Media Justice

by Dennis Carstens

  “Yes, your Honor,” the two lawyers replied.

  “Is LeAnne taking this to a grand jury?” Connors asked Lindquist referring to the county attorney.

  “Yes, your Honor. We’ll be getting an indictment for first degree murder,” she answered.

  Marc, standing between Brittany on his left and the prosecutor on his right, stood before the bench. Maddy had applied a little makeup to Brittany to give her some color. Her hair was brushed out and the chains removed. Fortunately, the courtroom camera was not turned on until the judge came out of chambers. They waited silently while the judge went through the legal formalities. He read off the charges, repeated Brittany’s rights to her and asked her to plead. When this was done, he allowed the lawyers some time to argue bail.

  Lindquist argued for a total remand to custody without allowance for any bail. She tried to claim that the nature of the crime itself was sufficient to warrant this but it was a losing effort. Connors is well known as a pretty fair and impartial jurist and made the point of reminding her that bail is to be set unless the defendant is a flight risk or a danger to the community. Lindquist tried to argue that Brittany fit both conditions but it was a weak argument and she knew it.

  On the other hand, Marc tried to argue for a minimum bail. Marc’s statements about the weakness of the prosecution’s case; the nonexistent danger to the community if Brittany was released and a flight risk sounded much more realistic. “Where could she go?” he asked. “Her picture has been shown all across the nation.”

  Connors patiently waited for the lawyers to finish then abruptly set bail at two million dollars. It was obvious Connors had decided on the amount before he came out on the bench. He let the lawyers argue just so they could get their arguments on the record in case of an appeal.

  THIRTY

  “Two million?” Barbara despondently asked Marc, more a statement than a question. “We can’t possibly come up with that.”

  After Brittany was ushered out of the courtroom, Marc, Madeline and the Rileys quickly exited to the hall. Before they could say a word, a stream of reporters came through the doors. Some were on their phones to call in the story and several others tried thrusting their microphones into Marc’s face for a comment. Marc saw Gabriella Shriqui and remembered he had promised to talk to her. He was surrounded by other reporters and could only shrug his shoulders and indicate he would call her later. Maddy and the Rileys stood behind him as he calmly answered a couple of questions. One of the idiots actually asked if his client was ready to take a plea. Marc ignored the man and they all managed to leave and were now in a conference room at the jail waiting for Brittany to be brought down.

  “Could they get a bond?” Madeline asked Marc.

  “For that amount? Two million? I doubt it. It would cost at least two hundred thousand and a bail bondsman would want every bit of it collateralized,” Marc replied.

  “Would we get the two hundred thousand back? We could come up with that much,” Barbara said.

  “No,” Marc answered. “That would be the fee for the bond.”

  They heard someone rap on the glass of the door. Marc looked up and saw that it was the sheriff himself. The sheriff opened the door and stepped inside to allow Brittany to enter the room. She was once again shackled at the waist and ankles and could only shuffle along while trying to walk. Cale asked Marc if he could talk to him for a minute. While her parents and brother greeted Brittany with teary-eyed hugs Marc followed Cale into the jail.

  The two men went into another, smaller conference room where attorneys meet with their clients. Inside, standing around the table were three deputies. All of them were staring at Marc with blank but serious expressions on their faces and beefy arms folded across their chests.

  Cale closed the door behind Marc, pulled a chair out from the table and sternly said, “Have a seat. We need to talk.”

  The instant Marc stepped inside and saw the deputies, he knew what was coming. Suppressing a smile, in fact almost laughing, he took the proffered chair and innocently looked at the sheriff.

  Instead of sitting down himself, Cale placed both hands on the table, leaned down and glared at Marc for a long ten seconds. While he did this Marc continued to look back at him with a calm, innocent expression as if he did not have the slightest idea what was going on.

  “I understand you have a problem with how I run my jail?” Cale calmly said while continuing to glare at Marc. “If I give one of my deputy’s instructions on how to handle an inmate, you don’t go running to a judge to complain about it. You come to me. Understood?” Cale continued to glare at Marc while Marc simply stared back at him without changing his expression or responding to his question.

  “When I give one of my deputies an order, there is a reason for it and I don’t need you or some judge to second guess me,” Cale continued his attempt to intimidate Marc.

  With that Cale straightened up and began to reach for the door handle.

  “Are you done?” Marc quietly asked.

  “What?” Cale said.

  “Are you done?” Marc repeated more slowly as if speaking to a child. “Can I say something now?”

  “Sure, why not?” Cale said with a chuckle as the three deputies all broke into sneers.

  “Have a seat,” Marc said motioning at the chair across the small table. “First of all,” he began as Cale sat down, “except as it relates to my client, I don’t give a damn how you run your jail. Second, if I have a problem with how my client is being treated, I’ll go to anyone I damn well please about it.”

  At this point, the smiles had vanished on the faces of the guards who all fidgeted slightly. Cale looked as if smoke was going to come out of his ears.

