“We can have a meaningful discussion about a possible settlement of the case without wasting a great deal of time and money,” Heiser suggested.
The offer was made two days after the grand jury returned a true bill on June 13, 2005. After hearing testimony from a host of people, Sarah included, the grand jury charged Shawn with five counts of aggravated murder; one count of first-degree murder; two counts of murder; three counts of murder by abuse (torture); four counts of manslaughter in the first-degree; three counts of assault in the second-degree; two counts of criminal mistreatment; one count of manufacturing a controlled substance; and two counts of endangering the welfare of a minor.
A prosecutor generally gets one shot at indictment, so they charge everything that fits. So many charges may confuse jurors and the public, but there are strategic reasons for this. It is one way to ensure that those guilty don’t get away with murder.
Because Sarah testified before the grand jury, she was exempt from being charged with any crime. The decision to put her before the grand jury, to not charge her with any crime, was made solely by District Attorney Heiser.
He denies his decision was the result of being manipulated by Sarah. Heiser and police investigators said they figured out pretty quickly Sarah was a flirt who employed her wiles to try to influence them.
I tried numerous times to meet Heiser in person, but we were unable to work out our schedules. We finally agreed to a phone interview. I had one question in particular I wanted him to answer: Why did he not charge Sarah with any crime?
“There was probable cause to charge Sarah for exposing her daughter to Shawn Field,” Heiser said. “At a minimum, she was reckless. She analyzed everything from her own interest first.”
But Heiser said his decision to not charge Sarah was purely an emotional one.
“I chose not to charge Sarah Sheehan with anything, recklessly endangering a minor or neglect, because I weighed the cost benefit. What do we bring to the safety of the community by raking her through the coals? It was a mercy decision, based solely on empathy and grief. I felt like she had already paid a high enough price.”
Besides, he noted, there wasn’t enough evidence to prove Sarah had physically abused her daughter in any way. Heiser remains on the fence about whether Sarah was involved in the scheme to extort money from David.
“The question is, was she involved or did she have knowledge about the plan to frame David and to extort money from him?” Heiser said. “I don’t believe she was, but she may have been. I wouldn’t be shocked to find out that she was.”
District attorneys make compromises. Their positions require it of them. Heiser was willing to sacrifice the wrongs committed by Sarah Sheehan against her daughter in an effort to build a stronger case against Shawn Field.
Somewhere in those first few days after Karly’s death, Heiser convinced himself Sarah Sheehan’s betrayal of her daughter was not sufficient to warrant a criminal conviction. He told himself Karly’s death was punishment enough for this mother.
Heiser’s decision not to charge Sarah with any crime wasn’t all that surprising. Historically, the courts have been far more lenient toward women than men. Until recently, women were less likely to be formally charged with crime, and more often than not, when they were charged, they were likely to receive probation.
“The woman nearly always gets a lesser sentence and is viewed merely as a compliant accomplice, especially if men are handling the case,” said Kathleen Ramsland. Ramsland teaches forensic psychology at DeSales University and has written numerous books on forensics and crime. “I think men are afraid of knowing women might be capable of real brutality, so they default to a softer view, mostly to preserve their own sense of insecurity. Some admit it, too.”
But those views of women are changing.
The Bureau of Justice reports that between 2000 and 2008 the number of women incarcerated increased by thirty-three percent. The biggest contributing factor is drug and alcohol abuse. According to her friends, Sarah’s drug of choice was alcohol and a smorgasbord of prescription drugs. Investigators had discovered what they described as a “ton of prescriptions” in Sarah’s name.
“Sarah could be lot of fun,” said one of her former girlfriends. “But she had mood swings. She’d be high for five minutes and then it was like she went catatonic. She’d be very flat, like she was in her own world. I pulled back after I saw too many troubling things in her personality. I didn’t know how stable a person she was.”
While Human Services investigators were relentless in their assumptions about David, they were disturbingly negligent in their assumptions about Sarah. If the roles of father and mother had been reversed in the death of Karly, what are the chances prosecutors would have determined the father had suffered enough already? Would the system have overlooked any contributory role David may have played in his daughter’s death the way they did with Sarah?
