by Jim Newell
That brought a real uproar from the spectators and especially from the state attorney. “Your Honour, I must object. What kind of game is the defence playing with the court? Hansford Nelson was murdered and this court is trying a man for murdering him.”
When the judge had restored order and silence to the courtroom, he said in harsher tones than before, “Overruled. Bailiff, please bring in the witness.”
The witness was a middle-aged man, gaunt, tousled, unshaved for several days. He was dressed in old torn and tattered overalls, his dirty white T-shirt partly covered by an equally dirty old sweater. He took the oath without comment and sat down in the witness chair.
The defence attorney walked to a point about three feet in front of the witness and asked, “Mr. Nelson, you are the brother of the late Arthur Nelson. Is that correct?”
“Objection. Arthur Nelson is officially alive.”
“Overruled. ‘Officially’ may be disproved. Continue, Counsellor.”
“Would you like me to repeat the question, Mr. Nelson?”
“Nah. You asked if I was Arthur’s brother. Yeah, the bastard was my brother.”
There was a rustle in the courtroom and Judge Holman rapped his gavel to silence it. “Mr. Nelson, watch your language. Unless you are positive that Arthur Nelson was illegitimate, you may not use the word ‘bastard.’ Continue, Counsellor.”
“Thank you, Your Honour,” said Gifford, and turning back to his witness, he asked, “Mr. Nelson, would you tell the court what you were doing about eight o’clock last evening?”
“I was at your house.”
“And what did you come to see me about.”
“Objection.” State Attorney Copeland had risen to his feet. “Your Honor, this is all news to the State. We have been given no notice of the type of story this witness is about to present as evidence.”
“Mr. Gifford?” inquired the Judge.
“This information was also on Mr. Copeland’s desk at eight o’clock this morning. He had two hours to inform the court that he would like to have a postponement of today’s hearing so that he could study it, but he apparently did not do so.”
“Objection overruled.” Anger and dejection showed on the faces of both the state attorney and the sheriff, but Gerald Copeland resumed his seat.
“Mr. Gifford, do you have any foundation for this testimony? I find it very strange.”
“That will come up immediately, Your Honour.
“Mr. Nelson, this trial is about the murder of Hansford Nelson, committed according to the charge by Sheriff Turner by my client, JP Nelson. Now you claim to be Hansford Nelson. Can you explain the discrepancy for us?”
“Easy. I’m Hansford. The Sheriff made a mistake and said I was dead but it was Arthur. He’s the one that’s dead. And the kid ain’t guilty.”
“How do you know that?”
Gerald Copeland rose again. “Your Honour, I must object again. The defence is playing games. We are dealing with identical twins, one of which has been identified under sworn oath by Sheriff Turner, and now the other twin changes his name and refutes the identity. Surely it’s time to put a stop to this nonsense.”
“Will counsel please come to the bench,” commanded Judge Holman.
When the two lawyers reached the bench, the judge asked Thomas Gifford, “What are you trying to prove, Mr. Gifford?”
“That the wrong man was identified as dead and that the wrong rifle was identified as the one that killed the victim. That’s why I asked for fingerprints to be brought in. I have a fingerprint kit with me in court and we can fingerprint the present witness right here and compare them for you. In the meantime, I have the survivor here and his answer to my next question is going be a big surprise to you all.”
“Strangest thing I’ve ever encountered, and I am going to allow it. Thank you gentlemen.” When Copeland had stomped angrily back to his table and Gifford had returned to his witness, Judge Holman said to the court at large, “Objection overruled. Continue Mr. Gifford.”
“Mr. Nelson, why are you so sure that the sheriff misidentified the dead man and that “JP is not guilty of shooting his father?”
“Cause I done it.”
Instead of what might have been a great stirring of surprise all around, there was complete silence at that statement. Everyone, including the Judge, but except JP and the Defence Attorney, seemed in a state of shock.
“You shot Arthur Nelson?”
“That’s what I tol’ you last night. Should have done it six months ago when I found out.”
“What did you find out six months ago?”
“I found out that he put me through twenty years of hell and then laughed at me when he tol’ me. He’d been laughin’ through those whole twenty years, I ’magine.”
Thomas Gifford turned back to the defence table and took a sip of water from the glass that sat there in front of his chair. Once again the move made sure that the jury had time to take in the testimony of the man calling himself Hansford Nelson. Then he turned back to the witness.
“What was this ‘hell’ you say your brother put you through?”
