Stand Your Ground: A Novel

by Victoria Christopher Murray

  “All Wyatt Spencer was trying to do was to provide help that he thought was needed. But before he could find out the full story of what was happening in front of his home, he was confronted by Marquis Johnson. And, I say ‘confronted’ because why else would Marquis get out of his car? Marquis jumped out because he wanted a fight. He jumped out because he was going to attack Mr. Spencer.

  “And so in self-defense, Mr. Spencer stood his ground. He had a right to be there, in front of his home. And there was no way that Mr. Spencer, an upstanding family man who has worked hard all of his life, could do anything except protect himself. And his family.” The attorney paused and looked at me. “His thoughts were only about his son and his pregnant wife.”

  It felt like everyone in the courtroom was looking at me—the jurors, the attorneys.

  “The evidence will show that Marquis Johnson had a propensity toward violence. There are young men and women who attended school with Marquis who were very afraid of him for this reason. And violence was on his mind when he got out of his car that night.”

  I had no idea how I was going to do this. No idea how I would be able to sit through this tension for the eight or nine or ten days that Newt said this trial would last.

  But then I looked over at Janice and my heart ached as she wiped away tears. I thought about how much she’d lost, yet here she sat. Even with tears falling from her eyes, her head was high.

  If she could sit through this, then I could sit through it, too.

  Chapter 30

  Janice

  We were almost home and I was so grateful.

  I hadn’t known what to expect, having never been in a courtroom before, but for sure, I never expected all of the tension. The opening arguments had been tough enough, but the pressure continued when our side called Heather to the stand.

  She hadn’t been in the courtroom, since she was a witness, but I turned to look at her when she walked solemnly down the center aisle. She was smartly dressed, a teen with a lot of money. Her jeans, navy blazer, and white tailored shirt made her look sophisticated, older than her seventeen years.

  She hadn’t looked at me when she passed by. She didn’t turn to look at us when she stood before the clerk and swore to tell the truth. Though I’d tried to make contact, her eyes never connected to mine.

  That was a bad sign.

  During one of the pretrial hearings, the defense had tried to get Heather excluded as a prosecution witness saying that since her father served on the board of Wyatt Spencer’s foundation, there was a conflict of interest. When I heard that, I wasn’t sure that I wanted her to testify either. Not when her parents were friends with the man who murdered my son.

  The judge had ruled that that information was immaterial; Heather would testify.

  By the way she walked into that courtroom, the way she wouldn’t look at me, I knew that decision was not going to be in our favor.

  “State your name,” the prosecutor said.

  “Heather Nelson.”

  “And, Heather, did you know Marquis Johnson?”

  “Yes,” she said. “He was my boyfriend,” she added, still not looking my way.

  “Were you with him the night of May twelfth?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you tell us the circumstances.”

  “Marquis and I had gone to the library. And afterward, we went to get something to eat.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “To the Cheesesteak Castle over on Mill Road. It’s not too far from our school.”

  There was a slight mumble in the courtroom. Everyone knew that Wyatt Spencer was the founder of the Cheesesteak Castles.

  “What did you do when you left the Cheesesteak Castle?”

  “We decided to eat in the car and we weren’t finished when we got near my house. So we parked a couple of blocks away and just sat and ate and talked.”

  “That’s all you were doing?”

  She nodded. “Yes, just talking.”

  “And did something happen while you were in the car?”

  “Yes. Mr. Spencer knocked on my window. It scared both of us.”

  “Objection!” the defense attorney said.

  “Sustained,” the judge responded. Then the judge said, “Ms. Nelson, just speak to what you felt, what you saw.”

  She looked up at the judge and nodded. She still never looked at me.

  Heather said, “The knock on the window scared me.”

  “What happened next?”

  “Mr. Spencer asked if I was okay, and I said that I was. And then he asked why was I in the car with Marquis? And then Marquis told him to get away from his car and Mr. Spencer said that he wasn’t going anywhere.”

  “Then what happened?”

  Heather paused, took a deep breath, and I knew then that she’d gone to the other side.

  She said, “Marquis got out of the car and went around to the back, but before he even got to the back, Mr. Spencer shot him!”

  I blinked.

  “So he got out of the car and that’s it?”

  She nodded and sniffed.

  “Did he get out of the car with anything? Did he have anything in his hand?”

  “No.” She shook her head, and kept shaking it as if she wanted to make sure that everyone got that point. “He didn’t have a bat.”

  “Objection!”

  “Sustained. Counselor . . .”

  The prosecutor nodded. “Did you see him with a bat?” he asked.

  “No,” Heather said. “He didn’t have a bat. He didn’t have anything.”

  “And what did you do? Did you get out of the car after Mr. Spencer shot Marquis?”

  “No! I was afraid that he would shoot me, too, so I just dialed 911.”

  “Thank you,” the prosecutor said. “No further questions.”

  The defense attorney looked like he couldn’t wait to jump up. “Ms. Nelson, how much time do you think passed between the time that Marquis got out of the car and the moment when you heard the shot?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Would you say five seconds, ten seconds, fifteen seconds?”

