Love Me or I'll Kill You

by Lee Butcher

  Davis agreed.

  “But Mr. DeJesus is so close to you that you said they could have been touching, correct?”

  “Yes, he could have touched her.”

  Davis said everything was happening fast. He said he didn’t know if Chino and Paula had talked while he was running to the closet. “Isn’t it true you said to her at that point, ‘Please don’t hurt me’?” Athan asked. “And she said, ‘Don’t worry, we’re not going to hurt you.’”

  “No, she did not say it,” Davis answered. “He said it.”

  “He wasn’t there, was he?”

  “Yes, he was. He was right behind her.”

  Athan’s questions established that Paula stayed in the bedroom while Chino gripped Davis’s neck and escorted him to the living room at gunpoint. “He’s the one telling you what to do?” she asked. Davis agreed.

  “It’s clear to you that he’s in charge, right?” Athan asked.

  Davis was reluctant to concede the point. “Well, at that moment he’s in charge of me, yes.”

  “But he’s not in charge of anything else, just you?”

  Davis said that was his impression, but he admitted that it was Chino who had him peek out from the blinds several times. “Not only is he telling you, ‘Go look out the blinds,’ he’s got a gun pointed at you?”

  “Yes,” Davis said.

  Davis admitted that he had lost track of Paula because he was looking out the windows for Chino in all of the rooms, including the two bedrooms. Athan’s questions established that at one point a police officer was pointing a gun straight at him when he looked out the window. Athan also established that Chino used Davis as a shield when he went to the door and shouted, “I have a hostage” before firing a burst of bullets.

  Davis said he thought Chino’s gun was silver, but he knew now that it was black.

  “What jogged your memory?” Athan asked.

  “I didn’t remember the actual color. I remember exactly what it looked like, but the color, I did not know.”

  Davis agreed that Chino had the gun in his hand or at his side 99 percent of the time. He also agreed that his memory was foggy on some things. Davis said that Paula didn’t talk much. Davis verified that some of the images he saw were reflected in the tiling as he lay in the bathtub. But he heard them talking. He said Paula cried several times.

  “Nestor DeJesus is trying to persuade Miss Gutierrez to commit suicide with him, right?” Athan asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Because she doesn’t want to do it, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And she’s telling him, ‘Let’s give up. Let’s surrender’?”

  Again, Davis agreed. He also agreed that Chino said he wouldn’t give up and that she shouldn’t, either. Davis said he missed some of the conversations Chino and Paula had even when he was in the same room with them.

  “I would black out, or just not pay attention because I was focusing on myself,” he said.

  Athan reminded him that Chino was nervous and that Davis had testified that Chino rambled, not always making sense because he was scared and nervous. “For example, he would say, ‘What are we going to do? This was not supposed to happen. You never said that was gonna . . . Oh, my God, do you know how much trouble we are in?’ He was just saying stuff like that, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “During that time Miss Gutierrez wasn’t saying anything. Most of the time she sat at the table with her head in her hands, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  Davis said that Chino had been “persuasive” when he tried to talk Paula into committing suicide. He said Chino explained why he shot a police officer.

  Athan asked, “He says that she’s pointing her gun at him, right? And he says that she had the nerve to tell him she was going to shoot him, right?”

  “No, kill him.”

  “Kill him. And he was upset, angry? How would you describe that demeanor?”

  “I would say, yeah, angry, more so angry.”

  “That this law enforcement officer would say such a thing to him, correct?”

  Davis agreed.

  “You would see him go from calm to upset, to angry, to crying, back to rational, and so on and so forth, while he was in the apartment with you. His mood changed a lot, didn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Her mood didn’t really change a lot, did it?”

  “No.”

  “She was crying? She was quiet? She was scared?”

  “Yes.”

  Davis said he was “kind of out of it” when Paula and Chino entered his apartment and that he didn’t recognize them right away. Later, he said, he remembered that they were residents of the apartment complex and that he had seen them at the pool. Davis said that he and his roommate had nicknames for Chino and Ashley.

  “Your roommate called him ‘the monkey guy’? And you called Ashley ‘the Star-Kist girl’?”

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t have a name for Miss Gutierrez, right?”

  “No.”

  Davis testified that every time he saw Paula and Ashley at the pool, Chino was with them. He had never seen Ashley with anyone but her parents. Switching back to the apartment, Athan established that Davis was in the bathtub when Chino gave him the telephone to talk with the police. He admitted that he didn’t know what Paula was doing.

  Paula was in the bedroom just before he was released, Davis testified, adding that Chino kept looking at her while he talked with Batista.

  “Now, you understood at ‘three’ they were supposed to kill themselves, right?” Athan asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you hear him say, like this, ‘One, two, pow’?”

  “No, it was not ‘one, two, pow.’ It was, ‘On the count of three, I’m going to let him go.’ You can put two and two together to gather what was supposed to happen.”

  “But after that, he kept saying on the count of three . . . and kept telling you on the count of three, out of here?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you understood by that they’re going to commit suicide. When you say he was trying to persuade Miss Gutierrez to commit suicide, she was reluctant to do it, right?”

  Davis agreed.

  “And in order to persuade her, he kept telling her what big trouble they were both in, right?”

  Davis said, “They were both making their cases. He was trying to persuade her to do that and she was trying to persuade him to give up.”

  Athan emphasized the fact that Davis was ill and didn’t remember everything clearly, and that he had even blacked out at times. She asked if Paula might have said, “I was not there” when she talked about the bank robbery, instead of saying, “I was there.” She emphasized that Davis’s memory might be faulty because he was remembering things that happened two years ago.

  On redirect Pruner moved quickly into damage control. Davis testified that Chino never verbally or physically mistreated Paula. Davis described them as being “just a regular couple.” Pruner asked if Paula stumbled into the apartment or seemed disoriented. Davis said no.

  “Mr. DeJesus spoke about he’s going to leave in a body bag one way or the other, something along those lines?” Pruner asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you ever hear Mr. DeJesus tell Paula Gutierrez you, too, are going to leave in a body bag one way or the other?”

  “No, he only spoke of himself.”

  Pruner asked if Chino said to Paula, “You never said this was going to happen.”

  “Yes.”

  “Was her response silent or to say, ‘Right, right’?”

  “Her response was silence.”

  Both Davis and Pruner seemed confused. Pruner tried to clarify.

  “On direct examination, did you tell me ‘right, right’ is what she said?”

  Athan stood. “Objection, improper impeachment.”

  “No, that’s okay,” Padgett said.

  Pruner tried again.

  �
�Remember when I asked you this question on direct, you answering she said, ‘Right, right’?”

  Davis was still confused.

  “I’m not trying to trip you up,” Pruner said. “Just tell us what you remember, at the time Mr. DeJesus is saying, ‘You never told me this would happen’?”

  “When he said, ‘You never told me this would happen,’ her expression was silence,” Davis said. “When he said, ‘This was not supposed to happen, this was not supposed to go this way,’ her answer was, ‘Right, right.’”

  “Did you see or sense any hesitancy on Miss Gutierrez’s part in trying to persuade not to commit suicide?”

  “No.”

  “She didn’t show any hesitancy to express a contrary opinion?”

  “No,” Davis said. “She spoke freely.”

  Pruner had no further questions for Davis and he was released.

  In building a homicide case, the state can’t just hit the highlights. Every little detail must be presented and proved, even the obvious fact that the victim was dead. Ober relieved Pruner to do some of the grunt work. He questioned a police officer about evidence found at the apartment and asked John Romeo, an officer with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), to describe the MAC-11 that was used in the bank robbery and murder.

  Detective Aubrey Black was the next witness for the state. Athan would also have some pointed questions for the detective who elicited Paula’s confession to the Bank of America robbery. Black, a twenty-five-year veteran with the Tampa Police Department, was with the hostage-negotiating team and interviewed Paula after she surrendered.

  Pruner entered into evidence the “consent to interview” form that Paula signed. Black said the conference room, where the interviewed had occurred, was comfortable. He said he noticed red stains on Paula’s shirt, which proved to be Chino’s blood. After Black identified the audiotapes of Paula’s interview, Pruner entered those as evidence and played the interview for the jury. After more than an hour of listening to the interview, it was time for Athan to cross-examine Black.

  She presented Paula as a meek, tired, and traumatized young woman who was overwhelmed by the day’s events and by the presence of three seasoned detectives with fifty years of combined experience. Black testified that he wasn’t tired, and he had started a long day as a hostage negotiator at the Crossings. As Athan had done during deposition, she elucidated Paula’s traumatic day, which ended with seeing a suicide. “I don’t think she physically witnessed it,” Black said. “Obviously, she came upon him shortly after he had shot himself . . . and saw the gore and all the things that go with a suicide case.”

  Athan established that Paula was further traumatized by being “taken down” by the SWAT team, handcuffed, put in a police cruiser, and taken to police headquarters. She established further that Paula knew she was a suspect in armed robbery and first-degree murder. Black said he wanted to conduct the interview while everything was still fresh in Paula’s mind.

  “After this horrendous day? Not tomorrow?” Athan asked.

  “Oh, definitely.”

  Athan asked Black if he could have booked Paula on the information he had before the interview. He answered yes. Had that been done, Athan asked, wouldn’t Paula have seen a judge, and a public defender would give her a form that said, “I don’t want to speak to anybody without a lawyer present”?

  “That’s correct.”

  Black said he realized that once Paula signed the form, police could not question her without a lawyer present, unless she specifically asked to be interviewed.

  “So it’s important that you talk to her and get a statement before she actually goes to court for the first time?” Athan asked.

  “You remember things fresher in your mind from talking to somebody immediately instead of waiting several months later,” Black said.

  “But you knew that if you didn’t get a statement this day that you probably weren’t getting one, right?”

  “That’s a good possibility.”

  Black agreed with Athan that Paula’s memory could have been affected by her “horrendous day,” which included seeing two violent deaths. Pruner objected on the grounds that the question was too vague and Padgett sustained the motion, saying the question called for speculation.

  Athan continued to hammer away: Black wanted to get a statement “now”; Paula was all alone with experienced detectives; the police didn’t want the statement to appear coerced; there were different levels of coercion.

  “You don’t have to be holding a gun to somebody’s head to coerce them, do you?” Athan asked.

  “If you’re talking about whether or not we coerced her to make a statement, I don’t think we did.”

  Athan established that Black had been a detective for twenty years and had taken more than a hundred statements. “I’ve taken it from people who have cried, boo-hooed throughout the tape,” Black said. “I’ve taken it from persons who cursed me throughout the course of the interview. So I’ve taken it from all extremes.” Black said he had no doubt that Paula made her statement without coercion.

  Athan asked if Black had taken courses on interrogation techniques and Black said yes. Black agreed that getting a suspect into a room, using a calm voice, and “being very nice” to a suspect was one of the techniques. Black affirmed that an interview would not have helped Paula “unless she wanted to go to jail.”

  Black had told Paula there was a “good possibility” that she would go to jail whether she made a statement or not. Athan insisted that it was an undisputable fact that she was going to jail, not just a possibility. Black agreed: “There was no possibility that she was going to go home that day.” The detective said a reasonable person would have known she would go to jail if he told her there was a “good possibility” that she would.

  “A better way to say it would have been: ‘Miss Gutierrez, you’re going to jail, no ifs, ands, or buts about it, ’” Athan said. “Because that, Detective Black, was the truth, wasn’t it?”

  “Semantics,” Black replied.

  Athan showed Black the form Paula signed to give her consent to an interview. The form stated her constitutional rights. The form read, “Consent to be interviewed concerning an offense of . . . ,” Athan said. “And there’s a blank?”

  Black said the offense was left blank because he didn’t know what the charges against Paula were, but he was certain that Paula knew the offenses were for armed robbery and the murder of a police officer.

  “So you don’t write here what the offense is,” Athan said, “that it’s a homicide, it’s a bank robbery. But you do write she’s a high-school graduate, she has two years of technical, et cetera, et cetera?”

  Athan wanted to know why Paula’s interview wasn’t taped on video. Black said he preferred audiotapes.

  “But we can’t really see what’s going on?” Athan asked.

  “That’s true,” Black replied.

  Athan asked about how Paula looked when Black told her she had a right to see a lawyer before answering questions. “Now, almost two years later, you probably can’t sit there and tell us what the look on her face was when you said that to her, can you?”

  “I don’t think her expression changed.... She was looking right at me,” Black said.

  The defense attorney contrasted how Paula was treated, with regard to her constitutional rights, as opposed to how police officers involved in the shoot-out were treated.

  “As a matter of fact, it’s so important that the police union requires a lawyer to be present when the officers are being questioned about the events of that day, right?” Athan asked. She mentioned Scudder, Shepler, Metzgar, and Bingle, in particular. “They all had a lawyer present that day, didn’t they?”

  “They had that option.”

  Black said he was aware that the police attorney went to the Crossings before the officers were questioned. “Because the right to a lawyer is that important for the police, yes?” Athan asked.

  “Yes, it is
.”

  “For Miss Gutierrez?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “She doesn’t have a union contract.... She’s just listening to you . . . and then you say . . . ‘Now, at this particular time, what I’m going to ask you to do is talk to us and tell us about what happened today, if you will?’” Athan said. “And you’re going to have her sign the form, right?”

  Black agreed.

  “You didn’t ask her, ‘Do you want a lawyer present? ’ or, ‘Do you have any questions?’”

  “I’m not allowed to get her a lawyer.”

  Athan pointed out that Black asked Paula to sign the consent form before it was filled in.

  “I asked her if she was willing to talk to us without an attorney and she said yes,” Black replied. “And she signed it.”

  “You didn’t say, ‘Without an attorney’; you just said, ‘Are you willing to talk to us?’”

  Black said that he read Paula her rights and that she asked if there was an attorney present. “I said, ‘No, that’s the problem, we don’t have one.’ But I said, ‘You have to make the decision.’ After a few seconds she made the decision. We’re talking about a community-college student. We’re not talking about somebody that is not educated. She made a conscious decision that she was willing to talk without an attorney being present.”

  Athan emphasized once again that Paula had no experience with the police before her arrest. “She says, ‘Okay, I have a question,’” Athan said. “She doesn’t say it as loud as I said it; she said it kind of meekly?”

  “She told me exactly what she wanted.”

  “When somebody says, ‘I don’t know. I’ve never been in this situation. I don’t know if I should talk to a lawyer first,’ your antenna goes right up, doesn’t it?”

  “It’s obvious.”

  “The interview is going to be way different if a lawyer isn’t there, right?”

  Black said that if a lawyer told Paula not to talk to the police, the interview would have ended. But, he said, Paula thought it over and told him that she wanted to go on, not that she wanted an attorney.

  “When any suspect says the word ‘lawyer,’ there’s a possibility that he or she may be invoking his or her right to counsel, right?”