If You Only Knew

by M. William Phelps

  Toca accused the PO of proceeding with the deal “in bad faith” by knowing that, at best, it was a manslaughter case, to begin with.

  Judge Potts ruled that if Vonlee didn’t want to go with the seven to fifteen, the court would allow her to withdraw her plea bargain and the prosecutor’s office was free to withdraw its deal and continue prosecuting its case any way it chose.

  To be certain that Vonlee understood what was happening and the seriousness of what she was doing, the judge asked if she was clear that by “withdrawing” her plea of manslaughter, the “charge of first-degree murder” would likely “be reinstated . . . and the maximum penalty for her could be life in prison?”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” Vonlee said, indicating that she understood the ramifications of her actions.

  “And do you do that freely and voluntarily?”

  “Yes.”

  “You fully understand the consequences?”

  “Yes.”

  The judge said she didn’t have any additional questions. After a pause and a slight glance down at her notes, Judge Potts concluded, “All right, the trial will be January 14, [2002].”

  Toca balked, saying that he had just been retained and there was a lot to go over. He would need more time. He might also have a scheduling conflict on that day. Then he explained how he felt the PO was “in a rush to try this. . . .”

  “We’re not in a rush, Your Honor,” Skrzynski said.

  The judge said two months was plenty enough time for Toca to get up to speed on the case and to prepare. And if the scheduling conflict on Toca’s end was not a criminal matter, Toca should drop the other case and focus on Vonlee’s trial. There would be no delay.

  CHAPTER 58

  WITH JURY SELECTION TAKING only one day, on Friday, November 30, 2001, at 8:48 A.M., Michigan vs. Billie Jean Rogers began on schedule inside Judge Wendy Potts’s Oakland County Sixth Circuit Court, in downtown Pontiac. Potts, a well-respected judge, had served the Sixth Judicial Circuit since December 11, 1997, when she was appointed from a probate position by then-governor John Engler. A proud grandmother, Potts expected punctuality in her courtroom as a general rule. She hated when lawyers showed up late and rarely tolerated it without some sort of tongue-lashing or warning about it happening again. The one working model Potts liked to promote was that she and her staff functioned together as a team and drove equal portions along the road to justice. Potts once told an interviewer with Motion magazine that the “advice” she would most likely “give a new attorney about courtroom etiquette” is to “treat judge’s staff with the same respect as the judge.” Interestingly enough, more likely in jest, Judge Potts told the same magazine her favorite “law-related” television show was watching “reruns of my court TV programs.” On a more serious note, Potts said she looked up to her brother as a role model; he was a man who had undergone a liver transplant and planned to run a marathon after healing. She demanded preparedness and professionalism inside her courtroom at all times.

  No excuses.

  By ten minutes after nine that morning, Potts proved her reputation as a time-efficient judge who liked to keep things moving along. APA John Skrzynski, a slightly balding, blond-haired, middle-aged man, in good physical shape, approached the jury to begin his opening statement. Skrzynski was a prosecutor who had led the charge against the high-profile “Doctor Death,” Jack Kevorkian.

  Skrzynski knew his way around the law, no doubt about it. He started with a rather interesting theme, picking up on something Judge Potts had mentioned in her terse remarks to the jury before they got started: “a list of ingredients, or what we call elements” of a murder.

  As the APA of Oakland County, a job he took more serious than probably anything else in his life besides family, Skrzynski said it was up to him to prove—beyond a reasonable doubt—these so-called elements. He acknowledged his appreciation for the jury and asked if they could focus throughout the trial on comparing those elements of murder with the evidence presented, before drawing their final conclusion. He then broke down each element.

  Did Billie Jean cause the death of her husband?

  A quick pause, look up from his notes. Then, if Billie Jean had caused that death, was there intent on her part to kill Don Rogers?

  The third element was premeditation, Skrzynski insisted. Did the intent have premeditation supporting it? And did that premeditation come before the “action took place”?

