A large part of the problem was Jim himself, who thought he could get away with covering up his sexual relationship with Danny. By pretending that he was a benevolent mentor to a troubled young man, he opened the door to some very damaging testimony from George Hill and Gregory Kerr. Jim's haughty demeanor did nothing to endear him to the jury. His attitude helped Lawton portray him as a cold, exploitive monster who kept his poor, emotionally damaged "boy toy" Danny "a prisoner in a comfortable concentration camp, where the torture was not physical but emotional and psychological."
Emily Bannister's $10 million-plus civil lawsuit against Jim was shelved pending the final outcome of the criminal trial. But, as anyone who paid attention to the O.J. Simpson murder trials knows, even when a person is acquitted in a criminal trial, as O.J. was, the civil trial can exact enormous revenge on the defendant's wealth. It is generally easier to win in a civil trial than in a criminal trial. Recognizing the potential financial disaster that Emily's lawsuit represented, Jim enlisted the very best attorney to represent his interests: Frank "Sonny" Seiler.
Jim was fortunate that Bobby Lee Cook was tied up in a federal trial in Florida and was unable to defend him in the second trial. Seiler is a senior partner at Bouhan, Williams & Levy, the law firm that purchased the elegant Armstrong House from Jim in 1970. It made sense to have Seiler, who was already up to speed on the case because of the civil lawsuit, as the lead counsel. Seiler is a very highly regarded and skilled litigator; in 1972-73, he was the youngest president of the State Bar of Georgia.
At the age of 22, Seiler became a local celebrity on August 10, 1955, when he and his buddy Jack Schaaf got into the Savannah River at East Broad Street and swam 14 miles to Tybee Island. It was very tough going against strong tides that were even rougher due to Hurricane Connie. The incident was an early example of Seiler's tenacity.
He and his wife, Cecilia, were already well-loved in Savannah. They were famous throughout the country for creating the dynasty of English bulldogs that became celebrity mascots for the University of Georgia football team, the Georgia Bulldogs. The Seilers' elite bulldogs, named Uga after the University of Georgia in Athens, are traditionally present at all University of Georgia football games.
The first Uga pup, the grandson of a bulldog that went with the football team when it won the 1943 Rose Bowl game, had been given to the Seilers as a wedding gift in 1955 while they were students at the university. On Sept. 29, 1956, when Seiler was a second-year law student at the university, the newly married couple took the pup to the Sigma Chi house across the street from the stadium. The dog looked outstanding in the attractive clothes that Cecilia had made for him. Without any expectation of what was ahead for them and their dog, the Seilers took the pup into the stadium for the first home game between the Georgia Bulldogs and Florida State. Up in the stands, where everyone could see him, the handsome pure white canine was the center of attention. All around, cameras snapped photos of them, including those of the Associated Press. A star was born.
Dan Magill, the university tennis coach and athletic publicity director, couldn't help but notice. He asked football coach "Wally" Butts to talk to Seiler about bringing Uga to the games, because Mike, the former mascot, had died. At the time, Seiler was earning some extra money working for the coach in the athletic ticket office. Seiler, always an enthusiastic fan of the football team, was happy to have his pet enhance the team's publicity efforts. "Good," Butts told him, "have him at every game." And so, this well-tempered, photogenic pup became Uga I and began the long reign of the Seilers' famous Uga mascots.
In a city suspicious of outsiders, Seiler was one of Savannah's own, unlike Bobby Lee Cook, who was from another part of the state, geographically distant from Savannah. The wisdom of the switch to Sonny Seiler was more than just home-team recognition. Seiler was a stark contrast to Lawton. Lawton, though he had limited courtroom prosecutorial experience, was clever and convincing. Seiler had distinguished himself as an accomplished civil trial litigator, but he was not a criminal defense attorney. The contrast extended to their very different courtroom styles. Lawton was a consistently soft-spoken and passionate prosecutor, while Seiler was a dramatic speaker who could be folksy and friendly in his questions to witnesses or outraged at their answers. Nobody nodded off when Seiler had the floor.
