Christopher Deedy: The Federal Agent Tried for Murder

     On November 4, 2011, 27-year-old Christopher Deedy, a U. S. State Department Special Agent from Arlington, Virginia, was in Hawaii as a member of the State Department's Diplomatic Security unit. Deedy and the other federal agents were in Honolulu to protect Hilary Clinton and President Obama at the upcoming Asian Pacific Economic Conference scheduled for November 7 through November 13.

     On the night of November 4, Agent Deedy and a couple of his friends were bar-hopping in the city. At 2:30 the following morning the off-duty agent, dressed in shorts, flip-flops and a dress shirt that covered the 9 mm Glock pistol on his hip, was having coffee at a McDonalds. Kollin K. Elderts, a 23-year-old Hawaiian man who had been arrested in 2008 for disorderly conduct, and in 2010 for driving under the influence, was giving a white McDonalds customer he didn't know a hard time. Elderts called this man, Michael Perrine, a "haole," a Hawaiian word used by the locals as a racial slur against Caucasians of European decent. Perrine, who had been minding his own business, said he didn't understand why Elderts was singling him out for this verbal abuse. "I'm a local, too," he said. "I live here."

     Agent Deedy walked over to Elderts' table and asked him why he was picking on Mr. Perrine. Mr. Elderts did not appreciate the interference. Angry words escalated into a physical confrontation. What happened next depended upon who was telling the story. The only facts not in dispute were these: Agent Deedy and the Hawaiian man fought. At some point in the confrontation the agent pulled his gun and fired three shots. One of the bullets hit and killed Mr. Elderts.

     The Honolulu coroner retrieved a single bullet from Elderts' body. Detectives dug two slugs out of a McDonald's wall. The autopsy report revealed that Kollin Elderts had recently consumed marijuana and cocaine. He also had a blood-alcohol level of 0.12, a percentage well above the state's legal limit for driving.

     Not long after Mr. Elderts' death a state grand jury in Honolulu indicted agent Deedy for second-degree murder. Assistant deputy prosecutor Janice Futa choose not to include, as a backup charge, the lesser offense of manslaughter. That meant it was second-degree murder or nothing. 

Christopher Deedy posted his $250,000 bail and returned to Virginia to await his trial.

      Mr. Elderts shooting death exacerbated racial tensions in Hawaii. The local media compared the killing of an unarmed man of color by a white man with the Treyvon Martin case that was unfolding at the time in Florida. According to narrative created by reporters and correspondents in the print and television media, Treyvon Martin had been killed by a wannabe cop; Elderts had been shot to death by a federal law enforcement officer. For Christopher Deedy the timing was not helpful.

     The Deedy murder trial got underway in a Honolulu courtroom in mid-July 2013. Circuit Court Judge Karen Ahn oversaw the selection of seven men and five women for the jury. Six of the jurors were of Hawaiian decent. The other members of the jury were Caucasian. Prosecutor Futa, with the defendant's wife and parents looking on, delivered her opening statement to the jurors. In the prosecution's version of the facts Deedy's first shot missed Mr. Elderts. The second shot, fired before the two men fell to the floor and fought, killed the victim. The defendant's third shot missed.

     In describing her theory of the case, Prosecutor Futa said, "The defendant...draws from his right hip area the gun. Kollin [Elderts] turns around and sees him and the defendant is within three feet of Kollin Elderts and fires his gun. He misses Kollin. Now having been shot at by the defendant, Elderts lunges toward him reaching for the gun. They grapple in front of the [McDonalds] counter and [another] shot rang out. After the shots, Kollin falls on top of the defendant onto the floor. The third bullet was fired. After the third bullet was fired, the gun jams."

     In her opening statement, the prosecutor portrayed Christopher Deedy as an inexperienced agent (George Zimmerman was a wannabe cop) who had consumed alcohol against State Department policy while carrying a firearm. Deedy had "stuck his nose" in the situation at McDonalds "that was not his business." Futa informed the jurors that the McDonald surveillance videotape of the incident was "frustratingly fuzzy."

     The defense version of the shooting differed from the prosecution's theory. According to the defense, it was the third shot, fired when the two men were fighting on the floor, that killed Mr. Elderts.

     Defense attorney Brook Hart, in addressing the jury, said, "The evidence will show that the defendant used a number of measured steps to try to sway Mr. Edlerts...from his violent assault. Referring to Elderts' racial slur, Hart said, "These are now fighting words. This is a threat of violence. This is what Deedy is trained to respond to, although he wasn't here to respond to the laws of harassment or bullying. He's a federal agent and his job is to serve the community." (His job was to protect Clinton and Obama.)

     According to the defense attorney, when the defendant showed Elderts his State Department badge and credentials, Elderts said, "What, you gonna shoot me? You got a gun? Shoot me. I'm gonna gut you."

     Attorney Hart informed the jurors that the State Department authorizes its agents to carry weapons when they are off-duty. She said that her client, on the night of the shooting, was not intoxicated.

     As in the Treyvon Martin case where George Zimmerman's head injuries proved valuable to the defense, Attorney Hart pointed out that Agent Deedy's nose had been broken and his face badly pummeled. In summing up, the defense attorney said, "Special Agent Deedy was compelled to discharge his gun resulting in the death of Elderts. Agent Deedy acted responsibly and in self-defense."

     On August 6, 2013, following 18 days of prosecution testimony, attorney Hart put the defendant on the stand. Agent Deedy testified that on the night in question Mr. Elderts had drawn his attention with his "hysterical laughing" and taunting of Mr. Perrine. When Elderts ignored the McDonalds cashier's request to leave Mr. Perrine alone, Deedy walked over to Elderts' table and asked him what was going on. Sounding a bit self-important, the witness said, "From my trained perspective I believed it was appropriate for me to intervene, to further assess the situation because this was not a mutual interaction going on."