  “Third,” Marc continued holding up three fingers, “the next time you try to intimidate me, you better bring more than the three stooges with you. In fact, if you try it again, I’ll have your ass before a judge so fast your feet won’t touch the ground. And, my client had better be treated with kid gloves while she’s in here. From now on, she gets treated no differently than anyone else. When I come to see her, there had better not be any delays and she better not be shackled the way she is now. You get someone in there to take those things off. I know for a fact that prisoners are not shackled when they visit with their lawyers.

  “Finally,” Marc said leaning forward and staring directly at the sheriff, “as an experienced trial lawyer, something you should keep in mind. I know more ways, legally, to make your life a living hell than you can possibly imagine. Don’t you ever pull a stunt like this again!”

  With that he stood up and knocked his chair over. Marc grabbed the door handle and flung it open so hard it banged against the wall and walked back steaming to where Brittany and the others were.

  As Marc stomped off, Cale sat at the table strumming the fingers of his left hand, almost boiling over at what had just happened. He looked at the three deputies and calmly said, “Go back to your duties. And one of you go unlock prisoner Riley.” The three of them quickly went around the opposite side of the table, the first one picked up Marc’s chair, and they hurriedly left the room. Cale continued to sit in the room thinking about what happened and steaming over the impertinence of the lawyer.

  When Marc returned to the client conference room, Maddy, seeing he was not happy asked, “What was that all about?”

  Marc took a deep breath, sighed and said to her, “I’ll tell you later. We need to talk about money,” he said looking at Brittany. “This is going to get expensive.”

  At that moment one of the deputies came in and unlocked the restraints on Brittany.

  “How much?” Barbara asked after the man left.

  “How much do you think you can come up with?”

  “I still have a little over a hundred thousand in an investment account from Greg’s accident,” Brittany said. “I haven’t spent much of it. I bought my car and put thirty thousand in the insurance policy for Becky.”

  “We can come up with ano
ther two hundred,” Floyd said. “It could take a few days.”

  “Why do these things cost so much?” Barbara asked.

  “I’m going to have to hire several experts,” Marc said. “First, a criminalist to go over everything, especially the crime scene. We’ll probably need our own pathologist and a psychiatrist to testify. Plus I’ll need to pay her,” he said nodding at Madeline, “and maybe another investigator to do a lot of leg work. A lot of witnesses to interview and she’ll start looking for Bob Olson. You have to understand, on a case like this, the prosecution will spend whatever they need to and we have to be ready.”

  Marc removed a sheet of paper from the folder he had placed on the table. He began filling in some blanks on the document and said, “Here’s what I’ll do, I’ll take a fifty thousand dollar retainer to get started. I’ll bill against that at two fifty an hour and pay costs as we go along. You put the other two hundred fifty into a bank account, set it aside to be used as needed and we’ll go from there. It can be an interest bearing investment account but it needs to be a cash account so we can get at it in a short period of time. Do you know someone to help you with that?” Barbara said she did as Marc slid the document to Brittany and showed her where to sign.

  Marc removed another sheet of paper from the file, handed it to Barbara and said, “I’m going to need another contract from you guaranteeing the costs and fees, whatever they turn out to be.”

  Barbara read the one page contract, looked at her frightened daughter, smiled at her, brushed Brittany’s face with the back of her hand and said, “Of course, whatever we have to do.” Marc handed her the pen and she and Floyd both signed it.

  The Rileys left shortly afterward so Marc could converse with Brittany. Madeline stayed since the attorney-client privilege extended to her and the three of them went over potential witnesses. Plus, Madeline wanted every detail Brittany could give her about Bob Olson, how they met and every place they had gone including dates and times. Their best chance to end this case favorably would obviously be for Madeline to track him down.

  On the way back into the Cities to his office, Marc told Maddy about his confrontation with Sheriff Cale.

  “What an asshole,” Madeline said. “You just couldn’t keep your mouth shut though could you?”

  “You had to be there. And if you were, you would’ve handled it worse than I did.”

  “Probably true,” she agreed. “Not the best idea to make an enemy of the sheriff.”

  “He already was,” Marc said. “I just got it confirmed today.”

  THIRTY ONE

  Sheriff Cale and the four investigators waited somewhat impatiently in a conference room at the county attorney’s office. LeAnne Miller summoned them to this meeting but had not bothered to explain why. Cale sat at one end of the table while the four detectives were seated to his right, along the wall, opposite the room’s entryway door. The sheriff was a bit peeved to be summoned at all since he didn’t work for the county attorney. To make it a bit worse, it wasn’t even Miller herself who called him but an assistant of some kind. On top of that he was still stewing from the arrogance of the lawyer talking to him the way he did.

  The door opened as Miller and her chief deputy, Judy Kennely came in with Kennely carrying a case file with her. Miller sincerely apologized for the short notice and making them wait. The two lawyers took seats in the middle of the table opposite the detectives. Kennely placed the file on the table and flipped it open.

  “I wanted to get together and go over the Riley case. Her bail was set at two million today, which means she’s not going anywhere. We’ve done some research on her lawyer, Kadella, and we’ve found he’s quite good. He’s very competent, knows his business and will give us a fight.

