SPM Responds (Part 8.b)

Continued from part 8.a

Alright. We already know that the child (Jane Doe) said she believed this assault could be a dream. That’s where I’ll start.

            My opinion is that she knew no assault took place, and it was her own guilty conscience that wouldn’t allow her to flat out say “I know this happened. I remember it clearly.” In trial, (Court Transcripts Volume 11 of 31 pg. 109), the child told the D.A., “…I was – I was sleepy and didn’t know if it could be a dream or something like that.”

            After Jane Doe said that, the D.A.’s gentle demeanor changed like day turns to night. She stared at the child, clearly disappointed, and asked “Was it a dream?” The child gave the answer that she knew Oncken wanted to hear, “No”, yet she still refused to say she remembered the assault clearly. On the same page (pg. 109) the D.A. asked, “Do you remember it clearly?” Jane Doe responded, “Not really.”

            Afterwards, Chip questions the child. Here, he basically confirms what she told the D.A.:

Criminal Trial

(Court Transcripts Volume 11 of 31 pg. 131)

Chip: I want to ask you a few questions about the last time you spent the night with Carley. Do you know what time I’m talking about?

Jane Doe: Yes.

Chip: You’ve talked a little bit about it with Ms. Oncken. You were not sure what happened that night, were you?

Jane Doe: Not really.

Chip: Because you thought you might be dreaming

Jane Doe: Yes.

Obviously this little girl had a conscience and was making things difficult for the D.A.’s. I remember telling Chip, “She’s trying to tell the truth.” I honestly felt that she was trying to dig me out of the mess that she initially put me in. She was an intelligent child, and she had to have known that by saying these things, she was hurting their chances of a conviction.

But every time something was said in trial that the D.A.’s didn’t like, they used their powers to fix the problem. They did this, mostly, by using their professionals, who would get on the stand and say exactly what the D.A.’s wanted them to say. In this case they called upon a well respected child psychologist named Jennifer Welch. This woman is using all the money her parents spent on her college education to be a court house puppet.

Criminal Trial

(Court Transcripts Volume 13 of 31 pg. 187)

D.A. What kinds of things might a child do as a defense mechanism when the abuse is occurring?

Psychologist: Well, when the abuse is occurring the child is usually, as you can imagine, very frightened. And a lot of times they feel paralyzed, feel unable to affect a situation.

            They usually can’t believe this is happening and so a lot of times they might try to talk themselves into thinking that it’s not happening. That it’s a dream…

As most of you know, after this trial ended, the child’s family took me to civil court to sue for money. During her civil disposition, under sworn oath, Jane Doe told my civil lawyer Brock, that the assault took place “for one second.” During this criminal trial, she testified that it took place for “about a minute.” (You’ll see exactly what Jane Doe said about this alleged assault in upcoming letters.)

            I brought up the civil disposition because now that we know she’s claiming this was a “one second” ordeal, the D.A.’s question, and the psychologist’s explanation, sound even dumber than when they first put on this whole show. But, at the time, how could they have known that the child would, later, change her story? And, just for the record, I didn’t do this thing for “one second” or one thousandth of a second.

            Jennifer Welch also used the words “very frightened” in describing how this child must have felt. The child told the D.A. that she was “…sleepy and didn’t know if it could be a dream…” I’m not sure how someone can be “very frightened” and sleepy at the same time, but the jury was like twelve baby birds, swallowing anything that got dropped down their throat. They wanted so bad to believe this gangster Mexican was guilty; this thug with a shaved head and sagging his pants in court and acting like the whole situation was a waste of his time. I represented everything they feared and now there was a chance to “send a message” as the D.A. put it. The problem was they sent the right message using the wrong person. I will say this to Chip’s credit, he did keep asking me to pick my pants up.

            Chip didn’t dismiss the possibility that Jane Doe may have really dreamed this. He knew that she had been diagnosed with mental disorders, “possible hallucinations” was what one doctor said, so I could understand his direction. The question was, how could a nine-year-old child dream, or make-up, or even hallucinate the act of oral sex if she didn’t know it existed? She would have had to be exposed to the act, either by seeing it, or, God forbid, experiencing it.

            Chip’s goal was to find sources of which this child could have been exposed to the act. He decided to ask Jane Doe about scary movies, knowing that those types usually contained graphic sex scenes.

Criminal Trial

(Court Transcripts Volume 11 of 31 pgs. 129-130)

Chip: Let me ask you a couple questions about movies. You – have seen scary movies before?

Jane Doe: Yes.

Chip: What type of scary movies?

Jane Doe: Like “Scream”

Chip: Did you see “Scream 2?”

Jane Doe: Yes.

Chip: What else?

Jane Doe: “I Know What You Did Last Summer.”

Chip: Did you ever have a nightmare or a bad dream after seeing one of these scary movies?

Jane Doe: Yes.

Chip, also, wanted to know if she saw the movie “Scary Movie.” That movie had a scene of a male performing oral sex on a female. So that he wouldn’t have to put the child back on the stand for just one question, he asked the judge to order the D.A.’s to ask the child if she had ever seen “Scary Movie.” The D.A.’s asked her and Jane Doe told them that she had seen the movie.

With that information, Chip makes this move:

Criminal Trial

(Court Transcripts Volume 14 of 31 pgs. 84-85)

Chip: Judge, I have one other piece of evidence that we intend to offer. I’d like the Court’s input and possibly an agreement with the State on this piece of evidence.

            All of the movies that (Jane Doe) mentioned, Scary Movie, Scream One, Scream Two, I Know What You Did Last Summer, I’ve had reviewed. I do believe that the graphic sexual content within some of these movies has to be brought to the jury’s attention. I don’t intend to publish all four of these two hour movies. And I’m even satisfied if the State would enter a stipulation that there is graphic sexual material contained within these movies and that that is the State’s and the Defense’s agreement because I’m not crazy about, you know, the deliberations of the jury watching eight hours worth of movies to find all the parts that have been identified.

            In the efficient way we’ve tried this case I would like to keep doing that. That’s what I intend to offer into evidence and I don’t know if the State wants to talk about it, consult about it.

D.A. Andrews: So, you want to put the movies, the video into evidence?

Chip: All four that she mentioned.

D.A. Andrews: And we have established that the child watched every part of these movies in their entirety? I don’t think there was any testimony to that.

There were two D.A.’s in my trial, a middle aged, dark-haired woman named Andrews, and the head D.A., an old lady named Oncken.

            Just in case any of these movies had damaging sexual scenes, we see Andrews already setting things up to have the child say she only saw certain parts.

Continued in part 8.c