In the Cowboy Clark case, Rehling’s job was to determine whether the bullet removed from Clark’s body was fired from the gun found inside Washington’s paper sack. He conducted an extensive microscopic and chemical study. He weighed and measured the bullet and identified it as a Remington 156-grain Smith & Wesson. The bullet was flattened on one side; as an expert witness for the state, he explained that it struck and bounced off a hard, smooth surface at a slight angle. In the pathologist’s opinion, something external, not internal, caused the flat place on the bullet.
Rehling also examined Clark’s bloody shirt to determine the distance from which the gun was fired. “Based upon my findings, and experience, as well as studies with this particular weapon,” he explained, the gunshot occurred twelve inches or more from the shirt. “How much more I cannot say.”
Following the microscopic examination of the bullet and the shirt, he conducted a ballistics comparison by firing test bullets from the .38 Special into a cotton box—a long box packed with long-staple cotton, which stops, without marring or mutilating, the bullet. On the witness stand, he explained with didactic self-assurance that each bullet fired from that weapon exhibited a microscopic pattern of “lands and grooves” transferred from the barrel. “It is a sort of fingerprint of that individual barrel,” he added. He concluded that the bullet retrieved during the autopsy had indeed been fired from Cowboy Clark’s .38 Special.
THE GUNSHOT THAT killed Cowboy Clark was fired near John Adams’s open bedroom window. Three months later, as the first day of testimony neared its end, Howard Sullinger called Adams as a state’s witness and asked him to recount the events of that humid July evening. Adams told the jury about the two-tone Chevrolet that struck the chinaberry tree near his house and the police officer yelling, “Get out, boy.” The prosecutor asked him to identify the individual who stepped out of the car. When Adams hesitated, Sullinger shouted, “Who was he? Who was the boy?”
From the witness stand, Adams looked to his right and pointed a wrinkled index finger at Caliph Washington. He recalled losing sight of Washington and Clark as they walked around the back of the patrol car. “I couldn’t see nothing,” he said. “I didn’t see nothing.” Adams explained that he heard the officer shout into his microphone, “Sergeant, I’m shot three times in the stomach.”
Adams’s common-law wife, Mary Davidson, occupied his bed that night. Even as a witness for the state, their “sinful” living arrangement shocked the straight-and-narrow prosecutor. “You just kind of wanted to see if you were going to like her and lived with her a while?” Sullinger asked. “No,” replied Adams, “I been living with her about twelve [years].”
Mary Davidson testified that the “fuss from cars” made such a loud noise that she awoke from a deep sleep. She peered over Adams’s prone body to gain a better view. She saw the glow from the headlights and the bright flashing light on top of Clark’s patrol car. From her bed, she watched quietly as Clark ordered someone from the car. When Sullinger asked Davidson who emerged from the car, she pointed to the defendant and said, “Caliph. Caliph Washington.” She also heard, but never saw, the shooting. “I just heard the gun fire,” she added, “and that was all I knowed.” Yet she had seen Washington standing near the car when a voice from the darkness called out to him, “Don’t get in the car.” Caliph ran away, Davidson added, and “I don’t know where he went.”
The final witness was Elijah Honeycutt. As Caliph Washington fled during the early morning hours of July 12, he stopped at Honeycutt’s house and asked for a ride to Travellick. As a witness, Honeycutt testified that when Washington exited the car, he said he had just killed a policeman. Honeycutt thought he was joking. “Oh, no, you haven’t did anything like that,” he said. Caliph just laughed and walked away.
WHEN CALIPH WASHINGTON boarded the Memphis-bound bus in Amory two days later, one of the first things passenger Furman Jones noticed was the brown paper bag in his hand. Now three months later, Sullinger called Jones to the stand to identify the bag and testify on behalf of the state. When the prosecutor asked what the two men talked about on the bus, Jones said that after some small talk, Washington told him he killed a policeman in Alabama.
Did you ask the defendant how he killed him? Sullinger asked.
Jones responded, “He said he killed him with the policeman’s pistol and he told me that the pistol was in his bag that he had.”
