A "Shark" Goes After the Evidence

Wayne Williams' defense was ready to attack

"Our case is going to be to you like a puzzle," District Attorney Lewis R. Slaton, 59, told jurors during opening arguments in the long-awaited case of Georgia vs. Wayne B. Williams. The 23-year-old black freelance photographer has been accused of killing two of the 28 young blacks who were slain during Atlanta's notorious 22-month series of murders. "At the conclusion there will be enough pieces in the puzzle that you will see the truth." Meanwhile, he suggested folksily, "Sit back and enjoy yourselves as much as possible." Slaton even urged the jurors to show sympathy for the state's witnesses, warning about the sly tactics of the chief defense trial lawyer, Alvin Binder, 52, a white attorney from Mississippi. "Mr. Binder has a national reputation as an expert in cross examination . . . put yourselves in their place."

Sarcastic and aggressive, Binder promptly lived up to his reputation, which one of his colleagues on the defense team described as "a shark--and a winner." Speaking in a slow drawl, Binder portrayed the defendant as "a free spirit with proud parents" who had "lavished all of their love, money and attention on this young son." Williams, the son of two schoolteachers, had been a bright child and an honor student, active in his church and the Cub Scouts. Insisted Binder: "You don't get a killer from a boy that was raised like that boy was."

Binder did note one fault in his client: "He could be in a little better physical shape." Williams, who is 5-ft. 7-in., 160 lbs. and appears pudgy, grinned at the remark. The point was pertinent: the prosecution suggested that Williams hoisted both of the victims, Nathaniel Cater, 27 (146 Ibs.), and Jimmy Ray Payne, 21 (138 Ibs.), over a 4-ft. wall on the James Jackson Parkway Bridge and threw their bodies into the Chattahoochee River. The defense insists that Williams was not strong enough to do this.

As testimony began, Binder effectively displayed his cross-examination talents. He forced Dr. Saleh Zaki, associate medical examiner of Fulton County, to admit that he had first listed the cause of Payne's death as "undetermined." Only after Williams was arrested, on June 21, did Zaki change Cater's death certificate to cite "homicide" as the cause. Asked Binder: "Did you not state [to the FBI] that had it not been for other killings you would have ruled Payne's death an accidental drowning?" Said Zaki: "I may have said something close to this, but not at all this." The grilling continued. "Doctor, do you know how Jimmy Payne died?" "He died as a result of asphyxia." "Do you know what caused that?" "I have not been able to establish the exact mechanism for that." Zaki conceded that Payne could conceivably have drowned, but he also insisted that bruises on the body and a lack of water in the lungs made it unlikely.

The main evidence against Williams, as Prosecutor Slaton admitted, is circumstantial. Police Officer Fred Jacobs testified that he saw a car driven by Williams "appear to come from a parked position" on the bridge about 3 a.m. on May 22, shortly after another policeman heard a splash in the water. Cater's body was found floating in the river two days later.

The prosecutor will try to link fibers found in Williams' home and car with similar fibers found on the bodies of both victims. Even before the state presented any testimony about the fibers, Binder tried to undermine the linkage by getting police to admit that a number of people had handled Payne's body. His implication: even the police could have been the source of fibers found on the victim.

Whether the eight black and four white jurors are convinced by Binder's trial skills will not be known until the end of the trial, which is expected to last at least six weeks. The jurors were selected in only five days, a short time considering the volume of pretrial publicity. A former Detroit policeman explained why he thought he could judge impartially. "I looked at Mr. Williams," he replied to questions during jury selection. "I looked at his mother and father. No one knows if that man is guilty. Nobody's heard the evidence." As the prosecution began assembling its "jigsaw puzzle" of evidence last week, the defense appeared to be pouncing effectively on some of the pieces.

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