One Breath Away: The Hiccup Girl - From Media Darling to Convicted Killer

by M. William Phelps

  “My family was quite poor,” Trevena told me. “My father was a one hundred percent World War II disabled veteran, who suffered catastrophic injuries during the war, leaving him mostly blind and quite crippled from bullet wounds to the chest and a large bayonet wound to his liver.”

  As a disabled vet, Trevena’s father provided for his family with only a small monthly pension, which was near the poverty line at the time. Trevena’s mother was a loving and caring soul, a housewife that raised his three siblings and Trevena (the youngest) the best she could, with what little they had. It was a difficult life, but not a life devoid of love, affection, and compassion for others.

  Through those tough times, Trevena said, whereas some might want to fade into the obscurity of quitting school and perhaps belly their lives up to the local gin mill bar to cry in the bartender’s ear and drink away the blows of life, Trevena and his siblings thrived. Each one went on to graduate high school and attend four years of college, all later earning bachelor’s degrees.

  “I was the only child to receive a postgraduate degree,” Trevena said respectfully.

  Those lessons in humility he was taught growing up helped Trevena when it came time for him to begin thinking about life after school.

  “To pay for tuition, I would work up to three jobs,” he said. “I was also awarded an academic scholarship. One of the jobs I worked while attending law school was as a police officer, where I received a great deal of practical experience about the justice system.”

  His life experiences would all come in handy as Trevena went to work fighting for the rights of his clients. A case like Jennifer Mee’s was especially personal to Trevena because he didn’t see a vicious, evil killer when he looked into Jennifer Mee’s eyes. She certainly was not. He saw a young girl growing up in a family that had struggled, forever living week to week, a family on the fringes of poverty and possibly one hospital stay or car accident away from being broke—much like many Americans today. The Robidoux family members were good people at heart, Trevena felt. They had been trying to work out a winning hand with the cards they’d been dealt. Jennifer, especially, had lost her way somewhere along the path of life. She wound up in a situation she had hard time pulling herself away from. Trevena didn’t want to see the rest of her life spent behind bars.

  * * *

  Married for a second time, to a twenty-nine-year-old “Texas beauty queen” he called his “soul mate,” Trevena walked toward the courtroom lectern, about to give his opening statement in Florida v. Jennifer Mee. The defense attorney thought about how young and naïve and ill-equipped Jennifer Mee had been to deal with the consequences of her life. Trevena saw a troubled girl with medical, mental, and educational issues. How in the heck was he going to get her out of this mess? A mess, in fact, that could result in Jennifer spending life (without any chance of parole) in prison. She was so young that if Jennifer was found guilty, by the time her life was over, she most certainly would not recall what it had been like on the outside, in the free world. Indeed, the stakes could not have been higher—and Trevena knew it.

  Trevena spoke softly, in a calm and soothing voice. With his salt-and-pepper goatee and shortly cropped black hair—just turning gray along the borders—he came across not as your typical fist-pumping, boisterous, accusation-hurling defense attorney banging a drum of “she didn’t do it.” Instead, more than anything else, John Trevena gave a comforting sense that he was there as Jennifer Mee’s legal advocate—the one person fighting for her rights—to jurors and those in the courtroom looking on. He was not about to stand up and rip apart an investigation or condemn a prosecutor for going after Jennifer Mee without supporting his disagreements with the holes he had found in the case. He was defending his client, plain and simple, trying to explain to jurors that Jennifer was being overcharged, by his estimation, and the evidence would prove as much.

  He first explained to jurors that an opening “statement” was not evidence; and that by not using the term “opening argument,” addressing jurors at this stage of a trial should not be a thunderous, chest-pounding indictment of one side against another. An opening statement in Trevena’s mind was a “road map” to guide jurors through the muck of a case and “where,” he added thoughtfully, nodding in the affirmative slightly, “the evidence will lead you.”

  Trevena clarified that opening statements gave “cues” in order to point out certain “testimony that would come later.” He encouraged jurors to “evaluate that testimony in light of some of the issues that would” be presented during the course of the trial.

