Murder in Montgomery County

by Katherine Scardino

Verna McClain is a 30 year old vocational nurse, who lived and worked in Montgomery County, located just north of Houston, Texas. She was engaged to be married and had been pregnant, until she suffered a miscarriage. Then, she set out on a search to "adopt" a baby.

Vera's mother told a Houston Chronicle reporter that she was shocked and in disbelief when she heard of the crime. Verna was not a violent person. A neighbor described her as a great mother, hard worker - even working 60 hours a week at times.

But life as Verna McClain knew it came crashing down last week when she was arrested and subsequently charged with capital murder in connection with the shooting death of Kala Golden (and the kidnapping of Kala's newborn son). This charge places her at risk for a death sentence, and the District Attorney handling her case will more likely than not seek the death penalty due to the extreme facts of this case.

Ms. Kala Golden Schugard gave birth to her baby boy, Keegan, three days prior to the incident. As Kala and Keegan left their pediatrician's office, Verna McClain was waiting for them - and she had a gun. Without much ado, Verna pulled her pistol and shot Kala several times in the chest. Kala fell to the pavement. Verna grabbed the baby, little 3 day old Keegan, out of the carriage and ran with the baby to her sister's Lexus and sped off - with Kala screaming "my baby, my baby!" Kala died there on the hot pavement, alone and the victim of one of the saddest crimes this area has seen for several years.

Verna did not care about Kala - she was on a mission. Apparently, she had been pregnant and had told her boyfriend that she had given birth to his baby. But, the first step occurred in this tragic sequence of events - Verna miscarried. Now, she needs a baby, so her mission began to locate a baby who could be pawned off to boyfriend as his own.

The facts of this tragic crime seem like those of many we have heard before. What makes this case weirdly different is that baby Keegan is white and Verna McClain is black. What in the world made her think she would be able to pass this little white baby as hers and her boyfriend's?

Enter stage right is her defense attorney. What could he say to the prosecutor to mitigate these facts and her confession at the time of her arrest? Two words - Andrea Yates ... remember her? She drowned her five children in the bathtub of their home (also just outside of Houston) back in 2001. Allegedly, unknown to her husband and family, she had been suffering from serious psychological issues that were coupled with a somewhat fanatical religious belief. During the trial jurors heard a lot of testimony both from the Defense and from the State, and from mental health experts. Her case was tried twice with the last one resulting in a verdict of insanity. Remember also that "insanity" means insane at the time of the offense.

Verna McClain's neighbors, friends, family and her fiancé all expressed shock that the woman they knew could possibly commit this murder and kidnapping. There is also the distraught family of this young mother, who are now faced with an incident no one could ever imagine, least of all expect. There is a tiny infant who will never know his biological mother.

We will have to wait for the end result of this case, but regardless of what it is, it will be bad for all concerned.

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Death by Bactine?

by Diane Dimond

How did 16 year old honor roll student Annie McCann die? Her parents have been agonizing over that heart wrenching question for too long. Definitive answers have been few but these determined parents refuse to give up asking.

On October 31, 2008 Annie left a note in her bedroom which mentioned suicide but she had also added the hope-filled line, “But I realized I can start over instead. . . . If you really love me, you’ll let me go.” Then, she inexplicably ran away, taking $1,000 in cash, jewelry and the family Volvo. It was a shock to Dan and Mary Jane McCann whose daughter was a devout Catholic, quiet and studious – a child who had never given them any trouble.

Two excruciating days later the McCann’s got a phone call informing them Annie’s body had been found at a housing project in Baltimore, Maryland about seventy miles from their home. They were dumbfounded.

The Maryland medical examiner ultimately declared Annie’s death was due to Lidocaine poisoning and concluded she had ingested the bottle of Bactine she carried to treat her newly pierced ears. The company that makes Bactine, along with a well-known medical examiner, Dr. Michael Baden, would both later declare that drinking one bottle would never be fatal.

After reviewing the autopsy and other reports prominent psychiatrist Dr. Keith Ablow concluded, “It strains the imagination … to believe that a person intent on dying would choose this obscure and extremely uncertain method of attempting to take her life.”

While the official cause of Annie’s death is still listed as “undetermined” Baltimore P.D. spokesman Anthony Guglielmi (right) told me this week, “Police believe it was a suicide.” Translated: While the case is listed as “pending” it might as well be closed.

The McCann’s hired a private detective to figure out how Annie – who always had a lousy sense of direction and hadn’t been driving that long – got all the way to Baltimore. P.I. Jimmy Kontsis followed the lead of a fingerprint found on the window of the McCann’s recovered car. That led to a group of local teens who admitted one of their group, a kid named D.J., had stolen the McCann’s car. But each of them insisted Annie was already dead in the back seat so they tossed her body and took a joyride. Police said they could find no evidence to charge them in Annie’s death and auto theft charges were never pursued either.

Noting that Annie’s autopsy remarked on, “fresh injuries to her face and head,” Dr. Baden suggested Annie might have died from homicidal suffocation. Was she victimized for the $1,000 she took with her? Police made note of Annie’s clean white socks but could never find her shoes. Might they have been left at the same place she ingested the Lidocaine?

