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Dr. Theodore M. King took the stand to speak for the dead.
On this January afternoon, the assistant medical examiner would
tell the jury how Laurence Jones Jr. died.
Yong Jones left the courtroom as King was sworn in by the clerk.
She could not listen to the details of how a bullet ended the
life of her only child.
King peered shyly at the jury from behind his glasses. He talked
about his work with a quiet reverence, his voice barely above
a whisper.
He explained to the jury that, during his career, he had performed
2,600 autopsies. He was on duty the morning in November 1993
when Larry Jones' body was brought to the Baltimore city morgue.
The cause of death was a gunshot wound, he told jurors. The
bullet entered the young man's left eyelid, fractured his skull
and sent bone slivers into the left side of his brain. The slug
also tore through his neck, causing severe injury to his jugular
vein.
''How serious were Jones' injuries?'' asked Cassandra Costley,
the prosecutor.
''The jugular drains blood from the brain,'' King explained.
''That injury alone will cause death rapidly. The victim bleeds
quite a bit, in a range of seconds to minutes.''
''What about the brain injury?'' Costley asked.
King explained that the brain injury also could cause death
quickly. The combination of the two lethal wounds meant Larry
Jones had almost no chance of surviving.
Some of the jurors shook their heads in apparent horror and
disgust. The defendant, James Langhorne, listened to King with
interest.
The doctor noted that he also found gunpowder stippling on Larry
Jones' face, indicating the gun was fired from within 12 to
18 inches. King said that the victim also suffered several bruises,
cuts and scrapes before his death.
''The injuries of arms, legs and chest indicates the deceased
had been in a struggle,'' King said. ''The injuries were so
fresh they had not had time to heal, indicating they occurred
very close to the time of the gunshot wound.''
A few jurors nodded their heads. They wondered whether the gunman
beat Larry Jones because he refused to give up his wallet and
his gold ring, a gift from his parents that he had treasured.
Langhorne's attorney, Samuel Brave, questioned King about the
bruises. He hoped to plant the notion that the victim had been
injured during a scuffle with some former friends rather than
as a result of getting mugged.
''Suppose 10 minutes before the victim had been shot he'd been
in some sort of struggle, could the injuries have been inflicted
then?'' Brave asked.
''Yes, that could be possible,'' King answered.
Alfred Brown took the stand next. A wiry, thin man, he wore
a red, white and blue running suit.
Brown explained that he and Langhorne used to sell drugs on
the streets of southeast Baltimore. He told the jury: ''We used
to hang tough.''
Brown said he had taught Langhorne a few tips about pulling
robberies. When they saw each other a few years later in prison,
Langhorne bragged to Brown that he had robbed a guy. The stickup
went bad when the victim put up a struggle.
''So I shot him,'' Langhorne told Brown. ''I got a ring and
a wallet.''
Brown told the jury he held onto the information until he needed
to trade it for a favor. After walking away from a halfway house
in October 1996, Brown was arrested again and decided it was
time to snitch on Langhorne.
''Anyone promise you anything for coming forward?'' prosecutor
Ilene Nathan asked.
''No.''
As Nathan settled in her seat, Brave stood, scratched his head
and walked to the witness stand. He noted that the 10 years
Brown faced for escaping from the halfway house disappeared
after Brown snitched on Langhorne.
His forehead wrinkling in disbelief, Brave asked: ''So the state
didn't have anything hanging over your head?''
''No,'' Brown answered.
Brave grinned. ''You know the system inside out, don't you?''
''I don't,'' Brown said. ''I ain't no career criminal. I've
only been locked up twice.''
''You're not going to get a thing out of this?'' Brave asked.
A thin smile sliding across his lips, Brown answered: ''No.''
A few of the jurors smirked at Brown's reply.
Brave moved on to a new series of questions, badgering Brown
on what details police had fed him to help his story stand up
in court.
''Are you saying under oath, as God is your judge, that detectives
never brought up the subject of the ring when you spoke to them?''
''No, James Langhorne told me about it,'' Brown answered.
''Didn't the detectives tell you exactly what they knew before
you opened your mouth?''
''No.''
As Brown stepped down from the witness stand, hundreds of starlings
flocked to the fourth-floor windows outside Judge Kathleen O'Ferrall
Friedman's courtroom. Jurors and court spectators stared at
the birds as dusk settled over the city. The starlings chirped
and flapped their wings as they came home to roost.
The sound of the birds swooping, circling, darting frenetically
outside the windows echoed in the courtroom as the judge dismissed
the jury until morning.
Langhorne, his wrists and ankles shackled, walked by Yong as
she sat on the court bench. He looked away as she searched his
face, trying to read his thoughts. He turned to his sister and
parents seated in the bench across from Yong. He raised his
eyebrows as a sign of hope and told them: ''See you later.''
Yong looked at the accused killer's mother, Joyce Langhorne.
She was a petite woman with dark smudges under her eyes. Her
face was pinched, sallow. Her brown eyes reflected little light
or hope.
''She is a mother like me,'' Yong thought. ''There is so much
pain in her eyes.''
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