Judgment Day

Rae Carruth didn’t want this. Not the woman carrying his child to be shot four times and implicate him before enduring a slow, agonizing death.

The former NFL receiver surely didn’t envision sweating through a 12-week trial on first-degree murder charges that could bring him the death penalty.

And Carruth never dreamed that Van Brett Watkins, the confessed gunman, would describe the murder of Cherica Adams in chilling detail in courtroom testimony, then point the finger directly at him:

She was screaming. She was drowning in her own blood. I could hear gurgling sounds.

*

Carruth, a first-round draft pick of the Carolina Panthers in 1997, must long for the days when his greatest concern was holding onto the football. Guilty or not, his life became a tangled web in Charlotte.

Prosecutors say he planned and paid for Watkins to murder Adams and the unborn child on Nov. 16, 1999, because he did not want to be saddled with child-support payments, only to see the job botched. Adams, 24, died a month later but the baby boy, Chancellor Lee Adams, was delivered by Caesarean section six weeks before full term and lived.

The defense contends that Watkins acted alone, impulsively pulling the trigger out of rage because Carruth wouldn’t finance a marijuana deal.

The jury will hear the end of closing arguments and probably begin deliberations today, sorting through mountains of conflicting evidence wheeled into the courtroom every day.

This was the most heinous in recent violence involving pro football players. And the trial graphically illustrated how a seemingly mild-mannered, wealthy young athlete with no criminal record could become easily derailed.

Carruth, 26, didn’t drink, smoke or use drugs. He took kids under his wing, spending free time bowling and playing video games with them. He had numerous girlfriends, among them Adams, who sold houses by day and worked as a stripper by night.

But the shady characters who inevitably gravitate to athletes, the kind Carruth avoided through high school and college, latched onto him in Charlotte. The most noticeable in his circle was Watkins, 40, a career criminal with a history of mental illness. Watkins pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, rather than face a first-degree charge, in exchange for his testimony.

Prosecutors, however, did not call him as a witness, concluding that the case against Carruth was strong enough and Watkins too unpredictable.

Defense attorney David Rudolf couldn’t resist. He expected Watkins to corroborate testimony from his star witness, a jail guard who told the jury Watkins confessed to her that he angrily shot Adams while trying to track down Carruth for drug money.

Instead, Watkins turned on Carruth. In two days of roiling testimony, capped by a monologue in which he lectured the jury and castigated Rudolf, Watkins contended that the three-year NFL veteran had prodded him for months to kill the pregnant Adams.

“You can tell when somebody’s telling you [lies] and when somebody’s telling the truth,” Watkins thundered. “Remember what I said. [Rudolf] is representing a person who killed, had his baby’s mama and baby contracted out to kill.”

This was a defense attorney’s nightmare. Or was it?

Rudolf struck back, casting Watkins as an unreliable witness whose testimony revealed only that he is capable of murder at the slightest impulse.

Theatrical and combative, the dapper attorney with a trim gray beard and wire-rimmed glasses recounted the criminal history of the 290-pound admitted murderer: stabbing his brother, pistol-whipping a rival drug dealer, threatening his wife with a cleaver and setting a fellow inmate afire.

Carruth’s fate could hinge on how the jury perceived Watkins. Did his unreasonable behavior leave reasonable doubt?

*

That’s the bitch I was talking about--Rae Carruth.

-- Watkins, explaining for whom he had expressed a death wish

*

Carruth’s life has been like one of the pass patterns he ran as a Panther receiver.

He shook the bump-and-run of growing up in a rough Sacramento neighborhood, sprinted to the University of Colorado where he flourished on the field and in the classroom, then cut into the clear and became the 27th pick of the 1997 draft, signing a four-year, $3.7-million contract.

But he didn’t keep his eye on the ball.

Carruth impregnated at least three women and had financial problems, losing money in a pyramid scheme, getting sued over the purchase of a home and paying child support for a son in Sacramento.

The route was ended with a whistle--blown by his mother.

Carruth jumped $3-million bail the day after Adams died, Dec. 14, 1999. Theodry Carruth tipped authorities that her son was at a hotel in Wildersville, Tenn., 500 miles from Charlotte. He was found cowering in the trunk of a gray Toyota Camry and gave himself up peacefully. He’d been there 21 hours, curled up with $3,900 in cash, a few candy bars and a urine container. His pants were at his knees.

His mother had feared that the longer Carruth was a fugitive, the greater the danger he faced upon being apprehended. Asked what she would say to her son when he was extradited to Charlotte, she responded, “Your mom is not a rat.”

