Dance of Death (26 page)

Cottingham cut him off. He let Diggs know right away the monkey was not on his back. “It is expressed in the verdict of the jury, who will hear the testimony, and I have full confidence that the jury will do what they perceive to be right and what the evidence suggests, and in my view, that's where the confidence is in the court.”

And with that being said, a little housekeeping was done, and with nothing more from the prosecution and defense, court was adjourned at 4:30
P.M
. On the way out of the courtroom, reporter Adam Shapiro, with News Channel 12, announced he was taking bets that Renee Poole would walk. Nobody offered to side against him.

The trial of the
State of South Carolina
v.
Kimberly Renee Poole
reconvened Wednesday, November 10, at 9:30
A.M
. Adam Shapiro and his television crew was there to film it. He talked with Marie Summey before the trial started and told her not to worry, he wouldn't be around to question her when the verdict was handed down. “Well, don't you worry,” she told him. “John and Renee are coming home.”

As a courtesy to the defense, Judge Cottingham had given them an extra day to prepare and meet with their witnesses. The jurors now sat in much more comfortable chairs to the left of the prosecution's table, and adjacent to the camera crew from Court TV. Cottingham made it clear to the jury a second time that the state was not seeking the death penalty against Renee Poole. The burden of proof, however, was on the state to prove her guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The indictment was for murder and criminal conspiracy.

Greg Hembree and Fran Humphries, both dressed in dark blue suits, sat at the prosecution table beside Bill Diggs, his attorney son Parnell Diggs and co-counsel Orrie West. At the end of the defense table private investigator C. E. Martin sat to the right of Renee and helped with the workload. His presence would be explained later by the defense in detail.

The victim's and defendant's families sat directly behind their respective attorneys, along with their supportive staff members. As normally occurs in a trial, the lawyers and staff members continually exchanged whispers and shuffled paperwork throughout the proceedings. For some odd reason, there was one large wooden chair in the courtroom—directly behind and in the middle of the prosecution and defense tables—that was elevated approximately twelve inches off the floor. Unbeknownst to anyone but himself, Detective Terry Altman made this his special seat. It gave him the appearance of being in an elevated position, and he sat there, grinning like a Cheshire cat who had finally caught his songbird. A small, insignificant matter, yet it seemed to give the prosecution a large boost in the courtroom.

Sitting to the right of the defense table in the gallery reserved for newsprint reporters was John Hinton, of the
Winston-Salem Journal
. For several days, Hinton would be the lone wolf covering the trial, writing dozens of articles about the Poole murder case. North Carolina television reporters and their cameramen were positioned in the balcony, appreciative of having been granted a bird's-eye view of the proceedings. Outside the courtroom, their parked satellite vans beamed the news back daily to their affiliates, just in time to share with their interested viewers. Judge Cottingham had given permission for the use of cameras and tape recorders in the courtroom, but disallowed the use of any strobes or camera flashes. The handful of spectators sitting in the gallery behind the families believed from what they had read in the newspaper that the prosecution and his team already had the upper hand. There seemed to be no unreasonable doubt the suspects were lovers and that love or jealously was always motive enough for murder.

Renee looked straight ahead when the judge read Count 1 of the indictment:

Count 2 involved criminal conspiracy in that:

Bill Diggs glanced at his client and took a deep breath, knowing he was about to begin a tough battle against the state. He had already filed his motions to try and stop the onslaught, arguing with the judge that Renee had been slighted from the day she had been arrested. But it had fallen on deaf ears.

Diggs was also about to discover that solicitor Hembree and deputy solicitor Humphries were meticulous lawyers who had done their homework. They had crossed all their t's and dotted all their i's. Not only would he have to play a near-perfect game of defense to get Renee acquitted, throughout the course of the trial, he also would have to defend the prosecution's accusations against John Frazier. It was not an enviable position. With Court TV airing the event in its entirety, and other news crews taping for nightly broadcasts, Diggs found himself in the battle of his career with the prosecution pulling out all the stops.

Fran Humphries was the first to draw blood. He kept his opening statement brief, telling the jury what he was going to prove to them and how he would present witnesses to substantiate his opening statement. He stood directly in front of the jurors and never broke eye contact. In a soft and low voice, he laid out the prosecution's case.

“In late April or so of 1998, Kimberly Renee Poole became so confined by the walls which were her ordinary life—you know the life that I talk about, the life that most of us aspire to—those walls became so confining to her that she developed a plan, a plan with a lover that she had had for about three months at the time. And on May 1, 1998, Kimberly Renee Poole, this defendant, took her two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, boxed up her belongings and, in the dead of night while her husband was at work, moved out of the marital residence and moved in with a fellow named John Boyd Frazier.

“Now, folks, if that were the end of it, it would be an age-old sad story, divorce and moving on, but Mrs. Poole got some good advice. She got some good advice which told her, ‘Mrs. Poole, if you believe that based on your circumstances, having left the marital residence, having no reputable and steady employment, and in the midst of an adulterous affair, you think you're gonna keep this child, you are sorely mistaken.'

“On May fifteenth, Kimberly Renee Poole moved back in with her husband, our victim, William Brent Poole. Now, was she happy about it? No, ma'am. No, sir. And the evidence will show you. What did she do about it? She treated this situation just as she had treated each and every situation in her life. What Kimberly Renee Poole wanted, Kimberly Renee Poole got.

“That home was not the place for her, but she wanted it all. And, folks, there was only one way to have it all. Oh, she wanted the home, but she didn't want the husband. And in the first week of June, after having moved back in with her long-suffering husband, she meets with her lover and a number of others, and over the course of an evening, plans a trap which will ultimately gain her that one thing she wants, which, folks, is everything.