     When Agent Deedy interceded on Mr. Perrine's behalf Mr. Elderts called him a "haole." According to the witness, "I needed to portray a stronger command presence." This is when he identified himself as a federal law enforcement officer. (The surveillance footage shows Deedy displaying his badge and credentials.) Not impressed, Mr. Elderts continued to taunt the agent. When Elderts slid out from behind his table, the agent knew there would be trouble. In describing this moment to the jury, Deedy said, "I think I was in actual shock. This was very quick, there was a lot going through my head. My brain was going in a thousand directions."

     Attorney Hart asked her witness, "Why didn't you just leave the restaurant?"

     Deedy answered that because he was a trained law enforcement officer, he couldn't responsibly back down. "I injected myself into the situation because I sensed the propensity for violence. For me at this point to run would be irresponsible."

     Agent Deedy described to the jury how he had tried to disable Elderts with a kick to his left shin. He missed and hit the meaty part of his opponent's thigh. At that moment the agent knew he was in for a fight. When his attacker tried to grab his gun the defendant said he had no choice but to utilize deadly force in defense of his life.

     The defense rested after three days of the defendant's testimony. The case went to the jury on August 15, 2013. On Monday, August 19, the jury foreman advised Judge Ahn that the panel could not reach an unanimous verdict. Judge Ahn declared a mistrial. The defendant was free to accompany his wife and his parents back to Virginia. His second trial was set for the spring of 2014.

     Following the verdict, prosecutor Futa told reporters that she was "very disappointed." She said she didn't regret not giving the jury the manslaughter option. Defense attorney Hart, in speaking to the press, said that her client "pleaded not guilty and is not guilty. "The jury," she said, "did not find him guilty."

     Because the jury did not acquit agent Deedy he was not home free. Not only that, Kollin Elderts' family sued him for wrongful death. Even if Christopher Deedy was eventually acquitted, he would have been better off calling the police and walking out of McDonalds that night.

     At his second trial in 2014, jurors found Deedy not guilty of murder but deadlocked seven to five in the defendant's favor on the manslaughter charge.

     When the prosecutor ordered a third trial, Christopher Deedy appealed on the grounds of double jeopardy. In December 2017 the Hawaii Supreme Court rejected the defendant's double jeopardy claim. Deedy's attorneys appealed that decision to the (federal) 9th Court of Appeals which ruled that Mr. Deedy, under the double jeopardy doctrine, could not be re-tried for manslaughter. Prosecutor Futa appealed that decision to the United States Supreme Court.

     In June 2020 the Supreme Court declined to hear the Deedy case. That meant the appellate court decision would stand. Following that decision a spokesperson for the Honolulu Prosecutor's Office announced that Mr. Deedy's case had been closed.  

Justin Bieber And The Great Calabasas Egging Caper

     What do you get when you mix youth, wealth, fame and a dose of sociopathy? You get a kid like Justin Bieber, the baby-faced singer with the big hair, tattooed arms and oversized Jacqueline Onasis sunglasses. You get a bored, narcissistic jerk who doesn't have a clue how to deal with his vacuous life.

     If you're a rich person who is not young, stupid or famous, having a celebrity like Bieber move into the mansion next to you is not a good thing. It's not a good thing for the entire neighborhood. But what can you do? There is no such thing as zoning ordinances that keep entertainment celebrities out of communities.

      In 2013 when the 19-year-old singer moved into the sprawling house on Prado del Grandioso Drive in Calabasas, California, neighbor Jeffrey Schwartz's nightmare began. With Bieber came the loud music and the all-night parties. Moreover, the celebrity himself became a huge pain-in-the-butt. In one confrontation with Mr. Schwartz Justin Bieber allegedly spit on him.

     On a more serious level, Mr. Schwartz and the other non-celebrities in the community accused the teen singer of endangering children by driving recklessly around the neighborhood in his luxury vehicles.

     Late Thursday night, January 9, 2014, Mr. Schwartz called the Los Angeles Sheriff's Office to report acts of vandalism against his home. According to the complainant, while standing on his second-floor balcony, he saw Justin Bieber throw at least twenty raw eggs at his house. The eggs permanently stained custom wood and venetian plaster that would cost Mr. Schwartz an estimated $20,000 to restore. The extent of the damage qualified the crime as felony vandalism. Detectives launched an investigation into the allegation, but did not take suspect Bieber into custody.

     At eight in the morning of Tuesday, January 14, 2014, pursuant to the egg assault case, twelve deputies out of the Lost Hills Sheriff's Station showed up at Bieber's mansion armed with a battering ram and a search warrant. As it turned out, the officers gained entry without using the battering ram. Eight people, including Bieber, were in the house when the police showed up at the door.

     Soon after entering the dwelling deputies saw, in plain view, what they thought was a quantity of cocaine or the drug Ecstasy. In connection with the drugs, deputies arrested a 20-year-old rapper who called himself Lil Za. Za was not only Bieber's friend, he had been living in the singer's house for several months.

     Deputies hauled Lil Za, real name Xavier Smith, to the Lost Hills Station lockup in Agoura. Later that day after posting his $20,000 bond Mr. Smith was about to be released when officers discovered he had destroyed the wall phone in the holding cell. Charged with felony vandalism, the judge raised the rapper's bail to $70,000. After posting the upped bond Smith tweeted to his fans that he was doing just fine. What a relief.

     Crime lab personnel identified the substance seized in the Bieber house search as MDMA--a form of Ecstasy commonly known as "molly." In California Ecstasy possession carried a maximum sentence of one year in jail. (Cocaine possession carried a maximum sentence of three years.)

     Bieber's egg throwing caper opened a can of worms for his drug possessing friend. However, while these alleged offenses provided rich material for the entertainment media, they were small potatoes crime-wise. When all is said and done few celebrities ever go to jail. Look what it took to put O. J. Simpson and Phil Spector behind bars--and they committed murder.  Lindsay Lohan, another celebrity jerk, spent a few hours in jail and you'd think the world had come to an end.

     On Thursday, January 23, 2014 at four in the morning, police in Miami Beach, Florida arrested the bad-boy cutie for drag racing and driving under the influence of alcohol. He was racing his Lamborghini. He posted his bond, was released from custody and later paid a fine.

