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Authors: Michael Benson

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Each potential juror was questioned by the prosecution as to his or her death penalty beliefs. Gregory Hembree called it “exploring their feeling.” He saw to it that any citizen who rejected capital punishment out of hand didn’t find a place on the jury.

William Diggs, his gray ponytail even longer than at the first trial, concentrated his questions on how much knowledge each potential juror had regarding his client’s background and alleged bad acts. Diggs eliminated the plethora of potential jurors who already thought Stanko guilty and were eager to see him executed.

On Tuesday, another twenty-five potential panelists endured the qualification process, but only seven of them were not sent home. On Wednesday, the court remained open despite the fact that it was Veteran’s Day. By Thursday evening, jury qualification was through, and those forty-five were whittled down to sixteen on Friday—Friday the Thirteenth. Six men, six women. All four alternates were female. Judge Steven John told the jurors and alternates that his already-existing gag order applied to them, too. They were not allowed to talk with anyone about the case. Estimates were that they would be sequestered and without their families for seven or eight days. During that time, they’d be staying in a hotel, and they would not be allowed to watch the news, use the Internet, or read a newspaper. Jurors would be allowed brief phone calls and visits with their loved ones, but these encounters would be closely monitored by both the sheriff’s office and SLED.

Sheriff Phillip Thompson, who was also the president of the South Carolina Sheriffs’ Association, told A. J. Ross, of WMBF-TV, that they were being particularly careful to keep outside influences from interfering with the jury’s work. High-profile case, life at stake—everything needed to be done properly.

In cases tried before a sequestered jury, both prosecution and defense felt pressure to be efficient, to stay focused on the job at hand, and do their jobs “in a timely fashion.”

Bill Diggs moved that this jury should be “thrown out” and replaced by another, from somewhere other than Horry County. In Horry, he said, emotions ran hot, and it would be impossible to get a fair trial. Half these jurors had prior knowledge of the case, having been exposed to both electronic and print reports, Diggs argued.

Judge John denied the motion.

As with Stephen Stanko’s first trial, the folks who were scheduled to testify were corraled into a room and kept from observing the testimony that preceded theirs. Unlike the first witness room, there wasn’t much laughter, nervous or otherwise. All the jokes were spent, leaving just a “dust in the sunbeam” tension, a teeth-grinding atmosphere.

As the trial began, a major storm descended upon the area and the entire proceedings took place during what some South Carolinians called the
worst weather ever.
Security checks were given to folks still a little drippy from the dash to the courthouse door.

Opening statements began just after noon.

Gregory Hembree said, “I’d like for you, the jury, to please use your common sense and judgment that will reach a verdict that speaks the truth. Use your common everyday abilities, reasoning abilities, for making any decisions, for making
this
decision. Common sense and good judgment—bring it into this courtroom. That’s why we have a jury of our peers. That’s why we don’t have a jury of judges, or a jury of lawyers, or a jury of something else. We have a jury of citizens because we want the good common sense.”

William Diggs rebutted Hembree’s argument by telling the jury to focus on Stephen Stanko’s mental state: “I don’t want to say this, and I know it’s going to sound wrong to my client because he’s a human being, but he’s not healthy. Period. We can show you that he is not healthy. The activity here”—Diggs pointed to the front of his head—“shows that he is not healthy.”

Anyone expecting a new slant on things from Stanko’s defense was disappointed with Diggs’s opening statement. He hadn’t altered his strategy very much from the first trial.

Steve Stanko, he said, suffered from a brain disorder that kept him from “maintaining relationships, holding a job, and analyzing things.” This didn’t mean Steve wasn’t smart. In fact, he had a very high intelligence quotient. That fact was irrelevant. His problem was behavioral, not intellectual.

Referring to Stephen Stanko and Henry Lee Turner, Diggs said, “The evidence is going to show these two men were friends. There’s no need to kill your friend. Mr. Turner’s death is senseless. It’s terrible. It’s a tragedy.”

By two o’clock, the first witness was called. It was established that at 3:22
A.M
. on April 8, 2005, a telephone registered to Laura Ling was used to call Henry Turner’s home.

One of Turner’s neighbors testified to seeing Ling’s car outside Turner’s home on Kimberly Drive later on the morning of April 8.

Horry County police sergeant Jeff Gause testified that his agency received a call from Turner’s son stating that Henry Turner was missing. He had missed a family dinner that day, which meant something was wrong. Arriving at the scene, Gause noted Ling’s car out front. They also noted that Turner’s pickup truck, which should have been there, was missing. A police log indicated that Gause was the thirteenth official to enter the crime scene. The first was Officer Thomas McMillan, who discovered the body, quickly followed by EMT officer Walter Gable. Gause may not have been in the top ten to arrive, but his observations carried the most weight, as it had been he who’d thoroughly photographed the victim’s mobile home and later drew the police schematic of Turner’s entire living space, including the position of Turner’s body on his bedroom floor, with his feet in the threshold to the bathroom.

