Authors: Michael Malone
Miss Bee Turner watched with gusto as the court stenographer,
old Mr. Walkington, deleted the outburst.
Hilliardson, calmer: “If defense counsel has questions for this witness, ask them. Otherwise, I will excuse the overworked Captain Mangum.”
Rosethorn, meekly: “Yes, Your Honor.” Isaac gave me a polite, chilly nod, before limping over to the easel that displayed a large diagram of the street outside Smoke's, with my squad car, Pym's body, George's position, the Montgomery Hotel all indicated. His stubby finger inched along the map. “Captain Mangum, from the time you heard the shot as you drove down Polk Street, to the time you leapt out of your patrol car in front of Smoke's Bar, how many minutes passed?”
“Two or three minutes at the most.”
“Three minutes. Pym lay on the sidewalk, a crowd all around, cars stopping, shouting, considerable confusion, right?” He swirled his hand around the area where Pym's body was outlined.
“Yes. More than a dozen people stood around on the sidewalk.” Isaac slid his finger across the map. “And you’ve told the district attorney that you found George Hall way over here, seated on the curb, his head lowered. So he had made no attempt in those long three minutes, in that crowded confusion, to fade into the crowd, to
flee
the scene?”
“None.”
“He was holding the gun?”
“No. A gun was lying on the sidewalk beside him. As shown there.”
“He made no attempt to hide it, or to use it to make good an escape?”
“None.”
“Did
he
say anything to
you
when you first approached him, Captain Mangum?”
“Yes. He said, ‘I’m not running. Just don’t shoot.’”
“Ah.” Isaac asked his next questions walking toward the jury, his back to me. “At the time were you pointing your gun at him?”
“No.”
“No? Why should he think you might shoot him then? What were you wearing at the time?”
“My police uniform.”
“Ah.… And the defendant, seated passively on the curb, looked up at a police officer and said, ‘Just don’t shoot’?…Why?”
“I can’t answer for him. I imagine he was scared I might shoot him.”
“Could that possibly be because over the years, a dozen blacks
had
been shot and killed by white Hillston policemen?”
Judge Hilliardson shook his head. “Counselor! As the witness has already, quite properly, told you, and as I feel sure you already know, it is not for him to speculate on the defendant's
thoughts.
”
“Yes, sir.” Slowly Isaac turned his sad eyes from the black woman on the front row of the jury, back toward the drawing. “Yes.…And then, Captain Mangum, you’ve testified that, picking up Pym's gun from the sidewalk, you walked through the crowd thirty feet away to check on the wounded man. Did Mr. Hall take
this
opportunity to attempt to escape?”
“No, he hadn’t moved at all when I returned. I asked him if he had fired the shot, and he nodded.”
“The district attorney failed to inquire, no doubt in his eagerness to let you return to your investigations, whether you asked Mr. Hall any
other
questions. Did you?”
“Yes, I asked him what had happened to his face.”
Isaac frowned. “Why should you ask that, Captain Mangum?”
“Because it was smeared with blood. His nose was bleeding heavily and there was a cut at the base of the nostril. I repeated the question but got no response from him.”
“Were you able to ascertain from others at the scene that Mr. Hall was heavily bleeding because he had been assaulted by Robert Pym?”
I figured Bazemore would jump, but I went ahead. “Yes. Several witnesses said that prior to the shooting, Pym had inserted the gun muzzle in Hall's nostril during a fight between—”
Bazemore jumped late. “Objection.”
“—the two inside Smoke's.”
Hilliardson: “Overruled.”
Rosethorn: “At that time did you question witnesses as to the origins of this fight?”
Mangum: “No. My superior, Captain Fulcher, arrived immediately, and instructed me to follow Pym's ambulance to University Hospital, which I did. I stayed there until after three A.M.”
“Did you
then
return and question witnesses to Pym's violent and armed assault on the defendant?”
Mitch's arm went off like a rocket. “Objection!”
“Sustained. Mr. Rosethorn, please!”
Rosethorn: “I’ll rephrase. Did you at any time further question witnesses to events leading up to the shooting?”
“No, sir. I was not made a member of the investigation.”
“Ah.” Rosethorn looked out the tall handsome windows for a while. “The first policeman on the scene, the one in the most immediate position to observe what had happened, and you were quickly removed from the case?”
