The Execution of Noa P. Singleton (22 page)

The county pathologist testified with an excruciatingly high amount of autopsy photos from the location of the gunshot wound to bolster his testimony so that the pathos of Lavonne and company would align with the prosecution. (Clearly, he and Marlene Dixon had the same tactic, and it worked.) Stewart Harris kept questioning him on the cause of death. “The indictment says gunshot wound to the chest, but it didn’t talk about the baby or whether Sarah died from the gunshot wound.”

But it was a gunshot wound to her chest, and the prosecution found no discernable alternative to the killing based on its location. Stewart Harris left that one alone, too, along with the information in the autopsy report about Sarah’s heart. No theory extrapolating why Sarah suffered from cardiac arrest was properly brought to the jury, even though it was the only evidence to ascertain. Shoddy research on both sides, if you ask me. Still, it took the pathologist another thirty colored photographs to show the wound with Sarah’s skin pulled back. It took him another twelve close-ups of her torso flipped open with the vestigial heart no longer beating, so that you could see her corrosive stomach, bloated and full of blackened coffee.

“No, I can’t be conclusively certain that it was the gunshot that killed her,” the pathologist continued, pointing to State’s Exhibit
Number 78, yet another photograph of her body laying flat on its back, hands spread wide open, palms up like she was meditating at the end of a yoga class, “because her heart was not normal. She appeared to be suffering from a cardiac arrest, as well. And her lungs were destroyed.”

“Is it possible that the gunshot wound could have sparked a cardiac arrest?”

“Yes, it’s possible.”

Tom Davies followed up. “Based on your training and experience, doctor, do you see many gunshot wounds to the chest that are accidental shootings?”

“Objection, speculation.”

“No,” the pathologist said anyway.

“Sustained,” the judge said at the same time.

I looked over to Harris, who, once again, stood from his chair.

“Motion to strike, your honor.”

Although the judge agreed and instructed the jury to ignore the last question-and-answer interchange, of course, they’d already heard it, so on they moved.

The police officer that showed up first on scene next tore through his police report on the stand, unable to remember anything that transpired on that memorable New Year’s Day without his paperwork crutch.

“The door was open when I got there. But there were splinters sticking out from the lock as if there was a break-in.”

A forensics expert testified later that blood on the door was a match with my own.

“It was just a slight smear, but enough to connect the defendant to the break-in.”

The paramedic who arrived first on the scene testified next.

“Ms. Dixon was dead upon arrival, and there was nothing we could do for her. Ms. Singleton, on the other hand, was suffering from severe trauma. She was sweating, her arms were shaking, and she also was bleeding from her left forefinger and right shoulder.”

“Could you elaborate?”

“Her fingernail on her left forefinger was torn off, right from the bed. From my perspective, it appeared to be an injury from a struggle.”

“And the shoulder?”

“She was bleeding from her shoulder due to a gunshot wound that merely grazed her skin. We tended to it on the spot.”

The librarian who found me in the stacks of Van Pelt took the stand just to prove that the Van Pelt incident actually occurred. The principal at one of my schools in West Philadelphia took the stand to prove that I was in fact a substitute science teacher. The guy from Lorenzo’s took the stand to prove that I liked to eat pizza. Bobby even took the stand to prove that I was indeed found by my father a little less than a year before the murder. He also took the stand to prove, not that it was my father with whom I was developing a relationship during the time in which my personality started rusting, but just to prove that I was a liar. That I lied about that call and the meetings and everything else in our relationship. None of it was relevant, and yet Madison McCall and Stewart Harris just sat there at the table, refusing to rise, refusing to object. Nobody should have heard any of this, but they did, and in it went along with those hundreds of photographs from Sarah’s autopsy and Marlene Dixon’s proselytizing. I suppose I could have spoken up again at that point, but that would have required my taking the stand, which Stewart Harris adamantly counseled me against doing, and to be honest, I didn’t entirely disagree.

