Fatal Beauty

by Burl Barer

  12/16/2000: Use of cocaine or other controlled substance or drug

  3/3/2003: Use of cocaine or other controlled substance or drug

  10/3/2003: Use of cocaine or other controlled substance or drug

  11/15/2003: Use of cocaine or other controlled substance or drug

  11/25/2003: Use of cocaine or other controlled substance or drug

  1/13/2004: Use of cocaine or other controlled substance or drug

  3/11/2004: Loss of parental rights by order of the 284th Judicial Court of Montgomery County, Texas

  7/20/2004: Use of false names and addresses (date unknown): Physical assault on James Joste in Harris County, Texas. The defendant was pregnant at the time of the attack.

  “They were pulling out all the stops to make sure the jury saw what a mess Glover was,” said Jeff Reynolds, “and show her as a chronic and recalcitrant drug user who also was abusive and downright nasty. The state even brought out Kim Waters, the former employee terrorized and threatened by Rhonda Glover. They also let the jury know that Rhonda shot up cocaine and allegedly abused her own son.”

  The punishment/mitigation phase was, however, the one place where Joe James Sawyer could bring forth hard-data documentation that would give jurors a clear picture of a woman who, in her heart of hearts, believed Jimmy Joste was Satan, a cannibal, ringleader of pagan sacrifices, murderer, child pornographer, child killer and a violent man.

  “Sawyer wisely paraded all those cops,” recalled Jeff Reynolds, “who had been out to the Mission Oaks house. They told of when she called up claiming that Jimmy had killed her son, stashed him in the attic, or whatever, when the truth was Jimmy had taken his son to the movies, and she knew where they were the whole time. She just forgot, and naturally assumed that Jimmy had killed the kid, so she calls the police. By the time that long line of police were done testifying, the jury knew Rhonda’s history of delusions, false accusations and history of being emotionally and mentally disturbed.”

  Having made it clear, either directly or indirectly, that Glover was emotionally or mentally disturbed, Sawyer then elicited testimony from expert Alexandra Gauthier confirming that Texas offers excellent mental-health treatment to people placed on probation, but comparatively little or no mental-health care for people sent to prison.

  “I have an undergraduate political-science degree from San Diego State, and a law degree from Ohio State,” testified Gauthier, a criminal defense lawyer practicing in Travis, Williamson and Hays Counties, Texas. “At the time of the Rhonda Glover case, I had been practicing law in Texas for ten years. ”

  Gauthier, familiar with representing emotionally disturbed persons in the criminal justice system, has been consulted often by both defense and prosecuting attorneys, and she helped edit and review a handbook by the Advocacy Foundation. (“It is a nonprofit advocacy group,” she explained, “for people with mental illness.”)

  “The purpose of the condition of probation is both rehabilitative and punitive as well,” explained Gauthier. “There is a wide range. It goes from doing community service, to taking drug and alcohol inpatient treatment. They go from all sorts of things—paying restitution, paying court costs and fees, paying for whatever types of programs the district judge would impose, including prison and jail time as well.

  “If the judge deemed it appropriate,” she said, “and even if the jury were to grant probation, the judge can send someone to prison for drug and alcohol treatment for up to one hundred twenty days. Probation is a fairly adaptive mechanism in Texas, as it is elsewhere. It attempts to meet the needs of the person, the defendant, and needs of society to know that this person on probation is being watched, and is also benefiting from being on probation.”

  The judge also has the power in Texas to add any conditions of probation that he or she deemed reasonable. “Additionally,” added Gauthier, “with mentally ill people, the judge can require them to take their medication, and do an inpatient or outpatient mental-health treatment, wear an ankle monitor. There are some pretty serious things that can happen on probation. It is like going to prison without walls. There are consequences for your behavior that are pretty serious, and the probation officers report to the judge. If you don’t comply, you go to prison.

