A time to kill

"It was a brilliant move, Harry Rex. He showed the jury, Noose, Buckley, everybody, that it's his courtroom and he's not afraid of a damned person in it. He drew first blood. He's got Buckley so jumpy right now he'll never relax. Noose respects him because he's not intimidated by His Honor. The jurors were shocked, but he woke them up and told them in a not so subtle way that this is war. A brilliant move."

"Yeah, I thought so myself."

"It didn't hurt us. Those women were asking for sympathy, but Jake reminded the jury of what their sweet little boys did before they died."

"The scumbags."

"If there's any resentment by the jury, they'll forget by the time the last witness testifies."

"Jake's pretty smooth, ain't he?"

"He's good. Very good. He's the best I've seen for his age."

"Wait till his closing argument. I've heard a couple. He could get sympathy out of a drill sergeant."

Jake returned and poured a small margarita. Just a very small one, for his nerves. Harry Rex drank like a sailor.

Ozzie was the first State witness after lunch. Buckley produced large, multicolored plats of the first and second floors of the courthouse, and together they traced the precise, last movements of Cobb and Willard.

Then Buckley produced a set of ten 16 x 24 color photographs of Cobb and Willard lying freshly dead on the stairs. They were gruesome. Jake had seen lots of pictures of dead bodies, and although none were particularly pleasant given their nature, some weren't so bad. In one of his cases, the victim had been shot in the heart with a .357 and simply fell over dead on his porch. He was a large, muscular old man, and the bullet never found its way out of the body. So there was no blood, just a small hole in his overalls, and then a small sealed hole in his chest. He looked as though he could have fallen asleep and slumped over, or passed out drunk on the porch, like Lucien. It was not a spectacular scene, and Buckley had not been proud of those photo-

graphs. They had not been enlarged. He had just handed the small Polaroids to the jury and looked disgusted because they were so clean.

But most murder pictures were grisly and sickening, with blood splashed on walls and ceilings, and parts of bodies blown free and scattered everywhere. Those were always enlarged by the D.A. and entered into evidence with great fanfare, then waved around the courtroom by Buckley as he and the witness described the scenes in the pictures. Finally, with the jurors fidgeting with curiosity, Buckley would politely ask the judge for permission to show the photographs to the jury, and the judge would always consent. Then Buck-ley and everybody else would watch their faces intently as they were shocked, horrified, and occasionally nauseated. Jake had actually seen two jurors vomit when handed photos of a badly slashed corpse.

Such pictures were highly prejudicial and highly inflammatory, and also highly admissible. "Probative" was the word used by the Supreme Court. Such pictures could aid the jury, according to ninety years of decisions from the Court. It was well settled in Mississippi that murder pictures, regardless of their impact on the jury, were always admissible.

Jake had seen the Cobb and Willard photographs weeks earlier, and had filed the standard objection and received the standard denial.

These were mounted professionally on heavy pos-terboard, something the D.A. had not done before. He handed the first one into the jury box to Reba Betts. It was the one of Willard's head and brains taken at close range.

"My God!" she gasped, and shoved it to the next juror, who gawked in horror, and passed it on. They handed it to one another, then to the alternates. Buckley took it, and gave Reba another one. The ritual continued for thirty minutes until all the pictures were returned to the D.A.

Then he grabbed the M-16 and thrust it at Ozzie. "Can you identify this?"

"Yes, it's the weapon found at the scene."

"Who picked it up at the scene?"

"I did."

"And what did you do with it?"

"Wrapped in a plastic bag and placed in a vault at the jail. Kept it locked up until I handed it to Mr. Laird with the crime lab in Jackson."

"Your Honor, the State would offer the weapon, Exhibit S-13, into evidence," Buckley said, waving it wildly.

"No objections," Jake said.

"We have nothing further of this witness," Buckley announced.

"Cross-examination?"

Jake flipped through his notes as he walked slowly to the podium. He had just a few questions for his friend.

"Sheriff, did you arrest Billy Ray Cobb and Pete Wil-lard?"

Buckley pushed his chair back and perched his ample frame on the edge, poised to leap and scream if necessary.

"Yes I did," answered the sheriff.

"For what reason?"

"For the rape of Tonya Hailey," he answered perfectly.

"And how old was she at the time she; was raped by Cobb and Willard?"

"She was ten."

"Is it true, Sheriff, that Pete Willard signed a written confession in-"

"Objection! Objection! Your Honor! That's inadmissible and Mr. Brigance knows it."