Dance of Death (34 page)

Diggs was nearly beaten back. “I mean, [the] only additional evidence I could have would be a name tag under it, but what we have obviously is a person who does not fit the description of John Frazier, okay. He has hair and he has a mustache. . . .”

As much as Diggs tried to get the judge to accept Martin's testimony, the prosecution argued against it. “I certainly don't have any objection to him being called as a witness,” Hembree said to the judge, “but to have him come in and be qualified as an expert? I don't know of a case held by our supreme court that says you can call your own private investigator, qualify him as an expert and then put him up there to critique the efforts by the police department. And how he would do it different back where he came from, so that's something brand-new for South Carolina.”

“No, it's not,” Cottingham assured him. “It's not gonna happen in South Carolina in my court.” After a fifteen-minute discussion on the matter, the judge offered his final words. “The thrust of your discussion is to put the guilt on somebody else. Well, sir, you're not entitled to it under the rule for your hired investigators to say that somebody else may have committed it instead of John Boyd Frazier. You simply can't do that. I specifically reject that and I decline to let him testify: one, as an expert; two, I'm not gonna let him get into any third-party guilt in his investigation. Clearly, that's what you want to show. I think as an officer of the court, you've got to admit that . . . If I'm wrong, the supreme court can tell me so. I'm not going to permit that, don't think our rules provide for it, and I'm certainly not going into a situation where the investigating officers are put on trial rather than the alleged defendant.”

Shortly before 10:00
P.M
., the court foreman was asked to bring the jury back in. They stayed long enough to hear defense counsel say there would be no more witnesses, that at this time they were gonna rest.

With the jury dismissed and most of the galleries nearly emptied, the judge asked to hear any motions. Since it had been a long day, Diggs asked to postpone any motions until the morning, and the prosecution agreed with one minor exception. The prosecution wanted to know if the state was going to be required to open on the law in regard to the general charges of murder. Cottingham informed that he intended to give the charge on murder, the definition of murder, the definition of malice and to charge the law as to conspiracy. He would also address the jury as to expert witnesses, the hand of one is the hand of all, mere presence and the voluntariness of the statement, identification charge with the testimony of John Boyd Frazier and charge with reference to failure to take the stand.

The judge then asked Renee to come forward as he questioned her about her absolute right to testify. “I do not wish to testify,” she said softly after acknowledging she understood all her rights to testify. Given the evidence of Renee's many sexual affairs, her promiscuous lifestyle, her confessions to the police and her fragile state of mind, it was a wise decision. The prosecutors could have easily disemboweled her like a wounded deer in front of the jury.

The court finally recessed at 10:15
P.M
. On the way out, those who had sat through the entire day's affairs pondered tomorrow's outcome. With the case now resting on the final arguments, the odds were in neither counsel's favor at this point. Even though the prosecution had presented a powerful case against Renee, its case could easily fail with the jurors. No matter what the jurors had seen and heard, it was still hard for some people to believe they would ever convict this young mother of conspiracy to commit murder. The jury had to have had doubts about her guilt, so how could they vote to send her to prison for the rest of her life without being absolutely positive she was guilty?

Although Renee looked worried, even she wholeheartedly believed the jury would have many reasonable doubts in mind.

Throughout the trial, only a handful of seats were occupied on either side of the courtroom, and that changed only slightly the last day of court. Renee looked confident and was dressed in a dark blue business suit with a plain white button-down blouse. For good luck, she wore on the front of her dress a gold angel with a halo made of pearls. Her mother had given it to her the first day of court as a reminder of her support. Both she and her mother had prayed this would be her final day to think about wearing a prison jumpsuit again.

After the panel of jurors was escorted in and seated in the jury box, the morning began as promised with the normal motions for dismissal and charges to the jury. The state would have the honor of first and last final arguments and the defense would have just the one offered between.

Fran Humphries began summation in praise of the jurors, then explained the legal terms of murder, conspiracy to commit murder, responsibility of the police and Renee's voluntary confession, withdrawal from conspiracy, and the principle of the hand of one is the hand of all.

He reminded the jurors, “If Renee Poole had said, ‘I'm not going through with it. You better not, either,' if and only if both of those predicate situations exist, then and only then does Kimberly Renee Poole escape responsibility in this matter.

“Even an intent to withdraw, and it is not suggested by this evidence, but even an intent to withdraw, if not communicated or if not done entirely, is insufficient and she is responsible, equally responsible for the murder of William Brent Poole. That is the law.

“Now, that is to say this: how do you communicate your entire and complete withdrawal from a conspiracy such as this? We can do it any number of ways: not just by word, but by action. Was there a withdrawal communicated entirely by this defendant, Kimberly Renee Poole, to John Boyd Frazier by her conduct? No, ma'am. No, sir. It is not enough to get the train off the tracks and then say, ‘shouldn't have done that.' The law requires a derailing of that train, and in this case, there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that.”

