“Don’t tell me the law, Mr. Copeland. Objection overruled. Mr. Gifford, I presume you know what you are doing?”
“I do, Your Honour, and you will see something very important to the future of my client with just a bit more patience.”
“I hold you responsible. Go ahead.”
Gifford repeated the experiment with three more Winchester 30-30 rifles. The sheriff had been correct when he said that there were thousands of that make of rifle. It had been in production since before the turn of the century thirty-five years previously. Turner examined each one as he had the first, noting that there was a live cartridge in each of the first two and that the safety catches were on. He could not identify the owner from looking at the gun and he denied that any of these could have been the rifle that killed Hansford Nelson.
His examination of the third gun was different. This time, there was no live cartridge in the breach. “There’s a shell in this gun, but no bullet,” he said in some surprise. “It must have been fired.”
“It was fired, Sheriff. My witness will tell you who fired it and when in a few moments. Now I will identify the owners of these guns.” He collected the first one, checked it against a list he had picked up from the defence table, and approached the bench. “Your Honour, can you identify the owner of this rifle?”
With some small measure of surprise Judge Holman took the rifle and examined it carefully. “No, I cannot. I have one like it, but so do many people.”
“Thank you, Your Honour. My point exactly. As a matter of fact, you may keep that rifle because it belongs to you. I identified it by the serial number when I took it from the gun rack in your truck early this morning and copied down the serial number on this sheet of paper this morning.”
Before the judge could reply, Gifford took the second rifle to the jury box and handed it to Max Farmer, a member of the jury sitting in the front row of the jury box. “Mr. Farmer, can you identify this rifle?” he asked handing over the rifle. Farmer looked at it carefully.
Finally, he said, “No sir. I can’t tell.”
Thomas Gifford took the rifle back and exchanged it for the third one. “How about this one, Mr. Farmer?”
The result was the same. Gifford retrieved it, laid it down and picked up the previous one. “This one is yours Mr. Farmer,” he said. “I checked the serial number when I picked it up from the gun rack in your truck this morning on my way into court. You may retrieve it from the Court Clerk when we are finished here.”
He handed it to the Court Clerk who laid it carefully in front on him on his table. Gifford also went to the Clerk’s table and picked up another rifle that was tagged as State Exhibit Number 1. He handed it to the sheriff and said, “Sheriff, this morning you testified under oath that this was the 30-30 rifle that was used to kill the man you identified as Hansford Nelson. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“Will you break it open please?”
The sheriff did so.
“And the breach is empty and the gun has been fired but not cleaned afterward.”
“Yes.”
“Thank you. I just wanted to make sure that with all these other rifles, I had the right one. Can you identify the owner?”
“Yes. Like I said this morning, I took it from JP’s truck.”
“Did you check the serial number against the company’s list of serial numbers?”
“No. Why should I do that?”
“Because I have a list of serial numbers here, as you have seen, and that list shows that the gun belongs to Hansford Nelson. How do explain that?”
Billy Bob Turner shook his head. “All I know is that I took that gun from JP’s truck, so it must have been his and he used it to kill Hansford Nelson.”
“Thank you, Sheriff Turner. I have no further questions. Gifford returned to his table for another glass of water, also giving the jury time to digest the information. They were all local men, all hunters and familiar with 30-30 rifles.
The sheriff left the witness stand and returned to the table he shared with Gerald Copeland. Neither man spoke to the other.
“What’s your point, Counsellor?” asked the judge. “I haven’t heard who owns that last rifle.”
My point is, that there are so many of us in this area—and in many other areas also—who own Winchester 30-30s that you can only tell whose is whose by the serial numbers. Now I am going to prove that Sheriff Turner was wrong in his guess-work. I call as my last witness, Hansford Nelson.”
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 appearing 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.”