Memory is a net; one finds it full of fish
when he takes it from the brook;
but a dozen miles of water have run
through it without sticking.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
Six months after the jury convicted Mariet Ford of kicking to death and burning his eight-month-pregnant wife and 3-year-old son, the handsome African-American former-collegiate-football star entered courtroom 61 dressed in a dark suit and harboring a new hope.
Once again, a crowd was watching Mariet. Once again, there was no time left for him on the clock. Instead of a ball, he had a murder conviction and his life was on the line.
After three delays, Judge John V. Stroud was ready to hear testimony in light of which the defense claimed Mariet deserved a new trial. Unless these witnesses could convince the judge otherwise, he was ready to sentence Mariet.
It was Friday, October 9, 1999.
On the same day three years earlier, a jury had deliberated just four hours in Southern California before finding a much more rich and famous football player – none other than O. J. Simpson – not guilty of murder.
Mariet was not about to be so lucky.
His defense attorney, William Gagen, planned to call three witnesses in support of his motion for a new trial: Mariet’s mother, Mariet and a previously unheard witness.
Deputy District Attorney Mark Curry had no witness lined up for rebuttal.
The black-robed judge took his seat on the bench. The court was called to order.
The attorneys said good morning “your honor.”
“All right,” the judge said.
He granted a place in his courtroom for cameras from The Bee and four TV stations. But the judge would not allow them to record the evidentiary portion of the hearing. That was the judge’s right.
A bailiff swore in Mariet’s mother, Carrie Ford.
She told the court that in the first days after the murders, she and her husband had flown from Mississippi to be with their son in his time of need. Several times while Mariet was staying at his brother Orrin’s, Mariet’s mother had talked with her son.
“In the course of those conversations, did he tell you anything about suspicious activity in the neighborhood within a week or a few weeks of the happening of the death of his family?” the defense attorney asked.
“Yes,” the mother said. “He did.”
“I’m going to object,” said the district attorney. “Hearsay."
“Objection sustained,” the judge said.
“And did you ever discuss that same subject with me?” the defense attorney asked.
“No,” Mariet’s mother said.
“With anyone connected with the defense of your son?” the attorney asked.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because,” Mariet’s mother said. “I thought Mariet was going to talk with you about it.”
This implied that in all of the emotional turmoil of the police treating him like a suspect in his family’s murder, Mariet had forgotten and his family had not thought to mention this key detail.
Was it as likely that he had massacred his family, doused their carcasses with gasoline and set them ablaze?
The mother’s testimony did not illuminate a clear answer. If the defense didn’t have any more than that, Gagen had been right in the third and final interview with the detectives; his client was on the tracks, headed for a lengthy prison sentence.
