Almost Midnight (32 page)

If the brusqueness of his cross-examination was any indication, five minutes in and out, Taney County prosecuting attorney Donald Clough was hardly bedazzled by O’Connor’s expert riffing.

“Doctor,” he said, fairly dripping with derision, “I want you to assume that there is an associate circuit judge here in Greene County, and that [this] associate circuit judge is a combat marine veteran, having gone through Marine Corps boot camp, learning how to kill people; and that this judge either thought, or actually it happened, that the circuit clerk had made derogatory remarks about his wife, and this judge tried to pick the circuit clerk up and throw him over the rotunda. Would that person be suffering from a disillusional [
sic
] thought disorder?”

“No. I mean, you’re asking hypothetically, but I doubt it.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Maurer trotted out six additional witnesses, friends and relatives of Darrell’s, all of whom gave it their valiant best. Then Clough, wrapping up the afternoon’s proceedings, called Bill Wendt to the stand.

Of course he’d done a good job on Darrell’s behalf, Wendt insisted. Could anyone reasonably suggest otherwise? He’d busted his tail, played every imaginable angle, used every courtroom ploy at his disposal. From the very start, however, it had been a losing battle. The evidence against Darrell had been overwhelming.

Maurer took a crack at Wendt in cross-examination but he might
just as well have saved himself the trouble. Wendt, the old smoothie, didn’t even come close to breaking a sweat. An insanity defense for Darrell? Of course he’d considered going this route. Tough pulling it off, though, when his own experts threw cold water on the idea. And it wasn’t as if he’d tapped the wrong experts. Dr. Clary, for one, was widely recognized in Springfield’s criminal law community as “a defense-oriented psychiatrist who would always find mental illness.” So what was he supposed to do? Shop around endlessly for a friendly diagnosis?

Darrell was transported back to Potosi immediately after the hearing. A month later he got the bad news. He got it through the mail, which is how death-row inmates usually get bad news regarding their appeals. Judge Sweeney had ruled against his petition for post-conviction relief. His conviction and death penalty were upheld. Darrell permitted himself just five minutes of disappointment before digging in once again and revving up his resolve: it didn’t matter how the appeals went, he said to himself. He knew, beyond a twinkling of doubt, that he had nothing to worry about.

T
HE NEXT YEAR
, almost exactly a year later, Darrell had more disappointment to overcome. In late November 1992 he received word that his direct appeal to the Missouri Supreme Court had also come to naught. This was a rough blow. Losing in post-conviction relief in Judge Sweeney’s courtroom was one thing, but the highest court in the state ruling against him? How could this happen? It didn’t take a legal genius to realize he’d been arrested illegally. How could an illustrious panel of judges possibly miss something so obvious?

The way the system of appeals for capital cases was structured at the time in Missouri, direct appeal to the state supreme court came directly on the heels of post-conviction relief proceedings. For death-row inmates, this was getting pretty close to the quick. Lose here, and the chances of obtaining a reversal or possibly a reduced sentence later on in federal review were slim to none.

Darrell’s direct appeal had been handled by Craig Johnston, a
slim, laconic man in his late thirties who’d been working out of the public defender’s office—first in Joplin, then Columbia—since graduating law school in 1984. Like many of his colleagues in the office, Johnston was overworked and overstressed, too many three-hundred-hour months with a deadline perched on his shoulder. He’d approached Darrell’s appeal with a wary, fingers-crossed optimism. While certainly not banking on winning, he’d gone to Jefferson City in September for oral hearings at the state supreme court building thinking he at least stood a fighting chance. It wasn’t to be. In its decision of November 24, the court shot down Johnston’s arguments one after another, like wooden ducks at a two-bit carnival booth.

No, the court ruled, Darrell had not been coerced or manipulated into confessing after he’d invoked his right to an attorney. It was Darrell himself who had initiated the conversation with law enforcement officials that resulted in his videotaped statement at Troop D headquarters in Springfield. No, Judge McGuire had not erred at trial in refusing an instruction on second-degree murder. The evidence supported only a finding of deliberate or first-degree murder. No, for the last time, no, Bill Wendt had not been derelict in abandoning the possibility of a mental defect or insanity defense.

