On November 1, Beam called a physician to counter the state’s claim—and the admission Hembree had made several times to law enforcement—that Hembree punched Randi in the face. The doctor, in the end, said he could find no evidence that Randi’s body showed those kinds of injuries. On her nose, or anywhere.
An issue came up; Beam asked that the jury be excused. He had a serious matter to discuss. It involved something unorthodox, and perhaps a bit costly and even dangerous. But he felt it needed to be done in order for his client to get a fair shake, especially in the face of the death penalty.
The judge was curious, as was everyone else in the courtroom.
Hamlin and Bell could only look at each other in bewilderment.
What now?
R
ichard Beam had the floor.
The passionate defense attorney began his argument with the DVD videos. He said the state’s videos were the only source for jurors to get a clear picture of the Hembree residence. That was a little bit unfair. Yet, what would be equally unfair was for his defense team to go out and make its own video. Even if the defense attorneys did that, it still wouldn’t give jurors a good depiction of Momma’s house and how “tight it is in reality” inside the residence. There was a “marked difference” in stepping into the home and seeing it on video, Beam suggested.
In addition, Beam suggested the same could be said for the trailers.
Thus, Beam motioned for the opportunity to allow the judge and jury to take a bus trip to both locales and view them in person. It was imperative to his defense and for the explanations he was going to be giving jurors surrounding those residences.
Bell had several problems with this. On the top of the state’s list was the simple fact that two years had gone by and there was “no guarantee things are the same way [inside either place]. Mr. Hembree says to the police, ‘I want to get all this resolved so Momma can clean the house up.’ We have no guarantee that the furniture is still in there. We have no guarantee that the basement . . . [or] anything looks like it did before.”
Next, Bell argued, the crimes that took place inside the trailers “happened at night” and Hembree’s defense had “not shown any reason why” going out there during the daytime would be beneficial. This thought led Bell to bring up a point he had wanted to make for some time.
“I think we need to take this into tremendous consideration.... [It’s] from the Gaston County tax office. It’s the footprint of this house with the measurements. Your Honor, if you look at that, you will see the bedroom—if you take the twenty-nine feet that the house is in width, subtract out four feet for a hallway, which has been testified to, and the stud walls in between it, you have about twenty-five and a half feet. You have rooms on either side. You have—what you end up with, Judge, is a bedroom of about twelve by twelve.” The size of the room, Bell added, worried him; there wasn’t enough room in the house for everyone to fit. He listed how many people would be walking through those tight spaces. “We have fifteen jurors. We have the defendant, sixteen. Your Honor is seventeen. Court reporter is eighteen. Nineteen and twenty for the lawyers.... That is
before
we bring in the sheriff. . . . From a security standpoint, we’re talking about twenty-one people, plus the deputies, shoved into this room, with the court reporter trying to write and take it all down. The jury cannot be protected.”
What if Hembree tried something? Bell proposed. What if Hembree had made this suggestion to go out there so he could hurt somebody?
“I thought it was ridiculous and it proved nothing,” ADA Hamlin said later. “Being in that basement [again] would be so creepy. I truly believe Hembree just wanted to see his house one last time before he went back to prison, and that is the
only
reason he wanted to argue this motion.”
“Mr. Hembree would have to be in restraints,” Bell continued, trying to convince the judge this was not going to be as easy as shuffling everyone into buses. Precautions had to be taken into account. “If he is in an area the size of that, with all the jurors and everybody else, Your Honor included, he would have to be in very, very secure restraints, which as Your Honor knows, you’re not supposed to show the defendant in that kind of situation. So even in those restraints, if he volunteered to have shackles on, still the jury would
not
be safe.”
Beam argued that the photos were not an accurate portrayal of these pivotal locations and the jury deserved to see them in person. “It’s a different spatial relationship when you’re there in person versus the photographs,” Beam said. “I’m not saying the photograph isn’t accurate. It is. It just doesn’t convey the spatial relationships of the rooms, and there’s no way to do that with a video or photos. It requires going in person.”
The judge thought about the possibilities as he talked through it with both sides, leaning toward a visit. First, though, he wanted to head out to each place himself, which he would do during the lunch recess. He worried about the media reporting from the scene. Was that a violation of Momma’s privacy? Would any of the jurors’ identities be compromised?
“The paramount rule is,” Beal advised, sending a message to any media present, “at no time shall the jurors be videotaped or photographed . . . so that’s where we stand. We won’t know any more until . . .” Beal paused. “I really . . . have trepidation about this process, but the first step is, I have to go see it. . . .”
