LAKEPORT, Calif. – On Friday, at the end of several weeks of testimony, the case of a man on trial for a fatal 2015 shooting in Clearlake was handed over to the jury.
The closing arguments in the murder trial of Billy Raymond Mount, 36, of Clearlake wrapped up on Friday.
For the last six weeks Mount has been on trial for the July 2, 2015, shooting death of 40-year-old Steven Galvin of Clearlake.
Galvin, as he lay dying, told Clearlake Police Det. Ryan Peterson that it was “Cyclops” – or David Cox, a skinhead living in Clearlake – who had been responsible for his shooting.
However, Deputy District Attorney Sharon Lerman – a former newspaper reporter – told the jury in her closing arguments that Galvin's dying statement was the headline to the story, not the story itself, and that they needed to look further and they would see Mount was indeed the guilty person.
However, Mount's defense attorney, Andrea Sullivan, argued that the story is as straightforward as that headline suggested, and that Galvin was in fact a more truthful and accurate witness to the events that ultimately took his life.
As court got under way on Friday morning, a woman seated in the audience handed a letter for Judge Andrew Blum to Sullivan.
Sullivan asked to give it to the judge. Blum, in turn, asked if it was an ex parte communication, then added that it wouldn't be lawful for him to accept such a letter from anyone.
A short time later, another woman – Penny Wisterman, identified during testimony as Mount's girlfriend – also attempted to give Blum a letter by handing it to Sgt. Don McPherson, the bailiff, who promptly gave it back to her.
The trial also has seen attempts by audience members to influence the jury, a strict violation of law.
Members of the audience contacted jurors in the hallway outside of Blum's Department Three courtroom during a break on the day of opening arguments to speak on Mount's behalf. Blum had issued a stern warning at that time that anyone who attempted to contact the jury in that way could end up in jail.
Then, on Wednesday, the case came close to a mistrial when another woman contacted jurors during a break to tell them that Mount was innocent. The woman was brought into court and questioned, and only after the jurors were polled about the incident's possible impact on them – they said they could proceed – did court resume.
Lerman told Lake County News on Friday that the woman who contacted the jurors on Wednesday could be facing charges at some point.
Messing with the 'white boys'
Before closing arguments began, Blum read to the jury their instructions for handling the case before Lerman started her closing arguments.
Lerman told the jury that, about a week before his death, Galvin told his girlfriend that, “When you mess with one of the white boys, you mess with all of them,” a statement that she said is chilling for how accurate it turned out to be.
Galvin had spent months dealing with Cox, who believed that Galvin was responsible for taking a new $50 tablet Cox had purchased at Walmart from Cox's girlfriend's purse during a get-together.
Cox, a skinhead, had involved in the dispute his circle of friends, who along with Cox were involved in confrontations with Galvin right up until two days before he was shot.
Galvin was struck by a bullet from a .22-caliber pistol while walking through a neighborhood along 35th Avenue, collapsing in a front yard.
The bullet left only a tiny entry wound on his back and one on the front of his body, Lerman said, but the damage it did inside of Galvin's body would prove fatal, severing his aorta and irreparably damaging his liver and lungs.
“He was dead inside of 45 minutes and never got the chance to tell us anything else,” she said, besides his statement to Peterson that “Cyclops” – or Cox – had been responsible for the assault on him.
Lerman suggested that, with his last gasp, Galvin chose to name Cox after months of conflicts with the skinhead. However, Lerman argued that it actually was Mount who pulled the trigger because Mount, also a skinhead, was having problems with Cox and wanted to get out of trouble.
A small white pickup had been seen pulling up to where Galvin was before the shooting. Sean Whiteman, one of the trial's witnesses, had testified to having driven his white Chevy S-10 pickup around with Mount as a passenger.
Jeremy Green, a friend of Mount's, also had testified to having ridden around with the men on the day of the shooting, but was dropped off at a gas station and so didn't see the incident occur.
Several witnesses at the scene saw the small white pickup. There also were different statements about a bald man who got out of the truck, who had no facial tattoos and a light-colored goatee, and appeared to be arguing with Galvin, before the truck started to pull away and two shots were fired.
Showing pictures of Cox and Mount side by side, Lerman argued that the man at the shooting scene couldn't have been Cox, who has distinctive facial tattoos and at the time had a dark-colored mustache. Mount also is bald and had a brown goatee and mustache.
Lerman said there were several key pieces of uncontroverted evidence: the crime was committed from Whiteman's pickup, Mount and Whiteman were together on the day of the shooting, an AC/DC compact disc found in Whiteman's pickup had Mount's DNA and fingerprints on it, Mount had a tense meeting with Cox a short time before the shooting, and Whiteman witnessed the shooting, recounting details only a witness would know.
She said it was Whiteman who led police to the handgun used in the shooting, found in a culvert. She said the gun had prints and DNA on it, although the prints couldn't be lifted nor the DNA extracted by experts. “That gun was meant to remain hidden.”
