Canyon of secrets

Sandra Grisham (in court): It was a day that dawned as bright as any other on the Sam Donaldson ranch. But that was a brightness that soon was to be dimmed in horror. Because Cody Posey decided his world would be better off without his family.  He made an unbelievably vicious and selfish decision that his belief was more important than the most basic universal human belief of all:  that life is precious.

From the start, prosecutor Sandra Grisham made her position clear—that Cody Posey should be convicted of three counts of first degree murder.

Cody was only 14 at the time of the killings, so this was children’s court. But the prosecutor was determined to send him to an adult prison for life.

And she said this was not a trial about abuse, and it would not play out like some case of a battered wife.

Grisham: This is not an issue about a battered woman.  Battered women don’t kill their husband and then turn around and kill their sister and their kids.

The prosecution began with someone who could be called a star witness – ABC newsman and ranch owner, Sam Donaldson.

Prosecution: What did you see sir?

Sam Donaldson: I saw a large, reddish, dried swath which I identified clearly as blood. I’d seen, I covered the war in Vietnam, saw a lot of it there. And walked to the kitchen and immediately saw, the red swath that was on the porch was on the kitchen floor.

Donaldson testified for about 15 minutes then left quickly, ironically refusing to answer any questions.

Back in court, the prosecution zeroed in on its most important piece of evidence: the confession tape.

Grisham:  Ladies and gentlemen, the first thing we want to know is why.  Why? But there’s no legal need to prove the why. The legal need is to prove how these killings occurred, where they occurred, and who committed them.  Cody Posey himself answers these questions.

Grisham argued almost everything the jury needed could be found on the videotape.

She let Cody’s own taped confession describe how he had calmly loaded and hidden the gun.

Deputy (tape): Okay, so you come back from the barn, you have, where did you have the .38?

Cody Posey: Tucked in behind, behind my back right here.

How he had shot his step-mother first while she was reading a book.

Deputy: What happened?

Cody: I shot her in the head.

And how he was laying in wait, like an assassin.

Cody: I was standing right here and he came, come up to the door and I hit him right here, in the head.

And then, most disturbingly of all, how he had shot his stepsister, who had never laid a finger on him.

Deputy: What about Marilea, what did you do to her?

Cody: I shot her so she wouldn’t go tell or nothing.

This was anything, the prosecutor argued, but some confused, abused boy.

Larson: The sense you get from the defense is that he snapped and from the point he snapped he was not responsible for what happened.

Grisham: That’s absolute nonsense.  How can anyone possibly claim that? If his father had come up to him and slapped him in the corral and he’d taken that rake and beaten his father to death and then shown a great deal of remorse afterwards, that’s a different case. You don’t snap and lose your mind and then—let’s see, I’ve got to replace these bullets with bullets that’ll do the job.  You don’t describe killing people as hitting them if you noticed in his confession. He actually used an assassin term. 

Cody:  I hit him right here, in the head.

Grisham laid out Cody’s careful attempt to conceal his victims, breaking a window to make it look like burglary, even writing a fake note to help his alibi.

Grisham: What worries me about this child is that he was so cold about the killings. Totally without any kind of empathy towards his sister whom he shot four inches from her face.  Most of us cannot imagine being able to take someone whose face we just blew off and be able to actually handle the body.  That takes someone extremely cold.

In addition, Grisham wanted to show the killings were pre-meditated.  She called Paul Posey’s older brother, Verlin to the stand.

Grisham (in court): Do you know if at some point in time Paul started locking up his guns in a gun safe?

Verlin: Yes ma’am.

Gary Mitchell: Objection, it’s hearsay.

What the prosecution wanted the jury to hear but was prevented—was this veiled threat Verlin said Cody made to his dad and stepmom one night when they went out and told him they’d be back later.

Verlin Posey: Cody got up and said, “Well how do I know it’s not an intruder and how do you know I won’t shoot you?” And they told him, “Cause we’re going out, we’ll be right back.”  And this went on and on.  He kept repeating it.  “Well how do you know I won’t think you’re an intruder and I won’t shoot you?”  That’s why they had to lock gun safe.

When Cody took the stand, prosecutor Grisham accused him of suddenly coming up with incidents of abuse he’d never shared with any of the doctors who saw him before trial.

Grisham: Cody, in fact, you remember a lot more incidences than you told any of these doctors about, didn’t you?

Cody Posey: I believe so, yes ma’am.

Grisham: When did you remember all those? Never mind, your honor, withdraw the question. Pass the witness.

Larson: So, you don’t even think he was abused?

Grisham:  That’s correct. He couldn’t use the abuse excuse on his sister. I don’t believe that his parents abused him either.  As I said, I think his parents were good, honorable people doing the best that they could to raise a very difficult child.

The clean cut teenager, she suggested, was a liar.

Grisham: You had a lot of problems with lying, a lot of arguments over lying, didn’t you?

Cody Posey: In my past I have lied, yes, ma’am.

Grisham:  Stolen?

Cody Posey: I had stolen one time.

Grisham: Cheated?

Cody Posey:  I believe so.  I believe it was in a card game.

Grisham: So you only cheated one time too?

Cody Posey: To my recollection.

Grisham:  You did illegal drugs?

Cody Posey:  I believe—as we covered earlier, I had experimented with marijuana.

She wanted to prove he was not suffering from any mental condition when he killed his family. First, she took on the defense psychologist:

Grisham: When he takes the snake shot out because “I didn’t think that would do the job,” that is indicative of some thinking and some intent, isn’t it?

Dr. Christine Johnson:  Yes.

Grisham: And when he reloaded it with .38 that he did think would do the job, that again is some indication that he is thinking, isn’t it?

Dr. Johnson: Yes.

Grisham: And that he is intending to kill?

Dr. Johnson: Yes.

Then, she called her own expert witness: a psychiatrist from the University of South Florida, an expert on kids who kill.

Grisham: And what was he thinking?  What did he report to you that he was thinking doctor?

Dr. Wade Myers:  Should he run away? Should he tell a teacher or tell his teachers or should he just live with it?

Grisham: And did he tell you what he decided to do?

Dr. Myers: Yes, in his words, “He said, nothing else worked, might as well just do it, so I did.”

The prosecution appeared to have the wind at its back. But would it last?

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