Sullinger held up the bag and inquired, “Out of this bag?”
Jones said yes.
On cross-examination, K. C. Edwards probed Jones for inconsistencies in his story. But instead of discrediting Jones’s testimony, Edwards unwittingly strengthened the state’s case, as the witness provided further details on the conversation with Washington: “He told me that the polices [sic] had been following him around, and he got out of the car there and he said he kicked the polices and took his pistol and shot him.”
The prosecutor immediately stood from his chair and asked court reporter Sydney Eckstone to read back the testimony just given. The reporter complied, and Sullinger looked at the jury. In a loud voice, he repeated the line “Kicked the policeman and took his pistol and shot him.”
A stunned Edwards turned to Jones and asked if Washington told him about the police officer kicking or hitting him in any way.
“No, sir,” he responded.
Edwards walked back to his chair and proclaimed in a frustrated tone, “No further questions.” Jones stepped down from the witness stand.
Following the brief testimonies of several material witnesses for the prosecution, Judge Mathews closed the first day of the trial. He warned the twelve men of the jury to speak to no one about the case, to allow no one to speak to them about the proceedings, and to not discuss Caliph Washington’s trial among themselves until they heard all the evidence and the charge of the court.
6
“BECAUSE IT WAS SELF-DEFENSE”
Bessemer’s notorious lawman Lawton “Stud” Grimes talks with Caliph Washington after his arrest. Grimes later claimed that Washington confessed to him about murdering Cowboy Clark.
DETECTIVE LAWTON “STUD” Grimes was the state’s closing witness. For almost two decades, Jefferson County prosecutors in Bessemer used Stud to provide a colorful punctuation mark to the end of a case. His gruff manliness and ability to spin a story resonated with the white working-class men who filled the jury boxes—he was, after all, one of them. Whenever Stud investigated a crime or testified in a case, the news rumbled across Bessemer like an approaching thunderstorm.
At times, his police methods garnered national attention, including a 1955 case of a jealous wife who discovered a photograph of her fun-loving husband with a bikini-clad model. She demanded that Bessemer police arrest the woman for “alienation of affections and indecent exposure.” Detective Grimes conducted an exhaustive search throughout the city, relying on the photo. A few days later, he arrested a sin-oozing brunette named Myrtle, placed her in the back of the car, transported her to the police station, and escorted her to an isolation cell. The red-faced detective brought Police Chief Charles Thomas Mullen to meet the scandalous woman—a life-size cardboard cutout used for a local beer promotion. “It’s fantastic,” Mullen said.
As the Washington trial resumed on Tuesday, October 8, prosecutor Sullinger called Stud Grimes to the stand. Grimes revealed that following Washington’s arrest in Mississippi, the suspect made a voluntary oral statement about shooting James “Cowboy” Clark. Grimes said he had not mistreated or abused Washington or made any promise, inducement, or threat before the suspect made the statement. Grimes said he simply asked, “What happened?” Washington told him that he ran from the policeman because he had so much trouble with them over the years. When Cowboy arrested Caliph in Exeter Alley, he grabbed hold of the suspect’s belt with his left hand and led him around the car. Clark then bent over to unlock the door with his right hand. Washington told Grimes, the detective testified, that he “just whirled in under him and gr
abbed his pistol and then stepped back and shot him two or three times.”
When Grimes finished his testimony, Sullinger announced that the state rested.
Caught off guard by the prosecutor’s sudden conclusion, Kermit Edwards was ill prepared to offer Washington’s defense. “It’s earlier than I expected,” he told Judge Mathews. The attorney asked for five minutes to pull his case together, and the judge granted him ten.
The seemingly obvious legal strategy for Edwards was to portray Clark as a violent aggressor and Washington as a victim of police brutality. He could argue that the suspect acted in self-defense as Clark tried to pistol-whip him, and evidence would have supported at least part of this argument. The law of Alabama was clear that the killing of one human being by another was justifiable and without legal guilt when such a killing was in self-defense. “Neither divine nor human law,” Judge Mathews once explained, “requires us to love our neighbor better than ourselves.”
