by A. W. Gray
When Wade finally retired in 1980, his anointed successor became an automatic shoo-in at election time. John Vance held all the credentials: a long and distinguished career as a prosecutor and a stint on the bench as criminal district judge. Personalities, however, are what give charisma to public office, and Vance was an abrupt change from his predecessor. Whereas Wade employed an open-door policy to the media, Vance shunned attention to himself; whereas Wade responded to questions from reporters with tidbits of homespun humor and mesmerizing anecdotes, Vance read from prepared statements whose length and lack of witticisms caused reporters to doze before the DA’s point was driven home. Slowly but surely, the romance with the press that Henry Wade had nurtured over a three-decade period began to fizzle.
That the district attorney’s office, constantly involved in drama of the courtroom variety, had its reputation indelibly scarred by a movie maker is probably fitting. Errol Morris’ early-eighties documentary entitled The Thin Blue Line placed the integrity of Dallas County’s police and prosecutors under harsh scrutiny. The subject of the film was the case of Randall Dale Adams, a dope-sniffing drifter convicted and sentenced to death for the slaying of a Dallas policeman during a routine traffic stop. The conduct of the prosecutors in the Adams case, it turned out, was somewhat less than impeccable.
Morris’ documentary turned up facts that were both shocking and explicit. Not only was Adams not the shooter in the policeman’s death, it turned out that the convicted man was in a cocaine stupor in a motel room during the murder, and wasn’t even present at the scene. Witnesses who could have cleared the defendant were suddenly unavailable at trial, and though prosecutors at the time expressed wide-eyed dismay over the witnesses’ disappearance, Morris’ documentary offered proof that they were in fact holed up in an Oak Cliff motel room and in constant telephone contact with the district attorney’s office. Largely due to public outcry over Morris’ film, appellate courts reversed Adams’ conviction in short order and remanded for retrial or dismissal of charges.
District Attorney Vance—who wasn’t even in office during Adams’ original trial but bore the brunt of its consequences—had an easy out in the case of Texas v. Randall Dale Adams that, inexplicably, he didn’t use. Doug Mulder, the lead prosecutor, had left the DA’s office for a lucrative private practice, and would have made the perfect foil; Vance needed merely to point the finger in Mulder’s direction, drop charges against Adams, and state publicly that the current administration’s bib was clean as a whistle. Why Vance made the decision to bow his neck, ignore the facts, and proceed with a second prosecution in the Adams case remains a mystery.
That prosecutors finally acknowledged a total lack of evidence against Adams and made an eleventh-hour decision to drop the charges doesn’t matter; for months on end, the papers and TV news editions were filled with photos and written accounts of a shackled and obviously bewildered Randall Dale Adams, led by stone-faced sheriff’s deputies, as he shuffled in and out of court for one hearing after another, and graphic profiles of Dallas County assistant DA’s as they dodged questions, conducted closed-door meetings, and issued one terse no-comment after another. Adams’ personal appearances on Donahue, The Tonight Show, and Good Morning, America once charges were dropped didn’t help matters, either; not only was the DA’s credence in serious jeopardy, newspeople miffed over their treatment by DA’s during the Adams case—and at the same time ecstatic over the increased newspaper sales and higher Nielsen ratings—had developed a nose for blood.
The second helping of district attorney stew served up to the media came in the form of another faulty prosecution unearthed, that of a woman named Joyce Ann Brown. Her case itself wasn’t that significant—an armed robbery conviction obtained by faulty eyewitness identification and some police shenanigans designed to hide the truth—but since Ms. Brown was both black and female, she made the perfect marketable object of abuse by the system. Once again presses and cameras rolled. District Attorney Vance showed more respect for his own hide in this instance; once the transgressions of police and prosecutors in the Brown case had become public knowledge, Vance dropped the charges in short, short order. Nonetheless, the DA’s image was soiled once more.
