She walked into the living room carrying gasoline in a mason jar.  He was laying on the couch facing the other way.  Watching T.V., drinking out of quart bottle of beer. He had been Lounging there in his underwear the last hour mumbling the B’ word, satisfied with himself for having told her how things were.  She had found out he had been messing around on her.  So what?  He was the man of the house and he’d do as he damn well pleased.  And he told the “B” just that.  

She stepped in front of him where he could see her.  As he looked up, she dumped the jar of gasoline over his head.  As he came up off the couch, cussing and trying to wipe the gasoline out of his eyes and off his face, she stepped away from him and calmly lit a cigarette with a wooden match like the ones you use to light a gas stove or BBQ.  She held the match for a second and then flicked it at him.

After the fire department put out the fire and he was put in a body bag and driven away to the morgue, the detective found her sitting on the curb.  He knew her.  He walked over and stood over her.  Using her first name, he asked her what happened.  Her reply?

“Ah’ don’t know.  Mutha F—er, jes’ burnt up!”

Maybe it was the audacity of her statement, maybe it was because the song did say, “He was her man, but he was doing her wrong.”  Anyway, I accepted the argument pressed by the defense attorney that the homicide was done in “The Heat of Passion.”  A nice descriptive phrase still in the law books, and in the penal code.  A killing in the “Heat of Passion.”  Apt enough to obviate the Malice element of Murder. Knock the charge down to Voluntary Manslaughter.  

While the couple were not exactly Frankie and Johnny, well . . .  you know, . . .in my mind, close enough. I approved the plea.

I had been prosecuting murders long enough to conclude that each community in Tulare County, as it related to criminal activity seem to have their own personality.  And it was reflected in the nature of the murders committed in their jurisdiction.  

If in the South County, one could expect knock down drawn-out fights with fists, knives, sometimes guns. Could be some trespasser smarting off and being bashed in the head by a rancher, could be a barroom brawl spilling into a parking lot and someone pulling a gun.  

North County? Well, stealthier.  More “murderous.” A gang of thugs catching someone alone in a park or driving by a picnic and firing into the crowd, a drug deal gone bad, a sexual assault turning into murder.  And then there were the scandals about to come to light.  And many of those led to deadly violence.  

And then there was Tulare.  My favorite.  To my mind, Tulare murders were distinctive in their premediated brutality. 

For some reason, I really enjoyed putting together those kinds of cases.  Maybe it because of where I grew up.  Who knows?  Whatever it was, cases from that side of life made a young prosecutor’s salad days interesting.

Having worked my way up to serious felonies, I was assigned to the Tulare Team.  At first It was me, one other attorney, and a couple of secretaries.  Our office consisted of a few small cubicles separated by cheap partitions, crammed into an unused portion of the municipal court in Tulare.  

The D.A. at the time lacked the political skills necessary to work effectively with the Board of Supervisors.  It was a failing. Afterall, legislative bodies hold the purse strings.  A truism I never overlooked when, years later, I found myself in the position of seeking budgetary increases for the department.  But back then, the lack of a proper managerial structure in the office, meant our little team was on our own down in Tulare.  There were no supervisory positions.  I was called the team leader by acclamation.  No extra pay.  No real authority.  But for us, it was alright at the time.  While there may have been a complete lack of oversight from the main office, we were good with that.

The police department was located next to the courthouse and during the time I was assigned to Tulare I developed a close working relationship, indeed real, lasting friendships with the chief of detectives and his best investigator.  

They were a unique pair of individuals.  

The detective had possibly the western world’s cheapest and ugliest toupee.  He was an excellent detective, but one with a proclivity for the seamy side of life. It made him effective in the often-times sleazy environments which his work required him to traverse.  For my part, dealing daily with him on case after case required a modicum of discretion to keep from being dragged into situations where a young attorney should never go.  That aside, he was smart, maybe smarmy, and maybe tricky, but he knew how to put murder cases together.  

