Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [186]
It was a poor start. Many a Judge lost respect for a lawyer who could not show a client his best interest.
MR. ESPLIN Your Honor, Mr. Gilmore has expressed to me the reason for his decision and it's based upon the fact that Nicole Barrett, who is the defendant's girl friend, is listed as a witness for the State, and he does not want her excluded from the courtroom. I think that's the sole basis for his decision.
THE COURT Is that so, Mr. Gilmore?
MR. GILMORE Well, yes. I seen that she wasn't on the list until just, you know, yesterday or so, and it appears to me that the reason was so that she would have to be excluded from the courtroom. And I don't want her to have to sit out in that uncomfortable hall all day.
THE COURT Well, she may have to be in the hall, but certainly we'll have chairs and other comforts there.
MR. GILMORE Well, it's my decision that she not be excluded, Your Honor.
THE COURT Is that all there is?
MR. ESPLIN That's all we have, Your Honor.
THE COURT That's the law matter? All right, you may bring the Jury back in
Gary, as if to recoup what he had given away, now spent time glowering at Wootton.
The irony of the whole thing, Esplin decided, was that Nicole, so far as he could see, wasn't even in Court. All morning Gary kept turning around to look for her. She didn't show up. She didn't get there, in fact, until lunchtime, and then Gary couldn't have been happier to see her.
Wootton began by explaining his witnesses to the Jury. "Each one," he said, "will give you a small piece of the overall story. They will tell you about how the defendant, Gary Gilmore . . . walked down the street with the motel cash box in one hand and the pistol in the other hand, abandoned the cash box at the end of the block, and abandoned the gun. They will tell you how shortly thereafter he was seen at a service station on the corner of Third South and University Avenue where he picked up his truck, at that time bleeding rather profusely from an injury to his left hand. The witnesses will tell you how they traced the blood trail from the service station back up the sidewalk to where it stopped at a Pfitzer evergreen bush that was planted along the side of the sidewalk. They will tell you how they found a .22 automatic pistol that appeared to have been discharged in the Pfitzer bush, because it had weeds and leaves in the automatic portion of the gun. They will tell you that they found a shell casing there. You'll also hear testimony that the investigators at the motel office where Mr. Bushnell was killed found another .22 shell casing. You'll hear expert testimony to the effect that the slug in his head was in fact a .22-caliber slug fired from a gun with the same type of markings inside the barrel, as the .22 pistol that was found in the Pfitzer bush."
As the exhibits and witnesses were presented during the length of that day, Wootton's case came forth much as he had announced it, solid and well connected. Snyder and Esplin could only raise doubts on small points or try to reduce the credibility of the testimony. So Esplin got the first witness, Larry Johnson, a draftsman, to admit that his plan of the motel, drawn to order in this last week before trial, could provide "no idea as to what plants or vegetables were growing on the 9th of July" around the motel windows. It was a detail, but it dissipated the authority of the first exhibit, and so kept the Jury from becoming impressed too quickly by the sheer quantity of exhibits.
Wootton, after all, was going to produce eighteen.
The next witness, Detective Fraser, had taken a number of photographs of the motel office. Esplin got him to agree that the drapes might have been moved before the photographs were taken.
So it went. Small corrections and small adjustments on the case Wootton was making. When Glen Overton came to the stand and described the appearance of Benny Bushnell dying in his own blood,