Bobby shot me a look of such hatred from the stand when he was talking about our relationship. I know that after my arrest, he was ridiculed to the point that he left the department and was only able to pursue employment as a security guard at jewelry stores and fancy boutiques on Walnut Street. (That wasn’t entirely my fault, despite what he believes.) Still, nobody ever took the stand to talk about the gun and where it came from. Nobody took the stand to talk about my own victimization. Nobody took the stand to talk about Marlene and her hatred toward my father. Marlene didn’t even take the stand
until my penalty hearing, which is why she was allowed to watch the whole spectacle. It was as if a news story was formed without any of the necessary details, without any merit. I wanted to talk to a friend. I wanted to talk to Persephone Riga or my brother, but neither one was at my trial.

My father did take the stand, but did so without having spoken with me once since Sarah died. He testified to his relationship with Sarah and his relationship with me. He talked about his twelve steps to sanity or whatever he wanted to call it. He spoke about my mother and about his bar and my lost childhood. He testified that he told me Sarah was pregnant and that he saw me outside of Planned Parenthood. He spoke about pretty much everything, never once looking my way while on the stand. And when he talked about reconnecting, it was as if he wanted to both hold me and hurt me at the same time. When Tom Davies pushed him question after question after question about his relationship with Sarah, his eyes were connected with Marlene Dixon the entire time. He seemed almost apologetic about it.

“I … I don’t know what to say,” he said, finally looking toward me.

It was nearly a full day of questioning before he bothered to glance my way. I could see water forming in his eyes, and he kept touching his scar.

“Do you believe Noa is capable of killing?”

“Objection,” Stewart barked. “Speculation.”

“Sustained.”

My father looked confused, his face wandering about the room.

“How did you feel when you found out Sarah and your unborn son were dead?”

“Objection, relevance,” Stewart said again.

“Overruled,” the judge said. “Answer the question.”

He looked again over to Marlene.

“I was devastated. I felt at once like I had lost all my children at the same time.” He paused, thinking. “I did lose all my children at the same time.”

“What did you know about Noa’s actions at the time of Sarah’s death?”

“I knew she was following Sarah around. She wanted us to break up.”

The lines that Mother Nature had carved across his face were deeper now, each fold reflecting a new decade of erosion. It was as if something else was taking hold of him, corroding the skin and everything beneath, and he seemed old for the first time.

“I’m just so sorry about everything that’s happened.” He looked away from me and back again to Marlene. “And I’ll never be the same.”

I don’t even remember the closing statements. All I remember is that the jury didn’t take long to walk back into their box after deliberating for some four hours.

Marlene was sitting behind Tom Davies’s seat, holding a disintegrating handkerchief below her nose, when the judge asked if the jury had made a decision. Still draped in black, her left arm was locked inside her husband’s, and she had to unhook it in order to remain focused. She wore the same large gold locket sitting outside of her blazer even then. It lay flat between her metastasized breasts as a badge of courage.

Several of the jury members periodically glanced over to her as Vincent stood to announce my verdict. The rest of them sat quietly and tried as they might to avoid eye contact with me, as if they were just so very sorry. I remember Vincent opening his little piece of paper because he didn’t know how to memorize the word
Guilty
 … and then … just white …

F
OR TWO DAYS
, T
OM
D
AVIES PROCEEDED TO CALL UP MEMBERS
of my former life before the judge in order to reveal a carnival of savagery that would rival Lizzie Borden. My mother was called to the stand early in the hearing. Tom Davies subpoenaed her, and even though Madison McCall tried to sway her to my side, she was unable to perform at the requisite caliber. Her acting skills failed me in the one performance that mattered most.

“I blame myself,” she kept saying, like she actually meant it. “If I was around more. If … if …”

Tom Davies handed her a tissue, and she patted the bottom of her nose with it, shamelessly flirting with him while under oath. She never cried once when I was arrested or when she visited me in jail (only the one time early on in my arrest). As soon as all her money ran out, she found me just as guilty as the rest. And not once during the entire prosecution—guilt or innocence, or punishment—did she bring up my missing father in a bathtub and a knife, or all those times she was late to pick me up from Persephone’s house because of a commercial audition for Tide or Clorox or some other laundry detergent. Or the time she left me to my woes to romance Paramedic One. Or caught me in bed with Andy Hoskins and almost gave me a medal. She left the stand without once saying that she loved me.

