The Perry March murder trial, day one: Testimony

State has saddled itself with many loose ends to tie up before closing arguments

Email | Print By Walker Duncan

When Perry March was extradited to the United States last August, there was rampant speculation about new evidence leading to his arrest nearly ten years after his wife had disappeared. In the months since his return, it has become clear that such is not the case. As the state opened its case today it became clear that the outcome of this trial will largely depend on the weight jurors are willing to give to largely circumstantial evidence against March.

As in the last trial, Janet March's mother Carolyn Levine was the first witness called to the stand. In the course of her lengthy testimony she described the lead up to her daughter’s disappearance, and the marital trouble that had been brewing for the years prior to the night of August 15, 1996.

She testified that during the rocky years preceding August of 1996 she had advised and attempted to help the troubled couple in resolving their issues believing that their marriage was not beyond hope.

Levine then went on to describe the her interactions with March in the days immediately following the disappearance and in the following months, walking the jury through the full dissolution of that relationship and describing the bitter custody battles that have raged ever since.

The state offered one enticing morsel to the jury as Levine ended her testimony. She was asked to identify an envelope that prosecutors will deal with more thoroughly in the coming days. In the envelope, allegedly found among the family effects following the sale of the house where Perry and Janet March had lived, is said to be a condom, its wrapper and a collection of sexually explicit letters that Perry March wrote to a paralegal while he was working with the Nashville law firm Bass, Berry & Sims.

The rumor mill asserts that this is largely the reason March left the firm.

Levine withstood a light cross-examination from the defense team. Following her testimony, the prosecution called over a dozen witnesses to both to provide small bits of information about the day before and the day after Janet March disappeared, and also to describe the dysfunctional relationship the couple shared and March’s behavior following August 15.

By themselves, the details discussed by these witnesses lack obvious significance (one witness merely testified that there was a pair of pliers present in the kitchen on the 15th). Only the coming days will show how well the prosecution can weave them together for the jury into a coherent picture of what happened the night Janet March disappeared.

Arguments continued this morning at 8:30.