  “I don’t know,” she repeated.

  “So it could have been enough time for Marquis to open the door and pull a bat out of the back of the car?”

  “I guess, but he didn’t—”

  The attorney interrupted her. “I only asked if there could have been enough time . . . That’s all I asked.”

  She looked at the judge, then back to the attorney. “I guess so.”

  The attorney nodded, then asked, “Why were you and Marquis sitting in the car talking? Weren’t you going to see each other in school the next day?”

  “Yes, but we hadn’t had a chance to hang out for a few weeks, so we wanted to spend a little extra time together before he went home.”

  The attorney frowned like her words came as a surprise to him. “You hadn’t had a chance to hang out? Marquis was your boyfriend; why hadn’t you spent time together?”

  “Because . . . he’d been on lockdown.”

  “Lockdown?” Now the defense attorney wore a deep frown. “Lockdown? Had he been in jail?”

  “Objection!” The prosecutor jumped up.

  “Withdrawn,” the defense attorney said. “What do you mean by ‘lockdown’?” He rephrased his question.

  “Well . . .” And with that pause, Heather looked at me for the first time. She said, “He’d done something wrong and so his parents kinda punished him.”

  “By ‘something wrong,’ do you mean he was suspended from school?”

  I could tell she didn’t want to answer that. I could tell that she was completely on our side.

  She nodded.

  The judge said, “You must answer the question, Ms. Nelson.”

  “Yes. He’d been suspended.”

  After that, the defense entered the school record with the reason for Marquis’s suspension—possession of marijuana. And then Heather was released from
the stand.

  This time, when she passed by she paused, for just the tiniest of moments, and smiled. It wasn’t a full smile, definitely not a happy smile. Just the kind of smile that said that she was so sorry and that she really did love my son.

  If I hadn’t been warned that all eyes and every camera would be watching me, I would have given her my thank-you. But all I did was nod and thank God that I’d been wrong about her. For so long and in so many ways.

  We were just blocks away from our home when my cell phone rang. I clicked accept and then asked, “Hey, Ree. What are you still doing up?” knowing that it had to be approaching midnight in Germany.

  “I had to check on you and see how the first day had gone. I so wish that I was there.”

  “I wish that, too,” I said.

  She’d only been gone for two weeks, having had to get back to her job. But I felt like I’d lived a lifetime without her.

  “So, how did it go?” she asked.

  “We’re on our way home now.”

  “You’re in the car?” Before I could answer, she said, “That means you can’t really talk.”

  “Not yet, but in a little while.”

  “Okay, then, do you remember pig latin?” she asked. “Ancay ouyay oday isthay?”

  I laughed.

  She said, “I guess that means you’ve forgotten.”

  “Never learned. But I can talk.”

  “How’re things with you and Tyrone?”

  I glanced over at my husband, who was in the same position that he was in when we were driving to the courthouse this morning. His eyes and his heart were away from me. “The same. Hoping for better.”

  “Dang. Are they still going after you?”

  “Yeah, it had stopped for a little while, but you know, since the trial started today.”

  “I can’t even imagine seeing your business on TV like that. Have you heard from Caleb?”

  “God no! And thank God for that,” I said. If Caleb tried to contact me in any way, and if Tyrone found out about it, that would be the blade that would cut the weak thread that held us together.

  “I just hope that Tyrone remembers all of that happened long ago.”

  I wanted to tell Syreeta that Tyrone knew that. He knew that it was long ago and long over, with no chance of it ever happening again.

  But this was about the pain of public humiliation. Of our secrets coming to light on national television. Of men Tyrone knew and ones he didn’t asking how could a man stay with a harlot such as me, though “harlot” was hardly the word they used.

  This was peer pressure. Adult peer pressure. Stranger peer pressure. All reminding Tyrone of how hurt he should have been. And how hurt he really was.

  “Maybe you two should go back to counseling,” Syreeta said.

  “I thought of that,” I said. “Maybe when this is over.”

  “It saved you before; it will save you again.”

  “Let us pray.”

  “Okay, girl. Well, I’ll check on you tomorrow. When do you take the stand?”

  I gazed out the window when I said, “I don’t know, tomorrow. Maybe.”

  “I’m praying, Jan. And I love you!”

  “I love you, too.”

  “Tell Tyrone I said hello.”

  “I will.”

  “No, tell him now, so that I can hear you.”

  I rolled my eyes, but did as my best friend asked. “Syreeta says hello.”

  Without turning my way, Tyrone only nodded.

  I said, “He said hello.”

  Syreeta said, “And tell him to stop acting like a fool just ’cause you slept with the pastor. That was a long—”

  I clicked off the phone because clearly, my friend had gone mad.

  Just as I dumped my cell back into my purse, Tyrone reached for my hand. He didn’t look at me, but he held me.

  I wanted him to look at me, but for now, holding my hand was huge. And just like this morning, it was something.

  It was hope.

  Chapter 31

  Meredith

  We’d made it through to this last day of the first week, and even though my husband was on trial for his life, I couldn’t believe how fascinating this trial was to me.