Just after giving a clear warning to the media, fifteen hours later, when court resumed on November 2, Judge Beal said he had been informed that one of the local news stations aired footage of a juror entering the jury box. Thus, the judge suspended all coverage of cameras inside the courtroom, announcing he would make a final decision on the matter when he had a moment to review the footage. The question everyone was asking, however, would that one mishap by the media destroy Danny Hembree’s chances of getting the jury out to Momma’s house and the trailer?
W
hen the trial resumed, the same expert testimony Hembree’s defense had been trying to sell to jurors regarding how the girls had died continued. There was a bit of testimony surrounding an idea that Randi did not have a broken nose, despite Hembree’s confession of having punched her in the nose while inside his den, thus the reason for all the blood that forensics had uncovered. Bell had put up an expert who testified there was broken cartilage on Randi’s nose. Hembree’s expert said he didn’t find that to be true.
Before the end of the day, Beam called a retired Gaston County Police Department detective. He had interviewed Hembree in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Beam asked the detective about a statement he had taken from Hembree.
Yet, no sooner had he been called than Beam concluded: “Other than those documents (reports) that you have in front of you, you don’t have an independent—away from those documents—recollection of actually speaking to Danny Hembree?”
“No, I don’t.”
Many wondered why the cop had been called, to begin with.
The rest of the day was essentially eaten up by arguments without the jury present. The state wasn’t sold on the idea that going out to both places was prudent. It was a dangerous hassle for everyone and did not move proceedings forward—and maybe even a way for Hembree to flex that control he so desperately craved.
ADA Hamlin argued with Beal about the differences in the properties then and now. There was no comparison. It might even confuse jurors more than help them.
The state’s arguments did no good, however. Judge Beal explained, “I’ve already addressed the fact that I realize there are some differences, but I think the value of seeing the property is of value [and] is substantial to the jury. In my discretion, I’m going to order that there shall be a jury view to take place [tomorrow] .”
Beal explained the rules for the visits.
Everyone was going: Hembree, his lawyers, the state, judge, court reporter, and several sheriffs.
Decision made, the judge ordered jurors back into the courtroom and explained what was happening. He gave specific instructions for what they could and could not do during the outing, banged his gavel, and told everyone to get a good night’s rest.
W
hen they returned the following morning from what was an uneventful trip out to the locales, the judge called a longer than usual recess so jurors could have a break, eat lunch, and be ready to resume testimony. The trial was beginning to weigh on those involved. It had become a long, tedious process of watching a runaway cart careen down a rocky slope toward a cliff. It was almost a given, anyone sitting in the courtroom felt, that Danny Hembree was going down. There was nothing that could save Hembree from a guilty verdict, anyone involved in the day-to-day business of the trial agreed. The only question left surrounded the death penalty: Would this jury put the value of the two victims’ lives, regardless of what types of lives they had led, over Hembree’s? There was no doubt in the minds of most court watchers that Hembree deserved it. He had played God and taken lives for his own twisted reasoning. He wasn’t mentally challenged, insane, or incompetent. He wasn’t acting out on voices inside his head. There had not been a shred of evidence to prove these were two accidental deaths.
And so, by the end of the day, November 3, 2011, after a bus trip, several instructions from the judge, and arguments by attorneys that each side had met its burden of proof, the defense rested.
Very soon Hembree’s fate would be in the hands of this jury, which had been paraded countless times in and out of the courtroom so the attorneys could argue their points.
At 3:26
P.M.
, the judge brought the jury in and announced that the “evidence portion” of the case had concluded.
One could
almost
hear a united, silent sigh from the jury:
Thank goodness
.
The judge indicated he was giving jurors the following day off. This was so that each juror could “refresh” him- or herself and take Friday through the weekend to relax. They would be back on Monday, well rested for closing arguments, which the judge warned were “quite likely to be lengthy.”
Deliberations would begin after that.
O
n Monday morning, November 7, the law allowed for both of Hembree’s attorneys to give a closing argument.
Brent Ratchford, who had worked doggedly for Hembree behind the scenes, spoke to jurors first. A point Ratchford banged about first was that Heather and Randi lived sordid lives within an underground, dodgy Gastonia drug culture that not many people in the courtroom would comprehend. He said the girls had “passed on”—a strange term that Ratchford had chosen, one that is generally used to describe the end of a sick aunt or granddad’s life, instead of “murdered” or “died”—because of their chosen lifestyles. Same as his client, he stopped short of blaming the girls for their own deaths.
