Crazy for You

by Michael Fleeman

  “I know when this book comes out one day or movie or etc., it would be good for me to know in general what’s happened out there while I was in here,” Sneiderman said, according to the document. “I was thinking if Sandra Bullock wasn’t so old, she’d be a good choice. I watched the ‘Miss Congeniality’ movie … I thought she kind of has my personality, so, you know, that would be a good choice, but I think she might be a little old, so we’ll see.” (Andrea was thirty-six, Bullock was forty-eight.)

  In her court papers, Panitch wrote, “It is the height of hypocrisy that the same Defendant who has already chosen the actress to play her in the movie about her life would seek to impeach a victim of her own wretched acts. Notwithstanding the objection, Ariela Neuman has not sold her life rights or otherwise entered into any contract to sell her name or pictures, nor written a book, unlike Defendant’s desire to do so.”

  Back and forth the battle went. At a February 2013 hearing in the murder trial, Andrea’s attorney Thomas Clegg again sought to have Dell removed from the witness list. “Make no mistake: This is an ordeal. She is entitled to companionship during her ordeal,” Clegg told the judge. District Attorney Robert James this time could only muster a shaky response. He finally acknowledged that he kept Dell on the witness list even though authorities had not contacted him. It was the first sign of a fissure in the prosecution’s case. Seizing on this, Clegg snapped that James should “put up or shut up,” to which James shot back that he didn’t have to do any such thing until trial.

  The defense next filed a motion in March, seeking dismissal of most of the sixteen counts against Andrea. They derided the perjury charges as “vague, uncertain, indefinite and devoid of specificity.” Ditto for the counts alleging Andrea hindered the apprehension of a criminal, giving false statements and concealing material facts. The prosecution countered that it had more evidence than most had realized. At a hearing in April, an investigator testified that records of Andrea’s calls and texts with Hemy the day of the murder had been erased from her BlackBerry. The investigator said it was impossible to tell who erased them or why, but noted that other calls and texts between Andrea and Hemy before the murder had not been deleted.

  Whatever boost the prosecution got was temporary. Not only did the judge rule that Andrea would be allowed to converse again with Joseph Dell, but buzz began building that the prosecution’s case was crumbling. Twice after Andrea was originally charged the prosecution had to go back to the grand jury for new indictments, tweaking the lineup of counts. The essence of the case remained the same—that Andrea allegedly had something to do with Rusty’s murder and then lied to authorities—but the tinkering with the charges sent a message of a lack of certainty on the prosecution’s part. As the trial grew near, the situation grew worse for the state. The evidence James wanted simply never arrived. And in late July the word had gotten out. Local media outlets reported that the DA was planning to drop the most serious charge against Andrea, that of murder.

  With a gag order imposed, neither side could confirm or deny the reports. This set the stage for a critical pretrial hearing where the prosecution would have to disclose its intentions. Televised live locally, the hearing was set for July 26—just three days before opening statements—and in the course of two tense hours in court tempers would fly. It began with lawyers debating a motion to allow the testimony of Hemy’s friend and confidante Melanie White, the prosecution calling her observations relevant, the defense saying it would be too prejudicial.

  When Judge Adams then asked about the second motion, the defense immediately called for a session at the sidebar. Several minutes of animated discussion ensued, the lawyers’ words fuzzed over by the judge activating his static switch. At the defense table Andrea sat nervously, wringing her hands.

  “All right, we’re back on the record, Mr. James!” the judge boomed as lawyers returned to the seats.

  “Yes, sir,” said the DA as he walked up to the lecturn, “at this point the state would make a motion.”

  James asked to remove counts one, two, and three of the indictment.

  “Mr. James,” the judge said, interrupting him, “the way it’s listed is count one is malice of murder, count two is felony murder, and count three is aggravated assault?”

  “That’s accurate, Judge,” said James.

  “Go ahead.”

  The prosecutor began tentatively. “Um,” he said, “as is customary and I believe as is also required, um, I would tender a reason, um, to make this, um, to make this motion.”

  He noted that the court was aware that jurors had been called in and that he would “not be too detailed” about the evidence, but that his perception of the case changed after he went through the discovery evidence provided by the defense.

  “After we received the second batch of discovery, we, the state, went back and reinterviewed most if not all of our witnesses in this case,” he said. “I have an ethical obligation not to seek convictions but to seek justice, and I believe it would be unjust and unethical for the DA’s office, for the state, for the district attorney of this county to go forward with a charge that I am not 100 percent sure someone is guilty of.” Therefore, the DA was dropping the murder charge against Andrea.

  Defense attorney Thomas Clegg couldn’t disagree, but took a swipe anyway.

  “There is no smoking gun in there leading anyone to conclude: Wow, looking at this, all of a sudden I can say they don’t have a murder case,” said Clegg. “I believe they have known all along they did not have a murder case. Be that as it may, I welcome at this time Mr. James’s admission that he does not have the degree of certainty necessary to go forward with a prosecution for these counts. So I have no objection to the dismissal of counts of one, two, and three.”

  The judge seemed taken aback by the last-minute move. “Mr. Clegg, before you take your seat, obviously the court will have some say in this.”

