The most suspenseful question in any murder trial is often whether or not the defendant will take the stand. Since Wesley Earnest had testified in the first trial in which he was found guilty, there were a lot of doubts that he would run that risk again. Nonetheless, the courtroom observers got their hearts’ desire. Wesley Earnest took the oath and sat in the witness box to testify on his own behalf.
His lawyer, Joey Sanzone, took Wesley through his life history, including his marriage to Jocelyn. When the talk turned to the time of construction of the lake house, Sanzone asked, “Would it be fair to say that you did more of the work than she did?”
“Absolutely.”
“But did you complain about that? Did you have any problem with that?”
“No, in fact, I found the construction work to be almost like therapy.”
“Did it bother you in any way that you were doing a little bit more of the work?”
“No. In fact, after I finished the workday working as an assistant principal, I would go there and work with my hands. I loved it because it just really took any kind of stress out of the day.”
“In the beginning, would she go there a lot with you?”
“We started building in 2004. And I know her work schedule, at that time, was working a lot of hours. So, I don’t know how much time she was able to be up there.”
“And just tell the jury about her work schedule back then and what was going on in that regard.”
“She was doing an excellent job with work, but as such, she got one of those senior management levels. And with that required some eighty-hour workweeks, weekends, lots and lots more hours [ . . . ]” Between her work schedule and his work on the lake house, Wesley said, “it was rare to see each other [ . . . ]”
He said that although he requested she spend more time at home with him, Jocelyn “couldn’t tear herself away from work. So I think my last effort was the anniversary of August 19, 2004 [ . . . ] Tried to put together some dinner and trying to welcome her home and have [ . . . ] a little social time together [ . . . ] It was somewhere close to midnight before she came home. Hadn’t gotten a phone call. Hadn’t heard anything from her.”
“. . . And that was just one of similar instances that had been going on for a while?”
“It had been. It just had been very disappointing all along. And we had gotten the occupancy permit for the lake house during that summer as well, but she refused to make that drive to work. So I was staying at the lake house by myself [ . . . ] Both insurance and mortgage required . . . [that we] . . . occupy the house as the primary residence. So you just can’t leave it empty.”
“As far as the intimacy goes, had that stopped at some time before?”
“Yes [ . . . ] Maybe early 2004.”
“Had there been a problem with that even before that?”
“Yes [ . . . ] The very first year of marriage, she actually told me to go sleep with other women and come home to her, which was very hard because your first year of marriage is supposed to be the honeymoon time [ . . . ] I didn’t want to do that. I just kept hanging in there with her refusing to see anybody else [ . . . ] And those requests to see other women and come home to her and just not sleep in the bed there at Pine Bluff Drive with anybody else was repeated over and over in 2002, 2003, going into 2004 period.”
Friends and family who’d experienced Jocelyn’s emotional devastation when she learned of Wesley’s infidelity scoffed at these statements, calling them self-serving, arrogant, and outright lies.
Wesley said they separated in the summer of 2004, “and we saw less and less of each other and just kind of [ . . . ] started diverging.”
“Did you ultimately meet someone else?”
“I did. I met Shameka Wright.” Wesley went on to describe meeting her at Big Lots where she had been working at the time.
“And have y’all been happy?”
“We’ve been very happy.”
“Can you tell us why you chose to move to Chesapeake?”
Wesley described the larger size of the school division and what that meant to his career, and said that he’d been looking for a fresh start. He also said that he “hadn’t talked to [Jocelyn] face-to-face in a conversation without attorneys since—the best I can recall was June of 2005.” He claimed to know nothing about her life after June 2005. “And I knew very little from the summer of 2004 to the summer of 2005,” he added. At Sanzone’s questioning, Wesley said he no longer had a key to the house on Pine Bluff, and not only did he not know the alarm code, “I didn’t even know there was an alarm system there.”
Sanzone asked his client about the December 2006 removal of furniture from the lake house, and Wesley confirmed his mother’s earlier testimony. After that, Sanzone also had him back up his mother’s testimony about the travel trailer and the campground.
Moving on to David Hall’s truck, Wesley contradicted Dave’s testimony, claiming that he’d returned the vehicle on Wednesday morning, December 19, 2007, before Jocelyn had died. He followed that testimony by verifying Al Ragas’s timeline, which put Wesley at the high school until after four o’clock that afternoon. When Sanzone asked where he went after his conversation with Al, Wesley said that he went home.
“Why did you go home?” the defense attorney asked.
“Much as the same right now, I’ve got this problem in my throat because my seasonal allergies have been acting up . . . Throat was sore, scratchy. And [I] went home to take a nap and get a little rest in.”
