Back beyond the offices, the other eleven jurors were leaving the deliberation room when they saw Richardson standing with Cher Elder’s family. Several women broke into a run toward them, tears streaming down their faces. “We’re so sorry,” they cried, explaining what had happened.
Richardson had never seen anything like it. Even some of the men were crying, others just shook his hand and walked out, saying they were too angry to talk about it right then. Other jurors stayed to talk to the family, apologizing over and over “for letting you down.”
Earl and Beth Elder went out to the hallway to meet with the assembled media. “That is what is screwed up about our system,” Cher’s furious father said. “The holdout juror was a coward who shirked her duty.”
A television reporter asked if it wasn’t enough that Luther would now be off the streets for possibly the rest of his life.
“Was it enough for my daughter?” Earl Elder shot back. “She’s dead. He’s not. He’s still living and breathing. That’s not right. We give too many rights to criminals and don’t think enough about the victims.”
“We’d have rather had a mistrial,” said 18-year-old Beth, her eyes red from crying. “Another jury would have convicted him for first degree murder.”
The jurors also began filtering out, some stopping to talk to the press.
“There were three shots to the back of her head,” said one. “The first could have been a mistake, but the other two were deliberate. And four times he went back to her grave to make sure she wouldn’t be found.”
“I felt an incredible sadness,” said another woman juror as tears fell from her cheeks. “I don’t think it is fair. It was the law, but it is not a law I care for.”
“We’re obviously upset that one juror wouldn’t agree to convict him of first degree murder,” said another tearful woman. “We’re very sorry.”
Hall was also surprised by the jury response. He told the media that he was concerned that the Lewis instructions had “forced a number of jurors to compromise their beliefs. Our system has flaws. And this may be one of those flaws where the views of one are allowed to outweigh the views of eleven others.”
Considering the type of evidence, Richardson was actually relieved that the jury had come back with a murder conviction. Still, he too was angry that a single holdout had saved Luther from the death penalty.
“Thomas Luther is guilty of first degree murder. He knows it. I know it. And eleven jurors know it.”
The pen moved across the page as if guided by some other hand than hers, leaving behind fragmented thoughts and raw emotions. Sometimes it seemed that writing in her diary was the only thing that kept Rhonda Edwards sane.
Just a few hours earlier, Thomas Edward Luther had been found guilty of second degree murder. Rhonda knew that she should have been happy he was convicted, or at least felt some sense of relief. She’d been told Luther would probably now receive a forty-eight-year sentence to go with a fifteen-to-thirty-five-year sentence he got in 1995 for the rape of a woman in West Virginia.
Nailing him for Cher’s death had been no sure thing. When it was apparent the jury was deadlocked, she had feared the worst—that man, that smirking, laughing monster who sat at the defense table might not have been held accountable for her death at all.
Instead, she wrote as she sat in a friend’s living room in Golden waiting for the evening news to come on the television, “I feel anger, rage, and resentment. I have lost a piece of myself ...”
“... I know I will never be the same as I was before her death, some sorrows leave deeper scars than others. A mother’s loss of her child is a deep scar ...”
Justice seemed hollow, as empty as the hole into which they’d lowered Cher’s casket. “There is a vacuum that can never be filled ... a terrible emptiness ...”
“... Cher didn’t get a fair trial ...” all because one juror, a 65-year-old woman, held out for second degree murder when her eleven colleagues believed he was guilty of murder in the first degree. She wouldn’t even explain her reasoning.
Now there would be no death penalty phase. No public hearing to expose the real truth about Luther instead of the white-washed version that appeared in court. Worst of all, there would be no equal payment for what he had done to Cher, no retribution for what he had put her family through.
Rhonda Edwards had held together after the verdict just long enough to get out of the courtroom before she burst into tears. She hadn’t wanted him to see her cry as he smiled and hugged his attorneys like he’d won. She couldn’t believe how he had callously talked about getting back in shape in the prison weight room.
And what did she have? Memories. Guilt. Frustration. “Our justice system can be twisted, because of one person who cannot see that execution by three bullets to the back of the head is deliberate murder. I hope crime never hits her family so she doesn’t feel the wrath and anger that comes with the system.
“To be able to talk to your child you have to go to a cemetery and visit a cold stone, it is the most heartbreak a mother can have.”
For several days following the verdict, radio talk shows, television newscasts, and newspaper columns were swamped by the outrage of a community that wondered how a single person could have held eleven others hostage.
Cleaver no longer sounded quite so sure when she was quoted saying, “All along our client told us he didn’t do it, and maybe he didn’t. We’re just happy we’re not proceeding to the penalty phase.”
Mary Brown was interviewed. She said she had hoped to testify against Luther in the death penalty phase, only to be once again frustrated and in tears because of the system.
“I wanted to be there for all victims to say, ‘You can go on. You don’t have to let men like this ruin your lives,’ ” she said. “I wanted to look him in the face and let him know that he didn’t win.” Several other states, she noted, didn’t require unanimous verdicts.