That’s the mystery!” Kontsis told me. “Even the police were, like, Lidocaine? They didn’t get it either.” Drug addicts have been known to try to smoke Lidocaine but Annie never experimented with drugs. Classmates called her sheltered and naïve.

Kontsis canvassed people at spots where Annie had been – her church, a Virginia Costco, even a pastry shop in the Little Italy section of Baltimore. He discovered a consistent description of an older, apparently homeless Hispanic woman (left) seen speaking with Annie at all three locations. A sketch of the mystery woman (who claimed to be from Honduras and was seeking immigration information) brought in no helpful information.

And then, last November the teenager known as D.J. – real name Darnell Kinlaw, now 21, — was arrested in Baltimore for murdering a woman and stealing her car. It was revealed that Kinlaw’s extensive police record lists eight charges of auto theft. Annie’s parents figured it was the perfect time to get more information from Kinlaw about the day their daughter died.

The McCanns travelled to meet Baltimore police and while they were treated politely they feel they have been lied to and ignored. Police say they are sympathetic but maintain they’ve already conducted a thorough investigation.

Look, maybe Annie McCann did manage to get a stash of Lidocaine and poisoned herself. But, that seems unlikely and after researching this case and counting up the loose ends – the odd trip to Baltimore, the missing money, the mystery woman and Kinlaw’s past – I can’t help but feel that in the absence of concrete evidence Annie’s half-used Bactine bottle gave police a convenient reason for her death. Easier to declare it a suicide and move on.

Left in the wake of that decision are Dan and Mary Jane McCann who cannot find peace. They still wonder why they never got Annie’s clothes back and why no one will tell them whether she had been raped the day she died.

The sad fact is there are countless families mourning the loss of their murdered children every day in America. They are Black, Hispanic, Asian and, in the case of Annie McCann – White. Their tears are all the same color.

In the end, it really isn’t race or ethnic background that matters when a child is murdered. It is the feeling families often get that no one cares enough to find the truth – that there will be no justice – that hurts so much.

Maybe our overburdened, understaffed police departments can find some way to work on making families feel more included in the heart-breaking process of homicide investigation.

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The Throw Away Child

by Donna Pendergast

It has been often said that a baby is a miracle from heaven. Miracle Jackson was just that. Born in February of 2000, Miracle was a beautiful, healthy baby girl. But there were to be no miracles in the cards in Miracle Jackson's short life. Her young life would be snuffed out after only 7 months by her own father in the most horrific sort of crime imaginable.

Miracle Jackson would die on September 14th, 2000, with a sock stuffed down her throat and duct tape affixed to her tiny face. The tape covering her eyes, nose and mouth working in tandem with the sock depriving her of the oxygen necessary to sustain her life. Her body was found stuffed into a plastic bag which was then discarded like a piece of garbage in a vacant lot in the city of Detroit.

How could this happen? If history was any indicator, how could it not?

Miracle Jackson was born to a mother, Tracey Swan, who had a history of psychiatric problems and had been diagnosed with manic depressive disorder. Miracle lived with her mother and her father, Shawn Jackson, who was her mother's short term boyfriend.

What is wrong with this picture? Everything!

Four years before Miracle was born Tracey Swan had her parental rights terminated to her other six children. This occurred when then boyfriend, Shawn Pleasant, (note the irony of the names in this case) the father of all six children, brutally beat five-year-old Kenneth Swan with a shovel. Kenneth was left severely brain damaged in a vegetative state where he now requires around-the clock care for the rest of his life. Pleasant was sentenced to a 3-15 year prison sentence on child abuse charges. He remains incarcerated on those charges to this day.

After Pleasant was incarcerated, Tracey became involved with Shawn Jackson and would later become pregnant. Jackson moved to California before Miracle was born but returned to Michigan in April of 2000 and moved in with Tracey. In July, a Child Protective Services worker was sent to the apartment on a complaint that Miracle was abused by being burned and scratched. Despite Tracey's mental instability, despite the prior termination of parental rights and despite the pending complaint, the worker opted to allow Miracle to remain in the home.

It would be a fatal mistake.

On Wednesday, September 14, 2000 around 2:00pm, Ms. Swan received a call from Jackson at her place of employment, Burger King. Jackson advised Ms. Swan that a Child Protective Services worker had come to the apartment and taken Miracle away. A suspicious Swan contacted police who quickly determined that the Family Independence Agency (FIA) had not taken the child. The police immediately began their search for Miracle. Early the next morning Jackson admitted under questioning from homicide detectives that he had murdered the baby because he was mad at something Tracey Swan had said. Jackson then led police to where he had disposed of Miracle's body by wrapping in in a plastic bag and tossing it into the center of an abandoned tire in a vacant field.

The crime scene was horrific. Even hardened police officers blanched at the sight of the tiny baby who had been discarded like a rag doll., her body crumpled, her face completely covered in duct tape.

