Experts say Baldwin prosecutors likely to try Stephen Nodine again on murder, stalking charges

Published: Wednesday, December 22, 2010, 5:30 AM

BAY MINETTE, Ala. — A Baldwin County judge Tuesday set a new trial date for former Mobile County Commissioner Stephen Nodine on murder and stalking charges, but it will be up to the new district attorney to decide if the state moves forward.

A jury on Monday convicted Nodine of a misdemeanor ethics violation but could not reach a unanimous verdict on charges that he stalked and killed his girlfriend, Angel Downs.

Circuit Judge Charles Partin scheduled the possible retrial for Feb. 28. Hallie Dixon, who defeated Baldwin County District Attorney Judy Newcomb in the Republican primary, will take office next month.

Newcomb said Monday that she believes the new administration should try the case again. Dixon said that she wants a chance to review the case and talk to Downs’ family before making a decision.

The Feb. 28 date keeps the case in the system but is not a hard date. Either side could request a delay. Since Newcomb prosecuted the case herself, several experts suggested, Dixon would need more than two months to put a new case together.

Jurors have said they split 9-3 in favor of conviction, which experts said is an important factor in a decision to retry a case.

“I’d say if it was a 9-3 split the other way, I’d go home,” said Mobile County District Attorney John Tyson Jr.

Tyson, who leaves office next month, said he believes it is likely Baldwin prosecutors will give it another try. The split, the strength of the evidence and the type of crime are all factors to consider, he said.

“The more serious the charge, the more seriously you have to take a look at the evidence, and the more seriously you have to think about the decision to do it or not,” he said.

Dixon said that deadlocked juries sometimes can spur plea bargains. But defense attorney Dennis Knizley said his client has maintained his innocence from the beginning and that a plea deal has been “off the table” from the start.

Dixon said that in any case that ends with a deadlocked jury, she will re-evaluate the entire case to gauge how likely it is that a second trial will end in conviction. How the first jury divided is a factor, she said.

“It’s not a mathematical equation by any means,” she said. “But in a general sense, I think it does affect the likelihood of success in the future.”

If there is a second trial, Knizley said Tuesday, he anticipates asking that it be moved to another jurisdiction. Although Knizley did not ask for a change of venue before the first trial, he said media coverage would make it extremely difficult to get a fair jury.

“There was absolute saturation during the trial, including the Twitter,” he said, referring to blow-by-blow accounts provided by TV reporters through the social networking site.

Since prosecutors are elected, outside influences sometimes can enter the decision to retry a high-profile case, some said.

“Politics can be a factor,” said. Deborah Young, a former federal prosecutor who followed the Nodine case. “And public opinion can be a factor.”

Young, who now teaches at Samford University’s Cumberland School of Law in Birmingham, said part of a prosecutor’s decision springs from how strong he or she feels the case is.

“Prosecutors always retry a case when they’re surprised by the result,” she said.

Experts said a second trial gives both sides an opportunity to address shortcomings exposed by the first trial. Which side benefits more? Experts said that depends on the case.

“Often, only the prosecutor puts on real evidence,” said Young.

Others said the prosecutors usually have less knowledge about the defense strategy than vice versa before the first trial, which means prosecutors have the upper hand in a retrial.

“Conventional wisdom is that a hung jury is a victory for the defense because there’s no conviction,” said Don Cochran, a Cumberland professor who previously worked as a state and federal prosecutor in Jefferson County. “I never really viewed it that way as a prosecutor.”

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Nodine on trial: Five key moments that helped shape the outcome of murder, stalking charges

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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Baldwin prosecutors wrap up murder case against Nodine; defense pushes suicide theory

Published: Thursday, December 16, 2010, 5:00 AM

BAY MINETTE, Ala. — Baldwin County prosecutors wrapped up their murder case against Stephen Nodine on Wednesday with testimony from the victim’s neighbors and two men who said they had dated her during the last year of her life.

The former Mobile County commissioner’s attorneys, meanwhile, opened their defense by attempting to depict Angel Downs as a woman with reasons to kill herself and a suicide attempt in her past.

In addition to murder, prosecutors have charged Nodine with stalking and an ethics violation related to his alleged misuse of a government-issued pickup truck. The trial, which continues today in Baldwin County Circuit Court, likely will hinge on whether jurors believe the prosecution theory that Downs’ death from a gunshot to the head May 9 was a homicide, or the defense contention that it was a suicide.