  It was a solid strategy. Part of Trevena’s job was to coach jurors into understanding that Jennifer Mee was at the wrong place at the wrong time, heavily influenced by her peers, unable to determine right from wrong, and in no way had participated in a murder. Trevena also saw a forceful prosecution based in part on the fact that Jennifer Mee was a celebrity. The high-profile nature of the case, Trevena was certain, played a major role in the state having gone after Jennifer as aggressively as it had.

  “Honestly,” Trevena told me later, “Miss Mee seemed too dim-witted to be the mastermind behind any criminal enterprise.... Intellectually, she just didn’t seem to have it together. The state kept using the term ‘mastermind, ’ and I was like, ‘Mastermind of what?’”

  In Trevena’s view, there was a terrible “rush to judgment” in this case. “I thought they were running roughshod over her because of her quasi-celebrity.”

  Part of what led Trevena down this road, he added, was the fact that the chief of police “did a big press conference to announce her arrest.... This was your normal, run-of-the-mill, inner-city crime—however tragic and terribly sad it was for the victim’s family—that if it made the news at all, it generally made the back page.”

  Trevena blamed the SPPD for announcing that they had the Hiccup Girl in custody in the first place and inviting the media firestorm to its doorstep.

  “This started by them identifying her as the Hiccup Girl,” Trevena remarked.

  As far as the two statements Jennifer Mee gave to the SPPD, Trevena made it clear that he had a major problem with that evidence.

  “The police department was trying to capitalize on her celebrity status and made it look like they had made this fantastic arrest in such a short time.... They were moving so rapidly, that the lead detective didn’t even know that another detective had interviewed her and obtained a statement from her, and so he turned around and goes and gets another statement from her.”

  That all being said, however, Trevena also knew the law in Florida and the battle he was up against in that regard was something out of his and Jennifer’s hands: the felony murder rule.

  “Florida has a very clear-cut felony murder rule. You could be the getaway driver.... Two guys come out of a bank, you are waiting, and it could be that one of your codefendants shoots a guard and you’re on the hook. . . .”

  Yet, a second problem Trevena and Jennifer faced was that the state was also alleging that Jennifer set this entire robbery up. It was rather simple. She contacted Shannon. She told him where to meet. She coaxed him behind that vacant house. He was murdered.

  Any way one added that up, it came out to the same solution.

  For Trevena, “Yes, Jennifer Mee made admissions that they were going to take his money, you know, rip him off . . . and she even used the term ‘robbery.’” But in this experienced lawyer’s opinion, the missing link was the idea that Jennifer Mee had no clue whatsoever that there was going to be a violent confrontation. She definitely did not know, moreover, that Laron and Lamont would use violent force to steal Shannon’s money, much less whip out a .38-caliber handgun and kill the man. “She was unaware that they were bringing a gun and certainly unaware that they were going to use violent force,” Trevena told me.

  As Trevena continued his opening statement, he turned around, pointed to Jennifer, and said, “Miss Mee sits alone as the only one charged here with first-degree murder. The state
must prove to you that she committed first-degree murder. Not that some other party who is not in this room . . . but that she is the responsible party for first-degree murder.”

  It was a powerful statement of the law.

  Then Trevena tried to inject some reasonable doubt into the state’s case. He explained that the state would have jurors believe that there were only “three people” involved in the crime, and he named Laron and Lamont as the other two.

  “But there were really four people involved,” Trevena told jurors. “We believe the evidence will show that there’s a fourth individual named Jennifer Charron . . . and Jennifer Charron, you will learn, was never charged with any crime whatsoever relating to this shooting.” There was a certain hint of “can you believe it?” in Trevena’s voice, over an undertone of “how dare they?”

  From that pivotal point of his defense, Trevena placed the blame on Jenni Charron, claiming that the evidence would eventually prove it was Jenni Charron who should be sitting in the place of Jennifer Mee inside the courtroom.

