Objection!: How High-Priced Defense Attorneys, Celebrity Defendants, and a 24/7 Media Have Hijacked Our Criminal Justice System

by Nancy Grace

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  Edward Bennett has been on death row since a jury sentenced him to die in 1988 for the shooting death of a Las Vegas convenience-store clerk. Bennett’s ad soliciting pen pals states, “My life has gone afoul enough that my heart melts when I see someone else’s troubles. . . . The only compensation I’ve ever found is to love people and so I’d like to love you. What do you like? Where does it hurt the most? I would like to be there for you.” That may be true for Bennett’s online “friends,”

  but not for his victim or his grieving family left behind.

  A F I N A L W O R D

  I have finally accepted that I will never know why a human chooses to rob another of his life, but I do have the common sense to know that some people will never be rehabilitated. Some people are simply so evil, so uncaring, that they will forever pose a threat to innocent individuals like the victims I listed above. I have learned that there is no such thing as locking killers up and throwing away the key. Just think about Charles Manson and his “disciples.” They were sentenced to death following the Manson-family murders in 1969, and then, in a political twist, the death penalty was banned in California in 1972. Manson’s sentence was commuted to life. Eventually he ran out of appeals, but each time he has come up for parole, it has wisely been denied.

  Even though the death penalty was reinstated in that jurisdiction in 1978, Manson and his followers continue to live on California tax dollars and conduct business on Web sites that encourage a cultlike following. Who knows what an ever-changing parole board may decide in the future? One thing about the Grim Reaper—he doesn’t grant parole.

  The fact that these murderers are not only living large behind bars but tormenting victims online is wrong. These crimes call out for the death penalty.

  I rest my case.

  O B J E C T I O N !

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  T H E R E V O L V I N G D O O R

  A K A O U R P A R O L E S Y S T E M

  There is a theory that keeping criminals off the streets is the best way to reduce crime. It makes perfect sense, except for one tiny detail: Most criminals, even the hard-boiled ones, are sent away for a relatively short period of time. Fleeting time behind bars doesn’t rehabilitate inmates; too many reemerge into society even more dangerous. Theoretically, parole is the ability to get out of jail under state supervision much earlier than the sentence from the judge dictates. For instance, a trial judge can sentence a child molester to thirty years behind bars and have that conviction and corresponding sentence affirmed on appeal.

  But—and it’s a powerful but—the parole board in that jurisdiction will release the defendant whenever it sees fit, or when the bed space is needed, be it after ten years, five, or three. Too often, these decisions result in more kidnappings, rapes, and murders.

  The case of Dru Sjodin’s disappearance and murder is a particularly disturbing example of how a violent criminal falls through the cracks. The criminal complaint against her alleged assailant, Alfonso Rodriguez Jr., said that the crime was “especially heinous, cruel and depraved,” and involved “torture and serious physical abuse.” Detectives confirm that they found traces of Sjodin’s DNA in blood collected from Rodriguez’s car. They also found a knife in the trunk that matched a sheath found near Sjodin’s car at the Grand Forks mall where she disappeared in November 2003.

  A convicted rapist, Rodriguez has a long history of involvement with illegal drugs, dating back to his youth. He has admitted to problems with alcohol, marijuana, hashish, and LSD. His record also includes being charged and tried in 1979 for sexually assaulting a woman he abducted from the parking lot of a department store at knifepoint. Rodriguez allegedly raped her twice before releasing her.

  But the Minnesota jury returned a not-guilty verdict. A guilty verdict 2 7 8

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  in a separate attempted kidnapping case, again with a female victim, that same year put him in prison for twenty-three years, and he was then freed.

