Death Sentence (29 page)

But the jurors would have overnight to overlook that and to think about their decision. Judge McKinnon recessed court for the day and ordered everybody back for an unusual Saturday session.

16

After an hour of instruction from Judge McKinnon Saturday morning, the jurors elected as their foreman Ronald Tuton, an auditor for the North Carolina Department of Revenue who was the same age as Velma. Tuton, who lived in Clarkton and worked in Whiteville in Columbus County, had been surprised to find himself on the jury. He had grown up in Lumberton, and although he was three years older than Joe Freeman Britt, he had played in the high school band with him. Although younger than Judge McKinnon, he had lived near him and known his family. He had made all of that known during jury selection, but he was chosen anyway.

Tuton began the discussion by announcing that no arm twisting would take place. Everybody had to reach a conclusion on his or her own, and everybody’s position would be respected. He soon discovered, however, that everybody appeared to be in agreement. Although some jurors were timid about speaking up, nobody seemed to think that Velma had been so heavily under the influence of drugs when she gave poison to Stuart that she didn’t know what she was doing. And the notion that she had done it just to make him sick seemed absurd to all. Everybody thought that she fully intended to do what she accomplished.

The factor that sealed intent, as far as Tuton was concerned, was that Velma might have saved Stuart’s life if she had told the doctors about the poison when she first took him to the hospital. That she didn’t was clear evidence that she wanted him to die.

Tuton decided to take a secret ballot. Each juror was to write a verdict. He opened them one by one, read each aloud and placed it on the table in front of him. The reading became a litany. “First-degree … first-degree murder … first-degree…”

The vote was unanimous. But Tuton wasn’t willing to accept it.

“I want us to make sure that we’re all satisfied,” he said, and the jurors went through the discussion and vote again. The result was unchanged.

“Okay, if that’s it, let’s go let them know,” Tuton said, and he notified the bailiff.

They had been gone from the courtroom only an hour and ten minutes.

“Has the jury reached a verdict?” asked Judge McKinnon.

“We have, Your Honor,” said Tuton.

“Will the defendant please stand.”

Velma stood expressionless, wearing a pink-and-navy suit, still chewing gum, as the verdict was announced.

Few in the courtroom were surprised. Certainly neither lawyer had doubted the outcome. Nor had Ronnie, who already had resigned himself to it after his mother’s performances on the stand. Velma showed no emotion as the verdict was announced.

Bob Jacobson had one more opportunity to save Velma’s life during the sentencing hearing, and the judge moved swiftly to that phase of the trial. Did Jacobson want to offer evidence?

He did. He called Diane Hayes, an old friend of Velma’s, who had worked with her at Belk’s. Ironically, Hayes was now employed in the administrative offices of Central Prison in Raleigh.

She described Velma as “a very happy person” when she first met her in 1964. “Velma was always talking Thomas this and Thomas that—just a very happy relationship with her husband. And then he started drinking.”

Velma changed after she started taking tranquilizers, Hayes said, and after Thomas’ death she frequently came to work “glassy-eyed” and with slurred speech. “Shaky,” she said. “She was real shaky.”

Jacobson called Pam back to reemphasize her mother’s drug abuse.

“I have seen it for the last ten years,” she said. “I have lived with it most every day.”

“Do you understand what has happened here this week?” Jacobson asked.

“Yes, I do.”

“And it is a very, very serious matter?”

“Yes, it is.”

“You love your mother, don’t you?”

“Very much.”

Ronnie, too, came back to talk about his mother’s drug use.

“Have you ever tried to do anything about this problem?” Jacobson asked.

“Yes, sir,” he said, then went on to tell of taking her to the hospital and the mental health center, of talking to physicians and asking them not to prescribe drugs for her.

“You love your mother, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“How do you feel about the punishment?”

“Object,” said Britt.

“Sustained,” said the judge.

“No further evidence,” said Jacobson.

Joe Freeman Britt never underestimated the task that lay before him. “You can have twelve clones of Attila the Hun in the jury box, and they’re still going to look for a reason not to give the death penalty,” he said later. “You’re asking a jury to do an unnatural act to kill a person, and that’s a hell of a burden. Jurors just look for reasons—some of us would say excuses—not to give the death penalty.”

Experience had taught him what he had to do to overcome that. “You don’t send a prisoner to the gallows with sweet reason. Freud says that when emotion and reason compete, emotion will always win. Perception is reality. It doesn’t matter what the facts are, doesn’t matter what the evidence is. Jurors are guided by their perceptions. And that’s where the advocacy comes in, molding and manipulating those perceptions.”

Standing now before the jurors, he began his molding and manipulating in a low-keyed monotone, speaking slowly, as if he were attempting to lull them.

In trials such as this, with the lawyers orchestrating everything, he noted, it was easy for jurors to rock back in their comfortable chairs and begin to look upon the proceedings as a melodrama.

“They wait to see what happens next, and they are concerned with following the factual situation, and they tend to forget the most important part of the case. You know what I am talking about,” he said, his voice quickening.

“I am talking about the fact that a living, breathing human being, who I would suggest on the thirty-first of January and up to the third of February, wanted to live just as badly as any one of you sitting in that jury box. He is dead! He is gone! He is gone forever, and he lies out there in that cold, damp sod wrapped in his shroud because of the callous, indifferent, malicious act of this woman sitting right here at this table.”

His voice had become a tornado ripping through the courtroom as he whirled on Velma. “She killed him dead! And sent him to meet his maker! And he is gone for an eternity because of that act of
this
woman!”

Suddenly, he changed pace, spoke in a more solemn tone.

