Before He Wakes (32 page)

Late in October, Jo Lynn had been closed up in one of Doris’s bedrooms, going through cancelled checks and other material, when something unusual caught her eye. One check on Russ’s account was numbered far out of sequence with the others. It was dated December 28, 1987, made payable to Barbara, but the signature did not look like the others on Russ’s checks.

“Look at this,” Jo Lynn said, going into another room where Doris was working.

Doris agreed that something was fishy about the check. She searched a Mother’s Day card that Russ had sent her to compare signatures. Russ clearly had not signed the check. Apparently Barbara had written the check to herself from Russ’s account just thirty-five days before his death. Why? Had Russ known about it? Was this somehow significant?

They thought it notable enough that they made it the lead item on the list they sent to Evenson on October 17. Unbeknownst to them, that check was the little thing that Evenson knew had been lying there right before his eyes all along. It brought about a whole new phase of the investigation that continued through January, producing the evidence that he and Buchanan had been seeking for so long. By the first anniversary of Russ’s death, they had no doubt that when the trial began on May 1, they would be able to show, step by step, exactly what had led to Russ’s murder.

For all their hard work, though, neither could have imagined that before the trial began, they would get help from a source they couldn’t have dreamed possible.

On Tuesday evening, April 18, 1989, less than two weeks before the trial was to begin, Rick Buchanan got a call at home from a Durham police officer named Ralph Mack.

A woman he knew had given him something that she thought might be significant to the Stager case, Mack said. Could he bring it over?

By all means, said Buchanan.

Mack arrived at 8:37 carrying a tiny audiotape cassette. It was a minicassette, made in Mexico, with a faded green label that bore the Realistic brand.

Buchanan should listen to the tape, Mack told him. It could be very important.

When Eric Evenson walked into the courthouse the next morning, Detective Valerie McCabe was waiting with a smile on her face. “Wait until you see what Ricky’s got,” she said, but she wouldn’t tell him what it was.

Evenson went straight to the detective division, where Buchanan and several other officers were listening to the tape. Nobody said anything as Evenson joined them, listening intently to the voice coming from the machine. It took Evenson only a few moments to realize what he was hearing.

“It was like, this is just unreal, it’s too hard to believe,” he recalled later.

Evenson hurried upstairs to tell Ron Stephens what Buchanan had turned up.

Under a process called discovery, North Carolina law requires the state to let the defense examine any physical evidence before the start of a trial, and Stephens did not want to risk a judge ruling that he had delayed something so important that had cropped up so late.

“We’ve got to get it to Cotter,” Stephens said.

The tape set off a whole new round of last-minute investigation and legal research for both sides.

Eight days after he got the tape, Buchanan asked Doris and Al Stager to come to the district attorney’s office. He had something that he wanted to see if they could identify. He took them into the law library and seated them at a table. He took a seat on the other side behind a small tape recorder.

“I have a tape,” he said. “Listen to the tape. See if you can identify the voice.”

Doris’s and Al’s expression revealed that they recognized the voice immediately, but they listened intently to the entire recording before speaking, their initial shock at what they were hearing turning to sorrow by the time the voice had stopped. Doris broke the silence that followed.

“That’s Russell,” she said.

Part Five

Judgment

26

The Lee County courthouse is a two-story brick structure of neoclassical design built shortly after the turn of the century. Porticoes on the east and west sides of the building are each supported by six Ionic columns painted to match the locally made burgundy brick. Inside, old men sit passing time on benches along the broad tiled hallways leading to the double staircase in the lobby that offers access to the second floor with its spacious single courtroom.

The charming exterior is deceiving, however. In the recent past the creaky old courtroom was renovated at minimal expense. The balcony, once the only place in the courtroom for black spectators, has been hidden behind a cheap drop ceiling with fluorescent lights. The walls are covered with imitation pine paneling, the walkways between the hard wooden benches topped with durable green carpeting of the sort found on miniature golf courses. The stern countenances of past judges scowl from dark portraits along the courtroom walls, as if their dignity has been offended by this cut-rate setting.

The courtroom had often been the scene of drama but never of the spectacle that Barbara Stager’s trial promised. Rarely were reporters, photographers and TV camera crews from the state’s largest cities drawn here. County officials knew that they would be coming in large numbers for this trial, though, and shortly before it was to begin they sent cleaning crews in to put the best face on the old building.

Few reporters and photographers were present, however, when the trial opened on Monday, May 1, 1989, though Judge J. B. Allen, who believed in wide public access to trials, already had ruled that cameras, audio recorders and video recorders would be allowed in the courtroom, ensuring that Barbara’s every display of emotion during the trial would be on front pages each morning and TV screens each night. But the early proceedings were too dull to attract many news people.

Instead, the courtroom was crowded with more than a hundred Lee County citizens who had been summoned for the purpose of choosing twelve who would decide Barbara’s fate.

Choosing those twelve was delayed while Barbara’s lawyer, William Cotter, put up a wall of motions. Barbara sat listening patiently in a pale green dress as Cotter fought to have her charges dismissed or her trial postponed.

“I am not prepared to try this case,” he told the judge, citing as reasons the sudden last-minute appearance of a mysterious audiotape and the departure of Richard Glaser, the second lawyer originally appointed to defend Barbara.

The tape had been a devastating blow to Cotter’s defense. His first reaction after listening to it was that his case suddenly had gone from bad to hopeless. Although Barbara remained sublimely confident even after learning of the tape, he was certain that if jurors were allowed to hear it, along with evidence about Larry’s shooting, she didn’t stand a chance.