     Regarding the great egging case, Mr. Bieber pleaded no contest to vandalism in return for two years on probation. 

     At some point after the house-egging caper the pop singer paid his neighbor $80,000 to cover the cost of the damage to the house. (They must have been really big eggs.) Mr. Schwartz, however, was not satisfied. The egging victim gave Bieber an ultimatum--fork over $1million or face a lawsuit.

     In response to the lawsuit threat Justin Bieber's people told Mr. Schwartz to suck an egg. As a result, in March 2015, Schwartz filed suit claiming the egg incident destroyed his reputation as an online auto leader. According to the plaintiff, he was known around the world as the guy Justin Bieber had egged and spit on. Exactly how that destroyed his business reputation was unclear. One would think that if anyone's reputation took a hit in the egging case, it was Bieber's.

     In November 2018 Bieber and Schwartz settled the long-running suit for an undisclosed amount.
       

Did Jeffrey Pyne Murder His Mother?

     On the surface it looked like 22-year-old Jeffrey Pyne had a great life with a promising future. He had graduated from the West Highland Christian Academy in Milford, Michigan as class valedictorian. After high school he attended the University of Michigan-Flint where he majored in biology. But at home in Highland Township Jeffery Payne had serious problems with his 51-year-old mother, Ruth.

     In 1998, when Jeffrey was 8-years-old, Ruth Pyne was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Over the next decade she became increasingly difficult to live with, and violent. For some reason, Jeffery had become the prime target of his mother's wrath which had subjected him to physical and verbal abuse. In July 2010, after the police arrested Ruth for trying to manually strangle her son, Jeffrey's father, Bernie Pyne, filed a petition with the court to have his wife institutionalized. In the commitment petition Mr. Pyne wrote: "She has invented a religion that deems all medication a form of sorcery and will not take her medication for that reason."

     Ruth Pyne's refusal to take her bipolar medicine, the cause of her bellicose behavior, created most of the friction between mother and son and led to many heated arguments. Following in-patient treatment at a Michigan mental health facility in 2010 Ruth Pyne returned home. But nothing changed. She refused to take her medication and continued to torment her son.

     On May 27, 2011, at 2:30 in the afternoon, Bernie Pyne and his ten-year-old daughter Julia came home to find Ruth dead in the garage. She had been bludgeoned and stabbed. Because nothing had been stolen from the garage or the house, and the victim had not been sexually assaulted, it didn't seem likely that this woman had been murdered by a stranger.

     According the the medical examiner who performed the autopsy, Ruth Pyne had received at least 12 vicious blows to the head from a two-by-four. Her attacker then stabbed her in the neck 16 times. It was possible that the stab wounds were postmortem. The overkill nature of the assault led investigators to believe the victim had been murdered by someone who knew her well, and hated her guts.

     Crime scene technicians found traces of the dead woman's blood on faucet handles in the laundry room where they believed the killer had washed his or her hands. The crime scene investigators found no blood on the inside knob of the garage man-door which was standing partially open. Had the killer left the garage through this doorway, the door operating knob would have contained traces of the victim's blood. Inside the dwelling crime scene technicians found no signs of blood or other physical evidence of the killing. Detectives speculated that the killer believed that he or she had enough time after the murder to clean up the house before Mr. Pyne and his daughter returned home and discovered the body.

     Since Ruth Pyne's murder appeared to be an inside job, suspicion immediately fell on Jeffery Pyne who had been, as far as anyone could tell, the last person to see his mother alive. On the day of the murder, detectives with the Oakland County Sheriff's Office questioned Jeffery at police headquarters. The suspect, when asked to account for himself that afternoon, said, "She got home from grocery shopping. I helped her bring the groceries in." According to Jeffery his mother was alive when he left the house at one-thirty that afternoon to plant lilac bushes at the home of one of his former high school teachers. After working at the teacher's house he drove to his part time job at Spicer Orchards.

     Crime scene investigators, on the day of the murder, combed Jeffrey Pyne's car for physical traces of the murder. They found nothing. A forensic analysis of Jeffrey's clothing also produced negative results.

     When officers questioned Jeffrey at the sheriff's office that afternoon, detectives noticed fresh blisters on both of his hands. When asked about the blisters, Jeffrey said he had gotten them earlier in the day planting lilacs at the teacher's house.  In response to a question about his relationship with his mother, Jeffrey said, "I've never had a problem with her. The only issue I had is I wanted her to take her medicine." At the conclusion of the interview detectives were certain Jeffrey Pyne had fatally bludgeoned and stabbed his mother.

     In October 2011, five months after the murder, Oakland County District Attorney John Skrzynski charged Jeffrey Pyne with first-degree murder.

     The Pyne murder trial got underway in Pontiac, Michigan on November 16, 2012. In his opening statement to the jury, prosecutor Skrzynski said, "This was an angry killing that was the result of years of living with a difficult person who was bipolar." The defendant's attorney, James Champion, pointed out that the state could not link his client to the murder through physical evidence and that the prosecution's proof was circumstantial, and weak.

     The strongest witness for the prosecution turned out to be the school teacher who had hired Jeffrey to do odd jobs around her house. According to her testimony, Jeffrey had planted the lilacs four days before his mother's murder. This was a credible witness who broke the defendant's alibi.

     The testimony phase of the Pyne murder trial came to a sudden close on December 14, 2012 when defense attorney Champion announced that he did not have any witnesses to present. In Champion's mind he didn't need any witnesses because the prosecution had failed to carry its burden of proof.

     On December 18, 2012, the jury found the defendant guilty of the lesser charge of second-degree murder. Judge Leo Bowan had the option of sentencing Jeffery Pyne to up to 60 years behind bars. He could also hand down the minimum sentence of seven years in prison.

     Jeffrey Pyne  maintained his innocence. The bloody clothes he would have worn when he killed his mother were not recovered. Those who believed Jeffrey Pyne innocent argued there were no bloody clothes to recover.

