Trial, page 50
“After you finished passing out ballots,” Ford asked, “did you have other work to do?”
Malcolm nodded. “Every time we pass out a ballot application, we make an entry on our iPad with the person’s name, address, and contact information. At the end of every workday, the canvassers have to send all that to the field director. So five of us got together at a house a couple of kids were renting on Peach Street, over in a Black section of town where we did a lot of canvassing. We just sat on the porch, finishing our reports, and someone said they’d get a couple pizzas and some beer.”
“How did you respond?”
Again, Malcolm glanced at Allie, this time with a look of surreptitious guilt. “I knew my mom would want me home. But we’d had a long day, and it seemed like fun. So I called and asked her if I could hang out with some friends from work for a couple hours.”
“What did she say?”
Malcolm hesitated. “I knew she wasn’t all that happy, especially with the idea of me driving home late at night. But she finally told me to drive carefully, stay out of trouble, and get back by midnight.”
Touching her eyes, Allie wished, as she had wished every day for the last nine months, that she had told Malcolm to come home right away. Silent, Janie squeezed her hand more tightly. “Did she say anything about not drinking alcohol?” Ford asked Malcolm.
He looked away. “She didn’t have to. She’d mentioned it often enough before. But I just wanted to join in with the others, so I told myself I’d stop after a couple beers.”
“Did you?”
Malcolm shook his head. “The evening stretched out, and we were talking about all sorts of things—politics, mostly, but also what we wanted to do with our lives. So I maybe had three or four.”
“During that time on the porch, Malcolm, did anything else get your attention?”
Malcolm nodded, his expression darkening. “One thing. There wasn’t much traffic on that street at night. But toward the time when I left, I saw this car or truck—I think it was a pickup truck—pass by the porch, driving so slow it seemed like the driver was checking us out. I mean that truck was just crawling.” Malcolm’s eyes narrowed in thought. “What seemed so strange to me was why someone would do that. We weren’t playing music, and people in the neighborhood were out on their porches all the time. A few kids hanging out was nothing unusual. I couldn’t imagine Black people paying us any mind, and you didn’t see a lot of white people on that street, even in daylight.”
“Could you see who the driver was?”
“No way. There aren’t any streetlights, so I could barely make out that I thought it was a truck.”
Ford’s expression conveyed curiosity and concern. “Do you think whoever was inside could see your faces?”
“Sure. We were close enough to the street. The porch lights were pretty bright, and we were sitting right under them.”
“Specifically, do you think that someone driving by that slowly could recognize you as Malcolm Hill?”
“Objection,” Harris interjected. “Lack of foundation, calls for speculation. I don’t even know if it’s relevant to anything.”
“Let’s find out,” the judge said promptly. “Objection overruled.”
“I’m sure they could,” Malcolm answered soberly. “I’d gotten used to all sorts of people I didn’t know recognizing my face. But what I remember thinking about just then was that those white nationalists had put my yearbook picture up on their website.”
“Did that cause you to react in a particular way?”
“Yeah, it spooked me enough that I decided to leave. I couldn’t relax anymore.”
“What route did you take home?”
Briefly Malcolm looked away. “From where we were, there’s only one. Old County Road.”
Ford had begun taking his time, Allie noticed, building a sense of events enveloping her son. Thinking about it made her skin crawl.
“Was there anything about Old County that concerned you?”
The timbre of Malcolm’s voice diminished. “There are whole stretches that are real dark, with nothing close to the road.”
“You remember the moon that night?”
“Yeah, we’d been looking up at it from the porch. It was only a sliver. So when I got out on the road, it was even darker.”
“Once you were on Old County,” Ford asked, “about how long would it have taken you to get home?”
“About a half hour.”
“Did you see any traffic?”
“I remember one car coming the other way.” Malcolm paused. “The only other thing I saw were these headlights behind me, maybe ten minutes after I hit Old County. A hundred yards back or so.”
“Did you notice anything particular about them?”
“Not at first. But it seemed like they never got any closer or further away. It was like they were driving the same speed I was.”
“For about how long?”
“Maybe another ten minutes.” Malcolm’s voice became quieter. “That’s when I began to think they were following me. Every now and then, around a curve, they’d disappear. But then there they were again, no bigger or smaller, always the same distance behind me.”
Ford nodded his encouragement. “What happened next?”
“Suddenly a blue flashing light appeared on top of the headlights. I knew they were coming for me, and realized I was on the darkest part of the road.” Malcolm folded his hands. “When the siren started screeching, I pulled over to the side.”
“What was going through your mind?”
Malcolm glanced toward the jury. “I was scared. I knew I’d been drinking, but I thought I’d been driving OK. What made it so bad out there was thinking this person was following me, and all I could do was wait for whatever happened.”
“While you were waiting, did you do anything else?”
