Cruel Doubt (34 page)

“10:20—Situation has not changed. At 7:45
A
.
M
. Wade Smith said Mr. Norton wanted to meet with him at 9
A
.
M
. and then with me and him at 9:30. I stated this was not desirable to me since I was footing the bill and there was nothing Mr. Norton could not say in my presence. We agreed (Mr. Smith and I) that all would meet at 9:00
together
.

“10:35—Same situation exists.

“10:40—No change in situation. I still sit here with the clock running. I do not feel there can be any satisfactory explanation for this disregard of our previous agreement that I would be included in the conference I will be expected to pay for.

“10:45—I made a trip to the ladies' room.

“10:50—No change in situation.

“10:55—Finally, Mr. Smith calls me into his office.”

By then, Bonnie said, the thought paramount in her mind was, “What's this conspiracy here? They're going to ask me to do something I'm not going to be capable of doing. At that moment, I felt betrayed. On the other hand, I still trusted Wade.”

Once again, Wade Smith found himself in the uncomfortable position of balancing what he perceived to be his client's best interests against what she herself might think they were. Wade feared that if the man who stood accused of murdering Lieth went free because of Bonnie's testimony, she would be plagued by doubt and fear for years to come.

She knew now, from Chris, that Upchurch had plotted with him. Upchurch had been with him the night before, waiting in the shack, planning to burn down the house. Upchurch had wanted to buy the machete. Upchurch had the prior criminal record for breaking and entering. Upchurch had tried to flee when the police had come looking for him, in contrast to Henderson, who had stepped forward voluntarily to cooperate.

In fact, even in the absence of physical evidence, the case against Upchurch seemed most persuasive to Wade, especially now that Henderson's testimony could be bolstered by that of Bonnie's own son. The only serious impediment to conviction seemed to be Bonnie's insistence that
it could not have been
Upchurch whom she'd seen.

And so, when Norton asked for a chance to meet with him and his client prior to her testimony, Wade decided that such a conference might serve both her interests and the interests of justice.

* * *

During the two hours that Bonnie spent brooding and fretting, Norton and Taylor and Young were explaining to Wade every aspect of their evidence, and lack of evidence.

One new factor was particularly troubling, they said. The story Chris told deviated, in significant ways, from the statement Henderson had given them. They almost felt as if they'd been duped. The murder plot could not have unfolded the way Chris said it had, if Henderson's story—to which they were thoroughly committed—was correct in all details. The basic elements of the two accounts were similar, but especially in the area of timing, glaring contradictions existed.

Norton feared that Chris's confession might have introduced more problems than it solved. This, he said, made it all the more urgent for Bonnie to, at the very least, soften her view that Upchurch could not have been the person she'd seen in her room.

It was bad enough, Norton emphasized, that she would probably insist, on telling the jury how back in September she'd jumped up and run from the courtroom in terror upon first laying eyes on Henderson, while the sight of Upchurch had provoked no reaction whatsoever.

Lewis Young argued that Bonnie's increasing certainty about Henderson's being the person in her room had arisen from the fact that she was, and would always be, defensive about her son's involvement. Despite what Chris had confessed to, she would continue to search for ways to minimize and excuse the extent of his guilt. And she'd never forgive Neal Henderson for having been the one who had first pointed the finger at her son. In Young's opinion, her view that Henderson had been the attacker was a function of his cooperation with law enforcement, rather than an honest recollection.

“She couldn't say doodlysquat” about the shape or size of her assailant, Young said, when he had first questioned her in the hospital. This whole “no-neck” business, in his view, had only sprung up after Henderson's statement had led to Chris's arrest. Now, Young said, she didn't care about Upchurch getting convicted. Her own son had been caught, and any other chips could fall where they may.

Bonnie, of course, remained adamant that absolute truth and honesty—as she defined those concepts—were what she owed to herself and to the memory of Lieth. She was not the sort to be bent by pressure. The harder they pushed, the harder she'd resist, as she'd already shown. This was what Wade spent most of the morning explaining to Norton, Taylor, and Young.

Eventually they agreed that Wade and Wade alone would try to find a way to help Bonnie persuade herself that she might not be quite as positive as she thought she was about the identity of the assailant.

And that's what Wade began to do, when, after keeping her waiting for two hours, he led her into his private office and closed the door.

