One Breath Away

by M. William Phelps

  It was very late in the day. Everyone was tired and sleepy from being cooped up in what was a small, stuffy room.

  With the jury happily seated again, Trevena moved on to how Wawrzynski had become the lead in the case.

  He said it was his turn.

  They discussed what a lead detective actually does.

  Wawrzynski explained how his job as lead detective was to keep the case moving, collect data and process items pertaining to the investigation in a detailed manner, within a “fair and reasonable amount of time.” He was a working manager.

  They moved on to talking about the crime scene and what Wawrzynski had seen while walking through it on that Sunday. Through this line of questioning, Trevena eventually led Wawrzynski to the condom wrapper found at the scene. Trevena wanted to know whose DNA had been found on the wrapper.

  Wawrzynski agreed it was Laron’s.

  This was a contentious issue for Trevena. To him, the idea that Laron’s DNA had been found on a condom wrapper found near a victim with his pants partially pulled down might suggest more than a robbery. Trevena proposed it might fall more in line with the first story everyone had told the SPPD—that Laron came upon Jenni and Shannon and he snapped. Who was to say the second story they all told wasn’t a cover-up for the first to protect Jenni Charron?

  As quickly as Trevena latched onto the condom wrapper thread, he was off it and onto how Wawrzynski had developed suspects in the case.

  A lot of this might have come across as redundant because it had been established already by other witnesses and by admitted pieces of evidence. In all fairness to John Trevena, however, he was obligated to go over it again to see if the cop kept to his story and didn’t leave anything out. Part of Trevena’s strategy here was to plant various seeds he could go back to at some point and explain. For example, Trevena brought out in his questioning that Jennifer Mee didn’t have a phone or a computer; yet there were four phones and a computer inside the apartment where she was staying at the time.

  “Yes, sir,” Wawrzynski confirmed.

  When Trevena talked about Jenni Charron’s phone in particular, he asked Wawrzynski if he had found it interesting that she would shut her phone off during the course of a murder investigation.

  “Absolutely,” Wawrzynski said, agreeing.

  “Did she ever have an explanation for that?”

  “Not to me. No, sir,” Wawrzynski answered.

  “So, that still, to this day, remains unanswered?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  As Trevena mentioned the word “work” as it pertained to Jenni Charron, ASA LaBruzzo objected, knowing where Trevena was going. Then a sidebar conference was called.

  Huddled around the bench with Trevena, the ASA explained to the judge how he believed Trevena was now going to “get into whether or not she’s a prostitute.”

  The judge wanted to know if that was the tree Trevena was itching to climb.

  “It is,” he said, “and there is evidence, and it’s very relevant to our defense. . . .”

  Explaining further, Trevena said the point he was trying to make was that Jenni Charron’s choice of occupation at the time proved she had money, had several phones associated with her job, and, most important, she had a computer and communicated with potential clients online.

  Was Trevena saying that Shannon Griffin was a client of Jenni Charron’s, and Laron had caught the two of them?

  LaBruzzo piped in and made an excellent point when he told the judge that he could agree all of that was significant in the scope of the trial, but it was something Trevena should focus on asking Jenni Charron herself when she sat on the witness stand and testified.

  The judge mentioned how it would be hearsay for the detective to talk about Jenni Charron’s alleged call girl status back then, especially seeing that she had no criminal record of prostitution.

  Trevena balked at that, saying how he was hoping Wawrzynski could talk about the crime scene and what was found and how it could possibly appear to be a scenario other than a robbery.

  “Like what?” the judge asked.

  “Well, for example, the fact that she was working as a sex worker would better coincide with the crime scene and what was seen there in terms of his pants down, the condom. I mean, you’re asking me, basically, to give [up] my defense.”

  “No, I’m not,” the judge countered. “I’m trying to figure out how this is all relevant and should come into evidence.”

  “I can promise you I’ll tie it in.”