     On Saturday January 12, 2013, the CBS crime series "48 Hours," in an episode called "The Perfect Family," aired an account of the Pyne case. The segment featured interviews of Ruth Pyne's sister and Jeffrey's father.

     Judge Bowan on January 29, 2013 sentenced Jeffrey Pyne to twenty years in prison.

The Anthony Todt Family Murder Case

     In 2018 Anthony Todt, a physical therapist and owner of the Family Physical Therapy Clinic in Colchester, Connecticut was in deep financial trouble. He was also being investigated by the FBI for violating the federal False Claims Act. Todt was suspected of submitting fraudulent claims for physical therapy to Medicaid and private insurers for services not given to patients.

     Anthony Todt was behind in his rental payments to the owner of the building that housed his clinic and had outstanding civil court judgements against him in the amount of $63,000 in one case and $36,000 in another. He was also struggling to keep up his mortgage payments on a Condo he owned in Celebration, Florida, an upscale community four miles west of Disney World.

     In May 2019 Anthony Todt, his wife Megan and their three children, Alex, 13, Tyler, 11 and Zoe, 4, moved to Celebration, Florida where they took up residence in an expensive house he had rented for $5,000 a month. From Florida he commuted to Connecticut to operate his physical therapy clinic.

     By November 2019 Anthony Todt owed his Celebration, Florida landlord several months rent and had closed his clinic in Connecticut.

     On December 29, 2019 one of the Todt family neighbors called the Osceola County Sheriff's Office for a welfare check of the Todt residence. None of the neighbors had seen the Todt children since Thanksgiving. Sheriff's deputies went to the house and when no one answered the door the officers left.

     On January 13, 2020, FBI agents armed with a federal warrant for Anthony Todt's arrest for violating the False Claims Act entered the dwelling and made a gruesome discovery. Mr. Todt was living in the house with the decomposing bodies of his wife and three children. FBI agents took him into custody and notified the local authorities about the scene they had discovered.

     While being detained on the federal false claims charges Mr. Todt ingested a handful of pills and was rushed to a nearby hospital. Upon his discharge from the medical facility on January 15, 2020 deputies with the Osceola Sheriff's Office arrested him for killing his wife and three children. While in local custody Anthony Todt told detectives that he and has wife had decided to kill themselves and their children to avoid an upcoming apocalypse. He suffocated is 4-year-old daughter with a pillow and stabbed his sons to death. His wife stabbed herself in the stomach but when she didn't die he suffocated her with a pillow. Todt didn't explain why he hadn't killed himself. 

     Not long after his arrest Mr. Todt recanted his confession, claiming that he was not home when his family was murdered. 

     On January 16, 2020 an Osceola County prosecutor charged Anthony Todt with four counts of first-degree murder. The local magistrate denied him bail.

     Anthony Todt had a family history of violence and murder. In 1981, when he was a child, Anthony Todt's father Robert Todt, a special education teacher and wrestling coach at a Bensalem, Pennsylvania high school outside of Philadelphia, was convicted of hiring one of his students, a burglar and drug addict named John Charmonte, to murder his wife, Loretta Todt. In 1980 Charmonte broke into the Todt house and shot Loretta Todt in the face while she slept. Although blinded by the wound Mrs. Todt survived the shooting. John Charmonte pleaded guilty to burglary and attempted murder and in return for his plea received a ten-year sentence. Robert Todt, the murder-for-hire mastermind, only served ten years in prison. When he hired the student to murder his wife Robert Todt was having an affair with a 17-year-old girl.

     In April 2022, an Osceola County jury found Anthony Todt guilty of four counts of first-degree murder. The judge sentenced him to life without parole.

The William Simmons Murder Case: An Unlikely Conviction

     Kaelin Rose Glazier, a 15-year-old sophomore at South Medford High School in Rush, Oregon, disappeared on November 6, 1996 after watching a video in a house trailer with 16-year-old William Frank Simmons. The missing girl had skipped church that evening to meet her boyfriend, Clifford Ruhland, at Simmons' trailer. According to Simmons the boyfriend didn't show up, and after he and Glazier watched the video she departed.

     The local police, believing that the missing girl had run away from home, waited 21 days before investigating the case as an abduction and possible murder. Simmons, a big kid who had been in trouble with the law and was the last known person to have seen the girl alive became the first and only suspect in the investigation. Years passed, and without the girl's body, the case ground to a halt. Every once in awhile detectives would question William Simmons at the police station, and every time he would deny having anything to do with the girl's disappearance.

     People don't vanish into thin air. In 2008, 12 years after Glazier went to Simmons' trailer, a man mowing a field 80 feet from the place she was last seen uncovered skeletal remains. According to a forensic anthropologist the bones were consistent with the remains of a 15-year-old girl.

     At the recovery site investigators discovered a skull wrapped in duct tape, a tennis shoe, part of a bra, and some jewelry that had belonged to the missing girl. While the medical examiner officially identified the remains as Glazier's and ruled her death a homicide, the forensic pathologist could not determine the precise cause of death. The police theorized she had been suffocated or strangled. DNA evidence from the duct tape did not match the victim's boyfriend or William Simmons.

     On April 10, 2010 the local prosecutor charged William Simmons with murder, and as a backup charge, first-degree manslaughter. The motive: he had killed the girl after she had rebuffed his sexual advances. After killing the girl the suspect had supposedly dragged her body to the nearby field. 

     The Simmons murder trial got underway on February 14, 2012 in the Jackson County Circuit Court. The prosecutor, without an eyewitness, confession or physical evidence linking the 31-year-old defendant to the murder, had an extremely weak case. The state didn't even have a jailhouse informant or a murder weapon. All the prosecutor had was the defendant's so-called "motive, means, and opportunity," to commit the crime.

     William Simmons' attorney pointed out that motive, means, and opportunity did not comprise evidence. The defense lawyer reminded jurors that the murdered girl's boyfriend may also have had motive, means, and opportunity in the 16 year old case.