  “I understand that, sir.”

  “And no one has presented to me a case that says the court must accept the state’s motion.”

  The judge would call a recess without ruling. Afterward, a clearly rattled Robert James returned to the lectern.

  “Your Honor, I’ll make this very brief,” he said. “What I was going to say I won’t say. But what I will say is I’ve been prosecuting cases for fourteen years. I have never—as an assistant DA, as solicitor, and now as the elected district attorney—I have never indicted a case where based on the evidence I had in front of me, I did not believe that an individual was guilty of the charges that I was indicting them for. I have never tried a case, on the other hand, where I have doubts, or where I believed there was a possibility I could be wrong.

  “That is why I’m before the court,” he continued. “That is why I made this motion. I’m standing before the court and standing before millions of people, perhaps, asking for the court to [dismiss] right before the trial. I’m struggling to see how that lacks ethics. I’m doing what I think is right.”

  By the end of the day, despite his reservations, Judge Adams granted the prosecution’s request. The Andrea Sneiderman murder trial suddenly became the Andrea Sneiderman perjury trial.

  The decision may have been a letdown for the national media—HLN had lost its marquee live murder trial—but the stakes remained high. Andrea still faced up to twenty years in prison. Her children could see her only behind razor wire and under heavy guard. All, Andrea maintained, for crimes she claimed she never committed.

  CHAPTER 24

  Opening statements began on a steamy southern morning on August 5, 2013, the cicadas buzzing in the trees outside the DeKalb County Courthouse. The trial had the feel of an afterthought. The national media left the story to the locals, who still gave it major coverage with live-streaming testimony, blogging, and tweeting. DA Robert James handed off opening statements to a newly promoted deputy, Kellie Hill, though he sat in court throughout the trial.

  The jury that had been selected would not be tasked with deciding w
hether Andrea Sneiderman should be held accountable for the cold-blooded murder of her husband, but for not telling the whole truth to police and at Hemy’s trial. She still faced decades in prison on the counts, which carried five-year penalties.

  But the defense was emboldened. Thomas Clegg delivered a no-compromise opening statement signaling that this wouldn’t be a reasonable-doubt case. “She ain’t on trial for murder. No evidence suggests that she is,” Clegg told the jury. “Everything will be based on inference, speculation, and a hunch. There is no evidence she has done anything wrong. It’s a myth.” Andrea was so confident that she turned down a last-minute plea deal, reportedly one year in prison.

  It was up to DeKalb Assistant District Attorney Hill to remind everybody that there was still unfinished business. In an opening statement that built in passion, she told jurors that Andrea had a “forbidden romance” with Hemy Neuman that “ended in the murder of her husband.”

  “The evidence will show that she suspected Hemy Neuman immediately,” said Hill. “And the evidence will show, ladies and gentlemen, that she lied.” The lies, Hill claimed, “kept police from figuring out who shot her husband in cold blood outside her son’s daycare.” Near the end of the opening statement, Hill said that Andrea “took this very witness stand”—she smacked the wood railing—“and vowed to tell the truth. That is not what she did.”

  Over the next six days, the prosecution laid out a meticulous case, alternating clips of Andrea’s courtroom testimony and police interviews with live witnesses. Each targeted statement came with a rebuke on the witness stand. Showing Andrea’s trial statements out of order and in sound-bite form stripped them of their emotional punch; jurors at Andrea’s trial didn’t experience the same surprise and shock of her slow build to anger and sarcasm.

  But the lies piled up all the same, the state argued as it sought to prove the 13 counts against Andrea. Prosecutors offered what it called evidence she hindered the apprehension of a criminal by deleting text messages and concealing her relationship with Hemy. They argued that she covered up her knowledge her boss had killed Rusty, using as evidence, among other things, their phone calls around the time of the murder. She concealed material facts, the state argued, by lying to police about a romance with Hemy, introducing their travel records, emails and testimony from the Pulse bartender and others.

  Prosecutors played back portions of her police interviews seeking to prove she made false statements by failing to tell investigators she suspected Hemy until the very end of the investigation. It alleged she also made false statements to Lt. Barnes about having no idea what happened to Rusty when she arrived at Dunwoody Prep, bringing into evidence her alleged statements she knew Rusty had been shot before anybody, the state claimed, had told her that. Prosecutors argued she was lying when she told investigators she had made it clear to Hemy to stop chasing after her, that claim, prosecutors alleged, undermined by their emails. And prosecutors presented evidence she perjured herself at Hemy’s trial by allegedly lying again about many of those same things on the witness stand.

  As the prosecution built its case against Andrea, it injected drama into the trial, its marquee witness to present what the state would claim was the context of her alleged lies.

  Impeccably dressed and accessorized, Shayna Citron walked to the witness stand in a black dress with plunging neckline and a silver necklace. Answering questions from Hill, Andrea’s former best friend recalled their pleasant life when they were two young moms with great husbands in suburban Atlanta: the book club meetings, the playdates, the school activities, dinners at each other’s homes, the baby showers as their children arrived.