To undermine the prosecution’s testimony that placed his cell phone in Chesapeake during the evening of December 19, he claimed that he did not have adequate cell coverage at his house, and missed a lot of incoming calls because of it. He added that he hadn’t gotten a signal at the Taco Bell, either. From there, Sanzone easily transitioned his line of questions to confirm the testimony of the fast food restaurant’s employee, Wayne Stewart.
After covering Wesley’s story about going out to pick up food that evening, Sanzone asked him what he did when he returned home.
“Just did some reading and organizing some things, packing up, getting things ready to finish my move,” he said, referring to his upcoming change to the campgrounds.
“Did you ever leave Chesapeake that evening, that day, the morning, the next day, anything?”
“Not at all.”
Wesley further said that scheduling his car detailing for Thursday had taken some time.
“But it was not because you were out of town any of those days?”
“No.”
Sanzone took Wesley through the events of December 20, 2007, from his activities during the last day of school before the holiday to his drive west. “So you go to Shameka’s house,” Sanzone said. “And it takes you about three and a half hours to get there at Concord. What happened when you got to her house?”
“Well, I just unloaded the car with all the Christmas goodies and things that the teachers and kids had brought in. And I gave it to them [ . . . ]”
“Did you hear some news?”
“I did. Shameka’s mother informed me of what, I guess, was on the news, that Jocelyn had died.”
“And how did you take that?”
“It hit me hard. It was devastating. In fact, my knees buckled [ . . . ]”
“Wesley, what did you do after that?”
“We just talked for a little bit and tried to kind of take it all in. Then I contacted the sheriff’s department.”
“Why did you contact them?”
“I figured being next-of-kin, there might be something I needed to do or talk to them, see what was going on.”
“Did you ultimately meet with them the next day?”
“I did.”
“And prior to going to meet with them, did you talk to a number of people [ . . . ] about what may have happened or did people talk to you?”
“Yes. There were rumors of all kinds [ . . . ] going around. I know that Shameka worked for Campbell County and heard rumors from the Campbell County first responders and people talking about this and that, all kinds of things.”
This testimony was the first accusation that Campbell County emergency personnel, who had not even responded to the crime scene, had been spreading stories about the event. And frankly, there is no indication that the statement was true.
“Now when you went up and met with the sheriff, were you informed that if there was anything that you could do to further clarify what was going on with you on the nineteenth and twentieth that you should do it . . . ?”
“Yes,” Wesley said, going on to state that it was the sight of his Taco Bell leftovers a day or so later that reminded him he’d been there on Wednesday, and said he went back to the place while it would still be fresh in the fast food employees’ minds.
Sanzone then questioned Wesley’s second occasion of borrowing David Hall’s truck in January. Wesley testified that when he’d borrowed the vehicle in December, he had run over boards with nails hiding in tall grass by his mom’s trailer. He said he’d stopped the leak with Fix-A-Flat, then replaced the tires the next month.
“Now with respect to Dave, when he called you to talk about the tires on the truck, he actually wanted his old tires? He liked the type he had before rather than what you put on there?” Sanzone asked.
“He was very happy to get the new tires,” Wesley insisted. “In fact, he called me Santa Claus.”
Next on the defense agenda was a discussion of guns. Wesley testified that he bought the Smith and Wesson .357 as a gift for Jocelyn and confirmed his father’s story that she was a better shot than he was.
Talking about the couple’s wills, Sanzone asked, “And the portion where it talks about the three-fifty-seven being yours, is that after the portion that you would get everything if Jocelyn died first?”
“It is after that portion,” Wesley said with a nod.
“Was it your intention through that will to ever say that the gun was your gun?”
“Not at all.”
“After the writing of those wills, and before that, who did the gun belong to?”
“It always belonged to her.”
“Did it ever in your mind come to a point where you thought it was yours . . . ?”
“No. It was a gift to her. It was going to be hers all along,” Wesley said, adding that—unlike any of the other witnesses questioned—he’d often seen Jocelyn with it.
“When she was walking, she had it in [ . . . ] her jacket, sweater. She would have it in her right pocket or it would be in the glove compartment of the console of the Honda Accord,” he claimed, saying, “Downtown, she worked those late-night hours and it’s not the best neighborhood.”
Sanzone geared up for his finale. “The bottom line in this whole case and this whole matter: did you kill Jocelyn Earnest?”
“No.”
“Did you go to that house that night as she was returning from someplace?”
“No.”
“Did you even know what time Jocelyn would be home or what her schedule was on the nineteenth?”
“No.”
Holding up the note found at the crime scene, Sanzone asked, “Did you compose this note and leave it?”
“No.”
“Did you, of your own knowledge, even know that Jocelyn had a new love?”
“I had no knowledge of anything.”
“The first time you heard of that from Marcy Shepherd was when?”
“The preliminary trial.”
Joey Sanzone had asked the last question of the direct examination. He could only hope that his client would hold up well under any prosecution attempt to throw him off his version of events.