20 Moments – Acquittal
Donna Woodlee was recently acquitted on murder charges. She and attorney John Mays talk about the ordeal of jail, women's prison and her murder trial during an interview in the Morgan County Courthouse Law Library. Photo by Gary Cosby Jr. 8/26/09
In one week we had simultaneous murder trials going on in Morgan County. One trail led to the conviction of a University of Alabama Huntsville professor who was convicted of killing his wife then dumping her body in the Tennessee River in Decatur. The other trial resulted in Donna Woodlee being acquitted of murder in the death of a man whom she killed in defense of her son.
I was assigned to meet Woodlee and her attorney at the Morgan County Courthouse for an interview. I thought she would be fairly emotional but I didn’t know whether it would be tears or laughter. It turned out to be tears with a smile mixed in from time to time. I never, ever shoot with a 50mm lens but this time I did. I found an old, manual focus 50 in a locker at work. It has some internal fungus and a couple of other problems but I had it in my bag anyway. Most of the time, a little internal dust or even fungus won’t kill your image quality. In fact, you can have a pretty messed up front element and still make good images. Just keep that rear element in good shape and you can do pretty well.
I moved around with the 50 on the D3 shooting available light and just shot while she described what happened during the night she killed a man. Then the emotion came. I had the right lens, the right angle and the right moment. That doesn’t always happen.
We don’t usually have two murder trials running at the same time in Morgan County. We have a fairly peaceful place to live in most respects. This was unusual and we had our resources committed to covering the higher profile trial of the UAH professor while it was underway. Court rules do not permit us to photograph the accused inside the courthouse so we have to wait outside to catch them coming and going. This basically meant we missed Woodlee’s trial altogether. That is why we were doing this story to start with. I doubt I could have made a better picture even if I had been in court shooting the trial.
Photo copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
