The Defense Promised the Jury a Scientist. It Rested With No Witnesses and Won the Last Word

Faith Hedgepeth was 19. She was a UNC biology student who wanted to be a pediatrician, and on the morning of September 7, 2012, her roommate found her dead under a comforter in the Chapel Hill apartment they shared. For nine days of testimony in a Durham County courtroom, the State of North Carolina has worked to prove that Miguel Enrique Salguero-Olivares broke into that apartment, raped and sexually assaulted her, and beat her to death with a rum bottle. On Wednesday, October 21, 2026, the jury was supposed to start hearing the other side.

It never did. By 10:37 in the morning, the evidence in this trial was over.

The defense had told this jury on the first day that it would hear from the defense's own DNA scientist. It told the State the same thing in chambers and on the record. Two defense witnesses were sitting at the courthouse Wednesday morning waiting to be called. Instead, Miguel Salguero-Olivares stood up, answered the judge's questions about his right to testify, and said four words: "I'm not going to testify." His lawyer, James Rainsford, then told the judge there would be no evidence for the defense. None. Not a witness, not a document, not the scientist.

And then the defense won something the State had been ready to take from it. For about forty minutes on Wednesday morning, it looked like the defense was going to lose the right to speak to the jury last, over a piece of paper the jury had never seen. By 10:30, the judge had reversed himself, and the defense will close this case on Thursday with nobody from the State getting up after it.

That is Day 10. A promise to the jury that was not kept, a right the defense almost lost and kept, a motion to dismiss that was denied on all four counts, and then, in the afternoon, with the jurors at home, an hour and a half of the judge and the lawyers going through every word of the law those jurors will hear. Some of the most important decisions in this whole trial were made in that afternoon session, and most people will never watch it. I did, and I want to walk you through it, because the way a jury is told the law decides as much as the evidence does.

Miguel Salguero-Olivares has pleaded not guilty. He has been in custody since his arrest in September 2021. He is presumed innocent, and nothing in this article is a finding. It is what was said in open court on Day 10, and the questions I think it leaves for Thursday.

If you're just finding this trial, I wrote up the openings on Day 1 here. The short version: the State says one man's DNA, on the bottle it calls the weapon, on Faith's boxer shorts, in samples from her body and on a food bag with a handwritten note, proves what happened. The defense has spent nine days saying DNA cannot tell a jury when or how it got there, and that the 2012 investigation left questions it never answered, starting with a swab of presumptive blood from the bathroom door frame that nobody ever tested and that was later lost.

What the jury has to decide, and what it does not

Before the day, the frame. This jury is not being asked who killed Faith Hedgepeth. It is being asked whether the State has proved four charges against this man, each one element by element, beyond a reasonable doubt. Those four charges went to the jury on Wednesday, after the judge denied the defense's motion to dismiss them.

First-degree murder, on two possible roads. The first road is premeditation and deliberation: an unlawful killing, with malice, that the killer thought about beforehand, however briefly, and carried out in a cool state of mind. The second road is felony murder: a killing committed while the defendant was committing another serious felony, here first-degree rape or first-degree sexual offense. On that road, the State does not have to prove he planned to kill. It has to prove the other felony, and that the killing happened in the course of it.

First-degree rape. As the instruction now reads, the State has to prove vaginal intercourse, by force or threat of force, against Faith's will and without her consent, and that the defendant employed a dangerous or deadly weapon or inflicted serious personal injury.

First-degree sexual offense. The same structure, for a sexual act other than intercourse.

First-degree burglary. Roughly, that he broke into and entered an occupied home at night, and that at the moment he went in, he intended to commit a felony inside.

Keep those in front of you. Every piece of Day 10, from the defense's silence to the State's edits to the instructions, changes how hard or how easy one of those elements is for the jury to find.

The motion nobody had to decide

Court opened at about 9:30 with the jury out of the room. The judge, Keith O. Gregory of Durham County Superior Court, said he had a colloquy to do, which is a set of questions a judge puts directly to a defendant, on the record, about a right only the defendant can give up. But first, one of the prosecutors had a motion.

The State had filed it the afternoon before. Before trial, under North Carolina's discovery law, the defense had given notice that it would call a DNA expert and had handed over a report. The State told the judge that after the trial had already begun, the defense had given it a second report from that expert, with new material in it. North Carolina requires the defense, once the State asks, to hand over its expert's report, opinion and "the underlying basis for that opinion" within a reasonable time before trial. The State was not asking to keep the expert off the stand. It was asking the judge to keep the expert from testifying about anything in the late report. The prosecutor said she did not think it would be an issue "unless and until he testifies."

The lawyers went to the bench. The defense asked the judge to do the colloquy with the defendant first. And the motion never came back, because within ten minutes there was no expert to testify.

I want to be careful here, because there is an easy story to tell and the record does not tell it. Nobody said on the record why the defense decided not to call its expert. The State's motion arrived the night before the defense was due to start, it threatened to cut the expert back, and the next morning the defense called no one. Those three facts sit next to each other. I believe they are connected, and that's my opinion. I can't prove it, and I don't know whether the decision was made because of the motion, in spite of it, or weeks earlier.

