Love Me or I'll Kill You

by Lee Butcher

  Pruner rose to make the final argument for the state. The state had to prove Paula’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and he intended to argue that Paula was never under duress, and that she had not reached a place of safety before Lois was killed by Chino.

  Pruner briefly reviewed the case, and said Paula and Chino had dumped the yellow SUV because they were still running from the police. He pointed out that the SUV’s motor was still warm when found at the Regency Apartments. Paula and Chino, he said, had committed robbery and “wanted to get out of Dodge.”

  Although Paula and Chino had reached their apartment at the Crossings without seeing a police car chasing them, Pruner said, the police were in hot pursuit. He argued that Paula knew that because she barely had time to take a shower before they were on the run again. In fact, she and Chino left the apartment so soon, Pruner said, that Paula didn’t even have time to put on underwear.

  “That’s the most telling about the brief time she was there before they left,” Pruner said. “That’s how brief; that’s how hectic. So if you hear an argument about them being safe or in a safe haven in that apartment, think about how soon they left, and think about why they left.

  “They left because they heard helicopters overhead and because they knew that the dragnet was being tightened.”

  Pruner presented a more detailed timeline to show that the police were in hot pursuit even while Paula was in her apartment. He verified the timeline with telephone calls, radio traffic, helicopter searches, and police activities from the time the bank was robbed until Lois was killed.

  The assistant state attorney insisted that police pursuit began with the first 911 call as the robbery was taking place at 10:41 A.M. At 10:42 A.M., bank surveillance cameras record the robbery and two radio transmissions were made by the Tampa police. Two minutes later, Barbara Oppenheim telephoned about money being thrown from a car. She gave a description of the Xterra.

  “Why were they driving the bright canary Xterra?” Pruner asked. “Logic tells you they were going to head out of Dodge. Bags were packed, money in hand, and it didn’t matter if they were driving a Goodyear blimp down Kennedy Boulevard, they were going to get out of Dodge before they could be apprehended. Only the dye pack explosions prevented this,” Pruner said.

  Officer Scudder arrived where money was “raining” at 10:48 A.M. At 10:55 A.M., just fourteen minutes after the first robbery report, a helicopter was in the air searching for the Xterra. About thirty minutes after the robbery, the Xterra was found at the Regency Apartments with the engine still warm. Police then began looking specifically for Chino, who owned the SUV. They knew where Chino lived.

  Lois reported at 11:23 A.M. that she was chasing Chino. Other police units hurried to help. Within sixty seconds Lois was back on the radio saying that she still was in hot pursuit. “Even less than a minute later,” Pruner said, “there’s the fatal broadcast, ‘Officer down. Officer down.’”

  Pruner argued that “Paula Gutierrez was on the run with Mr. DeJesus each and every step of the way.”

  There were many contradictions between Paula’s actions and the defense’s claim that she acted under duress, Pruner argued. He noted that Paula had the gun in the bank, she carried it into their apartment at the Crossings, and she carried it when she left the Crossings. Pruner argued that Paula was the only person seen with the MAC-11 until Lois was shot.

  “What the evidence has demonstrated to you,” Pruner said, “is an unbroken, continuous series of events that constituted the escape from the immediate scene of the robbery. They didn’t leave the apartment because they were doing anything illegal. They left because they knew what they did in the bank. So they could escape and continue to escape from that immediate scene of the bank robbery,” Pruner said.

  Paula had never found a safe haven, Pruner said. “She was on the run every step of the way.” In committing a robbery, Pruner said, “flight” is part of the crime. The evidence showed continuity, he said. “There is no abrupt ending, no safe haven at any point.”

  Athan objected, claiming that Pruner had misstated the law. Padgett overruled.

  The flight continued even after Lois’s death, Pruner contended, when Chino kicked down the door to Isaac Davis’s apartment and he and Paula took Davis hostage. Pruner asked the jury to return a verdict of guilty “for the highest degree of crime that you have found has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.”