She showed phone records for Penny Wisterman's phone, arguing that it was Mount who used that phone to call Cox. Earlier in the trial, the prosecution brought up a statement that Mount had reportedly made to Cox in that call, “I seen T-Bone. I got him,” but which on the stand last week Cox said he didn't remember making.
Lerman maintained that Mount showed that he intended to kill Galvin by shooting twice.
Cox had testified that he felt “1 percent” responsible for Galvin's death. Referring to that statement, Lerman asked the jury, “Do you believe that he directly ordered the defendant to kill Steven Galvin?” Or, she asked, was Cox an idiot because one of the people in his circle had taken it further, ending in the shooting.
Ultimately, she told jurors they didn't have to decide which of those two scenarios to believe because Cox didn't pull the trigger.
“The man who pulled the trigger is the person on trial,” she said.
The victim's own words
Sullivan began her closing arguments by playing video from Peterson's body camera, which had been played on the first day of testimony in the trial.
It showed Peterson arriving at the scene, where Galvin was being attended to by paramedics.
Peterson asked Galvin, “Who did this to you?” To which Galvin clearly stated “Cyclops” several times between gasps and stating, “I can't breathe.”
Sullivan maintained that a lot of evidence had been presented at trial that showed Mount didn't commit the murder. She said none of the witnesses at the shooting scene identified Mount, and no physical evidence on the gun or ammunition was connected to him.
Then there were what Sullivan called the “severe credibility issues” with a number of the prosecution witnesses.
“The most important evidence has been drowned out – the words you just heard,” Sullivan said, referring to Galvin's responses in the video. In that moment, when he said Cox's name, Galvin “told you everything you need to know.”
Peterson had experience dealing with injured people, Sullivan said. When he knelt down to speak to Galvin about who was responsible for the assault, “He got a clear, unequivocal answer: Cyclops.”
Sullivan said Galvin wasn't confused, as the prosecution argued. He knew what had happened to him.
Meantime, the prosecution has pointed the finger at Mount. “If you're going to call somebody a murderer, you need to have evidence to back it up,” she said, noting the only physical evidence comes off of a CD case.
She said the prosecution had twisted Galvin's words into a theory that Mount was on the outs with the skinheads and needed to commit the homicide, while the evidence, she added, suggested Cox was the killer.
Two of the eyewitnesses at the scene didn't pick Mount out of a line up, and one female witness had only seen Cox's photo a week before testifying at trial, Sullivan said.
Sullivan said the woman's memory was fragile, like writing on the sand along a beach. Over time, the details and clarity were lost.
She faulted the accounts of witnesses such as Jeremy Green, a friend of Mount's who was high on heroin when Peterson interviewed him, and Whiteman, who she said never recounted Mount making any phone call to Cox as they were riding around in the pickup.
While Galvin had never admitted to stealing Cox's tablet, he had said he would replace it. Sullivan said Galvin probably made that offer because he was terrified due to being accused by Cox.
Galvin was shot on July 2, at the start of the month, a time that Sullivan said was important to the people in this case because that is when they get their checks. Galvin had told Cox he would pay him at the start of the month, but months had gone by and it didn't happen.
“There's a clear progression of escalating violence,” said Sullivan, noting that there was a cycle of expectation and disappointment, and the third time – or the third month that had passed without Galvin paying Cox – was the charm.
Sullivan asked the jurors to think of the trial as a sale, not a race, suggesting they imagine how they would respond to Cox, Whiteman and Green if they showed up on the porch trying to sell a product.
She explained that in reaching a guilty verdict, the jurors must have an “abiding conviction,” meaning that, “a year from now, you're going to feel confident in that guilty vote.”
Sullivan added, “I urge you to give Galvin justice by listening to his last words.”
In her response to Sullivan's arguments, Lerman acknowledged that there were no angels in the case.
However, she maintained that the witness statements lined up, and while the female witness wasn't shown a picture of Cox until just before the trial, Lerman said the woman knew Cox, so she questioned what difference that made.
She said it was obvious that Galvin was confused, but he wasn't wrong when he named Cox. “He knew that whoever attacked him was one of Cyclops' white boys. He couldn't tell us the rest of the story.”
Cox's constant talk and complaining about the tablet, and enlisting people's help in his feud with Galvan, “that got somebody killed.”
She said it was many things, taken together, that pointed to Mount's guilt – from witness statements to the fingerprints and DNA on the CD case in Whiteman's truck.
“You must find him guilty of this murder,” she said of Mount.
With Lerman's arguments complete, Blum read final directions to the jury, which then left the courtroom.
Just after 4 p.m. the jury convened behind closed doors, asking the court for a large piece of paper as jurors began to consider the weeks of evidence in the case and, ultimately, to determine just what the case's final headline will be.
Editor's note: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that it was Lerman who asked to give the judge an ex parte letter, when in fact it was Sullivan.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
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