Meet The Newbies

A slow week at the county courthouse means we can indulge in a little lightening of the mood, perhaps get to know some of the new personalities who have taken over the center of attention, a new judge, new to the criminal bench, anyway, some new lawyers and police officers – all very young and dynamic, some even glamorously so, and what better way to get to know them than to see them in action, battling it out in one of those low-level offender skirmishes which serve as the training ground for both the lawyers and the police officers who have to take the stand and answer all the tricky, hardball questions.

Let’s begin with our new Deputy Public Defender, Chelsie Thurmond, who comes to us from New Orleans, and has turned out for trial in an almost funereally formal black suit and emerald Swiss-dot blouse, the tips of her long curly brown hair bleached blonde. Not a trace of makeup on a face that needs no help from the cosmetic industry, thank you, just the natural bloom of health and vigor, as she stands to address the jury on her client’s behalf, a young local woman named Lacy Grisham charged with drinking and driving, nearly twice the limit, hit & run, plus some other charges tacked on for good measure.

Deputy DA Melissa Weems, an exceptionally prepossessing young woman of such a stature (think of those stories you’ve heard about Icelandic giants) that she could ably play basketball as a center for an Olympic women’s team, a great big beautiful athlete, shoehorned into a lawyer’s skirt suit, and teetering around the balliwick on black velvet spike heels.  She pranced carefully over and had an exhibit marked by Court Clerk, Bonnie Miller; then, as precariously as if she were on stilts or a unicycle, maneuvered back to the front of the jury box where she addressed the defendant in the case, Ms. Grisham, who had taken the stand in her own defense.

“How tall are you?”

“Five-foot six.”

Deputy DA Weems smiled at the defendant, but not very pleasantly, and said, “I know it’s not a nice thing to ask, but you were a lot heavier at the time, weren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“If you don’t mind my asking, how much did you weigh back at the end of July?”

“Two-forty-something,” Grisham bashfully conceded.

With another of her mirthless smiles, Ms. Weems glanced down at the page in her hand, the results from a breath test that read .016 blood alcohol content, taken some two hours after the alleged DUI hit & run. At issue was what’s called the “elimination rate,” or how quickly the human body sobers up from a night of drinking, and one regains one’s level-headedness.

Having left Digger’s Bar in Willits at closing time, and backed into a F-150 pickup, Ms. Grisham had told the jurors that during the three to four hours she sat chatting with friends at the bar, she had only consumed three or four champagne cocktails called mimosas, cut with grapefruit juice (rather than the usual orange juice, perhaps she was already on the diet that resulted in her appearing in court at considerably less than 240 pounds).  Then, after she got home, she hauled a bottle of bubbly out of the fridge and had a few more glassfuls. This would account for her intoxication when the police arrived at her house to give her the breath test, and at the same time Ms. Grisham might plausibly give the appearance of having drank “responsibly” (as the booze merchants say) at the bar, waiting until she got home for a few more.

Therein lay the sophistry of the defense for the expert on alcohol intoxication from the Department of Justice in Eureka to parse.

Enter Matthew Kirsten, a grandfatherly figure with such a fulsome manner one suspects he pours too much syrup on his pancakes before he testifies. Mr. Kirsten took the stand with the avuncular aplomb of long familiarity with the seat, and there he sat all afternoon, the cloyingly glib Uncle Kirsten, who smirked tirelessly at the jury and told them, among many other things related to his experiments and calculations, that neither the three or four mimosas Grisham claimed to have drunk at the bar during a three-to four-hour stay, nor yet the two bumpers of bubbly she said she drank at home a half-hour later, would have put her BAC (blood alcohol content) above .00 parts per million, due to the elimination rate for someone her size.

The defendant’s size was an issue, but what about the size of the bottle? Was it a magnum, a jeroboam, a split, a tiny little airplane bottle, what?  And what about the size of the wine glasses? My friend in Virginia City has one that holds an entire 750 milliliter bottle. Here, one could exaggerate or minimize at will, if she only knew her “elimination rate.”

As for backing into the pickup, Grisham said it only made a small crunching sound and, having looked back and not seen the vehicle, she thought she’d run over a plastic bottle and crunched it. Considering how cheaply a car body is built these days, the defendant had a point. Sober witnesses, a taxi driver for one, and the bartender for another, both said it sounded like “a can crunching” or “something crumpling.”

When Officer Mason of the Willits Police arrived to investigate an alleged hit & run, these same two witnesses told him who done it and where Ms. Grisham lived, only a block and a half away. He went to Grisham’s house and was taking pictures of her damaged vehicle when she came out, having just received a message on Facebook, saying “WTF you hit my truck!!!!”

With Officer Mason on the stand, Ms. Weems asked some leading questions.

“Once you received information from the witnesses and knew who committed the hit & run, what did you do?”

Mason seemed a little astounded.  The Police Academy, to my small understanding, cautions cadets from making this kind of overweening assertion in court.  Mason’s answer, in contrast to Weems’ question, was decorously modest.

