I CALLED J.D. in Longboat during the afternoon break and asked her if she could get to Bushnell and meet with the Sumter County Sheriff the next afternoon. She didn’t think it’d be a problem and said she’d talk to me that evening.
J.D. called while I was eating a take-out French dip sandwich and a Diet Coke from McCalisters in Brownwood and watching what passes for a news show on TV. “I’m all set with the meeting at three tomorrow afternoon,” she said.
“Are you coming up tonight?”
“No, sweetie. I had a busy day and I’m beat. I’ve still got some paperwork to get done so I can take the next few days off. I’ll see you tomorrow evening at Esther’s. Do I need to stay undercover when I get up there?”
“Are you still a blond?”
She laughed. “So far. It’s not growing out very fast.”
“Then just be yourself. If anybody asks you about it, just tell the truth. I do think you should stay out of the courtroom until Thursday. It’ll be too late then for any testimony to change because somebody recognizes you. And you need to see the results of all your hard work.”
“Do you want me to open up to the sheriff on the evidence?”
“Completely. Tell him he can see the evidence firsthand for himself if he’ll come sit in the courtroom starting with the session this afternoon.”
“Okay. I’ll go on to Esther’s house after my meeting. I’ll see you there.”
Wednesday morning found me back in the courtroom, sitting at counsel table next to my client. I kept thinking about the beach, but duty was calling. Esther and I had met for a few minutes before we went into the courtroom. Her spirits were high, as they had been all through the trial. I thought it takes a special kind of person to stay positive when the weight of the state is bearing down on her, doing its best to put her in prison for life.
Judge Gallagher took the bench and said, “Who’s up next, Ms. Evans?”
“Madison Seyler, Your Honor.”
Ms. Seyler was a young woman with dark hair and a ready smile. I had met her when I took her deposition on the same day I’d taken Dr. Cooper’s. I wasn’t expecting any surprises. Meredith took her through her background, education, and training in the sometimes arcane discipline of fingerprint technology. “Can you tell us what you were asked to do in this case?” Meredith asked.
“I was given a pistol, a twenty-two-caliber Smith and Wesson model 67, to examine for fingerprints. I was also given a plastic bag with five complete bullets and one cartridge from a bullet that had been fired.”
“Did you find any prints?”
“Yes.”
“Tell the jury where you found them, please.”
“I found a full set of fingerprints on the grip, or handle, of the pistol and partial prints on each of the six cartridges.”
Meredith handed the witness the pistol, carefully sealed in a plastic bag. “Is this the gun on which you found the prints?”
“It looks like the one.”
I stood. “Your Honor, Ms. Evans and I have stipulated that the pistol the witness is holding is indeed the murder weapon.”
“Thank you, Mr. Royal,” Meredith said and turned back to the witness. “Did you determine to whom the fingerprints belonged?”
“Yes. Esther Higgins.”
“On both the grip on the pistol and the bullets?”
“Yes.”
“How did you determine that?”
“I entered the prints into the Automated Fingerprint Identification System maintained by the FBI and we got a hit.”
“Is that the program commonly called AFIS?”
“Yes.”
“No further questions.”
I stood. “Ms. Seyler, is there any way for you to determine how long my client’s fingerprints had been on the bullet cartridges?”
“No, sir.”
“So, they could have been there for years?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And the prints on the pistol grip?”
“There is no way to tell how long they’d been there.”
“No further questions, Your Honor,” I said.
“Just a couple,” Meredith said. “Ms. Seyler, did you find anybody else’s prints on either the cartridges or the pistol grip?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Nothing further, Your Honor.”
“Call your next witness, Ms. Evans.”
“Dr. Cassandra Wall.”
A woman in her thirties entered and took the witness stand. She turned, faced the clerk, and raised her right hand to be sworn.
“State your name, please,” Meredith said.
“Cassandra Wall.”
“Your occupation?”
“I’m the medical examiner for the Fifth Judicial Circuit of Florida.”
“What geographical area does that cover?”
“Five counties. Lake, Sumter, Marion, Hernando, and Citrus.”
“You’re a physician? An MD?”
“Yes.”
“Board certified in any specialty?”