After the Adams and Brown cases, the district attorney’s relationship to the press changed drastically. Once the scene of cordial news conferences and amicable friendships between prosecutors and media personnel, the majestic and impressive Frank Crowley Courts Building became a frustrating place for reporters to work. Crime-beat newspeople now had to rely on eavesdropping, public court records, and general courthouse gossip to find out anything at all; prosecutors stalked to and from court with tightly zippered lips, sweeping past knots of hopeful media reps with nary a word. As Bill Dillard Jr. accompanied Reed Prospere to the Crowley Building for his initial meeting concerning his sister’s death, the DA’s relationship to the media was, in a word, strained.
Both Bill Jr. and Big Daddy were wrong when they thought that a conference with Mike Gillette would put a bee under the police department’s fanny in its investigation into Nancy’s death. Their assumption was a natural one; Gillette is, after all, one of the DA’s superchief prosecutors. A short but sturdy man, pugnacious both in his trial demeanor and his stonewalling of media questions, Gillette is, next to First Assistant Norman Kinne, the most visible of the superchiefs. Like most of the public, though, the Dillards had a misconception of what the superchiefs are all about.
The term has nothing to do with railroads, of course. The pecking order in the DA’s staff goes something like this: Hirees begin in county traffic court and work their way up from there into misdemeanor prosecutions. It is in misdemeanor court that the weeding-out process begins, since most young lawyers are after the bucks to be had in private practice and view the DA’s staff as a springboard. Those who stick around on the county payroll through a year or so of drunk driving and petty shoplifting prosecutions eventually graduate to the third chair of one of the fourteen county felony courts, there to plea-bargain slam-dunk murders, rapes, robberies, and major thefts, taking only those defendants to trial whose records are such that the state makes no offer, and the defense attorney and client alike hope against hope for a jury of fools. It is from the first-chair felony court positions that the bulk of the prosecutors go for the money and gravitate to the defense side; above the felony courts, chances for promotion in the DA’s office narrow considerably.
Among the limited opportunities available are specialty divisions—white-collar, organized crime, appellate division, etc.—which require an expertise in a certain facet of the criminal statutes, and those prosecutors who go into the specialty fields are generally committed to a career with the county, moderate pay, generous retirement benefits, and a lifelong guarantee of anonymity. One may only receive fame on the DA’s staff by becoming a superchief, a hand-picked half dozen of trial specialists. The headlines go to the superchiefs by specific design.
There are two criteria to determine whether or not a case is worthy of superchief assignment, and two criteria only, the requirements being that the case has received maximum media coverage, and is one the county feels it simply must win at all costs. Plea bargains in superchief cases are rare; there is a desire to put both the defendant and the evidence on public display. It is arguable whether prosecutors seeking such lofty status must display an exceptional skill at their trade; it is imperative, however, that superchiefs be articulate and present a good appearance both in the courtroom and in front of the television cameras. The thick of tongue and the weak of chin need not apply.
When Bill Jr. originally met with Mike Gillette to outline the family belief that Richard had murdered Nancy, and to express dismay at the lack of police activity in the matter, the Lyon investigation simply hadn’t gained superchief status as yet. The case was a likely candidate, to be sure—a wealthy Highland Park victim, the victim’s family name famous in the business community, a hint of infidelity as a
possible motive—but other than family suspicion, there was nothing to indicate that Richard could be convicted of blowing his nose. Out of respect for Reed Prospere, his old friend from the DA’s staff now defected to private practice, Gillette listened attentively and agreed to look into the matter, but the fact was that he had more pressing business on his mind. On the front burner in Gillette’s list of priorities was a very important billboard-defacement case. The knowledge that a misdemeanor sign-painting violation would take precedence over Nancy Lyon’s possible murder would have sent Big Daddy into indeterminate orbit, but at the time Gillette first reviewed the Lyon case, that was precisely the situation.
