to what Celeste would get— half the houses, and closets full of clothes and expensive jewelry. “That doesn’t sound like nothing to me, folks,” she said.

The jurors had to find Celeste was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. “The prosecutors say this is the type of evidence on which you’d base a serious decision, like buying a home,” she went on. “You’re not deciding whether or not to buy a
home. You’re deciding whether or not to put this woman in a cage for the rest of her life.”

Nearly all the evidence against Celeste, she said, came from questionable sources: Tracey, the twins, and Donna Goodson. “Everyone would agree this family is dysfunctional with a capital D,” she asserted. “The twins have two million reasons to lie against Celeste,” the money they’d inherit with Celeste out of the way.

“Tracey Tarlton killed Steve Beard on her own, for her own selfish reasons,” DeGuerin said, addressing the jury. “Her own sick reasons.”

Quickly, his passion built. Where Baen was analytical, DeGuerin packed a strong emotional punch. “You need to believe that Steve died without a reasonable doubt from the gunshot wound,” he said, saying that they couldn’t do that.

When it came to the two women, DeGuerin said it was “insulting to say that Celeste was the aggressor.” Holding up Tracey’s journal, Defense Exhibit 98, he said, “If you do nothing else, please read this journal. Please look at the medical records.”

Reading snatches in which Tracey pined for Celeste, DeGuerin, his face flushed with fervor, said, “Delusions, lies, or fantasies, but it’s not the truth … The truth is that Tracey Tarlton is an aggressive lesbian who pursued heterosexual women who were married.”

On the screen, Baen flipped up the chart with the terms DeGuerin had used to paint Tracey: suicidal, homicidal, delusional, psychotic. He lowered his voice from what had become a roar and read from Tracey’s Timberlawn chart. “That’s not normal. That’s a crazy woman… She had nothing to lose and everything to gain,” he said, as Baen flashed on the screen a photo of Tracey aiming the murder weapon.

Walking back toward the defense table, he said: “Tracey told you Celeste ordered her to shoot him in the stomach so it wouldn’t make a mess.”

With that, DeGuerin lay down on the defense table, a pillow across his midsection. He pulled a white sheet over him, as if he were an obese man in bed. “Steve Beard’s stomach is the only thing Tracey could see!” he shouted. “She shot him in the stomach because it was the biggest target she had.”

Back on his feet, DeGuerin stared at the jurors and demanded: “You must return a not guilty verdict if you believe she was absolutely innocent, if she was definitely not guilty, if she was probably not guilty, and if she might not be guilty… The state did not prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt because they don’t have the evidence. All this other trash, this soap opera, does not prove Celeste is guilty.”

At 6:45 that evening the rest of the courthouse was dark and the crowds had thinned as Allison Wetzel rose to give the final closing argument. She began by thanking the jurors on behalf of the state of Texas, Steve’s family and his children.

“Gary Cobb ran out of time earlier,” she said. “He’d like you to look at the two date books and compare what Steve writes on the family one versus what is in Celeste’s own book. You’ll note there’s no mention of the trip to Europe in hers. That’s because she never planned to go.”

After DeGuerin’s highly emotional pleas, Wetzel wanted to be calm. The jury, she judged, had had enough. This was a different prosecutor from the one who’d given an opening statement, one more self-assured. If DeGuerin had once gotten under her skin, he was there no longer. “I wish we’d known in the beginning of the trial that Mr. DeGuerin was going to admit the relationship between the women was sexual,” she said. “It would have saved us a lot of time.”

Tracey had told Barbara Grant that Celeste insisted she be monogamous. “Monogamy isn’t just I want to play house,” Wetzel said. “It’s you-and-me-babe.”

Then she talked of the twins’ testimony: “Ninety percent of what Kristina and Jennifer told you is the same as what Christopher and Amy told you. The defendant looked forward to Steve’s death. She hated having sex with that old man.”

For the jury, Wetzel organized the evidence, drawing together the elements that pointed to Celeste’s involvement, everything from banning the teens from revealing Tracey’s name to the cell phone bills. Scoffing at the notion that the killing wasn’t about money, she held up the state’s financial chart, showing a sharp rise in Celeste’s spending, and then pointed out that the day Steve died, Celeste’s overriding concern was getting on his bank account. “That tells you something,” she said.

When it came to the cause of death, she quoted from Bayardo and Dr. Coscia, Steve’s surgeon, who’d said the symptoms matched pulmonary embolism. But for any juror not convinced, she held up a photo Justin had taken of Celeste’s hands after Steve died, with pockets of infection across her fingers. Wetzel’s implication was that if Steve died of an infection, it had come from Celeste.