     The jury, after deliberating ten hours, voted 10 to 2 to find the defendant guilty of first-degree manslaughter. (The reckless killing of a person as opposed to an intentional murder.) In Oregon a defendant could be convicted of manslaughter on just 10 guilty votes. To find a person guilty of murder 12 votes are needed. The judge sentenced William Simmons to the mandatory 10 years in prison.

     At a hearing in May 2012 the convicted man's attorneys, Andrew Vandergaw and Michael Bertoff, in an effort to secure a new trial for their client, put a witness on the stand named Serena Beach. During the Simmons trial Beach had contacted the defense attorneys and said she had "vital information about the case." The lawyers, busy defending the accused man, didn't have time to investigate her allegations.

     According to Serena Beach, in 2003 or 2004, the murder victim's stepfather, Robert Glazier, told her that he "was there when Kaelin Glazier came into the world and was there when she went out." He allegedly said that he knew she was dead and that her body was "down the road."

     The 65-year-old stepfather, who had been questioned three times by detectives during the early stages of the missing persons investigation, took the stand at the hearing to determine if there was sufficient cause to convene a new trial. Mr. Glazier said he knew that some people considered him a suspect in the murder. 

     Judge Benjamin Bloom denied the defense motion for a new trial. The attorneys for William Simmons appealed the judge's ruling.

     It's surprising that Judge Benjamin Bloom even allowed this case to go to a jury in the first place. Motive, means, and opportunity, while a guideline for identifying criminal suspects does not rise to proof beyond a reasonable doubt. (As evidenced in this case by the two not guilty votes.) The evidence in this case was not even enough to sustain liability in a civil wrongful death suit where the standard of proof is merely a preponderance of the evidence. In any other state the Simmons trial would have resulted in a hung jury.

     By any legal standard the William Simmons case represented an odd and unlikely homicide conviction. While Simmons may have been a good suspect and may have committed the crime, that was not enough evidence to put him behind bars for 10 years. If this were the standard of proof in all murder trials a lot of innocent people would end up in prison.

     In April 2020 the United States Supreme Court, in Ramos v. United States, set aside the un-unanimous jury verdict rules in Oregon and Louisiana on grounds such verdicts violated the Sixth Amendment right to a jury. As a result the William Simmons homicide conviction was vacated. 

     William Simmons was not retried for the murder of Rose Glazier. No further arrests were made in this case.

Susan Cole: Prospective Juror to Perjury Defendant

     More than 90 percent of the criminal cases in American are not tried before a jury. Bargained guilty pleas have essentially replaced the cumbersome and costly trial process. Still, tens of millions of Americans receive jury duty summonses every year. (Our criminal justice system would collapse if just 20 percent of defendants demanded a jury trial. The entire system is set up for guilty pleas based on negotiated sentencing deals. Legislators often make maximum sentences for minor crimes high to give prosecutors more bargaining power.)

     In high-profile criminal trials the outcome of the case is pretty much determined by which side does the best job of jury selection. O. J. Simpson got off because his attorneys won the jury selection battle. To a certain degree trials are over before the first witness takes the stand. Wealthy defendants often hire juror picking consultants who help design a defense-friendly jury. These psychological profilers match jurors to defendants by analyzing such factors as body language, hair styles, clothing, gender, marital status, age, race, education and occupation. In high-profile cases the jury selection process, called voir dire, can go on for months.

     Juries, in general, do not represent a cross-section of American society. Entire categories of people never see the jury box. For various reasons, juries rarely include professors, police officers, physicians, nurses, small business owners, employees of small companies, college students, young mothers and lawyers. Most juries are made up of retirees, government workers, employees of large corporations and people who are unemployed.

     There are many ways for a prospective juror to get out of jury duty. People can be excused for poor health, a criminal record, an upcoming wedding, family demands, mental illness, various economic hardships and the stated inability to render an unbiased decision. In Michigan, lawmakers recently approved a bill that exempted breast-feeding mothers from jury duty. While prospective jurors are not above telling lies to get out of sitting on a jury, prosecutions for this form of lying under oath are extremely rare. That makes the following case so unusual.

Susan Cole

     In June 2011, Susan Cole, a 57-year-old beautician and Mary Kay Cosmetics saleswoman, received a summons for jury duty. She arrived at the court house in Denver with her hair in curlers and dressed according to her idea of how mentally ill people present themselves. She wore too much lipstick, reindeer socks and mismatched sneakers. She had put on a tee-shirt that read: "Ask Me About My Bestseller." (In 2007 under the pen name Char Cole, Susan Cole had self-published a relationship, self-help book/memoir called "Seven Institutions With El-Way Secrets.")

     When Judge Anne Mansfield asked Cole if she had a history of mental illness the prospective juror said, "Yeah, I have some mental issues. I broke out of domestic violence in the military [after her divorce she joined the Army] and have a lot of repercussions. I get very confused in the morning when I try to get ready." (Like forgetting to take out her curlers.) The prospective juror said that as a result of the domestic violence she suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Cole also told the judge she was homeless and living on the street. Judge Mansfield asked if anyone objected to the dismissal of this woman. No one did and Susan Cole went home.

     On October 17, 2011, on Denver's "Dave Logan Show," a radio call-in program, callers were telling stories about how they had avoided jury duty. Susan Cole joined in the fun by calling the show and telling how she had recently gotten out of jury duty by impersonating a mentally ill person. Obviously aware that she was admitting to a crime, Cole called in under her pen name, Char.

     In justifying her jury avoiding ploy, Cole told the radio audience that she was simply too busy for jury duty. Rather than being ashamed of having lied under oath to avoid a basic civic responsibility, Cole seemed quite proud of herself: "I put black eyebrows on. I put red lipstick on. I left my hair in my curlers, and I put on a tee-shirt that said, 'Ask Me About My Bestseller.' For about two weeks after, when my roommate and I would think about it, or I would tell my clients about it, we would cry we would laugh so hard."

     One of the "Dave Logan Show" listeners was Anne Mansfield, the judge Susan Cole had lied to. She didn't find Cole's story so funny. The judge knew exactly who this caller was and notified the prosecutor's office. The prosecutor initiated a criminal investigation.

