Blood Done Sign My Name (32 page)

In a move that must have been calculated to inflame the racial feelings of the all-white jury, Banzet “asked me did I seen the man [who had fired the shot that killed Henry Marrow] in here, and I told him yes.” Recalling the scene years later, Chavis said, “He said, ‘Will you get up and go touch him.' And I said, ‘Yeah, sure.' ” Chavis walked across the courtroom and stepped up to Larry Teel. “I went over there and touched him, like that,” Chavis recounted, extending his index finger. For a defiant young black man to put his hands on a white man in court could not help but make white jurors uneasy, but the judge did not intervene.

Billy Watkins, who sat impassively chewing Life Savers during the entire weeklong trial, calmly cross-examined Chavis in an effort to discredit his powerful testimony. “Watkins, when I was on the stand, he asked me had I ever been in any trouble.” Trouble was one big reason why the Chavis family had sent Boo to New Jersey, and his local police record indicated that he had had plenty of clashes with the law. “I told him, yeah, but I ain't on trial.” Watkins forced Chavis to recount more or less his entire rap sheet in front of the jury. “What was I on probation for, what had I been in, all that,” Chavis said, “and I told him aiding and abetting, receiving stolen goods, breaking and entering, but I said I still wasn't on trial and I didn't kill nobody, either.” Watkins had made his point.

“This other lady that saw it, Mrs. Downey,” Chavis explained to me, “she was standing behind a bush, but she didn't want to cooperate.” In fact, the next witness, a fearful black woman named Evelyn Downey, had kept silent until she was subpoenaed and had refused to admit except under oath that she had seen any of the events behind the Teel place on the night of the murder. It was rumored that the Ku Klux Klan had threatened to burn her family's house and store if she testified. “Mrs. Downey testified she had not disclosed her knowledge of the shooting until last week when an agent of the State Bureau of Investigation, Ray Freeman, told her she would be subpoenaed as a witness,” the
News and Observer
reported. “Mrs. Downey said she had kept silent because she feared for her elderly in-laws who own and operate Downey's Grocery, located near the scene of the shooting.” The tiny store, only a few yards from the Teel place, was really little more than a shack that sold snacks and soft drinks. Mrs. Downey told the court that she had been inside at about eight forty-five on the night of the murder when she heard shouting and the sound of several people running past the store. She stepped outside under a tree and looked over toward the Tidewater Seafood Market and Teel's place.

“There were three white men standing over a boy, kicking him back and forth on the ground,” Downey testified in a quavering voice. “And I yelled, ‘You better stop before you kill him.' ” Robert Teel replied, “You better get back into the store,” according to Downey. She did not really recognize the other two men, she said, nor did she go back inside. “They kept kicking him back and forth and hitting him with the guns,” Mrs. Downey testified, “and then Mr. Teel said ‘Shoot the son of a bitch.' Then he said it again, ‘Shoot the son of a bitch nigger.' And I heard the shot and ran back into the store.” It was Larry Teel, she indicated, who'd held the rifle. Mrs. Downey collapsed in tears after testifying, and the bailiff helped her out of the courtroom. At that, the state rested its case against the Teels.

Judy Teel, Larry's eighteen-year-old wife, was the first witness for the defense the next day. She had seen a bunch of “them,” she said, referring to the young black men, coming over from the fish market before the trouble started. She testified that Henry Marrow, whom she said she had never seen before, had called out to her, “Hey, white girl. Hey, white girl.” Larry had stepped out of the shop and told the black man not to speak to her like that, in her account, and Marrow had advanced on her husband with a knife and used foul language, she told the court. Larry did not kick Henry Marrow, like some people said, she asserted, but when Marrow attacked him she ran to the front of the barbershop to get Teel and Roger to “help Larry. I just yelled for them to help Larry.” She knew that there were guns in the barbershop, she admitted, but she never saw anyone with a gun at any time. In a massive irregularity that I cannot explain, Judy was the only witness for the defense who followed Judge Martin's sequestration order and thus did not hear the testimony of the other witnesses.

