Who Killed These Girls?: Cold Case: The Yogurt Shop Murders by Beverly Lowry

Author:Beverly Lowry [Lowry, Beverly]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9780307594112
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2016-10-11T04:00:00+00:00

It became Okkervil’s most popular tune.

In a different context, W. H. Auden said something similar:

Evil is unspectacular and always human,

And shares our bed and eats at our own table…

III

THE COURTS: LAW, SCIENCE, BLUNDERS AND LUCK

CERTIFICATION

Once Judge Meurer had read the Pierce and Welborn affidavits, she picked up her phone.

“I didn’t live in Texas in 1991,” says criminal defense attorney Guillermo Gonzalez. “I knew nothing about the Yogurt Shop Murders.” Without providing a reason, the judge told Gonzalez she needed him. And when he said he already had too many commitments, “all she said was, ‘Be in my chambers this afternoon at three.’ And that”—he shrugs—“was that.”

In the landmark, unanimous 1963 decision Gideon v. Wainwright, the Supreme Court ruled that state courts were required under the Fourteenth Amendment to provide counsel in criminal cases for defendants who couldn’t afford their own attorneys, but the implementation of this ruling was left to the states. In Texas, some counties employ public defenders, while most, including Travis, use attorneys chosen by the judge and paid, if modestly, by the county. In splashy cases, judges often appoint hotshot lawyers because of the inevitable press coverage and notoriety, but it’s an iffy deal for popular attorneys. For a capital case—which can take years—in Travis County, the maximum pay for a lead defense attorney is fifty thousand dollars. “If you want to know the value Travis County places on a life,” one anti-death-penalty lawyer says, “it’s fifty grand.”

When Gonzalez and another defense attorney, Robert Icenhauer-Ramirez, arrived in Meurer’s office, she held out two affidavits, one in each hand. “Choose,” she said.

Gonzalez got Pierce, and Icenhauer-Ramirez landed Welborn. For the prosecution, Yogurt Shop belonged unreservedly to Ronnie Earle’s favorite death-penalty prosecutor, ADA Robert Smith, but he was busily involved with another capital case and therefore his colleague Howard “Buddy” Meyer would work the juvenile courtroom.

Within days of the appointments, Meurer granted the attorneys’ request for a bail-reduction hearing, at which Ron Lara argued against lowering the amount because the defendants were flight risks. In rebuttal, Welborn’s mother described her son’s attachment to home and his job, his plan to buy a house for himself and his child and his family’s desire to raise the one million dollars to bond him out. Kimberli Pierce then spoke of Maurice’s strong family ties and pointed out that even after the police warned him he would be arrested, he stayed put. “Innocent people don’t run,” she insisted. In closing, defense attorneys cited two other capital cases with bail set at $250,000.

After a brief break, the judge agreed to reduce Pierce’s bond to $750,000 and Welborn’s to $375,000. The cert hearing itself would begin within thirty to sixty days and would last between ten days and three weeks. Sessions would not be held on the anniversary of the murders or the day after. In a bold move, Meurer ordered the state to make available to both defense teams the thirty-three boxes of evidentiary material the APD had gathered over the past eight years, a decision the DA’s office ardently opposed.

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