     Detectives looking into the case found no mention of spousal abuse or PTSD in Cole's divorce records. Moreover, her military file contained no documentation supporting such a diagnosis. On March 22, 2012, police arrested Cole on charges of first-degree perjury and attempt to influence a public servant (the judge). If convicted she faced a maximum sentence of 6 years in prison, on each count.

     Before being hauled off to jail, Susan Cole told detectives that the military had lost her medical records. And the only person who had diagnosed her with PTSD, a Jefferson County court counselor, had since died. Cole said that in her book she writes of being imprisoned five days in a military mental institution. She also claimed that on the night before her jury duty appearance she had been traumatized by news that her cousin had been killed in a motorcycle accident. As it turned out her cousin hadn't been involved in a crash.

     In November 2012 Susan Cole pleaded guilty to the felony charge of attempting to influence a public servant. According to the plea deal the judge deferred her punishment. (A deferred judgment is a no-contest type of plea. Once the guilty party meets court-ordered requirements there is no formal conviction on record.) Cole also pleaded guilty to second-degree perjury. For this misdemeanor the judge sentenced her to two years probation and forty hours of community service.

     Had Cole gone to trial for lying under oath her fate would have been in the hands of people who had not lied to get off the jury. Now, with a criminal record involving dishonesty, this woman was no longer fit for jury duty.

The Serial Arsonist

     Robbers and thieves commit their crimes for financial gain. Arsonists, on the other hand, set fires for a variety of reasons. As a result, motive and criminal profiling is an important lead in an arson investigation. Regarding motive, unlawful fire setters generally fall into one of two categories: rational and irrational. The rational arsonists can be put into two groups: people who set fires for direct gain, and those who do it for indirect benefit or gain. Direct gain arsonists torch their homes, cars and businesses for the insurance money. The indirect gain fire is set, for example, as retaliation, revenge, competitor elimination or to cover-up another crime such as homicide. People who set fires for reasons that make sense are usually not repeat offenders. If they do repeat their crimes it's rarely more than twice.

     Arsonists who are irrationally or pathologically motivated are almost always young men. They are often powerless losers who are mad at the world. They set fires to get even with society, to experience feelings of power, to play the role of hero and in a small percentage of cases for sexual gratification. Many of them have had problems at school, with their parents and with the police. Some are mildly retarded, others have mental health problems. Older pathological fire setters often have drug and/or alcohol addictions. 

     Because the vast majority of serial arsonists are pathological fire setters who have no regard for human life, they are the most dangerous. Unlike rational fire setters they often hang around fire scenes soaking up the excitement they have created. When taken into custody they should be interrogated by arson investigators trained and experienced in questioning this type of suspect. For the pathological arsonist the bigger the fire the bigger the rush. Serial arsonists have been known to set several fires in one night.

The Dueling Expert Problem: The Rosa Jimenez Murder Case

     In a court of law a phony hired-gun forensic scientist can be more persuasive than his more qualified or ethical counterpart. This is possible because jurors make judgments based on how expert witnesses look, act and speak. They do not analyze their resumes. A court room charlatan who can act the part can be more believable than a real expert. Phonies like Dr. Ralph Erdmann, Dr. Louise Robbins, Dr. Pamela Fish, Dr. Michael West and Fred Zain, to name a few, testified in hundreds of cases before they were exposed and defrocked. There are hundreds of private sector hired-guns whose expert testimony is for sale for any side that will pay. Moreover, crime lab personnel working in the various levels of government are often incompetent, or tailor their findings to the needs of police and prosecutors. In general, the field of forensic science has not lived up to its potential, and to an alarming degree, is either useless or downright corrupt. The dueling expert problem is one of the symptoms of this reality.

     Vanderbilt law professor Rebecca Haw, in an article about dueling experts, discusses the "99 to 1 problem." Haw writes: "All but one out of 100 available experts testifies that the earth is round, and one out of 100 disagrees testifies that the earth is flat. To jurors, it appears that scientific consensus on the subject is divided roughly 50-50."

     As the author of two books on the Lindbergh kidnapping case I've encountered something like the 99 to 1 problem in connection with hack true crime writers who make the case that Bruno Richard Hauptmann, the man executed for the 1932 murder of the Lindbergh baby was innocent. More than a dozen highly qualified questioned document examiners had identified Hauptmann as the writer of all the ransom letters. Since the 1935 trial several modern handwriting experts have analyzed the evidence and drawn the same conclusion. While only one  recognized forensic document examiner has expressed doubt regarding these findings, those who believe that Hauptmann was innocent claim that the handwriting evidence in the case is in dispute. In reality, the question of who wrote the Lindbergh case ransom letters has been settled for a long time.

     In researching my 2008 book Forensics Under Fire I noticed that forensic pathologists often testify against each other in shaken baby syndrome and sudden infant death cases. Coroners and medical examiners also face off against opposing forensic pathologists in suicide versus homicide cases and trials featuring the issue of whether a victim was intentionally poisoned or died of an overdose. Forgery and disputed will cases almost always involve opposing handwriting experts, a forensic science on the verge of being destroyed by phony practitioners. (The JonBenet Ramsey case caused a serious rift among qualified forensic document examiners.) Experts regularly disagree over the crime scene identification of footwear and tire impressions, blood spatter analysis, bite mark identification and the cause and origin of suspicious structural fires. Even government fingerprint examiners are now being challenged in court. Twenty years ago this was unheard of.

     The fact that two expert witnesses are on opposite sides of a forensic science issue doesn't necessarily mean that one of them is either a phony or corrupt. But it does mean that one of them is wrong. When jurors find the scientist who is wrong more credible than the expert who is right, criminal justice has been subverted. Forensic science is supposed to be the solution, not the problem.

The Rosa Olvera Jimenez Case

     On January 30, 2003, 19-year-old Rosa Olvera Jimenez and the boy she regularly babysat were alone in the 21-months old's Austin, Texas home. Around noon, Bryan Gutierrez turned blue and collapsed. Although paramedics pulled a wad of 5 paper towels out of the boy's throat, he had slipped into a vegetative state. Four months later he died.