Humphries then turned the jurors' attention to logic. “Common sense, folks, is in the details, and there is one central, inescapable truth that is situated within the facts of this case: the conduct of Kimberly Renee Poole was intentional. It was goal oriented. It was purposeful, and it was knowing, and as a result, William Brent Poole lost his life by virtue of two gunshots to his head on an Horry County beach.”

The prosecutor's words had been chosen carefully and were well-rehearsed. His delivery as smooth as any of the trial lawyers from television's
Law & Order
. He never broke eye contact with the jury.

“Her conduct was not by chance,” Humphries concluded in a low voice. “It was not bad luck and it was not miscalculation. If there are two agreeing with one gun, each is as guilty as the other. Kimberly Renee Poole is as guilty as the other slayer, and in this case, almost entirely responsible.”

Bill Diggs took his place in front of the jury and began the defense's position by presenting a scathing attack against the police. Going straight for the jugular, he accused them all of lying. “We have major problems about the reliability and the believability of Renee's statement.... There are major problems considering the lies and the deceit that went into the production of that statement. You're gonna have to have a doubt about her guilt simply because of that process.”

Diggs's voice became louder as he then attacked the evidence presented by the prosecution. “The state doesn't have any evidence available to them that's certainly been introduced into this trial, any physical evidence to show you that John Frazier was at the beach that night. In a year and a half, they should have been able to find something, a piece of beach sand, a bug on the windshield, other than an eyewitness identification at twelve o'clock at night with somebody fifty to eighty feet away.”

So, as to let them know he had not been grabbing at straws, Diggs talked again about the composite and missing ponytail.

“That guy has got a lot of hair, okay?” Diggs stressed as he held the composite up before the jury. “This man has got a mustache. Where did that detail come from? . . . They (the police) generated that, and I would submit that's the kind of lead [they received] from Mr. Hensley who said he was only five feet away from the fellow, as opposed to eighty feet, and he got a good look.... Why wasn't this followed up on, and why didn't you hear any testimony from the prosecution about why this wasn't? Well, obviously, they got a confession out of Renee early on in the case and they had their blinders on, and when they had this stuff like this out there, they didn't pursue it. You know, they didn't pursue it.”

Diggs confessed he had been frustrated and in a bad mood last night when the judge ruled against him. He told the jurors that he had been mad at the prosecutors, the judge, and Detective King, but had apologized to everyone. Diggs's summation sounded fragmented and choppy, and he wasn't as sure of his words as Humphries had been. He strolled back and forth from his notes and fumbled awkwardly with his glasses, nervously putting them on, then taking them off again. His voice was weak and he seemed tired.

“I was thinking, ‘this whole case is just in a mess,' and I was trying to put my finger on why it is so, and I think that it's so in this situation simply because of the sheer volume and amount of deception and lying that went on in this case by the prosecution in the interview, when Renee was being interviewed. . . .”

Diggs wasn't through with the detectives quite yet. He stepped away from his notes at the lectern and told the jurors how he thought the greatest fault was the detectives' interview techniques and how inappropriate he believed they truly were. “And the state failed, for whatever reasons, to correct that in their case. In some respects, that's on trial. I'm not condemning it in every case, but in this case, it's inappropriate, I submit, because it was done to her. Based on the deceit and the deception and the lack of physical evidence in this case connecting John Frazier to the murder, Renee is innocent. She carved out an admission that was designed to save her child and because she had ineffective counsel in Mr. Leckowitz.”

Diggs reminded the jury of his expert, Dr. Tony Albiniak, who had singled out two dozen instances where she had been coerced into a confession. “She had been pushed into a corner and had no option available to her either to extricate herself from that very unnerving situation in the middle of the night with police detectives hovering around her, this twenty-one-year-old little girl, who turned twenty-three this week, she had no method or no means of getting out of that situation other than telling them what they wanted to say or wanted her to say. And, secondly, she had no way that was presented to her; she had no option. If she wanted to save her relationship with her child, she had no option except to tell them what they wanted to hear and get out of there.”

Having disposed of this matter, Diggs then listed—in a “let's chase a few rabbits” fashion—those things he believed were known and unknown in the case. He addressed each of these issues and attempted to provide an explanation. The list also included Renee's problematic demeanor.

“She was crying. And she was physically upset. Emotionally upset, physically sick. According to the testimony prior to Detective Altman's arrival on the scene when she was down at the police station.”

Diggs wanted the jury to believe the police had railroaded Renee into a confession. Then he attacked head-on the lesion that had infected Renee's defense throughout the entire case.

“Let's talk about Frazier and let's be done with it, okay? Because now the issue at hand is Renee, not Frazier, and that's another thing. Her conviction is superfluous to justice being done in this case because convicting or acquitting her, either way, Brent Poole's murderer is still out there on the street. We know that. Why are we here? Why isn't Frazier on trial? Have you thought about that during the course of this trial? I'll tell you why. One reason that might come to your mind is they don't have any evidence. I don't think there could be a louder admission than that by the prosecution than this trial, and I think—I would submit that those blinders need to come off the prosecution and they need to solve this case.”