One of the earlier witnesses called by the prosecution was Officer Woodstock. He held up his right hand to the Bible and swore to
tell the whole truth, so help him God. Dressed in his freshly ironed suit, he would be taken as seriously as any other person in a position of authority. Tom Davies questioned Officer Woodstock about my attitude upon arrest. He claimed that I was contentious. He used that word so many times in his testimony, you would think he was following a script written by a playwright with an achingly limited vocabulary. “She didn’t want to comply with our interrogation. She was,” he paused, “contentious.”

“Can you explain what you mean by that?”

He folded his hands together and then breathed in very loudly so that, against the microphone, it almost sounded like a plane was taking off.

“At first, she kept trying to question us. And then, when we pushed her further, she pretended to pass out so we would stop questioning her. I’ve seen that before. It’s an attempt at undermining our procedure, to try and circumvent the natural order of things. By policy, we must stop questioning the witness and issue medical attention. In reality, it retards the process.”

But McCall never questioned Woodstock on cross about my attitude. Instead, McCall just kept examining him about holding me unlawfully in a cell for half the night, ignoring the very purpose of the penalty hearing itself—a circus in which to turn my picture of Dorian Gray into the blackened canvas in which it lay. He talked about giving me water and a Three Musketeers bar as my only nourishment for twelve hours of interrogation, despite the wound to my shoulder.

They next called in the guard assigned to my wing to testify as to my perfunctory performance in jail. He claimed that he had to move me three times to avoid altercations within the walls because I was so contentious. I don’t think he looked that word up, because I was clearly anything but. He enunciated each letter in that word—even the silent ones.
Con. Ten. Shus
. Evidently he had the same thesaurus as Woodstock.

Davies also called in an expert on prison society. In order to keep
me from a life sentence without the possibility of parole, the state needed to prove that I would be a continuing threat to society, that I would be a future danger to all those who inhabited the Camelot of incarceration. According to him (and later the jury), my industriousness, my anger, and my long-standing apathy toward human behavior were all directed at my inability to cohabitate even within the prison walls.

The kid I beat up behind the bleachers in fifth grade took the stand claiming he had nightmares for weeks because of my fist. Tom Davies convinced the judge that it illustrated depravity of heart and was essential in the jury’s determination of future dangerousness. So in it went, along with every bad act I had ever done, regardless of proof, conviction, or bias.

“She terrified me, even then,” the man cried.

“She’s a pathological liar,” a girl I knew from middle school said on the stand. “She told me her mother was a doctor. I didn’t know that her mother was waiting tables while putting on dinner theater at night.”

“She used me to turn in fake homework,” another classmate said. I didn’t even recognize this girl’s name or face.

Again, Bobby was called in to show my manipulative tendencies. “She used me to get background information on people.”

“She used me for free pizza,” testified the guy from Lorenzo’s.

“She told me she graduated from college,” said the principal at one of the schools where I worked.

“She never told me she was ever pregnant,” Bobby said again. “She made me use condoms as if we needed them. And then she lied about her father.”

“I was scared of her when I first met her. I don’t know. It was just something about the way she spoke. The way she looked at me. Like I knew I could be her next victim,” said my freshman year roommate, who lived with me for all of five minutes before moving out. “She said she was pre-med, but I never saw her study or anything. Everyone I knew who was pre-med spent all their time in the library, if you
know what I mean,” she said. But how could she know what I did or did not do? I hadn’t lived with anyone since high school, and this one requested a room transfer within a day of living with me. Maybe she saw early what even I tried to cover for years. Or maybe she just wanted a single bedroom, barely remembered me, and was eager for her fifteen minutes.