      Jimenez, suspected of murdering the child from the onset, said she had inadvertently left a roll of paper towels in the living room while she prepared lunch in the kitchen. Bryan, his face blue, staggered into the kitchen and pointed to his throat. A few minutes later he collapsed.

     Charged with murder, Rosa Jimenez went on trial on August 25, 2005 at the Travis County district court in Austin. The prosecutor put two physicians and a medical examiner on the stand. The three experts testified that it would have been physically impossible for Bryan to have accidentally swallowed all of that paper. His gag reflex would have prevented that from happening. The fact the towels were stained with blood, according to these expert witnesses, supported the theory that the obstructive mass had been pushed into his throat by force.

     The Jimenez defense put Dr. Ira Kanfer, a forensic pathologist, on the stand. Dr. Kanfer testified that the victim could have accidentally choked himself with the paper towels. According to this forensic pathologist, the blood on the towels did not come from the inside of the victim's mouth, but from his lungs.

     On August 31, 2005, after eight hours of deliberation, the jury found Rosa Jimenez guilty of murder. The judge sentenced her to 99 years in prison.
   
     Defense attorneys filed a motion for a new trial on the grounds the state had not given the defense team enough money to hire a battery of experts to counter the prosecution's expert witnesses. Following the trial, two physicians who were pediatric airway specialists, and a forensic pathologist who specialized in the deaths of children, studied the case. All three of these experts believed that despite the gag reflex, Bryan Gutierrez could have accidentally choked on the paper towels.

     To counter the post-conviction findings of these new defense witnesses the prosecutor presented the analysis of an expert who agreed with the three doctors who had testified for the prosecution at the trial.

     In November 2005 the Travis County district judge who had presided over the case denied the defense motion for a new trial. Jimenez's attorneys appealed this ruling. Several months later, a Texas appeals court reversed the district judge and ordered a new trial based on the new evidence. The Travis County prosecutor appealed this decision to the state's highest court and in April 2012 that court, in an 8 to 1 decision, denied Rosa Jimenez a new trial. According to the justices, the new scientific evidence was not enough evidence to legally reverse the trial jury's finding of guilt.

     In the Jimenez murder case forensic science failed to establish how Bryan Gutierrez had died. It didn't matter to him but it meant everything to his babysitter who will probably die in prison. We will never know for sure if justice was done in this case.

     In the 1930's forensic science advocates such as law school dean John Wigmore and police chief August Vollmer believed that science in the court room would some day eliminate verdicts based upon emotion, guess work and legal gymnastics. That day may come, but notwithstanding cutting edge science such as DNA analysis we are not there yet.

The Ryan Ferguson Murder Case: The Power of Perjured Testimony

     During the early morning hours of November 1, 2001, a person or persons attacked sports editor Kent Heitholt as he approached his car in the parking lot next to the Columbia Daily Tribune office in Columbia, Missouri. Around the time of the assault two young white men were seen in the vicinity. The attackers had beaten Mr. Heitholt with their fists then strangled him with his own belt. His watch had been stolen but his wallet was still in his car.

     In the months following the Heitholt murder, detectives with the Columbia Police Department ran down thousands of leads but came up empty handed. As time passed and the case remained unsolved, local criminal justice leaders felt building pressure to solve this brutal murder of a prominent citizen.

     In an act of investigative desperation the authorities in November 2003 published a composite police sketch of the two men seen near the newspaper office that night. (Police sketches are not only useless to crime investigators, they make things worse by generating false leads and false hopes of a case solution.)

     In March 2004 an anonymous caller to the crime stopper's hotline in Columbia reported that a 19-year-old local man named Chuck Erickson had been telling people that he may have been involved in the Heitholt murder.

     Chuck Erickson, in March 2004, had just come off a probated sentence related to a drug conviction. When Mr. Heitholt was beaten and strangled to death Erickson would have been seventeen. Detectives assigned to the case were thrilled to have such a promising lead.

     At police headquarters detectives put Chuck Erickson through an intense and prolonged interrogation that was only partially recorded. Erickson told his questioners that because one of the men depicted in the police sketches looked like him, he started wondering if maybe in a drug and alcohol blackout he had been involved in Mr. Heitholt's violent death. Perhaps he and his friend since childhood, Ryan Ferguson, had committed the murder. They had been drinking that night in a bar not far from the crime scene. Maybe they had robbed the newspaper man in order to keep drinking.

     Had the detectives grilling Erickson not been so desperate to solve the Heitholt case, they might have recognized several indications that Erickson and his friend were not good murder suspects. The robbery motive didn't hold water because Mr. Heitholt had been murdered one hour after the bars had closed that night. Moreover, Erickson had to be told that the victim had been strangled with his own belt, and shown exactly where in the parking lot Heitholt had been attacked.

     When detectives brought Ryan Ferguson in for questioning, he insisted that he had nothing to do with Mr. Heitholt's murder. He maintained that position throughout the interrogation. Not only did Ferguson strongly deny any involvement in the homicide, investigators didn't have a single piece of physical evidence linking him to the crime scene.

     Notwithstanding having nothing but the word of a former drug addict who had no memory of what he had done that night, detectives continued to press their case against both suspects.

     In the months that followed, Chuck Erickson, in return for the promise of a relatively light sentence, agreed to testify against his friend. This meant that Erickson's memory, colored by heavy coaching, would have to significantly improve. And of course it did.

     In October 2005, in Columbia, Missouri, Ryan Ferguson went on trial for the Heitholt murder. When prosecutor Kevin Crane put Chuck Erickson on the stand he testified that he and the defendant had attacked the victim that night in the newspaper office parking lot. Prosecutor Crane also produced a witness, a janitor named Jerry Trump, who said he had seen Erickson and the defendant that night not far from the murder scene. For some reason Mr. Trump had waited several years before coming forward with his information.

