by Burl Barer
“One of the big problems that have come before me is bipolar disorder,” Greenfield said, “leaving defendants incapable of making rational choices or controlling impulsive urges. They know right from wrong, and often appear quite normal in most regards. But there are signs [that], if you are attuned, smack you in the face.”
It is his opinion that lawyers limit their interactions with, and concern for, their clients to the criminal case in front of them. “By doing so, they ignore the person in front of them, with these problems that have caused misery in their lives and, in a very real sense, led to their current problems. By ignoring this cause/effect piece, a lawyer is only doing half a job. It is quite likely, given the socioeconomic, family and educational worlds in which they functioned, that no one has ever bothered to figure out why the client is ‘a little weird.'”
In the matter of Rhonda Glover, her reason for being a little weird was diagnosed and confirmed more than once. Glover suffered from a medical condition that had a most disastrous impact on her decision-making abilities, and the lives of those around her.
Dr. E. Fuller Torrey said there are three factors that predict violence in people with a psychotic disorder. The first is a previous history of violence, the second is a substance abuse problem and the third is noncompliance with medication. All three indicators were manifested in Rhonda Lee Glover.
In the holistic approach to lawyering, the attorney looks beyond the criminal case to the cause of the client’s antisocial behaviors. Be it anger, frustration, inability to distinguish choices in real time sufficient to avoid bad ones, this is a chance to actually do something to really help a client.
Mental illness does not negate criminal responsibility, as the client is fully capable in a rational moment, to distinguish right from wrong or legal from illegal. “But it does,” commented Fred Wolfson, “negate the malevolence of the offense, and suggests an alternative to incarceration that will truly provide help to the client instead of merely warehousing him.”
The biggest stumbling block, said attorney Scott Greenfield, is that many prosecutors and judges know and understand so little about mental illness, and their appreciation is so simplistic, that they have a steep learning curve. “They must be taught that all people with mental disease or impairment are not drooling idiots. They similarly can’t appreciate why, if the client suffers from mental disease or impairment, they don’t fall into the legally incompetent classification.”
“I don’t like sending dangerous people to mental hospitals,” objected an Austin resident, “because they can escape easier from a hospital than a prison. Just look at the movie Halloween and Michael Myers!”
It isn’t only in the movies that such things happen. In September of 2009, an insane killer slipped away from the staff of a mental institution on a field trip to the Spokane County Interstate Fair. He was recaptured more than 180 miles away in south-central Washington State.
Phillip Arnold Paul, forty-seven, killed an elderly woman in 1987, then doused her body with gasoline to throw search dogs off the scent. Diagnosed as schizophrenic, he was acquitted by reason of insanity. He voluntarily gave himself up, but Spokane County sheriff Ozzie D. Knezovich said Paul had just tried to thumb a ride from an area resident who alerted authorities.
There was a lot of fear in the community, and people were locking their windows. Authorities said that they were committed to finding out how and why this happened, why there was an unacceptable two-hour delay in notifying local law enforcement of his escape, plus how potentially dangerous patients were brought to such a public venue. Shortly after the escape, there was ordered a halt to all field trips for “forensic patients"—those committed for treatment as a result of criminal proceedings—at all three of the state’s mental institutions.
While this is a scary scenario, in this particular situation the “insane killer” received an injection designed to maintain his mental stability for about two weeks on the Wednesday prior to his escape. Only at the end of that period would he have needed another dose to avoid the potential for a serious deterioration of his mental condition.
Paul aroused no suspicion when he left the mental institution with a backpack loaded with clothing, food, an electric guitar and $50 from a Social Security check. “It appears that Mr. Paul had planned this for quite some time,” said authorities. The field trip to the fair, which included thirty other patients, was an annual event that Paul easily could have anticipated. This example obviously fueled fears that someone crazy enough to kill can still be smart enough to get on the loose. Many people feel that the best place for an emotionally disturbed person with a proven history of homicidal violence is a prison with security far exceeding that of a mental hospital.
