After the trial ended, more than a few jurors expressed respect for Judge Mahoney but few had complimentary things to say about Mel McDonald.
"I think we got as frustrated with Mr. McDonald, as the judge did with the way he asked questions sometimes," one juror told New Times. "I found myself [trying to figure] out how I would have asked the questions if I were him, how to avoid the hearsay and the leading. It was all frustrating."
Peter M. Storch
Faylene Grant’s gravestone in Mesa.
Faylene Grant in Utah in September 2001, four days before she died.
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Doug Grant kept telling his family, supporters, and attorneys that he wanted to take the witness stand in his own defense. He became especially persistent about it after Judge Mahoney's momentous ruling on the manslaughter instruction.
But time was running out for the defense. The judge had promised jurors weeks earlier that trial testimony would be done by March 5, and, by God, she was sticking to it.
Late in the afternoon of March 4, Mel McDonald met at his law office at Central and Thomas with Doug Grant and several others, including his law associate Jay Adleman and Grant's wife, Hilary. McDonald had less than three hours of courtroom time left for his defense, and he needed to make a final decision about Grant's possible testimony.
Defense attorneys usually are loath to have their clients take the stand because, guilty or not, they don't often help their cause. McDonald fit squarely into that category.
Doug Grant, a salesman during his entire adulthood, believed he might save the day by talking directly to the jury.
McDonald allowed New Times to listen in on the discussion via speakerphone.
Also in the discussion by phone was Thomas Streed, a retired homicide cop from San Diego who had just finished testifying as an expert witness for Grant. Streed, who has a doctorate in human behavior, chimed in after a time.
"My main concern is Doug being boxed into a lengthy series of objections by Juan," he said, "and, in the end, he doesn't get to tell his story. Then Juan gets yet another opportunity to get in Doug's face as this philandering adulterer. But a plus is that the jury would get to see remorse about the whole situation, and the horror that Doug had to endure when Faylene died. Jurors naturally like to hear how someone sounds. But this judge doesn't like you, Doug. She's going to let Juan tear into you non-stop, no doubt."
Grant said nothing, but his wife spoke up.
"I absolutely hear what you guys are saying," Hilary said, speaking of McDonald and Streed, "but I am wondering, did we get enough of our story for the jury to make the right decision. But then I think every second about the things I wanted to say on the stand and could not. I just don't know."
Streed added, "I feel Doug's heart on this, that he really wants to testify. But Juan is masterful at what he does, and I've seen every slimy trick that a prosecutor can pull in a courtroom, and he got away with it."
Doug Grant spoke just once during the 40-minute conference: "Can I have a few minutes to speak with Hilary alone?"
He never did take the witness stand in his own defense before the jury convicted him of manslaughter.
During his closing argument, Juan Martinez provided jurors with his own theory — a whole new theory, in fact — of what actually happened in the Grants' bathroom back in September 2001.
Martinez lectured jurors that Doug Grant had told Faylene in her final days, "'God dialed me direct. I got a vision. I've got this vision that you are going to die!'"
Martinez continued, "And we know from her journals that she believed it. She's now under a death sentence. She doesn't know when that death sentence is going to be carried out, but she's under a death sentence."
Martinez's riff, delivered in a grating high-pitched rat-a-tat, did have grains of truth in it. But his "God dialed me direct" and "death sentence" phrases were hyperbole designed solely to sway jurors that Doug Grant was an evil man.
The prosecutor wanted jurors to believe that Grant tried to kill Faylene in Utah. Then, undaunted, he resolved to do her in at their home as his 11-year-old stepdaughter, Jenna, and the two boys slept in their bedrooms down the hall.
Genine Fulcher, a registered nurse from the hospital in Utah where Faylene was treated after the fall, testified that she examined postmortem photos showing two nasty abrasions under Faylene's right breast. Though Fulcher didn't have independent recollection of Faylene's injuries, she claimed that one of the bruises looked "fresher" than the other.
But under cross-examination, the nurse told Mel McDonald that the first time she'd seen color photos of the abrasions was that day in court. She explained that Juan Martinez e-mailed her black-and-white snapshots of the injuries months earlier and followed up with a phone call.
"I thought one showed more evidence of healing than the other," Fulcher told McDonald. "To me, that means there is a time difference."
Armed with this so-called "new" evidence, Martinez told jurors that the unconscious Faylene had sustained the second abrasion as Doug Grant lifted her up from the bathroom floor, draped her body over the edge of the tub, and held her head under the bathwater.
