Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (53 page)

“These plates have been sitting on the bottom of the ocean for two hundred and thirty years,” he said, “but they’re still brand-new. When they were found they were in their original packing crates. They’re in mint condition. No one has ever eaten off them before. We’re the first. Funny way to preserve dishes, isn’t it?”

Mrs. Williams lifted her sandwich and looked at her plate.

“You can’t fool a cat,” she said.

Two weeks earlier, on the first day of Williams’s third trial, the outcome had seemed a foregone conclusion—so much so that the
Savannah Morning News
had announced in a weary headline,
WILLIAMS FACES YET ANOTHER CONVICTION FOR MURDER.
The jury of nine women and three men seemed predisposed to hand down a third conviction; all of them, having been subjected to six years of relentless publicity, admitted that they knew
about the case and were aware that two prior juries had already found Williams guilty. The tension and suspense of the first two trials had given way to a feeling of grim inevitability. Television cameras were stationed outside the courthouse once again, but this time the spectator benches in the courtroom were only half full. Prentiss Crowe declared he would not even bother to read the news reports, it was all becoming such a bore. “It’s the same old story over and over,” he said, “like reruns of
I Love Lucy.”

The courthouse flack was among those who did attend. He sat slumped in his seat with one arm hooked over the back as if to keep himself from sliding off onto the floor. As usual, he was an oracle of courthouse wisdom and rumor. “Jim Williams’s guilt or innocence is no longer the issue,” he said. “Spencer Lawton’s incompetence is the issue. The question on everybody’s mind is, How long will he keep screwing up? I mean, this case is getting to be like a bad bullfight. Lawton’s the matador who can’t finish off the bull. Twice now, he’s plunged the sword in, but the bull’s still on his feet, and the fans are getting restless. Lawton looks ridiculous.”

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. At 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?”