Everything She Ever Wanted (26 page)

blame the court."

Little Carolyn Allanson was probably the biggest gun the prosecution

had.
 
She was right next door to an eyewitness, and television

mysteries had made eyewitness testimony seem infallible.
 
Carolyn had

never said she saw Tom that rainy night in July, but in her third

interview with George Zellner, she had recalled that she heard her

ex-mother-in-law scream out, "Tommy!

Tommy!
 
Tommy!"
 
She was on the witness stand for much of the third day

of trial, examined and cross-examined.

The Allansons' next-door neighbors, the Ducketts, and Officer McBurnett

were, of course, true eyewitnesses to a tall running man who fled the

crime scene.
 
All of them pinned Tom Allanson a little tighter to the

wall.

Hampered as he was by Pat's refusal to allow her husband to plead

guilty to lesser charges, Ed Garland could only try to stem the

damage.

He was good.
 
He elicited an admission from McBurnett that he had

glimpsed Tom in the police station before he identified him in the

lineup.
 
McBurnett had, like most of the East Point officers, made it a

habit to glance into the identification room to wave to a particularly

attractive female clerk who worked there.
 
On June 6, Tom had been

sitting in the ID room as McBurnett passed.

Several of the investigating officers had not saved their notes or

reduced their interviews to written reports.
 
Garland was agile, a

fencer poking tiny holes in the fabric of the state's case with his

rapier.
 
But only tiny holes.
 
The state's eyewitnesses included a

police officer and a fire fighter.
 
The Ducketts both described the

huge man who had run past their house even as the first sirens howled

through the Norman Berry neighborhood.
 
It would be a herculean task

for any attorney to overcome that kind of testimony.
 
Ed Garland was

further handicapped by Pat's courtroom behavior and her continued

insistence that she and not her husband's attorney should decide how

his defense would be handled.
 
When Pat was dissatisfied with the way

things were going, she punched Tom in the ribs.
 
She seemed to hover

just at the edge of hysteria, watching and listening for some danger to

Tom.
 
It drove Garland nuts.

On Wednesday morning, October 16, Ed Garland, his jaw tight, asked

Judge Wofford for a conference in chambers out of the jury's hearing.

The opposing attorneys were both present, as was the court

stenographer.

"Judge, I think it's necessary, to protect my reputation and the

integrity of the judicial process," Garland began, "[to note] that I

find substantial disagreements between the defendant's wife and myself

concerning how the case .
 
. . should be conducted.
 
. .

. There are certain witnesses that I decline to put on the stand, will

not put on the stand .
 
. . because of my investigation in the case.

"I also find there's an inability to communicate with my client

effectively because of his desire to have his wife present, and I find

that his wife is unstable.
 
His wife is affecting his judgment insofar

as my ability to communicate with him."

His exasperation obvious, Garland told the judge that Pat wanted to

select which witnesses would testify, and that she was telling Tom that

he must testify.
 
Almost always, a competent criminal defense attorney

chooses not to put his client on the stand; once he does that, he opens

the defendant up to crossexamination from the prosecution and

devastating questions often ensue.
 
Pat apparently felt she could coach

Tom in the proper way to testify.

"I want the record to show," Garland continued, "that I requested that

she remain out of the courtroom during the case.
 
She has refused, and

the defendant has demanded that she be allowed to be present.
 
. . . I

feel like the approach I have taken is the best I know how to do.

That's all I wanted to put on the record, Judge."

"Would you like me to bring her in here-have Mrs. Allanson

broughtin?"

"I think it will just get into her crying and gnashing of teeth,

Judge," Garland sighed.

"Colonel Garland, I have watched her-her facial expressions a number of

times," Judge Wofford said.
 
"Now, she has not made any audible

statements in the courtroom.
 
. . . She's made no truly noticeable

gestures-unless you were watching her carefully.
 
. . .

I have felt for the days this has been proceeding that she has been a

detriment to the trial, but she committed no action that was

sufficiently overt .
 
. . for the court to take action.
 
I recognize

that her presence is definitely a stumbling block to the harmonious

proceedings that we still have ahead."

Ed Garland, fighting for his client, was truly stymied.