  Deeann Athan approached the jury to make her closing argument. In her dark suit and red blouse, she was all business. She was a passionate advocate throughout a trial that seemed to be an uphill climb for the defense. Undaunted, Athan fought for Paula, who she believed was not guilty of the crimes with which she was charged.

  She began by saying the trial wasn’t as simple as Pruner wanted them to believe, and cited a movie entitled Twelve Angry Men, where all evidence pointed to the defendant’s guilt. One juror, played by the late Henry Fonda, convinced the other eleven jurors to vote for acquittal because the evidence was not what it seemed to be.

  On the surface it appeared that Paula might be guilty, Athan said, but jurors had to look deeper. “I tell you without hesitation that if you follow the law,” Athan said, “she is not guilty.”

  She mentioned that both the state and defense psychiatrists agreed that Paula suffered from mental illness and that her ability to make decisions was impaired. The only question between the two diagnoses, Athan said, was when the impairment began. Paula suffered abuse and was terrorized by Nestor DeJesus for three years and had learned how to stay alive with a man who threatened to kill her and her family, she said. Sure, Paula made an independent decision not to kill herself, but that was consistent with how Paula had learned to adapt.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, duress is not about being robotic, although at times she felt that she was a robot,” Athan said. “It is about making decisions. The question is why she made them.”

  Athan said the evidence proved that Paula acted out of duress. “Can anybody say that [Chino] was not a danger to her?” Athan asked. “Dr. Maher told you about this choking, the kind of thing that is life-threatening. Imagine being held up against the wall by this six-foot, two-hundred-pound weight-lifting maniac. The threat and harm was significant to her.”

  The randomness of Chino’s attacks on Paula was what made it so devastating, Athan said. If you were beaten every day at 2:00 P.M., you would expect it, she said. After 2:00 P.M. passed, she said, you wouldn’t have to worry. With Chino, Paula never knew when he would explode. “That’s what makes it so scary,” Athan said. “You never knew when it was coming. That was her pathological, sick world with Nestor DeJesus.”

  The introduction of Paula’s confession to the flower shop robbery had been devastating and Athan tried to soften the effect during her closing argument. “She’s not on trial for the flower shop robbery,” Athan said. “She had no reasonable means to avoid danger except being in the flower shop or being in the bank.”

  Athan said no one had been injured at the flower shop and that there had been no pursuit by the police. That gave Paula reason to believe there would be no pursuit after the bank robbery, Athan maintained.

  Athan said Paula had resigned herself to the horrible life she had with Chino. Paula had called the police twice, she said, and both times Chino had been released without being arrested. Each time he had threatened to kill her. “She had decided that she would bear whatever horror he wanted to give her, because she had brought this maniac into their (the family) lives and she took responsibility.”

  At the bank, Athan said, Paula told people to keep their heads down because she was afraid of what Chino would do. “She had seen his rage. Was he capable of hurting anyone in the bank without a gun? You bet he was.”

  Athan told the jury they had to look at Paula’s mental illness. She told them they had to look at things from Paula’s perspective. Paula did not act as a reasonable person because she was impaired, Athan argued.

  Athan again stresse
d that both psychiatrists had diagnosed Paula with post-traumatic stress disorder, brought about by fear, helplessness, or horror. Paula, Athan said, suffered from all three.

  Athan was unable to use the battered spouse syndrome as a defense, but she argued that Paula’s PTSD was based on ongoing domestic violence. “Physical violence associated with verbal threat,” Athan said. “What did he say? You heard it from her. You heard it from many witnesses: ‘I will kill you. If you leave me, I will kill you. If you weren’t pregnant, I would kill you. I will hunt you down. I know your mother’s Social Security number. You can’t hide from me. Not only will I hunt you down, I will hunt your family down and I can find you. Even if you go to Colombia, I will find you.’”

  Athan reminded the jury that Chino had said the same thing to Hadaad during the flower shop robbery: “‘I have your driver’s license. Don’t call the police. I will hunt you down.’”

  The goal of domestic violence was accomplished by physical and verbal abuse, along with psychological components, to break down the will of the abused partner, Athan said. This gave the abuser control of the partner, who adapted to the escalating violence. Both psychiatrists agreed this was what happened to Paula, Athan said.