One more thing about that expert. On Day 1, the defense told the jury about a UNC biology professor who teaches forensics. The name the State gave the expert on Wednesday did not sound like the name the defense gave in its opening, on either of the two recordings we have of that morning. It may be the same person heard badly, or it may be a second expert. I can't confirm either, so I am not naming anyone.

"I'm not going to testify"

The judge asked Miguel Salguero-Olivares to stand and affirm. Then he took him through it slowly, and I think the slowness was deliberate.

Did he understand that he had a right to testify? That his lawyers could not stop him? That the prosecutors could not, and the judge could not? Then the judge asked a question that sounds simple: who is the only person in this courtroom who can stop you from testifying?

"Nobody that I know," the defendant said.

That is not the answer. The judge did not move on. He told him to think about it and talk to his lawyers. After a moment with them: "Nobody can prevent me to testify but me." And who is the only person who can make you take the stand? "Myself."

Had he made a decision? He had. "I'm not going to testify."

He said he made that decision of his own free will. Nobody was preventing him or threatening him. Asked whether he understood that once his lawyers rested, he would not be allowed to come back and present testimony, he talked to his lawyers again, and said he did. Neither the State nor Mr. Rainsford had any questions to add. The judge found that the defendant was aware of his right to testify and had made the decision "of his own volition, free will, and not under the force of threat."

WATCH: CASE STORY PT 39 Faith Hedgepeth Murder Trial: Defendant Tells the Judge 'I'm Not Going to Testify' / Pt 39

Here is why that exchange matters more than it looks. The right to testify belongs to the defendant personally. It is not his lawyer's to give away. If there is ever a conviction in this case, one of the first things an appeal could ask is whether this man understood that the choice was his and nobody else's. The judge's patience on "nobody that I know" is what answers that question. When a defendant gives the wrong answer to a question like that, a careful judge stops and makes sure the right one is understood, and this judge did. I think he handled it well.

Then the judge asked the question the whole morning had been built around. Would there be evidence for the defendant?

"No, Your Honor," Mr. Rainsford said.

WATCH THE CLIP Faith Hedgepeth Murder Trial: Defendant Won't Take the Stand and the Defense Calls No Witnesses

What the jury does with his silence is set by law. The jury will be told, and the defense did not object to the instruction on Wednesday afternoon, that the defendant's decision not to testify cannot be held against him in any way. He has no burden to prove anything. The State cannot comment on his silence in its closing. Those are some of the oldest protections in American criminal law, and they apply here exactly as they would anywhere else.

The defense had one small worry about that instruction, and I'll come back to it, because it says something about how carefully this defense is guarding it.

The promise in the opening

There is a second thing about the defense's decision, and the State raised it within minutes.

The judge asked the prosecutor how long the State's closing argument would be. She said it was hard to say: "we were told in opening that there was going to be evidence for the defense," she said, and the State had been told the same thing "multiple times in chambers" and on the record. Two defense witnesses had been called to the courthouse that very morning.

WATCH THE CLIP Faith Hedgepeth Murder Trial: State Says Defense Promised Evidence and the Last Word Is at Stake

This is where I want to slow down, because we keep score on promises made to a jury, and we keep score on both sides.

An opening statement is not evidence. The judge told the jury that on Day 1. It is a forecast. The defense forecast its own scientist, and the jury will not hear one. That is a real cost, and the defense chose to pay it. A juror who remembers the opening may well ask on Thursday: where was the professor?

But there is a line here the State has to walk on Thursday, and it is a narrow one. The State is allowed to argue the evidence. It may tell the jury that its DNA evidence stands without a defense expert to contradict it. That is fair comment on what was proved. What the State may not do is turn the missing expert into a comment on the defendant's silence, or suggest that the defense had some duty to prove anything. The defense has no burden. A defendant can sit through a trial without saying a word, without calling a single witness, and still be found not guilty if the State has not proved its case. How close the State comes to that line on Thursday morning is one of the things I'll be watching most closely.

And here's the other side of the score. The defense did deliver something, just not through its own witnesses. Over nine days, nearly everything the defense set out in its opening came out of the State's witnesses on cross-examination: the bathroom door-frame swab that was never tested and then lost, the questions about the roommate's hand, the investigative leads nobody followed, the handwriting exhibit the State's own case agent walked back on Monday. The defense rested on the State's evidence because it believes the State's own evidence is where the doubt is. That is a legitimate way to defend a case, and whether it was the right call is going to be decided by twelve people on Thursday.

The exhibit the jury never saw

Now the fight of the morning, and it started with a detail most people missed on Monday.