Theodry, a Sacramento social worker, and other relatives maintain Carruth’s innocence. They crowd behind him, nine to a row, each day in court, dressed smartly and hanging on every word. Carruth is expressionless, except to acknowledge his family with a sheepish nod and sorrowful smile each time he shuffles in knee shackles to his seat at the defense table.

“I’ve never wavered in my faith in my son,” Theodry said as the case wound down. “Maybe it sounds crazy to some people, but I know my son and he could not have planned that murder. He’s not a bad person.”

Erich Cranwell might agree. The hearing-impaired youngster from Greeley, Colo., was 6 when Carruth and his girlfriend, Amber Turner, drove more than an hour to attend his birthday party in 1995. Carruth, Colorado’s star receiver at the time, bowled with the boy and his friends.

Two years ago, Carruth befriended another 6-year-old boy, Jacobe Walker. The youngster’s mother, Starlita Walker, said her son played on a T-ball team coached by Carruth in the spring of 1999.

“Rae had a natural bond with Jacobe,” said Walker, who sits with Carruth’s family each day in court. “He didn’t have to adjust to being around him.”

Melvin Fontes, Carruth’s coach at Sacramento Valley High, said he watched a shy sophomore develop into a senior leader. Fontes, brother of former Detroit Lion coach Wayne Fontes, ended his teary testimony by saying he loved Carruth as a son.

Born Raelamar Theotis Wiggins, Carruth took the last name of Samuel Carruth, whom his mother married when Rae was a child. Samuel and Theodry Carruth divorced when Rae was an adolescent and Rae spent time living with an aunt in Texas and with other relatives in Sacramento.

At 5 feet 11 and 195 pounds, with excellent speed, Carruth had 107 catches his last two seasons at Colorado and earned All-Big 12 Conference academic honors while majoring in English. After a promising start, his pro career spiraled downward because of injuries.

Carruth led NFL rookies with 44 catches in 1997, but sat out nearly all of the 1998 season because of a broken foot and had been sidelined more than a month in 1999 because of an ankle injury when he was arrested. The Panthers waived him the day after he skipped bail. He could become the first person convicted of murder who was an active NFL player at the time of his arrest.

Recent high-profile murder trials involving athletes have ended with smiling defendants and a dismayed public. But Carruth is less famous than NFL Hall of Famer O.J. Simpson or Baltimore Raven linebacker Ray Lewis, and Charlotte is less cosmopolitan than Los Angeles and Atlanta, the cities where those cases were tried.

“An athlete is more easily humanized to the jury because more is known about him,” said James Coleman, a Duke law professor who has followed the Carruth trial. “Whereas with a typical defendant, all the jury knows is the crime.

“But an athlete like O.J. is in a different situation than Carruth. Not many people knew much about Rae Carruth until Cherica Adams was murdered. And Charlotte is smaller, with different values. The jury is drawn from suburbs and farms as well as the city.”

*

I never killed anybody until the time your client had me kill Cherica Adams.

-- Watkins to Rudolf

*

Already paying $3,000 a month in child support for a son he fathered in 1994 and on tenuous ground with the Panthers because of his injuries, Carruth was portrayed by prosecutors as frantic because Adams was pregnant.

Carruth had met Adams at a party and although they dated frequently, both saw other people during their yearlong relationship. Adams worked as a stripper at a topless Charlotte bar called the Diamond Club and friends say she often dated musicians and professional athletes.

One witness testified that Carruth’s teammates ridiculed him, saying, “[Adams] was trying to juice him for money.”

Carruth, prosecutors suggested, wanted a do-over, such as he got with the push of a button on the video games he played obsessively. He was playing one, in fact, at the home of teammate Hannibal Navies within an hour of the shooting.

But this crime wasn’t as clean as a video screen. After seeing “The Bone Collector” together at a theater, Adams and Carruth left in separate cars. Another vehicle, driven by Michael Eugene Kennedy, 25, and carrying Stanley Drew Abraham, 20, and Watkins, pulled alongside Adams.

Watkins, sitting in the rear seat, shot her four times, putting holes in her intestines and liver. Her pancreas and spleen also were damaged.

Adams called 911 on her cell phone and the transcript was played during lead prosecutor Gentry Caudill’s opening statement while Saundra Adams, Cherica’s mother, softly sobbed.

“[Carruth] was in the car in front of me, and he slowed down and somebody pulled up beside me and did this,” Adams told the dispatcher.