  “You want to ask him if she’s a hooker?” the judge quipped.

  “I can ask him a more general question if the court is unhappy with that question—” Trevena said.

  “I am!” the judge immediately cut him off.

  Finishing up his thought, Trevena said: “. . . as to whether or not [the detective is] familiar with these types of aroma therapy spas, which she claims in the midst she was employed by, that those are typically fronts for prostitution.”

  “No offense,” the judge said, “you better—this is sort of hilarious—you better think about how you answer that question. There are lots of women who do yoga, like me, that—”

  This time, Trevena tried to cut her off, saying, “That’s—”

  But she wouldn’t let him, finishing her thought with: “. . . that go to aroma therapy spas. And I can assure you, there is no prostitution going on in those.”

  “Not the type that she was employed by!” Trevena said.

  The judge sustained the objection and explained to Trevena what he could and could not ask the detective regarding Jenni Charron’s chosen profession.

  When they resumed, Trevena went off on an entirely different track.

  CHAPTER 89

  IT FELT TO John Trevena that anytime he was gaining the least bit of momentum, the hammer came down as the judge wagged a finger and warned him to watch out, don’t go down that road. Here was his most hostile witness to date on the stand, Dave Wawrzynski, and he couldn’t question him the way in which he had planned.

  So Trevena switched tactics.

  He asked Wawrzynski if he had been “aware that Miss Mee had a monthly income.”

  “Was I? No, sir.”

  A few questions later, Trevena wanted to know if Wawrzynski felt Jennifer Mee had been cooperative with the investigation.

  The cop said she had been.

  But Jenni Charron, on the other hand, Trevena asked, she was uncooperative, wasn’t she?

  Wawrzynski said yes, at first, but then she came around.

  Trevena then explained how Jenni was told she was a witness and not a suspect. Then the attorney asked, “Is it suddenly when she realized she was not going to be charged, she became cooperative?”

  “I don’t know what was in her head,” Wawrzynski said. “I can tell you that during our investigation, at no point did I consider her . . . as a suspect in the investigation.”

  Trevena focused on Jenni and her potential “participation” in “criminal acts related to this case.” As he did this, it felt as though he was attacking everything about her.

  Wawrzynski kept telling him he never felt Jenni had committed any serious crimes. He didn’t go into detail, but Wawrzynski implied that cops give breaks every day in order to get the bigger catch. You don’t bust a dude smoking a joint on the street if he gives up the guy selling pounds of weed out of his home. It’s all part of a day in the life of solving crimes.

  As they continued, Trevena chipped away at Wawrzynski’s leadership skills in this investigation by stating—as a question—how the detective had not known that Jennifer Mee had given that first statement until just the previous year (2012), when Wawrzynski had sat down to give a deposition in the case.

  Wawrzynski said that was correct. But there was a lot about the investigation he didn’t know. The lead in a case is not privy to every single nuance and beat of a police force as it investigates.

  By his determination, Wawrzynski explained, after Trevena got a
bit testy asking for a “simple” yes or no in relation to Wawrzynski having failed at some aspects of being the lead detective, “Ultimately the facts that Miss Mee provided me were consistent with other statements I had received which I was not able to disprove.”

  Trevena moved on to the press conference. Did Wawrzynski brief the chief? Did he participate in preparing the department for that press conference?

  Wawrzynski explained that he answered to his immediate supervisor and briefed him about the investigation. What the chief and public relations people from the department did was out of his hands and he had nothing to do with it.

  MocoSpace was next.

  All the SPPD was able to get out of MocoSpace with a subpoena was “confirmation” that three (Lamont Newton, Shannon Griffin, and Jennifer Mee) of the four had accounts. The website claimed to have nothing more as far as records.

  Then came the question, perhaps, many were asking. “Ultimately,” Trevena said, “her arrest and the prosecution based on that arrest, you would have to be candid and admit, is based on her statement, not physical forensic evidence?”