  As I detailed earlier in the chapter, at the time of Rodriguez’s release he was eligible for civil commitment, continued time behind bars, but it never happened. Rodriguez fell through the cracks, and now Sjodin is dead. Federal authorities took the case away from Minnesota, a non-death-penalty jurisdiction, as the case crossed state lines and involved the federal crime of kidnapping. Whether the feds will seek the death penalty remains to be seen, but in any event Rodriguez is a perfect example of why the parole system is not working. Sources state that within two hours of the announcement of Dru’s disappearance, Rodriguez’s mother was concerned that her son was involved. How could he have been released? A known and highly dangerous registered sex offender? Rodriguez had been designated a Level 3 sex offender, or one who showed the highest likelihood of committing more sex crimes—

  it was no secret. And his alleged pattern with Dru is similar to the modus operandi of his other rapes and kidnapping. Incredible. Rodriguez should have remained locked behind prison bars, but he wasn’t—and Dru Sjodin paid for that mistake with her life. Here’s the kicker: Most parolees serve even less time than Rodriguez did—much less. This statistic is even more chilling when you consider that most crime, especially serious violent crime, is committed by repeat offenders.

  I’ll never forget the heart-wrenching case of eleven-year-old Carlie Brucia, abducted by a repeat offender at a car wash while walking home from a friend’s house on February 1, 2004. Her stepfather was actually on his way to pick her up when she was abducted. In the short while she was gone, she was kidnapped and then assaulted and ultimately murdered. The nation was horrified by a video of the little girl being led away by the arm by a middle-aged man in a mechanic’s-type jumpsuit that played out on television news programs after her disappearance. When the name of Brucia’s kidnapper was released, immediately, officials who pride themselves on being tough on crime, learned O B J E C T I O N !

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  that their justice system had failed little Carlie. Like Rodriguez, Joseph P. Smith, Carlie’s killer, was no stranger to a courtroom. His first brush with the law came back in 1993, when he was arrested for attacking a woman on a street in Sarasota, trying to drag her away with him in public, much as he did Carlie. He broke the woman’s nose by beating her with a motorcycle helmet. He pled no contest to aggravated battery and served a mere sixty days in jail, iced with two years’ probation.

  Smith has been on probation continuously ever since. In 1997, he got just one year of probation for carrying a concealed weapon, a five-inch knife hidden in the waistband of his shorts. In 1999, he was arrested for heroin possession and got eighteen months’ probation. Just one month later, he was arrested for prescription fraud, but the court agreed to drop the charges. One year later, Smith was arrested again for prescription fraud and sentenced to six months of house arrest followed by a year on probation. According to court records, his probation officer said that it was impossible to tell if a positive drug test had resulted from an illegal drug or a legitimate prescription of OxyContin for severe, chronic back pain. “Needs long term residential treatment . . . prison if necessary,” the probation officer wrote in a report that’s now a part of Smith’s court file. The newest judge on Smith’s case, Sarasota Circuit judge Harry Rapkin, said he’s never seen that report or others on Smith’s crimes throughout the years. In 2001, Smith was picked up for prescription fraud and finally did jail time, thirteen months on a sixteen-month sentence, and was released on New Year’s Day, 2003.

  Eight days later, deputies found Smith passed out in his car with drugs on the seat beside him. He could have gone to prison for five years, but it didn’t happen. Smith was put on probation for three more years. It’s astounding that for nearly a decade the man caught on video abducting Carlie and now facing trial for her assault and murder has been under the “supervision” of the Florida justice system. Despite his long rap sheet, he’s never done more than fourteen months’ jail time during a decade-long history of committing serious crime. Joe Br
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  Carlie’s father, asked Florida governor Jeb Bush to investigate why Smith had served practically no jail time despite more than a dozen arrests. I wonder how he’ll explain it all to Carlie’s family.

  These men are only two examples of repeat offenders who commit violent crimes—the actual numbers are staggering. America’s incarceration rate remained constant from 1925 to 1973, with about 110 people behind bars for every 100,000 residents.