 The Chief of Detectives, on the other hand, was as smooth and likeable as they come.  Plus, his cop car was a new Trans Am, with the giant eagle on the hood like Burt Reynolds drove in the movie “Smoky and the Bandit.”  As drug use and dealing came to be the predominate issue in the criminal justice system, the dealers learned quickly not to use nice cars in the transactions.  But before they did, police departments landed some nice cars by way of the asset forfeiture laws.  Tulare had the Trans Am.  Even Porterville once had three Cadillac’s parked in their police parking garage.   

During this period, I was trying my hand (and feet) at Karate training.  It began with my son wanting to take lessons. I went along with his request and the trainer sold me a set of lessons to be taken jointly with my son. Skeptical at first, I had kind of gotten into the training and lifestyle and was even starting to believe I could actually . . .well . . .probably . . .well . . .maybe . . .defend myself if attacked. . . and the attacker wasn’t too big, or too fast, or too tough.

As my next murder case ripened, I believed the lessons might have been worth the cost.  On the day of the preliminary hearing, I stood in the well of the court with a hostile crowd behind me.  On the right side of the courtroom every seat was occupied by a white person.  And on the left side, everyone in the audience was black. Having learned in Karate lessons to position myself for defense I stood sidewise so that the Judge was to my right, the defense attorneys, and defendants in front of me and the audience was to my left where I could keep a wary eye on the people in the courtroom, many of whom glared at me.

I was prosecuting two young black men for the murder of a husband and wife in their home.  

The white half of the audience were relatives and friends of the couple they had killed.  Their victims had been an elderly couple.  He had been a simple working man, retired with his wife in the home where they raised their kids.  The wife was found face down, her walker across the back of her legs.  They had been robbed and stomped to death by the two young men I was prosecuting. It was a murder, disturbing in its brutality, and the police had been aggressive in tearing through the black community to find the two young men I was prosecuting.

The black side of the audience was populated by friends and relatives of the defendants.  No one was maintaining they had been wrongfully charged.  Not yet.  But there were rumblings in the community about the tactics used to identify them as suspects and then apprehend them.  

I felt the case was strong enough to prosecute. I had some statements I could use along with physical evidence to connect the defendants to the crime scene.  I was familiar with the scene because I had been there even before both bodies had been removed.  

When the call about the discovery of the murder case was received by my Detective, he did what all detectives should do, but few did, he called the prosecutor who eventually have the responsibility to take the case to court. 

I threw on some blue jeans, a t-shirt and sneakers and drove to Tulare.  I was waiting at the curb in front of the Tulare courthouse when the detective pulled up.  I jumped in and we headed to the house where the old couple’s adult son had discovered their bodies.   

It is unique to walk the scene of a murder before it has been disturbed by the forensic people.  A murder freezes the scene.  There is no hurry after all.  The body isn’t going anywhere and, as I’ve said, contrary to the saying the “Dead Don’t Talk,” they do.  They communicate a lot of what has happened to them if you take your time and pay attention.  How the body is left, its posture, its direction, how its clothed, how long it’s been there, a thousand little things that can make a difference when prosecuting the case two or three years later when it finally comes to trial. 

Crime scene photos are valuable, but they are two dimensional and can’t convey the smell, the lighting, the closeness, or openness of the room or like in this case the rooms because the victims were in different rooms.  The wife had been removed.  She was still alive when discovered though she would die from her injuries a few days later.  But the man was still positioned where he had been felled.

I bent over him and looked at him closely.  His face was bloodied, his limbs were askew.  As I examined his face, I noticed a curious kind of curlicue mark on his neck right below the chin line.  I pointed it out to my detective.  He said he had seen it too.  He thought about it a moment and with no further explanation, he got out his camera and began to take “one-on-one” close ups with a small ruler positioned in the bottom of the of picture to provide scale.

At trial that mark would prove key to tying the defendants to the murders.  

We will talk about that next week.

Courthouse Tales is published Sundays. 

For more writings by Phil Cline, visit philcline.com

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