In her last waking moments before lapsing into a coma seven hours after the shooting, Adams again incriminated Carruth. From her hospital bed, she scribbled a note that read: “He was driving in front of me and stopped in the road. And a car pulled up beside me and he blocked the front and never came back.”

A nurse asked Adams the identity of the person who blocked her car and Adams wrote, “Rae.” A paramedic testified that moments after the shooting, Adams was asked who’d done this and responded, “Rae, my baby’s daddy.”

Caudill continued to trot out witnesses, more than two dozen in all.

Kennedy took the stand without a plea agreement and told jurors Carruth had given him $100 to buy the handgun Watkins used. Cell phone bills document that Carruth called Kennedy shortly after the shooting.

Candace Smith, an ex-girlfriend of Carruth, testified that after the murder, Carruth had asked her: “I can’t get in trouble, can I, because I didn’t actually pull the trigger?”

In rebuttal to a stream of character witnesses, Caudill produced two more ex-girlfriends, both of whom Carruth had impregnated. Both testified that although Carruth rarely raised his voice, he’d threatened to harm them and their children.

Michelle Wright, a Sacramento resident and the mother of Carruth’s son, told jurors Carruth said over the telephone, “Don’t be surprised if you get into a car accident.”

Turner, Carruth’s girlfriend in Colorado who eventually moved to Charlotte, said he blew up when she told him of her pregnancy. He insisted Turner have an abortion, and she did.

Turner recalled Carruth telling her: “I already told you I don’t want kids with you. Don’t make me send somebody out there to kill you. You know I would do it.”

Seemingly a dull functionary of the system, the gray-haired Caudill, 58, matched Rudolf’s sarcasm when necessary. When the defense introduced a brochure advertising a Mother’s Day gospel concert Carruth arranged for Theodry in 1998, Caudill asked the event’s organizer if Carruth had invited Wright, the mother of his first son.

Watkins bolstered the case, saying Carruth had agreed to pay him $3,000 to kill the baby and $6,000 to kill Adams and the baby. And it was Watkins who turned a salvo by Rudolf into a boomerang.

When the defense attorney asked Watkins why he told a jailer, “I hope the bitch dies,” Watkins pointed to Carruth and bellowed, “That’s the bitch I was talking about--Rae Carruth. That’s the bitch I was referring to, who got me into this. I did it because he made me do it.”

*

You’re hallucinating in taking this case to trial, thinking you’re going to win.

-- Watkins to Rudolf

*

As defenses go, this was the Minnesota Vikings, not the Baltimore Ravens.

Direct hits were few and even the skilled Rudolf’s best effort left gaping holes. But in a four-hour closing argument Monday, he painstakingly listed 10 factors that could create reasonable doubt, numbering on a large marker board.

“Rudolf did a good job of chipping away at the prosecution’s case,” said James Wyatt, a Charlotte attorney. “Most criminal cases are won or lost by establishing building blocks, pieces of evidence that create doubt in jurors’ minds.”

During the trial’s defense phase, Rudolf called a memory expert, who questioned the reliability of Adams’ dying words and note. He listed Kennedy’s drug convictions to bolster his argument that the shooting was the result of a drug deal gone wrong. He portrayed Turner as a scorned lover.

And he called Panther players William Floyd, Muhsin Muhammad, Leonard Wheeler and Navies to characterize Carruth as a regular guy with no violent tendencies.

The most compelling defense witness was Shirley Riddle, a sheriff’s deputy who said Watkins had told her the killing was an act of rage. Talking with Riddle in his cell in early December 1999, Watkins said he and Kennedy were chasing Carruth for drug money when they pulled alongside Adams’ car.

Watkins motioned for Adams to roll down her window and she made an obscene gesture at him.

“I lost control and started shooting,” Riddle recalled Watkins saying. “It was Rae’s fault. If Rae had just given us the money, none of this would have happened.”

Watkins denied making the comment and dismissed Riddle as “paparazzi.”

Rudolf called 38 witnesses over 12 days. Yet two people he did not call commanded as much attention.

One was Alondia Chaney, an Atlanta woman. Rudolf had said in his opening statement that she would testify she was on the phone with Carruth at the time of the shooting.

The other was Carruth. Where was he when Adams was shot? Why was he involved in a drug deal when several witnesses said he never used drugs? Jurors never heard Carruth.

“Rae wasn’t there, so he can’t say what happened,” Rudolf told reporters. “Rae doesn’t have a whole lot to add.”

*

Are you happy now?

-- Watkins to Carruth as court broke for a recess

*

Even if he gains his freedom, Carruth’s life is a shambles.

