In another case that year, lawyer Willie Gary negotiated his first million-dollar settlement. Dancy ran a stop sign, Charlie Hayes was forced to swerve off the road and crashed into a barn, at which point he was decapitated by a piece of falling timber.
The case involved a black truck driver named Charlie Hayes and an elderly white woman named Ella Dancy. In his second year working for himself, he achieved local notoriety when he settled a case for $225,000 against an insurance company. After the trial, there were no funds to continue to pay Gary, so he decided to open his own law office and did so on January 17, 1975. Despite losing the verdict, in part because he and the public defender who hired him were unprepared for the trial, the defendant was eventually given a retrial and his sentence was reduced to life in prison. He became involved in a death penalty case prior to finding out if he'd passed the bar exam. Gary talked his way into a job at the Office of the Public Defender in Stuart, Florida. The Burial fact-check reveals that Willie E.
