Blood Echoes (34 page)

West mentioned the elements within Coleman's history of deprivation, his begging on the streets and living in sharecropper shacks. “What effect does that have on the personality?” he asked.

Albrecht replied that it would make Coleman withdrawn and reluctant to have relationships with others “in the same way that the survivors of the Nazi holocaust, when tested, revealed a lack of willingness to become involved with others.”

West moved on to Coleman's passivity.

“Doctor, you testified that Wayne was passive. Can you tell me why he would, for example, confess to seven homicides … and that his brothers had no hand in it?”

“I can't underestimate the extent to which Wayne experiences brotherly love toward his younger brothers,” Albrecht answered.

According to Albrecht, Coleman's earliest dream had been of a fire that had suddenly broken out in one of the “shacks” the family lived in. The fire had started where the stovepipe met the roof, and Coleman had taken his brother out of the burning house. The “fire” in the house, Albrecht added, was probably indicative of its turmoil, the pervasive alcoholism and abuse.

This early fantasy, with its sense of protection, had been a theme played throughout Coleman's life, Albrecht told the jury, and it had ended in his taking the blame for all six of the Alday murders.

“Is Wayne able to point his finger at his brothers and say that they actually did it?” West asked.

Albrecht's answer was unequivocal. “Wayne would not do that,” he said.

As to Coleman's failure to testify, Albrecht told the jury that he recalled “one very touching comment Wayne made to me about the victims.”

“What did he say about the victims?”

“He said, ‘Well, they didn't have a chance to give their last words. Why should I?'”

“Doctor, what does that comment tell you about Wayne Coleman?”

“That he still feels guilt for what happened,” Albrecht answered. “After the crime he described for me a period when he was incarcerated, and he was extremely distraught. And he describes getting so disturbed that he got down on his knees and prayed for God's forgiveness. And he says he feels that eventually God forgave him. I don't believe Wayne Coleman has forgiven himself.”

*     *     *

Nor should he, Charles Ferguson thought, as he rose to cross-examine Dr. Albrecht.

“Now you said that you feel that Wayne has a lot of feeling for other people?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Would that feeling that he has for other people be consistent with him leaving a young woman nude in the woods and abandoning her body and leaving it there? Is that consistent with feeling for others?”

“I cannot answer that,” Albrecht replied. “I think that's up to this jury to decide. If I had a cold, he'd ask me about how I was feeling—a concern for me as a person, and for others.”

From her place in the courtroom, Nancy could hardly contain her contempt for Albrecht's testimony, particularly his description of the man who'd killed her father, three of her brothers, and her uncle, who had raped her sister-in-law, then participated in her murder, as a kind, concerned person. Always the most volatile of the Alday sisters, and having far less of the religious faith that guided her mother toward gentleness, acceptance, and forgiveness, Nancy had finally reached the boiling point, her grief at last overshadowed by her rage. “I'd like to have shown him a few pictures from the trailer and the woods,” she told Ernestine as they left the courtroom a short time later, “and let him tell me how concerned a human being Wayne Coleman was.”

Albrecht's testimony had irritated Nancy; that which followed it positively made her squirm.

After weeks of effort, West had finally persuaded Coleman's mother, Betty Isaacs, to testify in her son's behalf.

“Wayne was a good boy,” she told the jury. “He worked on the farms. He helped—done everything he could do. He never done nothing wrong.”

“Did he obey you?” West asked.

“Yes, he did,” Mrs. Isaacs replied. “Got along real good with his brothers and sisters.”

“While he was living with you, was he ever in trouble?”

“Not no serious trouble, no.”

“What kind of kid was Carl?”

“He was rough,” Mrs. Isaacs said. “He wouldn't listen to nobody. You tell him something, he wouldn't listen.”

“If you put Wayne and Billy and Carl in a pot, who would the leader be?”

“Carl. He could talk people into things.”

“Do you think that Carl could pull the trigger and kill somebody?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think that Billy could?”

“Yes.”

“Could Wayne pull the trigger?”

