Frederic Tokars Trial: 1997

The vituperative courtroom atmosphere was not made any better by Judge James G. Bodiford's refusal to grant strenuous defense demands for a mistrial over Court TV's decision not to show Lawrence's face. "I'm not telling Court TV what they can and can't do," the judge said sharply.

Although Tokars chose not to testify on his own behalf, his brother, Andy, took the stand to refute allegations of an unhappy home life. "I was over there a lot.… I can honestly say I never saw a fight, I never saw them raise their voices to each other.… I never saw any kind of anger towards each of them at all in the many, many years that I had been there."

In closing, Charron said that although Tokars didn't pull the trigger on the sawed-off shotgun that killed his wife, he was the mastermind, he was "the person who had the most to gain."

For Cook it all came down to Lawrence's credibility. "I can say with absolute candor I have never seen such an audacious liar in my life. He can be glib and even defraud smart lawyers when he wants to."

Fellow defense attorney Berry echoed this skepticism. When arrested for the murder, he said, Lawrence was prepared to do "whatever it takes" to escape the electric chair by framing Tokars with information fed to him by his lawyers while he was in jail. Berry likened the case against Tokars to "a chain. If you break one link in that chain—Eddie Lawrence—that chain is going to make you fall.… If you don't believe Eddie Lawrence, you can't convict Fred Tokars."

On March 8, the jury decided that Lawrence had been telling enough of the truth to convince them, and they found Tokars guilty of murder with malice. Jubilant prosecutors, confident that this time Tokars would get the chair, saw those hopes crushed just four days later when the jury imposed yet another life sentence.

More than $1 million of Georgia taxpayers' money had been spent and not a thing had changed.