“They planned it in meticulous detail, leaving absolutely nothing to chance. They set the trap, folks, with the one bait that this man, William Brent Poole, could not resist, and that was this: William Brent Poole, hoping against hope, hoped for a meaningful reunion with his wife. A reuniting of his family. Father, mother and daughter. Kimberly Renee Poole proposed to William Brent Poole that they take a vacation, that they celebrate their third anniversary, that they do that in Myrtle Beach, and on June 9, 1998, in the very late evening hours, on their anniversary, Kimberly Renee Poole walked her husband of three years, the father of her daughter, down an Horry County beach, away from the lights, to her lover, John Boyd Frazier. And there in the darkness, ladies and gentlemen, John Boyd Frazier shot and killed William Brent Poole.

“Folks, this is a murder case. Now I've already told you that Kimberly Renee Poole didn't pull the trigger. This case is founded upon a legal principle called the law of parties. Now the judge is gonna charge you about the law in this case, but as a preface to that, let me tell you this: The law of parties basically is this; it's more commonly called the hand of one is the hand of all, and what it means is this. If one is present, if one is aiding and abetting or participating, even though that person does not have the finger on the trigger, that person is equally—folks, equally—as guilty as the person who pulls the trigger and fires the fatal shots.

“That principle is founded in common sense because I tell you this, ladies and gentlemen, but for the conduct of Kimberly Renee Poole in this instance, William Brent Poole, husband, father and son, would not be dead.

“Over the course of the next few days, the state will present to you a number of witnesses, maybe as much as thirty-five or forty. We'll start at the crime scene. From there, we'll go back, because that is really where the story is.

“Now, you may ask me, ‘Mr. Solicitor, how do you know all of this? How do you know all of this?' She told us. Kimberly Renee Poole. She talked to law enforcement immediately after, and in her first contact with law enforcement, she described an armed robbery and murder by an unknown male assailant in dark clothing. That's where she starts, but, folks, over the course of the next four days, Kimberly Renee Poole, predator, becomes prey, and as walls, which she absolutely abhors, when they come in and start to enclose her, then and only then does she begin to trickle out the truth.

“You'll have the opportunity to hear all those statements and, more importantly, folks, you'll hear the evidence which supports those statements, at least in the portions that are true, by a number of witnesses whose credibility you'll judge.

“This is a murder case. This is a case based on a conspiracy and this is a case in which our victim, William Brent Poole, but for the actions of his wife of three years, a woman who wanted it all, would be alive today. Folks, it will require your absolute certain attention to detail, because, folks, it is the details....

“But I tell you, folks, today and the next few days are maybe some of the most important days you'll breathe on this earth because you have a unique opportunity in this trial to speak the truth when you render your verdict because that's that—that means, to speak the truth.”

Humphries thanked the jurors for their service in his closing remarks, then gave way to the defense.

Bill Diggs rose to make his opening statement and addressed the jurors.

“Having staked out what the state's position is in this case,” he began, “I want you to think for just a minute about this: what if he is wrong? I want you to think a minute about what this young girl, this young woman, has been through herself for the last year and a half.

“They are public servants. They are doing their jobs, but they better hope that they're right, because if they are wrong we've compounded a tragedy. The tragedy of Brent Poole's death with another tragedy, and that is forcing her to go through an accusation of the most terrible kind that we could make in our society. I want you to think about this. What if they are wrong?

“Now, the state has the burden of proof in this case. Your job is to hold him to that burden of proof, which he says he's gonna make and meet. He's already told you my client”—Diggs asked Renee to stand, then introduced her to the jury—“This is Kimberly Renee Poole. She's the only one you're sitting in judgment of. That's her.”

Renee sat back down and Diggs continued.

“He's already told you she didn't pull the trigger. She didn't kill her husband. You don't have to worry about that. That's not an issue in this case. Somebody pulled the trigger. He told you it was John Frazier, and so the only issue that you have to decide, was she conspiring with him to bring that about? And I'm gonna tell you right now, and you can take this to the bank, he's not gonna be able to prove it. He's not gonna be able to prove it, because it didn't happen.

“Fortunately, and thank heavens for technology, he tells you she told them she did this. Gonna have a chance not to just take his word for that. You're gonna have a chance to listen to her own words. After eleven or twelve hours of interrogation, on and on and on, to see what she said, look at the conditions under which she said those things, and you make a decision right there as to whether or not we've got a reliable statement here that we can take to the bank and convict this young girl on. That's a decision you're gonna have to make and it's not gonna get the state where it wants to go, because it didn't happen.”

Diggs cautioned them not to make up their mind until all the facts were in. “You talk about reasonable doubt, you're gonna have two, at least two. Very strong and overpowering doubts that compel a not guilty verdict. You're gonna have doubts in this case for two basic fundamental reasons, completely disassociated from one another, based on the evidence in this case. They are gonna be completely unrelated, either one of which is gonna require a verdict of not guilty.

“It's a tragedy that brings us here, and we don't apologize for that. That's tragic. This family is entitled to justice, but I will bet you they're the first ones who would say, ‘We want the killer of our son brought to justice. We don't want an innocent person instead or in lieu of that person,' and that's your job. Not only to determine who the killer was, but to make sure an innocent person doesn't stand in lieu of that killer.

“This is a hard, demanding job that you're gonna have. Hold me to my representations. I don't mind you doing that. You just hold the solicitor to the representations that he made.

“We appreciate your participation in this case. Without you, simply pointing the finger or using the state to point the finger at Renee, and that would do it for her. Thank heavens we don't live in that society.”