“I should have called my mother, told her what was happening. But then that car pulled up behind me. I didn’t have much time.” Malcolm began to speak more quickly, as if recalling the swiftness of events. “If this was a traffic stop, I figured he’d want to see my registration. But it was in the glove compartment with the gun. There were absentee ballot applications on the passenger seat. So I took out the gun and hid it beneath the papers. That way I could reach for my registration without anyone seeing I had it.”
Listening, Allie could feel Malcolm’s dread and panic as her own, a chill of premonition entering the courtroom. On the bench, Tilly’s features were emotionless. “Why didn’t you take out the registration?” Ford asked Malcolm.
“I should have. But things seemed to be happening so fast.” Malcolm’s voice lowered. “Suddenly whoever it was turned off his siren, his flasher, and his headlights. That’s when I realized how bad this could get. Because the only light in all of that darkness came from my car.”
78
Taut, Chase envisioned the darkness enveloping his son, imagined the sound of Bullock’s heavy boots on gravel. “When you took out the gun,” Ford asked him, “did you intend to use it?”
“No,” Malcolm insisted. “I swear it.”
“After the driver of the squad car turned off all of his lights, what did you do?”
“I just kept waiting with my hands on the steering wheel, like I had with Woody Palmer.” Malcolm’s voice resonated with remembered fear. “Then his shadow filled my driver’s side window, and already it felt way different.”
“Could you see his face?”
“No. He rapped on the window with his flashlight, then shined it in my eyes. ‘Open the window,’ he ordered. So I did.”
“Did he ask for your driver’s license or registration?”
“No. He just reached through the window and turned off my headlights.” Malcolm looked haunted now. “Suddenly it was pitch dark all around us.”
Ford waited a moment. “What happened next?”
“He told me to get out of the car and take a breath test.”
“Did you comply?”
“No,” Malcolm answered. “I didn’t want to be out there with him. I knew it wasn’t safe.”
“Was that because he’d turned out the lights?”
“Yes.” Malcolm’s voice became tighter. “But I noticed something else. I knew from our training that deputies should turn on their body cameras. But I couldn’t see the speck of light on his chest.
Ford nodded. “What did you say to him?”
“I asked him to follow me home. We could talk there, I said.”
“How did he respond?”
“He laughed. ‘No, Malcolm,’ he said. ‘We’re staying out here where Mama can’t see you.’” Distractedly, Malcolm touched the side of his face. “That’s when I knew for sure this wasn’t just a traffic stop. The man had come after me.”
“What did you decide to do?”
“I said I had the right to call my mother.” Malcolm seemed to swallow. “I’ll never forget what he said next. ‘Afraid it’s just you and me, Malcolm. A respected law enforcement officer, and the bastard son of a socialist whore who likes to take on men three at a time.’”
The first time Chase had heard this, he forced himself to stifle his own fury. But now he glanced at the jury, and saw Robert Franklin grimace. For a Black person in this county, Ford had told him, this portrait of George Bullock would be no great surprise. Chase wondered how much of a surprise Malcolm’s account was to Dalton Harris.
“Did he say anything else?” Ford asked.
“He said I was just a mama’s boy, busy rounding up Black people too stupid to vote.” Malcolm paused again. “He didn’t just know who I was; he knew what I did.”
“By then did you have any idea who he was?”
“Only that he was a deputy. I still hadn’t even seen his face. All I knew was that he hated us. Not just me and my family. Black people.”
To Chase, the jury looked rapt now. Stephen Hewitt kept glancing up from his notes, as though compelled to watch Malcolm closely. “I kept looking in the rearview mirror,” he continued, “hoping some driver would come along and see us, any kind of witness to what was happening to me out there. But there wasn’t any.
“Suddenly, my cell phone rang. I knew it was my mom.” Malcolm’s voice slowed. “For a minute, I was relieved. Then I realized I shouldn’t move my hands. So I asked if I could answer.”
“How did he respond to that?”
“He said that out where we were, I didn’t have phone privileges. I just sat there, frozen, until the ringing stopped. My hands were still on the steering wheel.”
Chase gazed at his son and, for a moment, their eyes met. Just stay with it, Chase tried to tell him. You’re doing fine. But the image of his son gripping the steering wheel as Allie tried to find him hit Chase hard, deepening his loathing for a dead man who might yet bring Malcolm down.
Ford moved closer to Malcolm. “After your phone stopped ringing, what happened next?”
Malcolm’s shoulders sagged. “He stuck his arm through the window and turned his flashlight on the passenger seat. ‘What you got there?’ he asked me. I said the papers were absentee ballot applications. Then he accused me of violating Georgia voting laws, and told me to hand them over.”
“Did you?”
Briefly, Malcolm’s eyes closed. “I couldn’t. The gun was underneath them.”
“What did you do instead?”
“I told him I didn’t want any trouble, and asked if I could see Sheriff Garrett.”
“Did he say anything to that?”
“He said he knew I’d like to go see my mother’s friend, but that wasn’t how my life was going tonight. Unless I wanted to die I should stay right where I was. Then I hear his footsteps on the gravel again, and suddenly I can see his shadow through the passenger window.