     Two men--a drug addict with a remarkably improved memory, and a witness who came forward at the last minute--comprised the sum total of the prosecution's case. In the name of justice, the trial judge should have directed a not guilty verdict based on the fact the government had not carried its burden of proof. But instead, the case went to the jury and Ryan Ferguson was found guilty as charged. The judge sentenced him to forty years in prison.

     In 2010, Missouri's Western District appellate court heard arguments regarding the Ferguson conviction. While the justices questioned the star prosecution witness' credibility, they declined to rule on the case. Instead, the appeals court judges recommended that the case be reviewed before a different lower court judge.

     The lower court hearing on the Ferguson conviction took place in April 2012. At this proceeding Chuck Erickson admitted under oath that he had lied at Ferguson's murder trial to save his own skin. Jerry Trump, the prosecution's miracle witness, took the stand and confessed that he had committed perjury as well.

     The lower court review judge, after hearing from Erickson and Trump, ruled that Erickson's testimony at Ferguson's 2005 murder trial was indeed credible. In other words, he was telling the truth then but lying now. Although the janitor's testimony was not reliable, the judge said it was an inconsequential factor in Ferguson's conviction. 

     On January 13, 2013 the Ferguson legal team appealed the review judge's ruling. In September, justices with the Western District Appeals Court considered the revised testimony of Chick Erickson and Jerry Trump. On November 5, 2013 the Missouri appeals court vacated Ryan Ferguson's murder conviction. After spending almost ten years behind bars Mr. Ferguson was a free man.

Who Murdered Jon Garner?

     In 2018, Jon Garner and his wife Sandra Louise Garner resided in the small Ellis County town of Maypearl, Texas. They were managers at the DHL Express and We Pack companies in nearby Paris, Texas. The couple had met in 2000 and two years later were married. Sandra, 13 years older than Jon, was twice-divorced with two children, Andrea and Wesley Miller.

     In 2014 Sandra Garner was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. Two years after the diagnosis the couple moved from Paris, Texas to the house in Maypearl. Jon Garner, described by people who knew him as a bit "wild and crazy," also drank heavily and suffered bouts of depression.

     In the early morning hours of January 2, 2018, 58-year-old Sandra Garner called 911 and rather calmly said, "There was a man here and he shot him. Please help me."

     Responding deputies with the Ellis County Sheriff's Office found the 911 caller's 45-year-old husband in bed with two gunshot wounds to his head. He was pronounced dead at the scene. At the sheriff's office Sandra Garner told her questioners that when awaken by the sound of two gunshots she was confronted by the shooter, a naked man wearing a face-mask. All she could see were his eyes. When she screamed the intruder said, "Shut up!" Sandra pleaded with the masked intruder not to kill her. In response he said, "What I came to do is done. I didn't come here to shoot you."

     The gunman who had just shot her husband to death took the time to explain why he had murdered him. According to the killer, after Mr. Garner had fired him some years ago he lost his house, his wife and his children. He had lost everything.

     Sandra Garner informed the sheriff's deputy that the shooter knew that the couple kept cash in the house and he wanted it. She directed him to the closet where they had $18,000 in a lockbox. Before the killer left the house with the money he told Sandra to count to 100 before calling the police. If he heard sirens he'd come back and shoot her.
   
     A search of the Garner house revealed that Mr. Garner owned 49 pistols and twelve rifles. Sandra Garner's .38-caliber Taurus revolver was not in the dwelling and she said she had no idea where it was. A police search of Sandra Garner's iPad immediately made her a suspect in her husband's death. Four days before the murder, someone on her iPad had Googled: "How to kill somebody in their sleep" then clicked a link to: "16 ways to kill somebody and not get caught."

     When asked about the incriminating iPad Google search the suspect replied that her husband often thought about killing himself and must have made the Internet inquiry.

     On January 5, 2018 sheriff's deputies returned to the Garner house for a more thorough search for the .38-caliber Taurus revolver. The officers went to the attached garage to search Sandra Garner's Ford Mustang but the garage was locked. When asked for the key the angered suspect reluctantly complied with the request.

     Under the front seat of the Mustang deputies found the suspect's .38-caliber revolver. It was wrapped in wet towels inside a plastic bag.

     At the crime lab forensic scientists were unable to find latent fingerprints or DNA evidence on the gun. A forensic firearms identification expert, however, determined that the fatal bullets had been fired from this revolver. 

     On January 10, 2018 sheriff's deputies took Sandra Garner into custody on the charge of murder. The magistrate set her bail at $2 million. An Ellis County grand jury two months later brought a murder indictment against her.

     The Sandra Garner case went to trial on September 10, 2019 in the Ellis County Court House in Waxahachie, Texas. The defendant's attorney, Tom Pappas offered a three-pronged defense: His client had been framed--by her son Wesley Miller; the Ellis County Sheriff's Office had horribly bungled the investigation; and the prosecution had not established a motive for Sandra Garner to kill the man who loved her and had taken care of her.

     The defendant, looking older and unwell, took the stand on her own behalf and came off as a sympathetic witness who had been framed by her son who had made the Google searches on her iPad and planted the murder weapon in her car. According to the defense, Wesley Miller had murdered his stepfather because he was desperate for money. The defense attorney pointed out that Mr. Miller was in the Garner house the night of the incriminating Google searches. Moreover, contrary to what detectives believed, Wesley Miller did not have a solid alibi for the early morning hours of January 2, 2018.

     Regarding the bungled investigation, the defense attorney highlighted the fact deputies, immediately following the discovery of Mr. Garner, did not bag his wife's hands to preserve possible gunshot residue. If they had they might have found that she had not fired the murder weapon. Had investigators processed the Mustang's door handles for latent fingerprints they may have discovered that Wesley Miller had planted the murder weapon. Also, the sheriff's office lost the crime scene photographs and had done nothing to protect the murder scene from evidence contamination and removal.

     Throughout the trial defense attorney Pappas repeatedly referred to his client as the "60-year-old nana with MS."

     On October 10, 2019, after 25 witnesses and 400 exhibits, the jury, after deliberating three hours, returned to the courtroom with its verdict: Not guilty. The jurors did not think the prosecution had made its case beyond a reasonable doubt.