The assistant D.A.'s who tried the Martin Anderson murder case were clearly outgunned, outmanned, and outmaneuvered, from the start, by the defense, but also, by Bay County itself. As reported in the Tallahassee Democrat:
By several accounts, the state's case began to fall apart with jury selection. Defense attorneys knocked off most of the potential black jurors and prosecutors bumped off two from a pool that started with 1,400 potential jurors.
''Jury selection is a critical part,'' said Tallahassee criminal defense attorney, Robert Augustus Harper Jr. ''It's the whole case.''
An all-white jury found the defendants not guilty of felony aggravated manslaughter of a child Friday. The verdict in the racially charged case sparked student protests at the Capitol and demands that federal investigators file civil rights charges.
Three assistant state attorneys - Pam Bondi, Scott Harmon and Michael Sinacore - tried the case against eight Panama City criminal defense attorneys.
The trial took three weeks. The verdict: 90 minutes.
90 minutes.
The prosecution also failed to request a change of venue.
''I see no reason to take the case out of Bay County,'' Ober said last year when the charges were announced. Ober was appointed to investigate the case by former Gov. Jeb Bush after the local state attorney recused himself.
Moreover:
Some attorneys said having the trial in conservative Bay County was bad for the prosecution.
''The defense had local witnesses as opposed to outside witnesses, and local experts as opposed to outside experts and a local jury,'' said Tallahassee trial lawyer Henry Hunter. ''They would've done better with a change of venue. The defense had an advantage with the venue.''
The prosecution made the wrong decision to put on two experts who did not completely agree on how Anderson died, some attorneys said, allowing defense attorneys to magnify the difference.
Hillsborough County Medical Examiner Dr. Vernard Adams testified Anderson died from suffocation when the drill instructors gave him ammonia and clamped his mouth shut. A second state witness, Dr. Thomas Andrew, medical examiner for the state of New Hampshire, said Anderson died from a lack of oxygen.
''They were prepared and the defense climbed all over it,'' said Pumphrey, who added that state prosecutors were, ''tactically out maneuvered.''
Meanwhile, he acquittal of those seven guards and world's most insensitive nurse Kristin Schmidt is ratcheting up the tension in Panama City.
The boy's mother, Gina Jones, stormed out of the courtroom. "I cannot see my son no more. Everybody see their family members. It's wrong," she said.
Anderson's family repeatedly sat through the painful video as it played during testimony. They had long sought a trial, claiming local officials tried to cover up the case. The conservative Florida Panhandle county is surrounded by military bases and residents are known for their respect for law and order.
"You kill a dog, you go to jail," said Gina Jones' lawyer, Benjamin Crump, outside court. "You kill a little black boy and nothing happens."
The guards, who are white, black and Asian, stood quietly as the judge read the verdicts. The all-white jury was escorted away from the courthouse and did not comment.
Special prosecutor Mark Ober said in a statement he was "extremely disappointed."
"In spite of these verdicts, Martin Lee Anderson did not die in vain," the statement read. "This case brought needed attention and reform to our juvenile justice system."
The state NAACP and other organizations, along with local policiticians including State Sen. Fredrica Wilson and U.S. Congressman Alcee Hastings are now pushing for the Justice Department to act.
U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Criminal Section, PHB Washington, D.C. 20530 202-514-3204 AskDOJ@usdoj.gov
Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum The Capitol PL-01 Tallahassee, FL 32399-1050 850-414-3300 Florida Toll Free: 1-866-966-7226 ag.mccollum@myfloridalegal.com
U.S. Attorney for the the Northern District of Florida 850-942-8430
Update 2: Funny thing about U.S. Attorney for NoFla Gregory Miller ... he was on Alberto Gonzales' purge list. Actually, that's probably a good sign that he's probably an honest guy.
The latest outrage in the sorry saga of Martin Lee Anderson's brief life and tragic death involves rumors, innuendo, and a quick tempered judge...
PANAMA CITY -- The judge kicked the victim's father out of the courtroom. The mother ran out, too upset to listen to testimony. And one defendant had to be hospitalized for stress.
Much of the drama that unfolded Wednesday in the boot camp case happened outside Circuit Judge Michael Overstreet's courtroom.
By the end of the day, neither of Martin Lee Anderson's parents was in court, and neither was defendant Joseph Walsh II.
The dead teen's mother, Gina Jones, broke down during testimony by one of the accused guards. Jones usually leaves the courtroom whenever the grainy boot camp videotape is aired. Wednesday morning she remained in her seat.
But as accused guard Charles Enfinger described physically restraining the boy -- with the boot camp video playing for jurors -- Jones ran from the room. She cried: "I can't do this!"
About two hours later, just before lunch, the judge removed the teen's father from court after accusing Robert Anderson of "making noises."
Just before lunch, defense attorney Waylon Graham complained to the judge that Anderson and several others sitting in the second row behind the prosecutors were using profanity and commenting on the evidence. It has been a pattern since the accused guards began to testify Tuesday, he said.
"We have complained and complained about it," Graham said.
This time, an investigator for the prosecutors heard it, backing up the defense attorneys' complaints, Graham said.
With the jury outside the courtroom, the judge ordered several people to stand and leave. He told them not to return to court.
Whether Mr. Anderson was talking or not is a matter of dispute:
Reporters sitting in the back of the courtroom didn't hear anything, and neither did Bettye Rouse, a courtroom spectator who was sitting right behind Anderson. She said the family had been quiet.
