The courtroom is hushed. Earl Morris swallows hard. He is playing to a small audience. Its numbers are few, but they are totally mesmerized.
If Morris were a veteran actor, this tiny crowd of spectators might be discouraging.
It might even tempt him to deliver his lines too swiftly. He might take the scene too lightly, saving a bigger emotional commitment for another day and a more important audience.
A hidden camera is filming the entire trial through a window in the rear of the courtroom for an upcoming segment of a television show. Morris cannot see the camera. It has no effect on him.
At any rate, Morris is not an actor. And, at 53, he never will face a more important audience in his life.
Morris is on trial for murdering his wife.
This jury, which stares at him unwaveringly and hangs upon his every word, holds Morris' fate in its hands.
Prosecutors charge that Morris fired two shots into the head of Ruby, his wife of 30 years, in their Cave Creek home on the night of June 3, 1989.
They further claim Morris attempted to cover up the crime.
They say he drove her body to San Diego, where he placed it in the family boat, which he then set on fire.
The boat sank. Ruby's body has never been found. It is believed to be entombed in the burned-out hulk of the boat resting deep in the Pacific Ocean.
Morris' defense is that Ruby committed suicide and he buried her at sea to avoid scandal.
This is Morris' second day on the witness stand. As he continues to testify, it becomes plain that he understands, instinctively, a few things about a theatrical performance.
A former Marine pilot, the six-foot-tall Morris dresses neatly, has good posture and a sense of timing. His taste in some areas is questionable. His jet-black toupee, for example, is much too obvious. No director would hire a leading man with a hairpiece so apparent.
On the witness stand, Morris often hesitates briefly before answering. This is effective. It never fails to bring the jurors into a forward lean, awaiting his answers.
Tom Henze, Morris' lawyer, is the most theatrically gifted defense lawyer in the state. Each move Henze makes in a courtroom seems natural and unforced, but they are all planned and calculated for effect.
Henze has style. He never blusters. He never allows himself to show surprise or anger.
And no lawyer is better at leading a defense witness to spin a sympathetic yarn about a crime than Tom Henze.
Henze comes across to the jury like a good listener, a man of sensitivity. His style is reminiscent of Atticus Finch in the classic film To Kill a Mockingbird. Henze, who dresses like an Ivy Leaguer, doesn't resemble Gregory Peck, who played the role in the film, but he's a better lawyer and more believable.
"Mr. Morris," Henze asks, "how many guns did you own in 1989?" Morris says, "Approximately 20 or 30. But most all of them were collector's items.
"I had a .45-caliber automatic in the bedroom and a .22-caliber pistol hid high on a dresser in the bathroom. We worried about protection because we lived in the last house on a dead-end road." "Henze leads Morris through a recitation of his marital troubles. The cause in recent years was Morris' long-running affair with Ruby's sister Peggy.
Morris was financially well-off. He had a big house and lots of cars and plenty of disposable cash. His income-tax business was a success. He estimated his net worth at approximately $1 million.
Ruby became convinced that every time Morris went out of town he was cheating on her with her sister, who lived in Monroe, Louisiana. Most of the time she was right.
"I was evasive," Morris admitted. "I lied to her. I was deceitful." Their marriage was on the rocks. Ruby had threatened to get a divorce and take most of Morris' money. Once, she threatened to shoot him.
In a final confrontation, the couple argued about a trip Morris planned to take to California the next week to see their daughter.
"Was your last discussion heated?" Henze asked.
"No." "How did it end?" "When I was leaving, I turned around and said, `I guess you are never gonna know where I am next week and I'm not gonna know where you are, either.' Then I walked out and closed the door."
Those were the last words Morris said to his wife, and his version is the only one available.
As he tells of the parting, Morris' throat catches. He adjusts his glasses. He sniffles once or twice.
Morris tells how he left Ruby and went into the garage to fix a flashlight. Around midnight, he heard the echo of a gunshot. He does not, however, think the shot came from inside his house.
"When I walked back into the bedroom, I saw Ruby lying on the bed with blood running down the side of her head," Morris says.
"I tried to pick her up. I have a hard time remembering about these things. I realized how serious it was. I grabbed a towel and tried to stop the bleeding. There was a pistol resting on her stomach. I tried to administer first aid. I breathed into her mouth. I pressed on her chest." "Where was the blood?" "It was all over the pillows. It was on the sheets." "Did you call for help?" "The phone in the bedroom is an antique. It doesn't work. I went and pushed our alarm. It is supposed to call an ambulance. The response time is supposed to be about half an hour." "What happened then?" "I began thinking that I would be blamed for Ruby's suicide," Morris says. "I was responsible because of the things I had done. There was my affair with Peggy. There was the fact that our oldest son had been born as a result of Ruby being raped by her father when she was 15 years old. He was on drugs. Our daughter needed an abortion.
"I was afraid all these things would come out if her suicide became clear. I wanted to hide the fact of what Ruby had done. I didn't want to take the blame for causing Ruby to kill herself."