  It had to, Skrzynski concluded.

  The fourth element included a deliberate act taking place during the course of the murder: was Don’s murder thought about beforehand?

  “Premeditation” was a confusing word, the APA seemed to suggest by his comments. It did not mean that in the weeks and months before Don’s murder, Billie Jean sat down and devised some diabolical plot to execute her husband or to make a drunken stupor of his look like a final bender. Premeditation could mean, quite actually, those crucial moments just before the crime was committed, mere seconds before.

  “The fifth element,” Skrzynski then announced, “is that the killing itself is not justified . . . excused or mitigated.”

  He was referring to self-defense.

  Skrzynski went through each element again, succinctly explaining the point he needed to make for each, before collectively asking jurors a rhetorical question, thus hoping to point to a mistake he believed Billie Jean had made, which subsequently led to her appearing to have something to hide: “How many of you ever lied to get into trouble? . . . Raise your hand.” He waited a moment, and then repeated the question: “How many of you have ever lied to get into serious trouble?”

  Billie Jean’s attorney, Walter Piszczatowski, objected, saying he thought the question was actually more argument than opening statement.

  Judge Potts called them both to the bench. She encouraged the APA to tell the jury what he was going to prove during the trial.

  Skrzynski never said what that lie Billie Jean had told might entail.

  After both attorneys resettled, Skrzynski gave the jury a narrative of what the state aimed to show Billie Jean Rogers had done on the night her husband died. He explained how the evidence would ultimately “show that around four-thirty in the morning . . . the police received a call on 911. It was . . . Billie Rogers. And she was calling the police to tell them that she and her niece, Nicole Titlow, had come home from the casino and had found her husband, Don Rogers, dead on the floor.”

  He further stated that as police arrived on scene and took a look around, “they discovered Don Rogers lying dead on the floor of the kitchen—and [after looking] at Don’s body,” those same cops “thought it was unusual.”

  Skrzynski warned jurors they would see a photograph of Don lying on the floor, and it wouldn’t be pleasant.

  “He’s dead. I want to prepare you for that. But this is what the police officers saw. It looks like he’s asleep.”

  From there, the APA focused on the seemingly odd fact that Don’s ankles had been crossed and it “looked almost like he had been watching TV or something.” It was strange—everyone in law enforcement there at the scene had thought so. The scene appeared staged and gave the officers the impression that there was more to the death than what appeared to be a heart attack or some other natural way that death comes to people inside their homes.

  With the thought in mind that something was wrong with the death scene, the cops “spoke to the two women that were there,” Skrzynski explained to twelve members of the community that had not heard this story until that moment. “They spoke to Billie Rogers and to another woman that was with her, Nicole Titlow. Billie Rogers was fairly calm and Nicole Titlow was very emotional. Very, very upset. Didn’t want to talk to the police.”

  The motive came up next as the APA digressed from the reactions of the ladies to how, as Don Rogers “lay there” dead on his kitchen floor, he “was actually a pretty wealthy man . . . [with] an estate . . . worth between one-point-five and one-point-eight million dollars.” The APA furth
er explained that the “account was in his name.” Billie Jean Rogers, however, “had what’s called a ‘right of survivorship’ in that money.” He then took a pause before delivering what he hoped was a pithy punch line: “That means that if Don dies, Billie gets the money.”

  It sounded sinister the way Skrzynski had put it—maybe even evil. Here was one of the oldest motives for murder perhaps on record: a crime carried out by a woman hell-bent on killing the man she supposedly loved, and then happily riding off into the sunset with a bundle of his cash. The argument had a black-widow spin in the way it had been presented by the experienced prosecutor; he believed what he was selling.

  The problem with this argument was that there was no supporting evidence to back any of it up besides some financial spreadsheets, a long and tortured bitterness between Don and his wife, and, finally, a choppy recording of Vonlee Titlow, the woman’s niece, talking to her boyfriend, a convicted felon, about a possible conspiracy to commit murder.