  But by 2000, the number had more than quadrupled, to 478. When local jails are included in the grand total, the United States locks up nearly 700 people per 100,000. Some 4.5 million Americans are on parole or probation, and another 3 million are ex-convicts who’ve served some amount on their original sentences and are now free. These convicts all wanted parole. The prison system wants more empty beds in order to accommodate the newest batch of violent offenders. Translation? Criminals are on the streets—free but not rehabilitated.

  Christopher Uggen and Melissa Thompson, sociologists at the University of Minnesota, and Jeff Manza, a sociologist at Northwestern University near Chicago, have done rough calculations suggesting that some 13 million Americans—7 percent of the adult population and nearly 12 percent of men—have been found guilty of a serious crime.

  Believe it or not, the average prison sentence is still only twenty-eight months. That’s not all: Parolees are released conditionally, usually for a time on parole during which they are ordered to follow minimal rules like staying off drugs, not committing additional crimes, and keeping a job. Today a typical parole officer is likely accountable for 50 percent more people on parole than the same officer would have been in the 1970s. Methods of supervision like drug and alcohol testing have taken the place of personal support and supervision. An ex-offender may have only a few short meetings with his parole officer each month. Conservatively speaking, by 1999, 58 percent of parolees were found to have violated parole. Those who break parole represent one third of all O B J E C T I O N !

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  prison admissions, the fastest-growing category. Approximately two-thirds of released prisoners are rearrested within three years of release; 40 percent are already back in prison in that time. Keep in mind, those are just the ones who get caught.

  A California study by the Little Hoover Commission, an independent state watchdog agency, showed that 67 percent of offenders sentenced to prison each year are parolees who have violated the terms of their release. The fact remains that crime is about three times as preva-lent in America today as it was as recently as 1960.

  A N I M P O R T A N T R E M E D Y :

  M A N D A T O R Y C I V I L

  C O M M I T M E N T R E V I E W

  When most people hear about rapists, child molesters, and killers being found guilty and sent to prison, they rest easy, believing that such predators are locked away and no longer walk the streets. The public doesn’t much consider their whereabouts or what has become of them.

  Most people naturally assume that because their crimes are serious, they’ll never see the light of day again. Unfortunately, too often justice doesn’t work that way. Too many of these predators are released from prison and continue to prey on innocent victims like Carlie and Dru.

  I am a believer in the three-strikes laws that call for life behind bars for a third violent felony. But in addition to three-strikes laws, twenty states have found a new way to keep such predators from being released too soon back into society. It’s called civil commitment and has been known as “sexual predator legislation.” It allows the involuntary confinement of sex offenders by the mental-health system for an indefinite period of time after the inmate finishes the sentence handed down at trial or as the result of a guilty plea. The idea got a great deal of attention in the Dru Sjodin case after it was made known that authorities secured civil commitment for Rodriguez. The only problem is that 2 8 2

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  civil commitment is selectively implemented, and many predators like Rodriguez are not chosen—for whatever reason. Mandatory review for further civil commitment would most assuredly seal up some of the cracks in the system.

  T H E R E M U S T B E

  A C C O U N T A B I L I T Y

  In addition to the concept of privatization of the parole and probation departments across the country, there is another important issue that must be addressed: accountability for the structure. The first step in reforming corrections is to assess the crime-control performance of existing corrections agencies. Holding corrections officials accountable for recidivism among their probationers, parolees, and prison alumni is certainly justified. While it is clear that there are multiple factors as to why felons repeat-offend, it is logical that if the percentage of arrests for new crimes is markedly less in one parole or probation office than in others, then there is something to be learned from the success story.

  Most serious violent crime is committed by repeat offenders. Therefore, homing in on those offenders whose names we already know should be a given.

  The case for accountability is grounded in the theory that recidivism is not insensitive to how corrections agencies do their business—

  there is an obvious connection between how a parolee does once free and how the parole officer handles the specific case. Second, given accountability for failure and incentive to perform even better, to bring in better numbers next quarter than this quarter, is a theory tried and true.