“Celeste Beard gave Donna Goodson ten thousand dollars. That wasn’t just for brushing her hair, folks,” she said. “Even Dr. Gotway admits Celeste talked about hiring a hit man to get rid of Tracey. Who was their star witness? Katina Lofton, a ten-time felon who asks Celeste for money.”

Lofton, Wetzel said, thought Celeste was going to be her Santa Claus.

“When you’re rich like Celeste Beard, you can buy lawyers and witnesses. Maybe in some places special people get special treatment. But when it comes to the courtroom,
that stops,” she said. “If you find Celeste Beard not guilty, you’re basically telling her money can buy anything. The defendant is guilty of capital murder. This defendant is guilty of injury to the elderly. I believe in this jury.”

Forty-eight days after it began, the trial of Celeste Beard Johnson ended. With that, the jury was led from the courtroom.

Deliberations were agony for both sides. Steve’s children spent much of their time in Halbert’s office, thinking back over all that had happened. At times they were seen outside the front doors, smoking quietly, looking tired and sad. They were all furious at DeGuerin for his final tactic—lying on the table with the pillow over his middle. To them, he’d ridiculed their father, a dead man not there to defend himself. Paul was especially angry, remembering the way Celeste giggled as DeGuerin lay on the table.

The twins rarely left the courthouse, worried about being pounced on by reporters and television cameras. They were taken in hidden elevators and out private doors. At the jail, Tracey Tarlton watched for snatches on the television news, and at home, Donna Goodson found she couldn’t turn off the TV, afraid the jury would come in without her hearing.

As the first evening of deliberations turned into the second day, the defense lawyers grew more confident. An old adage said that a quick verdict was usually a verdict of guilt. The longer a jury stayed out, it was thought, the better it was for the defense. DeGuerin, however, was still gnawing on his closing remarks. He’d had plans that in the tight time constraints he hadn’t gotten to, including drawing a timeline he said would have proved Celeste couldn’t have done all Tracey said she did the night of the shooting. And he was angry, spitting angry, about the judge, who’d ruled that he wasn’t allowed to present the testimony from Zan Ray and
Reginald Breaux. “If we’d been allowed to put on the case we wanted to, I’d feel better,” he said. “She didn’t let us do that.”

For her part, Catherine Baen prowled nervously through the tight quarters of the small defense room and the courthouse corridors, the hours wearing her down. She’d received a call inviting her back to The Hague to work on another war crimes trial. She’d agreed to go, but any excitement was squashed under the weight of what this jury would decide.

Rumors floated through the courthouse that this was an organized jury. Many were managers at their companies. When lunches were brought in, it was noticed that charts and lists were taped to the walls. They were dissecting the case, moving from issue to issue.

Meanwhile, Wetzel and Cobb weren’t worried about the passing hours. The jurors had asked the bailiff for evidence to be brought to them: the two calendars and the phone record summary. All were items they’d suggested the jury consider in their closings. Still, they had asked for other things that didn’t bode as well for the prosecutors, including Tracey’s journal, which DeGuerin had urged them to read.

On the third day, Wednesday, March 19, at 10:00
A.M.,
the jurors sent out a request for more evidence, including the photos from the lake house party, the cards the women had sent to each other, and Justin’s photos of Celeste’s infected hands. But it was something else that caught all the attorneys’ attention: The jurors wanted the photos from the autopsy—the autopsy itself—and Steve Beard’s death certificate.

To Wetzel this held good news and bad news. The good news: It appeared the jury had decided Celeste was involved, otherwise they wouldn’t be considering cause of death. The
bad news: They were discussing the cause of death.

Nearly seven hours later, at 4:40
P.M
., the attorneys were called. The jury had reached a verdict.

The interested flooded the courtroom, even more than for closing arguments. Again Steve’s family, including the twins and their friends, packed the front pews. Justin, Kristina, Jennifer, their friend Amanda, and Ellen Halbert sat together, holding hands. Moments earlier Justin had led them all in prayer. “Help the jury see what we know in our hearts,” he said. “Give us justice for Steve.”

Behind Celeste and her attorneys sat her friends, Marilou and her daughters, and Celeste’s husband Cole, who’d told the media he stood behind his wife’s innocence. The only one missing from the courtroom was Gary Cobb, who’d gone to pick up his youngest son at school. The jury walked in without smiling. The bailiff handed the decision to the judge, who read it and returned it to him. He then took it to the jury foreperson, Shelly Rosales, a blond, matter-of-fact woman, who looked directly at Celeste.