Before He Wakes (50 page)

Eric Evenson, now an assistant U.S. district attorney in Raleigh and no longer involved in the case that had occupied so much of his time and energy, sat in the front row in the audience, behind the prosecution table, next to Doris Stager, surrogate for her missing husband, Al. Al had suffered immense stress from Russ’s death and the anxiety of Barbara’s trial. Six months after her conviction, his heart condition had worsened and he had been hospitalized. He would need more surgery, the doctors had determined, but in preparing for it, they had discovered another problem: multiple myeloma, a malignancy of the bone marrow. He had lived with it for two and a half years and died just five months earlier, in March, leaving Doris even more devastated. Family members believed that it was Russ’s murder that actually had killed Al, and now they worried about Doris as well. She was hardly eating, and she looked pale, tiny and drawn, her eyes haunted by the blows that life had dealt her. At her other side sat Doris and Henry Ford, looking fit and at peace. Since Barbara’s trial they had moved to the mountains of Virginia, where they continued to hike and helped to maintain a long stretch of the Appalachian Trail.

To the left of the prosecutors sat the jury, which the lawyers had taken a week to pick. Its members were mostly middle-class and young to middle age, evenly divided between males and females.

William Farrell rose before them to give the opening statement for the state. He was precise, succinct and well organized. Vann, on the other hand, was rambling and disorganized when his turn came, starting sentences and dropping them, moving on to other thoughts, his voice occasionally rising with passion—“These lawyers want her to go to the gas chamber! You understand that?”—then falling so low that he barely could be heard. More than once the judge admonished him that the purpose of an opening statement was to preview the evidence, not to argue his case.

Eventually, though, Vann’s strategy became clear. Having failed to sway the judge to eliminate any testimony about Larry’s death, he would attempt to convince the jurors that it had indeed been an accident, that therefore Russ’s death could have been an accident, too. And Barbara, a woman guilty only of exceptionally bad luck sat convicted before them, her life in their hands. If that failed, he would overwhelm the jurors with Barbara’s goodness. Cotter and Falcone had used only four mitigating circumstances at Barbara’s trial. Vann already had a list of fifteen that he planned to present, and the list would grow as the hearing continued.

Ron Stephens knew that he was at a disadvantage, that chances were good that Barbara would not again be sentenced to death. Jurors rarely chose death when there was only one aggravating circumstance, particularly if that circumstance was pecuniary gain. And they usually were reluctant to give the ultimate penalty to women. Only three had been executed by the state since 1910, the most recent, Velma Barfield, in 1984. Moreover, Stephens had to convince all twelve jurors to pick death. Vann needed to win only one. If the jury could not reach a unanimous decision, Barbara automatically would receive a life sentence.

Beyond that, Stephens would be presenting a truncated version of the evidence he had offered at the trial, using only about half the number of witnesses. This was partly in the interest of time, partly to cut expenses, partly because the jurors wouldn’t need as much information to sentence Barbara as to convict her.

Stephens would take only three days to present his case, and as witnesses began to come and go, one problem with the courtroom became apparent. The constant rumble of big trucks negotiating the tiny traffic circle just beyond the courtroom’s walls penetrated the “soundproof’ windows and made hearing difficult even for the attorneys and jurors, much less for those in the audience. At times, testimony had to be momentarily halted, and witnesses constantly had to be reminded to speak louder.

Barbara dabbed at her eyes as her videotaped reenactment was played during Buchanan’s testimony.

“Do you know that the Randolph County medical examiner calls Larry Ford’s death an accidental shooting?” Vann bellowed at Buchanan afterward, waving the report before him, as he would do for all the state’s witnesses who testified about Larry’s death.

“I know it’s what that document says,” Buchanan replied.

When Vann cross-examined Doris Stager on the second day of testimony, he tried to get her to admit that Russ had been a heavy spender during his marriage to Jo Lynn.

“Isn’t that the reason she left him?” Vann asked.

“In my opinion, the reason she left him was that they were like two mules, each pulling in their own way,” Doris said firmly.

Jo Lynn was not there to hear Doris’s comment. She had attended most of Barbara’s trial and had married for the third time shortly thereafter, this time happily. She and her husband now operated a business in Raleigh. Russ’s death had caused her to form a new and lasting bond with her former in-laws and she wanted to be with Doris throughout the hearing, but her own mother was in the hospital gravely ill, and she would get to come only twice to support Doris.

Vann now got Doris to describe some of the cars Russ and Barbara had bought both before and after the financial crisis she had testified about earlier.

“And they bought each other Rolex watches?” he said.

“They sure did,” Doris agreed.

“When they had that conversation with you, it didn’t do much good, did it?” Vann said, referring to the financial crisis that Doris had sought to alleviate.

“I wish I could say yes,” Doris added.

Later, as the tape of Russ’s voice was played, Doris and her daughter Cindy sat sobbing and comforting one another while Barbara stared stoically ahead.

Barbara’s defense would take two days, and Vann planned to present twenty-seven witnesses, nearly twice as many as had appeared on her behalf at her trial. He began with the psychologist he had paid to examine her, then followed with a prison social worker who reported that Barbara was a model prisoner and identified some of the crafts that she had made. Vann took the crafts from a big paper bag behind his chair and paraded them before the jurors before submitting them into evidence. There were two framed works of needlepoint, one of them a verse from Joshua—“As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (which, Doris Stager noted, was the same verse that had always hung by her own kitchen door). There also were two stuffed animals, a cat and a mouse. Whether or not there were psychological implications, some in the courtroom noted that Barbara’s mouse was six times bigger than her cat.