Actually, the billboard-disfigurement case included an intentional windshield wiper-breaking incident, and eventually evolved into a felony leg-breaking charge along with a rape indictment, but originally the sign-painting was all the DA had to go on. The perpetrator was a charismatic black man named John Wiley Price, who coincidentally was the duly elected county commissioner from the Oak Cliff and South Dallas black districts, and who, not so coincidentally, was the number one critic of the county justice system in general and the district attorney’s office in particular. Price’s criticisms, for the most part, had to do with the systematic exclusion of blacks from juries—which had been a practice in Dallas County for decades—and the tendency for the DA’s to go easy on whites while prosecuting black defendants to the limits of the law. Be his methods right or wrong, it is abundantly clear that John Wiley Price is no one’s Uncle Tom.
Price’s run-ins with the law began when, while waging a war against the preponderance of alcoholic-beverage ads in black areas, he grabbed a brush and bucket of whitewash and proceeded to Tom Sawyer every billboard he could find in South Dallas containing a beer or whiskey advertisement. The defacement of the signs was a misdemeanor; Price pled guilty, paid a fine, and accepted probation to the chorus of “Right on, brother,” heard from black businessmen and clergy throughout the area. Next, while leading a demonstration in front of Channel 8 news headquarters, the commissioner encountered a lady determined to drive her car through the picket lines, at which point he broke off the lady’s windshield wiper. This resulted in a misdemeanor criminal mischief charge that Price carried to trial, was found guilty, and now faced a revocation of his probation for the sign disfigurement as well as sixty days in jail. Price appealed, remained free on bond, defiantly wagged his finger in the DA’s face, and went on with his campaign.
Just weeks after his criminal mischief conviction, Price led a demonstration in downtown Dallas during which a burly 220-pound construction laborer took exception to John Wiley’s disruptance of a work crew, and made a valiant attempt to separate the commissioner from his head. Price, a black belt in karate, put the man on the ground in short order, and in doing so broke the construction worker’s leg. Now the charges had evolved into something serious: felony assault. To top things off, one of Price’s former campaign workers had filed a rape complaint, stating that the commissioner had assaulted her in his office during the election. That the young lady had waited almost two years to decide that the commissioner forced her into sex against her will is strange; some have even accused the DA’s office of prompting the girl to file the charges. Nonetheless, a rape charge it was; the case was Mike Gillette’s assignment, and an investigation into a possible wife poisoning was something the superchief prosecutor simply didn’t have the time for.
If Gillette thought he was going to get away with providing mere lip service to the Dillards’ claims, however, he was every bit as mistaken as the police department. After two weeks had passed with no activity from the DA’s office, Bill Jr. appeared at the Crowley Building along with Reed Prospere a second time. In this meeting with Gillette, Bill Jr. wouldn’t take no for an answer. The Dillards wanted action. Gillette, up to his ears in the pursuit of John Wiley Price, realized that he would have no peace until some sort of action commenced in the Lyon case, so Gillette opted to pitch out; he heaved a lateral down the hallway into the hands of another superchief prosecutor named Jerri Sims. And with Jerri in charge, the Dillard persistence was finally to bear some significant fruit.
To say that Richard Lyon, a married man with a wandering eye, was finally brought down by two gorgeous blondes is an accurate statement, but somewhat misleading. There were two beautiful blondes involved, it is true, but only one of these lovelies craved Richard’s body. The other was in steadfast pursuit of his hide.
If a casting director were to sashay through the Dallas County district attorney’s office in search of an extra for a prosecutor’s role, he’d likely bypass Jerri Sims. She’d pop into the director’s mind, though, the next time he needed a flaxen-haired western beauty complete with an accent straight off the range. Jerri, in fact, is the epitome of looks that deceive.
The hair is awesome, the color of spun gold, falling in fluffy waves to a point halfway down the backs of Jerri’s thighs. The body is slim and athletic, the result of thrice-weekly jogging and weight training, the posture erect, the bearing confident. The face is almost elfin, the lips eager to turn up in an infectious Tinker Bell grin. In casual conversation she shows the beguiling innocence of a farm girl—which she was—while in the courtroom her questions are concise and to the point with no wasted phrases. That she became a lawyer at all was in defiance of the odds.