Highly unlikely, said Eugene attorney Bill Furtick. A man who’d worked with the state’s juvenile court system for decades, Furtick was called in on one of Oregon’s most notorious crimes: the case of Diane Downs.
On May 19, 1983, a young woman reported she had been carjacked on a rural road in Springfield, Oregon, by an unidentified male, who, she then claimed, shot her and her children. One child, a seven-year-old girl, was killed. The two surviving children, a girl, age eight, and a boy, age three, suffered paralysis as a result of the shooting. Furtick was the court-appointed attorney for the living children.
Diane Downs, the children’s mother, was later convicted of the attack, a deed she carried out as an attempt to hang on to a married boyfriend who didn’t want children. Downs, a verifiable narcissist, was sentenced to life in prison.
Getting the conviction took some doing.
“The construct of the entire investigative and training paradigm for the State of Oregon is built on the idea that only men do domestic violence,” Furtick said. “Men are seen as the abusers. Fathers, not mothers. Of course that’s not always true.”
Mothers acting alone commit the bulk of child abuse, but the judicial system has cultivated a bias toward men and allotted women preferential treatment. “There is a bias,” said Dr. Debra Esernio-Jenssen, medical director for the Children Protection Team at the University of Florida. “I think society accepts that a man may not be a good caregiver. As a whole, society expects women to be nurturing caregivers.”
After Karly’s death, Mindy Brill, Sarah’s former sister-in-law and close friend, told investigators that Sarah lacked a bond with Karly.
“Are you saying the nurturing mechanism was absent?” asked Detective Stauder.
“Yes,” Mindy said. “But Carol and Sarah aren’t very close. I think that has something to do with her relationship with Karly. And she gave Hillary up for adoption. I think that’s affected her with Karly a lot. I think she’s tried, but Sarah needs to get past that self-centeredness she has.”
A former childcare provider for Karly said, “Sarah was a party mom. Everybody knew David was there to pick up the pieces.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Scott Heiser asked a deputy district attorney who had turned in her resignation the week prior to take on the case. It was an unusual move. District attorneys typically handle the high-profile stuff themselves, for obvious political reasons. But it had been a hectic couple of years for Heiser and the Corvallis Police Department.
Heiser felt Joan Demarest would be the best woman for the job. He makes no bones about the fact that he appointed a woman attorney as the lead prosecutor for tactical reasons. He knew having a woman prosecutor would earn some favor with the jury in a child murder case.
Demarest grew up in Corvallis and earned her law degree from the University of Oregon. The victimization of women was a common topic of discussion in her childhood home. Joan Demarest’s mother, Merry Demarest, has been a longtime member of the National Organization for Women, and has served on the organization’s national board.
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bsp; Demarest’s father, Harry, is the former chair of the Benton County Democratic Party. The family continues to be politically active. They campaigned heavily for Hillary Clinton during the 2008 presidential election. Demarest’s parents celebrated their thirty-sixth wedding anniversary by testifying before the Benton County Commissioners in support of same-sex marriage.
Demarest began her career in Corvallis as a law intern, and continued working for as a deputy district attorney for Benton County after passing the bar in 1998. But tensions around the courthouse and the birth of her first child had her rethinking her career choice. She’d already given her two-weeks notice when she stopped by Heiser’s office one afternoon.
“It’s too bad you’re leaving,” Heiser said. “I was going to assign you the Field case.”
Because Demarest had been off on maternity leave in the three months prior she wasn’t familiar with Shawn Field. Heiser took the next few hours to explain the case to her. Demarest asked for the weekend to consider it.
Before she could accept the job, Demarest had to come to terms with her own position on the death penalty. She had previously been an opponent. Shawn Field changed her thoughts about that.
After consulting with her husband and her parents, Demarest took the job on a contract basis.