Bolstering the prosecution’s assertions that Downs, 45, was trying to end her often-tumultuous relationship with Nodine, two men testified that they had dated her in recent months.

Scott Bedford, a financial planner from Gulf Shores, testified that he met Downs on April 2 through an online dating service and began seeing her. He told jurors that he met Nodine on May 4 in Gulf Shores at a news conference related to the BP PLC oil spill.

During their brief conversation, Bedford said, Nodine made a derogatory comment about Downs. “I found it offensive,” he said.

Bedford said Downs did not seem depressed in the weeks before her death.

Roland Naseman, who told jurors that he dated Downs in 2009, testified that Nodine on April 1 of that year alternately banged on the door and back window of the condo in Fairhope where Downs was living at the time.

Naseman testified that the banging went on for about an hour before Nodine finally passed out in his truck.

On cross-examination, Naseman acknowledged that he stopped dating Downs, in part, because he questioned whether her relationship with Nodine was over.

“He had come up several times in the relationship,” he said. “Until she was finished with him, I didn’t want to date her.”

Defense attorney Dennis Knizley used a letter that Downs wrote days before her death to contradict testimony from her friends that she was done with Nodine.

Knizley said Downs’ letter, a reply she apparently had written to a seven-page letter she received from Nodine the Thursday before she died, expresses her love for Nodine and her desire to spend the rest of her life with him. She also expressed her desire for Nodine to divorce his wife, Knizley said.

Several of Downs’ neighbors in The Ridge condominiums off Fort Morgan Road testified they heard a gunshot shortly before 8 p.m. on May 9. Lannie Hill that he heard the gunshot and went to Downs’ house after a neighbor knocked on his door. He testified that he called 911 after he saw Downs lying in the driveway.

That contradicted the statement to the 911 operator, in which Hill said he heard a gunshot and saw a red pickup leaving the subdivision. In fact, it was other residents who had mentioned seeing the truck.

One of those who did see the truck, Roger Whitehead, testified that he heard a gunshot and quickly walked outside to investigate. When he got outside, he testified, he saw a red pickup truck with a blue county license plate driving toward the exit of the subdivision. The vehicle blocked his view of Downs’ home, he said.

Questioned by Knizley, Whitehead testified that he believes there was some delay from the time he heard the gunshot to when he walked out and saw the vehicle. Knizley played a videotaped interview with a Gulf Shores police officer on the day of the shooting in which Whitehead said he saw the truck go by right after the gunshot.

The first person to arrive at Downs’ home after the shooting, Nancy Hill, testified that there was not nearly as much blood as is shown in a crime scene photo taken later by Gulf Shores police. She said that Downs’ blonde hair was beginning to darken with blood.

Hill’s testimony could help explain why investigators never found any blood on Nodine, on his clothes or in his truck. It also is consistent with testimony from Dr. James Downs, a medical examiner hired as a private consultant by the District Attorney’s Office. Downs told jurors that the blood would have oozed out of Downs’ body rather than spurted.

Ann Myers, a nurse who lives in the neighborhood, testified that she saw Downs’ long, blonde hair “fanned out, like a halo” from the top of her head.

“It was the most unusual thing, as a nurse, I’ve ever seen, as far as gunshot victims go,” she testified.

The defense introduced records showing that Angel Downs’ income from her job as a sales manager at Benchmark Homes was on track to drop from $83,754 in 2008 to about $45,000 this year.

On the day Downs died, an acquaintance testified, she complained about her financial problems.

“She told me that she could not pay her bills. She told me she was not making enough money to pay her bills,” said Patricia Callahan Owens, who knew Downs and Nodine from beach outings in Pensacola. “She told me she was working more and making less money.”

Testifying about a suicide call he was sent on in October 2006, former Gulf Shores police Officer Timothy Dennis told jurors that he found Downs naked and unconscious on her bed, with shallow breathing and a yellowish tint to her skin.

Dennis testified that he saw empty pill bottles and a suicide note that read, in part, “I’m sorry for all that I’ve hurt.”

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Stephen Nodine murder trial: Testimony describes stormy, violent relationship between Nodine, Downs

Published: Wednesday, December 15, 2010, 5:00 AM

BAY MINETTE, Ala. — Two weeks before she suffered a fatal gunshot to the head, Angel Downs warned that Stephen Nodine might kill her, a friend of hers testified Tuesday.