An odd and misplaced calculation on the part of a major local Detroit newspaper brought the savagery of the crime home to an unprepared audience. On September 15th, the Detroit Free Press carried a picture of a Wayne County Medical Examiner's worker holding up the plastic bag containing Miracle's body on the front page of the newspaper. The decision to publish the picture at all, no less publish it on the front page, almost universally sparked outrage in the community. The fallout was so severe that the Executive Editor of the Free Press issued an explanation justifying the newspaper's position on the front page of the paper the following day.

Shawn Jackson was tried on First Degree Murder charge before a horrified jury. The pictures of miracle's duct-taped face were hard to stomach even for a hard core prosecutor like myself. The jury very quickly reached a verdict of guilty of First Degree Murder. Jackson will spend the rest of his natural life in prison. with no possibility of parole.

As horrific as the murder of Miracle Jackson was, it can be said that something good came of it. Within a week of her body being found, major institutional changes were initiated in two different State of Michigan agencies. As a result of Miracle's death, computerized records of live births are now cross checked with the FIA's central record of known abusers. this puts the FIA on notice when a child is born to a parent with a history of abuse or neglect. The FIA is now required to assess the risk to those children in an attempt to head off any more tragic stories like that of Miracle Jackson.

Miracle Jackson's sad story can be told in one short sentence: Forgotten in life, remembered in death.

May her legacy be that other children are spared her horrific fate.

Miracles do happen, Hope springs eternal.

Statements made in this post are my own and do not reflect the views, opinion or position of the Michigan Attorney General or the Michigan Department of Attorney General.

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The 'Smart' Bullet is on the Horizon

by Andrea Campbell

Look Up in the Sky!

New technology is a slow and steady march no matter who develops it. I am always torn when a new weapon is developed, and the subject of today’s spotlight is no less frightening and anxiety-driven for me because of its dichotomy of being both useful and deadly. We’re talking about a bullet for machine guns—currently—that guides itself to a target more than a mile away, with accuracy to within eight inches.

The Stuff of Movies

This missile-like bullet was the stuff of fiction such as with the futuristic movie Runaway, a 1984 film written by Michael Crichton, a writer who had an uncanny ability to see what’s coming down the pike. The missile of today, however, can really twist and turn its way around objects, making up to 30 corrections per second.

Can You Imagine?

Developed for the military or law enforcement by Sandia labs, Red Jones, one of the researchers who worked on the laser-guided bullet says, “Where we’re headed, we’re going to be limited only by our imagination.”

Throughout history under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Defense, tens of millions of contract dollars went to companies for just such a weapon. Previously, engineers discovered that the M2, a belt-fed machine gun and standard issue in the U.S. Army 80 years ago, when fired at a distance of 1,000 meters—more than half a mile—would often miss the target by as much as roughly 10 meters.

Small but Smart

Only three years in the making, the prototype bullet is amazingly small—only four inches long and, at an inch-and-a-half in diameter, is a 50 caliber bullet. It operates using an optical sensor, which seeks and stays with a laser beam focused on a target. It also creates outputs from the optical sensors in order to steer the projectile to the target.

“The sensor,” according to Sandia labs, “sends information to guidance and control electronics that use an algorithm in an 8-bit central processing unit to command electromagnetic actuators. The actuators steer the fins that guide the bullet.” This would be similar to a miniaturized guidance system, normally utilized by actual missiles.

Adam Firestone, an army veteran, claims that: “All of a sudden now you’ve got a way to eliminate the collateral damage issue.”

Will we see a form of these miniature “smart bullets” on the streets for criminal purposes? It’s highly likely but only initially used by the upper most, financially-able suspects like drug runners or pirates. Of course now there are still engineering problems Red Jones explains, that will need to be overcome and certain practical considerations such as: can it be tossed or fall off the back of a truck and still function?

Sandia is looking for investors but from all accounts, expect to see this in an action movie in the near future, and heaven forbid, in the far horizon, hear about it in a criminal justice context.

As seen on the Sandia website: Various licensing and partnering options are available. Please contact the Intellectual Property Department to discuss.

For more information, you can download this PDF from Sandia

Photo images: Sandia labs

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Did Blood Curdling Screams of Fear Belong To Treyvon Martin or George Zimmerman?

by Dr. Lillian Glass

The only encouraging thing to come out the terrible incident where Treyvon Martin was killed is that it showed us that people are indeed compassionate and people do get got involved. People saw something. They heard something and they said something. They called 911. They got involved. They gave information. They all said they heard screaming and they all said they heard it.

One of the callers actually was able to capture the screaming as he called 911 as you can hear it on the tape. In listening to the blood curdling screams, it is very hard to tell who’s voice it is.

George Zimmerman has a higher pitched voice so it may have been his. There is also a deep guttural primitive sounds of the voice which may sound like someone’s life was as stake. The tone at the beginning of the tape was different front he one at the end of the tape. At one point the pitch was high and at the other point it was a raw and guttural voice, which was painful to listen to.

Personally, I believe that it was fear on the part of both of these men which caused this tragic incident - fear of one another.

