In a Savannah Morning News interview, his friend Frank Cheatham Jr. quipped, "Legend has it that when George was born, the first thing he did was to shake hands with the doctor and wink at the nurse. He's been shakin' and winkin' ever since."
Oliver was a Methodist Sunday school teacher and a leader in the local Masonic lodge. Like attorney Frank "Sonny" Seiler, Oliver was a big Georgia Bulldogs fan.
Leading the prosecution team was Chatham County's new district attorney, Spencer Lawton Jr. He was a soft-spoken, serious young man from a respected old Savannah family. Always a victim's advocate, Lawton was known for his compassion for the poor. He had unseated the Ryan family, which had enjoyed a 30-year hold on the district attorney's office. Joe Ryan handed the office down to his son Andrew "Busby" J. Ryan III," who had just completed one term. Busby was expected to win another term when Lawton jumped into the Democratic primary race. Lawton's reputation as a man of principle earned him significant support from the black community, which helped him win the subsequent Democratic runoff and the race against the Republican candidate.
The other members of Lawton's team were Deppish Kirkland, his chief assistant, and Robert Sparks, an assistant with the state's Prosecuting Attorney's Council.
Bobby Lee Cook, a well-known attorney from the small town of Summerville, Georgia, in the northwest part of the state, was the lead defense counsel. Former prosecutor Stan Irvin described Cook in 2009: "Bobby Lee Cook was an old-school trial attorney, regarded as one of the 'deans of criminal defense attorneys.' He is tall, lanky, has long gray hair, a goatee and mustache, gold rimmed glasses, and continues to wear classic three-piece suits when many no longer do. He arrives at court in a Rolls Royce, yet maintains the touch of a commoner. He is a southern gentleman: kind, polite and courteous…He was a legend in the South."
Whenever a super-lawyer is brought in from another city, a talented local defense attorney is usually added to the team. In this case, the local attorney was John Wright Jones, who at that time was best known for his defense in a case against Army Rangers accused of killing a gay businessman. Lawton lost that very controversial case, which was his first big case as the new DA.
Emily Bannister came to the trial with her second oldest son, Billy Hansford. Neither the prosecution nor the defense wanted her in the courtroom, so both sides subpoenaed her as a possible witness to keep her out. However, they could not keep her out of the court house, so she and her son sat patiently outside the courtroom in the hallway.
The jury was selected on January 25, 1982, and consisted of six men and six women.
The next day, Lawton told the jury that he would prove that Jim had murdered Danny in cold blood and with malice and forethought. Lawton believed that Jim had planned the murder a month earlier when he concocted a hoax in an April 3 incident to make Danny appear like to be a dangerous madman. After shooting Danny in May, Lawton was convinced that Jim had staged the crime scene to make it look like self-defense. When it was Bobby Lee Cook's turn to address the jury, he promised them he would prove that Danny was a violent man who had initiated the attack on Jim, who had no criminal record.
An Impassioned Prosecution
Lawton detailed the prosecution's rationale for its theory that the shooting was premeditated and the crime scene was contrived to make the shooting look like self-defense. These theories served as the basis for his statements to the court and his witnesses' testimony during the trial. At a later date, Lawton incorporated this information in his Williams case history and summary, a document published for his staff.
Lawton expressed his fervent belief that the relationship between Jim and Danny was "mutually exploitive, but not equally so: Hansford, in his naïve, coarse and reckless youth, no doubt thought he was taking advantage of Williams, who gave him money, clothes, car, jewelry and magnificent surroundings. But in the antique dealer he had met a pro, one who held all the cards. Williams was a sophisticated manipulator who could easily bestow money and trips to Europe; but he could just as easily withhold them. And Danny Hansfords could be had at a dime a dozen."
Thirty-six minutes to contrive the scene
To prove Jim had staged the scene of the shooting, Lawton had to demonstrate to the jury that Jim had enough time after he shot Danny to damage the antiques supposedly destroyed by Danny's rampage. He also had to show that Jim had time to make changes to the death scene so that it looked as if Danny had shot at him.
The amount of time that elapsed between the shooting and Jim's call to the police was critical to making the prosecution's case. There were two calls that morning between Jim and Joe Goodman-one to cancel the European trip, and one about the shooting. Danny's presence on the first phone call established a time at which Danny was still alive. The second call established a time when Danny had been shot. One witness would determine the times of those two calls.
Lawton began by establishing that Jim had called the police at 2:58 a.m. on May 2. The officers were close by and arrived at Mercer House within a couple of minutes around 3 a.m. That was a matter of record. Soon after the shooting, the police questioned Joe about the timing of the calls and Lawton used Joe's statement at that time to determine that there were approximately 36 minutes between the time Jim called Joe to tell him that he shot Danny and the time Jim called the police.
Lawton's goal was to get Joe's testimony on the trial record as to the timing and the content of the two calls Jim made to him. Jim made the first call to Joe to say, "I've got bad news. The trip to Europe was cancelled."
