Fatal Beauty

by Burl Barer

  Another aspect of Karim’s expertise was especially important in the case against Rhonda Glover. “We compare a gunshot victim’s clothing and try to determine a distance of when a particular shot was fired toward the victim.” The particular item of clothing submitted to Karim was Jimmy Joste’s shorts.

  “Specifically, one pair of white Knights of the Roundtable dress shorts, one hundred percent cotton, zipper fly, had a short strap with a button waist, size thirty-four, with apparent biohazard and soiled sections.” According to Karim, there was a bullet hole in Joste’s shorts. “From the top of the waist of the waistline down, it was 8.75 inches. From the hemline up, it was 9.5 inches.” There was also a second bullet hole in Joste’s shorts, “basically on the right-side front section by the zipper.” Whether or not the holes were from the same bullet, or from separate ones, was debatable.

  “The point, I believe,” offered Jeff Reynolds, “was that Rhonda specifically shot Jimmy below the belt, on purpose, and after he was already on the ground. There were too many variables involved, from a scientific standpoint, to establish, with complete accuracy, exactly from where the shots were fired.”

  It wasn’t so much “guessing” as it was arguing about where Glover was standing when she fired the shots. Some insisted that she was not standing still, but rather was moving toward Joste, shooting him as he stumbled backward down the hall.

  “Rhonda Glover,” asserted ADA Bryan Case, “was in the bedroom when the first four rounds were fired. There are four shell casings there. We have photos of those. We don’t have to have exact measurements. There is a diagram. We know where those casings are in relation to the walls and the door. ”

  “That opinion,” countered Joe James Sawyer, Glover’s trial attorney, “is not founded upon science, and that’s the problem. The door to the bedroom was open—we all know that. You are surrounded by hard surfaces, and we have no exact measurements. We know that the way a Glock works, those shell casings could have gone anywhere, bounced off of the wall or whatever. Just because we know for a fact where the shell casings are doesn’t tell us with any scientific precision where she was when she pulled the trigger.”

  Rhonda Glover’s lawyer wanted hard science not guesswork when it came to placing where his client was when the shots were fired. When the prosecutor wanted Karim to pinpoint where Glover was standing when she pulled the trigger, based on photographic evidence of the bullet hole in the wall, Glover’s attorney strongly objected. As it turned out, Karim’s testimony was in Sawyer’s favor.

  “Without doing an ejection pattern analysis on that particular gun with that particular ammunition, it would be speculative,” said Karim. “The shooter could be anywhere in the bedroom or, under certain circumstances, in the hallway. It depends on the angle of the gun and how it was being held.”

  It wasn’t rocket science to figure out that she was either in the bedroom, the hallway—or both—for the simple reason that there was no other place for her to be. As for placement of the shooter, the conclusions of Dr. Bayardo, the ME, were not, he insisted, the result of guesswork. The evidence was simple and incontrovertible: Glover “fired four shots while in the bedroom, and six more shots were fired while she was in the hallway.” At least one was fired from directly above Joste, and at close range.

  If Rhonda Glover stood over Jimmy Joste and shot him while he was already down, even the most remote claim of self-defense became absurd. Sawyer did everything possible to cast doubt on any inference that his client did such a thing. In the final analysis it could not be stated with absolute certainty that she did so, but there was every indication that she most likely did.

  Assistant District Attorney Bryan Case put together a slightly different scenario on where Rhonda Glover was standing when she shot Jimmy Joste, a scenario also plausible based on blood splatter evidence.

  “Rhonda Glover wanted us to believe that she never moved from the doorway when she shot him,” said Case. “He was standing right in her way, right? No. He takes the first round right at the doorway. The cast-off blood is consistent with that. A bullet goes through him somewhere, right there at the doorway, blood on the door. Bam, three more times. Bam bam bam, while he is going down the hall. But then, you know what, he falls down. You know why there is three or four shots right through one place, because it is very likely that he was already dead at that point.