“No,” Mrs. Isaacs said, “because he was never that kind of a boy.”

It was a view of Coleman that his sister Ruth confirmed when she followed Betty Isaacs to the stand.

“What kind of kid was Wayne when he was growing up?” Citronberg asked.

“He was well-respected. A good boy.”

“Was he a loud child or a quiet child?”

“He was quiet.”

“What kind of kid was Carl?”

“He was mean, vicious.”

“Do you think Carl could pull the trigger and shoot somebody?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think Billy could pull the trigger and shoot somebody?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think Wayne could pull the trigger and shoot somebody?”

“No.”

“Why is that?”

“Because he was quiet.”

“Do you love Wayne?”

“Yes,” Ruth replied, “I do.”

Then, suddenly, she began to cry, and as she did so, Nancy noticed that rather than raising any objection to her weeping, as defense attorneys had done in the case of their own tears, Citronberg let it go on for quite some time before finally turning to the court.

“Do we have any tissues, Your Honor?” he asked gently.

As it turned out, the court did not.

In the final moments of the penalty phase, Ferguson faced the jury and declared in a short statement that most of the defense's case for a life sentence for Coleman was just “so much smoke.”

“I don't blame Betty Isaacs and Ruth Isaacs for telling you they don't want Wayne executed,” he went on, “but Jerry Alday didn't want to die. Ned Alday didn't want to die. Aubrey Alday didn't want to die. Shuggie Alday didn't want to die. Jimmy Alday didn't want to die. And Mary Alday didn't want to die.”

Once Ferguson had concluded, Tom West made his final argument for sparing Coleman's life.

“Smoke screen?” he asked. “You tell me if it's a smoke screen to bring in a man's mother when the state is trying to take his life and to tell what kind of a person he is.”

West added that he had never contested the fact that six people had been murdered, but that he had only tried to discover “why in the world that happened—who was responsible. Who was the leader? Who was the follower? Who was abused? Whose arm was twisted? Whose idea was it? That's what we've been trying to do in the defense in this case.”

Such things were not important to the prosecution, West continued, because the state “didn't care who did it or why or whether Wayne Coleman may just have been cowering in the back while the leader did the killing.”

That is precisely what Coleman had done, West concluded. “I'm not saying that Wayne is innocent,” he told the jury. “I'm not saying that he's not guilty in the sense that you have found him guilty. But, if we're going to decide who lives and who dies, don't you want to base that on more than just the fact that he was there?”

“Who was the real guilty party in this case?” West asked. “Carl Isaacs. Carl Isaacs has been tried a second time and found guilty of six murders and sentenced to death again. Don't worry about the guilty not being punished in this case.”

As for Coleman: “Let him live out his life,” West implored the jury. “You've heard testimony about what he has not had in life.” Still, despite his background, Coleman had in a sense triumphed over it far more than his brothers had. “Somehow, Wayne maintained his humanity,” West said, then asked the jury to spare his life.

“If any one of you feel that a life sentence is appropriate, that's it,” he said, “and I'd ask you to allow him to live.”

As she watched the jury file silently from the room, Nancy wondered if West had reached that one solitary person who would spare Wayne Coleman's life.

It would be longer than any of them could have imagined before they found out.

Both during the trial, and after it, as one day lengthened slowly into another while the jury continued its unexpectedly protracted deliberations concerning the fate of Wayne Coleman, Ernestine and Nancy remained in Decatur, the two of them cooped up in their room at the local Day's Inn. It was a situation made infinitely worse by the fact that members of Coleman's family had been booked into the same small motel. “We were always running into Betty Isaacs, Carl Isaacs' mother, and Coleman's sisters,” Nancy remembered. “And they would give us these terrible looks, like they thought that we were the ones who'd killed their people, instead of the way it really was.”

