AS is usual, the defense requested a dismissal on the grounds that there was insufficient evidence to sustain a first degree murder charge. Judge Stephens rejected that motion.
Defense attorney Johnny Gaskins next asked to recall Detective Jerry Faulk to read the transcript of Grant Hayes’s interview while the video (which had unintelligible audio) played on the screen. The judge wanted to know if the defense planned on calling Grant as a witness. When Gaskins said they were not, the state objected and the judge asked how they can admit his words if they don’t. He further explained that an interview taken ten days after the alleged offense might indicate a lot about Grant’s state of mind at the time of the crime but that it would not be relevant to Amanda’s.
Stephens sustained the state’s objection. He told the defense team that the tape could be made part of the record but it could not be produced as evidence or referred to unless they came up with a more compelling argument for inclusion.
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THE first witness for the defense was Mel Palmer, who’d been a licensed private investigator in North Carolina for more than twenty years. Continuing the disputed assumption that the gas station receipts all reflected the purchase of gasoline only, Palmer described how he’d driven the Durango to Wilson and back to Raleigh and then to Kinston once the defense had permission to search the vehicle. When he reached that town, he drove around to all of the properties listed as belonging to the Hayeses, covering 598 miles in the process.
Palmer also supported the defense theory that Grant used his answering service to make indirect contact with drug dealers. Then Gaskins brought up The Stepford Wives and The Talented Mr. Ripley, which Gaskins now wanted to play for the jury.
The state objected to wasting time watching movies. The jurors were adjourned for the day for the judge to listen to arguments from both sides. After doing so, Judge Stephens said, “We’ll allow Mel Palmer to describe the movies and allow them to be entered into the record. However, the state’s objection to playing the movies is sustained.”
The next morning, Palmer returned to the stand and presented a written description of both movies. He then went back through the details of his December 2013 recreation of the trail the defense claimed the Dodge Durango had followed on July 14 and 15, 2011.
On cross, the state questioned the validity of the miles-per-gallon figures he’d given but Palmer sidestepped the issue by saying that he did not have the manufacturer’s pamphlet. He also admitted that he had no independent knowledge of the real estate in question and only knew what the lawyer told him.
Then, Palmer said that the movie descriptions he’d read aloud were not written by him but by the attorney, or more accurately, he admitted, were both from Wikipedia entries with minor revisions. (For instance, the word “murder” in the Wikipedia version was replaced with “killing”; the phrase “young man” in first sentence had changed to “young sociopath”; and that the phrase “lie and deceive” was added by the defense.)
On re-direct, Gaskins gave Palmer the 2009 Dodge Durango manufacturer’s book and Palmer corrected the testimony he’d made on cross regarding highway mileage. Then he confirmed that what he’d seen in the movies was consistent with the description he’d read on the stand.
When prosecutor Boz Zellinger was back in the fray again, he verified that the private investigator hadn’t verified the report about the Hayes’s rental properties. Then he acknowledged that the tax records for 2011 did not show that the property was owned by Grant’s parents or by Grant or Amanda.
All in all, Palmer’s testimony did not appear to do much for the defense case. The next witness, however, was the one who had to win the day.