Seiler was assisted by Austin E. Catts and Donald F. Samuel from Garland, Samuel & Loeb, the premier criminal defense firm in Atlanta.
Under Seiler's direction, the second trial was very different from the first. The defense knew which witnesses and arguments would be used by Lawton's team and carefully prepared its expert witnesses to counter them. Seiler knew he had to knock out two of Lawton's key arguments: the lack of gunshot residue on Danny's hands and the chair that was photographed on top of Danny's pants leg.
The defense clearly understood that the jurors' views on homosexuality had paramount importance. In the first trial, the defense mistakenly believed that it could prevent the subject of homosexuality from being introduced into the trial. Consequently, the team did not eliminate jurors who may have been biased against gays. Seiler was not going to let that happen again.
The defense was concerned about widespread local knowledge of the case and the fact that Jim had already been convicted of premeditated murder. Recognizing that the media was mounting yet another media circus that could influence the jury, Seiler insisted on sequestering the jury. Several rebellious jurors were angry about possibly having to be away from their families and jobs. Judge Oliver listened to their complaints and then told them to go home and pack for two weeks.
This time, the defense put together a juror questionnaire to help expose potential jurors who were biased about homosexuality. Potential jurors were asked questions like: Would you care if your children were being taught by a homosexual? Would you mind if your minister was homosexual? Should homosexuals be allowed to service in the armed forces? Seiler also wanted them questioned about their opinions on using guns for self-protection and on the use of alcohol and marijuana.
At the insistence of co-counsel Austin Catts and over the objections of Seiler, who was not a believer, they hired professional jury consultants. The very careful juror questioning significantly stretched out the process, with expensive consultants dissecting body language and answers to the lengthy questionnaire. The consultants looked for inconsistencies in the answers that were given and body language that suggested that the prospective juror was not being forthcoming. After the consultants presented their input, Seiler politely ignored much of what they said.
The jury selection process was also delayed when the court had to strike a group of six potential jurors because one of them said that he discussed the trial with a juror from the previous trial. Finally, 12 jurors and two alternates were chosen from the 51 people who made it through the initial winnowing process. The jury was half female and half male.
Second Prosecution Similar to the First Trial
The prosecution's case was very similar to the first trial, where the team secured a conviction. Many of the same witnesses were called, and the testimony was much like what was presented in 1982.
The prosecution's major claim was that Jim staged the scene of the shooting to make it look like self-defense. Lawton used the fact that a chair leg had been moved over Danny's jeans as a visible example of Jim's alleged evidence-tampering. Officer Donna Stevens had taken extensive color photos of the death scene and other parts of Mercer House. Lawton used approximately 20 of her photos in the first trial to support the claim that Jim had moved evidence around.
Seiler discovered that Stevens had taken five rolls of photos. Most of those photos had not been used in the previous trial, nor had they been shown to the defense. Seiler finally got all the photos, started comparing photos of several objects, and found those objects were in different positions. This discovery gave credence to his argument that the investigators had, in fact, been the ones that had moved the evidence.
Seiler called one of the objects "the traveling pouch," a leather bag containing a brass belt buckle, shown on the floor next to a chair in two different places. The photos showed that both the pouch and the chair had been moved. A pink box on top of Jim's desk, as well as other things, had clearly been moved around. Stevens admitted that investigators moved certain things. She said that she took photos before, after, and during the moving of those items, but she testified, "To my knowledge, nothing was altered."
The other prosecution witnesses presented testimony that was successful in the first trial, with a few exceptions.
Randall Riddell, who performed the gunshot residue tests at the state crime lab, admitted under Austin Catts' cross-examination that his statement that Danny probably did not fire the weapon "was not an absolute." There were a number of variables that could affect the tests. For example, if Danny had wiped his hand across his shirt to clutch the wound in his chest, gunshot residue could have been removed from his hands.