“I want to point it out to you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, so that when you get back there in that jury room, you don’t have that feeling in the back of your head that this has just been some little old floor show we have been watching and Stuart Taylor never lived, that he was a figment of some scriptwriter’s imagination, because he wasn’t, my friends.

“He was a fifty-six-year-old man, an innocent human being who was just snuffed before his time. Now, for God’s sake, when you get back there, remember that because you know what it is like in the twentieth century where every time you turn on the tube or every time you pick up a newspaper, what are they talking about? The rights of the poor defendants in our society today!

“Well, when are we going to start worrying about the victims?” he asked, his voice back in the higher decibels. “They had a few rights, too, you know. Stuart Taylor had a few rights on the thirty-first of January, but who was there to protect his rights on that occasion? Did he have a lawyer, judge or jury? Or did he just get executed that week?”

Britt believed that argument had to find a rhythm, and when it did, he later would say, “You can almost see the jury begin to sway.”

The jury was beginning to sway, and Jacobson knew it.

“Objection,” he sang, hoping to break the rhythm.

“Overruled.”

“He is gone, my friends. He is gone forever, and it is because of this woman sitting over here at the next table.

“It is truly impossible to demonstrate in a well-lighted, orderly courtroom like this the agony and the pain and suffering that Stuart Taylor went through those three or four days. How in God’s name can I do that? I didn’t have a camera on him as he writhed in pain and clutched his stomach and vomited and had diarrhea and went through that for several days. I don’t have a time machine where I can poke a button and you go back to the emergency room at Southeastern Hospital and see him rolling around there and when he dies, the final gasp and throws back his head and screams …” He was practically screaming himself now. “There is no way I can bring home to you the true inhumanity of what was going on then.

“Stuart Taylor did not die at the end of a double-barrel shotgun. He didn’t even know he was facing his murderer. He didn’t have a chance to grapple with his assailant and try to save his life, because she was doing to him some nefarious act in secret, and he didn’t even realize what was happening to him.

“She used a weapon, I would suggest to you, much more horrible than a shotgun. It is a weapon that creates incredible torture. I had it here in my hand, state’s exhibit number nine.”

He carried the bottle of Terro to the jury box. “Do you know what that is? That is arsenic poison. It is designed and bottled for a reason. It is put in that bottle to kill things, whether they be ants or mice or human beings. This is a killer, and it is a killer that creates excruciating pain as it works its way into the human body. That isn’t something that makes ants sick or mice sick or human beings sick. That is something that does away with them forever!”

Velma couldn’t plead self-defense or insanity, he noted.

“What excuse does she have? There is no excuse!” he yelled. “There is nothing there for you to hang a cloak of life imprisonment on. I argue to you strongly that if there has ever been a case that deserved the imposition of the ultimate penalty, this is such a case.”

He reminded the jurors of the others who had died at Velma’s hand. “Now, the defense attorney will get up here and cry and tell you, ‘Oh, you saw the two children, and how can you do that to this poor woman?’ This poor woman sitting over there at that table,” he went on, his voice dripping with disdain, “according to the evidence has done away with at least four people in the last ten years
—killed her own mother
!”

His voice reverberated through the courtroom as he went on to explain why this trial was being held in two stages because of rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court, and to explain about aggravating and mitigating circumstances.

They would be considering three aggravating factors, he said. Number one was that the crime was committed for pecuniary gain. Clearly that was the case, he pointed out, because of the check Velma forged. Number two was that the crime was committed to hinder enforcement of the law. They should say yes to that as well, because Velma killed Stuart to prevent him from prosecuting her for the forgeries. The third factor was that the murder was especially heinous, hateful, odious, greatly reprehensible, atrocious, extremely shocking, wicked or cruel. That she used poison and remained indifferent to Stuart’s pain proved that without question, he maintained.

“Could it be that she does get her kicks from this type of thing?” he asked the jury. “The Lord knows that the evidence would show that she had done enough for a cheap enough price—”

“Object,” said Jacobson.

“Sustained,” said the judge, then instructed the jury, “Don’t consider that statement.”

“Would you say she was hardhearted to watch the man lie there and suffer as he did?” Britt asked. “Have you seen the first tear of remorse in this defendant’s eyes? Have you seen the first flinch of contrition? Has she ever seemed to be sorry for what she has done? What you have seen, I suggest, has been a cool—yes, cold!—individual fighting to avoid the supreme penalty in this case.”

This was “a hard woman” who “coolly and cold-bloodedly” poured poison into Stuart’s drinks, he said.

“Can you think of a more atrocious act in your life? Can you think of a more malicious act?”

After poisoning Stuart, he pointed out, she had watched his agonies while deceiving his family and his doctors.

“Do you think she has tried to deceive you in this courtroom this week?” he asked, going on to detail her lies to the detectives and Stuart’s family.

“Let me ask you something, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Can you be satisfied that a recommendation of life imprisonment for that woman will protect society in the future from her? I suggest to you that there is one recommendation that will protect society from Velma Barfield, and it’s the ultimate penalty!

“When you go to the jury room, just take one picture back there with you. Picture Stuart Taylor lying on his deathbed at Southeastern Hospital. Mr. McPherson said he threw back his head and made a scream and he went to get the doctor. Picture him lying there clutching his stomach. Do you recall what Dr. Page Hudson said about death by arsenic? He said there was an agonizing, hot, burning sensation in a person’s insides and that you threw up and had diarrhea until you were dehydrated and eventually died in pain. Take one picture with you, please, as he lay there dying, knowing that his Florence Nightingale was beside him but not knowing that his Florence Nightingale was in truth Lucrezia Borgia.”