On Monday, Day 9, with the jury out, the defense argued a motion to strike some of what the State's case agent, SBI Special Agent in Charge Justin Heinrich, had told the jury on Friday: his description of the roommate's many interviews as "remarkably consistent," his account of what guided his investigation, and his line that whoever left the DNA would be "the person responsible." The judge struck part of it and told the jury to disregard it. And the defense did one more thing. It had its own written motion marked as a defense exhibit, Defendant's Exhibit 13, and admitted into evidence, outside the jury's presence, so it would sit in the record. The prosecutor wondered at the time what the point was, since the motion was "part of the record anyway."

Here is why that matters. North Carolina has a rule, Rule 10 of the General Rules of Practice for the Superior and District Courts, that decides who speaks last to the jury. If the defendant introduces no evidence, the defense gets the final argument. If the defense puts on evidence, the State gets it. The last word is the last thing twelve people hear before they are told the law and sent to decide. Lawyers fight over it for a reason.

On Wednesday, the judge went to the exhibit list with the clerk. "Number 13," a defense exhibit, a motion to strike, admitted outside the presence of the jury. "So the defense has presented evidence," he said. He said the court had told the defense on the record on Monday that offering it would cost the defense the last argument. The prosecutor agreed: the defense "asked to have it admitted. And I indicated on the record that the defendant would lose the last right of argument."

Mr. Rainsford did not agree with any of it. He didn't believe the defense had presented evidence, and he said so. The motion was never moved into evidence "for purposes of the trial," he said, and taking away the defense's last argument over it would be "a Sixth Amendment violation, a Fifth Amendment violation, a 14th Amendment violation," and a violation of the State constitution's versions of those rights. On the cleaner of our two recordings of the morning, he also said he did not remember the court saying any such thing: "I don't take great notes. I don't remember that." The judge answered: "I said that on the record."

I went back to our own recording of Monday to look. On our transcript, Exhibit 13 is marked, the State says it is not sure of the purpose "because it's part of the record anyway," and the court admits it "into evidence outside the presence of the jury." Our transcript does not show the court or the State saying at that point that the defense would lose the last argument. That does not mean it wasn't said. A transcript made by software can miss a sentence, and it could have been said somewhere else in the day. The court reporter's record will settle it, and the judge asked the court reporter to find the passage. But I want you to know what our record shows, because a ruling that rests on a warning ought to rest on a warning everybody can find.

The judge called it "an important issue" and gave both sides twenty minutes to research it. The defense asked to let its waiting witnesses go home. Not until you rest in front of the jury, the judge said.

"Wait a second, Judge Gregory"

The twenty minutes became half an hour. When the judge came back, at about 10:21, he said, "Maybe I can cut to the chase."

He and his judicial fellow had spent the break on the law. He read Rule 10. Then he read from a 1932 decision of the North Carolina Supreme Court, State v. Raper, which describes the defendant's right to the last argument as "a substantial legal right, of which the defendants could not be deprived by an exercise of judicial discretion." He read the test for whether an item has been put into evidence: whether a party offered it as substantive evidence, or so the jury could examine it and decide whether it illustrates, corroborates or impeaches a witness.

"Well, this exhibit was not shown to the jury."

That was the whole answer, and he saw it. He said an appellate court would look at the question fresh, owing nothing to his call, and could say "wait a second, Judge Gregory," if the jury never saw this document, the defense never lost its last argument.

WATCH: CASE STORY PT 40 Faith Hedgepeth Murder Trial: Judge Rules the Defense Keeps the Last Argument After All / Pt 40

Then he did something I want to give him real credit for. He asked the State whether it had anything the other way.

One of the prosecutors, the man the judge addresses as "Mr. D.A.," said the State had not found "any definitive case law." Every case they found, he said, "involve[s] evidence that's introduced in front of the jury, which is why the state is very hesitant to request that we get last argument." He floated a second theory, that some of the exhibits the defense used on cross-examination might have gone beyond impeachment and counted as putting on evidence. But he called it "a gray zone," with "dire consequences on appeal," and said he was "still on the fence."

The judge ruled. He said he would err "on the side of caution and being prudent." He noted that the defense had offered the exhibit, that it "wasn't even asked to be sealed," and that the State had said at the time it was unnecessary. But for the court to take away the last argument "when defense exhibit 13 was not shown to the jury," he said, "it would be negligent." Then: "I'm not saying there's gonna be a conviction ... But what if there were a conviction? I'm not gonna let it be reversed based on the fact that this exhibit" caused a court to say the defense had offered evidence.

"You will have the last right to make the last argument in this matter." And: "What's key is that this jury doesn't know anything about this exhibit."

The State was invited to object, and it did not.

WATCH THE CLIP Faith Hedgepeth Murder Trial: Prosecutor Says He's 'On the Fence' and the Judge Reverses Course

Let me say plainly what I think of this, because it's the best moment of the day for the process. A judge said one thing at 9:45. By 10:30, after reading the law and asking the side that would benefit from his first position whether it had any authority, he said the opposite, and he explained exactly why. That is what is supposed to happen. Judges are not supposed to defend their first instinct. They are supposed to get it right, and the State deserves credit too. A prosecutor who says "we're on the fence" and declines to push a judge toward an error that could undo a conviction is doing the job right.