At one point the court was forced to resort to some fancy footwork. Johnston had argued, as had Bill Wendt two years earlier, that Darrell had been arrested in Arizona on pretextual or bad-faith warrants, issued for the ulterior motive of questioning him regarding the Lawrence homicides. If the warrants were invalid, it meant that the arrest and all evidence stemming from it, as “fruit of the poison tree,” were also invalid. The court argued in response that the arrest warrants, for nonsupport and carrying a concealed weapon, were
objectively
valid and that the
subjective
motivation of law enforcement officials in issuing them was completely beside the point. The kicker here was that in two previous cases,
State v. Blair
(1985) and
State v. Moody
(1969), the very same court had ruled that the subjective motivation of officers was indeed relevant in determining the validity of an arrest. But that was then and this was
now, and the court, overruling itself on
Blair
and
Moody
, stated: “It is certainly incongruous to say that police may make a valid arrest of any person under the authority of a lawful arrest warrant, but if police are also motivated by a desire to question the person regarding an unrelated offense, the arrest is invalid.”

Finally, after dispensing with all of Johnston’s arguments, the court affirmed the death penalty for Darrell. “Where there are multiple homicides, the killing of a person who is disabled, or an intricate, well thought out plan of how the killing is to be committed, all of which existed here, the death penalty is not at all unusual.”

Ninety miles down the road at Potosi, you could almost hear the buzzards gathering in the trees.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

B
ACK HOME THINGS
would never be the same. Darrell heard about the changes now and then, from letters his mom sent and from the occasional visitor, but sitting in a prison cell it was hard for him to appreciate just how extensive they really were. The world he’d grown up in was being transformed into something he’d scarcely recognize. Tourists were flocking to the Ozarks, especially down by Branson, and to make way for them hills were being bulldozed, twisty two-laners straightened and widened, and brush land paved over and fenced off. There was no telling, once all the new development was finished and the ceremonial ribbons cut, how much of the old countryside would be left.

It’s not that tourism was brand new to the region—its sweet clean streams and rolling hills had always been a draw to outsiders
—but this was something different: a veritable stampede. People were descending in droves on the Branson area and relatively few had any interest in fishing or hiking or swimming. They were coming to test the beds in one of the fancy new hotels on the main drive, to dine out in one of the new steakhouses or theme restaurants, and to catch a couple of shows in one of the gleaming new music palaces. Almost overnight Branson had become an entertainment mecca—country-music cute, biscuits and gravy beneath the neon, Nashville without the ghetto, Vegas without the hustle, a place where you could take the kids and never have to worry about covering anyone’s ears or eyes.

It began in the mid-eighties when a handful of country-music celebrities, sick and tired of touring, decided to cast about for a nice spot where they could settle in and set up permanent shop. Branson seemed to fit the bill as well as anywhere else. It was centrally located, not too far from Nashville, and just about as unsullied a place as you were going to find in middle America: all those hills and lakes and glistening streams, none of Nashville’s smoke and noise. Not only that, the surrounding area was thick with genuine down-home hillbilly charm. Folks could drive in for some music and have plenty of local atmosphere to soak up besides. Roy Clark and Boxcar Willie were first off the blocks, opening theaters on what would eventually be known as the Strip, and they were soon followed by stars such as Mickey Gilley and Mel Tillis and a supporting cast of lesser lights, has-beens, corny comedy acts, and Elvis impersonators. By the early 1990s sleepy old Branson had become one of the hottest tourist destinations in the land. Show up during the busy season and it was bumper-to-bumper traffic, half-hour waits at mini-golf, and more strumming and chorusing and orchestrated goofiness than you’d ever dream of.

Things, so Darrell heard, would never be the same: visitors pouring in by the busload and leaving their money behind, fast-food outlets and giant chain stores springing up for miles around, illuminated billboards strung out along the roadsides as far as the eye could see. Once proudly and defiantly remote, a thing of mystery
far off the beaten path, the traditional hillbilly culture of southwest Missouri was in danger of being smothered into submission. More and more, it was becoming something not so much to be lived as rather something to be rented out to visitors from Florida and Ohio, a weekend at a time. Quaintness on demand—a piece of secondhand nostalgia available at group discount rates.