Henze moved slowly. Each time Morris finished with an answer, Henze stood silently at the lectern, providing long pauses in the testimony. Time seemed to stand still in the courtroom. The story was coming out so slowly you had the feeling this sordid tale would never end.
"What did you do next?" "I picked her up and took her into the bathroom," Morris said.
He was choosing his words carefully.
"I cleaned her up. I changed her clothes. I sat her on the edge of the tub." "Where was she bleeding?" "From the temple area...her left temple.|.|.it was just one wound." "Did you stare at it or try to measure that wound?" "No." (This was important. A week before, a blood expert testifying for the state said that blood spatters on the headboard of the bed showed that the bullet had been fired from some distance and that the patterns indicated two shots had been fired.)
"What was she wearing?" "She was wearing a jogging suit. I changed her clothes. I put her in another jogging suit. Then I put her in the El Camino truck outside the house."
For the next few hours, Morris cleaned the blood from the bedroom and the bathroom.
Just before the sun came up, Morris suffered a jolt.
"I heard a truck pulling up," he says. "It scared me real good. I thought they'd finally come." It was not made clear who Morris thought was coming or what it might mean to him.
He looked out the front of the house and saw that the noise had been made by someone delivering the Sunday newspaper. He brought the newspaper back into the house and tossed it on the bed.
"It was now about six o'clock on Sunday morning," Morris says. "I propped Ruby up in the seat in the pickup alongside me and we headed out." Morris hesitates.
What a grim journey lay before him. Here was this frightened man desperately trying to save himself, heading off with his dead wife propped up beside him wearing his baseball cap to cover the bullet wound in her head.
"What did you plan to do with your wife's body?" Henze asks.
"We have a lot of abandoned mine shafts in the area. I thought I'd put her in one of those with the bedding that I brought along, too. Then I could still have time to catch my flight to California." He stopped speaking for an instant. Perhaps it dawned on Morris that his attempt to keep a normal schedule at this time seemed a little more than grotesque.
"I couldn't bring myself to do it." So he drove on toward San Diego, a drive of more than six hours.
"Ruby was sitting up," Morris recalls. "She looked like she was sleeping. I drove on Carefree Highway to the freeway and then went south to Route 10. I hit the cutoff to Gila Bend and then on to Yuma and San Diego." The picture of this macabre Sunday drive did not escape anyone in the courtroom. The description of this gruesome journey created a sense of anguish and despair in the courtroom. We are always surprised that human beings are capable of behaving this way.
After arriving at San Diego, Morris found his boat waiting for him. He towed it to the water and lowered it. Then he placed his wife's body in the cabin and went outside on land to think.
It was a busy Sunday in San Diego. Morris sat there all day. Then, finally, he devised a plan.
He would rent a boat and tow his own out onto the ocean and set it on fire.
At this point in Morris' story, a group of perhaps two dozen schoolchildren was ushered into the courtroom. Some giggled. Others inevitably tripped while walking into the spectator pews.
The noise and intrusion stunned Judge I. Sylvan Brown. Until this point, he had seemed to be dozing on the bench. But now he stared at the children with a look of incredulity. At first he said nothing. Only after most of them had found seats did the judge make his move.
"I'm sorry," he said in a tone so loud and panicked that it startled everyone. "You must go to another courtroom. You can't stay here." Judge Brown raised his hand, signaling for the adult accompanying the students.
"You are going to have to take them out," Judge Brown said. "They can't stay here. Find someplace else." The students, most with their mouths open in surprise, turned and walked slowly out of the courtroom.
It makes you wonder. Weren't they brought to the courthouse in a program designed to let them see the wheels of justice in action? If so, why were they tossed out? What kind of justice in action should they watch?
Judge Brown perhaps feared they might distract the jury. But in this instance the only distraction was caused by the judge himself.
I often wonder why judges grow so finicky after being on the bench for a long period. They seem to think of a courtroom as their little kingdom. But they are constantly protected and remain immune to criticism. No matter how eccentric or bullying their behavior becomes, no one dares to challenge them.
Not long after this incident, Judge Brown would add to his portrait as a classic eccentric.
Spotting a man in the second row who was writing in a notepad, Judge Brown suddenly warned him, "That kind of behavior won't be tolerated in this court." No one could understand what was taking place.
In the next instant, Judge Brown issued another order.
"Out of the court," he said. "I won't have this." The man got up and dutifully left the court.
It turned out the man had been writing an observation about the trial proceeding to a lawyer sitting next to him. There had been no disturbing noise. The only disturbance was brought about by the overwrought Judge Brown.
When the man left, Judge Brown apologized for the disturbance.
"I won't have people in my court acting in a way to disturb the jury," he said. But once again it was apparent that the only disturbing notes were sounded by Judge Brown.
Morris continues with his story.
"I towed my boat out into the ocean," Morris says.
"How did you get out into the ocean?" Henze asks.
"I went out by the Dana Point landing, under the bridge, passed the Coast Guard station and then into the ocean.
"I went out about 12 miles." The final ride took an hour. Ruby was in the boat, as well as the bedding and towels and the .22-caliber pistol. And then?" Henze asks.