But I also want to ask the question this exchange leaves behind, and I'll ask it fairly. The test the judge read is about what the jury sees. It was always going to come out this way once someone looked at it. So why did the morning start with the court telling the defense it had already lost the last argument? If the warning on Monday was given, and our recording does not show it, the defense was told on Monday that a piece of paper filed with the court, never shown to a juror, would cost it a substantial right. If the defense had believed that and changed its trial plan to call witnesses because of it, would anyone ever have known? I don't think anyone did anything wrong here on purpose. I think the system worked because a defense lawyer refused to accept it and a judge was willing to read before he ruled. Not every courtroom has both.

The practical result is significant. In a case built on DNA statistics on one side and investigative gaps on the other, the defense will now speak to the jury last, with no State rebuttal after it.

The evidence closes

The judge then laid out the rest of the trial. The defense would rest in front of the jury. The jury would be told it had heard all the evidence and sent home. Closing arguments would start "fresh tomorrow morning at 9:30," and "these arguments will not be separated, meaning that we're not going to let one party give a closing" one day and the other the next. After the jury left, the defense would make its motion to dismiss at the close of all the evidence, and "if the state survives," the lawyers would come back at 11:45 for the charge conference. Mr. Rainsford had no objection; both sides, he said, would probably want their people in court for the final arguments.

The jury came in at about 10:36. The judge hoped they'd enjoyed their day off, maybe at the fair. Then he asked Mr. Rainsford whether there would be evidence for the defense.

"No, Your Honor. We will be not offering evidence and we will be prepared to close tomorrow."

"The record shall reflect you've heard all the evidence in this matter," the judge told the jury. He explained that before closing arguments and his instructions, he had to confer with the lawyers about the law, and rather than make them wait around, he was sending them home until Thursday at 9:30, when they would hear the closings, then the law, and then begin deliberating. No opinions, no research. The jurors left their pens and pads on their chairs.

So, after nine days of testimony, the jury in the trial of Miguel Salguero-Olivares has heard only the State's evidence and what the defense drew out of the State's witnesses. Nothing else will be added.

Four counts, one sentence

The jury filed out at about 10:39. Mr. Rainsford stood.

"I would renew the motions to dismiss all of the charges against my client. I do not think the state has met its burden to prove each and every element of each and every offense for the same reasons verbatim that I argued at the close of the state's case."

He folded in everything he had argued on Monday without repeating a word of it. The State renewed its own arguments and asked the judge to deny the motion. "The motion to dismiss respectfully is denied as to all of the charges."

A motion to dismiss at this stage asks a narrow question. The judge does not decide whether the State has proved anything beyond a reasonable doubt. He asks whether there is substantial evidence of each element of each charge, and of the defendant being the one who committed it, looking at the evidence in the light most favorable to the State and leaving every contradiction for the jury. It is a low bar, and with DNA evidence the State says puts the defendant's genetic material in Faith's body and across the room where she died, I expected the denial. Renewing it now, at the close of all the evidence, is what keeps the question of whether the evidence was sufficient open for any appeal.

Here's something the denial tells us about Monday. Our recording of Day 9 ended as the defense was moving to dismiss at the close of the State's case, before anything was argued or decided. Wednesday's words, "renew" and "the same reasons verbatim that I argued at the close of the state's case," mean that motion was argued on Monday after our feed went dark, and the renewal implies it was denied then. We never saw that argument. The court reporter did.

It took about a minute and a half on Wednesday, and the judge gave no reasons. That is ordinary for this ruling. It still bothers me a little that the most consequential legal question a defendant can raise before a verdict, whether there is enough evidence to let a jury convict him at all, was decided on our record in one sentence, with the argument behind it happening where none of us could see it. That is nobody's fault. It is how it went.

The afternoon nobody watches

The morning's broadcasts ended there. One station signed off at 10:41, its reporter telling viewers the cameras would be back for the closing arguments. For a few hours it looked like the charge conference would happen entirely off any record the public could see.

It didn't. A full replay of the courtroom feed carried the afternoon, and court came back at about 2:00 in the afternoon Eastern, more than two hours after the 11:45 that had been set. It ran an hour and a half. We put the whole thing up as Part 41.

WATCH: CASE STORY PT 41 Faith Hedgepeth Murder Trial: Judge Agrees to Say 'Alleged Victim' After Defense Objects / Pt 41

A charge conference is required by North Carolina law. Before closing arguments, the judge must hold a recorded conference with the lawyers, out of the jury's presence, and tell them which offenses, which lesser offenses and which instructions he is going to give, so the lawyers can argue to the law the jury will actually hear. It is usually painstaking, and this one was. The judge said so himself near the end: "this is painstaking, but this is what we have to do for charge conference."

His method was simple. He went through the draft top to bottom, one pattern instruction at a time, and asked the State and then the defense for objections on each. North Carolina has a book of pattern jury instructions written by a committee of judges, and this judge leans on it hard. He said over and over that he had only pulled from the pattern and created nothing. "I have to keep saying that," he said at one point. And at another: "I abide by the pattern instructions because I notice on some pattern instructions grammatically, it does appear to be incorrect in some areas ... but I just give what the pattern says."

