Before He Wakes (51 page)

“Like I said, I have been convicted of taking Russell Stager’s life. I’m really, really sorry for that. Russ and I had a roller-coaster marriage. We had really good times and we had really bad times. Not unlike many and most marriages.

“I feel bad that my actions and my mistakes led to his death. I regret that. Most of all, I regret that. I wish I could turn the clock back. I wish I could change all of it.

“In spite of the circumstances and reasons for my being here today, I realize, too, that I’m very fortunate in many ways. I have a loving and supportive family who has continued to stand by me no matter what. And I’ll never forget them, and I thank them from the bottom of my heart. And I have a large circle of friends who have supported me though this, and continue to. And I’ll never forget them, either.

“But most of all, I know that I have the Lord on my side and in my heart. I thank God for the ultimate sacrifice He made of His son to give me forgiveness and salvation, that I can stand up to this and endure with peace, with strength, with courage. And I know that whatever decision you people make, I know that I’ll be with the Lord. I know that. I don’t have any doubts about it.

“And I also know that God and I are the only ones who know the absolute truth. That gives me an awful lot of peace.

“You have heard that I have a goal. Since I’ve been in prison I’ve been trying to further my education so that I can help people less fortunate than I am while I’m in prison. I would like to have the chance to be able to see that goal come to an end. I would like to be able to finish that education and help whoever I can while I’m there.

“I hope that every one of you will consider everything that you have seen and heard, everything. And I hope you will decide to give me another chance.”

As she turned and walked quickly back to her seat, Doris Stager’s anger-filled eyes followed her every step.

“Barbara Stager stands up here and talks about intent, still not able to accept that in cold blood she murdered her husband,” Ron Stephens told the jury in his closing argument, which was much longer and more impassioned than his closing at the trial. “I’m not mad,” he said. “I’m enraged. I make no apologies about it.
You
should be enraged.”

The defense had made a special effort to show that Barbara was not a dangerous person, and Stephens now countered that with a simple question. “How dangerous is Barbara Stager? You tell me. Would you want your son or your brother to marry her and share her bed?”

William Farrell had taken note of Vann’s theatrics with Barbara’s needlepoint and stuffed toys, and stepped before the jury holding the gun that had killed Russ.

“Russ Stager is gone, gone forever, dispatched to eternity by the business end of a .25-caliber pistol,” he said, holding up the small gun. He turned and picked up the toy cat that Barbara had made. “Dispatched to eternity by the hand that could make this. The hand that made this also could use this.” He placed the cat and the gun on the railing before the jury box, where they would be in plain sight throughout the rest of his argument.

“Did she really say she was sorry for killing Russ Stager?” Farrell said of Barbara’s plea to the jury. “Or did she tell you she was sorry for getting convicted?”

There were two Barbaras, he pointed out, and her family didn’t truly know her because they couldn’t accept what a monstrous person she really was.

“If the facts of this case do not justify capital punishment, please tell me what would,” he pleaded with the jurors. “What more would you require? How many more bodies?

“People who commit first-degree murder come from all walks of life. Some don’t have a chance. Some of them do. If we are not going to impose the ultimate sanction on people who’ve had Christian training, how can we impose it on the others? I ask you to ensure—
ensure
—that she never has the opportunity to do this again.”

Edward Falcone led for the defense, reading the same speech he had delivered at the sentencing phase of Barbara’s trial, altering it to include the expanded list of mitigating circumstances, now numbering twenty-one. Among them were that Barbara had led a Christian life, was a model prisoner, was remorseful and had shown no propensity for violence “other than to her husband.”

The fire and thunder were left to Art Vann, and he began by reading from the Bible, in Luke: “ ‘Wherefore I say unto thee. Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.

“And he said unto her, Thy sins are forgiven…. Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace.’ ”

Vann’s closing argument was even more disorganized and disjointed than his opening statement, and he fell back on old lawyer tricks, employing theatrics, dropping the gun to the floor, misrepresenting the evidence to confuse the jurors, even figuratively waving the flag in Barbara’s behalf.

One of his favorite phrases was “the King’s English,” and he had employed it often throughout the hearing. He held Larry’s death certificate high in the air for all to see. “It says right here in the King’s English,” he said, his voice rising dramatically, “accident—it’s not Hebrew or Icelandic, it’s English. Accident means
accident
.”

At one point, apparently forgetting that Barbara already had been convicted and that this was a sentencing hearing, he lapsed into an old refrain that he had used at many a trial. “In this great land, you are presumed to be innocent. That presumption of innocence sits with this woman. She is an innocent person. Not guilty! Innocent!”

Vann went on to punch at the validity of the tape of Russ’s voice, although he called it the videotape. “Whatever you get out of that tape, you’ll just have to decide,” he ended up saying. He took a swipe at the forged will, noting that the house was all that Barbara and Russ really owned, and under North Carolina law the house automatically went to the surviving spouse. “I don’t know why there was such a fuss about that,” he said of the will. “That ain’t no big deal. That ain’t the end of the world. So whatever you gather out of that, you just gather.”

He went on to attack Russ’s spending—“Just to run another rabbit with you,” he said by way of introducing it—then noted Barbara’s industry. “This lady—and she is a lady, she’s not a murderer—she worked. I don’t think there’s any question in anybody’s mind about that.”

He held up a sheaf of papers, school records, the Bible study certificates Barbara had earned in prison. “Y’all’ve seen these things,” he said, trying to get the jury involved on his side. “Have you seen ’em? Just shake your head up and down. Here’s her criminal record, nothing on it. She’s not of a vicious nature. Nobody has said anything ugly about her, because there’s nothing ugly to be said.”