Bazemore: “Ob—”
Mangum: “I was never assigned to the case.”
Rosethorn: “Before you were never assigned to the case, did you bother to ask Mr. Hall himself how and
why
this tragedy had happened?”
The question stopped me for a moment. “I wasn’t interrogating him. We’re talking about a few chaotic minutes, about a wounded man.” I paused. All that was true, but it wasn’t really why I hadn’t asked George that question. I said, “Well, in fact, it seemed obvious. I assumed—”
Now Isaac put his freckled hand on the rail of the witness stand, and tapped his fingers, springing the trap door. “Ah, yes! Captain Mangum, among all these professional assumptions and impressions you were busy with that night, and on the basis of what you’ve already told us, what
did
you assume? What was your
appraisal
of the circumstances surrounding this shooting? Did you assume that George Hall had committed a premeditated homicide against Pym? Or, did you not rather assume that—”
“Objection!” Mitch was in a high-step jig all the way around his table and halfway to the bench. “The witness's conclusions, based on hearsay, are irrelevant, immaterial, and insubstantial.”
“Counselor,” Isaac wheeled on him, “when I objected to your soliciting ‘impressions’ from Captain Mangum, you’re the one who
presented
your
witness as an ‘expert’ entitled to a professional opinion. I’m simply following your line of questioning.”
Hilliardson looked wryly at them both, then stroked his beaked nose. Finally he said, “Objection overruled. Witness may answer.” Mitch's neck swelled with protest but he swallowed it.
I said, “It seemed likely that there had been mutual combat between Hall and Pym, that Pym had been armed, that in a struggle for the gun, Hall had gotten hold of it, pursued Pym, and shot him.”
I was thinking it was interesting Isaac had never discussed with me what he might ask me today, and what I might answer. Interesting too, Isaac didn’t ask me now if I’d assumed a case of self-defense, because I’d once mentioned I could see a gray area there. Nor did he ask now if I’d made any investigations into Pym's death
subsequent
to the first trial. In the first place, Judge Hilliardson
wouldn’t have allowed him to use cross-examination to present new evidence. In the second place, no doubt Isaac was hoping Bazemore would cover up the whole Pym-Russell robbery/extortion/smuggling racket, that the State would then rest its case, after which Isaac, in his opening remarks, could accuse the State of a cover-up. At any rate, all he said now was, “Was it your understanding that Pym had attempted to ‘arrest’ Hall by this violent means, and that Hall was resisting arrest?”
“No, it was not. None of the witnesses described any attempt by Pym to arrest Hall.”
“Did you think that George Hall had previously planned, and took this opportunity to execute, a premeditated murder with malice aforethought?”
“No, I did not.”
Isaac walked away from me, back to stand near George Hall. “Were you then
surprised
to hear that your ‘superiors’ had charged the defendant with murder in the
first
degree? Just answer the question, yes or no. Were you surprised, Captain Mangum?”
Mitch Bazemore had his arms crossed over his biceps, squeezing them. He looked furious, but in a struggle to hide it, lest the jury think there was anything worth bothering about in what I was saying. I looked at George, just as his eyes moved toward mine. I said, “Yes, I was surprised.”
Isaac nodded slowly. “Yes. I would imagine you would be. And as a professional police officer, were you so
surprised
that this man had been sentenced to death, on the basis of the evidence as you knew it, that you wrote a letter to the state prison parole board saying so, and asking them to consider extending clemency to George Hall?”
Mitch stepped forward, staring at me. I could foresee a long unpleasant afternoon in his office; indeed, I could foresee that if Julian Lewis became governor and Bazemore became his A.G., I might get the chance I occasionally moped over when I was worn out—I could leave law enforcement and become a history teacher.
I said, “Yes, I did write to the board.”
“You thought an injustice would be done if Hall were executed?”
“Yes.”
Isaac didn’t smile at me even now; the jury was never going to suspect he didn’t dislike and distrust me immensely. “I have no further questions for the witness at this time.”