Savannah Det. Everette Ragan was a key prosecution witness. Ragan had testified at the previous trial that the evidence showed Jim shot Danny twice when he was face-down on the floor, and that Jim had contrived the scene to make it look like the shooting was self-defense.
Defense lawyers challenged whether Ragan was qualified to provide expert opinions. However, Judge Oliver allowed Ragan, as an expert criminal investigator, to testify about conclusions drawn based on what he found at the scene."
Ragan testified, "We noticed substantial amount of blood here on the wrist of the victim, on the fingers, and the hands of the victim. On closer inspection, you can see that this blood appears to have been smeared in these hands. We looked at the wrist. There's no wound whatsoever…there's no reason for this blood to have appeared on this man's wrist or on his hand, unless, at one time, the hand was…under the victim's body, which was subsequently moved and placed out here."
Over Catts' vigorous objections, Ragan went on to say, "Based on the position of the bullets on the body, the position of the bullet holes in the floor, and at this angle as the bullet went into the carpet, I concluded that the victim was on the floor when these two shots were fired into him."
Then Ragan noted the obvious: the chair over Danny's pants leg could not have been put there by the deceased.
Lawton then asked Ragan to testify about Jim's desk and a series of photographs that focused on various items on the desk top. The detective pointed out where a cigarette had been ground out on the top of the leather-top desk, even though there was an ashtray right beside it.
"Basically what you see here are paper fragments here on top of the desk. You'll see paper torn here and paper that is off the side of this desk that is on top of this drawer here to the right side of the desk," Ragan said as he pointed to the photographs. "You notice a TV Guide…sitting on top of these papers…as I pick up this TV Guide, you can see additional debris that is here on an envelope here that did not appear to be damaged whatsoever. You will see damage to these papers in here, which led me to conclude that after this paper was damaged here, that this magazine was placed again back on top of it."
Ragan brought the jury's attention to the photograph of the Luger lying on top of the desk. "When you take this close-up photograph on top of this weapon, you can see paper fragments that are sitting on top of this gun, which led to my conclusion that when this paper was damaged, causing these fragments to go here, this other paper here, and paper fragments on the floor behind this desk, the gun was in this position, causing the fragments to be thrown on top of this gun.
Ragan pointed to a photograph of Jim's desk chair. "If you look into the seat of this chair, you will again observe paper fragments and a lead fragment…. I drew my conclusions from the fact that there was no one sitting in this chair when these papers were damaged, causing them to fragment…to land in the seat of this chair."
Lawton brought in a new witness, Dr. George E. Gantner Jr., an expert on crime scenes, to provide independent confirmation of Ragan's theory of the shooting. "In my opinion," Gantner testified, "the shots from the gun on the desk occurred before the shot into the desk. In other words, the gun on the floor, in my opinion, was shot after the other three shots.
Gantner said he based his opinion "on the fact that the paper overlies the gun, for one thing. And secondly, the lack of extensive blood on the weapon on the floor, despite extensive blood on the hand."
Seiler cross-examined the new expert, who admitted that he had never been to the scene; never inspected the bullet holes in the floor or furniture; and never personally viewed the alignment of the shots or the bullet markings on the floor in reference to any position to where the user of the weapon may or may not have been standing. The prosecution didn't tell him about hair and bone that was found in the southwest corner of the room.
The prosecution had sent Gantner approximately 20 photographs out of more than 100 that were taken of the scene. Gantner had not been given sufficient information to provide convincing testimony for the prosecution.
A Much Stronger Defense the Second Time
Much of Jim's testimony was similar to the previous trial, with some important changes. Seiler asked him to explain his relationship with Danny. Jim answered, "I got to know him pretty good. He was a nice fellow. He could be very charming. He could just persuade you about anything in the world he wanted to…. By November, December '79, he had his girlfriend, I had mine. But to me sex is just a natural thing. We'd had sex a few times. Didn't bother me. Didn't bother him. I had my girlfriend, he had his. It was just an occasional thing that happened."
