Innocent Victims by Scott Whisnant

Author:Scott Whisnant
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781504039147
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2017-01-17T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-two

The first vote was 9 to 3 in favor of guilt. Within a couple of votes, one of the three gave in.

Odell Autry, the youngest juror at twenty-six, was one of the two holdouts. The machine operator at Black & Decker wanted to be sure. The jurors knew even then that a guilty verdict might as well be a death verdict. No one convicted of those murders would get anything less.

Autry was having a problem with the death sentence.

“We’ve got to get this over with because I’ve got a trip I want to go on,” one woman said. Autry continued to hold out.

“If you can’t make a decision, you shouldn’t be on this jury,” she told Autry, now near tears.

“I know the decision I’ve got to make, but you’re not going to rush me into it. I’ll have to live with myself the rest of my life.”

The jury voted a couple of times. Odell Autry and one other held on.

“I can’t make a decision to please you,” he told the woman who had somewhere to go. “I’ve got to make a decision, and I don’t know what I can do. I don’t know if I can do it.”

“Well, we should go get the judge now and tell him it’s going to be a hung jury. I’m sure he’s guilty, and if you can’t make a decision, you shouldn’t be on the jury.”

They deliberated 45 minutes that day until Judge Johnson sent them home at 5:15.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, have you selected one of your number to act as your foreman or forelady?” Judge Johnson asked. Juror number 11 spoke up. Alexander Thomas, the prison hospital guard who Beaver and Richardson kept despite his connections to law enforcement, had been elected.

The jurors returned the next day, as did about 60 spectators. Thomas took a vote; it was still 10 to 2. He had his fellow jurors write down everything they could remember about the case. When they finished, they settled in for what was beginning to look like a long deliberation.

Hennis and his family retired to an empty room in the courthouse. No one had much to say. Beaver paced up and down the hallway outside. No one dared bring up the case.

Tim didn’t want to think about it. “I went to sleep several times. I took my shoes and jacket off and curled up on the floor,” he said, relieved he hadn’t lost his childhood knack for napping. “I was bored and tired and worn out. I couldn’t stand it anymore. The best way to get through waiting was to blank my mind and not think about it.”

Gary Eastburn waited in an empty courtroom with the prosecutors and his mother. His friends in the hall took turns drawing nooses and talking about how Tim Hennis’s head belonged in one. From time to time, Gary went outside to chat. He approached Conrad Rensch, the ID technician who had taken the autopsy photos of his wife and children. “After

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