CHAPTER 33
Bill Diggs must have lain awake all night thinking about damage control, for his first question of the day was so intimidating that it set the tone for the remainder of his cross-examination.
“Is it, Detective King?” he asked slyly.
Deputy solicitor Humphries’ gentle questioning the day before suddenly gave way to a blistering cross-examination from the defense. Diggs came out of his corner swinging and went after King with a vengeance. In a loud, sometimes sarcastic voice, he pounced on the detective from the get-go. With a series of questions he asked with his back turned toward the witness, he began accusing King of having a role in purposely staging the times and places of Renee’s interviews that put her at an unfair disadvantage.
It was a valiant effort—but, somehow, somewhere—Diggs got sidetracked. When King bucked up and refused to answer questions regarding simple information, to his satisfaction, Diggs lost his focus and King’s cross-examination turned into an ugly slugfest. He kept firing his questions at King so fast and furious, often on insignificant matters, that they overlapped his answers, prompting Judge Cottingham to issue several harsh warnings.
“Are you gonna let me finish my answer?” King would shoot back at Diggs throughout his testimony when he tried to snowball him with rapid questions. A frustrated Diggs would respond with: “All I’m trying to ask you is . . . that’s all I’m trying to get to.” Back and forth it went each time, until Diggs made the statement to King, “I understand how limited your knowledge is with respect to this case.”
Humphries jumped to his feet in a strong prosecution objection. “(He’s) characterizing the testimony, Your Honor. That’s improper and he knows it.”
Diggs didn’t fare any better after that, and seemed to get deeper and deeper into a pissing contest with Sergeant King. But he never could land a solid punch. King led him around in circles, time and time again, until he was totally frustrated. Diggs took on the face of a law student who had just been told there was a pop quiz and he had studied the wrong chapter the night before.
“How many interviews did you conduct?” Diggs asked.
King looked at him as though he were confused. “How many interviews? Interviews that I had personally conducted?”
“Well, when I say you, in that sense, I mean the detective unit that was working on this case? However many detectives that may have been?”
“There were several interviews conducted,” King answered.
“Okay, could you tell me the individuals who were interviewed?”
“I don’t have the names. No, I don’t.”
“Do you know . . . ,” Diggs said, wagging his head like a dog. “Is there anybody in the Myrtle Beach Police Department that would have a list of the names of people who were interviewed by that investigative unit prior to your going to North Carolina?”
“Yes, it would be documented which investigator talked to who.”
“And who . . . who would have that documentation?”
“Whichever investigator was assisting in, in talking with these different people.”
Diggs took a deep breath. “All right. Did the investigators talk among themselves or did they construct this wall of silence between themselves?”
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” King responded. “‘A wall of silence’?”
“Did the . . . Did the detectives discuss this case among themselves and share information?”
“That’s correct.”
“And did they share it with you?”
“I may have some of it. Yes.”
“And they may have shared it with you, but you just forgot it. Is that what you’re saying?”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying,” King shot back.
“Did they share it with you or not?”
“Like I said, I may have got some of the information. Yes.”
Diggs kept his back turned toward King. “Either you did or you did not, or you forgot it. Now which one is it? Did you get information from them or not?”
“No, sir,” the judge admonished Diggs. “You’re not gonna limit him that way. He may explain his answer.”
“All right, certainly, I wish he would do that, Your Honor.”
King still wouldn’t answer. After several questions, and getting the runaround, Diggs asked him again, with sarcasm as thick as karo syrup: “Did you get it or not? That’s all I am asking. Can you tell us for sure if you got the information?”
“I’m telling you, Mr. Diggs. I may have got some of the information.”
“All right. And I—I . . . I concede that. You’re doing the best you can. Is that correct?”
“Is that a question you’re asking me?” King asked, catching his drift.
“Yes, sir. You’re doing your best?”
King didn’t respond, but the judge did. “That’s a question for the jury,” Cottingham admonished the counselor. “Go ahead.”
Diggs grilled King further about how they determined John was a suspect. At one point, he asked, “Well, did you base your analysis on anything other than evidence that you were collecting? I mean, when you talk about this, was it like crystal balls or something?”
Eyes in the jury widened. The judge boomed, “That would be an improper question.”
“Well, I apologize for that,” Diggs conceded.
“That’s totally improper,” Cottingham reminded him.