In listening to George speak to police it seems like he was out for vigilante justice when he says "...they always get away with it." Who is they? Is he referring to kids, thieves and thugs, or black people by his use of the term they.

BOTH MEN FEARFUL OF ONE ANOTHER

If it is the latter, then yes, it is a racist indication. If he is referring to thugs or kids, then it is not a racist comment. In listening to George’s tape to the 911 dispatcher, I didn’t hear any specific racial comment. But what I did hear was a fearful and frustrated George Zimmerman. His pitch was raised at the end of sentences and he spoke in a softer tone which often indicates fear.

George was following Treyvon and continued to do so even after he was told not to follow him by the police dispatcher. But George, due to his own fear that a robbery would take place continued to follow him anyway. He also reported to the dispatcher on the tape that Treyvon had his hand in his waistband. He was in fear that Treyvon had a gun on him.

Trevyon on the other hand was also in fear. He was afraid of a strange man following him. He had no idea why he was being followed. He was talking to his girlfriend on his cell phone when he noticed he was being followed and told his girlfriend that someone was following him. She relayed this information to police.

As Trevyon may have feared George was out to harm him, he responded by beating George up. As an eyewitness said on the 911 tape, the one on top was wearing a white shirt. That means that the one on top was Treyvon and he was beating up George, whom he thought was following him. Apparently this is how George got his broken nose and bloodied head.

George then told police Trevyon was reaching for George’s gun and that is when George shot him in self defense.

Since George was the one being pummeled by Trevyon, being on top as an eyewitness reported, it was most likely it was George’s screams for help, but we will not know for sure until the FBI does their analysis in isolating the sounds of the tapes so the specific voices can be discerned.

From Treyvon’s point of view, he was doing nothing wrong. He had visited his father’s girlfriend and had every right to be in the neighborhood. It didn’t matter if he was suspended from school for having marijuana in his bag as was reported. What mattered is that he had every right as a free citizen to walk the streets no matter how late or dark it was . The fact that he was speaking to his girlfriend may be further evidence that he did not have wrongdoing on his mind and had no intention of committing a robbery. When he noticed someone was following him he told his girlfriend he was afraid. He evidently confronted George out of fear.

From George’s point of view he was a neighborhood watchman. He wanted to protect his neighborhood against the rash of robberies which occurred. He noticed a young man walking alone. He was in fear so he called 911. His voice indicated tones of fear as he described the young man whom he was following

It was a case of both men fearing one another, hurting and killing one another because of that unfounded fear. Yes, they killed one another. Even though George is technically alive and breathing, this fear based event has killed his reputation and his future as he will never be the same with mobs of people calling for his arrest and for the President to even weigh in.

VISIONS OF A SAD PAST AND FUTURE

To Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson who call this a racial hate crime, it is essential to note that these two civil rights leaders grew up at a time where racially motivated killings of young Black men were not uncommon. Thus it is understandable why they have reacted so vehemently against the killing of teenager Trevyon and have rallied for other to get behind their views.

To law enforcement who saw George bloodied with a broken nose and wounds consistent with being attacked and analyzing eyewitness reports that the man in the white shirt was on top may have indicated to them that it was a matter of self defense. That is why they didn’t arrest him.

As all the facts come out. we will eventually learn what really happened . We have to take heed from the Duke lacrosse player’s experience where several White men were falsely accused of molesting a Black woman. It became a racially charged issue as we see here.

Was George afraid of a young black man walking alone in a neighborhood? The answer is yes. Was Trevyon afraid of an older White man following him? The answer is yes. Did they both react out of their respective fear? The answer is yes. This was a no win situation that would only end in someone’s death.

It is terrible that an innocent man, no mater what color he is, is dead because of that fear. It is also terrible that a man, no mater what color he is has to live with the fact that whether it was self defense or not, that he is technically responsible for ending another human being’s life.

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Cough Syrup, Dead Children, and the Case for Regulation

By Deborah Blum

Kathleen Hobson was eight years old when her mother unknowingly dosed her with poisonous cough syrup. She’d only taken a couple spoonfuls but when investigators came round, they still found nothing left to test. After the little girl died, her mother had set the bottle on fire and then thrown it into the trash.

Charlene Canady was just four when she died from the same medication. Her father had carefully packed the cough syrup bottle, waiting for justice to come calling. I always imagine him silent when he handed the bottle over, grief and his daughter’s name caught like a kind of suffocation in his throat.

Both little girls lived in Tulsa, Oklahoma, both came down with nasty little colds in the fall of 1937, and both died because they were dosed with a brand new medication, a popular, raspberry-flavored cough syrup. In all, the syrup would kill 11 people in Oklahoma, within a few weeks. Ten in Alabama. Ten in Georgia. Twenty-three in Mississippi. Nine in South Carolina. Seven in Texas. More in California, Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, Virginia, Louisiana, and more.