  “She then approaches, and we don’t know how close, but some number of steps toward him, and she aims the gun down so that the cartridge will eject out of the top of the gun and come to rest at Jimmy’s feet. She shoots him six times. She discharges six shells into him while he is lying there. It’s a tight pattern. She did not miss. She was a good shot.”

  The mental image of Rhonda Glover standing over the dead body of her child’s father, and intentionally shooting him in the groin, is not one to elicit sympathy for the accused. The entire concept of her doing that was incredibly off-putting to jurors and spectators. The fact that the physical evidence—although disputable—gave every indication of that taking place, it was impossible to erase from the mind of anyone who heard it.

  “I heard that Rhonda shot Jimmy’s balls off,” said one of Glover’s former Austin acquaintances. “From what the experts said at the trial, she probably did. That’s not only evil, that’s creepy. Bad enough that she killed him, but did she have to do that too?”

  “As hotheaded and outspoken as she was, none of us ever seriously believed she would kill Jimmy,” said Rocky Navarro. “Fifteen years is a long time, and that’s how long they were, more or less, together. Maybe if they didn’t have a child together, they would have split several years earlier. But Jimmy loved his son. So did Rhonda. That meant they would be tethered together as, I guess you could say, ‘spousal equivalents’ no matter what. During the trial they didn’t talk about Rhonda’s mental problems, or how screwed up on drugs both of them were at a certain point.”

  There were other things that could not be mentioned during the guilt/innocence phase of the trial. Joyce Imparato was all prepared to speak about Jimmy telling her that Rhonda and he were going off together, but when she started to testify, Rhonda’s lawyer objected that it was hearsay and prejudicial. Bryan Case objected to the objection, and there was another huddle with the judge on the issue of hearsay. This happened almost every few minutes because the trial of Rhonda Glover came immediately following United States Supreme Court rulings that threw the entire system of American justice into turmoil and confusion. The two rulings were, in the words of Loyala Law School professor Laurie Levenson, “revolutionary—they turned a bit of the criminal justice system upside down.”

  The one causing the greatest trepidation for everyone in the Glover trial was the ruling simply known as Crawford, named after Crawford v. Washington, a ruling that limited, as never before, prosecution evidence of statements made outside the court.

  “There were two new rulings from the United States Supreme Court,” said Jeff Reynolds, “and both decisions were at least short-term victories for defendants, and both were written by Justice Scalia—who, besides being one of the most conservative justices in the court’s modern history, is a stickler for enforcing the rights he finds in the Constitution.”

  One of these important rights is the right under the Sixth Amendment to confront one’s accusers at trial. It acts as a constitutional limit on prosecutors’ use of hearsay, a secondhand account of an out-of-court statement.

  Hearsay statements usually take the form of a police officer conveying the words of a witness who was unable or unwilling to testify in court. “Police have been known to not always tell the truth,” said former law enforcement officer Fred Wolfson. “I have a real issue with dishonest cops.”

  In the Supreme Court case, jurors in Michael Crawford’s assault trial heard a tape recording of a statement to police by his wife, Sylvia, that conflicted with Crawford’s claim of self-defense in stabbing a man. She was prevented from testifying by Washington State’s marital
privilege law, which prohibits one spouse from testifying against another without the latter’s consent.

  State courts upheld Crawford’s conviction, relying on the Supreme Court’s 1980 ruling that allowed prosecutors to use hearsay evidence if the circumstances showed that the statement of the witness was trustworthy. But in a 7-2 decision on March 8, 2004, the high court overturned the 1980 ruling and said the Sixth Amendment prohibits hearsay evidence of a witness’s “testimonial” statement—no matter how trustworthy—unless the defense has had a chance to cross-examine the witness.

