At the Hands of a Stranger (33 page)

Then came another recording, this one from October 25, 2007, made from the dash cam on a police car. It showed Hilton's van driving at night down a long stretch of road, then being pulled over because, according to the police officers in the car, Hilton was “driving all over the road.”

When Hilton got out of the van, they wanted to know if he had been drinking. Hilton assured them that he had not been, and said his driving had been erratic because he was smoking a cigarette and petting his dog. When the officers wanted to know if he was on any medication, he told them that he was on “all kinds,” including Ritalin. He kept assuring them that he had only been “messing with the dog” and smoking a cigarette at the same time, and he would pay closer attention to his driving. At the time he was wearing a purple cap with a pom-pom on top, and it was only two to three days after the murder of John Bryant.

It was unclear to the message board bloggers just what the point of this statement was. Several of them wrote that it seemed to them to be more beneficial to the prosecution than to the defense.

Forest Service officer Mary King next took the stand and said she had met Hilton, around 7:40
P.M
., in November 2007, off Silver Lake Road. He was walking with Dandy when she stopped to perform a welfare check on him, and he was very resentful of her intrusion and accused her of “hassling” him, saying that he didn't like the government. She made a notation in her logbook that indicated “signal 20,” which meant “crazy person.”

When Willie Meggs cross-examined King, he had several questions. King told him the stop was made close to the Thomas/Wallace road locations, and said Hilton was very negative and hostile. There was a large knife in plain view on him, she said, and she told him his license tag was nearly expired. She also told him he would have to leave his campsite soon because hunting season was about to begin. Hilton told her he'd be leaving the forest soon, and she took no action about him.

 

The final presentation by the defense was a video interview with Jinhee Lee, a lady who operated a dry cleaner/Laundromat in Duluth, Georgia. Hilton, she said, was a good customer, who came often to the Laundromat. He was accompanied by Dandy, whom, she said, she was very fond of. She never knew Hilton's name—only the dog's name, she said.

Hilton came regularly to the Laundromat; then he stopped coming for a while, starting back in 2007. At that time, she said, he told her that he had been in the mountains. Lee commented several times about Hilton always wearing the same type of clothing, synthetic outdoor/camping-style clothes.

When Hilton returned to the Laundromat after having been away, she noticed he was shaking and said she could see a change in him. She asked him if he was okay and he told her he had multiple sclerosis, and he took a pill while he was in the Laundromat.

“I couldn't believe it when I saw him on TV several months later,” after Meredith Emerson's murder, she said. “What happened to his dog?”

The interviewer assured Lee that Dandy had been adopted and was being well taken care of.

Following the videotaped testimony of Ms. Lee, the defense rested.

 

When the prosecution called their first rebuttal witness, clinical psychologist Dr. Greg Prichard, it was already past five-thirty in the evening, and the jury was growing tired. They'd had a long day and had heard from many witnesses, watched videos, and listened to tapes. Now there would be more testimony, but at least Prichard, with his down-to-earth delivery, was much more easily understood than some of the other expert witnesses who had testified.

Prichard began by confirming with the prosecution that his specialty was forensic psychology and he was being paid at the same rate as other expert witnesses, two hundred dollars per hour.

SA William Meggs began by asking Prichard what his opinion was on the diagnosis the other experts had given about Hilton's mental and emotional condition.

Prichard immediately said that he disagreed with the diagnosis of most of those who had testified. He didn't believe that Hilton had suffered a brain injury from being struck on the head by the falling Murphy bed, or by most of the other diagnoses presented by the defense. Instead, Prichard said, he believed Hilton was a psychopath.

Psychopaths, Prichard said, exhibited a cluster of behavior and personality traits that were extremely dangerous when combined. Psychopaths, he told the jury, were impulsive, callous, glib, facile, talkative, and with no emotional connections. They were selfish and self-centered, believing “the end justifies the means.” They were also subject to having antisocial personality disorder, which Prichard said was a disorder shared by 75 percent of the population in prisons.