In addition to Turner’s body, shot once each from the front and back, Gause also observed a pillow with gun residue on one side and blood on the other.

Gause testified that it appeared Turner had been shaving when the shooting occurred, because an electric razor was found near the body. Turner’s body was found with the pants pockets turned inside out.

To establish that Stephen Stanko had stolen Henry Lee Turner’s pickup and driven to Columbia, South Carolina, on April 8, the night of Turner’s murder, the prosecution called a man named Ryan Coleman.

“What do you do for a living, Mr. Coleman?”

“I am a bartender at the Blue Marlin,” the witness answered.

“In what town is that bar located?”

“Columbia.”

“And you were working in that capacity on April 8, 2005?”

“Yes, sir.”

Yes, on that evening, the defendant had come into his bar, and he’d spent a good deal more than the average customer. His tab came to $180, Coleman said, because in addition to drinks for himself, he was purchasing rounds for others as well.

When the Blue Marlin closed and it came time for the defendant to leave, Coleman testified, he’d given him $300, which was the bill
plus
a $120 tip.
Very
generous.

The witness admitted that after closing up the Blue Marlin, he joined the defendant at another bar, also in Columbia. Asked if anything out of the ordinary had occurred at the second bar, Coleman said it had. Stanko had been bragging to his drinking buddies all night that he was a “successful businessman.” Finally he ran into a bar patron who didn’t believe him. “Bullshit,” the guy said. This stuck in the defendant’s craw, Coleman said.

“He became irate?”

“I think ‘irate’ would be an understatement,” Coleman said. “He was red-in-the-face mad.” Coleman heard the defendant threaten the man who’d accused him of lying.

All eyes were on Dana Putnam as she entered the courtroom and walked to the front, where she promised to tell the whole truth. Her black hair was still up, just as it had been on the night she met Stephen Stanko. Wearing a baby blue sleeveless blouse and hoop earrings, she took the stand and testified that she had met the defendant on April 9, the day after his spending spree in Columbia bars. She told Gregory Hembree that her initial impression of Stanko was very positive.

“He was a very charming, very attractive, very smart, well-read, respectable guy,” she said. He was wearing a pullover Hooters shirt, and he was
very
popular.

Part of his appeal to the bar crowd was the size of his wallet, which seemed to hold an endless amount of cash. He took her and her friends out to dinner. He bought drinks. On Sunday morning, he even went to church with her.

When Putnam asked Stanko where all of that cash came from, he told her the yarn he’d been spinning all weekend. He owned eight and co-owned nine Hooters franchises throughout the Southeast.

If it had been any other time of year, she might have questioned the truth of his tale, but it was Masters weekend and Augusta was swimming with well-kempt affluence. “He was so charming and such a gentleman,” she added.

Putnam told the story of Stanko spending the night at her home, and subsequently seeing Stanko’s photo in the paper. She contacted Georgia authorities, and the defendant was apprehended without incident while exiting a shopping mall.

Still, she’d been duped, and she knew it. “I can’t believe I fell for that. When I saw his picture in the paper, I just screamed and cried.”

The witness with the biggest impact on the jury was Henry Lee Turner’s daughter, Debbie Turner Gallogly, of Roswell, Georgia. She testified that two days after her father’s twice-shot body was discovered by police, she and other relatives set about the difficult task of cleaning his home.

“What of note, if anything, did you find during that cleanup?” Gregory Hembree asked.

“We found a pool cue case, and inside the case was a business card.”

“Did you read the card?”

“Yes.”

“Could you tell the jury what was written on the business card?”

“It said, ‘Stephen C. Stanko, paralegal and exotic dancer,’” Gallogly recalled.

The prosecution established on the first day that Stephen Stanko had spent Masters weekend with some sort of injury to his hand. How he hurt himself depended upon whom he spoke with. Rather than nailing down one lie, such as he had with the Hooters franchises, he told a variety of stories to explain his hand—punched his car, a guy hit on his date, etc.

Chris Powell, branch manager of the Murrells Inlet Bank of America, testified that seven hundred dollars in Laura Ling’s account was withdrawn after her death. There was surveillance footage of the man who withdrew the money, and he resembled Stanko. Powell, however, said he could not positively ID Stanko from the somewhat blurry images. The jury saw those images, too. No matter what the witness said, it
was
Stephen Stanko.

On cross-examination, Powell noted that the man in the photos was making no effort to hide his identity or obstruct the camera.

In all, thirteen witnesses testified for the prosecution that Friday.

SATURDAY

No such thing as a weekend off when a jury is sequestered. On Saturday morning, November 14, 2009, the prosecution’s first witness was Investigator James Gordon, of the Richmond County Sheriff’s Office. He testified that it was he, after Stanko was apprehended, who processed Henry Lee Turner’s stolen truck.