  Then came a lunch between Shayna and Andrea, a lunch like many others. Andrea was about to start her first full-time office job and wanted her friend’s advice on office attire. “She was asking if open-toed shoes were okay in workplace or if flat shoes better option,” said Citron.

  * * *

  Almost from the moment Andrea started at GE, Citron detected a change. A May 2010 dance recital in which Andrea performed—“Andrea is a very good dancer and always had been,” she noted—was followed by a tense and uncomfortable dinner where Citron was stunned at seeing how her best friend acted with Rusty. “It was at that dinner that I saw for the first time that they were going through a rough time.”

  By September 1 things had gotten worse. When the women met at a restaurant for lunch, Andrea revealed that her boss had professed his love for her. This was the same anecdote that Citron testified about at the first trial, only now she could barely control her emotions on the witness stand.

  “Did she tell you how she felt about her boss?” asked Hill.

  Taking a moment to compose herself, Citron answered, “She said that maybe if she had not been married she’d be interested in him.”

  “Did she answer the question that you asked, What’s going on with you and Rusty?”

  Another pause, and Citron said, “There came a point in that conversation when I said, ‘Are things that bad? Are you and Rusty going to get a divorce?’ I couldn’t even believe I was saying that because they had been such a good team. She said to me that she would never divorce Rusty.”

  This, Andrea told her, despite years of issues with him. “We started talking about how everything in their married life had always been about Rusty, whatever job he had, whatever problems were going on in his job, whatever the situation was with the boss or co-worker was, there was always something. It was always all about him.”

  Then she revealed something that shocked Citron. “She said that her parents never wanted her to marry Rusty.”

  “You had never heard that before?”

  Tearing up, she said, “I had never heard that before.”

  “Did her parents tell her why?”

  “Again because everything was all about him, and she had previously had a relationship with some musician and they almost would have rather had her marry him because he was more supportive of her.”

  The lunch ended on a traumatic note for Citron. “I thought, Oh, my God, Andrea has checked out of this marriage,” she testified. Citron’s voice choked, her face contorted with emotion. “When she was speaking about Rusty her eyes were dark and cold. When she was speaking about her boss—I did not know his name at that point—her eyes were sparkling.”

  Citron sniffled and reached for a tissue and dabbed her left eye.

  Andrea watched her former friend intently but betrayed no reaction, her expression stony.

  Court ended for the day before Citron finished. She returned the next morning, this time in a bright-red dress and a strand of pearls, with more accounts of conversations in which Andrea spoke of marital problems. The latest was an argument in front of the children, the first time this had happened, Andrea told Shayna. “She was particularly upset.”

  As she testified, Citron seemed to struggle to remain composed, finally breaking into tears when she spoke of a Halloween costume party. Andrea and Sophia dressed as mommy-and-daughter sock-hop girls in poodle skirts and bobbed hair.

  “She looked amazing,” Citron said. “She looked the happiest I had seen her in a long time, absolutely radiant and glowing. Even her complexion was just absolutely gorgeous.”

  Rusty was dressed as Fred from Scooby-Doo and Ian as Scooby. Rusty was “just wiped wiped out,” Citron said.

  “Did he look as happy as the defendant looked?” asked Hill.

  “No,” said Citron.

  The party, the prosecution would later note, took place the same week that Hemy Neuman left his wife and started telling people he was sleeping with a younger woman.

  On cross-examination, Citron turned steely, every attempt by J. Thomas Morgan to undercut her credibility met with terse and combative replies. There would be no more tears. Her demeanor would later be likened by the defense as a bad scene from the Real Housewives of Atlanta, and witnesses called by the defense would rebut her. Andrea’s mother insisted her daughter and son-in-law had a s
trong, happy bond. Ben Nadler, who went to the same synagogue as the Sneidermans, said, “There was this little sparkle in her eye when she was talking about him and you could just really hear the pride.” But Shayna Citron never wavered: There was trouble in the Sneiderman marriage, the kind of trouble that the prosecution said laid the groundwork for lies.

  * * *

  Testimony ended August 15 with Andrea telling the judge that she would not take the stand in her own defense, clearing the way for summations. After spending much of the trial as a second-chair lawyer, handling the occasional witness, DA Robert James—last seen explaining himself—was back in form. “You’re a liar!” he said directly at Andrea during closing arguments as she looked away. “She’s a manipulator. She’s a deceiver,” he told the jury. “If this was the street, they’d say she’s got game.”

  Clegg wrapped up the defense case with the same stance as opening statements, conceding nothing. Andrea, he said, was a “victim” who had done absolutely nothing wrong. The prosecution’s case amounted to a “well-edited TV show” that lacked any real evidence. “Part of that woman’s heart, part of that woman’s soul was ripped apart and she will never get that back,” he said. “The state of Georgia is doing all it can to take away the rest of her heart, the rest of her soul.” Asking, “What on earth are we doing here,” Clegg said of the prosecution, “They blew it, folks. They blew it totally. They blew it completely.”

  The jury retired that Friday to begin deliberations, returned after a weekend break, and by lunchtime Monday had a verdict. Judge Adams brought the jury into the courtroom and explained to the forewoman how to read the read the verdict, starting at the top of the form and reading it in its entirety into the record.