  Then he broke into a biography of Jennifer Mee and her life, at one point saying, “Miss Mee is known, as you heard from jury selection and from the court, as the Hiccup Girl. Miss Mee was, at the age of fifteen, subject to an extraordinary amount of both local and national publicity because of a medical condition, which caused her to have continuous hiccups. Now, you notice as she sits here today, it’s unlikely you will see any episodes of hiccups because she is now controlling that condition through medication. . . .”

  The state objected.

  The judge suggested a bench conference.

  Trevena was then allowed to continue.

  As he did, more objections led to additional bench conferences. After sorting it all out, Trevena turned his focus once again on Jenni Charron, absolutely disparaging her character, attacking her former means of making a living.

  “Jennifer Charron, you will hear, she is going to testify that she had a considerable amount of money. She was making good money. You will learn through the testimony on cross-examination that she was working, essentially, as a prostitute. . . .”

  He then explained the living conditions of the four at the time of the murder. He mentioned the statements each gave to police and how different—yet alike—they will sound. He argued that the “cover story” of Jenni Charron being essentially caught with Shannon by Laron was, in fact, the way it happened, and that Jennifer Mee was the scapegoat.

  Jenni Charron, according to Trevena, was the state’s “star witness,” and that’s why she was never charged with any crime, not even as an accessory after the fact, a crime that she admitted to and the SPPD was well aware of.

  Finally John Trevena encouraged jurors to ask themselves which of the stories they were about to hear during the course of this trial “made sense,” and to keep in mind that, when four of six shots were fired that night, Jennifer Mee was nowhere in sight.

  “She is not at the scene.”

  Then it was back to Jenni Charron and how the SPPD used Jenni to nail Jennifer Mee.

  “It wasn’t like it was a deal cut,” Trevena said of the detectives and their interaction with Jenni on that Sunday after the murder, and later. “It wasn’t like the detective said, ‘Miss Charron, you tell us what really happened and we’re not going to charge you with a crime.’” For Trevena, it was more complicated than that. Kind of like the detective saying, “Miss Charron, tell us how Miss Mee is involved and then you won’t be charged with anything. You’re a witness. You’re not a defendant.”

  This was a bold accusation on the part of Trevena, and yet it was allowed to linger without an objection.

  Trevena stated that the true motivation here was for the SPPD to gain notoriety through charging the Hiccup Girl with first-degree murder.

  ASA Chris LaBruzzo vehemently objected.

  “Sustained,” the judge said. “Move on.”

  In the end, Trevena implored jurors to view the evidence with “common sense” and truly take a look at the theories he had just presented of a salivating pit bull attacking a defenseless poodle. They should keep in mind that the state decided to toss the book at a young girl, who didn’t know any better, all because of her celebrity.

  “I was facing an uphill battle from the start,” Trevena said later, defending the bold position he took during his opening statement. “It was really her only chance.”

  CHAPTER 82

  JASON BRAZELTON WAS the state’s first witness. To no one’s surprise, the attorney briefly explained how he had come upon Shannon’s body, thinking he was looking at a homeless man sleeping off a bender.

  After Jason introduced jurors to the victim, Officer Kurt Bradshaw took the stand to describe what he found when he rolled up to the crime scene after Jason Brazelton had called it in.

  This was textbook, prosecutorial “scene setting” by the state. The best way to present a case to jurors was to begin with the 911 call and then allow the case to unfold from there. Within Bradshaw’s testimony, however, that scene setting contained several graphic images displayed for the jury, among them Shannon Griffin’s brutalized body. This brought a sense of jolting realism to the trial that had perhaps been lost in all of the Hiccup Girl hoopla leading up to the first few witnesses. Not forty minutes into the trial, jurors had a clear look at the result of a robbery gone bad and the decision a group of three people had made to rob a man of $60. Here was the dead body of a young man who believed he was scootering his way downtown to meet a girl.