The jurors went on the air to say they felt coerced by the judge’s instructions. If the jurors were upset after the verdict, they were absoluely outraged when they finally got to read and hear about Luther’s past. They said they believed that if they’d been allowed to hear about Luther’s track record of attacking other women and unsanitized statements he made—“Why do I do these things?” and “The next girl won’t live”—even the holdout juror would have come around.
Traumatized, the jurors called each other to cry and lend support. They’d done their best, but felt like failures.
Kate Stone, one of the alternate jurors, recognized that there needed to be some sort of closure. She called the others and invited them to a get-together at her house, telling them to bring their spouses so they could hear what the jurors were going through as a group. Nine jurors and their spouses showed up—one could not be reached and another had to work and, of course, no one invited the twelfth.
At the get-together, the jurors decided they wanted to do something to express their displeasure. They wondered if the judge would let them speak at Luther’s sentencing, scheduled for April 5.
A week later, they got together again. This time, they invited Richardson. He was surprised at how torn they remained. “You got nothin’ to be sorry for,” he assured them. He told them about an anonymous call he’d received in the days following the verdict. The caller said he knew the holdout juror and that she had gone to her priest during the trial and the priest had instructed her to do nothing that would expose Luther to the death penalty.
It meant the woman had violated the judge’s admonition to not discuss the case with anyone. Richardson knew that some of the other jurors had moral qualms about the death penalty—he had his own reservations about it, except in this case—and that was fine with him. But if the holdout juror had looked into her heart and decided she could not follow the law regarding the death penalty, she should have told the judge and asked to be excused. Now, he wondered if she had known all along that she wouldn’t agree to first degree murder and had lied to ge
t on the jury to thwart the law.
As far as the jurors speaking at the sentencing, he’d never heard of such a thing. It wouldn’t hurt to ask the judge, he told them, but personally, he still had to stay out of it. Luther’s lawyers had already said they would be appealing the conviction.
Kate Stone contacted Munch, who said the jurors could read a statement. So together they drafted what they wanted to say.
April 5 arrived. Cher Elder’s family and friends arrived at the courthouse to find it packed with not just the press, but well-wishers, the jurors, and Mary Brown. The tension made the courtroom air feel hot and dense, and there was a collective gasp when Luther was led into the courtroom, the chains that bound his handcuffed wrists to a belly band and shackled his ankles clinking as he shuffled to the defense table. Instead of the nice clothes his lawyers had dressed him in for the trial, he wore the more familiar bright orange jail jumpsuit over a white t-shirt. He smiled when he saw his attorneys but, looking back at the gallery, appeared stunned that the courtroom was so full of unfriendly faces. He turned quickly away.
Munch called for the first witness to approach the podium that had been set up between the prosecution and defense tables. A slight, pretty woman with dark hair in a floral dress stood and walked to the microphone.
Looking at Munch and ignoring Luther, who glanced once at her and turned his head away, Mary Brown began to speak. “Death is inevitable. It comes to all living things. Although it is said that we all die alone, that is not exactly true. Each of us hopes to die surrounded by people that we love, to be able to say goodbye, to let them know how much we loved life and loved them. While many events may keep this from happening, most that I can think of are accidental.
“Cher Elder never got to say goodbye. She saw her death approaching on the face of a stranger—the same stranger who I thought would end my life. And reflected in that face was rage, hate, and the intent of inflicting extraordinary pain and terror on her and ultimately to end her life.
“As I now recall the sound of my own neck bones and skull crunching in my ears, beyond the pain and terror, I thought of my family, my friends, and how very much I loved them. I did not want to be some faceless, nameless body rotting in the snow, my loved ones never knowing what had become of their friend, their daughter, sister, co-worker.”
As she spoke, Mary Brown’s voice grew stronger. She kept her head high, her small frame straight, looking down occasionally to check the typed notes of her speech. Soon there were few dry eyes in the gallery. Cleaver and Enwall slumped in their chairs, while Luther’s face turned crimson.
“The pain of an anonymous death is almost indescribable, except to one who nearly experienced it,” Brown continued. “During my attack, Thomas Luther systematically shredded my dignity and dehumanized me. He violated my body, my mind, my soul. I was stripped of my innocent belief in the goodness of mankind.
“I could not undersand why. What had I ever done? Didn’t he know I was a kind, good person? I’m sure that Cher wondered as well.
“During my first imaginings of confronting Luther after my assault, I did not see myself trying to hurt him or to get even. I just saw myself in a room telling him, telling everyone, my life story. I guess I believed that if he knew how good I was, this would not have happened. I had lost so much. It was incomprehensible that anyone that looked like a human being could treat another human being in such a way. My entire person, my whole world view had been destroyed. I did not know who I was anymore.”
Mary Brown paused as if remembering the ordeal she’d been through. Cher Elder’s family and strangers alike could be heard crying in the gallery.
“The road to recovery has been a very long and painful one. I have had to draw on inner resources I did not know that I had. I feel extraordinarily lucky to have a second chance at life—to enjoy friendships, to create a family, and to accomplish worthy goals.