"What has occurred has occurred outside the presence of the jury and

the court," he said.
 
I asked her to leave yesterday where I could talk

to him alone, to remove him from her suggestive influences.
 
. . . She

went across the courtroom and faked a heart attackin my opinion-to get

the attention."

Judge Wofford nodded.
 
Pat Allanson had gasped a'nd fainted the moment

he had walked out of the courtroom, and the sheriff's deputy had

informed him of it.

Ed Garland explained further.
 
"When I tried to talk with him .
 
. .

gave him my uninterrupted counsel, and got him to reflect on it, she

pulled a heart attack .
 
. . and demanded that she be present with him

in all my discussions.
 
.

. . I find that with her acting the way she acts, that he doesn't think

clearly."

Nobody in Judge Wofford's chambers could argue with that.
 
But there

didn't seem to be anything they could do about it.
 
In her

near-hysterical fight to save Tom, Pat continued to disrupt his trial,

but she always managed to stay just within the bounds of courtroom

propriety.
 
The judge had warned against demonstrations, and her

grimacing and whispering remained on the edge of what he would allow,

barely restrained.
 
Her visits to Tom left him unsettled and worried.

She wanted him to testify; she warned him Ed Garland wasn't doing right

by him.
 
Outside the courtroom, Pat often fainted and clutched her

heart.
 
On one occasion during a break, she pointed out a policeman to

Tom and whispered desperately, "Oh my God, Tom!
 
That man raped me!"

And then she fainted once again.

"What did she expect me to do?"
 
Tom later asked futilely.
 
"Deck a cop

right there in the courthouse hallway?
 
I couldn't do anything.

Tom Allanson descended further into his own private hell.
 
The way

things were going, he now figured he would probably be found guilty and

executed.
 
Who would look after Pat?
 
He was so in love with his wife

that his biggest worry was not his own bleak future, but hers.
 
What

would she ever do in this world without him?

Ed Garland trudged on, feeling Pat Allanson around his neck like an

albatross.
 
He attempted to have her description of what Tom was

wearing on the day of the shootings excluded.
 
It didn't help his

client's case one bit to have his own wife corroborate the state's

eyewitnesses.
 
Garland's objections were overruled.

The jury saw dozens of pictures of the blood-drenched basement and

heard Sergeant Callahan describe the scene he had found on the night of

July 3. But had Tom been one of the people in the basement?
 
If Garland

could convince Pat that he had to keep Tom off the stand, the case

would come down to ballistics.

Ballistics were not nearly as emotional or fraught with danger as Tom's

testimony could be.

Three guns had been present: a .32 revolver, a brand-new Marlin deer

rifle-really an "elephant gun," high-powered as they come-and a

20-gauge shotgun.
 
Could anyone prove who had fired which guns?

Garland was able to establish on crossexamination that Tom's hands had

been clean of unpowder residue when he was tested, and that no

fingerprints had been found on any of the weapons.

Kelly Rite, a criminalist and microanalyst from the Georgia State Crime

Lab, was called to the stand as an expert witness for the

prosecution.

He testified that the shotgun cartridges, one blue and one yellow,

found in the "hole" itself and on the basement floor just beneath it

had come from the Excel shotgun, the "stolen" gun.
 
They had once

contained approximately twenty pellets-No.
 
3 buckshot, the same gauge

as those found in Walter and Carolyn Allanson.
 
The buckshot itself was

consistent with the type used in the empty cartridges, although lead

pellets, unlike bullets, bear no definitive markings that can identify

the weapon from which they have been fired.

Rite's laboratory tests indicated that the shotgun had been about ten

feet from Carolyn when it was fired.
 
Whoever shot Walter Allanson had

been over forty feet away, and the angle of the deadly buckshot had

been from left to right.
 
Some of the pellets had "skipped" as they hit

a flashlight Walter had carried and the overhead light fixture.
 
The

closer a shotgun is to a target, the smaller the circle of damage it

will leave in the target -or in the victim.

Carolyn Allanson's wounds had been centered in her left chest area;

Walter's wounds were widely scattered from his face to his hand, wrist,

and abdomen.

Rite concluded that only two shots had been fired from the Excel