“Everyone thinks that I’m crazy,” Rhonda Glover admitted. “And they think I’m crazy because I’m a Christian, and I hear the voice of God, and I’ve been given this assignment, and I’ve been chosen for this mission. I am on a mission from God. I have built my case against these people. Jimmy is the one. He is the ringleader. ”
Given the opportunity, and supplied with the appropriate audio cues, Rhonda Glover’s mind magnetically returns to the realm of delusion. This is not a character defect, nor an evil of the soul, but rather a medical condition. Glover can transverse the emotional spectrum from tearful vulnerability to icelike disdain in mere moments. During the trial in Judge Mike Lynch’s courtroom, everyone present witnessed the melodramatic behavior and quickly changing moods of the defendant.
On February 16, 2006, the Rhonda Glover who walked into the Travis County Courthouse bore little resemblance to the vivacious Glover of years past. She exuded none of the raw sexuality for which she was rightly famed. Conservative in dress and demeanor, with her hair pulled back, she would take the stand in her own defense, and tell why and how she shot Jimmy Joste. She was cautioned by her attorney, however, not to mention the cave, the clones, George W. Bush or the pagan sacrifices because “they were too dangerous to talk about.”
The delusional or dishonest are not always delusional or dishonest. Some of Rhonda Glover’s assertions about Jimmy Joste were so bizarre and absurd that her lawyer Joe James Sawyer referred to them as such. Yet, some of her statements about Joste were borne out by objective investigation and sworn witness testimony.
Glover claimed that Jimmy Joste stalked her, and repeatedly attempted to get into her Houston apartment. A review of Houston police records attested to the truth of her statement. In April of 2004, there were trespassing complaints filed against Joste, and these did not come from Rhonda Glover. They came from the manager of the property where Glover lived.
“She stated that a man named James Joste has been trying to get on the property for several days to see his ex-wife,” testified Houston police officer Silvas. “She stated that she was told by Rhonda Glover that she did not want to see the suspect, and not to let him on [the] property. The manager stated that the front entrance has twenty-four hour gate attendants, and they were advised of the situation. They have had several contacts with the suspect trying to get onto the property. ”
The list of dates and times that Joste made contact with the gate attendants and was turned away from the property are as follows:
4/12/2004—5:58 P.M., 7:18 P.M., 9:29 P.M. and 10:10 P.M.
4/13/2004—9:15 A.M and 6:15 P.M.
4/14/2004—3:44 P.M., 3:48 P.M. and 4:10 P.M.
The suspect, it was noted, was driving a blue Volkswagen. He was advised each time by the gate attendants that he needed to stay away from the property. “He wouldn’t leave me alone,” insisted Glover. “He hounded me relentlessly. He was supposed to stay away from me.”
The validation of Glover’s claim was the first true ray of credibility to her story. It was an established fact that Jimmy Joste was repeatedly turned away from Glover’s Houston residence by the request of property management. These unwanted visits, plus Joste pleading no contest in the Barton Creek Incident, were about all Sawyer had to portray Ji
mmy Joste as a violent and abusive stalker worthy of fear.
Now, at long last, Rhonda Glover would take the witness stand and explain why she shot Jimmy Joste at least ten times with a Glock 9mm handgun. First, Glover testified about her relationship with Joste, and how the initial joy of their relationship evaporated in the heat of his heavy drinking and repeated beatings. For the next fourteen years, they lived together and apart in a host of homes in the Houston and Austin areas. They even tried to start over in California. Each time they tried to make a go of it, said Rhonda, Jimmy’s violence tore them apart.
According to Glover’s testimony, she entered the Austin residence she and Joste once shared to reclaim some camping gear from the attic before taking her nine-year-old son, Ronnie, on a planned cross-country excursion in a rented mobile home. Joste, however, surprised her by his sudden appearance. Glover, her voice trembling, and every movement and gesture communicating a soul-wrenching level of despair, told of the intense fear gripping her when she heard Jimmy Joste arrive.