Most of the general instructions went through without a word: the function of the jury, burden of proof and reasonable doubt, credibility, the weight of the evidence, circumstantial evidence, interested witnesses, photographs as illustrative and as substantive evidence, identification of a defendant as the person who committed a crime, expert testimony, and the definition of intent. A new instruction was added at the State's request, the one that tells jurors to abide by the court interpreter's translation, since some testimony was given in Spanish. The defense asked that it read "may have been given" instead of "may be given," and the judge agreed.

Then the instruction on the defendant's decision not to testify. The defense had no objection to its words. It objected to its spacing. If the jury gets written copies, the defense said, and the spacing on that one page looks different from the others, "maybe the jury looks at it and says, Oh, this is just boilerplate, that's not as important." He put it on the record under federal and State due process. The judge said the font was the same and noted the objection, and his judicial fellow fixed the spacing.

That might be the smallest objection I've ever written about, and I want to say why I'm writing about it anyway. This defense put its whole case on the proposition that the State's evidence leaves doubt, and on the defendant's right to say nothing. The instruction that protects that silence is the one page the defense will most want the jurors to read and believe. A lawyer who notices that it looks different on the page and says so is doing his job.

Two roads to first-degree murder

Then the substance. The judge told the lawyers he had given the jury both theories of first-degree murder, premeditation and deliberation, and felony murder, and that on the felony murder road the jury could choose first-degree rape or first-degree sexual offense as the underlying felony. He said he "threw the kitchen sink at everything" in the draft, on the understanding that the parties would ask for deletions. They did, and almost all of the deletions were the State's.

Here is the list, because I think it is the most revealing thing in the afternoon.

The State asked to remove every reference to an attempt. The felony murder instruction no longer says "or attempted to commit." The rape and sexual offense instructions no longer say "or attempting to commit." The State is not asking the jury to find that he tried. It is asking the jury to find that he did.

The State asked to remove "or displayed" from the weapon element of rape and sexual offense, wherever it appeared. The question is whether the defendant "employed" a dangerous or deadly weapon, not whether he showed one.

The State asked to remove the parentheticals in the rape and sexual offense instructions that tell the jury "the force necessary to constitute rape need not be actual physical force. Fear or coercion may take the place of physical force," and that "consent induced by fear is not consent at law." The defense did not object. The State's theory is actual force, with a weapon, and it does not want the jury looking anywhere else.

The State asked to remove, from the sexual offense definition, the part that covers penetration by an object. The defense did not object.

The State first asked to remove the line in the rape instruction that says "the actual emission of semen is not necessary," then talked to co-counsel and changed its mind. "Co-counsel and I are changing our minds," the prosecutor said, and asked to keep it in. The defense said it did not think the line was necessary but did not object. It stays.

And in the premeditation instruction, where the pattern lists circumstances from which a jury may infer premeditation and deliberation, the State asked to delete two of them: "conduct of the defendant before, during and after the killing," and "threats and declarations of the defendant." The defense did not object.

Stop on that last one. Those are the circumstances that usually carry premeditation in a murder case: what the person did before, what he did after, what he said. The State asked to take them out of the instruction. I read that as the State telling the court, in its own way, that it does not have evidence of what this defendant did before or after, or of anything he said or threatened, that would show he planned a killing. That is my reading, and the prosecutor did not say it in those words. But a party does not usually ask a judge to take a path to its own conviction out of the instruction unless it knows there is nothing on that path. What is left for premeditation is the injuries themselves.

"With a deadly weapon"

There was one deletion the defense fought, and the State backed down.

In the felony murder instruction, the second element says that while committing first-degree rape or first-degree sexual offense, "the defendant killed the victim with a deadly weapon." The State asked to remove "with a deadly weapon." The prosecutor said the pattern instruction he was looking at for felony murder ends with "the defendant killed the victim," and that the statute requires the underlying felony to involve a deadly weapon, not the killing itself.

Mr. Rainsford took a minute, checked, and said, "I think the language should stay." The pattern committee had included it, he said, and taking it out "in light of the other language becomes confusing to the jury," which touches on State and federal due process.

The State conferred, and withdrew. "I'm gonna withdraw my request given given that the pattern jury instruction committee and their wisdom um decided to put that in there. I I don't think it's should be in there, but um I think it's safer to keep it in."

That phrase, "safer to keep it in," is the State thinking about an appeal, and it ran through the whole day. The same instinct made the State hesitate to fight for the last argument in the morning. A prosecutor who expects a conviction thinks about keeping it, and the State has been careful on Day 10 about every issue an appellate court could later use to send this case back.

For the jury, it means that on the felony murder road, the State has to prove that the killing itself was done with a deadly weapon. The State's evidence says that weapon was the rum bottle.