  Why should state government workers be exempt from the same incentives and repercussions as the rest of the world, commonly known as the private sector? They shouldn’t. Simply put, I believe that the standard should be perform or look for a new job. Good work equals incentive. Is that so hard to understand?

  O B J E C T I O N !

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  A N D A W O R D T O

  T R I A L J U D G E S

  And to those trial judges who are responsible for sentencing: Did you read that last paragraph about accountability? Believe it or not, it applies to you, too.

  C H A P T E R T E N

  T H I S I S R E A L R E A L I T Y T E L E V I S I O N

  MY FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES CAN’T BELIEVE

  it when I tell them I don’t watch “reality TV.” I’m talking, of course, about the growing list of reality game shows that seem to have taken over network television’s prime-time schedule. When I hear the words

  “reality television,” I get a very different mental picture from the one you see on Survivor, where a group of attractive people run around a beach in bikinis, eat bugs, and scheme to have each other thrown off the island. I do have to admit, though, sometimes I’d rather eat a bowl of bugs than hear one more word from a scamming lawyer.

  Reality TV, as we’ve come to know it, is actually contrived TV. I want the real thing—the unvarnished truth. To me, real reality television is all about cameras bringing court proceedings and trials into our living rooms, eyes and ears that cannot tell a lie in courtrooms for trials—to ensure we know the truth.

  I’m convinced the Founding Fathers would insist on televised court proceedings. The journals of the Continental Congress state in black and white that the Founding Fathers were strong advocates of granting public access to courts of law. They even wanted courtrooms big enough to hold the entire community in which the trial was held, O B J E C T I O N !

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  “before as many people as choose to attend.” Of course, that day and age and “community” are gone forever. In their stead is a different community that encompasses the entire world.

  S E C O N D H A N D J U S T I C E

  My favorite movie is To Kill a Mockingbird, the classic trial film set just after the Great Depression. Based on the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel by Harper Lee, the 1962 movie tells the story of Atticus Finch (played by Gregory Peck), a defense lawyer who courageously takes on the defense of a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman in a small southern town. One of the greatest scenes in
the film occurs at the trial’s climax. Atticus looks up to see the balcony of the courtroom packed with people waiting to hear the verdict in the case. The camera then cuts to outside the courthouse, where people stand waiting for word of the verdict. They have been forced to stand outside the courtroom, on the outskirts of justice. To disallow cameras in the courtroom is like making every citizen stand outside to hear justice secondhand.

  Generations ago, courtrooms across this country were packed with friends and neighbors, court watchers all. That’s why many courtrooms are so cavernous—so that everyone could see justice in action and there would be no “secret proceedings.” The best disinfectant is sun-shine, and when it comes to thwarting attacks against justice, an open court is the best cleanser. Trials have always been the subject of intense scrutiny and gossip. There’s never been a time when legal cases weren’t part of the conversation at the local diner, around the supper table, or on the front porch. These days, a lot of those conversations take place over the airwaves.

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  T H E N E I G H B O R H O O D

  C E R T A I N L Y H A S C H A N G E D

  Today a single case can affect millions of people. That definitely was the case with the Watergate hearings, former president Bill Clinton’s impeachment proceedings, and the September 11 Commission hearings.

  The little ballot dispute after the 2000 presidential elections brought the business of the greatest country in the world to a standstill. It was a case wherein judges from appellate courts all the way up to the U.S.

  Supreme Court repeatedly voted along straight party lines. The public wanted and deserved to see the hearing of then-governor George W.

  Bush’s appeal of the Florida Supreme Court’s decision to allow the manual-recount totals added into Florida’s presidential vote.

  That dispute started in a courtroom and touched the life of every American. While it is physically impossible to carry out our Founding Fathers’ wishes that everyone get a seat in the courtroom, those bright minds created that idea as a framework on which this country stands. It is critical that every citizen have access to what is happening in our courts as the events unfold. Today, the camera is our eyes and ears in American courts of law.