Gordon testified as to the items he discovered. These included a registration in the glove box indicating the truck belonged to Henry Lee Turner, a Goose Creek High School ring, Class of 1986, with STEVE engraved on the inside, a pullover Hooters shirt, a bag containing a loaded handgun, Turner’s checkbook, and a receipt book belonging to Stephen Stanko. The evidence linked the truck to Stanko, and Stanko to the murder.

Dr. Kim Collins, who participated in the postmortem of both of Stephen Stanko’s murder victims, determined that the decedent died because of two gunshot wounds, one in the right side of his chest, the other in the back. Both bullets, she testified, were found during the autopsy.

“Could you determine which wound came first, Dr. Collins?”

“Yes, the wound in the chest came first.”

At 10:46, on the morning of the second day of testimony, after presenting precisely twenty witnesses, the prosecution rested its case.

“Mr. Diggs, is the defense ready to present its case?”

“We are, Your Honor.”

Judge Steven John called an early lunch break. The defense would commence at one o’clock.

The defense presented a series of medical experts—some repeats from the first trial, some new—all of whom testified that Stephen Stanko’s impulses were poorly controlled due to puny frontal lobes.

In order to make the medical testimony more credible to the Horry County jury, Bill Diggs took greater care this time establishing the chain of evidence for the PET scans.

Dr. Marc Einhorn, a self-employed neurophysiologist from Georgia, testified that he examined the defendant in 2006. The examination included both a PET scan of his brain and an intelligence test. Stanko’s IQ was around one-forty, which put him in the “gifted area.” Dr. Einhorn said the PET scans were made at the Medical University of South Carolina. Those images were sent to Dr. Joseph C. Wu, of the University of California at Irvine (UCI).

Dr. Einhorn was forced to admit on cross-examination that tests done while Stanko was in prison “came back fine.”

Dr. Wu was an expert on psychiatric disorders and brain scanning, the associate professor in residence in the department of psychiatry and human behavior at the UCI Brain Imaging Center, and a leading expert in using PET scans to visualize brain function and/or activity. He’d published multiple articles on PET scans of neuropsychiatric conditions. He had received during the course of his career more than a million dollars in grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) . In a leading book on psychiatry,
Kaplan & Sadock’s Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry,
Dr. Wu wrote the chapter on functional brain imaging. He spoke with a thick Chinese accent and had a mustache.

With his expertise established, Dr. Wu told the jury about the sad shriveled state of the gray matter immediately behind the defendant’s forehead.

Dr. Ruben Gur was a psychiatry professor and neurologist from the Univsrsity of Pennsylvania—a tall, bespectacled man, with a wild crop of curly gray hair. For his court appearance, he wore a brown jacket, with a blue shirt and tie.

As he testified, Dr. Gur stood and showed the jury a plastic model of the human brain. The model opened at its center and divided into two halves so Dr. Gur could show a cross-sectional view.

“Dr. Gur, during your examination, did you find that images of Steve’s brain revealed a normal brain?” William Diggs asked.

“No, sir. Those images showed an abnormal brain,” Dr. Gur replied. Abnormal in a way that could induce “malfunction in a very serious way.”

Was it a common problem? No, Stephen Stanko’s brain was rare.

Thank goodness, spectators thought, they were discussing the abnormal brain of a rare monster.

Dr. Gur characterized Steve’s problem as a physical injury causing a personality disorder, the effect of which was that Steve had little regard for others. He treated other people like instruments. He was charming but had “no feeling beyond the external demeanor.” People with the condition Stanko suffered from could be “super cool” yet glow hot in a flash.

“All of a sudden, they can attack,” Dr. Gur testified.

Dr. James Thrasher, the South Carolina psychiatrist who examined Stephen Stanko not long after the murders, repeated his testimony that complications surrounding Steve’s birth and a severe concussion as a teenager could have damaged his brain.

Thrasher explained that during his first interview with the defendant soon after the murders, Stanko had given him conflicting reasons why he’d driven to Henry Lee Turner’s house after murdering Laura Ling. At first, he told Thrasher the same lie he’d told Turner, that his father had died and he needed consoling. (But that lie, Stanko must have realized, was destined to collapse when authorities discovered his dad was alive.) Later, Stanko told Thrasher he’d gone to see Turner because he was feeling suicidal and was thinking of turning himself in because he “might have” killed Laura.

At Turner’s house, Stanko claimed, there had been an “altercation.” Turner grabbed a gun and pointed it at Stanko. There was a struggle. During the desperate grapple, the gun went flying. Stanko dove and got to it first. He grabbed it and fired, all in one motion.

Taking it point by point, Gregory Hembree used masterful cross-examination technique to illustrate the ways Stephen Stanko’s scenario differed from the evidence. Stanko’s story, for example, did not account for the other two shots fired, or the hole in the pillow-turned-silencer.

“Did Stanko mention the second shot into the victim’s torso with the .357 Magnum?”

“No.”

“Did he mention the pillow?”

“No, he did not.”

“Did he mention there was still an electric shaver near the victim’s hand when he was found on the bathroom floor?”

“No, he didn’t mention that detail during our interview,” Dr. Thrasher replied.