"Victim," or "alleged victim"

Then came the moment that became the title of Part 41.

After the State finished its edits to the murder instruction, the judge asked the defense if it had anything further. Mr. Rainsford's co-counsel spoke. "Your Honor, through the uh through this uh charge, it switches between the use of the phrase victim and alleged victim. We would just ask that for each reference to victim be consistent with the with using the phrase alleged victim."

The State left it to the court's discretion.

"I'm gonna keep it the same then, respectfully," the judge said. "I don't think I don't think it's reversible if the court respectful is following the pattern instruction. I understand the request ... but I'm just gonna keep it the way it's listed."

The defense objected, under federal and State due process. Telling the jury "the victim," as opposed to "the alleged victim," the defense said, "puts it in uh the jury in a position that the court is commenting that something actually has occurred."

The judge turned to the State. If the court read "alleged victim" throughout, was there a concern? "No, sir." So the judge changed it. "Based on the objection and based on the fact that the district attorney's office um is not concerned if we just change it to alleged victim, then we will honor that request."

I'm glad he changed it. I want to ask why it took an objection.

Think about what a jury hears in that room on Thursday. The person reading the law to them is the judge, the one person in the room every juror is told is neutral. Faith Hedgepeth is dead, and nobody disputes that. But this jury is being asked to decide whether she was raped, whether she was sexually assaulted, and whether the State has proved this man killed her. When the judge's own instruction calls her "the victim" of the crimes the jury has not yet decided happened, and then in the next paragraph calls her "the alleged victim," the inconsistency itself says something. A juror can fairly hear the judge as having made up his mind about part of what they are supposed to decide.

I don't think Judge Gregory meant that, and I don't think the pattern committee meant it either. But the presumption of innocence should not depend on a defense lawyer catching the wording in a draft. Neutral language before a verdict should be the default, and here it was the exception the defense had to ask for, and had to object to before the court would grant it. The judge's first answer was that it wasn't reversible. That is the wrong question. Whether something will get a conviction reversed and whether it is fair to the person on trial are different questions, and the second one should come first.

It got fixed. The defense did its job. I'd like to see the next draft start where this one ended.

All or nothing

Then burglary, and the State made a choice that may matter more than anything else it did Wednesday.

"The state just simply wants first degree burglary or not guilty," the judge said, summarizing the State's request. "Yes, sir. That's correct."

The pattern instruction for first-degree burglary comes with lesser included offenses: second-degree burglary, felonious breaking or entering, non-felonious breaking or entering. The State asked to remove every one of them. It said there was no evidence to support anything less than first-degree burglary. The defense, after a moment, did not object.

The State then made the same choice on rape. "The state would ask that only first degree rape be submitted and none of the lesser included offenses." No objection from the defense. And on sexual offense: "the state would ask that your honor not instruct on any lesser included besides first degree sexual offense." No objection.

Only the murder charge keeps a middle option. The jury can find first-degree murder on either theory, second-degree murder, or not guilty.

So on three of the four counts, this jury has two choices. Guilty of the highest charge, or not guilty.

Here's why that matters, and why I think both sides made the same bet from opposite directions. A lesser included offense gives a jury somewhere to go when it believes the State has proved most of a charge but not all of it. Take the rape count. If a juror believes the State proved intercourse without consent but is not convinced the State proved a weapon was employed, a lesser option would let that juror convict of something less. Without one, that juror has to choose between first-degree rape and not guilty. The same is true for burglary. If a juror is not sure the State proved that the person who came through that door intended a felony at the moment he walked in, there is no second-degree burglary or breaking or entering to settle on.

The State is betting that a jury convinced by the DNA will not stop at a lesser option and will go all the way. The defense is betting that a jury with any doubt about any element will have to acquit. Both sides agreed to remove the middle. That is a legitimate strategic choice for both, and I'm not criticizing it. But I want you to understand, when the verdict comes, that this jury was given no room in between, and that it was the lawyers who decided that, not the evidence.

The pictures and the three phrases

At the end of the substantive instructions, the defense came back to premeditation.

The pattern instruction lists circumstances a jury may consider to infer that a killing was premeditated and deliberate. After the State's deletions, the remaining ones include lack of provocation by the victim, "use of grossly excessive force," "infliction of lethal wounds after the victim is felled," and "brutal or vicious circumstances of the killing," along with the manner and means of the killing. The defense asked the judge to remove those three phrases.

The argument was emphasis. The instruction already tells the jury it can consider the manner in which or the means by which the killing was done. Adding three more phrases, all about force, the defense said, points the jury at the same thing three or four times. And "infliction of lethal wounds after the victim is felled" raises a question the evidence may not answer: whether Faith was still alive after the first blow, whether she died within seconds, and whether any sexual offense happened before or after she was struck. Those phrases, the defense argued, are "confusing," "unduly prejudicial," and a due process violation under the federal and State constitutions.