The jury’s body language indicated Diggs had hit a sour note. His banter with Sergeant King did more to turn the jury off to his line of questioning than to turn them on. And to make matters worse, the remainder of his time would be spent in hurling spitballs at King, getting objections from the prosecution and then sparring with the judge. Cottingham even lost his patience with Diggs and his antics. After Diggs’s persistent protest that King wasn’t cooperating with him, Cottingham shouted, “No, sir, that’s not true. The jury will determine that. Now don’t argue with me. Get on with the question.”
Finally Diggs threw up his hands in despair and called it quits. “I don’t have anything else. I’m gonna bring him back as a defense witness, Your Honor. At this point—”
Judge Cottingham wouldn’t let him off the hook. “No, wait a minute.” He called Diggs back to the front of the courtroom. “Let this record reflect that I’m giving you unlimited opportunity to cross-examine this witness. I only say to you that question was answered, and the record will reflect it, on three separate occasions, and that’s sufficient as to that question. Now, if you’ve got any more, have at it.”
“Your Honor, I don’t have any more at this time,” a totally perturbed Diggs answered.
On redirect, Humphries again had no problem soliciting information from King. In questions about Renee and John’s relationship, he worked the sergeant like a well-oiled machine. They were obviously on the same team, but more important, he knew what buttons of his to push and what buttons not to push.
Finally, after about five minutes of smooth sailing, Humphries asked King, “Did [Renee] later explain to you what she meant by her statement [of] ‘I kind of changed in that relationship’?”
“Yes.”
“How did she explain that change? Was it a change in her, the relationship or the character of the relationship?”
“It was a change in the relationship,” King answered.
Diggs objected, but the judge allowed it.
When King stated, “It became a sexual relationship,” Humphries made him repeat it again.
The prosecution was racking up big time, as Humphries and King continued to work off each other. The average juror had watched enough court cases on television and at the movies to know so many conspirators were inept at keeping their story straight and normally became very sloppy in their schemes. They were very surprised to hear Renee’s lawyer Victor Leckowitz had allowed her to confess, unless he mistakenly thought she was innocent. Jurors were smart enough to understand the police can be overbearing, but not to the point where she would confess to an incriminating statement that could be used against her. She was obviously not the brightest bulb in the chandelier for not keeping her mouth shut, but it was a hard sale to say she invented a story because she was tired and wanted to go home.
Diggs’s rhythm had been broken by King, and it clearly showed. When he had questioned the detective on the stand, it was like playing tennis with no one to return his serves. It wasn’t fair to the defense. Diggs objected several times to the prosecution’s line of questions related to Renee and John’s relationship, but it didn’t take root. King was a key witness, but every step Diggs took to go after him, he had been hammered. Finally, in desperation, he asked for a sidebar. The judge dismissed the jury.
“Your Honor,” Diggs stated candidly, “the question I have is I don’t understand how the witness can testify that through his investigation he learned that the defendant supposedly was lying about a relationship [with Frazier] and the time limit or the length of it when the court will not permit him to tell me what he learned about the position of the body of Brent Poole when he was shot.”
“Well, you examined him exhaustively on that subject, Mr. Diggs. He told you and this jury at least three times, and perhaps five times, that he got his information only on the position of the body from the doctor.”
Diggs continued to protest for several minutes. “My objection is we’ve got a two . . . we’re not . . . The solicitor can bring in information based on what the detective learned in his investigation, but I can’t. And that’s what I object to.”
When Diggs had exhausted his argument, Orrie West, his co-counselor, attempted to come to his aid. She didn’t fare any better.
“No, ma’am. I’m gonna take one lawyer at a time now,” Cottingham advised her. West retreated to her seat at the defense table.
But Diggs stood his ground, arguing back and forth with the judge for another five minutes about how King was responding to his questions. “But, Your Honor,” he had said, “with all due respect, he didn’t answer.... He gave an answer, but it wasn’t responsive. I would ask Your Honor to direct him to answer the question.”
“He did,” Cottingham said impatiently. “The record is clear on that.... He answered it. Three times. No, sir. I’m through with that issue now, through with it.”
The morning had been a disaster for Renee Poole’s defense. If it wasn’t a revelation to her, it was to nearly everyone who mattered. The defense had never anticipated King’s strength on the witness stand, and, as a result, they had been completely derailed.