The Innocent Man (27 page)

The
Ake
decision required that the basic tools of an adequate defense be provided by the state to an indigent defendant. It was ignored by Judge Jones in both the Fritz and the Williamson trials.

Forensic evidence was a crucial part of the prosecution. Jerry Peters, Larry Mullins, Mary Long, Susan Land, and Melvin Hett were all experts. Ron was left with only Barney, a competent courtroom advocate, but, sadly, one unable to see the evidence.

The state rested after Melvin Hett. At the beginning of the trial, Barney waived his opening statement, reserving it for the start of his defense. It was a risky maneuver. Most defense lawyers can’t wait to address the jurors early on to begin sowing doubt about the state’s evidence. The opening statement and the closing argument are the only stages in a trial when a lawyer can directly address the jury, and they are opportunities too ripe to pass up.

Barney, after the state rested, surprised everyone by again waiving his right to an opening statement. No
reason was given, none was required, but it was a very unusual tactic.

Barney called to the stand seven straight jailers. All denied they had ever heard Ron Williamson in any way implicate himself in the Carter murder.

Wayne Joplin was the Pontotoc County court clerk. Barney called him as a witness to review the records of Terri Holland. She had been arrested in New Mexico in October 1984 and hauled back to Ada and placed in jail, where she promptly helped solve two sensational murder cases, though she waited two years to inform the police about Ron’s dramatic confession to her. She pleaded guilty to the bad-check charges, received a five-year sentence with three suspended, and was ordered to pay court costs of $70, restitution of $527.09, $225 for attorneys’ fees at the rate of $50 per month, $10 a month to the Department of Corrections, and $50 a month to the Crime Victims Compensation Fund.

She made one payment of $50 in May 1986, then all was apparently forgiven.

Barney was down to his last witness, the defendant himself. Allowing Ron to testify was risky. He was volatile—earlier in the day he had lashed out at Terri Holland—and the jury was already afraid of him. He had a criminal record, which Peterson would hammer him with, attacking his credibility. No one was certain how much, if any, of his meds he was receiving. He was angry and unpredictable, and, worst of all, he had not been prepped by his lawyer.

Barney asked for a conference at the bench and said to Judge Jones: “Now then, the fun starts. I’d like to have a recess to do whatever I can as far as having any kind of calming influence on him. He seems—well, he
hasn’t been jumping up and down. I’m ready to have a recess anyway.”

“You’re down to one possible witness?” Judge Jones asked.

“I’m down to one, yeah, and I think you’re using the right term too, Judge.”

When they adjourned for the noon recess, Ron was led downstairs on his way to the jail. He saw the victim’s father and yelled, “Charlie Carter, I did not kill your daughter!” The deputies hustled him away even faster.

At 1:00 p.m., he was sworn in. After a few preliminary questions, he denied having any conversation with Terri Holland and denied ever meeting Debbie Carter.

When did he first learn of Carter’s death? Barney asked. “On December the 8th, my sister, Annette Hudson, called over to the house, and mother answered the telephone. And I heard mother say, ‘Well, I know Ronnie didn’t do it because he was at home.’ And I asked mother what that was about. She said that Annette had called and said that there had been a girl killed in our neighborhood.”

The lack of preparation became more apparent a few minutes later when Barney asked the witness about first meeting Gary Rogers.

Ron said, “And it was just shortly after that that I went down to the station and gave a lie detector test.”

Barney almost choked: “Ronnie, don’t—you’re not supposed to talk about that.”

Any mention of a polygraph in front of the jury was prohibited. Had the state done so, a mistrial would have been in order. No one had bothered to inform Ron. Seconds later he stepped out of bounds again when he described an incident with Dennis Fritz. “I was with
Dennis Fritz and we were going down the road and I told him that Dennis Smith had called me back and told me the results of the polygraph test had been inconclusive.”

Barney plowed ahead and changed the subject. They talked briefly about Ron’s conviction on the forged instrument. Then a few questions about where he was on the night of the murder. Barney finished with a feeble “Did you kill Debbie Carter?”

“No sir. I did not.”

“I believe that’s all.”

