After Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by Marilyn J Bardsley

insisted on a fourth trial. He gave me several reasons. First, of the 36 jurors in the first three trials, 35 had voted to convict Jim. Lawton believed he owed it to those 35 jurors to pursue the case. With the limited budgetary resources of the prosecutor’s office, he had done quite well. He was up against the best southern defense lawyers money could buy, as well as top-notch expert witnesses and political headwinds at the Georgia Supreme Court.
     

     
    Spencer Lawton Jr.
     
    Yet he had been on track to win three convictions, if it had not been for the one juror. In my opinion, there was also another reason: Lawton, who is very focused on victims’ rights, so passionately believed that Jim was guilty of cold-blooded murder that he wanted to see him punished for it. He wanted justice for the emotionally disturbed young man who he believed had been exploited by a wealthy manipulator.
     
    It would have been nearly impossible to get an impartial jury in Savannah after three high-profile trials. Defense lawyers got their way, and the fourth trial was held in Augusta, Georgia, where no one had ever heard of Jim Williams. Chatham County Superior Court Judge James W. Head presided.
     
    The trial began on May 1, 1989. Two days later, a jury of six men and women was selected, along with one man and two women as alternates. On May 12, the jury began to deliberate. After one hour, Jim was acquitted. The almost decade-long legal drama was finally over.
     
    According to Spencer Lawton, the quick acquittal came for several reasons. Aside from the inevitable staleness of an eight-year-old trial, the Georgia Supreme Court had placed such limitations on the evidence it was difficult to mount as effective a prosecution as was delivered in the previous trials. Lawton also thought that one of the main reasons for the acquittal was defense attorney Sonny Seiler’s effective argument: After eight years of hounding Jim, the jury should tell the prosecution to let the man alone. This argument played to the jury’s inherent desire to pardon.
     

Chapter 15: Some Observations on Danny’s Death
     
    Spencer Lawton mounted a very effective prosecution in the Savannah trials; 35 out of 36 jurors voted for Jim’s conviction. The success was due, in part, to the result of persuasive testimony about a staged crime scene and gunshot residue, but there was more. Lawton eloquently expressed his sincere passion about a wealthy, unscrupulous sophisticate exploiting an emotionally unstable young man. His arguments affected the jury. Ironically, in the first two trials, Jim was his own worst enemy on the stand, alienating the jury with his arrogance and his assertion that his sexual relationship with Danny was normal and natural. The jury could not ignore the cumulative effect of publicity and the fact that Jim was found guilty more than once. Finally, there was the issue of homosexuality, which was offensive to the morals of middle-class southern jurors of that era.
     
    I admire Lawton’s persuasive evidence for a staged crime scene, but I have some trouble subscribing to the belief that Jim was guilty of premeditated murder for several reasons. For three decades, Jim had worked relentlessly to make a fortune for himself and to become an important figure in Savannah society. He thoroughly enjoyed living like an aristocrat and exercising the power of deciding who would be favored with an invitation to his famous Christmas parties. The people who came to his parties did not know who Danny was and would have been very disapproving if they had been exposed to him. Jim and Danny were rarely seen together in bars and clubs because Danny embarrassed Jim—the social power broker, the man who had dinner with Jacqueline Onassis, and the man whose home was highlighted in
Architectural Digest
.
     
    To suggest that Jim would go to great lengths to create an elaborate hoax of self-defense over the period of a month —a hoax that would suddenly put the