“I went to a possible suspect’s residence.”

“How far from Digger’s Bar was that?”

“About one-tenth of a mile.”

“Did you photograph the vehicle involved in the hit & run?”

Judge Cindee Mayfield’s eyes glanced up from her note taking and flickered over the defense table, perhaps anticipating an objection to such blatant leading. There wasn’t any.

As Mason was taking pictures of the damage to Grisham’s Jeep, she came out of the house and, momentarily, Officer D’Orazio arrived on scene. To the officers, Grisham showed “objective signs of intoxication” and D’Orazio gave her some field sobriety tests, which, not surprisingly, she failed.

“Is the person who committed these crimes in the courtroom, Officer Mason?”

If Weems had been on a basketball court a whistle blast would have penalized her for goaltending, at the very least. But in court, it’s the defense lawyer’s job to object, otherwise the judge has no recourse to quell such fouls as the prosecution was getting away with – or so it seemed to me, though I’ve no kind of legal mind, I’m merely an aficionado of the sport.

Judge Leonard La Casse, long retired to fly-fishing and bird-watching, used to tell the lawyers it was their responsibility to object, he couldn’t do it for them, but Judge Mayfield seemed to trust in the training and experience the newbies come to court with.

Mason said, “That’s Lacy at the defense table in the black sweatshirt and spotted dress.”

Weems said, “May the record reflect the witness has identified the defendant?”

Judge Mayfield said, “I wouldn’t call it a ‘sweatshirt’ but yes, he’s identified her.”

Ms. Grisham was wearing a dainty black cardigan, lambs wool or cashmere, over a black dress with golden globes of various sizes imprinted on it. Officer Mason was in a stiff black suit, and this was probably the first time he’d worn it in public. He usually wears his uniform to court, but in this case, he was Weems’ lead investigator, and had to dress the part.

The courtroom drama began during closing arguments, on the third day. Both lawyers wore black suits, Ms. Thurmond’s set off with a green and red Swiss-dot blouse, flattering yet demure; Ms. Weems’ wore white silk flounces billowing over her cleavage, and a doubled strand of pearls.  Weems went first.

“Ladies and gentlemen, when you can’t even make it out of the parking lot without committing a hit & run, you’ve had too much to drink.” With this opening remark, she then launched into a breakdown of the charges and special allegations, quoting her expert from DOJ Matthew Kirsten (without the cloying smiles he’s known for), and his calculations on body weight and the alcohol elimination rate, emphasizing that the two glasses of champagne the defendant had at home would have “zero” effect on her BAC.

Then she went into the “permissible inferences” the jurors were to make, namely, that she was under the influence when she left the bar, and at the time of the hit & run, and at the time of driving home; Weems wanted the jurors to use the permissible inference to find her guilty of the hit & run, Count One; Count Two, over the legal limit of .08; Count Three, DUI; (I never understood what Count Four was; and Count Five — ?!—I didn’t get that one, either.)

Ms. Thurmond began with, “Most if not all of the evidence supports Ms. Grisham’s testimony – which has never changed.  She backed out, heard a crunch – the taxi driver called it a crumpling – and thought she had backed over an empty water bottle. And the taxi driver said she looked like she didn’t know she’d hit the pickup.”

This point was essential to refute Weems’ insistence on the hit & run, for if you don’t know you’ve hit another vehicle, you need not contact the owner or the police.

“And the People’s own expert said that the defendant’s blood alcohol level on leaving the bar would have been .00; then we have the breath test being given an hour and a half after she got home, and Mr. Kirsten said if the test was given within three hours it cannot and will not tell you what the BAC level was at the time she was driving.”

Thurmond then got out her Chart of Guilt, a colorful production that is one of the props at the Office of the Public Defender and, pointing at last to the highest level, marked Highly Likely – “even at this level, ladies and gentlemen, you must find her Not Guilty.”

Deputy DA Weems came back for her rebuttal with a vengeance. “It’s my suggestion to you ladies and gentlemen, that nothing the defendant has said is accurate. If the two drinks she supposedly had at home would have zero effect on her BAC and the three or four she had at the bar over the course of three or four hours would have zero effect on her BAC level, then where did the 0.16 that she blew come from? It didn’t just magically appear! If two drinks in a hour and  a half would affect her minimally, then she drank more than three or four at the bar.

“Objection, your honor, calls for speculation.”

“Overruled.”

“She also had a tactic of stalling the officers, saying she couldn’t make up her mind as to whether she wanted the blood test or the breath test. This defendant knew she’d hit that vehicle, she had to have known, but she didn’t get out because she knew she’d been driving under the influence. She could have walked home.  She could have had a sober driver. There’s no reasonable doubt here. Find her guilty.”

They did, but only for the DUI, not the part about being over the legal limit of .08, or the hit & run, and none of the rest, whatever they were.

And, in case anyone’s keeping score, with only the raw DUI guilty verdict, we give the nod to Thurmond who won her first trial against Weems.