“It was so damaging that it actually was exhilarating in a very strange way,” he later recalled. “It made me say, ‘Okay, Cotter, you’ve got to do something with this, let’s get going.’ ”

Judge Allen was not sympathetic. Now fifty-one, Allen had been a probation officer, prosecutor and District Court judge before his election to the Superior Court bench two and a half years earlier. A burly man with a deep, stentorian voice, he was a commanding and intimidating presence. His silver hair fell in a dip across his forehead, and he stared down from the bench through wire-rimmed glasses with a pensive expression. He had no patience with lawyers’ excuses, and he was ready to get on with the trial.

He already had denied several of Cotter’s motions, and now he denied this one. But Cotter was ready with more. Among them was another request that the state be ordered not to bring up anything about Barbara’s previous marriage or her character.

“We didn’t even want the name of James Larry Ford to come up in this trial,” he said.

“Are you asking me to order that the state be prevented from presenting any evidence of any crimes, wrongs or acts that are not directly related to the death of Allison Russell Stager III?” the judge asked.

“That’s correct,” Cotter said. “What concerns me is the prosecution’s opening statement about what it is they are going to prove in their case.”

Allen decided to reserve decision on that until after the jury had been picked.

Although he was getting nowhere, Cotter, who would grow to like and respect Allen as the trial wore on despite an avalanche of rulings against him, wouldn’t give up. “Your Honor, one last motion,” he interjected.

“All right,” the judge said wearily.

“I am going to renew my motion to continue and ask for one week.”

“All right. The motion is denied. Now, Counsel, I am prepared for the state and for the defendant to bring in the first panel and commence jury selection.”

The jury would be chosen from panels of a dozen citizens, many of whom were reluctant to serve. The first to be called was a housewife of Japanese descent, and Evenson quickly made clear the line of questioning he would be following.

“How do you feel about capital punishment? Are you opposed to it, or do you feel like it is a necessary law?”

“I am opposed to it,” the woman said. “I don’t believe in it.”

“Okay, that’s fine. Is that based on some moral or religious belief that you have or just a general feeling that you have?”

“Just a general feeling.”

“You feel strongly about that?”

“Well, I guess so. I never have faced to ask me like that question, but I generally, I don’t like to be having capital punishment in the United States.”

The judge intervened to excuse her, explaining that her views would impair her ability to serve.

The second prospective witness was as clear on his position as the first had been. “I feel like I like it,” he replied when Evenson asked his feelings about capital punishment.

This was a gun-owning fundamentalist. If you murder, he said, you should die. The prosecution was happy with him.

Would he always vote for death after convicting a defendant of first-degree murder? Cotter asked.

“Yes, sir.”

He too was excused.

By the end of the day only two jurors had been accepted. By the end of the second day, half the jury had been seated. Not until the fourth day, after eighty-three people had been questioned, was the fourth and final alternate chosen, a man who said he found the death penalty an “unfortunate necessity.” Asked if he could sentence somebody to death, he responded, “I think I could do it but it would be rather hard to live with.”

The final makeup of the jury was nine men and three women, all white. Most were married and had children. Their jobs included carpenter, telephone worker, salesman, assembly-line worker, media technician, nursing instructor. Most were churchgoers, with Baptists being predominant. Barbara, with her own strong Baptist background, knew that such a jury likely would be strongly conservative, not reluctant to impose a death penalty. But she could not accept, friends later said, that people such as these possibly could believe that she would deliberately kill somebody.

The Fords and Stagers never had met, but the parents of Barbara’s two husbands recognized one another instinctively as they arrived at court for the opening of testimony on Monday, May 8. The two mothers met in warm embrace.

The Fords and Stagers took front-row seats, just behind the table where the prosecutors sat, separated from them by a wooden rail. They were joined by the Stagers’ daughter, Cindy; Russ’s first wife, Jo Lynn; the Fords’ son Ronnie and their granddaughter Dana who was living with them temporarily.

Across the aisle, seated behind Barbara and her two defense attorneys, were her parents, her sons and her minister. Behind them were a group of close friends and supporters.

Reporters and photographers had turned out in force, as expected, and halfway back on the defense side of the courtroom, a TV camera had been mounted.

Before court was called to order, Barbara remained with her family and friends, chatting and laughing, never acknowledging her former in-laws across the way. Her brown hair had been cut short, and all hint of blond was gone. She wore big wire-frame glasses, a bulky turtleneck blouse with a single strand of pearls and tiny earrings. On her left hand were the diamond engagement ring and wedding band that Russ had given her.

After the jury had been impaneled and sent to the jury room, Cotter again asked that his motion be heard to deny admission of any evidence of Larry’s death. He was particularly concerned that the state might bring it up in opening remarks. He didn’t want any mention of the recently found audiotape either.

“Does the state intend to make an opening statement?” the judge inquired.

“If Your Honor please, because the jury selection has taken basically a week, we’re ready to go ahead and proceed with evidence,” said Eric Evenson, who didn’t like giving the opposition an outline of the case he planned to present. “We’re not going to make one at this time.”

That being the case, Cotter told the judge, he wouldn’t make one either. “But we reserve the right to do so at another time,” he said.

The judge delayed hearing Cotter’s motion until the matter came up in the course of the trial.

A technician set up a recorder to play the tape of Jason’s call to 911, and after the jury had returned, the state’s first witness, dispatcher Barbara Parson, told them about the call and the actions she had taken.