Emily Simmons, who said she was friends with both Downs and Nodine, testified that Downs confided in her after having several harsh confrontations with Nodine during the weekend of the Flora-Bama Mullet Toss in April.

Downs, Simmons said, told her that if she were ever found dead, it would by Nodine’s hand — not suicide.

“She was crying,” Simmons testified. “He had changed. He was not the person she knew.”

Nodine, who was a Mobile County commissioner at the time of Downs’ death, stands accused of murder, stalking and an ethics charges related to the alleged misuse of his government-issued pickup truck.

Simmons also testified that she was waiting in the car outside of Downs’ home in Gulf Shores at the end of that weekend when Nodine showed up and followed Downs into her home. Later, Downs ran back to the car.

“She told me that he tried to break her arm when they were inside,” Simmons said. “She screamed, and he let her go.”

Simmons was the last witness of an eventful day Tuesday. Defense attorneys will get a chance to cross-examine her today. ?Prosecutors said they expect to wrap up their case later in the day.

The testimony undercut the defense position that Downs shot herself on the evening of May 9.

Other friends of Downs testified that they also witnessed abusive behavior by Nodine.

Tracie Sweatt testified that Nodine knocked on the door of the beach condominium she was using, along with Downs and several other women, for that last weekend of April.

Sweatt told jurors that Nodine opened one of the bedroom doors and found Downs, asleep and in her pajamas, with a male friend, who was fully clothed.

“You’re a whore,” Sweatt quoted Nodine as telling Downs.

Nodine threw what appeared to be a garage door opener and hit Downs in the forehead, Sweatt testified.

Another friend who was part of the group that weekend, Christine Salley, testified that Nodine came looking for Downs on the beach the next day, April 25.

“He said, ‘Where’s that f——-g whore?’” she said.

Salley testified that Downs moved her residence to The Ridge condominiums in Gulf Shores because she wanted a home where she could park in the garage, so that Nodine would not know whether she was home.

Salley also described a trip to a New Orleans Saints game in 2009 that turned violent. She said she learned after the game that Downs and Nodine had a physical fight in the French Quarter but that Downs had managed to get away.

“She was very upset, just sitting in the car with a blank stare,” Salley told jurors. “She had scratches on her, and she had blood on her clothes.”

Defense attorney John Williams challenged the view expressed by Salley and Sweatt that Downs had broken off her relationship with Nodine.

During cross-examination, he asked both witnesses about a number signs that Nodine and Downs were still a couple: After the weekend in April, they dined together at several restaurants, and they spent the day together at Pensacola Beach on May 9.

Nodine and his teenage son also slept over at Downs’ home the previous Friday, Williams said.

Sweatt said that they did not know that Nodine and his son stayed at Downs’ home.

“But, no, given their relationship, it would not surprise me,” said Sweatt, who described the couple’s relationship as on and off.

Earlier Tuesday, a waiter at Don Carlos Mexican Restaurant in Daphne testified that Nodine appeared nervous as he drank coffee on the evening of May 9.

“He just seemed to be a little nervous and fidgety, playing with his phone,” said Joshua King, who refilled Nodine’s coffee and water.

King also testified that Nodine seemed upset as he left the restaurant.

“He made a loud outburst, something like, ‘Oh, no,’ like he had received some piece of startling news,” he said.

In an effort to prove the ethics charge, prosecutors offered testimony from Mobile County Administrator John Pafenbach, who testified that county employees, except for law enforcement officers, are prohibited from using county vehicles for personal reasons.

Under cross-examination from defense lawyer Dennis Knizley, Pafenbach acknowledged that the county does not give the written policy to commissioners when they take office.

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Judge in Nodine trial changes mind, will allow cameras to shoot courtroom

Published: Wednesday, December 08, 2010, 4:12 PM ??? Updated: Wednesday, December 08, 2010, 4:17 PM

Shortly after announcing that he was barring cameramen from taking video images through the courtroom door, the judge in the Stephen Nodine trial reconsidered that decision, according to one of his staffers.

The reason for the reversal was not immediately clear.

After an early recess in Nodine's murder trial, Circuit Judge Charles C. Partin spoke harshly to the media about what he said was the release of graphic images from the trial. He did not state which television station was involved.?

However, he later reversed himself and will allow cameramen to shoot pictures from the door window. ?

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