  “Some of the best Social Services available to people with mental illness are made available to them while on probation in the state of Texas,” Gauthier said. “There is a wraparound attempt made through private and state organizations to provide quality care, housing, employment and other types of opportunities to individuals who cannot afford to pay for those things themselves. This county has special programs for people on probation and parole to receive medication and counseling, housing and other issues to meet their needs.”

  Asked if these same services are provided to mentally ill people inside the prison system, her answer was quick and succinct: “No. These services simply do not exist inside the Texas penal institutions.”

  By putting this expert on the stand, Joe James Sawyer established an excellent foundation for the jury to select probation and mental-health care as the appropriate way of handling the strange case of Rhonda Glover. The state, of course, did not agree in the least.

  “This isn’t a probation hearing,” Gail Van Winkle reminded the jury. “This is a punishment hearing. I anticipate that the defense counsel will ask you to strongly consider probation for the defendant in this case. I want you to know that just because you are instructed on the possibility of probation, just because a defendant is legally eligible for probation, does not mean that the defendant is entitled to it. Any person convicted of a first-degree felony, including murder, who has never been convicted of a felony in this state or any other state—as you heard was true of the defendant—is legally eligible for probation. You need to ask yourselves, ‘Is probation appropriate for this case? Is probation appropriate for the taking of a human life? Is probation an appropriate punishment for taking Jimmy Joste from his family and friends?’ Think about that. This was a cold and calculated act.”

  Van Winkle said that Rhonda Glover was mean. Exceptionally mean. “You cannot rehabilitate meanness. You cannot rehabilitate a manipulative woman. Yes, she has mental illness. There are lots of people in our community who live with mental illness, and they do not take the lives of other human beings.”

  Van Winkle then stated that it is appropriate that Texas provide mental health resources for “those individuals out in the community with mental illness who are not violent, who live a peaceful life, and do not commit violent acts, and do not take human lives.”

  Van Winkle’s argument clearly characterized the denial of comprehensive mental-health resources as appropriate punishment for felons. If Glover were granted probation, Van Winkle asserted, she would go back out into the community. “She would be among us. She could be your neighbor, be on the bus you take, be around your children. Putting her on probation won’t control her behavior. Probation can’t make sure that she takes her medication.

  “Probation can do a very limited amount of things,” said Van Winkle, “and it is unfortunate that we can’t save every person. We can’t protect every person in our community, and our first obligation is to the law-abiding citizens of Travis County, and think what is best for them, and for the rest of our community. Is it really in the interest of justice to let this woman back out on the street with just supervision through probation?”

  19

  The jury was previously instructed that there were two ranges of punishment from which they could select. The jury would have to agree unanimously that Rhonda Glover did not act under the “immediate influence of severe passion arising from an adequate cause” in order to sentence her to somewhere between five years and ninety-nine years in prison. If she did act under the immediate influence of severe passion arising from an adequate cause, they could select a range of up to twenty years.

  “Sudden passion arising from an adequate cause,” explained Gail Van Winkle, “is generally a circumstance
where, for example, you come home and find your spouse in bed with another person. Now, that’s a situation where the jury could see someone being so surprised and upset that they would not be thinking clearly, and murder someone.

  “We had nothing close to that in this case,” Van Winkle said. “What we had was a woman who planned out this murder since May of 2004, and acted out her plan.

  “You remember Jackie Pierce, the convicted felon. She testified as to what Rhonda told her. And, yes,” said Van Winkle, “the judge instructed the jury that if they didn’t want to believe her because she was a convicted felon many times over, that was up to them. By the same token, just because she is a convicted felon does not mean that the jury has to disregard her testimony.

  “I think what is significant about that testimony,” Van Winkle said, referring to Jackie Pierce, “is that she came in contact with Rhonda Glover in July of 2005, and Rhonda told her that she sought out the victim. She went to the house, believing he was there. She went up the stairs and unloaded the gun into him. Then, later, Rhonda told her that she was mad at Jimmy because she thought he’d been cheating on her. He had been hanging out with strippers, and he quit buying her things. As you know, John Thrash testified that Jimmy ran out of money right before his death, and they spent quite a bit of money around the time of his death, and there was nothing really left in his accounts.”

