Free After Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by Marilyn J Bardsley Page B

Supreme Court’s decision. There were, however, two interesting new highlights. As reported in
The Savannah Morning News
by reporter Jan Skutch, the first was the testimony of Marilyn Case, former assistant head nurse in the emergency room at Candler General Hospital, who said that Danny’s hands were not bagged when he arrived at the hospital. “‘I personally, myself, bagged the hands bilaterally in the emergency department,’” Case said. Coroner James C. Metts Jr. had called her and instructed her to bag the hands. She used plastic garbage bags, which she then taped to keep them on Danny’s arms.
     
    The bagging was done to preserve gunpowder on the Danny’s hands until swabbing for gunshot residue could be performed. The lack of gunshot residue on his hands was one of the strongest portions of the prosecution’s case because it gave credibility to the assertion that Danny had not fired a pistol at Jim.
     
    During the previous two trials and at the third one, police detective Sgt. Joseph Jordan had testified that he had taped brown paper bags over Danny’s hands before the body was removed from Mercer House. Case’s testimony appeared to support the defense allegation that police treatment of the scene was sloppy. Skutch reported that when defense witness Dr. Joseph Burton, the Atlanta medical examiner, took the stand again, he testified that plastic bags were detrimental to preserving gunpowder residue.
     
    Jan Skutch wrote that Joe Goodman, who arrived at Mercer House at the same time as police, briefly saw the scene in the study with Danny dead on the floor. “‘When I looked into Williams’ study,’” Joe testified, “‘I saw a body and a German Luger … No, I didn’t see a chair … There was no chair.’” Skutch points out in his trial coverage how important Joe’s testimony was: “It is the first time in three trials that a witness has pointedly disputed a police photograph showing a fallen Hansford with a chair over his legs, resting on his right pants cuff.”
     
    Skutch also noted that when Jim took the stand, he came across very differently than in the previous two trials: “Williams’ appearance on the witness stand was marked by an outward calm which at times seemed to border on a daze. His demeanor held up through an afternoon of questioning by Lawton.”
     
    In his final arguments, Lawton included a photographic presentation to the jury photos of the alleged damage that Danny had allegedly inflicted on Jim’s antiques the night of the shooting, focusing on the grandfather clock that Danny allegedly knocked over in the hall. In my recent interview with Lawton, he said that the damage to the clock was very minimal. He believed that someone as young and strong as Danny was would have inflicted much more damage on the clock. Rather, Lawton believed that Jim, in staging the scene, had lowered the clock down to an inch or two from the floor and let it drop. The clock was subsequently fixed and sold. Lawton then listed the other minor items that were damaged. He pointed out to the jury that in a house filled with exceptionally valuable antiques, Danny’s alleged rampage wasn’t all that costly.
     
    The case went to the jury on June 5, but soon it became obvious that they would not reach a unanimous guilty verdict. One woman juror refused to vote for Jim’s guilt. She was the sole person on the jury who had experienced a life-and-death situation not unlike the one Jim described with Danny. When her boyfriend tried to strangle her, she grabbed a kitchen knife and stabbed him severely enough to stop his attack, but did not kill him. She wasn’t going to give in to the other 11 people who wanted her to vote against her conscience.
     
    On Tuesday, June 9, 1987, a frustrated and angry Judge Oliver declared a mistrial. Jim was allowed to remain free until the decision in a fourth trial.
     
    The Fourth Trial
     
    Recently, in an interview with Spencer Lawton, I asked him why he