“He jerks open the passenger door, and the inside light comes on. Then he leans into the car.” Malcolm seemed to swallow. “Suddenly he’s grabbing the papers, and I know he’ll uncover the gun…”
He stopped abruptly. In the same even tone, Ford asked, “What did you do?”
“I couldn’t do anything. It felt like I was paralyzed. Then he moves the papers and sees the gun in the light from the ceiling.” Malcolm’s voice quickened. “He starts reaching for it, and I know for sure he’s going to kill me. So I take my hands off the steering wheel and try to grab it. We’ve both got our hands on the gun, and he’s trying to turn it toward me.
“Our faces are so close, I can smell his breath. My head hits the steering wheel. He’s over me now. I’m using all my strength to twist the gun in his hands. Then there’s this pop…”
Once more, Malcolm stopped.
“Go on,” Ford prompted.
Slowly, Malcolm nodded, responding in a hollow voice. “I feel his grip loosen, and there’s something wet on my T-shirt. Then I see his face in the light. He’s slumped in the passenger seat, just staring. A piece of his forehead is missing, and there’s blood on his face. I knew right then he was dead.”
“What did you do?”
“I turned away and stumbled out of the car. Next thing I was sitting in the gravel, throwing up.” Malcolm shook his head in despair. “My phone rang again. I knew my mom was calling. But it was too late.”
Quietly, Ford asked, “Did you mean for the gun to go off?”
“No. I don’t even know how it did.” Sitting straighter, Malcolm composed himself. “Like I told Deputy Spinetta, it was an accident. I didn’t want to fight with him. I didn’t want any part of it. All I wanted was to get home safe.”
With the last poignant sentence, Chase felt yet again the terrible unfairness of Malcolm’s tragedy. The accident that had ensnared him in a trial for capital murder had resulted from a malignant stranger’s design, and only the stranger deserved to die.
“Thank you, Malcolm,” Ford told Chase’s son. “No further questions.”
79
Sitting on the witness stand, Malcolm watched Dalton Harris rise from the prosecution table and walk slowly toward him.
He was at once focused on Harris and conscious of their place in a pit of legal combat intently watched by the judge; jurors; the other lawyers; spectators including his mother, grandmother, and George Bullock’s wife and children; the sheriff’s deputies assigned to guard his safety; the television cameras broadcasting his face and voice to millions of strangers who would know him by this alone. Just keep watching Harris, Chase had advised. Preserve a calm demeanor. Don’t play to the jury. Don’t answer too quickly. If you don’t understand the question, ask Harris to clarify it. If you find yourself anxious or losing your temper, take a breath before answering. He did not need to say that Malcolm’s freedom, and perhaps his life, might depend on how well he withstood the district attorney’s assault.
For an instant, Malcolm thought of the tension he had always felt before playing football, and wished with a rush of nostalgia for the nights of innocence when the stakes of failure or success were simply a win or loss in a season of games played for pride, one moment in time on the way to a continuing life where its elation or disappointment would dissipate in the absorption of new events. But one practice he had followed before every game was to sit by himself, eyes closed, and say a brief, silent prayer from his childhood. Malcolm did that now.
Harris stopped in front of him, a portrait of poise and command and, to Malcolm, entitled indifference to everything but his own pride of place in the hierarchy of color. “Before you broke Billy’s Palmer’s nose,” the prosecutor asked calmly, “did he threaten you?”
Malcolm took his first breath. “He called me a name.”
“That wasn’t my question. Before you hit him, did Billy threaten you with violence?”
Malcolm paused to think. But there was only one answer. “No.”
“Did he try to hit you?”
“No.”
“You didn’t punch Billy in self-defense?”
Once more, Malcolm considered his answer. Though he kept his eyes on Harris, he felt the intense attention all around him, jurors reacting to his every word. “Not physically.”
Already, Harris seemed like a chess player, making one move after another. “Why didn’t you walk away?”
Malcolm stared back at him. “Because he called me a ‘stupid fucking nigger.’”
“In other words, you hit Billy because you were angry.”
“I hit him because he insulted me like no one should ever insult a Black person.”
“In fact, you were so angry that you broke his nose.”
“I didn’t plan on breaking anything.”
Harris adopted the patient manner of a lawyer extracting obvious truths from a reluctant witness. “But you hit him very hard, didn’t you?”
“I just hit him, that’s all. I was reacting to what he said. I didn’t think about how hard I was hitting him.”
“Did anyone else hear him call you that name?”
“Not that I know about,” Malcolm responded. “But I did.”
“But you were already angry at Woody Palmer, weren’t you?”
“Yes sir, I was. I thought I should be able to visit my grandfather’s grave without getting stopped for being Black.”
“Weren’t you also angry because Billy wore a ‘Back the Blue’ T-shirt?”
How should he frame his response? Malcolm wondered. “I thought it was disrespectful to do that the day after they showed that video of George Floyd.”
“And roughly an hour before, in civics class, Billy said he thought the Black Lives Matter movement was using the video to disparage police.”
“He said that, yes.”