* * *

It was, perhaps, the strangest encounter he'd ever had with a client. After apologizing for the long delay, he explained that he wanted to replicate, as closely as possible, the conditions that had existed in her bedroom the night she'd been attacked.

This had already been a very upsetting morning for her, coming after a very upsetting week, which had concluded a very upsetting month, which had come after almost a year and a half of unremitting anguish, which had flowed from as terrifying a moment as anyone could possibly experience. And now the one person left on earth in whom she had absolute faith wanted to reproduce that moment.

He asked Bonnie to lie on his office floor. He then stepped behind his desk and pulled his heavy draperies closed. He turned off the lights. Then he asked Bonnie, who was terribly nearsighted, to take off her glasses.

Then he loomed over her, as had the man who'd tried to kill her.

“What would it take to make
me
look like the person in your bedroom that night?” Wade asked.

She said he would need more bulk in the upper body and less of a neck. Even in the darkened office, even with her glasses off, even Wade—who did have the barrel-chested look of the Carolina halfback he'd once been—did not resemble the figure she'd seen. But if he stepped back a bit, increasing the distortion caused by her nearsightedness, maybe then she would not be quite so sure.

He took two steps backward.

No, she said, he still didn't look like her attacker. He needed more bulk and less neck.

So he went to his office closet and took out his overcoat and put it on, bunching the shoulders up high and squeezing his neck down into the collar of the coat. Then he held his hands clasped high above him, as if preparing to swing down with a bat.

“How about now?”

“Well,” Bonnie said doubtfully, “that might be a little closer.”

“All right,” Wade said, “you see, you can't really be certain of exactly
what
you saw that night. Under the right circumstances, even
I
can wind up looking like the person who attacked you.”

“Well,” Bonnie said, “I'm not sure.”

That, Wade said, was just the point. She couldn't be sure. And not being sure, she could then truthfully testify that it was at least possible that the person she'd seen in her room that night was James Upchurch. And that was all that anyone wanted her to say. Just that, and no more. Just leave open the possibility, so that the case against Upchurch would not totally collapse.

Wade went through the motions again: raising his hands and clasping them over his head, so his neck almost disappeared.

“Yes,” Bonnie said, “under these circumstances, and after all your contortions, I would honestly be able to say you've changed your appearance enough so you do bear some resemblance to the person I saw that night.”

“That's fine,” Wade said. “That's all you'll ever be asked to say. Nothing untruthful, nothing you don't honestly believe. Just that it is a possibility.”

Wade told Bonnie to stay right where she was, on the floor. Then he brought Mitchell Norton into his office and duplicated his little demonstration.

Then Bonnie was permitted to get up and to put on her glasses. Wade took off his overcoat with the air of a skilled surgeon who'd just completed a particularly complex and dangerous operation. He opened his draperies. Once again his office was flooded with light.

He asked Bonnie to step outside while he spoke for just a few more minutes with Mitchell Norton. He wanted to stress to the prosecutor—though he did not say this to Bonnie at the time—the importance of wording the question in such a limited and precise way as to allow her to feel that she was being truthful in giving him the answer he needed. Don't push it too far, he cautioned. Honesty is first on the list of Bonnie's virtues. The truth has hurt her dearly in this matter, but it's all she has left to cling to. If you're very careful, he said, and do it just right, you can have her say it's possible. But she's so ready not to, he added, that it wouldn't take but one extra question to have the whole house of cards come tumbling down.

* * *

In the waiting room, Bonnie resumed her writing.

“11:55—Still sitting in lobby. Beginning to look like the whole purpose of this meeting is to establish/coerce my testimony to make certain that I do
not
say figure could not possibly have fit size and stature of Upchurch. . . .

“12:05—Still sitting in lobby. My feelings are that there is probably a conspiracy going on here to bend my testimony to fit the prosecution's case. (In speaking to Mr. Smith, I mentioned that I felt the physical evidence the prosecution has should directly place Upchurch in my home on the nite of the 25th. Mr. Smith said he feels there is no physical evidence to that effect. That's what I am afraid of.)

“12:10—Still in lobby. I trust Mr. Smith's judgment, but feel the
evidence alone
should prove/disprove the outcome of this trial. Let me get this in the record:
NO ONE
WANTS THE GUILTY PARTY/PARTIES PUNISHED
MORE THAN ME!
I CONTINUE TO LOVE LIETH. THE PASSING MONTHS AND YEARS HAVE NOT DIMINISHED THE LOSS I FEEL
IN ANY RESPECT
.”