More than one hundred dead nationwide, in fact, and most of them children, Charlenes and Kathleens scattered across the United States like so much storm wreckage. “Nobody but Almighty God and I can know what I have been through these past few days,” a Louisiana doctor later wrote to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, after six of his patients died in one week.

As FDA scientists would quickly realize, the syrup was lethal because it was sweetened by a compound known as diethylene glycol which kills by causing acute kidney damage. Both diethylene glycol and the obviously closely related compound, ethylene glycol (even more toxic) are best known today for their use as antifreeze agents and homicidal weapons on more than one occasion.

But at the time that Elixir Sulfanilamide came to be, produced by the S.E. Massengill Company of Bristol, Tennessee, that wasn’t well understood. There was actually no legal requirement that companies understand their products, much less safety test them.

The company chemist who designed the cough syrup by mixing a sulfa drug into the poisonous sweetener claimed to have no such knowledge. And as the company president, Samuel Massengill responded: “We have been supplying a legitimate professional demand and not once could have foreseen the unlooked-for results. I do not feel that there was any responsibility on our part.”

The resulting Elixir Sulfanilamide scandal – and it was, indeed, an incendiary, nation-rocking scandal at the time - is mostly forgotten today. But it shouldn’t be. Those rippling deaths, the feeble government response, the indifference of the manufacturer and its big business allies - provoked such a passionate outcry that a year later, the long-delayed U.S. Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act was signed by President Franklin Roosevelt.

The 1938 law was first major upgrade of 1906 legislation. The earlier law established the U.S. government as a guardian of the American people’s safety, set precedents in regulating toxic chemicals in food and drugs. But that turn-of-the century law was in many ways a piece of regulatory lace, full of exceptions and exemptions. The new law filled many of those holes, gave power to protective rules.

Now, for the first time, manufacturers were required to safety test their wares and could be held responsible for consumer death and injury. In the case of Elixir Sulfanilamide, the company could not be held liable for a single death. It could only be charged with mislabeling – elixirs were supposed to contain alcohol and the cough syrup contained none.

The 1938 law also required manufacturers to list ingredients on their labels in some detail – another first. One of my favorite books of the 1930s, 100,000,000 Guinea Pigs, by Arthur Kallet and F.J. Schlink, is basically a litany of the hidden dangers that preceded that rule: the toothpaste that contained so much potassium chlorate that it was possible to commit suicide by eating a single tube; the high levels of lead in hair dye,;and the use of the toxic element thallium in depilatory creams. One of the side effects of thallium poisoning is that hair falls out. Cosmetic manufacturers of the 1930s thus found it handy in hair-removal products. They expressed surprise at the small epidemic of baldness, paralysis and occasional death that resulted. But, as they reminded irate physicians, they could not be held responsible for that.

But although advocates like Kallet and Schlink spent years marshaling such evidence in an effort to persuade the government to give the FDA actual enforcement powers, they were stymied by business opposition until the Elixir Sulfanilamide scandal galvanized the country. In an essay for the Annals of Internal Medicine, toxicologist Paul M. Wax called it “one of the most consequential mass-poisonings of the twentieth century.”

And it’s that case that always comes to mind when I hear politicians trumpeting the wonders of an unregulated marketplace, as with the current Republican party mantra that we don’t need strong environmental protections or – at the most extreme vantage point – even a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency at all. Last year, along the same lines, conservative legislators were busily trying to defund the FDA as well.

The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein points out that Americans tend to sound anti-regulation when queried. But, he adds, if you press them on which oversight they’d like to give up, the picture becomes more complicated. Klein cites a Pew Research survey done in February which found that 53 percent of respondents wanted food and food product regulation increased – only seven percent thought it should be reduced. For environmental regulation, slightly more – a full 17 percent – argued for relaxing the rules. The survey was, actually, unable to locate a majority of American citizens seeking to be less well protected.

We hear legislators suggest that hard economic times demand the loosening of regulations. But don’t forget that our country was still mired in the long-reach of the Great Depression when that 1938 law was passed. The government recognized, even then, that protection of American citizens meant more than policing our cities and defending our borders. It meant dedicated protection of public health.

Do we sometimes wish that such protection was smarter, moved faster, was more richly knowledge-based? Less influenced by politics, on occasion, by corporate lobbyists? Of course, we do. But I see that as a call to keep the process as politics free as possible (dreaming, I know), to invest more in good risk research and to use that knowledge to improve protection against everything from food poisoning to chemical contamination.

We may not remember by name the Kathleen Hobsons and Charlene Canadays of our past. And as I said, the Elixir Sulfanilamide story, is mostly forgotten as well. But we should be grateful for the way it changed our lives. And we should occasionally acknowledge those lost children; whether we recognize it or not, their ghosts still walk among us today, reminding us of what is right.

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Most Everything I Know About Trying High-Profile Cases I've Learned From My Ex-Husband, John Henry Browne

by Anne Bremner,

with contributions by Bob Sims

John Henry Browne is defending accused killer Robert Bales. Bales is the Pacific Northwest-based soldier who allegedly gunned down 17 civilians in Afghanistan.