“What did Jimmy say to you when he realized you were in the house?” asked Sawyer.
Glover didn’t respond. Silence stretched between lawyer and client until Rhonda Glover said, “I think I’m going into a state of shock.”
The bailiff poured her some water. Everyone waited for Glover to regain composure. Instead, she leaned forward, buried her head in her arms, and took a brief nap on the counter in front of the witness stand.
“Ms. Glover,” prompted her lawyer, “we need to continue. What did he say?”
The disheveled witness raised her head and replied, “He said, ‘Rhonda, are you in the house?’ and I said nothing. I just sat there in fear.”
“What happened next?”
“I can’t remember,” said Glover. “I think I’m going to faint. ”
“Ms. Glover, these people want to know what happened,” Sawyer said. “Tell the jury what happened.”
She told of him screaming at her as he came up the stairs, first demanding his son, then calling her a bitch and saying he was going to kill her. The jury heard of them meeting at the doorway to the bedroom, and Jimmy grabbing her by the throat. “He was choking me, and I reached in and pulled my gun out and shot him. I shot him. Because I thought he was going to kill me.”
“You emptied the gun into him, didn’t you?” asked her attorney.
“I emptied the gun in him. Yes, I did. I am so sorry! ”
Glover sobbed on the witness stand, but a moment later, when Bryan Case cross-examined her, she was suddenly a different person altogether. The tears were gone; her tone brittle. Her eyes were ice.
“Ms. Glover,” asked Bryan Case, “your earlier testimony on direct was that you and he basically met at the threshold of the door?”
“Yes, and he began choking me.”
“He began choking you. And you are going toward him, pointing a gun at him, right?”
“Yes.”
“Going toward him, yes?”
“Yes,” Glover replied coldly.
“And is that the way they taught you in the defensive use of firearms to deal with a dangerous situation?”
“Yes.”
“To go at it with a gun?”
“Yes.”
“And he begins choking you, and you have shot this gun a number of times, correct?”
Glover was getting progressively irked.
“Yes.”
“And if you shot it a number of times, you know how to shoot the gun, and how is it that your testimony now, I assume, is that you started pulling the trigger and just never stopped, right?”
“Yes. I shot him. It just…,” Glover paused, and then snapped, “I shot him. The gun just went off. It just perpetuated.”
No one could fail to notice the difference between the tone of her replies to Joe James Sawyer and those to Bryan Case. “It was a remarkable and visibly stunning transformation. It was like something from a movie. Crocodile tears on direct examination,” said Bryan Case. “And then … who was that person who testified on cross-examination? It was like a different person in the same body. Who was that person who sat there and looked at me with the coldest, hardest, meanest look imaginable?”
When Rhonda Glover looked coldly at Bryan Case and said, “Yes. I shot him,” her complete lack of any emotion, other than the complete disdain for him communicated by her inflection and body language, shocked those in the courtroom.
“It was like she wasn’t the same person who, minutes before, was weeping away in the witness stand,” recalled Fred Wolfson. “It was, in a word, scary.”
When Glover’s testimony was over, and she was asked to step down, she had her own objections. “I thought I was going to get to talk about Jimmy sexually abusing our son.”
There were several simultaneous gasps in the courtroom, and an equal number of laborious sighs. “It wasn’t relevant to the trial. There was absolutely no evidence,” said Bryan Case, “and it absolutely contradicts a conversation that Rhonda had with Christy Dillon in Houston shortly before the murder.”
In her conversation with Dillon, Rhonda Glover said that she thought that one of her mother’s friends was sexually abusing her son. She never said anything of this nature about Jimmy Joste until she was in the courtroom.
“This is,” said Gail Van Winkle, “another example of a woman who will say anything at any time if she thinks it will help her. She is a woman who is admittedly not truthful by her friends’ own accounts.”