Prichard pointed out that Hilton was not taking Ritalin when he shot his stepfather, and that according to his army dismissal papers, he had been counseled five times in the military and was relieved from assignment to a special weapons platoon because of “undesirable character traits.” The records said he had been doing well until he began hearing voices and having increasing anxiety. He told his commanding officer he had come into the service on false pretenses, and the report said he had a “conflict of personality,” but no mention of a diagnosed mental illness.

Between the age of twenty-one and the present time, Prichard said, Hilton had been arrested on criminal charges multiple times. Prichard said he had interviewed Hilton's second wife, who told him that within six months of marriage, Hilton had her quit her job and work for him, picking up checks for businesses. She told him she soon realized Hilton was posing as a charity.

During their marriage Hilton admitted to her that he had touched her nine-year-old daughter sexually and had also pulled out his penis and asked her young son to touch it.

When he admitted doing so, he said, “Well, they're not my children.”

Concerning the murders of Meredith Emerson and Cheryl Dunlap, Prichard told the jury to “listen to what Mr. Hilton says” for psychopathic traits, such as:

“I started hunting in September.”

“Blood Mountain is a good place to hunt. There's a large variety of people who come there.”

“She was doomed from the start. I had to kill her.”

“That's the one (Meredith Emerson) I'm going to get.”

Prichard also reminded the jury about Hilton's involvement with the movie
Deadly Run,
his statements made on the way to Florida, and the fact that Hilton had offered information on Cheryl Dunlap's murder for personal gain. There were constant objections from the defense during his testimony—all of which were overruled—and Prichard concluded his remarks with his analysis of Hilton's behavior and its causes.

“He clearly knew right from wrong and the criminal nature of his conduct,” Prichard said. “He tried to avoid detection by his treatment of his victims' bodies and the mask he wore at the ATM. The primary issue for Mr. Hilton is a personality and character issue present for his entire life. He's a psychopath. That's what generated the murders, and nothing else.”

When Prichard's testimony for the state concluded, an exhausted jury was dismissed at six-thirty on Friday evening, with instructions to come back at ten-thirty, Monday morning, when Prichard would be cross-examined by the defense.

 

When the third day of the penalty phase of Gary Michael Hilton's trial began, the jury was not due to take their places until ten-thirty, but the arguing between the defense and Judge Hankinson began bright and early, at eight-thirty in the morning. The defense immediately moved for a mistrial on the grounds that Dr. Prichard, during his testimony the previous day, had improperly criticized the testimony of the other experts appearing for the defense. Judge Hankinson denied that motion, and told the defense that there had been no evidence that Prichard had attacked the credibility of the other doctors. He had merely given his own opinion and had not maligned the others.

Then the defense again moved for a mistrial, saying that the prosecution had violated a court order when Dr. Joseph Wu was questioned about Hilton's involvement in the movie
Deadly Run.
The prosecution countered by claiming that Wu was the first one to bring up the movie when he said that Hilton was “clearly delusional” when he claimed to have been involved in the film.

“The state has disregarded the earlier court order, not to mention the movie,” Ines Suber said.

“Dr. Wu opened the door for the state to introduce the movie, because he brought it up first,” Willie Meggs countered.

“The prosecution brought it up first with Dr. Wu,” Suber claimed, and asked again for a mistrial and sanctions. “The defense didn't bring it up during direct examination. The prosecution did, during cross-examination,” Suber stressed. “We have the movie. Mr. Hilton received no credit for any involvement in it. The state violated the court order, and a mistrial is required.”

Hankinson denied the request for a mistrial, telling Suber, “When it first came up, the defense made no objection. Now, [to object] one week later, there's no basis for a mistrial.”

Then, before summoning the jury, the judge ordered both sides to go over the jury instructions again, page by page; then he asked if there were any objections. When there were none, Hankinson sent the bailiff to bring in the jury.

 

Defense attorney Robert Friedman began his cross-examination of Dr. Greg Prichard by pointing out that Prichard didn't conduct a clinical interview of Hilton, but rather had based his conclusions solely on a record review, Hilton's taped interviews, and interviews with Hilton's mother, his ex-wife, and his former boss John Tabor.