The deal, to be sure, wasn’t completely done—at least not yet. There were still backwoods areas where tourists dared not tread, still twisty blacktops guaranteed to make your tires ache, still cockfighters and outlaws and preachers in plaid shirts presiding over Sunday service at clapboard churches. There were still secrets left untold, mysteries buried deep in the hills, and honest-to-goodness hillbillies who knew fakery when they saw it. But for how long? With the Branson boom spilling out in all directions, and the Springfield suburbs creeping steadily southward, how long would it be before the hillbilly culture of southwest Missouri ended up as an adorable, fun-for-the-whole-family theme park?

I
N EARLY DECEMBER
of 1994, having spent more than four years at Potosi, Darrell was confronting environmental pressures of a rather different kind. Up to this point, each of Potosi’s roughly three hundred prisoners had enjoyed the comparative luxury of a cell entirely his own. This, however, was soon to change. Faced with prison overcrowding across the state, the Missouri Department of Corrections was intent on significantly increasing the inmate population at its flagship institution. In practical terms, this meant converting many of the single-man cells into two-man units. It also meant easing up on the stringent entrance requirements by bringing in prisoners who had been sentenced to something less than death or life without parole.

For many of those inmates already in place, this was unwelcome news. In a maximum-security prison, where your every move is closely monitored, where even the walls have eyes and ears, and trouble incubates in every corner, a cell of one’s own is no small
thing. The chance to stretch out unmolested and dream of greener pastures, to arrange your belongings just so on the single wall shelf, to use the stainless steel toilet with some degree of privacy—it makes all the difference in the world. It’s a matter of holding the madness at bay, carving out a zone of dignity. If you’re forced to ride double, there’s no telling whom you’re going to wind up with. Some druggie, maybe, fussing and fidgeting all day long, or some pretty boy with a jealous daddy down the walk. Or some wacko bleating and braying till three in the morning. If your cell mate gets caught with a shank or a little bit of “girl” (cocaine), you’ll get written up, too. If he’s up all night with diarrhea, you’ll be up all night with him, fending off the growl and stench of his guts.

Even if you luck out and land a cell mate you get along with, someone you might actually count as a friend, it’s still a losing proposition. Two grown men stuck together day after day, endless hours at a time, in a fourteen-by-six-foot cement-block cage: not much chance of a happy outcome. After the first couple of weeks you’re both all talked out, and then the edginess creeps in. Little things, the way the guy slurps his carton of milk from the canteen, or sniffs back his snot when you’re trying to read—they build and build until they’re unholy annoyances. Pretty soon the cell is enveloped in a smog of tension. You’re like two tomcats cornered in an alley: you’ve no longer got any choice in the matter. You can’t help but provoke one another.

The lifers in general population were doubled up first, starting in late December. It was a lengthy process. In one housing unit after another, individual cells were vacated and stripped clean so that bunk beds could be brought in and bolted to the floors. Over time the new inmates started arriving. They were a ragtag bunch. Some were violent offenders, serving thirty years or longer. Others were doing lighter time but had earned reputations as troublemakers in their previous places of incarceration. While all this was going on, the capital-punishment prisoners were watching and waiting. They knew they were next in line for doubling up, probably in a year or so. Not all of them, however, were planning on surrendering their single-man cells without a fight.

For the time being, Darrell carried on much as before. By this point he’d long given up on his earlier routine of staying awake until the wee hours watching reruns of old sitcoms. Instead he was usually asleep by eleven, up at six sharp and off to the mess hall for breakfast. Then two hours of yard or recreation, which, weather providing, he usually spent outdoors, where there was a football field encircled by a quarter-mile asphalt track, volleyball and horseshoe pits, handball courts, and picnic tables. Then back inside for lockdown and a head count before lunch, and after lunch three more hours of rec, which some days he’d split between the law library and the chapel library. A final hour of rec after supper and, finally, back into the cage until morning.