Joe said, "Jim and I talked for a few seconds, or maybe a minute. I don't know. I was just awakened, you know, out of a dead sleep."
Then Joe said that Danny told him, "I hope there's no hard feelings," and Joe answered, "No, there's no hard feelings." Danny passed the phone back to Jim for a few seconds and Joe told him that he would see him sometime next week.
When Lawton asked him what he did after that conversation, Joe answered, "Well, I never turned the light on, so I just staggered back to my bed and smoked a cigarette. Nancy, my girlfriend, woke up, and she said, 'What's happened?' And I'd say shortly after our little conversation that must have lasted 10, 15, 20 minutes, I don't know-the phone rang again." When the phone rang a second time, it was Jim calling to tell Joe he had to shoot Danny.
Lawton needed to hear Joe repeat on the stand what he had said in his statement about how much time elapsed between the two calls. To Lawton's consternation, Joe answered, "I'd say between 15 and 30 minutes." Because Joe did not wear a watch, Lawton asked if he had looked at a clock. Joe explained the difficulty in doing so: "Well, my microwave clock sits kinda sideways from my couch and I had one phone in the apartment. It's a small apartment and you have to get out of your bed, walk around into a door and right at the door sits a table, a couch, and then kinda opposite, my microwave. It's an Amana with red lights, digital lights…but unless you're right up on it, the two's look like eight's sometimes, the four's look like five's sometimes, you've got to be dead up on it.
"I looked at the clock, but truthfully I can't really say it was exactly 2:25 or 2:30. I can just say a few minutes-not a few minutes-I'd say 15, 20, 30 minutes later, because me and Nancy, we laid in the bed and we talked and we kinda laughed a little bit and we couldn't go right back to sleep, but the lights were never on until after the second phone call."
This answer was not the one the prosecutor wanted. Joe's statement back in early May 1981 was inconsistent with what he was saying in court. Lawton wanted to show Joe a copy of his statement to refresh his memory, but Cook objected on the grounds that Lawton was leading the witness because Joe had not requested a copy of his statement.
Lawton then asked Joe what was said in the second conversation. Joe answered, "Come downtown quick. I just had to shoot Danny." Jim had not said that Danny was dead. Joe told his girlfriend that he was going to Jim's by himself. Nancy replied, "No. I'm going with you." Nancy was well aware of Danny's violent behavior and didn't want Joe to go to Mercer House alone. They hurriedly put on jeans and T-shirts and drove as quickly as they could to Jim's house, arriving at the same time as the police.
After some discussion, the judge permitted Lawton to ask Joe if he signed a statement in May of 1981 saying that the second call from Jim was around 2:20 to 2:25 a.m. Joe answered, "That's what I signed, yes."
Lawton wanted to know, "Are you now saying that that's untrue, or are you now saying that you can't remember or don't know?"
Joe said, "I can't be sure. In other words, it might be five or ten minutes one way or the other."
Lawton picked a time in between 2:20 and 2:25 in Joe's signed statement as the time of the second call-2:22 a.m.-to calculate the 36 minutes from the 2:58 a.m. call Jim made to the police in which Jim allegedly staged the crime scene.
After that, defense attorney John Wright Jones cross-examined Joe. He asked about the time it took them to get from his apartment to Jim's house. Joe said it probably took between seven and 10 minutes, driving down Drayton Street at 40 to 45 miles an hour. At that time there were no cars on the road.
Jones also asked him how Danny sounded when he spoke to him. Joe answered, "He-slurred words a little bit. I could tell he'd been drinking-but he sounded like Danny."
Then Jones asked why his girlfriend didn't want Joe to go by himself. Joe said, "She was scared of…" Lawton interrupted with an objection on the grounds that Joe was about to testify about a prior act of violence on Danny's part. The judge eventually agreed with Lawton. What Jones was permitted to ask Joe was if he was familiar with Danny's reputation: Joe answered that Danny's reputation was bad.
Lawton: The Crime Scene Was Staged (source: Lawton's case summary)
The position of the body:
"A person coming into the room would approach from behind and to the right of anyone sitting at the desk. As seen from behind the desk, Hansford's body lay face down in front of the desk, feet-to-left and head-to-right, the head being on the same right-front spot that Williams said Hansford was standing on when firing at him.
"He was in the classic, comic-book position of the dead gunman," Lawton explained. "(He was) chest-down on the floor, head face-down on the right cheek; left forearm under left shoulder like a child sleeping; right arm out at the shoulder level and bent, with the hand resting in the shooting position on the grip of the Luger pistol at about head level, right leg extended straight out, the left leg bent with the ankle lying across the right leg just above that ankle. He had obvious bullet wounds in his back and the back of his head (the shot to the chest didn't exit the body but lodged near the spine). Under his head and chest was a large pool of blood.