Ratchford quoted their experts and explained how—all of them—believed Heather died from a cocaine overdose: “Because [Heather’s] levels [of cocaine] . . . fall within impaired driving, people who go to the emergency room having distress because of toxicity, and also fatalities—people who die of a cocaine toxicity or overdose. Her levels fell in all three of those categories, so that’s extremely important evidence. That’s why [our experts] put it in the report.”
The word “cocaine” came up again and again in Ratchford’s closing.
He leaned heavily on it: cocaine, cocaine, cocaine.
Ratchford pushed the notion of convicting Hembree on lesser charges, explaining, “[The judge is] going to break down first-degree murder, second-degree murder, and . . . involuntary manslaughter. . . . Danny didn’t choke Heather Catterton to death.” He said Hembree didn’t suffocate Heather, either. He did, however, give her cocaine . . . “and she died as a result.” And that, defense attorney Ratchford contended, was “not first-degree murder” or “second-degree murder.... It’s involuntary manslaughter!”
Near the end of what became an argument built around the idea of feeling sorry for Hembree and looking at Heather as desperate and strung out, Ratchford got caught up in his own narrative, pleading: “Can you imagine what it feels like to be hopeless? Let your mind wander on that just a second. Hopeless. Without any hope.” He called it “a dark hole” for a guy like Hembree to “be in.” Then the attorney asked what anyone else would do. “You take cocaine and alcohol to make yourself feel better . . . ,” he said, adding how the drug made Hembree “feel normal.” Why? “Because you are abnormal and you don’t know why—”
The judge interrupted. “Mr. Ratchford, I’ll . . . ask you to pause for a second.” Then Judge Beal spoke to the jury. “At no time should you put yourselves in the position of anyone involved in the case. To the extent that it’s part of argument, it’s intended to be a rhetorical device, but it’s not proper to put yourselves in the position of someone—you should apply the rules of law I give. . . .”
For the next half hour, Ratchford talked about the dangers of cocaine and how “any amount” could “kill” and “be lethal.”
He closed by imploring jurors to “pay attention” and “listen for what you don’t hear,” saying how what we don’t hear is sometimes “the most telling fact, and the one thing you’re going to not hear with certainty is what caused Heather Catterton’s death.”
Strange ending. It was clear throughout this trial, and jurors would be able to view the DVDs again if they chose, that Hembree explained perfectly well how Heather Catterton had died. Her killer had gone into great detail, in fact.
Richard Beam began with the burden of proof argument and morphed into a discussion about a Robert Redford, Daryl Hannah, and Debra Winger film,
Legal Eagles,
and how the judge and Redford’s lawyer character in that film got into a little tiff as Redford’s character made the point that his case was more complicated than the prosecution wanted jurors to believe. That same argument was relevant in Hembree’s case, Beam insisted.
Further along, Beam brought up Randi: “I want you to listen to what [the state] talked about. They’re going to talk about all the evidence about Randi Saldana because they don’t have much evidence of what caused the death of Heather Catterton.”
After that, Beam mentioned the drug lifestyle and the effect smoking crack cocaine had on the human body. As he went on and on, Beam’s theme came into focus with one word he routinely leaned on: “abnormal.” He said over and over that everything in Hembree’s case was abnormal: Hembree asked for coffee while being interrogated; he jumped around from crime to crime during his interrogation; he readily admitted to several murders; he had no trouble confessing to crimes that police could not later prove.
This sort of “dodge the real issue” argument did not come across as patently salable. Hembree was a liar, absolutely. He was a lifelong convicted felon, yes. He was a repeat violent offender, certainly. One could talk around that all he wanted; but when the facts of the case were there to look at, there was no choice but to believe Hembree was exactly who he had said he was: a serial murderer.
Then Beam brought in an age-old defense tactic: reasonable doubt. He said, “Mr. Hembree told you on the stand [Heather] passed away in her sleep on the bed. That actually does appear to be consistent with the condition of the body. As I said, abnormal is normal in this case.”
It was clear Beam could have gone on all day, arguing each point as if back at university debating a classmate.
“There [are] a lot of things in this case, ladies and gentlemen, a lot of evidence, much of it dealing with Miss Saldana. But the real question still remains—What killed Heather Catterton?”
Beam went on so long, in fact, the judge called a recess.
When they came back, Beam bantered on about the differences between Randi’s and Heather’s deaths. Finally he concluded, “When you view Mr. Hembree, you have to view in context, and when you do that, you’ll understand he would say anything that he thought would benefit him then.” In this case, “it did,” he added. Yet that didn’t “mean he did it.” What it meant, the lawyer said, was that Hembree wanted “to benefit” from it.
And that was “the reason the appropriate verdict is involuntary manslaughter.”