  The defense attorney argued that Paula was so beaten down that neighbors barely noticed her. She rarely said hello and kept her eyes averted, Laura Kent didn’t think Paula spoke English, Athan said, and Isaac Davis, who had a nickname for everyone, including Chino and Ashley, did not have one for Paula. “She didn’t exist,” Athan said. “She was withdrawn and did not interact. She was a nonentity.”

  Athan knew that juries didn’t like a duress defense. In fact, they rejected it more than 90 percent of the time. Still, she had to show Paula’s state of mind. Also crucial to Paula’s defense were Athan’s contentions that she had reached a safe haven and that she didn’t get an attorney before being interviewed by Detective Black, even though she had made a request.

  Athan said that “flight” was the issue in this case. Lois’s murder didn’t occur in the bank or while they were attempting to rob the bank, she said, which would have made it felony murder. If the murder occurred while Paula was fleeing the immediate scene of the robbery, that would be felony murder, too. Athan argued that Paula had reached a safe haven and had stopped running. The flight, she said, was marked by a series of interruptions in the series of events.

  There was a break, Athan said, before Lois was killed. When Paula left the bank, police were not pursuing the Xterra getaway vehicle, Athan said. “They got away, but they hadn’t reached their safety yet,” she said. The defense attorney argued that the police did a fantastic job, but they were never in pursuit of the SUV: it had been abandoned when police found it.

  “Paula Gutierrez was home taking a shower,” Athan said. “She had reached a place of safety. That is what breaks the chain. That is what tells you she’s no longer escaping from the scene. She’s home.”

  The law, Athan argued, held the home sacred, and that a person in her home was protected by the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. “It says the police, the government, cannot come into your home without a search warrant signed by a magistrate,” Athan said. “Your home is your sacred place. Your home is your castle. And that’s how the law views it.... It is your place of sanctity, your place of safety.”

  Athan insisted that Paula believed it was over and that she cried with relief. “She thought it was over,” Athan said. Paula told Black that she heard helicopters, but that she was mistaken. Remember, the interview was “torturous at the end of a long, torturous day.”

  Paula testified in court that she wasn’t sure about hearing the helicopters, Athan said. Athan pointed out that on her cross-examination, Davis, Kent, Tatum, Forney, and Officer Metzgar did not hear helicopters. Paula was taking a shower, Athan said, and all she heard was Chino ordering her to get dressed and run.

  Athan reminded the jury that when Chino’s mother dropped them at the Crossings, they wanted to take Ashley. If they were escaping, would they put Ashley in peril? she asked. “The child is precious to everyone,” Athan said, “even this monster, Nestor DeJesus. He’s going to take this child and put her in danger in the middle of a police pursuit? I don’t think so.”

  Athan expected the state to present a large blowup of the devastating photograph showing Paula with the MAC-11. There was little she could do except try to take some sting out of it. “This picture means nothing,” she said. “They put this picture in and then we put the whole roll in . . . family pictures. [Paula] is sitting on the sofa like a bump on a log, looking depressed, looking a lot like a victim.”

  Athan again talked more about Paula’s statement to Detective Black. “I’ve made a lot of noise about her statement,” Athan said. “Our constitutional rights are precious. She asked for a lawyer that day. The police say that isn’t their job. You know what? It is their job.”

  She ended by asking the jury to look beyond the obvious. “Her escape was done,” Athan said. “It’s not felony murder. Nestor DeJesus is Lois Marrero’s killer. Paula Gutierrez didn’t kill anybody. She didn’t help anybody kill anyone. She shouldn’t be the sacrificial lamb because [Chino] took his own life and has robbed us all of the vengeance of getting a cop killer in this courtroom.”

  Athan took her seat next to Paula as Pruner rose to make his rebuttal. He intended to strip away the “revised” edition of Paula like layers of an onion and to show her as selfish, manipulative, and fully in control of her faculties. Just as Athan expected, Pruner displayed a larger-than-life photograph of Paula with the MAC-11.