The state declared him indigent and is paying for his defense. Any remaining assets probably will go to his sons, Rae Jr., 6, and Chancellor, who is being cared for by Adams’ mother.

Carruth has spent more than a year in a 5x11-foot cell on the second floor of the Mecklenburg County Jail. He wrote a poem last summer, “How it Feels to Be Caged.” An excerpt:

Think about how many times you’ve been to the zoo. Ever wonder how it would feel if one of the animals were you?

Ever ask yourself if it’s possible for a gorilla to cry, if the eagles or condors miss the sky?

Ever look into the eyes of a giraffe or gazelle, and ask yourself how they survive in a lifeless hell?

I bet you’ve never sensed the animals’ pain, humility or rage. Because it’s impossible to conceive unless you’ve lived on both sides of the cage.

Relatives of Cherica Adams, who called her “Cookie” and remember the uplifting sayings she taped to mirrors and doors in her apartment, know pain. And rage. Her father, Jeffrey Moonie, sat in court every day on a blue-and-white striped stadium cushion, watching a trial in shades of gray.

“Yes, I believe he is guilty,” Moonie said the day testimony ended. “The 911 tape, the eyewitness testimony of Kennedy and Watkins and from Cherica, the evidence is there.”

*

God bless y’all.

-- Watkins’ parting comment to the jury

*

The 12 residents of Mecklenburg County charged with determining the truth about Carruth include seven white males, three black females and two white females.

Most experts believe Carruth has enough redeeming qualities to be spared the death penalty if found guilty of first-degree murder.

“The fact that he has a skilled attorney may help him avoid the death penalty,” said Coleman, the Duke law professor. “The jury has learned much about him, and not all the jury learned is bad.”

A hung jury would prompt a retrial. A verdict of not guilty would set Carruth free. Could he resurrect his football career? Lewis, acquitted of double murder charges in June, has done so spectacularly and will play in the Super Bowl on Jan. 28.

Many of Carruth’s relatives are Oakland Raider fans. It’s a mother’s dream, seeing her son trade an inmate’s jumpsuit for a silver-and-black uniform.

“I want Rae to go to the Raiders or the 49ers,” Theodry Carruth said. “Somewhere close to home. I’m going to keep watch on him.”

If he’s found guilty, she’ll have to write.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

CARRUTH CHRONOLOGY

Nov. 16, 1999

The pregnant Cherica Adams, 24, is shot four times while sitting in her car in Charlotte, N.C. Moments later, she implicates Carolina Panther receiver Rae Carruth in a 911 call. Her baby boy, Chancellor Lee Adams, is delivered by emergency Caesarean section.

Nov. 25, 1999

Carruth is arrested on charges of conspiracy and attempted murder. Van Brett Watkins, Michael Eugene Kennedy and Stanley Drew Abraham are arrested and charged within days.

Dec. 6, 1999

Carruth is released from jail after posting $3-million bail.

Dec. 14, 1999

Adams, who had lapsed into a coma seven hours after the shooting, dies. The four defendants are charged with first-degree murder.

Dec. 15, 1999

Federal authorities find Carruth hiding in the trunk of a car 500 miles from Charlotte.

Dec. 16, 1999

The Panthers release Carruth and the NFL suspends him indefinitely.

Dec. 30, 1999

A paternity test proves Carruth is the father of Chancellor, who is in the custody of Adams’ mother, Saundra.

July 5, 2000

Carruth declines an offer by prosecutors to plead guilty to second-degree murder.

July 31, 2000

Watkins admits to pulling the trigger and pleads guilty to second-degree murder.

Aug. 1, 2000

Carruth’s mother, Theodry, brings Chancellor to visit his father at the jail.

Sept. 6, 2000

The court allows Carruth to be tried separately from Abraham and Kennedy.

Nov. 14, 2000

Jury selection is completed and seven white men, three black women and two white women are seated.

Nov. 20, 2000

The trial begins with prosecutor Gentry Caudill and defense attorney David Rudolf presenting opening arguments.

Jan. 11, 2001

Testimony ends. The prosecution took 11 days to make its case, and the defense took 12. Rebuttal arguments lasted another five days. Judge Charles Lamm calls a four-day recess because Caudill has flu.

Monday

Caudill and Rudolf give closing arguments.

Today

Caudill is scheduled to give a closing rebuttal. Lamm will then give jury instructions and deliberations will begin.

The Victim/The Gunman

Van Brett Watkins, a career criminal with a history of mental illness, has accused Rae Carruth of hiring him to murder Cherica Adams, 24.