An education coordinator for the prison told of the classes Barbara had been taking: art and creative writing. She also had begun a correspondence program through the University of North Carolina to complete her degree in sociology, he said, and after getting it, she hoped to be able to teach inmates who could not read or write.

By Thursday afternoon, the courtroom had taken on the air of a tent revival, as preachers and prison missionaries took the stand one after another to testify about Barbara’s religious fervor, her dedication to prison religious services and Bible study classes.

“We count on her,” said Sam Roane, a deep-voiced eighty-four-year-old lay minister. “She’s such an intelligent, bright person and just keeps growing deeper in the word of God as time goes by. The main reason I think she had grown so much in her faith in these past four years is because she is interested in what we are studying. Right now we’re studying Paul. Praise the Lord for Paul!”

Outside, thunder rumbled from an approaching storm.

“That’s the Lord talking now,” said Vann.

“Yes, sir, that’s Him,” said Roane.

Roane’s enthusiastic wife, Gales, raised fits of laughter from Barbara’s friends and family after Vann got her to describe the prison ministry she and her husband had maintained for thirty-two years. “How’d the Lord get you to do that?”

“I don’t know,” she responded with a big smile, “I’ve been waiting for my parole.”

She got more approving chuckles when she told Vann that she had been praying for him, then turned pointedly to the prosecutors and said, “and for YOU, and for the judge and the jury.”

“We thank her for her prayers,” Stephens said when his turn for cross-examination came, “and we have no questions.”

A parade of Barbara’s friends and former fellow church members followed to endorse her good points, and family members took the stand to once again cast doubt on the validity of Russ’s voice on the audiotape, to try to make Russ’s and Barbara’s relationship seem fine and to attempt to paint Russ as the bigger spender of the two.

Both of Barbara’s sons testified this time. Bryan, now twenty-four, had finished college and was living in Wrightsville Beach, where he worked in a restaurant. Jason had undergone some troubled times after his mother’s conviction and had been sent to a military school, from which he had graduated. Now nineteen, he was living in Charlottesville, Virginia, with Barbara’s brother Steve and his wife, Astrid, and also working in a restaurant.

Barbara’s father, who had not testified at her trial, was the only family member who did not testify at the hearing.

Barbara’s mother was the final witness Friday afternoon. She had retired from her job at Duke eight months earlier, and she and James, also retired, now had their house on the market. They had bought a farm in the mountains of Virginia, not far from where the Fords lived, and planned to move there, away from Durham, the only home they had ever known, where so many people knew about Barbara’s case. She took the stand carrying a sheet of notes and wearing an expression of self-assurance. Guided by Vann, she expressed pride in her three children and described Barbara as “a super child.”

“She was excellent, made excellent grades…. Her brother had a horrible time trying to do the same kind of grades she did.”

She told of Barbara winning a scholarship, going off to college, meeting Larry and getting married.

“Barbara dropped out of school. With our help, we got Larry through.”

Doris and Henry Ford looked at one another and shook their heads sadly.

When Vann asked how Barbara had adjusted to prison, Marva said, “She has amazed me, she really has. I don’t know that I could have gone every week to see her if she had not had the attitude she’s had.”

“It takes a lot of guts to do that,” Vann put in.

“It certainly does. I love her very much. I would rather be there myself than to have her there.”

“She, of course, loves you,” Vann offered as Barbara cried two seats away.

Marva fought back her own tears and quickly regained her composure as Vann once again brought out Barbara’s needlepoint, her stuffed animals and a brightly colored afghan she had made.

“She’s done some other beautiful things, too,” Marva said, then offered a tight smile and added, “I’m going to open up a store.”

After she departed the stand, the defense rested, and court was recessed for the weekend.

A lectern had been set before the jury box when court reconvened Monday morning. Barbara, who had made no public statement since her arrest, wanted to address the jury. Vann took her by the hand and led her to the lectern. The whole courtroom leaned forward, listening intently as Barbara began to speak in a tiny, nervous voice.

“Ladies and gentlemen, you know that my name is Barbara Stager. You know that many times in our lives we have a chance to look back and reflect on the way our lives have been. I have had a chance to do that in these past several years.

“I have made a lot of mistakes in my life. I’ve done a lot of things that I knew were wrong. I have disappointed a lot of people that love me and that I love. I’ve done things that were against my nature. I’ve done things that were against the values that my parents instilled in me. But nevertheless, I know that I—that my life does have some meaning, and that I can be of help to other people at some point in my life.

“I’m not perfect. I don’t know of a single human being alive that is perfect. There are many things about the past that I wish I could change. I wish I could, and I know that I can’t.

“I’ve been convicted of taking the life of Russell Stager. I’m sorry about that. I’m sorry for his family, for the loss and the pain that they have had to suffer. I wish I could take it back. I wish I could take all of that away from them.”

As Barbara spoke, Doris Stager sat leaning forward, straining for every word, her hands tightly gripping the seat at her sides, her eyes fixed intently on Barbara’s face only a few feet away, but Barbara never glanced in her direction.

“My parents, my family, my sons, my brothers, they have had to suffer, too. I wish I could take that away from them, too.

“You’ve heard a lot of testimony, and you’ve seen an awful lot of evidence. And even though intent is not an issue at this point, whether or not I intentionally took his life, I’m still responsible. That’s a terrible, terrible burden to bear. But I am aware of it, and I’ve accepted that responsibility.

“I realize the hurt and the pain and the anger that it’s caused his family, people that love him, my family, and people that love me. I just wish I could take that away. I wish I could turn the clock back and change things. But I know I can’t.

“One of my deepest regrets is the injustice that’s been done to Larry Ford. His memory has been misused because of me. I’m sorry to his family for that. I know this has been terrible for them, too, and I’m terribly sorry for that. I hate it for them, and for his sons.