"I set the boat afire and returned. It took about an hour to get back. I drove to the San Diego airport and got a plane home. It was about 1:30 p.m." According to Morris' account, he hadn't slept for almost two days. What must he have been thinking on that airplane ride back to Sky Harbor International Airport?
He would be going back to the house in Cave Creek without the wife with whom he had lived for 30 years.
He was in for a surprise. When Morris pulled up in front of his house, he realized he wasn't going to be alone after all.
There was a sheriff's car in his front yard. And when he opened the door, a police officer with a gun in his hand came to greet him.
Henze, who dresses more like a college English professor than a criminal lawyer, handled the direct examination flawlessly.
Henze's style is one of unfailing courteousness. His concern does not seem limited only to his client. He is deferential to the judge, the prosecutor, the court bailiff and the jury.
It is a style that works. Before any trial has proceeded for two days, everyone in the courtroom is sympathetic to Henze's cause.
They become concerned about Henze's client, whether he be a drug dealer, bank robber, murderer or-in one well-remembered instance-a Mesa gynecologist who had the unfortunate habit of committing sexual assaults upon patients who came to his office for pelvic examinations. Henze has appeared for the defense in virtually every high-profile trial held in Maricopa County in the past decade. He was and is in the Don Bolles murder case. He was in the Redmond murder case. He is still involved in the seemingly endless Knapp murder case which may yet go to a fourth trial.
He gives the impression that he is so totally relaxed about his work that it isn't necessary for him to prepare very strenuously before coming to court.
That myth was shattered one day in the Morris trial when Henze told of a burglary that took place in a neighbor's house the night before his client took the stand.
"It was a little after three in the morning," Henze said. "I was already up. I heard noises in the street outside." Looking out the window, Henze saw two men carrying armfuls of clothes. They were in the driveway of Larry Debus, another defense attorney, who lives in the next house.
"I called Debus on the phone," Henze said. "Next thing I knew I heard Debus' car. He plowed right into these guys, knocking the clothes and everything they were carrying into the air. Then they got up and ran away in the dark." "What were you doing up at three o'clock?" a man asked.
"I couldn't sleep," Henze said. Then he grinned, realizing he had revealed he was probably working at that hour.
There is a fine line that any man on trial for the murder of his wife must walk.
It is not enough for the jury that he protest his innocence. They must also see his pain. And yet, he cannot be too emotional on the stand. If he breaks into tears too often, they will feel he is faking.
Joe McGinniss examined this angle well in his book Fatal Vision. On the night before Captain Jeffrey MacDonald takes the stand to defend himself for the murder of his wife and two young daughters, his lawyer exhorts him:
"For the sake of the rest of your life, you must show you have pain." He also warns MacDonald against any displays of anger during cross-examination: "A jury won't sympathize with someone who is hostile or belligerent." Earl Morris had passed his first test. He had shown just the right amount of pain. But now he was about to walk across a thin and dangerous line.
He must now face cross-examination from assistant county attorney William Clayton. All during Morris' direct testimony, Clayton had been taking notes.
Now he arises from his chair. He puts two hands on the lectern Henze has been using and wrestles it over to his side of the courtroom.
Prosecutor Clayton has options. He can attack Morris head-on, slashing at him for his hard-to-believe account of the necessity for hiding the body of a woman who had committed suicide.
Or he could use finesse and try to lead Morris down a line of questioning that would portray him as a man who could not be believed.
He chose the latter course.
Waiting for the attack, Morris sits like a coiled spring. But there is no attack. There is only a long series of questions that, at first, seem innocuous.
"You lied to your wife, Ruby?" Clayton asks.
"Yes." "You lied to the detectives?" "Yes." "You lied to the sheriff's deputy?" "Yes." "You lied to Ruby many times, didn't you?" Now Morris says something that startles everyone. His mistake is that he is suddenly trying to outthink the prosecutor.
"I think `deceive' might be a better word," Morris says.
"You like the word `deceive' better?" Clayton says. His tone is flat.
"Yes." "Is deceiving nicer than lying?" "A lie is when you tell a falsehood," Morris says. "Deceiving is when you give an impression that's false." Morris is sailing out past safe waters.
"Let me get this straight," Clayton says. "You cleaned up your wife to dump her into a mine shaft?" "But I changed my mind." "So when you changed your mind you decided she was already dressed for a trip to San Diego? She was presentable, is that right?" "Yes." "You told us you sounded the alarm for help? Did you ever think about calling a second time?" "Yes, I did."
"Do you know there is no record of you making a call for help?"
No answer.
"You told us the bullet wound was in Ruby's left temple?" "Yes." "Ruby was right-handed, isn't that right?" It was almost over.
Morris was on the witness stand for a day and a half.
There will be a few more witnesses, and then it will be time for final arguments.
This is another area of Henze's strength. He will walk up and down in front of the jury looking like a college professor who enjoys drinking beer with the boys on weekends.
But he is not a college professor. And long ago he switched to O'Doul's, a nonalcoholic brew.
LICKS NIXED HICKS HEAD'S WARRIORS IN OT... v2-26-92