  “Her statement alone?” the detective asked to clarify.

  “I won’t say her ‘statement alone.’ I’ll say ‘testimonial statements’?”

  “Based on testimonial, that’s the primary. There are some other pieces that are part of that, but a significant portion of it is based upon testimony.”

  “And if someone had given a false story, had lied, that could taint your investigation through no fault of yours?”

  Ready for that question, Wawrzynski said, “Which is one of the reasons we try to verify as much as we could through the phone records to confirm that these were the phones that were used to contact each other. Which is why we try to verify through testing of the items not attributed to the victim who might possibly own those items to put them at the crime scene, if we could, or at least with items familiar to that.”

  “Understood,” Trevena countered. “But, ultimately, you weren’t really able to get any reliable forensic data that you could bring into court and show the jury and say, ‘See how this connects to Jennifer Mee. We know she sent this text. We know . . .’”

  “With texting?” Wawrzynski asked before answering his own question: “No, sir. There are two areas where, forensically, she’s attached to items.”

  Trevena said he wanted to talk about that, adding, “Because this entire case, if I understand correctly, there is two forensic items, and only two, that tie to Miss Mee?”

  The compelling way Trevena put it called into question the idea that the SPPD had only two forensic items connected to Jennifer—as if there needed to be more than one piece of forensic evidence tying a suspect to a murder. Still, Trevena, such a competent and seasoned defense attorney, was smart to place into question even the forensic evidence the state had against Jennifer Mee.

  “Yes, sir,” Wawrzynski agreed.

  “That would be the fingerprint that was on the driver’s license?” Trevena asked.

  Wawrzynski nodded and affirmed.

  Then Trevena wanted to know if it was possible that the fingerprint could have been “transferred” to the license later on, after the item was taken back to the apartment.

  The detective said it was possible.

  The other piece of forensic evidence was a tank top found inside the backpack brought to the crime scene by Laron Raiford. Jennifer Mee’s DNA was found on that shirt. But, as Trevena concluded, it did not prove anything as far as her being responsible for the murder.

  “By itself, no, sir,” Wawrzynski said, adding that all of this evidence, combined with the statements they had taken from each suspect and the witness, was what they call “corroborative.” It wasn’t one piece of the puzzle that made a picture, so to speak, but all of them put together. And even if there was a missing piece here and there, the picture could still come into clear focus.

  Trevena tried to trip up the detective by questioning every aspect of his investigation, but Wawrzynski had his answers ready. It was not the first time this detective had been grilled relentlessly on the stand. He expected it here. He understood what Trevena was trying to accomplish, but in the end, as he carefully explained to jurors, as a cop you have to follow the facts as they come to you. A cop should not interject his opinion into a case, or choose a path to go down and put on proverbial blinders. You follow the evidence, as clichéd at it sounded, and you allow it to dictate where a case takes you. Jennifer Mee had brought herself into this case, the others corroborated her independent story, the evidence they gathered backed a lot of it up, and here they were, putting all of that to the ultimate test of a murder trial.

  After a back-and-forth between them regarding how many shots were fired and if the number of shots at a scene constituted a robbery or perhaps some other type of crime, Wawrzynski complained about being asked to inject his “opinion” into it, adding how that was something investigators shouldn’t do.

  “Okay,” Trevena said, “you know that Jennifer Mee’s first version of events . . . was that Laron Raiford became enraged because he had discovered that Jennifer Charron had had communication with the victim, Shannon Griffin?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And that that’s why Laron Raiford snapped and filled him with bullets?”

  “I’ve heard that—yes, sir.”

  “Now, I want you to think carefully while I ask this very important question. As we sit here today, you cannot rule out that possibility, can you, sir?”

  “I cannot. Can I add—can I add something to that?”

  “That was my question,” Trevena said, with almost an unspoken warning not to add anything to what was just said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now,” Trevena said, and then stared down at his notes in silence for quite some time. Then: “May I have a moment, Your Honor?”

