Published: Wednesday, December 22, 2010, 5:30 AM
BAY MINETTE, Ala. — In any high-stakes trial that lasts two weeks, there are bound to be turning points or dramatic moments that leave an indelible mark.
Here are five from the trial of former Mobile County Commissioner Stephen Nodine, which resulted in a Monday conviction for improper use of his government-issued truck and a hung jury on charges of murder and stalking in the death of Angel Downs:
- Stepehen nodine is here.” Those words, which Downs wrote via text message to her sister in Georgia, served as a chilling accusation directed straight at the defendant.
It was as if Downs were testifying from the grave, prosecutors suggested.
Jurors saw the text projected onto the wall of Baldwin County Circuit Judge Charles Partin’s courtroom. District Attorney Judy Newcomb argued that the misspelled name and lack of punctuation — in contrast to other text messages that day — showed that the victim was frantically trying to get the message out.
Downs’ sister, Susan Bloodworth, testified that the victim sent the text message in response to a question about what was happening outside the victim’s Gulf Shores home. According to Bloodworth, Downs had called asking whether she should shoot an intruder in the head, chest or legs.
- Dueling forensics. The key question of the trial was whether Downs was shot by somebody else or shot herself. The medical examiner who conducted the autopsy, Dr. Eugene Hart, ruled the manner of death inconclusive.
But he testified that it was consistent with suicide and told jurors that he held to that opinion even after law enforcement investigators asked him to re-examine the body.
An expert witness hired by the state, Dr. James Downs, sat on the courtroom floor and demonstrated that he thought the victim was sitting on her driveway, her legs crossed or bent, leaning toward the left as a gun was pressed to her right temple.
After the victim collapsed, Dr. Downs said, someone moved her body, leaving drag marks. During an intense cross-examination by defense attorney Dennis Knizley, Dr. Downs testified that he was not saying his re-enactment was definitely the way the shooting happened. He told jurors that it was one way it could have happened.
- Nodine’s explanations. Nodine told Baldwin County sheriff’s investigators several different reasons why he was headed home after spending the day of May 9 at Pensacola Beach with Downs, with whom he had had a long affair. Newcomb used all of them to accuse him of inconsistency.
At various points in a long interview with investigators, Nodine said he needed to get home because it was Mother’s Day, because he had work related to the BP PLC oil spill, because he had not been home all day and because he wanted to watch a Yankees-Red Sox game.
Nodine also told authorities that he realized he had forgotten his wallet at Downs’ home and called three times as he was returning to retrieve it. He told investigators that he reached Downs on the third try, according to testimony.
In fact, according to cell phone records, the longest call was the first call, lasting 20 seconds. Another call lasted just four seconds while the other two went to voicemail, according to testimony.
- Strange couple. Throughout the trial, prosecutors tried to prove that Nodine was stalking Downs, and they put on witnesses who testified about seeing Nodine throw an object at her, yell at her and bang on her door and window.
But defense lawyers countered with testimony that Nodine and Downs spent time with each other as recently as the week before her death. Jurors also saw a photo taken that day of a shirtless Nodine, sitting in a beach chair, holding her hand.
Trial observers strained to understand why Downs stayed with a married man for six often-tumultuous years. Perhaps harder to understand was how Nodine managed to spend holidays like Mother’s Day and Easter with his girlfriend — including, according to testimony, taking his teenage son on sleepovers at her house — without his wife taking action.
- Newcomb’s O.J. moment. Several law enforcement officials and Dr. Downs testified about the great significance of Angel Downs’ hair at the scene, which appeared to be pulled straight back from her head like a fan.
The prosecution witnesses pointed to the hair as evidence that the killer had partially staged the scene.
But Knizley pointed out that the lead investigator never mentioned the hair in his report, and a retired Alabama medical examiner testified that the hair position was not significant. Under cross-examination from Newcomb, Dr. James Lauridson testified that the victim’s hair easily could have ended up in that position.
Newcomb tried to challenge that assertion with a dramatic courtroom re-enactment. She kneeled down and flung herself backward, her head hitting a pillow she had placed on the floor.
But in doing so, the prosecutor’s own hair flared up and back in front of a stunned courtroom.
“When you first came down on the pillow, your hair fanned out,” Lauridson testified.
The maneuver called to mind prosecutor Christopher Darden’s famous request that O.J. Simpson put on a pair of bloodstained gloves in his 1995 murder trial. It backfired when Simpson could not get the gloves over his hands, prompting defense lawyer Johnnie Cochran’s memorable line, “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.”
(Staff Reporter Katherine Sayre contributed to this report.)
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