Even if Rhonda believed that Jimmy Joste was molesting his own son, that still wouldn’t make shooting him an act of self-defense. “We don’t live in the kind of society,” Van Winkle said, “where you can shoot and kill someone that you believe has done something bad, or even if they have been convicted of a crime. That is not self-defense. That does not make killing justified. ”
18
There was more than one version of the shooting offered from the witness stand, and both of them allegedly from Rhonda Glover. The second version was one supposedly given by Glover to a fellow inmate in the Travis County Jail. This “alternate version” offered a different reason for the shooting that had nothing to do with self-defense.
Jackie Pierce-Ray, who also goes by the name Jackie Pierce, admitted an extensive criminal history characterized by various forms of fraud. She also had a background of working in the Texas Legislature. At the time of Rhonda Glover’s residency in the Travis County Jail, Glover sought out Jackie Pierce. “She wanted to discuss legal questions,” confirmed Ray. “During the course of our conversations, she talked about a pending murder charge.
“She told me that on the day of the murder, that she was going to her house to pick up camping equipment because she was going to take her son camping, and on the way to the house, she passed the post office on the left and realized that it was closed. She was going down to Red’s Gun Shop and stop there. So she went there and stopped there and practiced her shooting, and then she drove back to the house.
“On the way,” Ray clarified, “Rhonda stopped and made a call at the pay phone. She said that she asked Jimmy where he was—if he were in Vail or in Austin, and he said he was in Austin. She told him that she was coming by the house to pick up some camping equipment.
“When she arrived there,” recounted Jackie Pierce-Ray, “she saw that the garage door was open. She knew he was home. She proceeded to go in the house, go upstairs, and she went into the upstairs area. She came out of the bathroom and emptied the gun on him.”
According to this woman, later characterized by Rhonda’s defense attorney as a “jailhouse snitch,” Glover was upset with Jimmy Joste. In fact, she was outraged and furious. The trigger for her outrage wasn’t clone sex, pagan sacrifices or homosexuals creeping into the aquifer. “She was upset about him not having bought her anything in about a year and a half.”
Glover was also angered, according to Pierce-Ray, “because she had found some stuff in his vehicle that indicated that he was going to strip club
s and other places like that, and she said, ‘Nobody messes around on me!'”
It was Jackie Pierce-Ray’s impression, based on statements from Rhonda Glover that the reason she emptied the Glock into Jimmy Joste was because she believed he had been cheating.
“I’m just telling you what she said to me,” stated Pierce-Ray flatly. “She said that, and I’m just saying what she said to me in the Travis County Jail.”
It is possible that she was telling the truth, yet with one simple error. She mistook “bedroom” for “bathroom.” Glover could have, while entering the house through the garage, peered into Jimmy’s car and seen something from Rocky’s and Jimmy’s recent get-together that triggered insane jealousy and suspicion. After all, Rocky and Jimmy stopped at a “strip joint” so Rocky could have a smoke in air-conditioned comfort.
“She is a liar,” Rhonda Glover later proclaimed, “her testimony is not only a complete lie, but it contradicts all the physical evidence that was already presented. Her mother called the chaplain at the Del Valle Jail and said that Jackie cut the monitor off her leg and went on the run. The mother told the chaplain that everything Jackie Pierce-Ray said on the stand was a lie. It is easy to see that she lied about the physical evidence. She said I hid in the bathroom, and then opened fire on him. Look at the floor plan. The bathroom is in front of the door where he was found. Jimmy’s body was found facing the bedroom. The shell casings were found in the bedroom, not in the hallway. And he was shot in the front of him, not in the back, and not facing the bathroom door. The ballistics do not corroborate Jackie’s story at all. My loser lawyer didn’t catch that, but I see things that others don’t see.”
“Her lawyer certainly caught that,” remarked Fred Wolfson, “but if he were to mention it, he would be accepting the prosecution’s presentation of the ballistic evidence, and the prosecution’s definition of what that evidence proved—evidence that her lawyer was doing his best to raise doubts about. She can’t have it both ways. She can’t say the prosecution’s evidence is faulty, and then say it isn’t just to cast doubt on that other woman’s veracity.”