  Speaking to the jury in Judge Lynch’s courtroom, Van Winkle referred to Rhonda Glover as “coldhearted, manipulative and mean—the kind of person who, because of her mental state and her unwillingness to take medication, cannot be rehabilitated. I ask you to think about what number of years in prison would be appropriate, and I know it is very difficult to put a value to Jimmy’s life in a number of years.”

  The state also expressed concern for Rhonda and Jimmy’s only child. “Shouldn’t the son be allowed to grow up away from Rhonda Glover and be safe? Shouldn’t our community be safe? Oh, I’m sure that defense counsel is going to make some issue about her mental health, and ask you to consider that as a mitigating factor. She has had numerous opportunities to get help for her mental problems, and she has medication that she refuses to take, and even if she does take them, she mixes them with illegal drugs. This is a very dangerous woman.

  “You have heard a lot about the defendant,” concluded Van Winkle, “and the defendant has rights, and they have all been met. She has had her day in court. Jimmy isn’t here, and I ask you that if there is anything you can do, when you go back in that jury room, please remember Jimmy and remember him the way that Kelly, his brother, would want you to.”

  Kelly Joste was one of the last people to take the stand during the punishment phase. “He was exactly one year younger,” said Kelly of his brother, Jimmy. “We were born on the same day, exactly one year apart. I don’t know how my mother did that. Both our parents are gone, and we had one other brother who was killed early in life in a motorcycle accident when he was twenty-one or twenty-two.”

  “Jimmy and I were very close,” said Kelly Joste. “Especially in the last ten years since our mother died. I spent a few holidays with Jimmy. He had his life and I had mine. In fact, I used to get mad at Jimmy because he wanted to exchange Christmas presents. I thought that was foolish, as we were grown men. He was very generous and I could never match his gifts. I always think of him on our shared birthday of January fifteenth, and at Christmastime. I think of him every night in my prayers. ”

  Kelly Joste was not asked his opinion of Rhonda Glover, but Joe James Sawyer had a fairly good sense of intuition on such matters. “It should be no surprise that friends and family of Jimmy Joste sit there and think, ‘Dear God, punish her severely,'” Sawyer said in his final remarks to the jury. “I don’t think Rhonda Glover is evil. I don’t think Jimmy Joste was evil. No person deserves to be killed. Death comes to all of us, too soon in many cases. It is a tragedy for that family and close friends, and I understand their anger, but is it appropriate that you transfer their anger to you?”

  Whatever emotional reward Jimmy Joste’s friends and family would receive from hearing the jury sentence Rhonda Glover to ninety-nine years would be, Sawyer insisted, a “feast of ashes.” In a year or two, or three or four, “what will it mean?” Sawyer asked. “It will not bring Jimmy back to life. It will not be a balm to their hearts.

  “Life in the penitentiary really means what it says,” he told the jury. “I want you to think back and answer the question ‘What did I do for my birthday last year? Who was I surrounded by? What was Christmas like?’ How much the days of our lives mean to us, and do you think that the days of Rhonda Glover’s life are any less meaningful to her?”

  The jury, denied any information about Glover’s mental health during the guilt or innocence phase, was now informed of her condition. “Sawyer wasn’t going to go overboard playing the nutcase card,” recalled Fred Wolfson, “but he certainly had his way of reminding them.”