  I guess I’d expected to be completely bored, just playing my role. But it wasn’t like that. I was engaged with every person who took the stand.

  It was easy to sit and watch since Newt kept telling us that we had nothing to worry about. According to him, it was the prosecution and the Johnsons who needed to be sweating because we were clearly winning.

  “They don’t have a case,” Newt told us on Tuesday. “What did they give us today? I tore Heather’s testimony down.”

  I didn’t quite see it that way. To me, Heather had been clear, credible, and confident. I couldn’t see how that was a win for us. But, of course, I said nothing.

  On Wednesday, Newt said, “This case should never have been brought to trial. I wouldn’t be surprised if the judge throws it out after the prosecution rests.”

  Again, I wondered what trial was Newt listening to? Two teachers had testified. One who explained that while Marquis had been suspended, he was the tenth student that school year to have been suspended for possession of marijuana. And the other teacher was Marquis’s guidance counselor, who spoke of how Marquis was not a thug—he was a young man who would have been valedictorian (save for the suspension) and he was on his way to UPenn on an academic scholarship.

  But the most interesting testimony had come from the man who I still found a bit intriguing.

  “State your name for the court.”

  “Detective Lucien Ferguson.”

  As the detective and the prosecutor went back and forth establishing Detective Ferguson’s credentials, I was struck by his first name, Lucien. A name I’d never heard before.

  “Detective, did you respond to a call on Monday, May twelfth of this year on Avon Street in Haverford?”

  “Yes. I did, along with seven other officers.”

  “Can you tell us what you found at the scene?”

  That was when I checked out because I knew what the detective had found. A dead boy. And a bat. And my husband. It wasn’t until the detective began speaking about what happened at the station that I became interested again.

  “During his interview, I asked Wyatt Spencer about his phone call to 911. I wanted to know why it came in three minutes after the first call.”

  “And what did Mr. Spencer say?”

  “He said that he didn’t have his phone on him. That he had to run into the house and go upstairs to get it. He said that accounted for the difference in time between his call and the first call.”

  “Did that make sense to you?”

  “At that time, we were just taking his statement.”

  “Was there ever a time when you became concerned about that explanation?”

  “Yes. When our detectives went back to the scene. We reenacted a man running from the front of the house, up to the bedroom, then back down again.”

  “And how long did that take your detective?” the prosecutor asked.

  “About forty-four seconds—if he waited to call until he came back outside. If he had called from his phone when he first found it, it would have taken him about half of that time.”

  “Did you ever ask Mr. Spencer about the call again?”

  “Yes, sir. After we’d done our test, I spoke with Wyatt Spencer again about ten days later. At that time, he said that his cell phone was downstairs, right at the front door.”

  “Would you consider that an inconsistent statement?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did you ask him about that inconsistency?”

  “I did.”

  “And what was his response?”

  “He never answered; he was angry.”

  “No further questions.”

  Then, the attorney on our side asked Detective Ferguson if he’d ever met an innocent man who’d given an inconsistent stat
ement. When the detective said that he had, our attorney sat down and the detective was dismissed.

  But while Newt didn’t think the detective’s testimony counted for anything, I thought it revealed to the jury that my husband was not only a murderer, but he was a lousy liar.

  To me, between the teachers and the detectives, that day had gone well for the prosecution of my husband.

  Yesterday he said, “If this does make it to the jury, they’ll be out for ten minutes before they come back with ‘not guilty.’ ”

  That’s when I decided the only way Newt could think that the jury would come back so quickly and decisively in Wyatt’s favor was that Newt had to be sleeping through the testimonies.

  It was true that the medical examiner didn’t give much to either side. But what he said had to help the prosecution.

  “Marquis was shot at close range, one bullet through his heart that caused catastrophic loss of blood pressure. He didn’t die instantly, though. It probably took two to three minutes.”

  Janice had let out a gasp that made me want to cry, and there was no relief for me when the fingerprint expert took the stand.

  “Mr. Henderson,” the prosecutor began, “you didn’t find any prints on the bat?”

  “No.”

  “But does that mean that Mr. Spencer did not touch the bat?”

  “No, it doesn’t,” the examiner said. “The misconception is that there will be fingerprints on every surface. But just because someone touches a surface does not guarantee that a latent print will be deposited, and there are lots of reasons for this. The person’s hands may be very dry, which means there is little or no sweat or oils coating the ridges. Therefore, the ridge detail won’t reliably transfer to the surface. And then, of course, there is the chance that someone could be wearing gloves.”

  If I had been any kind of woman, I would have stood up and given the examiner another reason for how the bat could have been wiped clean.

  “So, I’ll ask one more time: Just because Mr. Spencer’s fingerprints weren’t found on the bat doesn’t mean he didn’t touch it, correct?”

  “Objection! The question was asked and answered.”

  “Sustained.”

  Our side didn’t ask the examiner nor the fingerprint expert any questions and I was glad. I was glad because if either had stayed on the stand any longer, I may have found the courage to do the right thing.