  Up against the bare facts, the argument felt weak and inconsequential.

  The APA continued to march to the tune of the widow’s thirst for, and possible addiction to, gambling and how she had amassed a fifty-thousand-dollar debt that she needed to pay off. This situation had potentially pushed her over the edge to murder the man whose money she had spent.

  As a piece of evidence the APA promised, he mentioned a floor plan of the Rogers household. He explained where everything pertinent to the case was located: dining table, chairs, living area, couch, coffee table, a pair of shoes and glass of water. He said the glass of water on the coffee table in close proximity to that pair of women’s shoes said something about the crime. Billie Jean had admitted the water and shoes were hers—and that admission told a story. He relayed how the detective and officers on the scene, seeing the items, thought it was unusual for them to be there, seeing that Billie Jean and Vonlee had already said they had walked into the house through the garage. If that was the case, Skrzynski explained, one or both women would’ve had to walk over Don’s body or step around it in order to make it into the living space to take off her shoes and drink from the glass of water. That alone, the APA presumed, was evidence of a nefarious crime the women had committed, solely because they obviously did not care about Don’s dead body on the kitchen floor when they came home.

  But what if Billie Jean simply said that it was routine for her to walk in and see Don passed out, walk over him, and then sit down to relax before committing to the nightly task of picking him up off the floor and dragging him up to his room?

  Reasonable doubt?

  Skrzynski hoped not.

  By his opening, the APA appeared to be setting the stage with the elements of murder, and the peculiar nature of the “death scene,” as noted by two cops, to all be evidence of a premeditated, well-thought-out plan to murder Don on that night.

  Adding to his theme, the APA explained how the medical examiner first thought it was a heart attack but then changed his mind when those mitigating circumstances of an admission had come into play.

  From that point, Skrzynski introduced Danny Chahine.

  And then he zeroed in on Vonlee, Billie Jean’s “niece,” and how she had admitted to Danny that she was a man—and then the real “bombshell” of her revelation: Vonlee had taken part in a murder with her aunt, but she felt her aunt had done the deed herself.

  Concluding, the APA said Billie Jean’s “niece” would likely not testify, and that was her right. But if Vonlee Titlow chose to plead the Fifth, well, Skrzynski added, the jury could still be certain to hear from her via words from Vonlee’s guilty lips to Danny’s eager ears via a recording device Danny had hidden inside his truck.

  CHAPTER 59

  WALTER PISZCZATOWSKI WAS A well-respected attorney with sandy brown/blond hair, a trendy goatee (neatly groomed), along with a rather cheerful, easygoing demeanor—however serious he came across in a court of law. In that sense, Piszczatowski bore a striking resemblance to his rival, APA Skrzynski.

  Billie Jean had chosen well in Piszczatowski for an attorney. He graduated from Wayne State University Law School in 1977 before joining the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office, where he stayed until 1983. From there, Piszczatowski became a member of the PO’s Special Assignment Squad before moving on to become an assistant U.S. attorney (AUSA) in the Eastern District (Michigan), finally climbing into the chief of Special Prosecutions Unit’s job. He left that post to go into private practice in 1988 and never looked back.

  Piszczatowski was a serious player in the world of criminal defense in Oakland County, Michigan. He had been hired by a number of high-profile celebrities, whose cases commanded major media attention. Piszczatowski had represented Marshall Mathers (iconic rapper Eminem) on a concealed weapons charge in April 2001. He had taken on cases for music industry heavyweights such as Marilyn Manson and Jack White, as well as Indiana Pacers basketball star David Harrison.