“Pathology and Forensic Medicine.”
“As part of your duties as medical examiner, do you perform autopsies on murder victims?”
“Yes.”
“Did you perform an autopsy on Olivia Lathom?”
“I did.”
Meredith took the witness through the autopsy and her findings. “Did you arrive at a cause of death?”
“Yes. She died of a gunshot wound to her back. The bullet penetrated her heart and she died almost instantly.”
“When you did the autopsy, did you find the bullet that killed her?”
“Yes. It was just inside her left chest wall. The velocity of the bullet was pretty well spent by the time it entered her back, but it had enough energy left to penetrate her heart.”
“Thank you, Doctor. Nothing further, Your Honor.”
“Mr. Royal?” the judge said.
“Dr. Wall,” I said, “is part of your job the finding of cause of death?”
“Yes.”
“And why do you need to do that?”
“I have to determine whether the death is natural or suicide or caused by somebody else. If caused by someone else, I have to make the determination if it’s a homicide. And I have to be ready to testify in court about those issues.”
“And you did that in this case?”
“Yes. The cause of death was definitely the gunshot wound in the victim’s back.”
“Were you able to determine how far the shooter was standing from Ms. Lathom when he or she fired the bullet into Ms. Lathom’s back?”
“Several feet, at least.”
“How did you determine that?”
“There were no powder burns on Ms. Lathom’s clothes where the bullet penetrated the cloth. If the killer had been standing very close, the discharge of the weapon would have left powder burns.”
“Do you have an opinion based on a reasonable degree of medical probability, absent any other facts, as to whether the fingerprints on the gun and the bullets point to the killer?”
“No. That is outside the purview of my examinations.”
“Thank you, Dr. Wall. No further questions.”
The next witness was Robert Peralta, the ballistics expert. Meredith took him through his education and experience, and qualified him as an expert in his field.
“Tell the jury what your job was as it relates to this case,” Meredith said.
“I was asked to examine a bullet taken from the body of a woman identified as Olivia Lathom and determine if it came from a particular gun.”
“Were you given the gun to test?”
“I was.”
“Can you describe the gun?”
“It was a twenty-two-caliber Smith and Wesson model 67 revolver.”
Meredith showed him the gun in the evidence bag. “Does this appear to be the gun you examined?”
“Was the gun loaded when you received it?”
“No. The bullets had been extracted from the cylinder, but there were five rounds in a plastic evidence bag that I was told had been in the pistol when it was found by the police.”
“Were you provided with a bullet that you understood to be the one that killed the victim in this case?”
“Yes.”
Meredith held up the murder weapon. “Did you arrive at an opinion as to whether this pistol fired the bullet that killed Ms. Lathom?”
“Yes. That gun fired the bullet found in Ms. Lathom’s body.”
Meredith took him through the testing, how it was performed, and how he reached his conclusions. “No further questions, Your Honor,” she said.
“No questions, Your Honor,” I said.
Judge Gallagher looked at the clock and said, “It’s near enough to noon that we can break for lunch. The court will be in recess until one thirty this afternoon.
We were just back from lunch when the court deputy told Meredith and me that the judge wanted to see us in chambers. “We’ve got a problem,” he said as we entered his chambers. “One of the jurors got violently ill during lunch. He was taken to the hospital, but the emergency room doc over there tells us it’s just something that he ate that disagreed with him. He should be ready to go in the morning, but we need to decide whether to seat one of the alternates or wait until morning to see if the juror is back.”
“Which juror is it?” I asked.
“The prison guard.”
Meredith and I looked at each other. We both wanted that man on the jury. She thought he would vote guilty, and I was pretty sure he would go for the acquittal. “Why don’t we recess until in the morning,” she said. “If he’s not ready to go, we can seat the alternate.”
“I agree,” I said.
“Can you guys finish this by Friday if we take the afternoon off?”
“Yes,” we said in unison.
“Okay. Let’s let the jury know what’s going on, and we’ll call it a day.”
I called J.D. and asked her to alert the sheriff to the fact that there would be no court that afternoon. She would tell the sheriff that the fireworks would begin on Thursday morning. I planned to spend some of the rest of the day getting ready for the big guns.