The judge did not wait long. "I actually think that all three, um, the jury could see just from those pictures, they could decide if they thought it was grossly excessive force." He saw a distinction between excessive force and wounds after she fell, and said the jury could look at "the totality of the circumstances in those pictures." The State objected to removing any of them; they are supported by the evidence and by case law describing ways the State may prove premeditation by circumstantial evidence. "The burden is on us," the prosecutor said, "and these are ways that we can prove it."

"I'm not gonna remove the those those brackets," the judge said. "I'll note the objection to my non-removal, but I do think the evidence supports this." Overruled.

I think the judge's ruling is within the law, and I want to be honest that the pattern exists for a reason. Those circumstances are ways the courts have said premeditation can be inferred, and the State is allowed to ask for them when there is evidence. But put the afternoon together. The State took out "conduct of the defendant before, during and after the killing." It took out "threats and declarations of the defendant." What is left to carry premeditation is the brutality of the injuries, and the judge's own reason for keeping those phrases was "those pictures."

So here is my question for Thursday, and it's the one I think the defense will ask. If the State has no evidence of anything this man did or said before or after that night that shows a plan, is the severity of the injuries alone enough to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the killing was premeditated and deliberate, rather than a killing done in rage? The State itself told this jury on Day 1 that the defendant acted "in a fit of rage," and that the jury "may not see or hear evidence about what exactly precipitated his rage." A fit of rage is the State's word. Premeditation and deliberation mean a cool state of mind. The jury will have to decide whether those two things can be true about the same act, and the instruction now points them straight at the photographs to decide it.

That is also why the felony murder road matters so much. If the jury is not convinced on premeditation, felony murder does not require it. But felony murder requires the jury to find first-degree rape or first-degree sexual offense first.

The verdict sheet, and what twelve people must agree on

The verdict sheet came next, and it produced the afternoon's last real fight.

For first-degree murder, the sheet asks whether the jury finds the defendant guilty, and if so, on which basis: premeditation and deliberation, the felony murder rule, or both. The State first asked that the felony murder line be broken down further, into felony murder based on first-degree rape and felony murder based on first-degree sexual offense.

This is where the judge explained why he had sent the lawyers a blog post that morning from the UNC School of Government. Under North Carolina law as the post describes it, he said, the jury need not be unanimous about which felony underlies a felony murder conviction. If some jurors find the killing happened during a rape and others find it happened during a sexual offense, they can still convict of felony murder together. He read from the post, citing a 2008 decision of the State Supreme Court, and an earlier Court of Appeals decision that found a similar instruction posed no unanimity problem. Then he asked the State what it really wanted, given that.

The State withdrew its request. Leave it as one line.

Now the defense wanted it broken down. "I'm objecting to it not being broken down," Mr. Rainsford said. Not separating the two felonies, he argued, means "you will have an issue of juror unanimity," and that is a due process violation under the federal and State constitutions. "I know what the blog post says, but respectfully I disagree. Uh a future appellate court may look at the issue differently. Every case is different, the facts are different."

The judge noted the objection and kept the sheet as the State asked. The prosecutors agreed with his reading of the law.

I'm not going to tell you the judge got the law wrong. He read it out loud, he gave both sides the source before the hearing started, and he followed what the appellate courts have said. But I want you to see what it means in this case. Under this verdict sheet, a jury could convict Miguel Salguero-Olivares of first-degree murder on the felony murder theory without twelve people agreeing on which crime he committed before the killing. Six could be sure it was a rape and six could be sure it was a sexual offense, and the sheet would read the same. The law allows that. Mr. Rainsford's objection is preserved, and if there is a conviction on that theory, an appellate court may get to decide whether he was right that every case is different.

One more point on that. The rape and sexual offense are separate counts on the same verdict sheet. Each one, on its own count, must be unanimous. So if the jury convicts of felony murder but cannot agree on either felony as its own count, that tension would show up on the verdict sheet itself. The judge flagged a related issue from the same blog post: if a jury convicts of felony murder and of the underlying felony, the court may be required to arrest judgment on the felony. That is a sentencing question for later, if there is a later.

The rest of the sheet was simple. First-degree burglary or not guilty. First-degree rape or not guilty. First-degree sexual offense or not guilty.

"I want them to listen to me"

A few logistics came up that tell you how this judge runs his courtroom, and one of them goes to something bigger than this trial.

The jurors will get written copies of the instructions, twelve of them, but only after the judge has read the instructions aloud and sent them back to deliberate. The four alternates do not get copies unless one becomes a juror. "When I start reading the instructions, the jury's not gonna have the instructions," he said. "I want them to listen to me. Because if I give them the instructions, they're gonna read ahead." One of the lawyers had asked about copies for the four alternates, and agreed once the judge explained.

The State asked to have two prosecutors give its closing. Allowed. The defense asked for the same option. Allowed, "and you have you have the option of last argument, obviously." The State estimated its closing at more than an hour and not more than two. The judge said he does not push lawyers on time, but wants both closings done the same day, with short breaks between speakers for the court reporter.