  The way Piszczatowski viewed the position of anyone he defended was to allow the facts of the case to unfold before the jury in a fair and balanced manner, poking holes in the state’s position, where he felt he could. Here, as Piszczatowski looked at the PO’s case against Billie Jean, he had a client that didn’t need to be defended, necessarily, more than she needed legal counsel to guide the jury toward the truth. Without Vonlee’s testimony, the state was up against a brick wall, Piszczatowski knew. The PO had nothing that proved Billie Jean had murdered her husband. Yes, Billie Jean had spent a lot of her husband’s savings and investment money after his death. She had accumulated a large gambling debt, which Don Rogers had been paying. But she had not just up and married the guy months or weeks before he died. She’d spent a lifetime with Don. Sure, Don might have been pissed at his wife, but that was not an uncommon problem between a man and his wife. If it was all you had to serve up as a prosecutor, it was certainly not enough grounds for the accused to have murdered the guy.

  Beyond all of that, Billie Jean had been diagnosed with terminal cancer before Don’s death. Why would she plot to kill the man when she herself was going to be dead within, supposedly, the year? Or maybe that was the PO’s theory—that Billie Jean didn’t care what happened to her? She could spend all the money she wanted and then check out. Was it morally wrong? Was it unfair to do that to a man you were supposed to love, honor and cherish?

  Maybe so.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, this case is about . . . being accused of a crime that you didn’t commit,” Piszczatowski stated, setting the tone immediately upon addressing the jury. “But thank goodness not everyone that’s charged with a criminal offense is convicted of that criminal offense.” This was an important point for Billie Jean’s lawyer to make: just because she had been charged and faced trial, that alone did not mean Billie Jean Rogers was guilty of the crime.

  Piszczatowski talked about the charges against his client being only—at this stage—a “piece of paper . . . in the court file.” It was a charge. It wasn’t fact. She wasn’t guilty because she had been charged. A charge “is not evidence.” The allegations on that piece of paper, he thundered, “bears no weight!” He said it had nothing “to do with the prosecution’s case. It’s no different than a civil complaint. If you’re getting sued in civil court, there’s a complaint that starts the proceedings. In criminal proceedings, it’s what’s called ‘criminal information.’”

  This was the point to Piszczatowski’s argument. He encouraged jurors not to get caught up in what seemed to be a full court press to make sure someone goes down for the death of Don Rogers. Listen to the evidence. Realize the facts of the case as they unfold before you. Think things through. Put yourself in the position of Billie Jean. Ask yourself if there is any reasonable doubt whatsoever before dropping the blade on a guillotine that will “decide her fate.”

  Using that tone as a launching point, Piszczatowski ripped apart the PO, calling its prosecution of his client a “shoddy method” of seeking justice, adding how a “shoddy method of inve
stigation” led to the arrest. Not good, solid police work. “There are three basic principles of law. Mr. Skrzynski alluded to one in his opening this morning, and that is that he has the burden of . . . proving each and every element in this case beyond a reasonable doubt.”

  Piszczatowski talked about a metaphoric “cloak” that his client sat in the courtroom and wore around her neck, one of which had “presumption of innocence” written on the front, and nobody serving on the jury should ever forget that fact, especially in a case such as the one they were about to hear. That cloak, he added, furthering his metaphor, should stay put until the PO stripped it off her “with evidence.” He let the word—“evidence”—ring for a few beats before continuing, saying how if “they don’t do their job, well, your job is to do one thing. Because that’s how the judicial system works.”

  After introducing himself and his co-counsel, Piszczatowski mentioned how the case should hinge on several important, unconditional essentials: “cold, hard facts, evidence, [no] sympathy or bias, the burden of proof” by the PO.

  He asked jurors to wait and withhold judgment until the end, which sounded routine and rather mundane, but most juries, any smart lawyer knew, made up their minds by the halfway point. Piszczatowski did not want that to happen here.

  The truth, Piszczatowski promised, would be “constant” in the case he would present. He said he would introduce a number of inconsistencies that would ultimately “cause you problems.” Smartly, perhaps, he keyed on the point of there being “a number of questions . . . left open” and a “number of mysteries” that still needed to be solved. And if the jury had issues with “closing the loop,” there was no other result except a vote for acquittal. The PO could not be “half right,” and Billie Jean could not be found guilty based on the “poor quality of the evidence.”