Jim went on to say, "He could be very, very nice…and the next moment, just like that he'd turn on you like a cocked rattlesnake. And you didn't know when it was going to happen, and you didn't have to give him a reason for it to happen."
He gave several examples. After Danny had his stomach pumped, when he had tried to commit suicide, he "tore up Clark Pavilion. Three orderlies-they put him in a steel cot. He bragged to me about this." Later, he told the jury about how Danny and his friend attacked Earl LeFevre and his family; how Danny beat up Robert Croyle, who had been spraying for roaches, and then went after him with a baseball bat; the time when Danny beat up his landlord and threw a chair through his window; and finally his sudden attack on his employee Barry Thomas.
Jim admitted that after the shooting, he moved around several things as he searched for his telephone directory to make the calls to Joe, his attorney, and the police.
Lawton cross-examined Jim about Danny's girlfriend, Debbie. Jim testified that Danny and Debbie spent many nights in his guest bedroom and that he had no reason to be jealous of her. When the gold chain necklace inevitably came up, Jim said that he extended Danny credit for the necklace, much as he had with Danny's car.
Lawton probed the testimony Jim had given on the sexual aspects of his relationship with Danny. Jim responded that Danny "was a hustler on Bull Street selling himself to anybody who wanted to pay for it…He was 22 years old. He was no child…I was going with a very attractive young lady who later went back to North Florida, where she was attending nursing school. Danny was going with Debbie and trying to marry her. This other thing had no mystique to it. It was just something that was natural and normal, and just occasionally."
Lawton continued the probe. "…Are you contending that you, at the age of 50, and him at the age of 20, under those circumstances, that that was in fact a natural and normal thing.
Jim answered, "Mmm-hmm. I was 52 years old, but he had 52 years worth of mileage on him."
The defense team created a model of Jim's study in the courtroom with Jim's furniture and carpet. There was even a replica on Danny's body on the floor. This effort made it much easier for the jury to visualize Dr. Joseph Burton's detailed testimony about gunshot residue.
Seiler added an impressive new expert witness, Dr. Irving C. Stone, who had helped a committee in Congress investigate the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Stone was the head of the Dallas, Texas, Institute for Forensic Sciences. Dr. Larry Howard, the head of the state crime lab, took the two Lugers and Danny's shirt to Dallas for analysis. The Dallas crime lab had sophisticated equipment that the Georgia lab didn't have. When Stone shot the Luger that Danny had under his hand, he found that it had a heavy trigger pull, which made it difficult to fire. When Stone finally got the Luger to fire, it caused the gun to jerk around a great deal, which could explain how Danny missed his shot at Jim and hit the desk instead. Also, the Luger had a round jammed in it when the police put it into evidence. The two casings that were found most likely came from that gun.
When Stone shot the Luger that Jim used, he found it had a light trigger pull, which supported Jim's claim that he shot Danny multiple times in rapid succession.
Using a sophisticated energy dispersive X-ray machine, Stone was able to show that Danny was shot from a distance of 4 or more feet away. Tests did not produce any gunpowder at all on Danny's shirt. These two findings undermined the prosecution's coup de grâce theory.
Further testing of Danny's gun didn't consistently produce enough residue to be meaningful.
Stone testified that Danny fired a shot into Jim's desk. Then Jim shot him in the left side of his chest. The force of that shot caused Danny to start to spin toward the floor, catching the other two rapid-fire shots, one in the head and one in the back. These two shots were not when Danny was lying on the floor.
Seiler had another important expert witness, Dr. Charles Petty, the Dallas medical examiner who had participated in the congressional panel that re-examined the John F. Kennedy assassination. Petty testified that the first shot that hit Danny in the left shoulder severed his aorta and injured his spinal cord. He voiced the opinion that Danny fired first and both men were standing when they shot at each other. He told the jury that Jim stayed behind his desk when he shot Danny. Had he fired a shot less than 3 feet from Danny, powder burns would have been on his shirt, but no burns were found.
