One Breath Away

by M. William Phelps

  “Now, I heard the state’s attorney ask you about alcohol and drugs in the victim’s system, and I believe you said there were no drugs in his system, correct?”

  “That we could determine,” Dr. Wilson said.

  “Let me ask you about marijuana, for example. In general, marijuana has a tendency to stay in the system much longer than other drugs?”

  “I’m not a toxicologist. I really cannot answer that question.”

  “You have not had that issue before dealing with the longevity of marijuana in a person’s system?”

  “No.”

  “And have no knowledge of that?”

  “Correct.”

  What at first seemed like an important fact Trevena was able to get out of the doctor—that there was no “stippling” around any of the gunshot wounds on Shannon’s body—soon lost any impact it might have had on jurors when the doctor further explained his answer. No stippling indicated that shots had been fired from some distance away from the body. Stippling is a black residue found around a gunshot wound on the skin or perhaps even on the clothing. The presence of it tells the expert the barrel of a weapon had likely been placed directly on the skin/clothing, or at least very close, and then fired. Picture the end of a gun barrel spraying black powder out of its nose and that hot powder burning the skin around the entrance wound like a brand.

  Wilson answered by saying that he could not really agree with Trevena’s explanation because Shannon’s clothing had been removed from the scene and so he had to conclude an “indeterminate” finding regarding how far away or close the shooter was to Shannon at the time the weapon was fired.

  In the end, they decided on about twelve inches or less as a possible measurement for the weapon barrel and Shannon’s skin. What this had to do with Jennifer Mee did not become entirely clear as Trevena concluded his questioning and the court recessed for an afternoon break. But the one thing it did say was that whoever fired the weapon that killed Shannon held it at least a foot away at the time.

  CHAPTER 86

  ROBERT SCHOCK HAD spent thirteen years with the SPPD’s Homicide Unit, but the last twelve of his twenty-five-year career in law enforcement with the state’s attorney’s office as a special investigator. The reason why the ASA had called Schock was clear from the start of their conversation.

  “I’d like to ask you some questions about what’s been . . . called a ‘jail call,’” LaBruzzo said, before urging the investigator to talk about the telephone system inside a jail and how an inmate makes a phone call to the outside.

  This was a precursor to what the state had viewed, undoubtedly, as one of its most detrimental pieces of evidence against Jennifer Mee: her alleged “admission” over the phone to her mother during that first call Jennifer had made back on the day she was arrested on felony murder charges. It was a conversation that Rachel Robidoux had lived with and thought about ever since her daughter had been arrested.

  “I often ask myself why I even asked her to explain what happened to me, over the phone,” Rachel said later.

  What Rachel and others later clarified was that Jennifer Mee was not articulate in any way, and thus her explanation of what she did on that night should not be taken literally—it was Jennifer’s way of expressing what had happened to her.

  Robert Schock had found the call between Rachel and Jennifer after the state’s attorney’s office asked him to check out all the calls made by Jennifer Mee from the jail.

  Playing devil’s advocate, one might conclude: Well, there you go. They went after her, looking to take out of context a telephone call between a mother and her daughter and nail her child for murder!

  But this investigation tactic was standard procedure for law enforcement when looking at a murder suspect’s behavior. By the time they’d decided to look at this, Jennifer Mee had been charged with felony murder. The state was simply building its case.

  Then, as LaBruzzo started to talk about the call, Trevena asked for a bench conference, saying he was going to object to the call, its relevance, and its admission into trial. Trevena explained to the judge that he felt the state was going to introduce the call as an “admission,” and Trevena did not think the call rose to the level of an actual confession. He was concerned that jurors might see it that way if they heard the call.

  LaBruzzo said he was not planning to submit the call as evidence through Mr. Schock; he wanted to use another witness, on another day, in that regard. The only testimony he wanted out of Schock regarding the call was verification that he had located the call and how. Through that testimony, LaBruzzo could then provide documentation about the call to the court.

  The judge wanted to hear the call.

  The jury was asked to leave the room.

  LaBruzzo played the call.

  Judge Nancy Moate Ley asked Trevena to wage his argument.

  “Your Honor, the first ground would be relevancy. It is not tantamount to an admission against interest such that it should be introduced in this case, particularly considering ground two of the objection that any probative of that recording is substantially outweighed by the prejudicial effect of playing that recording to the jury.”

  From where John Trevena saw things, the call itself said “very little” and was “of great concern” to him if it was allowed by this judge to be introduced.

  “One other concern I have . . . ,” Trevena continued, “is this is a free call that an inmate gets upon their arrest. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the normal admonition against anything you say may be recorded in this call.” He explained how he could not “recall hearing that” in the recording. “Under Florida law, to record a conversation, it either has to be the beep, which I heard no beeping, or there has to be an oral, verbal, warning indicating that the phone call is being recorded, which the court and I have heard probably hundreds, if not over a thousand, of these calls over the course of many years of practice.”

  Trevena talked about hearing “repeated warnings” throughout those other calls, such as “This call may be monitored.”

  “Well,” he told the judge as LaBruzzo listened, “I don’t recall hearing it all throughout the call.”