“This was a case where I knew I could make a difference,” Demarest said. “Shawn Field was a monster who needed justice and I was determined to not let Sarah Sheehan jeopardize his shot at life in prison or the death penalty.”
When Demarest and I met a few times at a coffee house in Corvallis, she brought along her children. Demarest is a hands-on, attentive mom. Our meetings were scheduled to accommodate nap times and play dates.
There’s no question the lady lawyer felt she was defending Sarah as much as she was prosecuting Shawn Field. “I’m convinced Sarah had nothing to do with Karly’s abuse or death, aside from picking Shawn Field as a mate,” Demarest said.
It was Heiser who irrevocably determined that Sarah would be a victim in a murder trial and not a co-defendant when he subpoenaed her to testify at the grand jury hearing. The Fifth Amendment ensured that Sarah would never face charges in her daughter’s death.
Demarest was left to deal with the fallout of that. Under Oregon Law, Sarah was by definition a victim as the mother of a murdered child.
“Most people vilify Sarah without understanding the circumstances she was in, and without looking further,” the attorney said. “I know that some of Sarah’s personality traits and choices make it easy to do that. Through my work on this case I learned that emotional abuse is more effective than physical abuse at controlling other people.”
But it was physical abuse that caused Karly’s death.
Demarest asked the jury to weigh the evidence against Shawn and overlook any wrongdoing on Sarah’s behalf. If the jurors had begun to divvy up the blame for Karly’s death between Shawn and Sarah, it could have derailed the entire criminal case. The prosecution needed to keep the focus on Shawn.
“It wasn’t until after I had spent hours with experts that I was able to see Sarah with a more sympathetic eye,” Demarest said. “Shawn Field undermined whatever self-confidence she may have had, convinced her she knew nothing about parenting and that she was a bad mother.”
Sarah said Shawn trained her to not question him. So she didn’t.
Except that one time, when she confronted him about the gay pornography she found on his computer. Certainly, that took some steely-eyed gumption. So why did Sarah leave Karly with Shawn after seeing her daughter in such physical distress Friday morning? Instead of leaving Karly alone with Shawn, breaking a repeated promise to David and DHS, why didn’t Sarah take Karly to daycare? David had already paid for it. If she had to go to work, why not take Karly to Delynn’s on her way?
Perhaps Sarah knew Delynn would take one look at Karly’s ruptured eyeball, those swollen and bruised feet, and do the thing Sarah had failed to do that morning: take Karly to the ER immediately. Sarah did not take Karly to Delynn’s because she was covering for Shawn. Sarah knew Delynn was on to her and Shawn; he didn’t want the state poking around anymore.
Demarest knew this, of course, which is why she had to build a case to explain away Sarah’s actions. “I tried to find a way to make sense of what Sarah did and everything that happened,” Demarest said. “The abuse and control made the most sense, even though it didn’t explain everything.”
I wondered if Demarest’s upbringing didn’t predispose her to see Sarah as a victim, rather than someone complicit in her daughter’s death. Demarest became visibly annoyed when I told her that some community members had suggested as much. Her cheeks flushed hot, and she sat back rigidly in her chair.
“Who said that?” she asked. “Who? Clark Willes? Did he say it?”
Clark Willes was one of Shawn’s defense attorneys, although not the lead lawyer on the case. Dan Koenig, who has cultivated a reputation for getting the bad guy off, had that honor. But the contention between Demarest and Willes stretches back to the early 1800s and a religious leader by the name of Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon Church.
At the time of Shawn Field’s trial, Willes was an active Mormon bishop. Demarest told me her parents had, at their own request, been excommunicated from the Mormon Church. She said it was their way of protesting the church’s stand regarding minorities in the priesthood.
Clark Willes likes to wear long-sleeve white shirts, which he rolls up on his thick forearms. His bushy dark eyebrows are prominent over his thin-framed glasses. He’s a bit rumpled around the edges.
Willes is a study in contrasts. He is a Mormon bishop who helped defend a child killer, an attorney who often finds himself on the wrong side of the law. He’s been brought before the Oregon Bar on disciplinary charges, and most recently was arraigned on charges of tampering with a witness.
