After five days of opening and closing statements and testimony and cross examination of witnesses by the state and the defense, it took the jury just 30 minutes to find Good guilty. Once the verdict was in Judge James Williams sentenced Good to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Good was scheduled to be transported Friday afternoon to Kirkland Correctional Institute, the reception and evaluation center for the S.C. Department of Corrections. A determination will then be made as to where Good will serve his sentence.
Good, 29, was charged killing Fernandez who disappeared Sept. 3, 2008 after finishing her shift at Ellen Sagar Nursing. Her skeletal remains were found Jan. 7 by a utility worker beneath some power lines off Highpoint Road in the Carlisle area.
The state’s case against Good was a largely circumstantial one that included a phone log that showed that a signal from a cell phone he owned had bounced off a tower in the Carlisle area the night of Fernandez’s disappearance; two witnesses who said they heard three gunshots from the back of Good’s house the night Fernandez disappeared; three spent bullet casings from a burn pile behind his home; a witness who said he heard Good destroy Fernandez’s cell phone in Jonesville and pieces of the cell phone cover recovered from the roadside; the same witness testified about Good cleaning his car that evening and disposing of a floor mat. The timing of Good’s movements from the time he picked up Fernandez was also the subject of much contention between the state and the defense.
The circumstantial nature of the case against Good was constantly hammered on by the defense which pointed to the inability of the state to produce a cause of Fernandez’s; definitive evidence linking Good to the site where her remains were found; and the lack of a murder weapon. The defense sought to provide other explanations for the circumstantial evidence against Good including testimony that Good’s cell phone was in the possession of a relative who lived in Carlisle and that he was cleaning paint that had been spilled in his car.
Twice during the trial the defense moved for direct verdict of not guilty based what it said was the lack of evidence against Good. Williams rejected both motions.
The most dramatic and powerful moment of the trial came when Good’s and Fernandez’s 6-year-old son took the stand told the court that his father had killed his mother. The child said that the day of his mother’s disappearance they’d played together and then he’d went to his room and his parents to theirs. Then there was what he said was a camera flash that left his father smiling and his mother dead. He said his father then buried his mother in their backyard.
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