At the ice and soda machines, or in the laundry, or simply as they strolled to their cars in the motel parking lot, Ernestine and Nancy would sometimes feel themselves under the hostile glare of Betty Isaacs or one of her daughters. “We never wished any harm on Mrs. Isaacs and her daughters that came down to testify in Decatur,” Ernestine later said. “We'd never said a word against them. But the fact is, it was her boys that came down here and killed my husband and my boys, not the other way around.”

At 10:20
A.M.
on Tuesday, May 11, a full six days after the final arguments in the penalty phase had been concluded, and following a record thirty-five hours of continuous deliberation, the foreman of the jury sent a note to the judge which declared tersely: “We are unable to agree upon a sentence.”

That simple statement was the culmination of seemingly endless days of deliberation during which the jury room had been rocked by bursts of argument, screams, and weeping as a single juror held out against the imposition of the death penalty.

According to later reports, it had been a stalemate from the beginning, when, upon entering the jury room, one of the jurors, a twenty-two-year-old woman who had been a small child at the time of the murders, announced unequivocally that she would not vote for the death sentence.

Despite the juror's inflexible statement, deliberations had continued, struggling on through Mother's Day in what the
Atlanta Constitution
later called “a marathon that experts say is unequaled in modern death penalty deliberations in Georgia.”

By the sixth day, however, the deadlock had become obvious. A mistrial was therefore declared by Judge Lawson, and under Georgia law, this meant that Coleman would get a life sentence. He would be eligible for parole in fifteen years.

“Wayne's satisfied that the jury spared his life,” West told reporters at the end of the proceedings. For that reason, he added, any further appeal would be a waste of time.

With news of the hung jury, Ernestine once more moved toward a serene acceptance. Nancy, however, was less sanguine. Spiritually exhausted and economically depleted by the lengthy trial and subsequent jury deliberations, she packed the car solemnly and prepared for the eight-hour drive back to Donalsonville. It was not a pleasant journey, but in some sense, it was at least a welcome one. “We all really needed some relief,” Nancy said in 1990. “By the time that trial was over, I felt like I'd been staring at Wayne Coleman all my life.”

It was but a short respite, however, for only a few weeks after returning to Seminole County, Nancy and Ernestine began their preparations to attend the trial of George Dungee, next in line to be prosecuted.

But it was a trial that never happened.

In 1988, the Georgia General Assembly had decreed that mentally retarded individuals could not be executed in Georgia. At the same time, it officially judged mentally retarded people to be those whose I.Q. tested lower than 70.

Repeatedly given I.Q. tests, George Dungee had never scored higher than 68.

Thus, on July 14, 1988, Dungee pleaded guilty by reason of mental retardation to six counts of murder before the Superior Court of Muscogee County in Columbus. He was sentenced to six consecutive life terms.

With Wayne Coleman and George Dungee now spared the death penalty, only Carl Isaacs remained with the shadow of the gallows still before him.

On March 20, 1989, his attorneys filed a 764-page brief with the Georgia State Supreme Court in an initial appeal action whose continuing process would last for at least eight to thirteen years.

It might also continue indefinitely.

In the meantime, Ernestine, Nancy, and Patricia Alday remain in an odd state of ambiguity and suspension. For them, “justice,” as Ernestine always called it, is no longer at issue. Only closure is, only the sense that the legal process that resulted from the slaughter of May 14, 1973, will eventually come to an end while some of those who survived it are still alive.

As the months pass, and Carl Isaacs' appeals stagger through the various layers of the judicial system, Ernestine, now seventy-five years old, rocks in her padded rocker and lets her eyes move from one photograph to the next, from Ned, to Shuggie, then on to Jerry, Jimmy, Aubrey, Mary. “Not a day goes by I don't think of them,” she tells what she considers the last of the reporters who will botner to write about the tragedy on River Road. “Tell everybody that. Tell them not a day goes by.”

Each morning Patricia rises at the same early hour, then drives to the small brick building that houses the Seminole County Department of Family and Children Services in downtown Donalsonville. “I see all these terrible things that happen in families around here,” she says, “all the abuse, sexual and every other kind. And I think of my father and my brothers, and I think how good they were, even better than I could have known at the time.”