  “I don’t want any special sympathy for her because she suffers from a mental disease,” Sawyer said, “but I do want you to know that I handed over to you everything I could think of to help you make your decision—not to get a special break, it is not for special sympathy. I’m asking you to deliberate and think, ‘How many birthdays? How many Christmases?’ Think what it would be like to be locked up and your family members die away—you get a letter, and you can’t even go when your father dies, your mother or your aunt. Some of you may think, ‘Well, good.’ That is appropriate. So be it. I’m only asking you to consider. The decision you’ll make all the next hours will be the most important decision ever made in this woman’s life. Please do it with care, and do be respectful of each other. ”

  “This isn’t the most horrendous murder,” admitted Bryan Case. “If it were, Rhonda Glover would face the death penalty. Maybe this is one of the most evil. No, I shouldn’t say that either,” he said, searching for the proper term, “because no human being has the right to declare someone evil.”

  After brief reflection he found the perfect word. “She’s mean. In fact, she is one of the meanest people I’ve ever seen. She is also dangerous. Jimmy should have taken Rhonda’s father’s advice, taken his checkbook and gone. But goodness gracious, this woman needs to be held fully accountable for what she did to get out of that relationship. ”

  There was another reason why Case believed it was in everyone’s best interest for Rhonda Glover to be locked up. “Think about this,” he said. “Think about Danny Davis, Joyce Imparato, Kim Waters, Christy Dillon, Patti Swenson, Rocky Navarro and others. What do they all have in common? Some of them live in Austin, and some of them live in Houston. I will tell you what they all have in common. If this woman is ever on the street, their lives are in danger, and that is simply a matter of fact. If this woman is ever on the streets of Austin, Texas, their lives are in danger, and the lives of many other people are in danger. I am not speaking in hyperbole here. I am not making up some outrageous argument or exaggerating. I am stating this as an absolute fact. ”

  This line of reasoning was not something that hadn’t already crossed the minds of those whose names he mentioned. Rhonda Glover was quick to anger, and carried a grudge with the same ease with which she carried a Glock 9mm.

  “She is,” Case restated, “just so mean. Take a look at what she says about people who were once her friends. Look at what she has done. I think you’ll agree. I don’t know what you do about mean. And I don’t know how she could have gone this long and made it as well being this way, except that she’s smart, attractive and has an outgoing personality. But what you have heard is witness after witness testifying to literally horrible things she has done for years and years and years, and, you know, I may be mistaken, but I don’t know if anybody said anything good about her, period. Did anybody say anything good? Where? Is she a good mother? No. I mean, no one even in her family would say that she is a good mother. She is not. Debbie McCall, during the penalty phase of the trial, got up on the stand and said t
hat Rhonda Glover was physically abusive to her son.”

  Dwelling again on the topic of Glover’s only offspring, Case raised the question of what would be best for the child. “What would it do to him to think, to realize, that after all that evidence was presented, that a jury decided for some reason that the most appropriate thing to do was to reward his mother with either probation or a light sentence? In my opinion, probation or a light sentence is just a direct reward to her.

  “Face it,” said Bryan Case, “she just couldn’t stand the thought of being pursued by Jimmy Joste, a man obsessively in love with her, and the father of her child, for the rest of her life. She has got to deal with Jimmy, and she’s able to concoct all manner of justifications and excuses for what she had planned for some time. If he is not dead, then he is following her from here to eternity, and she can’t stand it. She can’t stand him sexually. He is no longer attractive to her at all, and the thought of him crawling all over her in that big RV is just too much. No, there is only one thing to do—and she telegraphed it long ago to Ms. Swenson—kill Jimmy Joste. It doesn’t which came first, the decision to kill him, or the bizarre justification that he was Satan. The act and the outcome are the same. She empties the gun into him. He’s dead. She killed him.”

  Joe James Sawyer was correct in his prediction of how the state would frame their closing arguments—that they would insist that Glover planned on killing Joste as far back as when Patti Swenson and she spent that evening at Mulligan’s, and that the only thing that changed was the method of murder. That concept, successful in getting a guilty verdict, was used again in the state’s arguments regarding the proper punishment for Glover’s crime of murder.

  When the punishment phase concluded, and before Rhonda Glover was to be sentenced, Sawyer wanted to leave the courtroom. Judge Lynch was a bit taken aback.