“While I feel that it is only the grace of God that sustained me, I carry with me a deep feeling of guilt for survival itself when I know other equally deserving women have died. Sadness is part of my life, and my heart feels the loss of Cher and all those who are still nameless.
“The world has lost their potential. Their families have suffered the deepest loss imaginable. I hope and pray that Thomas Luther is never given the opportunity to make a decision like that again—a decision as to the life and death of another human being.”
Mary Brown finally looked at Luther, but he did not return her gaze, though he must surely have been aware of it. It was Mary’s triumph, her day in court at long last, where she could expose the monster for what he was. She turned back to the judge, and left no doubt that she in part blamed the courts.
“As you consider Thomas Luther’s sentence, I would ask you to keep these facts in mind. Fourteen years ago, Luther, a man charged with attempted murder, rape, and kidnapping pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. He was found sane, and then changed his plea to not guilty. His defense lawyer prevented me from telling my story, to avoid ‘undue emotional influence on a jury,’ and then trivialized both the events and their effects in a court of law.
“The district attorney and a defense lawyer, in the guise of protecting me, plea-bargained the case without ever asking my opinion. Luther served eleven years for his crime.
“After his release, he was convicted of violently assaulting another woman, and he killed Cher Elder. But Thomas Luther was presented to this jury looking as clean as a Boy Scout, with no mention of his prior record.
“There are other Thomas Luthers out there. A system of justice that protects the accused at the expense of present and future victims, that hides the truth to avoid emotion, that plea-bargains and paroles to clear the prisons, must share the responsibility for Cher Elder’s death.”
Munch sat with his face turning red, blinking behind his round glasses as Mary Brown spoke. When she finished, he cleared his throat and asked who was next.
With Kate Stone leading them, nine jurors and two alternates walked to the podium. They had decided it would be better, more objective, for Stone to read their message, but they were all together to support her.
Luther slid further into his seat as Kate Stone began to speak. Cleaver stared straight ahead, while Enwall turned to listen.
“After careful and thoughtful deliberation, in a very short amount of time, it was quite apparent to eleven of us that Thomas Luther was and is guilty of murder in the first degree,” Stone began.
“Your Honor, we feel a profound sense of failure. Logically, we know that we need not feel this way. We followed the law and instructions given to us. We know that all of this was caused first of all by the actions of Thomas Luther in killing Cher, and then by the actions of one juror. We are sincerely disappointed that one of our fellow jurors held out for second degree murder. We know that this is a legal verdict, but it is not a just verdict.
“While we could not convict on first degree, we are absolutely adamant that this heinous individual should serve the maximum sentence of the lesser charge of second degree murder. We also ask that the sentence that you give Thomas Luther be served consecutively with any other sentence pending. Your Honor, we feel that Thomas Luther should pay for what he did to Cher all by itself. Cher deserves at least this.
“We were appalled to learn about the other crimes that Thomas Luther has been convicted of, in addition to the charges that are currently pending against him. All of these crimes have strengthened our resolve to see that this man serves the maximum penalty.
“It is obvious to us that Thomas Luther should not be allowed to be part of a free society to prey on anyone in the future, as he has in the past. Cher and her family definitely have the right to expect that justice be served. Society has the right to expect protection from this sort of violence.
“We are all so strongly united as a jury in this opinion that we are now in direct contact with our senators and legislators, who are also concerned, to change the existing laws to allow for
a conviction based on a majority vote.
“Your Honor, please help the public see justice done.”
It was then time for Cher Elder’s family to speak. Her grandfather, Edward Simpson, described how he had looked forward to the day Cher married and brought a great-grandchild into the world. “That juror violated her oath.”
Cher’s grandmother, Mary Ellen Elbert, who had feared that she would die before Cher was found, spoke next. “She was an easy child to love ... beautiful and talented,” she said.
Then Beth Elder, a beautiful young woman despite the tears that streamed down her face, stepped up. “I have never seen a person touch as many lives as Cher did,” she said quietly. “Not until I met Tom Luther.
“When he touches anything, it shatters. He’s made victims of us all, taking away what can never be replaced.
“Cher was the most unique person I have ever met. She was a little piece of everyone who loved her and when she was brutally executed, she took more than a little piece of me with her.”
Beth Elder’s last words came out as a cry. She paused and took a breath before continuing. “Her death stripped me of my trust, my happiness, my innocence, and my only sister. It took away my friend, my surrogate mother, and my guardian angel. There are no words that can express how I feel about Cher and the words that express how I feel about Tom Luther aren’t for human ears.
“To me he isn’t fit to be a member of society. He needs to be locked up for as long as the law allows, not just for retribution but to protect society from him. Everywhere this man goes, he leaves victims in his wake. It’s time he was stopped. I’m asking you to please sentence him to the forty-eight-year maximum to be served consecutively to the West Virginia sentence.”
Beth Elder took her seat next to her father who put his arm around her and pulled his only daughter to him. From the row in front of him, Rhonda Edwards stood up. She looked much as her daughter would have. Those who knew them both often said that Rhonda and Cher had shared the same outgoing, trusting personality. But Cher’s death had changed her mother so that it seemed a great sadness followed her like a shadow.
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