Diggs devoted the rest of his final argument to refuting Renee's “confession” and the physical evidence in the case.

“Justice in this case would require a complete acquittal of Renee on both of these charges, okay?” Diggs summed it up for the jury. “I would submit there's not any evidence at all. Without the use of her statement, there's no evidence to convict her of either offense. This case and the law cries out for an acquittal. This family cannot—cannot—under any circumstances receive justice today. That's gonna have to come when the trial is had for the murderer of their son.”

Diggs paused briefly, then gave the jurors a most intense look.

“. . . His Honor charged you a few minutes ago that mere presence at the crime scene—Renee was there; she was there. Over and over in her interview, she insisted, ‘I didn't know it was gonna happen,' but she was there when it did, and His Honor has already instructed you that's not guilt; that's not evidence of guilt—it doesn't make her guilty in the eyes of the law. It doesn't make her guilty. Even—he said something even beyond that. Even knowledge that this was gonna happen doesn't make her guilty, you know, and that's not sufficient to convict her.”

Solicitor Greg Hembree didn't mince any words with the jury in his opening statement of his closing arguments. “For the defense to suggest in its closing remarks that the conviction of Kimberly Renee Poole is superfluous, is insignificant to them, to the Poole family, it's offensive. This was a cold-blooded, premeditated, diabolical murder of their son and their brother.”

With lots of dramatic flair and enthusiasm, Hembree told the jury this case had a lot of evidence. Using the three Styrofoam charts like a college professor would to help keep his summation organized, he assured the jurors, “There are a lot of exhibits. You've heard from a lot of witnesses, but when you boil it down, the case is actually quite straightforward. The motive is clear, the means is clear, the opportunity is clear, and the steps undertaken to cover the crime is clear. I ask you to do one thing, to use your good judgment and common sense to evaluate this evidence and render a verdict that speaks the truth.”

The evidence supported a conviction, Hembree assured the jurors, as he reminded them of the facts from the beginning to the end of this case. He scoffed at the defense's suggestion of no motive.

“Several weeks before May first, defendant and John Boyd Frazier make a plan. They're gonna move in together. They're gonna set up housekeeping. She's gonna leave her husband for John Boyd Frazier, and she didn't cancel the trip with her husband to Chicago; she wants to get that in, but once she's finished with that, on Friday night, she leaves home, packs up in the dead of night, while her husband is out working the graveyard shift at Mack Trucks, trying to provide for their family. She boxes it up—bag and baggage, baby in the car—and disappears. He comes home to an empty house; no warnings; no clue, distraught.

“Now, this rocks along for a little while, but at some point, Mrs. Poole goes to see a lawyer. She says that in her statement. She went to see a lawyer about this family situation she finds herself in and he said, ‘Well, maybe it wasn't such a good idea.' What's the story here? We've got a lady without a job—we know what her previous job was—who has abandoned the marital home in the dead of night.... I expect the lawyer did tell her that was kind of a bad idea. Ladies and gentlemen, where is the custody of that child going? It's a problem. She also figures out that maybe John Boyd Frazier isn't all he's cracked up to be. He's kind of a loser. He doesn't really have any money. He's kind of a loser.”

Hembree picked up a copy of the transcript and held it out in front of the jurors. He read the parts as well as any amateur actor. “Let's see what Mrs. Poole tells us about John Frazier. We'll just read it right out of her statement.”

The jury listened to Renee's own incriminating words relating to her feelings for her husband and her lover, and the insurance policy she was to receive.

“See how the stakes are building up on the table? Custody, the house, the truck, over a hundred thousand dollars; that's a lot of money, even for a loser. That's a lot of money, and I think the last important piece of evidence that has to go into this motive, which sets the stage for what's about to happen, is Mr. Bollow. He saw Renee the Saturday after she moved back in, on the sixteenth, and he said she smoked a cigarette, lit up a cigarette, and kind of leaned against the truck and she said, ‘Brent will never make me do what I don't want to do.'

“So, we've got problems. We can't get custody; don't have any money, but we want to live together. What are we gonna do about it? And that is the plan. That's when they started making plans.

“First, they came on a couple of plans. The first plan was poison.”

Hembree read from the transcript where Renee had said that John kept talking to her about killing her husband: “I think that was his main thing—me poisoning him. I was like, ‘No, I'm not gonna do that.' He said something about he was gonna do one thing, then he was gonna do another thing. I said, ‘Well, do it. I don't think you have the balls to do it.'”

Hembree elaborated, then reminded the jury, “The poisoning plan wasn't gonna work, so they came up with another plan, a second plan.” He read excerpts from her statement that included John's instructions for murder: