“Yes,” said Hunter-Olney.
The judge wanted to know what the state wanted, exactly.
“We would like you to instruct her that she needs to get a grasp of her emotions.”
As they talked it through, Jennifer folded both hands in front of herself on the table, twiddled her thumbs nervously, and was on the brink of totally losing it.
Trevena’s co-counsel had a short chat with Jennifer, encouraging her to be tough, hold tight, and try to get a handle on herself. If she needed a break, they could take one.
Hunter-Olney then continued with Doug Bolden, showing him several pieces of physical evidence he recognized as Shannon’s personal belongings. It was a difficult moment. Doug looked down at Shannon’s wallet and, of course, saw his cousin again standing inside that house, saying good-bye, smiling, happily going about his life, coming out of his shell for the first time. It was a lasting image, sure—but also a final one.
The state ended its direct examination by having Doug explain how the SPPD notified him of Shannon’s death by a knock on the door and the shocking revelation that his young cousin had been murdered.
* * *
John Trevena began by asking Doug Bolden about Walmart. Wasn’t it considered a “drug-free workplace,” and would that be something that Shannon knew?
Doug said sure.
After a few additional questions, Trevena asked Doug if he knew “Shannon to be a marijuana smoker?”
“No.”
Trevena then asked the same question several different ways, alluding to the idea Doug had presented that Shannon was going downtown on a date, not to buy some weed. This was all part of Trevena’s argument bolstering the theory that Shannon and Jenni Charron were hooking up.
As they continued talking back and forth—Trevena had to tread carefully on the memory of the victim—it was clear Doug Bolden believed Shannon had met a girl online and had made plans with her for a date that night. There was never any discussion between the two about Shannon going out to buy weed. And there was never any discussion about the girl’s identity.
After establishing that Doug had a computer in the house that Shannon often used to go online, Trevena said he was done.
They took a break.
At about 2:45 P.M., testimony resumed.
CHAPTER 83
ON THAT SAME day, September 18, 2013, as the afternoon session began, the state brought in its forensic technician, Brent Goodman, a fifteen-year SPPD employee. This was the state’s CSI man. He was the guy who had arrived at the crime scene with his criminal tackle box, latex gloves, flashlight, and tweezers to sift through whatever evidence had been left behind by Shannon’s murderers. Goodman had a master’s degree in forensic anthropology and was qualified in blood spatter analysis, drug lab work, and arson investigation.
Quickly, as LaBruzzo questioned Goodman, the forensic tech dismantled any images the jury might have had of a Gil Grissom–like television character walking around the scene, investigatory light bulbs going off in his head, questioning witnesses, solving crimes in sixty minutes, in between commercial breaks.
“Do you have the ability to arrest anyone, or do you carry a weapon?” LaBruzzo asked.
“No, sir, I do not.”
Goodman’s job was to collect evidence and study it. He didn’t make distinctions or judgments about how important or not a particular piece of evidence was to a case. He collected what he found, bagged and tagged it, maybe analyzed it back at the lab and made a report. He also took crime scene video, which the jury was now going to get a chance to look at, taking each one of them into that dark back alleyway on the night of the murder.
Another reason for having a witness of Goodman’s caliber on the stand was to introduce the physical pieces of evidence the SPPD had collected during the course of its investigation. This took time and explanation, and a witness like Goodman could bring the trial’s momentum to a standstill. Thus, over the course of the next hour, the state had Goodman introduce one piece of evidence after the next that had been collected from the scene and Shannon’s body.
LaBruzzo and Goodman went through all of it: the shoes, the flip-flops, the cigarette pack, the condom wrapper, the plastic water bottles, that .38-caliber weapon. Photos were introduced, giving the jury a clear perspective of the scene and where each piece of evidence had been found. When one took all of this in, and looked at it under the light of the testimony accompanying it, a picture of Shannon’s last moments—parking his scooter, walking across the street to meet up with Jennifer Mee, her leading him behind the vacant house, two men attacking him, Shannon fighting violently for his life, a gun discharged, a young man dead—came to mind.
Jennifer looked on and cried. Here were the remnants of what she had run away from. Perhaps it was the first time for her to imagine what happened as it all unfolded in the wake of her quick getaway.
The other part of Goodman’s testimony was to explain the scene at the apartment where Laron and Lamont had been arrested and where they had found Shannon’s belongings.
The murder team of Jennifer Mee, Laron Raiford, and Lamont Newton had tried to get rid of Shannon’s belongings by burning and then hiding them. Yet, as Goodman explained, he also found a bleach bottle and other items associated with trying to clean up evidence. So although the team tried to get rid of the evidence, they had not done a good job disposing of the items.
Goodman had also collected buccal swabs of DNA from the suspects. That evidence would, of course, tie into any additional evidence collected at both scenes.
As murder trials go, this was a classic A-to-Z narrative of presenting the evidence and building a case for jurors. As the testimony continued, witness after witness, each piece of evidence after the next, all seemed to lead to one conclusion: Jennifer Mee—despite how she felt now, and what she had first told the SPPD—was at that scene, had participated in a cover-up afterward, and, by the law, had admitted to taking part in first-degree felony murder.
* * *
Trevena had only a few questions for Goodman. What could he get out of the guy in the end, really? Goodman was presenting cold, hard, and mostly scientific facts. It was best to allow them their place in the trial and move on.
In Jennifer Mee, Trevena had a client, he said, “who just didn’t get it. It’s sad, really. She never understood the severity of this. . . .”
Another factor Trevena talked about later, one he said he could not go anywhere near during the trial, was the “race issue” and the idea that Jennifer Mee had dated only black males. Sad as it was, there were some people in the world still living in the 1960s racist South, Trevena knew. He had to take that into consideration and go into the trial with the honest realization that Jennifer Mee would be judged on her life choices, whether anyone in that courtroom would admit race was an issue or not.
In looking at all of the complications Jennifer Mee faced, aside from the wealth of evidence against her, Trevena felt the best way to defend his client was to focus on the back end. Go through the trial recognizing the worst might happen (Jennifer would be found guilty), while hoping for the best (an innocent verdict, manslaughter, or some other result).
By “back end,” Trevena meant an appeal. He’d win the case on appeal. He’d done it before. “You see, initially, our goal was to try to work out a plea deal. We tried and tried and tried.” The state, Trevena maintained, was uninterested in any sort of realistic plea deal, at any time. “And I shouldn’t say they wouldn’t do it,” Trevena added with a bit of sarcasm. “But the numbers they gave us seemed really unreasonable for someone so young. We came as high as fifteen years and we were told that even twenty would likely be rejected.”
To sit down and begin talking about a plea deal with Trevena, the state wanted somewhere near “twenty-five [years] and upward,” Trevena said.
There was no way Trevena could “stand there in good faith,” he explained, “and take a girl at that age, with her mentality, and tell her, ‘Okay, now, you’re go
ing to spend the next quarter century in prison.’ It just didn’t make sense to me.”
On the flip side, however, most cases similar to Jennifer’s were routinely pleaded out and a trial avoided, Trevena maintained. The state hardly ever prosecuted an inner-city robbery resulting in a murder. And a quick cursory search of cases in Florida backed up Trevena’s statement. It was the most cost effective and better for all involved if a plea was reached by both parties in these types of cases.
“The state would have cleared this case but for her status,” Trevena was convinced. “Another defendant that had no notoriety or celebrity would have easily been able to plead it out. I’ve done it myself in many other cases—but not this one! They wanted that trial.”
CHAPTER 84
AS THAT TRIAL, which John Trevena was certain the state was using to showboat its prosecution of a quasi-celebrity, continued on September 18, 2013, twenty-five-year SPPD veteran Melinda Clayton was called as the judge announced that Clayton was going to be the final witness of the day.
Clayton, a latent-fingerprint examiner, was dressed professionally in a camo-green blazer and black slacks, which echoed nicely against her long, naturally beautiful gray hair. Clayton was an important witness for the state. She was set to tie up a few evidentiary loose ends with unimpeachable scientific evidence.
After Clayton explained how fingerprints work and how effective they can be in connecting a particular person unequivocally to a piece of evidence, she broke into a narrative about the specific work she had done in this case. One interesting fact the jury heard right off the bat was that even identical twins do not share the same fingerprints. Clayton’s testimony bolstered the fact that fingerprinting is a science that we have used for over a century and will continue to use as long as there is a crime to solve. It was an old-school investigatory tactic that worked.
The major piece of testimony the state was looking for out of Clayton came a few minutes in. The state asked if Clayton had fingerprinted Jennifer Mee and also had found fingerprints on Shannon Griffin’s license.
She said yes to both.
Then ASA Hunter-Olney asked if Clayton had analyzed both sets of the prints and drawn a conclusion.
Clayton had.
And what was that?
“My conclusion was that the print that was obtained from the front of the driver’s license was the right index finger of Jennifer Mee.”
Jennifer Mee had held Shannon Griffin’s license at some point. That was a devastating and damaging image for jurors to have in their heads regarding Jennifer Mee.
The state had no further questions for Clayton.
Defense attorney John Trevena asked a few nonessential questions, and after several redirect questions from the ASA, Clayton was cut loose. The day concluded with the thrust of the judge’s gavel.
CHAPTER 85
A CELL PHONE buzzed on one of the courtroom tables as the judge worked on a laptop computer at the bench. People filed into the courtroom on September 19, 2013, as firearms expert Yolanda Soto, a state witness, prepared to shift the government’s case into cruise control.
What the state did flawlessly was not belabor any one particular issue or witness. This was a lot harder to do than it might seem. At times, murder trials can get bogged down by expert analysis and from expert witnesses who are forced to carry on, and on, by a prosecutor that has never heard of the quote “less is more.” Here, LaBruzzo and Hunter-Olney asked only those pertinent questions of their witnesses and did not allow them to ramble on. They’d put their experts in the seat, have them list their credentials briefly, and then asked them to provide their particular piece of the puzzle. That was it.
For Yolanda Soto, her role in this trial was to identify the murder weapon as being the same gun in the photos and in the video the jury had seen and then describe how that weapon worked. This gun was not an automatic handheld killing machine of any sort, a sort of rapid-fire weapon that went off on a hair trigger. It was a “single-” and “double-” action revolver, a .38 Special. It took effort to fire in that single-action mode, and even more effort in double-action mode.
“Three and one-quarter pounds” of pressure, to be exact, in single action, Soto told jurors, and “nine and three-quarter” pounds in double action.
The implication was that a .38 Special was not a weapon that fired easily. One school of thought with this testimony would be to pooh-pooh any sort of notion that the murder happened accidently.
Soto explained how the strands of steel being cut as a bullet exits a barrel leave those telltale marks a ballistics expert uses to compare a particular bullet to a particular weapon.
Long story short, the rounds found inside Shannon’s body matched the barrel of the weapon found at the scene, Soto explained.
And after that, the state said it was finished questioning Yolanda Soto.
* * *
Trevena stuck to the same line of questioning, having Soto explain further single- and double-action weapons. He spent some time asking about the pounds of pressure needed to fire the weapon and was able to get Soto to admit she had no idea whether the gun was fired in single- or double-action mode during this particular crime.
As they chatted back and forth, it became clear that Trevena was trying to make a point that the weapon could have been fired accidently and not on purpose, providing the finger behind the trigger was powerful enough.
Why he was interested in this was anybody’s guess. But after a few moments of questioning, Trevena indicated he was done with Soto.
* * *
A second forensic expert was called: Janel Borries. She told jurors she was the assistant director for the Pinellas County Forensic Laboratory, supervising the DNA section of the lab. Because her expertise was in DNA sequencing and the measurement of DNA strands (the ladder part of the popular DNA animation strands), it took some time before Borries began to explain her role in the investigation. However, when she did, the questions and answers were rapid, each coming one after the next.
“Did you have an opportunity to examine the items in that envelope?”
“Yes, I did.”
“And what are those items?”
“They were represented as swabs from shell casings and [a] gun.”
“And I am showing you what’s been entered into evidence as State’s Exhibit 20—did you have an opportunity to examine that piece of evidence?”
“Yes, I did.”
“And could you please tell the jurors what that piece of evidence is?”
“It’s a condom wrapper.”
The ASA asked about another piece of evidence from the scene. “Did you have an opportunity to examine that?”
“Yes, I did.”
“And what are those items?”
“They are swabs that are represented as being from the hammer of the gun, the trigger of the gun, and the grips of the gun.”
Borries then talked about swabs taken from Jennifer, Laron, and Lamont that she had analyzed, before the ASA had her explain how the lab protects itself against contaminating evidence. It was a necessary departure from the quick back-and-forth exchange, because with DNA and blood spatter and so many evidence packages came the possibility that some could be mixed up. The state wanted jurors to understand that this was no Keystone Cop organization; these were lab professionals that followed strict guidelines and policies and procedures to guard against any type of contaminant.
When all was said and done, neither Jennifer Mee’s nor Lamont Newton’s DNA “[could not] be excluded” from being contributors to the items they had discussed (the condom wrapper and the weapon), but Laron Raiford’s DNA was an unmistakable match found on both.
He was there, in other words.
As Borries checked the clothing—Lamont’s, Laron’s, and Shannon’s—she found a “mixture of the three individuals’” DNA on all of it. In addition, regarding a tank top T-shirt (Laron’s or Lamont’s), it was determined that “the major profile could be determined . . . [a
nd was] consistent with the buccal swabs from Jennifer Mee.” Jennifer must have, at some point, handled or worn the shirt.
Borries said she also found the presence of a chemical that had been used to try and wash away forensic evidence.
The ASA asked if she had an idea what that chemical might have been based upon her scientific analysis.
“Bleach,” she said.
Other clothing from Shannon Griffin’s body included DNA from all three (Shannon, Lamont, and Laron), in addition to another donor that was unidentified as being Shannon, Laron, Lamont, or Jennifer Mee.
All of this testimony firmly locked into position for the state the idea that all three charged in this case had been at the crime scene, had handled Shannon’s belongings, while Laron was the one that held the weapon. The science, unmistakably, backed up the statements given to the SPPD by Jennifer Mee, Laron Raiford, and Lamont Newton, with small discrepancies in each.
The state’s case was beginning to come together.
Trevena’s co-counsel did not have much for Borries. Again, it was hard to argue with science.
* * *
Associate ME Chris Wilson took the oath next and put the notorious exclamation point on how terrifying and painful death had been for Shannon as he endured round after round into his chest. It was not a fast death. Shannon knew what was happening and suffered. As Wilson talked through the autopsy, the state produced several photographs of Shannon’s body, displaying his wounds for jurors. It was striking and gruesome and illustrated how senseless this crime had been.
Jennifer Mee, passive and still, could do no more than, at times, turn away from the images and cry.
Wilson described entrance and exit wounds, internal injuries, and what actually killed Shannon: a bullet to his aorta.
* * *
When given his crack at the medical examiner in this case, John Trevena zeroed in on a potential “rush to judgment” argument he had waged in his opening statement. The first question Trevena asked the doctor was based on the time of the autopsy being just a day after the murder. Trevena wanted to know if this was typical.
One Breath Away: The Hiccup Girl - From Media Darling to Convicted Killer Page 29