The chair that was photographed over Danny body, according to Dr. Petty, could have been the result of an involuntary movement on Danny's part.
Seiler followed the technical testimony with a lengthy list of individuals who had experienced Danny's dark side: Barry Thomas, Jim's restoration employee; Earl LeFevre, the Gulfstream mechanic who was attacked by Danny and George Hill; Robert Croyle, who sprayed for roaches at Danny's apartment; Nina A. Kelly, a Georgia Regional Hospital nurse; Steven W. Richardson, Director of Admissions at Georgia Regional; and Drs. Lester Haddad, Simon Spiriosa, Patrick Brooks, and Aurel Teodorescu.
As in the previous trial, a number of Jim's friends provided him with testimony that he was a peaceful man and they had never witnessed drugs at Mercer House.
Seiler had two surprise witnesses. The first was Vanessa Blanton, who lived at the corner of Bull Street and East Gordon Street in an apartment that was across the square from Mercer House on Monterey Square. She was employed at a café on River Street that stayed open until 2:30 a.m. She normally had 30 minutes of clean-up after the bar closed. She estimated that in the early-morning hours of April 3, 1981, she left the café around 3:10 or 3:15 a.m. She drove directly home, straight down Whitaker and made a left on Gordon.
While she knew of Jim and his restoration of Mercer House, she did not know him, nor had she ever heard of Danny Hansford.
Seiler asked her if anything unusual happened when she got to her house.
Blanton said that she heard a gunshot. "When I arrived at the apartment, I was fortunate enough to find a parking place in front of my apartment, and I was going up the stairs, and I was almost to the top of the front entrance when I heard a gunshot, and I looked over my shoulder towards Mr. Williams' house. It sounded as if it had come in that direction. I looked over there, and there was a young man standing there, holding a gun pointing it up inside the square, towards the trees, and he fired another shot.
"I was watching him, and I don't know if he saw me or not, but he started back up the front entrance to Mr. Williams' house."
Seiler asked her how the man was dressed. She said, "Jeans, T-shirt, like most young men wear."
"Were you afraid," Seiler asked her, "having seen the incident?"
She answered, "Well, I was more concerned, living right there on Bull Street, there's a lot of things that go on in Forsyth Park, you know. It's not unusual to hear something at night…I collected my thoughts for a minute and I thought about calling the police, but I looked out the window, and by then there was a police car there…I was exhausted. I went to bed."
When she heard about the fatal shooting in May, she never really made the connection between the two events. Nobody from the police department or the district attorney's office ever came to ask her if she knew anything about the shooting.
Seiler had contacted her two weeks earlier after he had heard that she told a girl she worked with that she had heard two shots. The story got back to Seiler, who subpoenaed her.
The second surprise witness was Claudina ("Dina") Delk Smith, a homemaker who had worked as a medical secretary and was completing her degree at Armstrong University. She had lived on and off in Savannah for 11 years. However, in the spring of 1981, she lived just outside Atlanta. She and her son came to visit her family and friends for the "Night in Old Savannah" weekend festival on May 1, 1981.They arrived Thursday evening and stayed with her cousin, who lived at 17-A West Gordon Street on the corner of Monterey Square. Her cousin's house was directly across from Mercer House. "Her house was on the corner of the square, not the corner of the street," she explained. "If you walked out of her front door, you would be facing the south side of Mr. Williams' house…the Gordon Street side."