"I was sitting in the row behind them," she said. "I did not hear a thing."
Crump said he heard that a text message had been sent from someone in the courtroom to Graham, a message accusing Anderson of misbehaving. That's when Graham interrupted the proceedings, Crump said. ...
And Mr. Graham has an interesting take on Anderson's future:
He said the father might be able to get back into the courtroom to hear closing arguments and the verdict if he would "beg forgiveness."
"If they were in federal court, they would all be in a holding cell right now," Graham said.
And then, there's the high drama surrounding one of the defendants:
All seemed quiet until the afternoon break, when two ambulances rolled up to the back of the courthouse. Emergency crews then slipped into the courtroom and carried out Walsh on a stretcher. He wasn't moving. His eyes were closed.
His parents, who have attended much of the trial, were at his side.
Walsh, 37, was taken to Bay Medical Center, the same local hospital where Martin Lee Anderson went after he left the boot camp yard.
Walsh's father, also named Joseph Walsh, said his son was under tremendous pressure.
"Stress does this to him," said Walsh, 62, adding that his son suffers from Gulf War syndrome.
By the end of the day, there were no updates on Walsh's condition. He did not return.
...and last but not least, the obligatory O.J. connection:
All things lead to O.J. Simpson, including the boot camp trial. Absent in the glare of Court TV cameras is the wife of Bay County Circuit Judge Michael Overstreet. She made the cover of Playboy magazine in October 1994. Call her a model. Call her an actress. Simpson called her an alibi after the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. Overstreet's wife? Paula Barbieri, Simpson's ex-girlfriend.
An attorney for the defense says the paramilitary atmosphere surrounding the beating of Martin Anderson at a Bay County, Florida boot camp last January was "just another day at the office." Said defense attorney Walter Smith:
The guards saw Anderson not as a 14-year-old child, but as ''a six-foot, 168-pound adult felon,'' Smith said. He had been sent to the camp for a probation violation after trespassing at a school and stealing his grandmother's car from a church parking lot.
Smith, who represents guard Charles Enfinger, said Anderson's file had been marked with a red dot -- the highest of three levels of offenders -- indicating the he had the potential for violence.
''These are not rogue officers who are trying to punish a kid,'' he said. ``Nobody is going to say that those hammer strikes or knee strikes were unlawful, they were strictly according to procedure.''
Defense attorneys maintain that Anderson's death was unavoidable because he had undiagnosed sickle cell trait, a genetic blood disorder. The usually benign disorder can cause blood cells to shrivel into a sickle shape and limit their ability to carry oxygen under physical stress.
Earlier Monday, prosecutors rested their case after the chief medical director for Florida's Department of Juvenile Justice testified that nurse Kristin Schmidt, who stood by during the altercation, did not tell her supervisors that the teen was struck and forced to inhale ammonia.
Smith said later that camp employees did not consider ammonia tablets as a use of force against the offenders, so they did not find it necessary to put that in their reports.
The trial is pretty much going according to rote -- the use of force was "justified" because of Anderson's size (he had no criminal record and had only been there one day, so i'm not sure how they determined that he was a threat), the tape magnifies the horror but it's "misleading", it was sickle cell trait that killed Anderosn, not the brutal half-hour beating by seven adult men, and the conflicting autopsies constitute reasonable doubt. Throw in an all-white jury in Jena-esque Bay County and you've got a recipe for acquittal.
Medical experts testified yesterday about Matin Lee Anderson's medical condition, and what relationship his sickle cell trait may have had to his death. Most salient point:
Chief medical examiner for the state of New Hampshire, Dr. Thomas Andrew, a prosecution witness, said Anderson was not suffocated, but died from a combination of a lack of oxygen due to the sickle-cell trait he had, the ''inappropriate'' use of ammonia capsules and the blows and strikes he took from drill instructors. All of those led to a ''lethal chain of events.''
He said the lack of oxygen ''is the tipping point in all these events.'' By the time the paramedics came, Anderson had brain damage but was still breathing.
Anderson's cause of death is complex, Andrew said, and when asked by Assistant State Attorney Scott Harmon if Anderson would have died without the actions of the guards, he said, ''no.''...
The trial for the seven guards and the useless nurse who watched those guards beat, kick, stomp and elbow for 30 minutes at a Bay County boot camp last January began yesterday on charges of aggravated manslaughter. The eight are being tried before an all-white jury, in a town where Martin's family had to go underground during the nearly year-long ordeal before indictments were handed down, due to racist taunts and death threats. Ain't that a kick in the head.
On trial and charged with felony aggravated manslaughter of a child are former drill instructors Henry Dickens, Charles Enfinger, Patrick Garrett, Raymond Hauck, Charles Helms Jr., Henry McFadden Jr., Joseph Walsh II and camp nurse, Kristin Schmidt. They face up to 30 years in prison, if convicted. Overstreet said he will allow the jury to consider a lesser non-homicidal verdict also.
Two of the defendants are black, one Asian and five are white. Defense attorneys have said some of the former drill instructors will testify.
Here we go.
By the way, we talked this morning about the Emmett Till case. The town where his killers were acquitted back in 1955 is now planning to issue an apology, in hopes of bringing tourists to their dying municipality. Fascinating backgrounder on the players in the Till tragedy here.
For some reason, the two cases resonated in parallel fashion for me this morning.