  They argued back and forth about the warning. However, the matter at hand, effectively, was whether the judge was going to allow the jury to hear the call at all. Without that call being introduced, those warnings would not matter. And if that call did not make it into the trial, Jennifer had a chance.

  After LaBruzzo and Trevena talked it through in front of the judge, hammering each other’s arguments, the judge, perhaps a bit too nonchalantly, said, “All right. They (the tapes of the calls) are both admitted.”

  And that was it.

  Since the matter was fresh, LaBruzzo thought what the heck, now was as good a time as any to hear the calls. And it wasn’t long after when the jury was brought back in and the tapes were played.

  * * *

  A lot of it was common conversation between first a granddaughter and her grandfather, and then a mother and her daughter. The exchange everyone would be talking about in the coming days was a minute or so into the tape: “Who’d you kill?” Rachel had asked.

  “I ain’t kill nobody.”

  “Well, then, how are they charging you with . . . murder?”

  “Because I set everything up. It all went wrong, Momma. Shit went downhill after everything happened, Mom.”

  * * *

  With LaBruzzo finished with Schock soon after the jury had heard the call, Trevena questioned Schock about the process of the calls and how the recordings were made. Trevena’s argument felt weak and shallow compared to the riveting missile LaBruzzo had launched with that phone call being placed into the record. There was no unhearing those intensely self-incriminating words from the woman on trial for felony murder.

  “Because I set everything up.”

  Within the context of that one sentence alone, Jennifer had seemingly admitted not only to setting up the crime, but, more important in the stat
e’s case, taking part in it all.

  When Trevena realized he wasn’t getting anywhere with Schock, he quickly passed the witness.

  * * *

  Gary Gibson, Terrell Skinner, and then Dave Wawrzynski would be next. They were the state’s three SPPD investigative witnesses. Gibson and Skinner were textbook state witnesses, coming in and giving a blow-by-blow account of the investigation from their different, albeit similar, perspectives.

  Trevena tried unsuccessfully to get both Gibson and Skinner to give a little bit of a jolt to the idea that Jennifer was targeted, but neither took hold of the live wire. And to that end, Trevena was not too concerned. His focus was on Dave Wawrzynski—whom Trevena saw as a lead detective out there targeting his client with a net, looking to catch her up in a felony murder charge after realizing who she was.

  CHAPTER 87

  AS HE SAT back and thought about all these little pieces of the evidence puzzle building a picture of the state’s case, John Trevena could not help but think back to that darn call. Hearing his client say—in an open courtroom to the jury—that she had set “it” up was a devastating blow they were going to have a hard time coming back from.

  “It was quite agonizing to sit there and watch it unfold, really,” Trevena recalled. “We kind of knew where it was all headed after that. Because unless the jury would nullify” that call, a task attorneys could not ask them to do, Trevena felt they were going to lose the case.

  Trevena’s only hope at this point was that the jury looked at the case and decided the law was too harsh as it applied to Jennifer “and cut her a break and cut her loose.”

  Yet, that was so rare, so unheard of, it was unlikely to happen.

  As he searched jurors for any type of indication as to what they were thinking or feeling, Trevena felt most members of the jury were “horrified” by the stakes and the job they had in front of them. It was written all over their faces throughout the trial. They shifted in their seats and looked sullen and sad at times. The trial was definitely an emotional tax many in the jury box were paying every hour.

  In “combat” mode as the trial carried forth, Trevena developed a strategy that included him “trying to lay the groundwork” for an appeal during the trial itself. His thought was that the state’s eagerness to prosecute Jennifer Mee this time would subside if they faced a second trial—a retrial. So Trevena had to do whatever he could to interject grounds for an appeal during the trial itself.

  There were, of course, no surprises as Dave Wawrzynski sat and testified for the state during the ASA’s direct line of questioning. Wawrzynski, as the lead investigator, talked jurors through what turned into a rather brief investigation that, in Wawrzynski’s opinion, was thorough and solid to the core. He explained how one lead pointed them in the next direction and the dominoes all fell together as that day—Sunday—unfolded. The key, the detective said, was that anonymous tipster with the courage to phone in and report what she knew, who she felt was involved in Shannon’s death, and where those individuals were hiding out.

  From there, Wawrzynski hit on all of the key aspects of the SPPD’s investigation, with him not only leading the charge, but also supervising it.

  Walking the crime scene.

  Shannon’s body.

  The evidence at the crime scene.

  Doug Bolden and a victimology campaign.

  The idea that the bottom of Shannon’s socks were clean, indicating to Wawrzynski that his killer or killers had removed Shannon’s sneakers, on top of pulling the pockets out of his pants and dropping them slightly, told the detective that this was a common type of snatch-and-grab robbery he had seen many times before.