I told Willes and Koenig I wasn’t out to retry this case, that I trusted the jury had found the right person guilty. So what compelled Willes to turn over his case files on Shawn Field’s defense to me? I asked Willes why he gave me access to the files during one of the several times we met. I’m not sure I ever got a satisfactory answer from him. It’s an unusual move for an attorney to grant complete access to every bit of evidentiary material he amassed during the course of a trial. I was as surprised by it as anyone.
I understood why professionals like Heiser and Demarest might not like Clark Willes. As a former court reporter, I’d had intense arguments with Dennis Hachler, one of Oregon’s best defense attorneys, about why he would defend some of the state’s worst criminal offenders.
Hachler and I got in crosshairs with each other after he had me removed from court once to keep me from reporting on a school counselor who had sexually abused a child. Hachler told the judge he was going to call me as a witness because I had interviewed the child, and because I knew the counselor personally. Afterwards, Hachler sent me flowers with an apology note and signed it “From the Devil.”
I was not amused. I sent the flowers back to the florist and told Hachler that he had overstepped his bounds. Despite the sparring, we respected each other. It was Hachler who told Willes I could be trusted—and I believe that if it had it not been for Dennis Hachler, I would never had gained access to hundreds of pages of police reports, recorded interviews, evidentiary material, photos and pretrial evidence that were critically important to this story.
District Attorney Heiser had concerns of his own about Clark Willes, but Heiser had the utmost confidence in Joan Demarest.
“Joan had considerable success with the less-than-honorable methods employed by Clark Willes,” Heiser said. “And she was capable of dealing with what was often less than a level playing field in Judge Holcomb’s courtroom.”
It was a well-circulated rumor around the courthouse that there was no love lost between Heiser and Judge Holcomb. The two had come up through the ranks in the district attorney’s office. There are some in Holcomb’s camp who believe Heis
er resented her success. Not so, said Heiser. It was the judge’s unprofessional approach he resented.
The Gazette-Times, the local paper, reported that Heiser went so far as to file a motion imploring Judge Holcomb to recuse herself from the trial:
Benton County Circuit Court Judge Janet Holcomb won’t step aside in the trial of Shawn Wesley Field. Holcomb is presiding over the trial of Field, who is charged with murder in the June 3, 2005, death of three-year-old Karla “Karly” Sheehan. Karly was the daughter of his then-girlfriend Sarah Brill Sheehan.
District Attorney Scott Heiser filed a motion Friday asking Holcomb to recuse herself because of evident bias against Deputy District Attorney Joan Demarest. Heiser included in his motion nine statements from the victim’s family, friends and a sheriff’s deputy, citing Holcomb’s courtroom demeanor and expressions during pretrial hearings.
“The motion is without merit,” Holcomb ruled Tuesday. “It is denied.” She said firmly that the case would be tried on its merits. “It’s not about the judge or lawyers,” she said. “It’s about Karly.” The case will be tried without prejudice, fairly and impartially and in the highest judicial tradition, Holcomb promised.
She did not address complaints from Karly’s father and grandparents, among others, that she did not maintain the decorum they expected in the courtroom, decorum they feel is appropriate in a case concerning the death of a three-year-old child.
Holcomb also did not address any of the specific charges in Heiser’s motion. All parties declined to comment on Holcomb’s ruling. Present Tuesday were Sarah Sheehan and David Sheehan, Karly’s parents. Gene and Carol Brill, Karly’s grandparents, were also present.
“It’s tough,” Gene Brill said, his voice full of emotion. “It’s been a painful, painful year.”
Although Judge Holcomb was dismayed by Heiser’s complaint, she remained steadfast in her resolve to conduct the trial professionally and responsibly. “I didn’t feel there was a legitimate reason for Heiser to make his request,” Holcomb told me later. “Whatever controversy was there was his.”
KARLY SHEEHAN: True Crime behind Karly's Law Page 18