Then the State raised something that I think deserves attention. In its closing, the State said, it plans to use images that have not been published to the media. It hopes to run two versions of its slides, one for the jury and one for the broadcast feed with those images redacted. If it can't make that work, the prosecutor asked "that nothing that's being presented be broadcast."

The judge did not accept that. He said he had a concern if the court were to stop the media from broadcasting exhibits that have already been broadcast to the public, because that goes "towards once again the issue about these courts being open," and he did not want to be reversed for it. He told the State to work on the two-version plan, and if it couldn't, to come in Thursday morning prepared with law that would allow him to block exhibits that were already public, and he told the defense to be prepared to argue why he can't. The issue was tabled until the morning.

I'm with the judge on this. Courts in this country are open. There are good reasons to keep some images of a homicide victim out of a public broadcast, out of respect for Faith and her family, and the judge said he ruled on the broadcasting of exhibits before trial. But a request that "nothing" in a closing argument be broadcast is a request to close the most important hour of a public trial to the public. The judge saw that and pushed back. Watch for how it's settled Thursday morning, before the jury comes in.

The draft goes to both sides by email tonight. Corrections come in the morning. Then the clerk makes the copies, and the closings begin. "But we're good sheriff until tomorrow morning at 930."

Where the State's case stands

So here is where I think this trial is, on the evening the evidence closed. This is my opinion. I am not on this jury, and theirs is the only verdict that counts. But I've watched all ten days, and I'm going to tell you what I think.

On identity, the State's DNA is the strongest thing in this trial, and after Wednesday it stands with no defense scientist against it. The State says the defendant's DNA is on the rum bottle, on the boxer shorts, on the food bag with the note, and in samples from Faith's body, and his palm print and thumbprint on a wine bottle. The defense's answer to all of that came from cross-examination of the State's own analysts and investigators: what DNA cannot say about when and how, the swab nobody tested, the investigation that took nine years. If I were sitting in that box, I would find the DNA hard to get past. I would also want an answer to how a man the State says was a stranger came to be in that bedroom, and the State told the jury on Day 1 it may never give one.

On first-degree rape and first-degree sexual offense, I think the State's proof depends on more than DNA. DNA can show contact. These counts require force, lack of consent and a weapon employed or serious injury, and they require the jury to be satisfied about what happened and in what order. The defense told the judge on Monday that the State's own sexual assault nurse examiner could not say a sexual assault occurred. The State has removed every fallback from the rape and sexual offense instructions and every lesser option from the verdict sheet. On these two counts, I think the State has asked the jury for everything or nothing, and these are the counts where I believe a careful juror could most reasonably stop.

On first-degree burglary, the State has to prove that whoever entered that apartment intended a felony at the moment of entry. The State's own account from Day 1 is that the door was left unlocked because the two women shared one key. Intent at the door is something a jury can only infer from what happened inside. With no lesser option, the jury either infers it or acquits.

On first-degree murder, the felony murder road depends on the rape or sexual offense counts. The premeditation road, after the State's own deletions, rests on the injuries and the pictures, in a case where the State told the jury its own theory was rage.

Whether the State has proved each of these, beyond a reasonable doubt, is the question twelve people get on Thursday. On the record I've seen, I think the State's case is strongest on the DNA and weakest on the elements that depend on what happened inside that bedroom, and the State's own edits to the instructions on Wednesday point at the same places.

Thursday at 9:30

The jury comes back Thursday, October 22, at 9:30 in the morning.

Before the jurors come in, watch for three things. Whether the corrections to the instructions are settled. Whether the State found a way to keep its unpublished images off the broadcast without closing the closing argument. And whether anything from the charge conference is put back on the record.

Then the State argues, possibly with two prosecutors, for an hour or two. Watch how it handles the defense expert who never testified. Fair comment on the strength of its own evidence is allowed. Anything that touches the defendant's silence, or suggests the defense had to prove something, is not. If the defense objects, that objection is what preserves the issue.

Then the defense argues, last, with no State rebuttal behind it, because a judge read the law in a recess and changed his mind. Expect the swab, the roommate, the nine years, the handwriting exhibit the State's own agent walked back, and the burden of proof. Expect "safer to keep it in" to cut both ways.

Then the judge reads the law to twelve people who will not be holding a copy, because he wants them to listen. He will tell them the defendant's silence cannot be held against him. He will call Faith the alleged victim, every time, because the defense asked. He will tell them the State has two roads to first-degree murder and no middle on three of the four counts.

And then they go back and decide whether the State proved it.

Faith Hedgepeth was 19. She deserved an investigation in 2012 that chased every lead it had. The man on trial deserves a process in 2026 that holds the State to every element it charged. On Day 10, the process mostly held. The judge reversed himself when the law said he should, the defense caught a word the draft should never have used, and the State, more than once, chose the careful road. Thursday is when we find out whether all of it was enough.

Every Part, every clip and every article on this trial is on the Faith Hedgepeth trial coverage page. If you want the afternoon in full, watch Part 41 start to finish. It is the law this jury will hear, and you can decide for yourself whether it was written fairly.