  After introducing how and where the victim was found by bringing in Jason Brazelton and Kurt Bradshaw, the state produced its first character witness—Doug Bolden, who was going to inject some heartfelt emotion into the trial.

  * * *

  Wearing a yellow dress shirt and black dinner jacket, Doug Bolden walked into the courtroom. Watching him, Rachel Robidoux, who was sitting in back of her daughter, nearly lost control of her emotions. As her chest heaved in and out rapidly, she dabbed her eyes with a tissue. Rachel’s display of raw emotion was infectious and sincere.

  A handsome man, like his cousin, Doug Bolden spoke clearly and articulately. Here was a guy who had lost a cousin he viewed (and loved) as a son. The loss had been devastating to Doug, his wife, and the Griffin family as a whole. Shannon was a guiding light, a bright star within the family. He had simply been looking to make a life for himself in Florida after experiencing the horrible effects of Mother Nature at her worst. Listening to Doug Bolden, one got a sense of just how pointless and meaningless this murder had been.

  The state had Doug go through that night Shannon was leaving the house: how happy he was, how cheerful his spirits were, and how it was all based on the fact that Shannon was going to meet a female. Nowhere in Doug’s account did it seem as though Shannon was going out to score a small amount of marijuana. Regardless of what all the others had said, to Doug Bolden, Shannon was heading out on a date.

  ASA Janet Clack Hunter-Olney, LaBruzzo’s co-counsel, questioned Doug Bolden with an affecting genuineness and candor, asking at one point: “Okay, how long had he lived with you here in Pinellas County?”

  “It was almost two years.”

  “And was that the last time that you saw Shannon?” she asked next, referencing that night Shannon had left the Bolden household so happy and excited to go meet a girl.

  “It was . . . It was the very last time.”

  “What is the next thing that happened?”

  When Doug spoke, he smiled at times and looked down at others, no doubt calling up the imagery associated with the memories he was sharing. It had been such an alarming blow, and those moments before Shannon left the house were etched in Doug’s mind as if they had happened the previous day. How could a man forget the final moments with someone he loved? How could Doug Bolden ever rid from his memories the idea that his cousin had been taken from him and his family for nothing?

  “He told me,” Doug continued, “like I said before, he was like, ‘Hey, I’
m going out. You know, I met a young lady.’ Personally, I was excited for him because he was someone who rarely ever went out. I mean, he was someone that went to work.... I was so proud of him.”

  As his testimony continued, Doug spoke of a man he had mentored into getting his GED. He talked about how the two of them walked down to the Walmart together so Shannon could get a job application. Then when Shannon got the job, the sheer happiness Doug saw on Shannon’s face came across as though the young man had hit the lottery. To Shannon, the simple things most people took for granted were things he relished. He was grateful for so much in so many ways. It was a joy just to watch him grow and live, Doug suggested.

  ASA Hunter-Olney showed Doug several photos of Shannon’s scooter and asked him how long Shannon had owned it.

  “I want to say about six months.”

  Hunter-Olney stopped the testimony at that point and asked the judge if she could approach the bench. Soon all the lawyers were standing around the judge, talking.

  There was a problem.

  Jennifer Mee was Hunter-Olney’s issue. As Doug talked through Shannon’s life, Jennifer had begun to cry. It was very animated and loud. It was as if the floodgates of emotion had let loose after Jennifer suddenly realized that a real life had been snuffed out and that she had been part of it. She sat staring blankly straight ahead; at times, her lower lip was quivering. She sniffled and wiped away what were, no doubt, real tears. The look on her face was grave, sullen and dramatic, an upside-down smile.

  This was problematic for the state. As the trial moved forward, there was going to be plenty more emotional testimony and scores of graphic photos. Jennifer had to be strong, prepared for all of it. She couldn’t sit through the trial and cry. LaBruzzo, in a statement to the judge, wondered if it was “not proper” that Jennifer was displaying so much emotion.

  “So you’re asking me to do something?” the judge asked him during the sidebar, out of juror earshot.