In closing, Vann thanked the jurors. “I hope you’ll find it in your hearts not to put this woman in the gas chamber. She has the gift of patience with people, of understanding of people, and she has made a tremendous influence in the lives of these people she’s involved with now.

“Don’t slam the door on her mother and father, her two sons, her brothers. Don’t slam the door in the face of her friends who love her and care for her. I ask you a question. What is the value of taking her life? Who’s going to gain anything by that?

“You heard what she told you. She’s at peace with her Lord. That I believe and that I hope you’ll believe. Don’t forget what Luke said about it. Here was a woman, I take it she was a prostitute. She washed our Lord’s feet and dried it off with her hair, and He said she was forgiven. Your sins are forgiven.”

Vann finished at 3:45, too late, the judge decided, to charge the jury and let them begin deliberations this day. They could start fresh in the morning.

Only seven minutes after the jury went to deliberate at 10:13 Tuesday morning, August 31, the foreman sent back a question: “With a sentence of life imprisonment, is there a possibility of being released prior to death?”

The judge brought the jury out to tell them that they should not be concerned about that, then sent them back to deliberate until lunch. After lunch, the jury returned to the spacious jury room on the northeastern comer of the courthouse with its long mahogany table, comfortable upholstered armchairs and views of the outside traffic.

At 3:20, the courtroom quickly reassembled, but the jurors only had another question: “If the jury cannot unanimously decide for death or life, what happens?”

That, too, was not their concern, the judge informed them, but the question clearly disheartened the prosecutors, who could win only with unanimity.

Only eighteen minutes later, the jury returned again.

“Without telling me the outcome,” Judge Ellis said to foreman Leon McCormick, “have you reached a unanimous verdict in this case?”

“We have.”

The verdict was passed to the judge, who read it and turned it over to the court clerk, Debra Jones, who stood to read it.

The jury had answered yes to the question of whether Barbara had acted for pecuniary gain. The suspense dragged on as the clerk waded through the jury’s answers to each mitigating factor, yes to the first twenty, no to the final one, a catchall that they could fill in for themselves. Were the mitigating factors insufficient to override the aggravating? Yes. Only one more question remained. Was the sole aggravating factor sufficient to recommend death?

“No,” read the clerk, but only the lawyers and the reporters seemed to grasp that this was the verdict, that Barbara’s life had been saved. No gasp of relief or indignation came from the rest of the audience until Debra Jones made it clear: “We, the jury, unanimously recommend that the defendant, Barbara T. Stager, be sentenced to life in prison.”

Barbara turned and flashed a big smile at her relieved family. Doris Stager broke into tears of disbelief. The prosecutors slumped in their chairs. Art Vann turned and thrust a fist of victory into the air at Barbara’s father, who returned the gesture with a big smile.

When the jury was polled, it became clear that there had been confusion in the jury room. The eldest member, a seventy-five-year-old man who was hard of hearing, answered no when asked if this were his verdict, then changed his mind after the question was read to him again. “I didn’t hear,” he said. Another male member of the jury raised his hand when his turn came. “I’ve got a question,” he said. “Does it have to be unanimous either way?” After an explanation from the judge, he, too, agreed that this had been his verdict.

Barbara was instructed to rise.

“Anything else that you’d like to say?” the judge asked.

She shook her head, and he quickly sentenced her to prison “for the term of her natural life.”

“She’ll be in the custody of the sheriff,” the judge intoned, and the bailiffs quickly ushered her from the courtroom, she turning and waving with a smile to her family and friends as she left.

The judge thanked the jurors and dismissed them, then adjourned court.

As the jurors were leaving the jury box, two women stopped and bent over to say something to Doris Stager, who sat in the front row in stunned disbelief, but they hurried away when she flared at them and was restrained by her daughter. One juror walked past the Fords and Doris Stager without acknowledgment and went to the other side of the courtroom, where she embraced the Terrys, who quickly had formed a congratulatory circle around Barbara’s attorneys.

Reporters chased after the jurors to find out what had happened.

“I think they had a pretty strong case,” the foreman told one reporter. “It simply didn’t warrant the death penalty.”

Others said that the jury had been split eight for death, four against. One juror, another said, had announced soon after entering the room that she was opposed to the death penalty and never would vote for it, although she had told the prosecutors under oath that she could choose death if the circumstances warranted it. The eight had finally gone over to the side of the four, this juror said, because everybody was tired and wanted to go home.

“I think she killed them both,” a female juror told another reporter. “She’ll get off in twenty years and she’ll get her another one and pop him off.”

Actually, Barbara could become eligible for parole in only twelve years, and that disgusted the sole black male on the jury, DeVaughn Jordan. “I feel as if this lady should never get no kind of parole, nothing,” he said. “In all fairness, she should have got the death penalty.”

The reason she didn’t, he said, was that some jurors, when faced with the reality of it, just couldn’t bring themselves to vote for it. “It’s like bungee jumping,” he said. “You get up there and you just decide that you can’t jump.”

He shook his head. “Crime’s too high. People don’t value life. Your life ain’t worth five cents out here. But some people don’t want to do what it takes to stop it. Killing’s just too easy, too easy.”

Barbara’s family wouldn’t respond to reporters’ requests for comments, but when die reporters clustered around Doris Stager, she said, “Okay, I’ve got a statement, just one.” Her voice rose as she spoke until she was fairly shouting. “I have learned to live with the fact that Barbara Stager blew my son’s brains out with a gun while he slept in his own bed. If I can learn to live with that, I guess I can learn to live with the fact that she is in prison. The first time she gets a chance for parole, she’ll put on another act.” She paused, her anger surging, thrust a finger in the air and shouted loud enough to be certain that the Terrys could hear her. “Correction, cold-bloodedly shot my son’s brains out!”