The evening of May 1, they had gone to Johnson Square for the "Night in Old Savannah" celebration with her cousin. They returned to Monterey Square, but then she went out again to visit a friend that lived at the Drayton Arms until 1:30, when she talked to her husband long distance and had a lengthy conversation with her cousin. Afterward, she went out to sit in the square to smoke a cigarette, since her cousin didn't want her to smoke in the house. Shortly afterwards she heard several loud gunshots fired all at once. It seemed to her to be all around, not just in one direction. She told the jury that she just sat there for perhaps 30 minutes. Frozen. Frightened. Finally, she walked back to her cousin's house, which meant walking past Mercer House.
Defense co-counsel Austin Catts asked her if any police cars were around Jim's house at that time. She did not see any police cars and still did not have any idea from what direction the shots had come. When she passed Mercer House, she saw that the lights were on and the front door was standing open, but no one was standing in the doorway. When she got to her cousin's house, she went into her bedroom and found her half-awake. She, too, had heard the loud noises. She talked with her and went to bed. She said she didn't call the police because she wouldn't know what to tell them. She didn't know where the shots came from.
The next morning, she saw a TV news van outside Mercer House and read in the newspaper about a shooting had occurred in the house. She and her son left for the beach that morning and then went to Hinesville to visit relatives. After that, they went home to the Atlanta area. No one from any investigating agency had come to her cousin's home to ask her if she had heard anything in the early-morning hours of May 2.
She came back to live in Savannah. Her cousin introduced her to Jim Williams in early November 1982. She told him what she experienced the year before in Monterey Square and he asked her to speak with his attorney. Subsequently, Doug Moss, an investigator for the defense, interviewed her.
Lawton cross-examined her and asked why she didn't call the police. She said she didn't think there was any value in telling the police she just heard shots. After she told Jim, he put her in touch with his investigator and she didn't think it was necessary to call the police as well.
Seiler ended the defense witnesses with Dr. Henry A. Brandt, a psychiatrist and neurologist with a private practice, who also ran a clinic for the poor at Memorial Hospital one day a week. Dr. Brandt had examined Danny's medical, juvenile, criminal, and Air Force records, plus the evaluations of his probation officers. In Danny's records, two diagnoses were given-unsocialized aggressive behavior with emotional lability [emotional instability] and anti-social personality disorder, which Dr. Brandt said were "tantamount to the same diagnosis. It's been described in medical literature for at least 150 years, but they keep changing the term…. Before that, it was a psychopath, or psychopathic inferiority, sociopath, moral insanity…they're speaking about essentially the same thing."
To clarify for the layman, Seiler asked, "When you say…'antisocial,' then does that mean more than just not getting along with people at parties?"
"Oh, absolutely," Dr. Brandt answered. "It's a lifelong pattern…. The American Psychiatric Association listed the 12 criteria for the diagnosis. To make the diagnosis, the person would only have to meet three of these criteria…. The first one is truancy…. Another is delinquency, arrested or referred to juvenile court because of behavior…running away from home at least twice…. It's a lifelong pattern that exists…of constantly coming in conflict all the way through with any of the rules, regulations that society, parents, legal systems, any authority figures have set up."
"How can this be treated?" Seiler asked.
"I hate to tell you that there's no treatment," Dr. Brandt said, "because 99 percent of the time the patients themselves feel like they're perfectly justified in what they've done…they never show guilt except to play upon the sympathy of the people who have got them cornered. They can look you straight in the eye and tell you the best lie in the world and convince you absolutely that what they're saying is the truth, and stick to this for a while, and two weeks later, a month later, you find out it was all wrong what they told you. And the unfortunate thing is, invariably they all refuse treatment. They only get into treatment situations because they come into conflict with the law…and send them to juvenile court, then prisons…"
Seiler asked: What would be the effect of introducing dependency on alcohol and marijuana to an antisocial personality?
"Well, you've got three raging illnesses taking place in one person at the same time…and you have a compound impossible situation that anybody could deal with."
Seiler then asked him if a person with an anti-social personality were to consume a quantity of alcohol and marijuana might be expected to become suddenly violent and hostile.
Dr. Brandt replied, "Based upon his life pattern that's existed for 21 years, yes."