Before the world knew any of the specific details of this case or who the victims were, it knew all about the accused -- and the defenses. And it knew why.

Nature abhors a vacuum. And what a vacuum of information from the military there was. John stepped up and immediately filled it. He spoke of the four stressful deployments, post-traumatic stress disorder, a head injury, financial woes, and the personal strife Bales has experienced. Sentiment prevailed. "I am not putting the war on trial, but the war is on trial," John said. Many agreed. Suddenly, public conversation was elevated beyond this case to the prosecution of the war itself.

John Henry Browne was a hippie in the 1960s. When we were married I remember him talking fondly of those halcyon days, describing San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, a mecca for the Hippie movement. He knew every nook and cranny in that neighborhood from his travels. He brought memories of Buena Vista Park during the Summer of Love 1967 come to life when he told me his stories. (I recently found an old picture of him with hair streaming past his shoulders and a drooping hippie moustache, one I used for a birthday invitation for him once.) John walked the walk as a hippie. He protested against the Vietnam War. He never served.

Many people talk of the 1960s as a time of protest, casual sex and civil unrest, a time in which some people think very little was accomplished for bettering American society. I disagree. Positive changes did come. In time. Women's rights and civil liberties improved by leaps and bounds. We steadily climbed out of the chasm of racism. The Vietnam War was ended. And from that time of momentous social change came John Henry Browne.

He has waited all his life for this case. He is made for this case. He will put the war on trial and he will win. It's ironic that decades after his period of discontent in the 60s, and on the eve of his expected retirement, John is handling the most important case of his career -- and one of the most important in this country's history.

Rules in dealing with the media in such a highly publicized case? Be brief and be quiet. Deliver a message that resonates. Tell the truth. Humanize your client. Use your case as a platform for public conversations about the greater good. Be accessible. Be relentless. Never, never, never ever quit.

I have learned all of this -- and more -- from my ex-husband John Henry Browne.

And that's why I know he will win.

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The Tragedy of the Trayvon Martin Homicide: A Profiler's View

Trayvon Martin

by Pat Brown

When the news reports started rolling in on the homicide of African-American teenager Trayvon Martin by Sandford, Florida neighborhood watchman, George Zimmerman, the first thought that went through my head was, "I hope justice prevails," but then my second thought was, "Oh, this is going to get nasty." I am already being proven right on my latter thought but as to justice being meted out properly, I am not sure the national emotional outburst over this case with its racial overtones is going to interfere with that. What makes so much of this case difficult is the murky waters of what really happened and who was justified in doing what and who was profiling who and who was profiling out of racism and who was not.

Let's take a look at how the first news reports (blithely paraphrased and made simple for impact) brought the incident to light (and the left and the right are general categories for the purposes of pointing out the issues, not for saying everyone is so "black and white" and absolute on the incident) :

The left: White dude chases down innocent black child and wastes him.

The right: Citizen protecting his neighborhood shoots thug while defending his life.

Then, more information comes out:

The left: Okay, not-totally White dude scares the crap out of innocent not-so-small teen and teen hits stalker in fear and then not-totally White dude shoots teen dead when all teen has is Skittles in his pocket.

The right: Okay, the citizen is a bit aggressive trying to keep his neighborhood safe and maybe shouldn't have followed the kid but he has the right to shoot someone who then becomes the physical aggressor and smashes in his nose and is on top of him beating him on the ground.

The left: Regardless of who did what first, George Zimmerman is clearly a racist because he profiled Trayvon Martin as up to no good for no reason other than he was black and wearing a hoodie and standing around and he said "f***ing coons" on the 911 call to the police, so it is a hate crime.

The right: Trayvon was suspended from school so he obviously is a troublemaker and he was acting shady in Zimmerman's neighborhood and Zimmerman never said "f***ing coons" on the 911 tape but "f***ing goons,"or "f***ing tools," or "f***ing cons," etc.

Whew! Okay, so what do I think? I think this is going to be a mess for a long time no matter how you slice it or view it. But, here is my profiler's take.

George Zimmerman

Let's start with George Zimmerman. He has got some issues that is for sure (read Gina Simmons previous Women in Crime post, Anger, Race, and Psychology in the Trayvon Martin Case)  but some of Zimmerman's black friends say he is all broken up about the shooting and isn't a racist. From what I have read, he is a wannabe cop, the neighborhood ninja, the overzealous protector of the community. My guess is he might qualify for a personality disorder and be more into his role as superhero than he is into being concerned about the welfare of the local citizens or being a racist of any sort. He clearly overstepped his bounds and should have left the approach of Trayvon up to the police unless he saw the young man attacking someone. In other words, causing another bodily harm is only acceptable if you are in fear of being severely injured or killed or someone else is likely to be severely injured or killed. Even with Florida Stand-Your-Ground laws which removes the duty to retreat and permits the citizen to fight force with force and still claim self-defense, you still can't actually be the one who is the aggressor because that makes you the perpetrator and not the victim.