Jerri was born in Fort Worth, where she lived until the ripe old age of two, and that was the extent of her city life until she’d graduated college. Her folks eventually settled on a farm near the West Texas town of Wellman. Wellman isn’t even a speck on most maps, and claims Brownfield, barely a wide place in the road in its own right, as its nearest metropolitan neighbor. One school houses grades one through twelve in Wellman, and the local six-man football team plays its games without grandstands as townspeople, horses, and dogs roam the sidelines and greet hometown touchdowns with cheers accompanied by joyous barks and neighs. Jerri’s named for her father, though he spells his with a “y.” Her mother is Wilma Sims.
“It’s country,” Jerri says, leaning back in her office, her wealth of hair hanging down behind her chair back. “Real, real country, I guess, but it’s home.”
“Youall had FFA, I suppose,” the interviewer says. “Future Farmers of America.”
Her nose wrinkles in a grin. “Sure, I was the queen. Homecoming queen, too, one year. Only times we ever got to Dallas was on FFA trips, to the state fair, and sometimes for Cowboy games. I was third in my class, but I guess that’s not much in Wellman. I might’ve been first, but I hated math to beat all.” She pronounces it “may-yath,” and one pictures Laurie, her bare toes wriggling in cornfield dirt as Curly rides up singing, “Oh, what a beautiful mornin’.”
Music? Willie an’ Waylon, right?
“I never liked country music till I moved to Dallas, which is sort of funny, I guess. But Brownfield, that was just a few miles, had this station, KKVB, that played pop. The Eagles and the Doors. The Bee Gees, that’s what we had for hayride music.”
“Third in your class and then on to college?” the interviewer says.
Jerri thinks about this one, turning her head to gaze out her window across the elevated portion of Stemmons Freeway as it bends into the Austin interchange. “I didn’t really want to go, but Mama insisted. Texas Tech. In my neck of the woods, everybody that went to college either picked Tech or West Texas, in Canyon.” It’s a figure of speech; in Jerri’s neck of the “woods,” one may drive for miles and never lay eyes on a tree. The Tinker Bell grin lights up the room. “I did pretty well once I got to college, though.”
Good grades?
“Three-point-five”—a fleeting look of pride melting into one of her infrequent frowns—“but I wasn’t really getting anywhere. Started as a psychology major, but, you know, a lot of that is bull. I wound up majoring in speech therapy.”
Sorority?
A pleasant laugh. “I was too independent for all
that stuff.”
“So you took the LSAT and went on to law school,” the interviewer says.
She shakes her head; the hair waves back and forth. “I got married first.”
“Oh? Boy from college, or someone from Wellman?”
“Neither. A banker from Houston. See, I worked part time for Avis at the airport. He was passin’ through, sort of.” One pictures Jerri in a TV commercial, hand raised in the honest-injun sign, still second but trying harder. “We moved to Houston, and I didn’t take the law school test until the next spring. That fall I enrolled at University of Houston Law School.”
“So hubby worked while you went to school.”
“Till we got divorced.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“One of those things. It’s the reason I moved to Dallas, though, as soon as I passed the bar exam.”
“And you went to work for the DA here?”
“Not right away,” Jerri says. “I was in family practice for a while, but that bored me to death. I interviewed with Judge Vance”—though he’s been off the bench for a decade, District Attorney Vance is still “Judge” to his assistants—“but then he sort of hemmed and hawed. I had a job with the Tarrant County prosecutor before he finally called me. Might have made Tarrant County mad when I reneged.” Jerri says this with confidence; she’d be a welcome addition to any DA’s staff, and knows it. An astute and inquisitive legal scholar, Jerri will likely run for judge in the not too far distant future. She’ll probably win.