  “That’s the important part,” added Jeff Reynolds, “you have the right, under our Constitution, to cross-examine someone who is testifying against you. If someone can just get up there and speak for someone else who isn’t there, and you can’t confront them or cross-examine them, your rights as an American have been violated. Because of the Supreme Court’s Crawford decision, you have to put people on the stand so they can be cross-examined. If they’re unavailable, you can’t use those statements.”

  Scalia refused to define “testimonial” hearsay but said it included, at least, testimony at a previous legal proceeding, and statements made during police interrogation. Since 1980, judges and legislatures had been relying on Supreme Court authority to allow police to tell juries what witnesses had told them.

  Jimmy Joste was unavailable to be questioned about what he said to Joyce Imparato because he was dead. Joe James Sawyer invoked the Crawford decision to keep her from telling the jury what Joste said to her.

  “I don’t see how this is prejudicial,” said Judge Lynch.

  “Oh, it is way prejudicial,” countered Sawyer, and Lynch asked for an explanation.

  “Well,” said Sawyer, “I’m sure that the state is going to, in the final argument, say that obviously Rhonda had told him that they were going away together. It raises a whole new issue.”

  “I think it is probative,” said Case, “because it sheds light on any number of things that have already been brought up…. If the defendant testifies, then the jury will get one version of their relationship, but the state believes it is probative in that it explains why the victim would have expected to see Rhonda at the house, why he might have depleted his resources and not cared if they were going to go away and leave together. Our theory of the case is that Jimmy believed that, but Rhonda knew it was never going to happen.”

  Caught up in his own argument, Case proceeded to validate Sawyer’s objection. “Jimmy was out of money,” Case said, “Jimmy was wanting Rhonda to go away with him, and the three of them would have their family—her and Jimmy and their son. Jimmy was telling her this, and I’m sure that the defendant is going to testify about whatever she thought the relationship was when she was living in that five-thousand-dollar-a-month condo in Houston, but the state’s belief is that Jimmy was hoping and wanting to be back with her and their son, and she let him continue in that belief, but she knew he was running out of money, and—”

  Judge Lynch interrupted him, asking, “Is all this going to come out of this witness’s testimony?”

  “No, no, all that won’t come out. But this is why her testimony is significant as to what Jimmy was thinking, and—”

  The judge ruled that Imparato could testify that Jimmy came to her house and gave her back “stuff,” but she was not to say anything about why he gave it back.

  “But that’s not the story,” complained Imparato, knowing full well that the reason she was there was to tell the jury that Jimmy believed that he and Rhonda were going away together.

  “You understand the ruling,” said Lynch.

  “Yes,” she acknowledged.

  “Then obey the ruling. ”

  Joyce told the jury about Jimmy coming over and returning the blankets, but not about Jimmy believing that Rhonda and he were leaving the country together.

  “The witness was obviously upset,” recalled Fred Wolfson. “She wanted people to know about the frame of mind of a man she cared about deeply, a man who was a close personal friend. But the way it turned out, the jury was not allowed to hear about Jimmy believing that Rhonda, Ronnie and he were all going to be one happy family in another country.”

  “They were going to Canada,” said Danny Davis. “The extradition laws up there are different. He told someone he was going to France, but it was Canada. He went away, all right, but not with Rhonda, but because of her. I really can’t imagine how she could claim that she shot him in self-defense.”

  In the state of Texas, the Texas Penal Code clearly defines self-defense as a person justified in using force against another when and to the degree he reasonably believes the force is immediately necessary to protect himself against the other’s use or attempted use of unlawful force.

  A law originally enacted in 1973 required Texans to attempt to retreat when criminally attacked. In 1995, the state legislature passed an exception to that law allowing the use of force without retreat when the intruder had illegally entered the victim’s home. The law signed by Governor Rick Perry in 2007, after the Joste homicide, extended the 1995 exception beyond the home to vehicles and workplaces. The law allows the reasonable use of deadly force without retreat when the intruder is committing certain violent crimes, such as murder or sexual assault, or is attempting to commit such crimes; unlawfully trying to enter a protected place; or is unlawfully trying to remove a person from a protected place. The law provides both criminal and civil immunity for persons lawfully using deadly force in the above circumstances.