Zimmerman was not in that position at the time he saw Trayvon walking away from him, so he clearly moved in on Trayvon, with or without his gun drawn, and Trayvon reacted either in self-defense or a fit of anger at being harassed without proper cause. I think Zimmerman's defense lawyer has his work cut out for him to prove that he in no way threatened Trayvon and Trayvon, if he punched him, did not do so when Zimmerman made a physical move on him or tried to draw his gun on him. Just because Zimmerman ended up on the ground at one point with Trayvon standing over him as one witness claims to have seen (and the supposed broken nose and damage to the back of Zimmerman's head could be the result of one punched that knocked him backwards and no further aggression), this doesn't mean Trayvon wasn't the defender and well within his rights to take Zimmerman down.

Alternatively, there is the possibility that Zimmerman followed Trayvon, not too closely and Trayvon turned on him, approached him aggressively, started cussing at him and then assaulted him at which point Zimmerman though he was going to die and pulled his gun from his holster/waistband and shot Trayvon. In this case, Zimmerman may have been stupid and annoying but if at no point did Trayvon actually have a claim to being in fear of being severely injured or killed, he would have no right to claim self-defense any more than Zimmerman if there was no immediate threat. Of course, Trayvon isn't around to speak of his emotions or Zimmerman's behavior at the time, so we will have to rely on direct and circumstantial evidence hopefully handled with a scientific objectiveness and not runaway emotion.

Okay, so right now, I am on the fence as to who was defending himself and who was the aggressor. I have to say since Zimmerman clearly escalated the whole incident and was armed at the time, it is my opinion he was far more responsible for the ensuing events than a seventeen-year-old kid who didn't see it coming.

I do want to stop and look at the issues of racial profiling and racism, both of which I think may have been blown way out of proportion in this case. Let me take you to an example that happened in my own son's experience.

I was visiting my friend, Jenny, at her home in a cul-de-sac. My son came to pick me up in my little red Mazda Miata convertible. He pulled in front of her house and was patiently waiting with engine running. All of a sudden, the woman from across the street comes straight towards the car, and standing in the middle of the street, she starts blasting an air horn and asking what he was doing there. My son was a bit taken aback as he had never had this happen before. Here was a white woman in her sixties dressed in a housecoat barking at him, a twenty-eight year old biracial young man dressed in a t-shirt, demanding that he tell her what business he had on her street. How did he react? Well, I wouldn't be surprised if many men of his age might not say "Bitch, this is a public street; mind your own damn business." Some might have even called her a racial slur.

My son said, "Ma'am, I am waiting on my mother who is inside visiting her friend, Jenny." To which the woman replied, "Oh, sorry, we have had a bunch of drug dealers and burglars around the neighborhood and I keep an eye out for anyone who doesn't belong." Then when I came out, she apologized to me as well.

My sons, David and Jeremy

Why did my son behave so politely? Well, first of all because he immediately recognized the woman in the housecoat as an overzealous neighborhood watch type of lady, the kind who shows up every month at the town council meeting and drives everyone nuts. Basically, it never really occurred to him that this white lady was dangerous or was being racist, just that she was a bit bats. And, truthfully, the lady wasn't being racist; I think she would have approached a white boy in a hoodie with the same zeal and not bothered to approach a fifty-year-old black man dressed in a suit with a Bible on his dashboard. She profiled incorrectly but not with any real racial bias.

I asked my son how he might have reacted if George Zimmerman was trailing him down the street. He had to stop and think about that. The first problem he had was that  Zimmerman wouldn't have been a uniformed cop in which case he would know he should be polite for a good reason if questioned. Nor would Zimmerman have on the uniform of the Guardian Angels who you know are out patrolling the neighborhood. And he wouldn't look like an old crazy lady, but a young crazy man, possible a psychopath will ill intentions, or an asshole looking for trouble.

What then if my son had turned on Zimmerman and said, "What the f*** is your problem, dog?" And Zimmerman got all loud and obnoxious and moved in on him. My son works as a bouncer and I can see him taking defensive action not realizing that the man had brought a gun to a fistfight. It is one thing to have a concealed weapon for the purposes of protecting oneself in a surprise attack but bringing hardware to a fight that should be with fists is a bit sneaky and dangerous and premeditated; almost rings of entrapment, some kind of set-up.

Okay, so I am still having trouble getting Zimmerman out of the wrong here, but let's check out the racist issue. I am not convinced this was racial in any way, that Zimmerman wouldn't have chased down a white teenage thug looking boy either. I didn't find his description to the police very racially biased...just a calm description of the "suspect" and a general term of "asshole" to describe people getting away with crime in the neighborhood. I didn't hear any spouting of racist slurs throughout his conversation with 911.

Of course, there is that bit he muttered under his breath during that call that has become the explosive "smoking gun" that is making this "clearly" a hate crime. Zimmerman is supposed to have muttered, "F***ing coons," and it sure does sound like that.