On redirect, Bazemore did smile at me; it was reasonably scary. He asked me to confirm once more that Hall had brought the gun out of the bar, had shot Pym
outside
the bar, a hundred yards from where the fight had allegedly occurred, that Pym had been unarmed when he was shot, that he had been shot from a distance of approximately thirty feet, and so not in the midst of a struggle. He asked me to agree that it would be entirely legal for an off-duty policeman to arrest someone. He asked me to admit that at the time of my writing to the board, I had not known the full circumstances of the relations between Pym and Hall, as I now knew them (though he didn’t ask me what those full circumstances were). He asked me, “Captain Mangum, in your questioning of Hall, only minutes after the shot was fired, did he appear to be irrational, or out of control, or in any way of diminished capacity to reason? Any of those?”
“No. He seemed—”
“
Minutes
after he shot Pym, did he seem violently in the grip of an irresistible rage?”
“No. Numb.”
“He surrendered himself to the police because he
knew
he had
shot a man, am I right? He was perfectly aware of what he had done?”
“If you mean, did he realize he had fired the shot, yes, I think so.”
“Did he say to you then, ‘I shot Pym in self-defense’?”
“No.”
“Or, ‘I didn’t mean to,’ or, ‘I couldn’t help myself’?”
“No.”
“Does a request for clemency necessarily mean a denial of the validity of a verdict?”
“Not necessarily.”
“Have you, as chief of the Hillston Police Department, made a
great many
requests for parole or clemency for criminals whom
you
have charged, and the courts have convicted of crimes?”
“Yes, I have.”
“Hundreds?”
“No. Perhaps two dozen.”
“Do those many requests mean that you repudiate the right of a jury to try and to decide on the guilt or innocence of a man brought before it?”
“No.”
Bazemore came up on my side, and thrust his chin very near my face. “Is it your duty to enforce the laws of the state under which you are empowered as chief of this city's police?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Is it the law of this state that a jury may sentence to death a man convicted of first-degree murder if they so determine?”
“Yes, it is.” Freezing sweat ran down the sides of my shirt as I watched his pale blue righteous eyes.
“Is it,” he said, “your belief that if the death penalty—”
Isaac managed to move fast without sounding even much interested. “Objection. The witness is not being challenged for jury duty. He is here as a professional police officer. His opinions on this matter, whatever they may be, and however interested we all might be to hear them, are irrelevant.”
The judge agreed, adding that Isaac should keep that in mind when tempted to share with us
his
personal opinions.
Still smiling, Bazemore backed off. “If, Captain Mangum, your superior had not arrived on the scene that night at Smoke's Bar, where you found Robert Pym dying of a gunshot wound, and George Hall sitting there beside a smoking gun, would
you
have arrested George Hall?”
“Yes.”
“No further questions, at this time.” Bazemore thanked me as if I’d said everything he could have possibly hoped for.
Nobody at the defense table looked at me as I walked by them.
Upstairs, Sergeant Ralph Fisher told me he’d heard that my testimony had been pretty good. I said, “Good for whom? HPD?”
He smiled, his black cheeks pitted with old pockmarks. “Naw, for George Hall. I heard you made HPD sound pitiful.”
“Yeah, well, Ralph, if Bazemore cans me, I hope you get stuck with my job.” I handed him a typed roster. “Here, you can have five extra men Friday night. That do?”
“Have to, won’t it?” Ralph was in charge of police protection at that Trinity Church public panel on “The Klan in Carolina: Pawns of Power?” which the Hall Committee was co-sponsoring, and which I hoped the Klan would not be attending in force.
Ralph said, “This born-again Grand Dragon worries me more than Commie Janet. If the Klan hasn’t killed that woman by now, after all the stuff she's laid on them, I figure they don’t plan to.” (Like most of the force, he called the socialist Janet Malley—whom HPD had had occasion to arrest for numerous public disturbances— simply “Commie Janet.”)
I said, “Well, put a vest on Janet, if she’ll let you. And don’t stand too close to that ex–Grand Dragon; I’d hate for something to happen to you if one of his old pals tries to stop his exposé with a Browning automatic. Put a vest on him too.”
Walking away, Ralph called, “On top of his robe, or under it?”
I was standing in the squad room skimming the
Star
, when
Justin sauntered in. I asked him how he’d gotten back from Kentucky so fast, and he said Andy had let him borrow his plane. I said Andy was some pal, and Justin handed me a big envelope.