Hansford Nelson looked him straight in the eye and said with a quiver of anger in his voice, “Twenty-one years ago, Mary Ann Coulter accused me of knocking her up…”
Judge Holman interrupted the witness, “I have warned you once. This will be the last time I will do so. Your language is not acceptable to the court. If you mean that you were accused of getting Mary Ann Coulter, as she was known then, pregnant, than say so in those words.”
“Okay, Gabe, …uh…sorry, I mean ‘Your Honour,’ she accused me of getting her pregnant an’ I did what I thought was the right thing and we got married. The next twenty years until last year when she died from the pneumonia were nothing but pure hell. Her tongue was all over me from sunup ’til bedtime. She couldn’t find anything right about me. She kept the house like a pig pen, she couldn’t cook for sour apples, and she made life a living hell for me every single day every way she could think of.”
He would have continued, but Thomas Gifford could see that Hansford had made his point. He stopped the outpouring of vitriolic accusations by asking, “And what was it that he told you that made you angry enough to shoot Arthur?”
“He told me one night when we’d been drinkin’ at the Shotgun Bar that I was a damn fool, marrying Mary Ann, because I didn’t knock…I mean get her pregnant. He did.”
“And you believed Arthur.”
“Well of course I believed him. What reason would he have had for tellin’ me otherwise? Beside, I always knew that he and likely half a dozen other guys could have done it. Just that I had a couple a opportunities, you might say, to be the one.”
“And that made you angry after all those years.”
“Damn right it did.” Judge Holman ignored the word “damn.”
“And you wanted to make it right that JP was not convicted of the shooting. Did you tell JP?”
“Yes. He was mad, but he accepted it. “Didn’t have no choice, did he? Not only that, but I didn’t want to see the kid have to go through what I did. Everybody in town knows that my daughter, Jasmine, is pregnant and that JP is responsible, according to her. JP is my son, and, that’d be incest. And even if it wasn’t, it’d be the same all over again. Jasmine’s ’zactly like her mother.” He turned to look at JP, sitting with his head bowed so that he was looking at the table in front of him. “Don’t do it, JP. Don’t marry that girl. She’s your first cousin and this family’s messed up enough.” He ignored Judge Holman’s gavel and continued talking to JP. “There ain’t no law says you got to do it.”
Judge Holman rapped his gavel again and again, both to quiet the eruption of noise among the spectators and to interrupt the continued flow of words from Hansford Nelson. “Hansford—if that’s who you are,” he said, “you can talk to the court but you can’t talk to the accused or anybody but your lawyer and me. Do you understand?”
Hansford, no longer app
earing bedraggled, but looking fierce and angry, nodded his head.
“You have to answer. The Court Clerk can’t write a nod.”
“All right. Yes. I just wanted the kid to know. I saw Doc Henderson couple of weeks ago and he told me that this cancer is going to be the end of me in less than six months. So if I die by hanging for shooting that son of a bitch brother of mine or from cancer. Don’t make no difference.”
Once more the spectators erupted at Hansford Nelson’s words, and once more Judge Holman banged his gavel. “Silence,” he said loudly. Then he practically yelled, “If the courtroom is not quiet immediately, I will clear the court.” His face red with anger, the judge pounded his gavel twice more before he achieved his wish for silence among the spectators.
Before the Judge could continue, Thomas Gifford jumped in with another question. “Hansford, how could you commit this shooting of your brother and yet JP was charged?”
“Objection.” Copeland was on his feet again. “There’s no foundation for that question, Your Honour We don’t know even that the witness did actually commit the murder of Arthur Nelson or Hansford Nelson, whichever it was. The sheriff made a thorough investigation and he found that JP Nelson, Hansford’s son, is the guilty one.”
“Objection overruled. I for one want to hear the rest of this testimony. The accused is not guilty until the jury says so. The Sheriff does not make that decision, and you of all people ought to know that. If it is true, we have a case for a court-ordered acquittal.”
Thomas Gifford returned to his witness. “Mr. Nelson, would you describe what happened on the day of the shooting.”
“Well, I saw Arthur and JP driving out of town in JP’s ol’ truck towards the ol’ apple orchard up north of town that lots of people use for deer hunting, and I followed them. I been mad at Arthur for six months, like I said before, an’ I figured this might be my time to pay him back for good. I waited till they parked, and they separated. JP, he went west over the little hill and Arthur sat down, waitin’ for a deer to come looking for apples. Just like the lazy so and so.”
“Just tell the court what happened, please,” broke in Gifford.
“Okay. I walked up to Arthur and I says to him, ‘Arthur, you bastard, (this time the judge ignored the remark), your time is up. I been thinkin’ about payin’ you back for all those years I spent with Mary Ann and now it’s gonna happen.’