* * *

From twelve-twenty until almost three
P
.
M
., in a windowless conference room, Bonnie met with Norton and Young and Taylor to discuss her testimony. From the start, the atmosphere was strained.

“They went over the questions they might be covering when I testified,” Bonnie said later. “They wanted to see what kind of answers I would give. We ended up arguing. I would give a full response, but Mr. Norton would want a long, complicated, suggestive question to produce a yes or no answer.

“I said, ‘Mr. Norton, if you were to ask me a short, simple question, I could give you a short, simple answer.' But he put his questions in such a form as to tell you what to say. All you had to do was concur, but often what he said was not right. He had hypotheticals that were so long that by the time he got to the end, you forgot what the beginning was. His goal was to create a sense of constant conflict between Lieth and Chris. To make it seem that there was no goodwill. He wanted to create in the jury's mind what he considered a real motive: conflict and greed, not just drugs. And that just wasn't right.”

Norton's recollection was that Bonnie grew hostile every time he suggested the existence of any conflict between Chris and Lieth. “She just denied it,” he said. “She just kept saying, ‘It wasn't that bad.' I sensed a real problem with her, because she'd been on the other side all the way along and just couldn't accept now that we'd been right.”

At times, both Young and Taylor would step outside the conference room, leaving Bonnie alone with Mitchell Norton. As soon as they did, it seemed to her that the district attorney, who had never been exactly cordial, grew more antagonistic.

“When I did not answer the questions the way he wanted,” Bonnie wrote later in her notes, “he began to say things like, ‘You appear to be defending your son. This can only make things harder for Chris at the sentencing. The jury will look at you and think, now, who benefited the most from Lieth's death?' ”

Bonnie found it harder than usual to maintain her self-control.
Who benefited the most? How about, who has suffered the most?
This was beginning to remind her of that bad night back in May in Winston-Salem, with Lewis Young shouting at her. But why was Mitchell Norton treating her this way now, when they were no longer on opposite sides?

Then Norton said, “There are a lot of people in Washington who still think you and Angela are involved.”

“I couldn't care less what they think.”

“But a case could be made,” Norton persisted. “There are circumstances.”

“Mr. Norton,” she said, “your problem from the very beginning has been that all you've had have been circumstances. You've just never had any facts.”

“You sound like a mother instead of a victim.”

“Unfortunately, I am both.”

Bonnie deeply resented Norton's attitude. She had no present, could envision very little future for herself, and now this man was trying to take away her past.

 

32

On Monday morning, January 8, Mitchell Norton, from whom words came as slowly as unrefined molasses poured from a jug, stood before the jury and delivered his opening remarks.

He said there would be inconsistencies in what the jury would hear. “Inconsistencies insofar as time, place, insofar as when occurrences occurred, and maybe sometimes what actually occurred.” But he said not to worry. “That is the normal, the natural state of affairs, not only in trials of criminal cases, but also in our everyday lives. People do not see things the same way, do not hear things the same way, do not remember exactly in the same way.” He added that in this case, inconsistencies might have arisen because the first arrest was not made until almost a year after the murder had been committed. He urged the jurors not to focus on the inconsistencies, but to look at the broad picture instead.

“There's going to be evidence of drug usage—acid, marijuana, cocaine. There's going to be elements of repression in this case, people that wanted desperately to forget what had happened.” But, he said, the evidence would show “a cold, calculated, brutal killing.” He said, “It's going to be unusual in some respects, bizarre in some respects, but when you boil it right down to what it's all about, it's a much more basic motive, a much more basic cause: one of greed. Fast, easy money is what this case is all about.”

Norton then launched into his vision of life in the Von Stein–Pritchard household at the time of the murder. “Lieth Von Stein was under a lot of stress. Because of the stress, because of the deaths [of his parents], sometimes Lieth was on edge. The son, Chris, had gone to North Carolina State University. Lieth Von Stein was paying the bills. The grades weren't good. Chris was spending money. Problems erupted. At times, the relationship was on edge.”

There it was: the unhappy home life that would allow a conclusion of premeditation; that would render ineffective any argument that this whole tragedy was the almost accidental result of some kids playing a fantasy game that spun out of control.