"On the back of the right hand (the one on top of the pistol grip) was a heavy deposit of blood, which had evidently been smeared-and a lighter area in the blood around the wrist, where some of it had apparently been rubbed off. There was no wound on the right hand, and no blood around it-or on the gun beneath it." Dr. Larry Howard, head of the state crime lab, testified that "it appeared from the police photos that the victim's right hand had been had been moved from underneath the body to extend above his head."
Lawton described what he believed was the clearest evidence of tampering with the death scene: "Over Hansford's legs (and facing his head) was an upright chair, upholstered and of heavy antique wood construction. One rear leg of this chair was firmly on top of the material of Hansford's right trouser leg.
Items on Jim's desk had been moved:
"On the desk, at the left-front and directly next to the right arm of the chair just mentioned, was an extinguished marijuana cigarette and a burn hole. The cigarette appeared to have been ground out on the leather desk top. A plastic bag of marijuana lay adjacent.
"Also on the desk, at the right arm of one seated there, was a stack of papers which had clearly been hit with a bullet, with papers and fragments strewn about the desk top, and on the floor behind and to the right of one seated there. And behind the desk, on the floor, was a damaged metal commemorative belt buckle in a leather pouch, which had evidently been in the stack of papers when it was hit.
"On top of the stack was an undamaged TV Guide, which had obviously been put there after the stack itself had been shot. Finally-also on top of the desk, directly in front of the seat-was a German Luger pistol. And on top of the pistol, including the grip, were paper fragments, indicating that the gun had been placed there before the adjacent pile of papers was hit…. In the seat of the desk chair were found lead fragments, presumed to be from the bullet which had struck the pile of papers and the belt buckle-and indicating that no one was sitting in or obstructing the seat when the bullet was fired into the pile."
The shooting and subsequent staging of the scene:
"Accepting that at some point they were together in the study and arguing, as Williams claimed, and that the canceled trip was a point of contention, it's plausible to imagine that Hansford, sitting in the chair across from Williams and to his left, in spiteful anger, snubbed out a marijuana cigarette on the leather desk top. Whereupon, Williams reached into a drawer at his right hand, pulled out a Luger and shot Hansford. As he saw that he was being shot, Hansford began to rise from the chair and move to Williams' right, towards the exit from the room. As he moved, fatally shot in the heart (aorta), he brought his hands to his chest, turned, and fell face-down on the floor along the length of the desk. In his rising and falling, Hansford knocked over the chair. Williams then walked around or leaned over the desk and delivered a coup de grâce to the head and the back.
"He then put the gun down on the middle of the desk, went into another room, got another Luger, came back and stood at the right-front of the desk-by Hansford's head-and shot at 'himself,' hitting the pile of papers with the buckle in it.
"The bullet tearing into the pile of papers scattered small paper fragments over the gun on the desk (the gun, according to Williams' version, should not have been there when the papers were hit) and lead fragments in the seat of the chair (which, according to his version, should have been obstructed by his body when the papers/buckle were hit).
"Having missed 'himself,' he may have wiped the gun for prints. Then he reached into the bloody space under Hansford's chest and with his finger and thumb around the wrist, pulled the right hand out, smearing the blood on the back of the hand as he did so (while at the same time 'cleaning' the lighter area in the blood under his own finger, at the wrist), and placed the hand flat on the top of the grip of the pistol on the floor.
"Somewhere in here, he called his friend (Goodman) and his lawyer (Duffy).
"And, sometime during the course of contriving the scene in the study, putting things in order for Hansford to appear to have been shot while standing right-front, he placed upright the chair at left-front…but thoughtlessly failed to notice that a leg of the chair had come down on the victim's trouser leg…. Presumably at the same time, he laid the TV Guide on the top of the pile of bullet-wounded papers.
"He then set about 'wrecking' the house in the area of the foyer and living room, where he claimed the initial 'attack' and continued 'rampage' occurred. (Testimony and photographs of the entire scene indicate that the more valuable of the damaged items were very 'carefully' broken.)
"This done, he called the police."
Savannah police detectives D. Everette Ragan and Joseph. P. Jordan, as well as Dr. Larry Howard, the head of the state crime lab, testified about the bullet wounds and the position of Danny's body. They explained the prosecution's theory of the shooting and the elements of the death scene that appeared to be staged.
The Gunshots and Gunshot Residue
The key issue in the case was who shot first: Danny or Jim? Jim tried to justify shooting Danny on the basis that Danny shot at him first. What became an important determining factor was the presence or absence of gunshot residue on Danny's hands. If there was gunshot residue was on Danny's hands, it would mean that Danny had fired at Jim-making a reasonable case for self-defense. If no gunshot residue was found on Danny's hands, making the case for self-defense was more complicated.