In his haste to get his client on and off the stand with as little damage as possible, Barney neglected to rebut most of the allegations from the state’s witnesses. Ron could have explained his “dream confession” to Rogers and Featherstone the night after his arrest. He could have explained his jailhouse conversations with John Christian and Mike Tenney. He could have diagrammed the jail and explained to the jury that it was impossible for Terri Holland to hear what she heard without others doing so. He could have flatly denied the statements of Glen Gore, Gary Allen, Tony Vick, Donna Walker, and Letha Caldwell.

Like all prosecutors, Peterson was itching for a shot at the defendant on cross-examination. What he didn’t expect was for the defendant to be thoroughly unintimidated. He began by making much of Ron’s friendship with Dennis Fritz, now a convicted murderer.

“Isn’t it a fact, Mr. Williamson, that you and Dennis Fritz are about the only friends each of you got; isn’t that right?”

“Well, let’s put it like this,” Ron answered coolly. “You framed him, and now you’re trying to frame me.”

The words echoed around the courtroom as Peterson caught his breath.

Changing the subject, he asked if Ron remembered meeting Debbie Carter, something he continually denied. The question was asked again, and Ron blurted, “Peterson, I’m going to make this clear to you one more time.”

Judge Jones intervened and instructed the witness to answer the question. Again, Ron denied ever meeting Debbie Carter.

Peterson stomped and strutted around, throwing a few jabs and hitting air. He got into trouble again when he returned to his fiction. “Do you know where you were after ten o’clock on December the 7th?”

Ron: “At home.”

Peterson: “Doing what?”

Ron: “After ten o’clock five years ago, I could have been watching television or asleep.”

Peterson: “Isn’t it a fact you went out that door, went down that alley—”

Ron: “Huh-uh, bud. No way.”

Peterson: “… went down that alley.”

Ron: “No way man.”

Peterson: “You and Dennis Fritz.”

Ron: “You’re—no way. No way.”

Peterson: “Walked up to that apartment.”

Ron: “No way.”

Peterson: “Do you know where Dennis Fritz was that night?”

Ron: “I know he wasn’t at Debbie Carter’s. That’s the way I’ll put it.”

Peterson: “How do you know he wasn’t at Debbie Carter’s?”

Ron: “Because you framed him.”

Peterson: “How do you know he wasn’t at Debbie Carter’s?”

Ron: “I’d bet my life on it. Let’s put it like that.”

Peterson: “Tell us how you know.”

Ron: “I just don’t—don’t ask me any more questions. I’ll get down and you can put it to the jury, but I’m telling you you framed him and now you’re trying to frame me.”

Barney: “Ronnie.”

Ron: “My mother knew I was at home. You come harassing me for five years. Now, you can do whatever you want to do to me. I don’t care.”

Peterson tendered the witness and sat down.

During his closing argument, Barney did much to malign the police and their work—the prolonged investigation, the loss of Gore’s hair samples, their seeming blindness to Gore as a suspect, Dennis Smith’s slipshod fingerprinting at the crime scene, the numerous requests for samples from Ron, the questionable tactics used in taking his dream confession, the failure to provide the defense with Ron’s earlier statement, the ever-shifting opinions from the OSBI gang. The list of errors was long and rich, and Barney referred to the police more than once as the Keystone Kops.

As all good lawyers do, he argued that there was plenty of reasonable doubt and appealed to the jurors to use their common sense.

Peterson argued that there was no doubt whatsoever. The cops, all fine professionals of course, did an
exemplary job with their investigation, and Peterson and his team had provided the jury with clear proof of guilt.

Picking up on something he’d heard from Melvin Hett, he played things a bit loose with his terminology. Talking about the hair analysis, he said, “So, over a long period of time Mr. Hett is examining hairs and eliminating, examining and eliminating, along with his other cases. Then in 1985, there’s a match.”

But Barney was ready. He immediately objected, saying, “If the court please, there hasn’t been a match since statehood. We object to him using that term.”

The objection was sustained.

Peterson plodded on, summarizing what each of his witnesses said. When he brought up Terri Holland, Ron became tense.

Peterson: “Terri Holland is telling you what she recalls after two years, and her testimony was that she heard this Defendant tell his mother that if she didn’t bring him something—”

Ron jumped to his feet and said, “Hold it!”

Peterson: “… he ought to kill her just like he killed Debbie Carter.”

Ron: “Shut your mouth man, I never said that!”