  He spoke about:

  • Viewing Shannon’s wounds at the scene

  • How his investigators did a thorough canvass of the neighborhood

  • How the scooter led them to identify Shannon

  • How, at first, they had developed a person of interest—Laron—and no one else

  • Getting Laron Raiford’s name into the system and the SPPD, and ultimately coming up with the name Jenni Charron

  • How uncovering Jenni Charron’s name led to Lamont, who led to Jennifer Mee

  • The arrests at Jenni’s friend’s apartment

  • Phone records

  • His interview with Laron

  • The three admissions

  • How all of the evidence corresponded with what Wawrzynski had heard from Laron, Lamont, and, eventually, Jennifer Mee

  Wawrzynski discussed his interviews with Jennifer Mee and how she had admitted to him that she’d first lied about Jenni Charron and Shannon and that park. It was a story they had all made up—and that it was she who had actually set up the meeting with Shannon through MocoSpace.

  As they arrived there, ASA LaBruzzo played the tape of Jennifer’s second interview, where she had admitted to everything. As the tape played, and Jennifer talked about MocoSpace, crying during that portion of the interview, she sat motionless inside the courtroom, staring down at the oak table in front of her. Her shoulders were slouched; her face drooped. Tears once again were streaming down her cheeks as her chest heaved in and out every so often.

  Wearing a white blouse, with her hair tightly pulled back into a bun, her skin pale, Jennifer looked tired and worn down by the trial process. It was almost as if she knew where this was all heading and could do nothing more than slowly accept it, witness after witness. Trevena had already explained to Jennifer and Rachel that there was zero possibility that Jennifer was going to testify on her own behalf. It just wouldn’t be prudent to put her on the stand and watch her fall apart emotionally while retelling everything she had explained to the police once already. LaBruzzo would bury her.

  On the reverse end of things, the taped interview jurors heard helped John Trevena establish the argument that most of these cases were pleaded out because they were typically slam dunks, once the suspect was brought in and he or she started to talk.

  Of course, Jennifer did not know she was admitting to first-degree murder. She believed that by telling the truth she was taking herself out of that part of the crime.

  Wawrzynski did a fair job of explaining how the SPPD didn’t take a confession or admission and then close a case. The evidence had to corroborate the admissions or it wasn’t yet a closed case from their point of view. Pertaining to the notion of Jennifer, Laron, and Lamont telling that story of Jenni Charron down at the park meeting Shannon, the SPPD could not find any corroborating evidence to support it. But once the suspects coughed up the truth, all of the other evidence the SPPD had uncovered—namely, telephone records—fit into that truth like a finely machined piston into its corresponding cylinder. The case came together without any effort; everything, effectively, made sense to detectives after that.

  An important fact that Wawrzynski made during this final part of his direct questioning was that the phone records taken from Laron’s account matched up to what Jennifer Mee and Jenni Charron and Laron were telling the SPPD. All of them had said that Jennifer Mee borrowed Laron’s phone and used it that night. This was significant in the context of the phone records. Because when the SPPD went back and checked out Jenni Charron’s phone records—working on the idea that perhaps the first story was true and would be challenged later on—they did not find any connection whatsoever to the case as it had been described for them by the suspects.

  “And I looked at Miss Charron’s phone,” Wawrzynski told the court as his direct testimony wound down, “which is a phone that was also identified to us. . . . That number doesn’t show on Mr. Griffin’s phone log. But on Mr. Raiford’s phone log, there are six phone contacts between that phone number and Mr. Raiford’s phone number, all during that time period starting around [eight-seventeen] and ending at [nine forty-three at night.]”

  How damaging was this testimony? Unimpeachable phone records showed that Jenni and Shannon had never spoken through their own phones—Jenni would have had to be using Laron’s p
hone if she spoke to Shannon on that night. Each suspect and the SPPD’s witness, Jenni Charron herself, at one point or another, had said it was Jennifer Mee using Laron’s phone. But what’s more, Laron had borrowed Jenni’s phone—another fact established by all the suspects—and had spoken to Jennifer Mee between the time Shannon left his house and when he arrived at the crime scene. This shattered any argument that could be made for Jenni and Shannon hooking up. It was clear that Jennifer Mee (using Laron’s phone) was discussing Shannon’s trip up to the crime scene with Laron (and Shannon), just as they had all (including Jennifer Mee) told the SPPD in their statements.

  Beyond that, when one looked at Shannon’s phone records, there was Laron’s phone calling and communicating with him.

  CHAPTER 88

  AFTER A “COMFORT break,” called by the judge, John Trevena stood and began his cross-examination of Dave Wawrzynski. He asked the detective how many years he had been with the SPPD.

  “It will be ten in October,” Wawrzynski said.

  A softball—the last one hurled at the detective from John Trevena.

  Then Trevena asked if Wawrzynski had heard of Jennifer Mee before he met her in 2010 as part of the Shannon Griffin murder investigation.

  Wawrzynski said he had, in fact, been “familiar” with Miss Mee.

  They discussed the runaway incident Wawrzynski and the SPPD took part in back in 2007 after Jennifer’s hiccup star had crashed and burned.

  Hunter-Olney objected on the grounds of relevancy.

  The judge called for a proffer, so Trevena could ask the question of the detective and the judge could make a call if the question and answer were appropriate for jurors to hear later. That meant the jury would be asked to exit the courtroom—again.

  When the proffer concluded, still without the jury present, the judge asked Trevena if he wanted to get the answer Wawrzynski had given into the record with jurors, but Trevena indicated that based on the detective’s answer it was not that important, after all.