  “Texas is considered to be one of the most conservative states,” said Joe James Sawyer, “and we pride ourselves on that. I am from here, and I’m proud of it, but I want you to consider that even in our conservative state, we allow broad terms of punishment for the crime of murder, and that is because our legislature determined that it is inappropriate to just blindly mete out punishment.

  “In 1974, we had the last major change in Texas law,” Sawyer recalled. “I was then a young practicing lawyer. It was one of the most dramatic and sweeping changes you can imagine. In 1974, if someone were convicted of a crime of rape, for example, the penalty was death. If you were convicted of burglary of a home that night, it was an automatic life sentence. The jury did not get to deliberate. It was an automatic punishment. Those days are gone, and they’re gone with good reason. Now the legislature has an amazing new form of freedom to a jury. It is the freedom to slowly and carefully consider what punishment fits the crime.”

  The nature of the crime might depend upon the circumstances of the crime. The circumstances under which Rhonda Glover shot Jimmy Joste formed the essence of the trial in Travis County.

  The mental condition of Rhonda Glover at the time of her arrest, and prior to the trial, was something her lawyer wanted brought to the jury’s attention. At no time during the guilt or innocence phase was the jury made aware that Glover suffered from a proven medical disease or disorder of the mind. Joe James Sawyer, Glover’s lawyer, believed that it was necessary for the trial jury to know that Rhonda Glover suffered from a mental illness.

  “Before this trial commenced, and before I actually represented Ms. Glover,” Sawyer said to Judge Lynch, “there was a judicial proceeding in this court [that was] based in part on expert testimony about a mental disease from which the defendant suffers. A jury returned a verdict finding that she was incompetent to stand trial. Finding incompetence necessarily reflects the jury’s belief of the definition of incompetence, that is the inability to sufficiently understand the charges against her, coupled with an inability to effectively assist her lawyer in representing her.

  “I would particularly note that she has been in custody for some many months and that it clearly was not drug related. I anticipate argument from the state that all of the behavior of 2003 and 2004 was drug driven, and not the result of her suffering from a mental disease or disorder.”

  Sawyer asked that the judge allow him to bring in witnesses to establish that fact so the jury would be aw
are of Glover’s mental illness. Speaking for the prosecution, Bryan Case didn’t like that idea. “The issue of competency is not relevant. It has been kept out of the trial, and the state objects to any kind of mentioning of the defendant being competent or incompetent at some point.”

  The judge agreed, and no one was called to testify about the extent of Glover’s illness, or her previous condition of incompetency. “It was diagnosed, and Glover was on three medications during her time in jail, and was supposedly receiving her medications during her trial,” commented Fred Wolfson. “Glover, however, says that she stopped taking her medications during the trial, and also says that she was overmedicated during the trial. ”

  Sawyer asked if Judge Lynch would at least take judicial notice of Glover’s mental condition, and Case objected to that also. “The problem I have with that,” he explained, “is that it would be a comment on the weight of the evidence, and the evidence speaks for itself, and the state doesn’t dispute that she had a mental disease.”

  The jury was remanded to separate truth from fiction in a case where, in order to reach the truth, one had to hear fiction. The same confession Rhonda Glover gave to Detectives Walker and Fortune was what got her declared mentally incompetent.

  “The really bizarre thing,” commented Jeff Reynolds, “is that the jury is hearing all this, and applying the reasoning of a sane and rational person to the information presented to them. The missing ingredient is that Rhonda, on the day she pulled the trigger, was not rational at all. Her experience of the world, her operational reality, is far removed from anything these people can imagine. The prosecution successfully argued that her demented view of what was going on around her was secondary to the fact that she shot Jimmy Joste.”