Det. Joseph P. Jordan was in charge of safeguarding any gunshot residue on Danny's hands and shirt. In accordance with police department procedure, Jordan said he put paper bags on Danny's hands at the death scene before the body was taken to the Candler Hospital morgue. The purpose of bagging the hands at the scene was to protect against any disturbance of residue until swabbings could be taken just before the autopsy, and then sent to the state crime lab for analysis.
This key test got caught up in a backlog of work at the state crime lab and was delayed until June. Fortunately for the prosecution, when the tests came back, they were completely negative for any gunshot powder on Danny's hands and shirt.
During the trial, Spencer Lawton called on Roger Parian from the state crime lab branch in Savannah. Parian testified that the German Luger that Danny allegedly fired did produce significant residue after one shot and even higher levels of residue with additional shots. The state crime lab's expert, Randall Riddell, performed the gunshot residue test. The results were completely negative, which he considered significant. Riddell went on to say that he doubted that Hansford fired the weapon.
Neither German Luger had fingerprints on them, which was not unusual. Det. Jordan explained that the Luger handgrip is too rough to get a good print.
Next, state pathologist Dr. Richard Draffin testified about the three shots that Danny sustained and estimated that he died within 30 seconds of being shot. Draffin said he did not know which shot was the first. One shot entered Danny's chest with a slight downward angle, severing his aorta; another shot entered the right side of his head and caused extensive brain damage; a third wound was in the back. Either the shot to the chest or the shot to the head could by itself have been fatal.
It should be noted that Chatham County has long had a very distinguished and respected coroner, Dr. James Metts, who came to Mercer House about 15 to 20 minutes after the police arrived. Draffin and Metts performed the autopsy together.
Premeditation: The Prosecution's Theory
The centerpiece of the premeditation theory was the early-morning incident on April 3, 1981, a month before Jim shot Danny. Jim called the police, and Cpl. Mike Anderson and his officers went to Mercer House. According to Lawton's case summary: "They arrived to find Williams downstairs pointing out various items of damaged furniture which Williams said Hansford had broken in a rampage during which he had also threatened both himself and Williams, and had fired a pistol both outside and inside the house.
"There was an apparently dismantled German Luger pistol lying in two pieces on a table by the door; Williams said it had broken apart when Hansford threw it down. The pistol smelled of having recently been fired. Williams told the officers that Hansford was upstairs, armed, and probably wouldn't be taken alive.
"The officers proceeded carefully up the stairs, where to their surprise, they found Hansford asleep or passed out on a bed, not armed. When they woke him and he heard the accusations against him, he became belligerent and uncooperative. He appeared to be heavily under the influence. Williams told the officers, according to Cpl. Anderson's report, 'that for some time now the suspect had been on drugs and becomes mentally unstable.' In the bedroom, also according to the report, they 'found a bullet marking in the floor.'
"Williams said he wanted to prosecute. The officers arrested Hansford. Later that day, when Williams declined to prosecute him, Hansford was released from jail."
Lawton believed that the incident was a staged hoax. The rationale for calling police to Mercer House a month before the shooting was to establish a police record of Danny, high on drugs and alcohol, allegedly going on a destructive rampage, together with and wildly firing one of Jim's pistols into the floor and outside in Monterey Square. Also, Danny was either sleeping or passed out, but when awakened and asked about the incident, he denied it and became angry.
Lawton said that Jim, 51 at the time of the shooting, had characterized the relationship between him and Danny, 21, "generally as that of Henry Higgins to Eliza Doolittle: He had taken Hansford off the street and under his wing, in an effort to 'save him from himself.'" He also characterized Danny "as immature, undependable, and unstable-tormented by feelings of betrayal and rejection-even sporadically violent."
A week later, on April 10, Jim made first-class reservations for Danny and himself on a Delta Airlines flight to London and then on to Geneva, departing May 3.
Lawton found it curious that a week after the April 3 episode, Jim had made reservations for himself and Danny to go to Europe. Jim's reason for having a companion on the trip was his hypoglycemia, which had led to fainting spells. Lawton reasoned that Danny had demonstrated himself to be an unreliable and unlikely choice for a companion entrusted with Jim's health.
The Defense
Cook opened with his star witness, Dr. Joseph Burton, the highly respected medical examiner from Atlanta's DeKalb and Cobb Counties. Burton was one of the few qualified forensic pathologists in Georgia at that time. As a medical examiner, he had performed 7,000 autopsies and certified approximately 15,000 deaths.
Considering the huge importance of the gunshot residue issue, Cook asked Burton, "If…the hand wipings are taken in the proper method…and sent to the state crime laboratory for analysis and there is a negative result that indicates the nonpresence of any powder residue…. In your professional opinion and based upon your knowledge and background of that test, what significance does that have?"
Burton was clear and emphatic: "It has very little significance to me…A negative test, however, does not mean that the person did or did not fire a weapon. It simply means that that particular test did not pick up the residue that we look for on the hands or on the areas of the body where we might find powder residue.