  There was a long pause in the courtroom as Trevena conferred with his colleagues and Wawrzynski waited for the next question.

  When Trevena returned, he said, “Your Honor, I believe that’s all I have.”

  * * *

  Of course, when ASA Hunter-Olney got up and began her redirect, she offered Wawrzynski that missed opportunity he’d lost with Trevena to clarify something he had wanted to “add.”

  Smart move.

  “There’s two parts to that,” the detective said. “One is—No one else ever repeated that statement. Even her own statement after that doesn’t equal that first statement. And that second statement that she provided to me is consistent with the other statements that I heard—”

  But Trevena objected and the detective stopped.

  “Overruled.”

  Wawrzynski continued without being told: “The second part of that is . . . In the phone records, in looking at Mr. Griffin’s telephone, of the phone numbers provided to me by the individuals involved in this investigation, there was no phone contact by Miss Charron’s phone or Mr. Raiford’s phone to Mr. Griffin’s phone prior to that call we described happening at approximately eight P.M. on the twenty-third of October, all the way up to the sixteenth of October. Before that date period, I don’t have those records, but for the period that I requested, there was no phone contact in there.”

  Hunter-Olney asked a few additional questions and indicated that was all she had.

  Trevena passed on a recross.

  Another day in the books.

  CHAPTER 90

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING, September 20, began with a surprise. Anticipating the state resting its case, John Trevena submitted a motion for a “judgment of acquittal.” It was a formality, in many respects, and all defense lawyers try it (or some version of it) at one time or another during the course of a trial. In that motion, Trevena argued that Detective Wawrzynski had not fully answered his questions and that the state had failed to contradict—“which is their burden”—every “reasonable hypothesis of innocence.”

  In Trevena’s view, a shoddy, slipshod, and speedy inves
tigation, based on a rush to judgment of the defendant because of her celebrity, had brought Jennifer Mee to this point of being tried for first-degree murder, and there was no basis or solid foundation for that prosecution.

  “I would respectfully suggest the obligation to not let this case go to jury based upon the testimony you’ve heard,” Trevena asked the judge.

  Further along, he talked about a major problem he had with the lack of evidence in the case and how it could not possibly point to Jennifer Mee being involved in the robbery. At best, Jennifer should have been charged with accessory after the fact. But first-degree murder? It was more than a stretch.

  The judge was quick with her answer.

  Denied.

  Move on.

  The jury was brought in after a short break.

  The state then rested its case against Jennifer Mee.

  * * *

  After asking for and taking a recess, so Trevena could have a conversation with his first defense witness, he called Jenni Charron to the stand. Jenni was reluctant to testify for the defense.

  With her head tilted to her left, wearing a brown dress, Jenni was wheeled into the courtroom by ASA LaBruzzo as courtroom spectators all turned to watch.

  Yes, wheeled.

  Since the last time Jenni had seen Jennifer Mee, Jenni’s life had taken somewhat of a downward spiral. In fact, at one time, Jenni was considered a “reluctant witness.” Back in August 2013, a month ago, during pretrial hearings in Jennifer Mee’s case, Jenni was called to the stand, but she had failed to show up. She had been “avoiding” the pretrial hearings, Trevena had said publicly, because he believed she was “hiding something.” Jenni had been so “reluctant” to testify, in fact, the judge had to order an arrest warrant for her during pretrial hearings. She finally showed up after that, with a good reason for not being there previously: Jenni had been in jail on an “order to show cause” charge for not appearing at pretrial hearings before that.

  There was a brooding look of melancholy on Jenni’s face as she sat in her wheelchair behind the microphone. She’d suffered from Crohn’s disease for a while and had also gotten a spinal infection that had paralyzed her from the waist down. Testifying in court, confined to a wheelchair, was certainly not the situation she had envisioned on this day, but here she was, unenthusiastic or not, ready and willing to answer any questions she could.