Edwards’s task, then, was to convince the jury of three major points: first, that Washington had not provoked or encouraged the incident with Clark; second, that the defendant had been in imminent danger of death or bodily harm from Clark; and third, that he had no reasonable hope of escape or retreat from the situation without putting his own life or safety in jeopardy.
But this was Bessemer, Alabama, in 1957. An all-white jury would find no sympathy for a black man who killed a white man, widowed his wife, and orphaned his children. Their emotional perceptions would be too much for Edwards to overcome. Washington had not even an ounce of hope of acquittal. When the trial reconvened, all Edwards could do was call a few witnesses for a limited and uninspired defense, sensing that a guilty verdict was inevitable.
Perhaps this explained why Edwards plodded through the testimony of defense witnesses—asking routine questions and failing to connect key pieces of evidence which might raise reasonable doubt in the minds of the jurors. When Lipscomb Police Chief Thurman P. Avery revealed that he had discovered a new dent on the right inside fender of patrol car number thirteen, the attorney never explored with the witness the possibility that the dent was caused by a ricocheting bullet—one that hit the fender and entered Cowboy Clark’s body at an odd angle. “Something just dented it,” Avery testified; “pierced it but didn’t go through it; just glanced off. It happened that night.” When he finished speaking, Edwards simply dismissed Avery from the stand.
As his last witness, he called Washington to testify on his own behalf, and to offer his own report of that fatal night for the jury to weigh alongside Grimes’s convincing narrative. After the defendant settled in the oak chair on the witness stand, Edwards calmly led him through the events of July 11, 12, 13, and 14. For each question, Caliph Washington gave a short, precise answer. The car tailing him had no siren or flashing light. When the bullets whizzed by his window, he sped up. When the lights on the patrol car were turned on, he stopped right then. When Clark said, “Get out of that car, nigger. Put your hands up,” Washington obeyed. When Clark asked about the whiskey, he told him that he had no liquor in his car.
According to Washington, Clark then led him around to the other side of the police car. He stopped, opened the door, and yelled: “Listen here, nigger, I want to know where that whiskey is at.” You can search the car, Washington responded. He had nothing to hide. This only made Clark angrier. He bellowed, “You’re going to be a smart nigger,” and he drew the pistol from his holster. The lawman raised the gun to strike him, but Washington caught the officer’s hands, and the pair “got to tussling” back and forth over the weapon. Clark tried to kick Washington’s leg and push him back, while both of them held on to the gun. That was when the pistol fired three times. Washington never had control of the weapon, he claimed, and Clark’s finger was on the trigger.
Following the third shot fired from the gun, Clark released the pistol into Washington’s hands and fell against the car.
“What did you do?” Edwards asked.
“I run,” the defendant said.
AS SULLINGER APPROACHED the witness stand to begin his cross-examination, Edwards noticed that prosecutor Sullinger was relying on several sheets of paper as a guide for questioning the defendant. Edwards petitioned Judge Mathews to allow him to review the pages, which appeared to be a statement, but the judge refused. Edwards then shouted a loud objection and demanded to see the papers.
Before Mathews could answer, the prosecutor interrupted, “What business is it of his what I am using to examine the witness with?”
Edwards jumped in and explained that Sullinger was using a statement made by Washington—which the defendant, and his attorney, had a right to review before it was used to impeach him. Although the law supported Edwards’s argument, Judge Mathews overruled the objection.
Free to proceed, Sullinger began peppering Washington with a series of rapid-fire questions to draw out inconsistences between his testimony and the statement. Was Cowboy Clark standing close to you, the prosecutor asked, when you “grabbed the pistol and started to jerk it out of his hand?” The defendant answered, “No, sir.” After you shot the officer, you said you laid him in the front seat of the car? He answered, “No, sir.” Sullinger grumbled, “Didn’t do anything for him, huh?” Washington answered, “No, sir.”
For over ten minutes, Sullinger continued this unrelenting onslaught. The questioning took a toll on Washington, and he looked to Edwards for some relief. “Don’t look at your lawyer,” Sullinger yelled. “Look at me.” Edwards objected, but Judge Mathews allowed the interrogation to continue.