“In many forensic cases evaluation is not possible,” Prichard told Friedman. “I could not evaluate Mr. Hilton face-to-face. I wasn't allowed to, so I had to rely on a great deal of data to generate my conclusions. Ideally, you always want to [meet with] the person.”

Friedman asked if Prichard wasn't able to interview Hilton “because the state didn't follow the rules?”

Prichard told him he did not know.

Friedman then brought up Hilton's criminal record.

“There were not any prior convictions of violence prior to the Emerson and Dunlap cases,” Freidman said. “There were arrests for aggravated assault and arson, but no convictions, no records.” As to the allegations by his ex-wife about child abuse: “Again, there were no charges filed and no records.”

The jury had questions for Prichard, wanting to know the difference between personality disorders and mental disorders. He explained that mental disorders are due to a neurochemical imbalance, and personality disorders are not biologically driven. They are a disorder in a subject's character or personality.

The jury also wanted to know if the records Prichard had examined showed who had filed the complaint against Dr. Delcher for improperly prescribing Ritalin for Hilton.

Dr. Prichard said he didn't know.

 

The next step in the trial was about to begin. The jury would hear closing arguments from both sides; then they would retire to the jury room for their deliberations. Hankinson ordered the doors to the courtroom locked during final jury instructions and closing arguments so the jurors wouldn't be distracted by people coming and going from the room.

Hankinson told the jury that according to Florida law, he would make the final decision on sentencing Hilton, but he was required to give their recommendation “great weight.” He told them not to be influenced one way or the other by Hilton's decision not to testify, and he said it would take a majority vote to recommend the death penalty.

 

After the judge spoke to the jurors, State Attorney William Meggs began his closing arguments by telling the jury, “Jury duty is a high, high calling. Your job is to weigh the aggravating and mitigating circumstances and make a decision, not because of sympathy or anger.”

Meggs spoke to the jury about duty, saying that the late American hero Pat Tillman had given up a lucrative pro football contract to join the military because he wanted to do his duty to his country. “Doing his duty cost him his life,” Meggs said.

The prosecutor told the jury about aggravating factors that, he said, had been proven beyond every reasonable doubt. The first, he said, was the murder of Meredith Emerson, for which Hilton had been convicted. The second aggravating factor was the kidnapping of Cheryl Dunlap. And the third was the fact that Hilton went to great lengths to conceal Cheryl Dunlap's murder.

“The defendant cut her head off. We don't have any teeth. Remember his statements, ‘If you take them, you have to kill them, or you get caught,' and ‘I have to go do something with these.'”

The fourth aggravating factor, Meggs told the jury, was the fact that the murder was committed for financial gain, proven by Hilton's use of Cheryl Dunlap's ATM card. And the fifth, one of the most extreme factors, was the fact that it was a heinous, atrocious crime.

“We have every reason to believe that Cheryl Dunlap knew she was going to die,” Meggs said. “She was chained around the neck so she couldn't escape from the van, and knew she was going to die, and there was nothing she could do about it.”

Meggs reminded the jury of the deep bruise that medical examiners found on her back. He told them Cheryl had lived for forty-eight hours: until Hilton got to the ATM, and the PIN number she had given him had worked.

The sixth aggravating factor to be considered, Meggs said, was the fact that the murder was committed in a cold, calculated, premeditated manner. He reminded the jury of Hilton's own statements: “They fight, and then they submit.” “I'm out of money. I'm going to have to kill somebody.” “This shit just got me caught.” “When you go out to kill and you're seen, you're screwed,” and other remarks Hilton had made during interviews.

Meggs told the jury that the testimony of the defense's own experts contradicted one another, and said the defense was trying to blame everybody but Hilton for his crimes. Cleo Dabag, he said, was a good mother who did the best she could under difficult circumstances, and her testimony proved that Hilton had just the opposite of a bad childhood. Most of the defense's other witnesses meant very little, Meggs said, and one of the defense's expert witnesses had been fined $15,000 for wrongfully prescribing OxyContin.