Neither Larry Teel nor his father had been expected to testify at the trial. But Billy Watkins called him to the stand. “In a surprise move here Thursday,” the
News and Observer
reported, “Larry Teel, 18-year-old son of a local barber, Robert Teel, took the witness stand in Granville County Superior Court and denied that he shot and killed a local Negro man.” According to Larry, whom one seasoned courtroom observer described as “obviously terrified,” he and his wife had been rolling motorcycles into the shop when Marrow walked toward them. “Hey, white girl. Hey, you son of a bitch,” Larry quoted the young black man as having said. When Larry objected to Marrow's talking to his wife disrespectfully, he told the court, the black man replied, “Come on, I am a soul brother,” and brandished a knife at him. When Marrow rushed at him, “I kicked him in the chest,” Larry Teel said, contradicting his wife's testimony. “He staggered back and grabbed a handful of gravel and threw it at me. About that time I heard a shotgun.”

When he found the young black man on the ground, Larry claimed, he straddled Marrow, hit him several times with his fists, took the knife away from him, and jumped to his feet. As he stood over Marrow, the younger Teel claimed, he saw a gun pointed at the fallen man's head. “I was looking down at a rifle barrel,” said Teel, “and it jerked and went off.” His father and another man were standing with him at the time, Larry swore, but he didn't see who the other man was. He had not fired a gun, nor even held a gun at any point that night, Larry maintained. Though he admitted to having had one foot on either side of Marrow's body when he heard the gunshot, he did not know who was holding the weapon. He said he had absolutely no clue who might have fired the gun that killed Henry Marrow, though he admitted that his father was present. Larry recognized his father's voice, he conceded, “when he told me ‘I'm going to go call an ambulance and the police.' ”

As hard as it must have been for anyone in the room to believe Larry Teel's shaky and sullen account of the killing, what happened the next day was even more far-fetched. In fact, the last day of testimony fully justified prosecutor Burgwyn's comparison to the Perry Mason show, which my father and I often watched together. In those days, Perry Mason was television's most popular detective, a dark, brooding defense attorney who unraveled mysterious murders in an hour, not counting commercials. By the third or fourth commercial break, the handsome Tv lawyer knew who the killer was—but he wasn't telling. In the climactic courtroom scene of each episode—the accused was always innocent—the real murderer would stand up and blurt out a startling confession and the blameless person before the bar of justice would go free. The plots on Perry Mason were predictable even to an eleven-year-old, but no one except Billy Watkins seemed to anticipate what was about to happen in the Granville County courthouse on August 31, 1970.

That morning, Watkins called Roger Oakley to the stand. Roger had not been named as either a witness or a suspect; the prosecution witnesses had all identified his brother Larry as the one who had fired the lethal bullet. Roger had not even attended the trial, despite the fact that his brother and his father sat charged with first-degree murder. “The trial of an Oxford man and his son on charges of murdering a 23-year-old black man took a startling turn on Friday,” a reporter for the
News and Observer
wrote, “when another member of the defendants' family testified in Granville County Superior Court that he was holding the gun that fired the fatal shot.” He was working on the boat parked in front of the barbershop with his father, Roger Oakley testified, when he heard his brother's wife “holler for me to help Larry.”

He ran around the corner of the motorcycle shop and saw a black man coming at his younger brother with a knife, he told the court. When he saw his father run out of the barbershop with a shotgun, he went inside and got the combined .410 shotgun and .22 rifle over-and-under and ran after his father, who fired the 12-gauge shotgun at a man who was running. Oakley testified that when he got to the other side of the seafood market, he saw his father and Larry standing above the fallen Henry Marrow, and he joined them, aiming the gun down at Marrow's head. At no time, he said, did Larry have a gun in his hand that night. “Someone bumped my shoulder and the gun went off,” Roger said quietly, tears streaming down his face. “I didn't mean to kill nobody.”

Prosecutor Burgwyn, red-faced and nearly sputtering, roared into his cross-examination. “Why haven't you told the truth before?” he demanded. “If this was an accident, why did you let your father and brother stand trial for first-degree murder?”