"It is routine now in the Dade County medical examiner's office not to perform these tests…they are unreliable and we're seeking to find a more accurate test that is more reliable to be used in courtrooms."
Cook reiterated his key question: If all the procedures were performed correctly, would a negative result "indicate in any fashion that the deceased did not fire a weapon?"
Burton answered, "No, sir, it does not, and if it did, a great majority of the cases we now have pending in Atlanta, Georgia, would not be processed."
Cook then asked him if he knew of any experts who disagreed with that opinion.
Burton responded, "I personally do not know of anyone in my specialty of medicine nor in the field of forensic pathology that I consider to be reliable experts who disagree with the statements I have just made."
He also referenced his experience with tests on suicides: of which "Dekalb and Cobb Counties, for the past 10 years, has had one of the highest suicide rates of any county in the entire nation. On all of these cases we have routinely taken swabbings on people who died of gunshot wounds and sent them to the lab and in no single year since 1973 have I had greater than a 50 percent positive return on these tests when the tests are being done by people who are trained to take them, the swabbings, and presently my own technician and myself are taking swabbings to see if we can improve the percentage of positive results from these tests."
Cook asked him about FBI studies of the accuracy of such tests.
Burton replied, "For about seven or eight years in the past, the FBI has kept records of all the tests sent to them for analysis of gunshot residue on the hands. These are tests they have no control over: they do not know who took the tests; how they were taken; they simply receive a kit in the laboratory and they're asked to check it for residue.
"During this period of time, they had less than one 1 percent positive results from the tests sent to them randomly throughout the country." The implication is that the gunshot residue tests on samples from suspected shooters only rarely indicated that they had actually shot a gun.
Next, Cook asked Burton if he had a chance to review the autopsy reports, review the 58 color photos taken at the scene, inspect all the physical evidence at the scene, and make a personal inspection of the house and the room where the shooting took place. Burton said that he had done so.
"When I try to reconstruct what happened at a death scene, I try to not take any bit of evidence out of context, because I can take any one bit of evidence that we find here and make it say anything that I want it to say, but it's much harder to take all the bits of evidence and make them say what you want them to say. However, sometimes they fit together like pieces of a puzzle and can tell us plain as a picture what might have happened to someone.
"We have to understand something about the autopsy findings to begin to understand how this person fell and how he might have gotten in this position.
"One bullet, according to the autopsy findings and the photographs which I examined, struck the deceased in the left upper chest. This bullet did not exit his body, but passed into the body and passed into the lung tissue. Once a bullet passes into the lung it starts to cause bleeding…he begins to blow frothy blood out of the nose and mouth and in two of the photographs…we can see on the left hand of the deceased fine droplets of blood on the back and top of his left hand. These are splatters of blood and on another photograph we can show that on the left collar of this shirt we have the same splatterings that come out through the nose and mouth when someone is shot in the lungs.
"Now, it's also significant that there aren't any other of these splatters around on the floor, on the desk, on the chair, on the wall, indicating that once this person received a lung shot, that the body began to fall and went to the ground and he did not move around…
"With the deceased in front of desk, if he were standing erect, the person on the other side of the desk…firing a weapon at this person and striking him in the left chest, this would be like someone taking their fist and hitting you in the left side of the chest and it would tend to start to rotate your body to the left side.
"It would also cause your body to start to fall…. Now, as the body rotates and falls, it throws the left leg over the right leg. Now the body is off-center, rotated around, and the back of this body is now facing the desk and falling to the ground. The shot in the lungs did not pass through the body, so we don't have any holes in the walls or floor anywhere."
Next on Cook's agenda was to have Burton knock out Lawton's coup de grâce theory. Cook asked if he had any opinion on how fast the three shots were fired.
Burton said, "The only way I can make the facts fit the autopsy findings, the facts at the scene, the amount of blood spattering at the scene, the fact that the body does not appear to have made any significant movement, is to have these shots occurring in rapid succession, one right after another.
"This would be in keeping with the body falling to the floor and the person firing the weapon at the body, moving the weapon with the body as it fell and firing."
Cook asked, "Is there any way, in your opinion, that you can place the body of Mr. Hansford on the ground, walk around the desk and fire a shot into his head, and satisfy the physical evidence which existed in this case?"
"I cannot," Burton stated.
Burton then performed a demonstration using a desk, a couple of chairs, and Mr. Moss, an investigator for the defense, who lay down on the floor in the same position as the body. "I first shoot him in the chest," Burton said, "rotate him around to his left side, have him start to fall. As his back comes across the level of the table there, I shoot him in the right side of his back, which he has up to me.
"As he lands on the floor, I shoot him in his head and the head shot goes into the rug. This is bam, bam, bam, fast as the body falls to the floor, and it accounts for the bone, the hair, the holes in the floor and the angles through the body. It accounts for the blood splatters. It accounts for everything that I see in the case except for the chair."