  Pruner attacked the defense contention that Paula had found a safe haven and that the flight from the bank robbery was over. That should be obvious, he said, because Lois was killed while Paula and Chino tried to steal a car to continue their flight.

  “If they weren’t fleeing,” he asked. “why were they carrying the gun?”

  To see the real Paula Gutierrez, Pruner said, all you had to do was look at what she said and did. Look at her as she is, he said, and not through a lens filtered by a psychiatrist or interpreted in a diagnostic manual. He turned his attention to the enlarged photograph so feared by the defense.

  “This photograph was taken at a time when she is supposedly so depressed that she can’t get out of bed,” he said. “This picture tells you one of two things: either she wasn’t that depressed or this gun gave her energy because she liked the way it felt.

  “Look at her. She is radiant in this picture. This is a pose that you would see if it was an actress holding her first Oscar or a graduate from college holding a well-deserved diploma.”

  Pruner said the gun brought energy and comfort to Paula. The picture, he said, told more than any words or psychiatrist could tell about Paula’s state of mind at that time. He asked them to listen to Paula’s words and voice when she talked with Batista during negotiations.

  “She warns Detective Batista, not in timid, docile tones of a downtrodden, beaten woman, but in assertive warning tones: ‘Don’t come in here or there’ll be a shoot-out.’ She warns him that she’s got Officer Marrero’s gun.”

  And the only concerns Paula expressed, he said, were of going to jail, being raped in jail, having the police step on her neck, and having newspapers show her face. All of those statements show nothing but self-involvement, Pruner told the jury.

  The jury listened to the portion of the tape Pruner had talked about and then he continued to talk about her self-involvement. She was afraid of incarceration, of what might happen in jail, and of publicity. “That’s where her mind-set was,” he said, “not in some deluded never-never land or nether region that Dr. Maher wants you to believe.”

  He said it was important for the jury to understand this so they could weigh the duress defense accurately, and whether Paula was forced to take part in the robberies and the armed burglary of Isaac Davis’s apartment. The jury needed to understand the real Paula Gutierrez, he said, not the “new, revised” Paula.
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  Pruner produced Paula’s wallet. Inside it was a smaller print of the photograph of her with the MAC-11. “Look at the photo there,” he said, indicating the blowup. “That’s your timid, docile, downtrodden, beaten, abused woman that she carried around. That’s Paula Gutierrez.”

  Paula was a troubled girl long before she met Nestor DeJesus, Pruner said. The real Paula Gutierrez was a runaway who skipped school and became pregnant at thirteen. “She was so unmanageable she was sent to another country, to her homeland, by her parents,” Pruner said. Paula learned how to manipulate people at age thirteen by threatening to kill herself if her parents didn’t return her to New York.

  Instead of being dominated by Chino, Pruner said, “she played him like a fiddle.” He said Paula controlled when, and if, she would see Chino. She broke up with Chino many times and he didn’t hurt her or her family. “She didn’t fear violent repercussions of rejecting him and she didn’t suffer any,” Pruner said. Paula went to live with Chino, Pruner said, only after she had been dumped by a boyfriend, thrown an iron at her father, and demanded that her father leave his own house.

  “She tells her mom, ‘I can’t live here with him anymore. You need to tell him to leave.’ What does that tell you about her self-assurance? Mom doesn’t back her. Paula calls Felix and he says, ‘No, you can’t stay here.’ Who does she turn to? She turns to Nestor DeJesus when she needs him.”

  After Paula became pregnant, she defied Chino and moved into her mother’s house, Pruner said, and she stayed there until she was ready to return on her own terms. She wasn’t afraid to confront Nestor DeJesus if he insulted, offended, or disrespected her, Pruner said.

  The small things in life can tell you volumes about a person, Pruner said. He asked the jury to take another look at Paula’s wallet. This woman who never went anywhere. “What you see are credit cards, Household Bank, Visa, Bank of America Visa, Bank of America ATM, Target, Burdines, all in her name,” he said. “Circuit City. You see cards to Tribeca Hair Salon, a doctor’s card, pediatrician card, Busch Gardens passes, library cards, and health club card.”