“Because my lawyer told me not to,” Roger Oakley whispered. “My lawyer told me not to say nothing.”

“Do you mean to tell this jury that you let your father and your brother stay in jail without privilege of bond since May 12, and didn't tell anybody you shot the man, and that the shooting was an accident?” Burgwyn asked. Roger replied that he had only decided to testify the week before. “Your father and your brother were on trial for their lives in this courthouse,” the gray-haired prosecutor said softly to the young man. “On trial for their
lives,
” he repeated, “charged with capital murder. And you have not set foot in this courtroom. Why haven't you come here before?”

Roger Oakley stared at the floor. “My attorney told me not to come,” he whispered.

“So your brother Larry never touched that gun? Did I hear you correctly on that point?” the prosecutor asked.

“Yes, sir,” Oakley replied. “I never saw him touch a gun the whole time.”

“Both barrels of that gun had been fired,” Burgwyn said. “The rifle barrel that killed Henry Marrow, and the .410-shotgun underneath had been fired, too. Did you fire the shotgun and the rifle?”

“I refuse to answer on the grounds that it may incriminate me,” Roger chanted quietly, as if he were talking to himself.

“The boy who lay on the ground, begging for his life, helpless, Roger—did you kick him?”

“I was kicking him,” Oakley replied quietly. “We was all kicking him.”

“Did you beat him with the stock of that rifle?” Burgwyn asked. “His skull was fractured, Roger,” the prosecutor added. “You say you were standing above him with a rifle. Did you hit him with it?”

“I refuse to answer on the grounds that it may incriminate me,” Oakley said once more in the same distant monotone.

“Who told you to say that, Roger?” the prosecutor demanded. “Who told you to plead the Fifth Amendment?”

“My lawyers,” Oakley whispered. “Frank Banzet and Mr. Watkins.” At this point, the court reporter remembered, the young man began to cry softly.

“You know, of course, that neither your wife nor your attorney can testify against you, don't you? They told you that, too, didn't they? And they told you that all the witnesses had testified that Larry was holding the gun, didn't they?” Burgwyn continued. “And they told you that if you said you'd shot the rifle, but that it was an accident, your brother and father might not have to go to prison, didn't they? And they told you that it would be hard to convict you of something you didn't do, when all the witnesses had already testified that your brother had done it, didn't they? Isn't that more or less what they told you, Roger?”

“I refuse to answer on the grounds that it may incriminate me,” the young man said weakly.

“Your brother shot that boy, didn't he?” Burgwyn said. “And you and your daddy helped kill him, didn't you? They let you stay home with your wife and the baby, isn't that right? And now you're supposed to help them get out of jail by saying that you had the gun the whole time, when you know there isn't a witness anywhere that can testify to that effect, aren't you? Nobody but your wife and your attorney, and neither one of them can testify against you. Tell the truth.”

“No, sir,” Roger Oakley sobbed softly. “I'm sorry.”

“No further questions,” Burgwyn told the judge. The defense rested its case before lunch. The attorneys for both sides would begin offering summations that afternoon at three.

During the recess, Lieutenant J. C. Williams of the Oxford Police Department and Bill Burgwyn fielded questions from reporters who wanted to know why Roger Oakley had not been charged in the case. “There was a third party mentioned from time to time during the investigation as a participant in the slaying,” Lieutenant Williams stammered. “But none of my five witnesses could make a positive identification of the third person. And none of the five witnesses told investigating officers that the third party was the one who pulled the trigger. Frankly, I don't know what to make of it, either.” Burgwyn told the reporters that Roger Oakley would have been charged in the original indictment with first-degree murder, since he had clearly helped Larry and Robert Teel kill Henry Marrow, but that the prosecution “could never positively identify the other man” who had been standing with the pair over the body. The prosecutor denied any implication that the investigators had charged the wrong man: all of them had participated in the killing, he said, which was true, and it made little difference who had pulled the last trigger. Every witness for the defense was a member of the Teel family, and he did not see any reason to take Roger's confession, which could not be verified, over the testimony of five witnesses for the state, all of whom agreed that Larry Teel had fired the fatal shot.