Cook called several witnesses to testify about Danny's violent behavior: Nurse Nina A. Kelly and Dr. Aurel Teodorescu from Georgia Regional Hospital, and Gulfstream airplane mechanic Earl W. LeFevre.
Jim's Testimony
On January 28, Jim began his testimony. Cook directed the questions. He told the court about his humble beginnings, growing up in Gordon, Georgia, his restoration work, and his successful antiques business. The problem was that he focused too much on his success, his very expensive antiques, his trips to Europe and England, his wonderful Fabergé collection, Mercer House, and other things that were important to him. This recitation of wealth had the effect of distancing him from the middle-class jurors. His haughty attitude just made matters worse.
He mentioned that he kept loaded Lugers in many rooms of his house as well as an alarm system because he had been burglarized twice, once while he was asleep upstairs.
He told the jury how Danny rode up to Mercer House on a bicycle in 1979, looking for work and how he tried to teach the young man to be an apprentice in his workshop.
He explained how he loaned Danny the money to buy a used 1967 Camaro which was paid back by deductions from Danny's part-time earnings.
Jim told the following story: One evening, at a social event, Jim passed out. Later, doctors told him it was a blood sugar imbalance called hypoglycemia and an irregular heartbeat that were more likely to create problems in late afternoon and evening. His doctor recommended that he have someone check in on him and accompany him when he traveled. Danny often checked in on him in the evening and sometimes spent the night in the guest bedroom.
Jim's health issues are what prompted him to ask Danny to go with him on his trip to Europe in May, but Danny eventually decided to back out when he realized he could not take his marijuana with him. Jim said that he asked Danny to see if Joe would go instead. When Joe agreed, Jim made the reservations for Joe and Jim for May 3.
Eventually, Jim got to the events of May 1 and the early morning of May 2. He described in detail Danny's increasingly violent behavior that culminated in his death. "As fast as I could pull the trigger, I shot," Jim said. "I was going to stop him from killing me…I knew that if I didn't stop him right that second…I meant to stop him." Danny's behavior that night absolutely terrified him. "I have never been as afraid in my entire life, Mr. Cook," he said."
Cook asked him about the April 3 incident, in which Danny allegedly went on a destructive rampage in Mercer House, shot one of Jim's Lugers into an upstairs floor, and then went out into Monterey Square and fired the gun. Lawton considered the events of April 3 a hoax that Jim created to make Danny look like a madman. It was the centerpiece of Lawton's premeditation theory. Cook opened the door for Jim to tell his side of the story.
When Lawton cross-examined Jim, he encouraged Jim to describe the relationship he had with Danny. Lawton asked him if he had told a reporter four days after Danny's death, "I was determined to save him from himself." Jim confirmed that the quote was accurate.
"Danny Hansford was suicidal and he had a death wish, which he talked to me about," Jim told Lawton. "He made a comment at Bonaventure Cemetery one afternoon to me, and he said, 'See those small tombstones over there? That's a bunch of poor folks. You see those a little higher? That's just the working folks.'
"And he said, 'You see those big ones over there? That's what I'm gonna get. If I die in Jim Williams' house, I'm going to have one of those.' He said that before he attempted suicide and left a note."
Lawton asked how Danny was paid. He wanted to know if Jim had paid him for any other work other than as a part-time worker in his shop. Jim said, "How do you mean? What other work would there be?"
Lawton clarified, "I'm just asking you. I just want to be sure that I've got it right."
Lawton asked for another clarification about Jim's description of the shooting when he said, "I've never done anything like that in my life." Lawton asked him to explain the statement more fully.
"I've never shot anybody before in my life," Jim explained. "I've never even struck a person with my hand. I'm not a fighting type of person."
"Did you ever become angry with Danny?" Lawton asked.
"I became angry with him, yes," Jim said.
"But you never struck out at him," Lawton continued.
"No," Jim stated. "He would have killed me with his hands."
"And you never struck out at anybody else, for that matter? I mean, when you're angry, that's not your method, I take it."
Jim reiterated, "I said, I've never hit anybody. I'm not the fighter type."
"You wouldn't throw anything at anybody?" Lawton persisted.
Jim finally caught on to where this line of questioning was going. He said,: "One night I played backgammon with a man and beat him seven times straight and the next night he was going to beat me. I watched him cheat two games and the third game he also cheated. He said, 'Are you accusing me of cheating?' and I said, 'No, I'm telling you, you did,' and I took the board and hit him on the head with it…and walked off."
Lawton's Trap
Lawton eventually laid a trap and Jim walked right into it. Convinced that he did not have to be candid about his sexual relationship with Danny, Jim never brought it up, even when pressed repeatedly by Lawton on the nature of the relationship. He testified that Danny worked for him doing various jobs and that he tried to help him make something of his life. Why he took this position is hard to understand, considering that defense attorney Bobby Lee Cook knew that Lawton was prepared to call witnesses who would testify to the sexual nature of Jim and Danny's relationship.