“And I shot him in the chest with my 30-30. He tried to shoot me back, and he even pulled the trigger, but he was too weak to aim, ’n he died. He fell on top a his rifle. He couldn’t even open the breach to eject the shell before he kicked off.”
Every member of the jury was sitting forward, listening to every word. Indeed, so were the judge and everyone else in the courtroom except for Gerald Copeland and Sheriff Turner. They were leaning back in their chairs whispering.
“Then what happened?” continued Gifford.
“I threw down my rifle and knelt down beside Arthur, and JP came running over the hill, just like I ’spected he would. I made out I was trying to help Arthur and when JP asked what happened, I tol’ him that I fired at a deer, but Arthur, he moved in front of me just as I pulled the trigger and he fired back at me. He was too weak to aim and he missed me. Then he died. First thing somebody else come along and said he would go get the sheriff and we waited. That was basically the truth except it was Arthur I fired at, not a deer.
“I picked up the two rifles, JP’s and mine, and took them up to JP’s truck and mine. I got them mixed up and put my rifle in JP’s truck and his rifle in mine. When the sheriff got there, ’bout three-quarters of an hour later, he found the rifle beside Arthur, broke it open and found that it had a shell but no bullet. Then he wanted to know where the other guns were, ’n I tol’ him where I had put them. I tol’ him about the accident, as I called it, and he went and fetched the guns. When he broke open the one in JP’s truck, he found mine and it had been fired, but he didn’t know it was mine. He didn’t break open the one in my truck, just put it back in the gun rack. I was really sweatin’ that he was gonna rack it open and see that it hadn’t been fired and then he’d know my story was a lie, but he didn’t.”
“Thank you, Mr. Nelson.” Gifford turned to Judge Holman. “That was the whole point of my experiment with the 30-30 rifles this morning, Your Honour. You can see how easy it is to get those rifles mixed up. Now I see that the bailiff has returned with what I believe are the finger prints of Arthur Nelson.” He turned to his desk and picked up a parcel that had been sitting there. He quickly unwrapped the parcel from the towel that surrounded it. “This is a standard fingerprint kit, Your Honour, and I would ask you to have Sheriff Turner take the prints of the witness and compare them with the sheet that the bailiff just handed you.”
“Your Honour, I must protest. This is highly irregular.” Gerald Copeland was red-faced and obviously very annoyed.
“You are correct there, Mr. Copeland, replied Judge Holman, but we have begun this process and we are going to continue it to the end. If you wish to lodge an appeal in good time, that is your right as State Attorney. Sheriff Turner, please take the fingerprints, as many as you need, and show me the result.”
The courtroom was not exactly silent, but there was only a slight buzz of conversation as the spectators were too involved in watching the fingerprinting take place. The procedure did not take long, and the sheriff silently passed the sheet of white paper with the witness’s prints on it to the Judge. Judge Holman studied the two sheets carefully, then called the two lawyers to the bench where he showed them the sheets. He didn’t say a word, just showed them where he had marked the witness’s prints as Hansford Nelson, and set them beside the official page marked Arthur Nelson.
“It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it,” Judge Holman said in a low voice, “that the witness is Hansford Nelson?”
Gifford said, “When JP said ‘My uncle’ he meant Hansford. He knew because he had been told that Arthur was his real father so Hansford was his uncle. When the sheriff said, ‘You’re under arrest for killing your father, JP thought he meant Arthur and he denied it, but the sheriff was referring to Hansford.
Copeland, sighed and said, “I’ll make the required motion.” Both men returned to their tables. Copeland remained standing. Gifford sat down and patted his client on the back. JP smiled for the first time that day.
“Your Honour,” said Gerald Copeland, the State moves that all charges against Jacky Paul Nelson be withdrawn. The State also moves that Hansford Nelson be charged with the murder of his brother Arthur.”
The court accepts your first motion, Mr. Copeland. The charges are officially dropped. Mr. Nelson,” he turned to JP, “you are free to go.”
Then he turned to the jury. “Members of the jury, I thank you for the time you have committed to this trial. You are also free to go.” None of the members of the jury, sensing that there was more to come moved. “As to the second motion, the court rejects it.” He turned to the man still sitting quietly in the witness chair. “Hansford, I will not order that you be charged with murder. You have been punished enough, I think, by having lived twenty years with Mary Ann Coulter Nelson. As you know, she was my sister-in-law, and I am aware that everything you said about her was true. I also believe that if Dr. Henderson told you that your cancer will take your life in six months or less, that will be an extra punishment as you wait out the time. You also are free to go.”
Judge Holman rapped his gavel once more. “Court is dismissed,” he proclaimed, and left the courtroom.
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