Finally, an exasperated Edwards pleaded with the judge to stop the prosecutor’s line of questioning and allow the defendant to review the statement that Sullinger was reading from. Mathews disagreed, and the questioning continued.
Emboldened by the free hand, Sullinger attempted to humiliate Washington. Holding Clark’s pistol, he waved it in front of Washington’s face and asked him if he ever held any part of the gun except the barrel.
Caliph Washington said no. As the prosecutor held the gun by the barrel, Washington showed how he had grabbed the barrel to keep the butt of the gun from coming down on his head. “I was just trying to hold it up,” he explained.
Washington said he never had control of the pistol, and anyone who said he did was lying. Washington explained that the officer was already shot. “You mean while he had hold of this, he pulled the trigger . . . [and] shot himself? Is that how?” Sullinger enquired. “I don’t know how it went off,” the defendant answered. “It went off when we were tussling.” Sullinger thought Washington’s claim that Clark pulled the trigger and shot himself was ludicrous. The questions continued to pop fast:
SULLINGER: “You didn’t have the gun in your hands then at all?”
WASHINGTON: “No.”
SULLINGER: “You want to take that gun and show me how you backed off and shot that officer three times?”
WASHINGTON: “I didn’t have it in my hands.”
SULLINGER: “You heard Mr. Grimes’s testimony, didn’t you?”
WASHINGTON: “He lied.”
SULLINGER: “Yes. Well, you heard the soldier boy off the bus, Jones?”
WASHINGTON: “He lied, too.”
SULLINGER: “Lied, too?”
WASHINGTON: “I haven’t talked to him in any ways.”
SULLINGER: “That’s right? And this boy, Honeycutt? He lied, too, didn’t he?”
WASHINGTON: “Yes, sir.”
SULLINGER: “And Adams lied? John Adams—the bald-headed Negro testified here yesterday? He lied, didn’t he?”
WASHINGTON: “I guess he did.”
SULLINGER: “Well, you heard him. Did he lie or didn’t he lie?
WASHINGTON: “Yes, sir.”
SULLINGER: “And Mary Davidson lied too, didn’t she?”
WASHINGTON: “Sure did.”
SULLINGER: “Then everybody here lied except you, haven’t they?”
WASHINGTON: “Wasn’t nobody there but
me.”
SULLINGER: “I see. Wasn’t nobody there left but you, and you’re testifying to suit yourself, is that it?”
WASHINGTON: “No, sir.”
Sullinger suggested that Washington was the one lying. Since Cowboy Clark was dead and unable to testify, the prosecutor believed Caliph was making up his own version of the truth. Sullinger, barely pausing to catch his breath, asked: “Did you make up your mind that since the officer couldn’t testify that you would come in here today and just tell the story that he tried to shoot you?”
Edwards jumped from his seat and yelled, “Don’t answer that! We object.” Judge Mathews agreed.
Sullinger stopped the questioning and dismissed Washington from the stand.
Following a short recess, to the surprise of the judge, K. C. Edwards rested the defendant’s case.
FOR BOTH THE prosecution and defense, the admissibility of Caliph Washington’s statement remained a serious issue. To support his use of the document, Sullinger called a rebuttal witness, deputy sheriff Walter C. Dean—the criminal investigator who wrote down Washington’s words on July 14, the day he was captured. As Dean settled into the witness chair, Sullinger handed him a small stack of papers and asked if this was the statement signed by Washington. After he examined the papers and answered yes, the prosecutor submitted the statement as evidence.
Edwards offered his most spirited objection of the trial. This was inadmissible evidence, he insisted, because the statement was not presented during the state’s main case against the defendant and was now being offered for the sole purpose of impeaching the defendant. The prosecutor simply wanted to catch Washington in a lie and thereby destroy his credibility.
For the next thirty minutes, Sullinger and Edwards argued over the document. Edwards pleaded with the judge to allow the defendant to read his own statement, but the prosecutor withdrew the evidence and began reading it into the court record. Edwards continued to object and pleaded with Judge Mathews to see the statement.
He Calls Me by Lightning Page 11