By the end of the day on Friday, January 29, a good part of the trial had been completed. Doctors from Memorial Medical Center and the Georgia Regional Hospital testified about Danny's mental instability, violent tendencies and attempts at suicide. The defense testimony had concluded. There was one last presentation of evidence-Lawton's rebuttal witnesses and Jim's character witnesses-that would take place Monday before the closing arguments would be given.
Lawton had a real bombshell in his two rebuttal witnesses. One was Danny's best friend, George Hill, who worked for Coastal Marine Energy Service as a tugboat deckhand in Thunderbolt, a town on the Wilmington River. He had known Danny for eight to ten years. Lawton asked him what he knew about Danny's relationship with Jim.
Hill said, "Mr. Williams was giving Danny money when he needed it, bought him a nice car, gave him fine clothes, in exchange for him to go to bed with him…to sleep with him."
Lawton asked how he knew that.
Hill answered, "Me and Danny talked about it a few times. I tried to convince Danny it wasn't a good thing to do. It could mess up his reputation if it got out around town. The last time we talked about it, Danny just told me that he liked the money and everything, that if Mr. Williams wanted to pay him to suck his dick that it was fine with him and we let it go at that. I didn't talk to Danny too much more after that. Danny said he liked the money and the clothes."
Savannah was then and still is a genteel and polite city. The vulgarity of Hill's words must have electrified the jury. One simply did not talk graphically in public about homosexuality.
Lawton asked him if Danny ever told him how he felt about his relationship with Jim.
Hill said, "He wasn't real happy with it, but as he pointed out to me, I had to work all week and I walked around in blue jeans and he don't have to do nothing and he's driving around in a nice car wearing fine clothes and golden jewelry."
Lawton wanted to know if Danny ever told him about disagreements that he had with Jim.
"Well, a few times when I was over there," Hill told the jury, "they had a few small ones, whenever Mr. Williams wouldn't give Danny the money that he wanted. Danny would start a small argument and then we'd leave the house and come back later when he was calmed down and Mr. Williams would apologize for the fight and he'd usually give him what he wanted.
"One time there was-I wasn't there when the argument took place-Danny started dating a girl named Debbie and Mr. Williams wasn't too happy about it and he bought Danny a $400 gold necklace and Danny told me he bought it with the agreement Danny would quit seeing this girl and Danny gave the necklace to Debbie and he took her over to the house with it. Danny talked to me about it later that night and said that Mr. Williams got pretty mad and told him that that was it, he'd have to pack his stuff and leave and Danny was real worried that he'd just lost his meal ticket, you know. He was going to have to give back the car that Mr. Williams had given him and that he wouldn't be getting the money to buy clothes anymore."
"Was it an unusual thing," Lawton asked, "as far as you know, for Mr. Williams to threaten to throw Danny out?"
Hill answered, "No. He's done that a couple of times before, you know, but Danny was real scared this time that he really meant it…. Because of that necklace."
Lawton asked when this had taken place, and Hill told the jury, "This was about two nights before he died.
Recognizing that George Hill had a reputation for violence, Lawton asked him about it.
"Yes, sir," Hill answered. "I used to be an alcoholic and I got in trouble with the law…. I quit drinking. I've got a good job now. I've got my own house and I'm engaged to be married. I've got money in the bank and I've just lately straightened my life up."
During his cross-examination of George Hill, defense attorney Bobby Lee Cook reminded the jury that Hill and Danny attacked Earl LeFevre and his son and later broke down the door in LeFevre's house. He also asked Hill about the 15 street lights he shot out. As Hill tried to deny his guilt, Cook hit him with the documentation.
Then Cook got to the real point he was building up to: "So, from May the 2nd of 1981 until about three weeks ago, you had never told what you have just told to a single living soul…. And who did you talk to on that occasion?
Hill said, "Well, Mrs. Hansford got in touch with me and asked me to please talk to her attorney or one of the district attorneys.
Cook replied, "And she got in touch with you because she told you that she had a lawsuit she had filed and wanted to collect some money and would give you part of it, didn't she?"
Hill refuted Cook's statement emphatically, but Cook's subsequent cross-examination showed Hill to be a witness with significant credibility issues.
Nevertheless, Hill's testimony about Danny's comments just before his death created quite an effect. Judge Oliver instructed the jury to consider Hill's testimony for the limited purpose of motive.
Lawton called his second rebuttal witness. Gregory Kerr, who played backgammon with Jim at Mercer House, mentioned that Danny was a nice-looking young man. Jim, according to Kerr, said, "Yes. He's very good in bed and also, he's well-endowed."
Lawton then asked if Jim had described Danny in any other way.
"Well, he described his physique as being very muscular and strong and just," Kerr replied. "you know, the sex was good."