Closing Arguments
In his closing, Seiler reminded the jury how sloppy the police investigation was. He emphasized that the death scene was not secure and told the jury that the photos proved that items had been moved around by the crowd that had congregated there. "In they come, one officer after another, and it wasn't just a matter of just coming. It's come and join the party, you see, because you don't have many things like this happening in Savannah, in a historical mansion…and they're all curious."
Also, he said, the police didn't bother to take fingerprints off any of the objects that had been trashed or thrown around, like the highly polished silver tray or the 16th-century grandfather clock, to determine if Danny or Jim had handled them. Nor did the police canvass the neighborhood to see if anyone had witnessed the events of April 3 or May 2, as they usually did in such cases.
Seiler also compared the credentials of his expert witnesses, such as Dr. Stone, Dr. Burton, and Dr. Petty, to old Dr. Larry Howard, whom he characterized as a bureaucrat paid to help the state convict people. Howard, "who never put a foot in Jim Williams' house" and delivered his "expert" testimony with only 21 photos and an autopsy report to go by.
Lawton told jurors that all the negative information the defense presented about Danny was beside the point. "Danny Hansford is not the one on trial today. Danny Hansford is dead." The prosecutor said he didn't deny that Danny was a violent person, but that he doubted that he was the pathologically violent person the defense witnesses made him out to be. He said, "Rather, what Danny Hansford was is not bad. It's sad, what he was, more than anything else in the world, he was vulnerable. He was caught in the middle, a very unsophisticated, uneducated young man, a street kid who'd been rejected all of his life, and he finds himself surrounded…in this penumbra of sophistication, of wealth, of influence, of luxury…Jim Williams' friend. Well, what kind of friendship? What was the nature of their relationship?
"Now the man that will tell you that a relationship between a 50-year-old man and a 21-year-old boy-a very sophisticated man and a street kid-a sexual relationship at that-that it's natural and normal, just like granola-a man that will tell you that won't always tell you the truth."
Lawton then went on to the key points in his case, including the theory that the April 3 incident was a hoax meant to create a false police record of Danny's erratic and violent behavior. The passionate rhetoric of Lawton's closing in the first trial was gone. Instead, he had his assistant stage a demonstration that appeared to refute Dr. Stone's testimony about the heavy trigger pull on the gun that Danny allegedly used to shoot at Jim. Ms. Kathy Aldridge, a petite woman who weighed about 100 pounds, pointed the unloaded pistol at arm's length and fired it one-handed at the wall. There was no jerking of the muzzle whatsoever.
Seiler had put up a very good fight, far better than Cook's. The addition of strong, credible witnesses like Dr. Irving Stone and Dr. Charles Petty to an impressive witness like Dr. Joseph Burton, made the prosecution witnesses seem weak. Seiler's focus on exposing the record of Danny's violent, psychopathic personality made it harder to recognize the poor, troubled young victim that Lawton successfully created for the previous trial.
By conducting his own investigation, Seiler underscored how unprofessional the police investigation was. By demanding all of the police photos and comparing them, he could prove many different officers at the death scene moved items around. What the police should have been doing, Seiler emphasized, was determine whether Danny's or Jim's fingerprints were on the recently polished silver tray that had been thrown on the floor. Vanessa Blanton's and Dina Smith's testimony underscored the fact that police investigators didn't bother to interview potential witnesses in the neighborhood.
On 5:30 p.m. on Saturday, October 8, 1983, the jury began to deliberate. They had been sequestered since September 27. Six jurors had been very angry about the sequestration from the beginning. They took less than three hours to return a guilty verdict. Judge Oliver, who, like the jury, was tired and cranky, delivered a sentence of life imprisonment.
Jim was taken to the Chatham County jail and placed in a special cell away from the general inmate population. His requests for bond during his appeal were denied while his appeal was pending. While he was housed in the jail, he still conducted his antiques business by routing his business calls through Mercer House.
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