Nancy Grace - Murder in the Courthouse

Once or twice, Hailey spotted Tish Adams casting a quick, surreptitious glance across the center aisle dividing the sides. Hailey caught her looking over, usually, at Julie’s mother and once at Hailey herself. When she locked eyes with Hailey, Tish Adams quickly looked away.

Opening statements had commenced at nine o’clock sharp under Luther Alverson’s watchful eye. He stared down from the bench, rarely interrupting, but listening carefully. His law clerk, Walter Lovell, according to a desk placard sitting at a solid wood desk to the side of the judge’s bench, was a slight, pale young man with a bushy moustache, a high forehead, and pale blue eyes. Lovell also seemed to listen to every single syllable uttered in the courtroom, likely as an aide to Alverson. The judge would do nothing to jeopardize these proceedings.

The state’s opening had lasted exactly an hour, and, afraid they’d lose their places, neither Hailey nor Fincher left the room for a break before Mikey DelVecchio began opening for the defense. Not a word was spoken as the lead prosecutor, following his opening, returned to his seat at the counsel table closest to the jury box and sat down, clearly spent of energy.

The courtroom was completely hushed. A long silence ensued. From behind them, Hailey could see Julie Love’s father place a protective arm around her mom’s shoulders, as if to protect her from what was about to happen.

And he was right.

“Mr. DelVecchio? Are you ready to proceed with opening statement for the defense?” Alverson was not about to allow defense delays this early in the ball game.

“Yes, sir. I am.” DelVecchio stood up from his chair, pushing it back as he did. He didn’t make a move away from the defense counsel table, but stood there, stock-still, his back erect, perusing the jurors from twenty to thirty feet away.

“Julie Love Adams slept around !” DelVecchio practically shouted it like a battle cry.

Gasps erupted throughout the courtroom and a single, audible cry, quickly stifled, tore from the throat of Julie’s mother. She quickly covered her face in her husband’s shoulder. At the same instant, the man seated in a wheelchair beside the father, obviously Julie’s younger brother, Brent, grabbed his dad’s other shoulder to keep him seated when he made to spring to his feet in defense of his dead daughter.

“Order! Order in the court!” Alverson beat his gavel on hardwood from the bench. Simultaneously the prosecutor leaped to his feet and yelled, “Objection!”

“They can’t do that!” Hailey whispered into Finch’s ear as he leaned over. “You can’t bring in the victim’s reputation unless it’s, say, for self-defense and the victim’s known to be pugnacious or carry a gun…”

“Objection, Your Honor! A victim’s reputation is inadmissible unless it goes to self-defense!” The prosecutor blurted it out as he continued to stand, now on the defense. He had controlled the courtroom up until now, but in the last fifteen seconds DelVecchio took over.

“It must be a ploy,” Hailey whispered again into Finch’s ear. “The state won’t throw out the jury over this and it’s not grounds for a mistrial unless it’s directed at the defendant. So what’s his game? Poisoning the jury against Julie?”

Another sob escaped Julie’s mom. The judge looked over at her as a friend behind her handed her Kleenex across her pew.

“I’m sorry, Judge Alverson, but this is our defense.” DelVecchio said it in his most sanctimonious tone, as if he hated blurting out that Julie was a tramp… but that he had to. Hailey knew that, of course, nothing could please DelVecchio more than destroying Julie’s memory, if it meant saving his client and gaining national attention for getting another defendant off on murder one.

“Excuse me, counsel. Are you telling me Mr. Adams’s defense to a charge of murder one is that his pregnant wife committed adultery?”

Hailey winced. Every time the charge was repeated in front of the jury made it less explosive. Pretty soon the words “Julie Love Adams” and “affairs” and/or “sex” wouldn’t seem so incendiary. They would have heard it so often, they’d be numb.

“Yes, Your Honor. It is. We intend to prove that Julie Adams had so many sex affairs behind her husband’s back that any number of men may have killed her. And as for being pregnant… I mean, who knows who the biological father may have been ?”

At that, Julie’s father sprang from his seat, heading straight for DelVecchio and Todd Adams. Full of rage, he leaped over the three-foot-tall partition between the gallery and the well, where lawyers and defendants sat before the jury.

Sheriffs rushed from the paneled walls around them, closing in on Julie’s dad, Malcolm Love, Sr. When they reached him, grabbing him by either shoulder, he first tensed as if he would put up a fight, but glancing back at his wife still seated in the pew they had shared, her head bowed toward her lap, her face buried in a white hanky, he relented. His body relaxed and he let the sheriffs take him by either elbow, one on each side of him and one behind him.

The courtroom was in an uproar, everyone talking at once, press frantically taking notes, thrilled at the turn of events and now talking openly to each other. Several sprang from their seats and out the back door of the courtroom to position themselves on the front courthouse steps for impromptu stand-ups for local news… all about how the defense had branded Julie Love, the dead mother-to-be, as an unfaithful wife who was ready, willing, and able to fall into bed behind her husband’s back.

All this churning as the sheriffs pulled Malcolm Love out of the courtroom by his armpits. Hailey could barely hear the whoosh of the double wooden doors at the back of the courtroom amid all the chatter.

She leaned toward Fincher again. “So now the burden’s shifted. He did it, all in just one sentence.”

“Did what, Hailey?”

“He changed the game. DelVecchio just changed the game. It’s not about him proving Adams is innocent. Now it’s about the state proving Julie wasn’t sleeping around. Disgusting.”

“I can’t believe they’d do this to her. The guy kills her, kills the baby, and now his lawyer drags her name through the mud,” Fincher whispered back into Hailey’s ear.

“Order! Order!” Pounding his gavel on the wooden block, the judge called out again from his bench, his voice carrying to the very back of the courtroom.

Bailiffs appeared seemingly out of nowhere. Six of them assumed sentinel positions at the edges of the pews on both sides and two more stood at the defense counsel table. One stood staring out into the pews full of people directly between Todd Adams and the spectators. The other sheriff stood facing Todd Adams, positioned between Adams and the judge.

Todd Adams was twisting in his seat, first to one lawyer and then to the next as DelVecchio stood, poised as if posing for a full-length portrait to be painted of himself. He was positioned directly to the left of Adams, between him and the jury.

Soaking up the attention and seemingly unaware of the disruption he’d caused, DelVecchio stood unmoved. But the commotion seemed to be gaining momentum.

“Order! I said order in the court!” Luther Alverson rose from his seat behind the bench. More bailiffs poured into the courtroom, now lining up between the pews and the walls.

Julie’s mother, Dana, let out a moan, quickly holding her damp hanky to her mouth to stifle further anguish. All eyes turned to her, including the jurors. Not to be outdone, Tish Adams rose from her seat to stand directly behind the wooden railing separating her from her son, as if she were guarding him.