Lawton questioned Kerr about the drugs Danny took and where he got them.
"I knew Danny wasn't working at this time," Kerr replied. "Mr. Williams had stepped out of the room, and I said, 'Danny, where do you get the money to buy your drugs?' and he said, 'Jim buys all my drugs.'"
Cook objected to "the rankest and purist sort of hearsay," but he was overruled.
Kerr was the man who Jim had hit over the head with the backgammon board for cheating. Defense co-counsel John Wright Jones cross-examined Kerr, showing him to be a witness with credibility problems. However, Kerr's testimony probably helped convince the jury that Jim was not truthful about his relationship with Danny and that Jim would strike back physically if angered.
It was unintentionally ironic that the prominent citizens, including Jim's good friend Carol Freeman, who then came forward to provide character witness for Jim, had not heard the testimony of Hill and Kerr. Their testimony was limited to ascertaining that Jim's reputation was peaceable and that they never knew of any drug activity at Mercer House.
Closing Arguments
Spencer Lawton was on a roll after his controversial rebuttal witnesses. He continued his assault on the defense in his closing arguments. Deeply passionate about his beliefs, he was angry about the death of Danny Hansford at the hands of a man he considered evil, manipulative and exploitive.
"Jim Williams is a man of 50 years of age. He is a man of immense wealth, of obvious sophistication. He lives in an elegant home, travels abroad twice a year. He has many powerful, attractive and influential friends…"
"Danny Hansford was an immature, undereducated, unsophisticated, confused, temperamental young man, preoccupied with feelings of betrayal and rejection, even at the hands of his mother, says Jim Williams. I suggest to you that Danny Hansford was a young man who was a great deal more tragic than evil. Can you not imagine how easily impressed a young man like that would be, living in a house, being friends with a man of Jim Williams' stature?
"Danny Hansford was never someone that Jim Williams really cared for. He was a pawn, nothing more or less than a pawn in a sick little game of manipulation and exploitation. Danny may have thought of himself as a bit of a hustler. Well, he was in way over his head. He was playing for keeps with a pro, and he turned out to be the ultimate loser. I don't think he was a hustler. I think he was being hustled. I think he was what amounts to a prisoner in a comfortable concentration camp, where the torture was not physical but emotional and psychological."
"What happened was an act of murder…The self defense was a cover-up. It did not occur. Thomas Hobbes is often quoted as saying that life is nasty, brutish, and short, and surely it must have seemed so to Danny Hansford during the last fifteen or 20 seconds of his life, while his life was oozing out onto Jim Williams' Persian rug."
Lawton referenced the April 3 incident when Danny allegedly broke up furniture and fired a gun into the floor and into the square. Lawton claimed that this event, occurring almost a month before Danny was shot, was a hoax intended to get a fabricated rampage on the police record, a plot to set up a premeditated murder to look like self-defense.
In his closing, John Wright Jones made an issue out of the Chatham County Coroner, the distinguished Dr. James Metts, not being called to testify. "The district attorney has an obligation to present all the evidence…. The only medical examiner on the scene was not brought in by the state. He was there. He was their investigator, who was not brought in to testify, and the evidence, or the lack of evidence, can create a doubt in your mind.
"He [Metts] was the man that made the report and he was the man that supervised the autopsy…. But for some reason or another, the district attorney chose not to put him on the stand. He's your coroner. He's my coroner. That's his official duty, to investigate homicides. So there must have been some reason for not putting Metts on the stand."
Defense attorney Bobby Lee Cook's closing statement assailed the credibility of Lawton's rebuttal witnesses, Hill and Kerr. He wondered why it was only Emily Bannister, Danny's mother, who could bring them forward. He then went on to emphasize that when a man lives in a community for 31 years and has exceptionally credible witnesses who can attest to his peaceful nature, these witnesses must be taken seriously. The fact that Danny Hansford had a reputation for being a violent person should have been introduced by the state.
Cook reinforced Jones' statements on Dr. Metts' absence from the trial. "In fact, he was the senior investigator upon that scene under Georgia law as being the coroner. He had more experience in crime scene investigation than Ragan and Jordan and myself put together…. If Spencer Lawton had had the slightest idea that Dr. Metts had thought that this crime scene was contrived, he'd have brought him up here in a stretcher, if he'd had to, and there's no other way around it…when Joe Burton said, 'Well, I wasn't looking at Dr. Draffin's [the state pathologist] report; I was looking at Dr. Metts' report,' Spencer Lawton looked like he swallowed a rat."
Finally, Cook focused on Jim's right to self-defense in the face of imminent danger. He urged the jury to acquit Jim of any offense.
The jury took about four hours to convict Jim, rejecting options of voluntary manslaughter, as well as the self-defense or acquittal as charged. He was sentenced to life in prison. Lead defense counsel Bobby Lee Cook announced they would appeal the verdict.
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