I listened to those two words over and over and I still had problems with turning "coons" into "goons" or into anything else nonracist... until I asked myself if there could be any less objectionable thing he might have muttered offhandedly at that moment, and I came up with "F***ing cones." In other words, when he parked and exited the car in chasing down Trayvon and he might have hit or stepped on a road cone, those two words might be just a normal expletive one might let out at that moment. So I listened over and over again and it does sound more like "F***ing cones" to me. How will we know? I would guess the crime scene photos ought to let us know if there were traffic cones at that location or any other object or possible circumstance to influence Zimmerman into saying something that sounded like "coons." If not, interviews with everyone possible is necessary to find out whether Zimmerman was the type to ever say use such ugly derogatory racist language or not.

So, until I learn absolutely that Zimmerman has uttered racial slurs in his past, I will not assume he is being racist. A possible aggressor, a troublemaker, a bad profiler, an annoyance, a fool, and a dangerous whack job, but not necessarily a racist.

Let's not forget that there are youths of all races and cultural backgrounds that trouble our neighborhoods. In my own town, there are some bratty kids who play in the streets and dance in front of cars and make nasty comments when we slow to drive by. We have had break-ins in my town and there are signs of gang activity here. My town has become much thuggier looking in recent years, with young men and women of all colors in hoodies and other clothing that makes many citizens raise an eyebrow as to the character of the young people within them. Regardless of the right to dress as one pleases, certain clothing sends certain messages and it behooves parents to make sure their sons and daughters don't look or act like criminals when walking about the neighborhood just to be on the safe side. But, back to the issue at hand, at this point (unless Zimmerman is proven to be a racist or that Trayvon chased him down and assaulted him), I think George Zimmerman was "gunning" to be a hero and Trayvon ended up being the unsuspecting victim of Zimmerman's overactive zealous power trip. We shall see how it all plays out; let's just hope it is on the evidence and not the result of a bunch of political, personal, and emotional issues. The tragedy of the killing of Trayvon Martin is bad enough, but I hope we don't add to that, the tragedy of fueling racial division if this case turns out not to be about racism at all.

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Anger, Race and Psychology in The Trayvon Martin Case

by Gina Simmons, Ph.D.

After 17 year old Trayvon Martin was shot last month by a neighbor as he walked home from a convenience store, it poked the deep wound of racial injustice in this country. As more protests mount and African American leaders shout out for justice in this case, we should all seek to understand the emotional and psychological issues that led to this young man's death.

It's likely that Martin's shooter, George Zimmerman, had some unresolved anger issues. As a psychotherapist who specializes in anger and conflict management, in my opinion Zimmerman's comments to emergency and non-emergency police revealed smoldering anger. As he speaks to the police dispatcher he mutters what sounds like a racial slur. He also says, "These a**holes. They always get away."

Perhaps Zimmerman experienced a heightened threat sensitivity, anxiety or paranoia. As neighborhood watch captain he likely perceived any stranger walking through the area as a potential threat. The 46 calls he made to police, in the months prior to the Martin shooting, suggest he took his volunteer position very seriously. Zimmerman, angry about recent burglaries in the area, may have suffered from irrational fears that warped his perceptions.

All of us fall victim to perceptual biases that cloud our judgement and decision-making abilities. The confirmation bias makes us see only the information that confirms our prior beliefs, while ignoring evidence that contradicts them. When racial prejudice mixes with the confirmation bias, we often won't even see behavior outside the stereotype. You can't make decisions based on evidence that you can't see.

Anger distorts our perception by narrowing our focus to the perceived threat. Our brain uses short cuts, called heuristics, to rapidly sort through information. The availability heuristic leads us to make decisions based on what easily comes to mind from our memory. So if we've been reading lots of news reports about terrorist attacks and we hear a loud boom, our first thought might be "we've been attacked by terrorists."

Trayvon Martin likely felt fear in his last moments of life as well. Walking through the neighborhood, talking on the phone to a girl, he may have felt pretty relaxed until he saw a large white man following him. He allegedly mentioned this to the girl. She said she told him to run. Witnesses reportedly heard cries for help, a shot, and then nothing.

In 2005 Zimmerman was twice accused of either criminal misconduct or violence. He reportedly had a spotty employment history and financial problems. As a teen he was the victim of a minor criminal assault. When people feel like victims they often act like abusers, as fear leads them to overreact to minor events. Zimmerman, feeling a renewed purpose as neighborhood watch captain, may have felt a warped sense of urgency about a young black man on his street.

Strong emotions and preexisting anxiety distort perception. You see threats when they are not there. After the 9/11 attacks I worked a 12 hour day. A patient told me they contacted the FBI regarding information they had related to the attacks. Tired and stressed I got into my car, late at night, tossed my purse on the passenger seat and heard a strange crunch. The seat was covered with glass. I leaped out of my car and my first thought, "terrorist." After I got my heart rate under control I noticed that the window was broken and a black trash container was stolen.

The availability heuristic led me to a perceptual error clouded by fatigue and anxiety. This happens to all of us. In my case, no one was harmed by my distortion of perception. Unfortunately for the Martin family, Zimmerman carried a concealed weapon, and apparently felt entitled to use it.

Photos courtesy of David Shankbone and bMethe.

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