Norton then described the murder: Lieth “screaming at the top of his voice,” Bonnie's description of the intruder as “a shadowy figure, a person who appeared very methodical, strange, broad-shouldered.”

The prosecutor described how Bonnie, “wanting desperately to believe that it was not true [that Chris had planned the murder], supported the son, believed him to be innocent, until two weeks ago.” But, he said, “Chris Pritchard himself will talk to you about his use of drugs, the use of alcohol, the fact that he was a student living in a ‘me' world, a world surrounded by pizza and beer and alcohol and drugs and a game called Dungeons and Dragons.

“Now,” Norton said, “the game has an influence in the case, but it is not a case of a Dungeons and Dragons game gone crazy. It's not a case of Dungeons and Dragons out of control. But Dungeons and Dragons influenced the way that he and Neal Henderson and James Upchurch thought and lived. The game was more of a routine for them than going to class. It's what brought them together: this game that's based on a medieval setting, with clubs and daggers and knives and sticks, in a time before guns were invented. And their minds were accustomed to thinking and living in this world of ‘me.' ‘What am I going to do?' Fast, easy money.”

He said Chris, hoping to “accelerate his inheritance,” had “provided the car . . . provided the key so that James Upchurch could come into the house and kill his mother and stepfather.”

And, Norton said, it had been Upchurch and Upchurch alone. All poor Neal Henderson had done was drive a car, not really knowing what would happen. Norton said Henderson was “so intelligent that when he was in kindergarten, they put him in second grade. When he got to the fifth grade, they put him in the eighth. The other boys were bigger than he was. They made fun of him because he was smarter than they were. He craved acceptance. Looked for friends, turned to music and fantasy and Dungeons and Dragons.”

And so, craving friends, Henderson had agreed to drive the car and “to wait while James Upchurch went into the house and killed Lieth Von Stein.”

* * *

When Jim Vosburgh had explained that he would not be able to represent Upchurch as a public defender, the next name up had been that of Wayland Sermons, a tall, dark-haired, handsome, well-dressed, soft-spoken thirty-four-year-old graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the law school at Wake Forest.

Vosburgh liked to say that he'd known Sermons “since he was a snotty-nosed little kid.” A quarter century before, in fact, the day Vosburgh and his wife moved to their home on Honey Pod Road in Little Washington, it was nine-year-old Wayland Sermons who'd come up to their back dock in his small boat and had, in the most neighborly way, taken the new residents on a tour of “his” river. Vosburgh felt he'd entered the pages of
Huckleberry Finn
.

Now Sermons, whose father had served in the state legislature for fifteen years, had the responsibility for a man's life in his hands for the first time in his career. Serving with him as cocounsel was Frank Johnston, an accomplished Washington trial lawyer ten years older than himself.

Though the jury in Elizabeth City would never know it, Little Washington was such a small town that almost everyone involved in this case seemed to have some odd connection to someone else. For Vosburgh, it had been watching Wayland Sermons grow up. For Frank Johnston, it had been having a daughter who'd been in Chris Pritchard's class at Washington High School. They'd never dated, but Chris had been in his home.

Johnston was five eight, on the stocky side, with black hair that was showing its first flecks of gray. He wore wireframed glasses, had a soft Southern accent, and was blessed with a resonant voice, which provided a contrast to Sermons's smoother, lighter tone. His courtroom style was a distinctive combination of the laid-back (a trait he shared with Sermons) and the no-nonsense. Neither overly folksy nor excessively dramatic, he was noted for his skill at jury argument, and it was he, not Sermons, who made the opening statement on Upchurch's behalf.

Not surprisingly, Johnston suggested that the jury disregard Norton's suggestion and instead look very closely at each and every inconsistency. “Look at it,” he said, “examine it, turn it over, twist it around, pull it apart.” He said—and with this Bonnie had to agree—that the State “does not have any evidence, any real evidence. They just have a lot of circumstances.”

He asked the jurors the same questions about Neal Henderson that Bonnie had been asking herself. “Why is it that it took him eleven months to have this great conscience breakdown and to decide to spill the beans? We submit to you there's a reason for that. We submit to you that he had ample opportunity to develop, to analyze, and to determine what testimony he had to give, and what story he had to give, to put himself in the best position possible.”

Johnston said he was confident that by the end of the trial the jurors would find that reasonable doubt existed as to Upchurch's guilt.