  “We have a solid, circumstantial case with Brittany’s failure to report her daughter missing, her behavior during that time, this nonsense about a mysterious boyfriend, her many lies to friends and relatives about where the kid was, all casting serious doubt on her credibility. But each one separately can be explained away by a good lawyer. I doubt those things, by themselves, would get a conviction,” Miller explained.

  “Finding the life insurance policy on Becky is a godsend,” Kennely interjected. “It is certainly strong motive. We’ll see about the other evidence gathered at the search when the test results come in.”

  “I see a problem though,” Miller said picking up after Kennely finished. “So far, we have no evidence that Brittany was anything but a caring, loving mother. If I was defending her, I would hammer away at that. He’ll want to try to create reasonable doubt and we have to anticipate that one of the things he’ll try is that. He’ll tell the jury it defies common sense to believe this loving, young mother got up one day and decided to kill her beautiful baby girl for money. Will that work? I don’t know. What we need is testimony to refute the loving, caring mother image.”

  “So what we want from you,” Kennely continued looking at each of the four investigators, “is to go back and tear her life apart. We need to know everything about her. Especially people who knew her and the kid. Find someone to refute her loving mother image.”

  “We interviewed a couple of ex-boyfriends who told us she sometimes wished she didn’t have the kid,” Kristin Williams said.

  “We know,” Miller said. “It’s a start and we’ll use them but, it’s a little thin. Go out looking, specifically for something more substantial. Interview the ex-boyfriends again.”

  “Help them along to make their story a little stronger,” Cale said. “Don’t put words in their mouths but, you know what to do.”

  “Absolutely,” Paul Anderson said while thinking putting words in their mouths is exactly what you want.

  “Apparently we’re all done considering that Brittany may be telling the truth.” Shannon Keenan said, a statement, not a question, “We decided Bob Olson doesn’t exist and this is all on Brittany.”

  LeAnn Miller looked at Shannon and amiably said, “Do you have any reason to believe otherwise?”

  “No,” Shannon sighed. “Not really. It’s just that we, Kris and me, believed her.”

  “She seemed totally sincere,” Kristin added.

  “If you two have doubts, say so now,” Kennely said. “We need to know if we can count on you. If you get on a witness stand and start expressing doubts, it could sink us.”

  The two women detectives look at each other then turned to Kennely. “I’m good,” Kristin said. “I’ll go with the evidence. In fact, I feel a little foolish that the psycho bitch jerked us around the way she did.

  “I’m a professional,” Shannon answered Kennely’s query. “The evidence is what it is and I’ll go with it.”

  “It’s a little disheartening,” Miller quietly added, “to think that a mother could murder such a beautiful little girl.”

  With that, the meeting ended and they all got up to leave. As they were filing out the door, Cale told Shannon and Stu Doyle to wait a moment.

  Cale sat on the edge of the table which brought the tall man down to eye level with Detective Keenan. “Are you on board one hundred percent?”

  “Yes, sir. I’m good. I think what LeAnne said about it being so sad to think of a mother doing that kind of thing hit home. I might’ve been feeling that a bit. But, I’m fine,” she finished with a sad smile.

  “Good, Shannon. I’m glad to hear that. I need to talk to Stu so please excuse us,” Cale said.

  After Keenan had left and closed the door, Cale said to Stu Doyle, “That line about it being disheartening about the mom and kid thing…”

  “Yeah?” Doyle said.

  “Get that out to your media source. We’re all sad and sickened about it and blah, blah, blah. The public will eat it up.”

  “You got it boss,” Doyle said.

  Barely two hours after the bail hearing had concluded, The Court Reporter went live. Robbie Nelson, Melinda’s producer, had expected the show to air live today and restricted Melinda’s wine intake to a s
ingle glass at lunch.

  The show began with a live report from Gabriella Shriqui standing outside the Dakota County Government Center. By this time, knowing Brittany was back in her cell, and her lawyer had left, the crowd of protesters and most of the media had dispersed. Gabriella was reporting the hearing with no embellishment.

  Melinda did her best to get Gabriella to make a disparaging comment or two about Brittany but failed. Gabriella did use the leak from Stu Doyle to tell the audience that morale at the sheriff’s office was down and that almost everyone there was having a difficult time with what Brittany allegedly had done. “A source close to the investigation,” she said, “was shocked that something like this could happen in such a nice community.”

  Melinda finally gave up on it, politely ended the interview and went to a commercial break.

  “Sometimes she’s a little too professional,” Melinda complained to Robbie while lighting a cigarette. The makeup woman was checking her over as Melinda took several long drags on the cigarette.

  “I tell her to be like that,” Robbie said as he took the cigarette away from her and chuckled when Melinda childishly stuck out her tongue at him.

  Robbie held up a finger to her to stop her from speaking while he listened into his headset. “Good, thanks Cordelia,” he said into his mouthpiece, “We’re all set with the video from the courtroom when we come back,” he told Melinda, then turned and went back to his seat.

  After the break, Melinda read the intro of the court video into the camera. Melinda stayed silent while the courtroom scene was shown. They edited it down to just the bail argument and when it was finished, Melinda was back on screen. She took about two minutes to explain to the audience what had taken place before the bail argument especially the not guilty plea which Melinda commented on with a weary expression and a sad shake of her head.