Barney: “Sit down. Be still now.”

The Court: “Mr. Williamson.”

Ron: “I did not say that to my mother.”

Barney: “Ronnie.”

The Court: “Listen to your attorney.”

Ron sat down and seethed. Peterson labored on, spinning the testimony of the state’s witnesses in a light so favorable Barney was forced to object repeatedly and ask Judge Jones to remind the prosecutor to stay within the facts.

The jury retired at 10:15 a.m. on Wednesday. Annette and Renee remained in the courtroom for a while, then left for lunch. It was difficult to eat. After hearing every word of testimony, they were even further convinced their brother was innocent, but it was Peterson’s courtroom. Most of the rulings had gone his way. He’d patched together the same witnesses with just as little evidence and got a guilty verdict against Fritz.

They despised the man. He was loud and arrogant and ran over people. They detested him for what he was doing to their brother.

The hours passed. At 4:30 word arrived that the jury had a verdict, and the courtroom filled up quickly. Judge Jones took his place and lectured the spectators against outbursts. Annette and Renee held hands and prayed.

Across the aisle the Carter family held hands, too, and prayed. Their ordeal was almost over.

At 4:40, the jury foreman handed a verdict to the clerk, who glanced at it and passed it on to Judge Jones. He announced the verdict—guilty on all counts. The Carters silently pumped their hands in the air in a show of victory. Annette and Renee wept quietly, as did Peggy Stillwell.

Ron hung his head, shaken but not altogether surprised. After eleven months in the Pontotoc County jail he had become part of a rotten system. He knew Dennis Fritz was an innocent man, yet he’d been convicted by the same cops and same prosecutor in the same courtroom.

Judge Jones was anxious to finish the trial. Without
a pause, he ordered the state to begin the penalty phase. Nancy Shew addressed the jury and explained that since the murder was especially heinous, atrocious, and cruel, and since it was committed for the purpose of preventing arrest, and since there was a strong likelihood that Ron would kill again and was thus a continuing threat to society, he should be put to death.

To prove this, the state called four witnesses, four women Ron had encountered before, none of whom had bothered to press criminal charges against him. The first was Beverly Setliff, who testified that on June 14, 1981, seven years earlier, she had seen Ron Williamson outside her house late at night as she was preparing for bed. He yelled, “Hey,” and, “I know you’re in there and I’m going to get you.” She had never seen him before. She locked the doors and he disappeared.

She did not call the police, didn’t even think about it, really, and didn’t consider filing a complaint until the next day, when she saw a cop at a convenience store and told him about the incident. If a formal report was prepared, she never saw it.

Three weeks later, she saw Ron again, and a friend told her his name. Six years passed. When Ron was arrested, she called the police and told the story of the prowler.

The next witness was Lavita Brewer, the same woman who testified against Dennis Fritz. She told her story again—meeting Ron and Dennis in a bar in Norman, getting in the car with them, becoming frightened, jumping out, calling the police. According to her version, Ron never touched her or threatened her in any manner. She became hysterical in the backseat of Dennis’s car because he would not stop and let her out,
and the worst thing Ron did during the episode was to tell her to shut up.

She eventually jumped out of the car, fled, called the police, but did not press charges.

Letha Caldwell testified again. She had known Ron Williamson since their junior high days at Byng and had always been friendly with him. During the early 1980s, he and Dennis Fritz began hanging around her house late at night, always drinking. One day she was working in her flower beds and Ron appeared. They had small talk and she kept working, which irritated him. At one point, he grabbed her wrist. She broke free, walked into the house, then realized that her children were inside. He followed her, but didn’t touch her again and soon left. She did not report the incident to the police.

The final witness was by far the most damaging. A divorced woman named Andrea Hardcastle told a harrowing tale of an ordeal that lasted over four hours. In 1981, Ron and a friend were at her house, trying to coax her into going out with them. They were headed for the Coachlight. Andrea was keeping three children of her own and two others, so she could not go out. The men left, but Ron soon returned to retrieve a pack of cigarettes. He entered the house uninvited and quickly made a pass at Andrea. It was after ten at night, the children were asleep, and she was frightened. She had no interest in sex. He exploded, striking her repeatedly about the face and head and demanding that she perform oral sex. She refused and, in doing so, realized that the more she talked, the less he hit her.