As a woman left the witness stand after describing the final minutes of Straughan Lee Griffin's life, his fiancee crumpled into the arms of her best friend, who had taken off a week from work to be by her side around the clock.
The judge called a bench conference, and quick whispers, starting with a Connecticut lawyer, rippled person to person through three rows of people watching the trial of one of Griffin's alleged killers.
Outside the Anne Arundel County courtroom, friends clustered around Griffin's survivors, offering a funny reminiscence or a silent walk down the corridor for a fleeting escape.
For a week - one the victim's mother had predicted would be "the most difficult time of my life" - Griffin's Southeast Virginia family and his fiancee were so cocooned by friends that even longtime victim-assistance advocates were impressed.
The Griffins went nowhere alone, not even to the ladies' room during short breaks in the emotionally pitched trial of Terrence Tolbert 21, who was convicted last week in the 2002 carjacking that left Griffin dead. Much of the after-court time was filled recounting happy times with Lee Griffin, as he was known, a successful entrepreneur and sailing buff whose generosity extended to some of Annapolis' poorest residents.
Family members said the presence of Lee's close friends, many of whom left work and family hundreds of miles away to sit beside them, cannot be overestimated. The sad reunion, they said, was a tribute to a man whose dry wit and thoughtfulness could inspire friends from all walks of life to continue to come together so that neither they nor his family would be alone.
"It was the closest I felt to Lee being there," said Ginny Rawls, the victim's fiancee, who lives in northern Virginia. She arrived at Griffin's home in the tony historic district of Annapolis on Sept. 19, 2002, to find police officers and crime-scene tape. Griffin, 51, had been shot, carjacked and run over by his own Jeep. The couple had planned to spend a weekend at the beach, discussing wedding plans.
"It's a shared pain. We all cushion each other," said Linda Griffin, the victim's sister.
Late Wednesday, after five hours of deliberations, a jury convicted Tolbert of first-degree murder. Another suspect, Leeander Jerome Blake, 19, Tolbert's neighbor in the Robinwood public housing complex, successfully challenged the admissibility of his statement to police and cannot be tried short of action by the U.S. Supreme Court.
