Delayed Justice

It started almost as soon as they were sentenced: Carl Paiva, Bubba Nelson, Freddie Parker, and Tony Williams each availed himself of his rights under law.  They are appealing their convictions.  The list is long: ineffective counsel, evidence not admitted, the testimony of the forensic pathologist, use of the film during interrogation…and on and on….

The matter has moved slowly and you can see the tortuous paths here:

Anthony Robert Eugene Williams

James Cleophas Nelson

Arthur Carlton Paiva

Feddie Bsss Parker

Oral arguments in the appeal will be heard July 14 in Lansing at the Michigan Court of Appeals.  The matters will be heard before judges Richard A. Bandstra, Pat A. Donofrio, and Peter D. O’Connell.  You can find the backgrounds for these judges here.

Mark Sands will be defending against the appeals on behalf of the Attorney General’s office.

On the night of December 19, 1997,  Jermaine Buxton was walking down the 800 block of Sherman, SE, in Grand Rapids, Kent County, MI, with three friends.  Around 8:00  p.m. an unidentfied person shot at the group, fatally hitting  Jermaine in the neck .  He was 17 years old.

I can tell from my stats page when people are hitting the website using specific search terms.  Two nights ago it was relating to the life and murder of Debbie Polinsky.  This is one of those local Ottawa County, MI, cases for which there was NOTHING on the web when we started this.  I thought she needed to be remembered in a place where people could easily find the details of her life and death.  And so we did what we were able, culling through the newspaper accounts at the Holland Public Library.  But we don’t have a good photo, we don’t have lots and lots of details.  We’d like them.  Two nights ago we had 20 hits in an hour in a search for her name.  Somebody out there who is checking the site knew her, probably loved her and treasured her.  Would you send us a photograph?  More information?  Our only goal is to tell the story so this crime, too, can be solved.  It can be.  Whoever did this needs to be identified and held accountable.

Chris Cameron, the executive director of Silent Observer in Grand Rapids, organized a press conference at the Grand Rapids Police Department to highlight the release of the public service announcements that we’d just finished.  We were asking the stations to make use of them.  More, the family members of the six victims were on hand to tell their stories.  With the authority that no one else has, they delivered the message of the devastation and loss that is now their daily reality.  Carolyn Priester, the founder and head of the support group Conquerors, told her story, too.  And the members of the media were responsive, caring, and willing to deliver that story to a larger audience.  That’s where it belongs: in the awareness of all of us that there is justice yet to be meted out.

I had a chance to say a few things as well: that the best police force in the world is only as good as its community support; that working with Conquerors and Silent Observer was and is an honor.  What I didn’t say high, wide and handsome was that I surely didn’t make these PSAs all by myself.  Phil Blauw, that wonderful shooter and lighter, was manning the camera. Melissa was on hand to serve as production assistant.  In particular, she paid very special attention to people.  Then there’s Stuart Poltrock of SoundPost who suggested and supplied the music bed.  He also did my voice recording.  I always taught my students that you can do anything in film and television, but you can’t do it by yourself.  It really takes all of us.

Including the reporters and shooters from the news media and their stations who have indicated that they will run the PSAs.  Those :30 pieces are now up at a lot of websites.  Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Let’s see what happens.

 

John Robinson on his police motor. Photo by Tony Kelly

John Robinson is quite a police officer.  Oh, I know he’s technically retired.  But he’s not tired.  And he has a heart for the victims of crime.  Like so many other officers, he hates it when the bad guys get away with a crime.  And murder is the worst of all crimes.  Last week he sat down and spoke with us about the murder of Shelley Speet Mills.  He was stopped at a light at the intersection of Michigan and College in Grand Rapids, eastbound, when the call came in that a woman thought her daughter had been murdered at 314 College NE.  That was two houses away. 

He secured the scene and stayed with Shelley’s body until all the examinations attendant on a body were concluded.  I supposed that’s a fancy way of saying he remained at the scene until he helped move the body  to autopsy.  He assisted there, too, and stayed there until all evidence was given to him to take back to the police station.  Chain of custody.

He didn’t work the case again while he was a patrolman, but when he was promoted to what’s now called the Major Case  Team, he took up the investigation again.  And when he rose to the head of that unit he directed the continuing investigation.  This case has never been cold; it’s always been worked and worked just as hard as there have been leads.  Some years that’s been pretty thin.  But he knows this crime CAN be solved.  He is correct.

Here’s the reality: the police can be effective only when they have the cooperation of a willing and supportive citizenry.  When the public turns away, withholds knowledge, the bad guys get away with it.  It may be dangerous, it may be unpleasant, it may be costly and inconvenient, but as long as people tell what they know about crime we stand a chance at an ordered civilization.

With our rights come responsibilities.  Yeah, I know I’m a conservative.   Believe me, I know.  For me, though, that begins with conserving our ordered liberty under the rule of law.

There’s a lot at stake here, and in our day-by-day fashion we either struggle to keep that order or we allow entropy to claim it all.  William Butler Yeats put it best in his 1919 poem:

    THE SECOND COMING

    Turning and turning in the widening gyre 
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer; 
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; 
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, 
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere 
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned; 
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst 
    Are full of passionate intensity.

    Surely some revelation is at hand; 
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand. 
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out 
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi 
    Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand; 
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man, 
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, 
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it 
    Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds. 
    The darkness drops again but now I know 
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep 
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, 
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, 
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

As for John, he keeps these old cases ticking over and he still rides a Harley.

In this previous post we talked about the postponement for the trial for Sid Terrel Jones in the matter of the murder of Janeane Lusk.

The trial is still ON for Monday morning in Grand Rapids and here are the details:

Trial Information
Case Number: 08-11265-FC
17th Circuit Court
Courtroom 11D
180 Ottawa Avenue NW
Grand Rapids, MI
(616) 632 – 5220
June 22, 2009: 8:30 a.m.
Judge Donald A. Johnston

I called to confirm this morning. As always before, I met with unfailing politeness on the part of the Court Clerk’s office. It’s the same way here in Grand Haven, too. These are the people who handle the details, those precious details, on which hang the balance of law.

Let justice be served.

Mary Jean D’Agostino was murdered early in the morning on Aug. 29, 1993, in an apartment building at 787 Burcham Drive, East Lansing, Ingham/Clinton County, MI.  She had been strangled.  Earlier that night, a tenant of the building heard a woman shout,  “OK, go ahead and kill me!”  The East Lansing police assume it was Mary Jean’s voice that was heard.

Although police  identified several people D’Agostino was with the night she was killed, no one has been charged with Mary Jean’s murder.

 

MJVH

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Out next steps are generating these for the various television stations. The first order of business is to determine whether or not they want them. Then we have to format them in a file structure that works…Quicktime, WMV, AVI, h.264, flv…you name it and it’s out there. So, stand by for more on all of this.

It wasn’t that nothing was going on…far from it.  But it might have seemed that nothing was moving forward.  Here’s the result of some of the behind-the-scenes activity:

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The taping of these public service announcements was organized by Carolyn Priester of the Conquerors, a support group for families of murder victims. Her son was taken from her, too.

Credit also goes to Chris Cameron at Silent Observer in Grand Rapids for allowing the vision to see light.

More about this project later. Gotta cut the grass!

Bill Mills was married to his lovely bride for 17 days before she was murdered.  Thirty-nine years later he sat down to speak with me…and this is not something he was eager to do.  I am sorry to have invaded his privacy with this inquiry.  But I am even sorrier for the cause of it.  I believe he was willing to speak and to do so with such good grace because he wants the killer identified and–if possible–brought to justice.

So, yes, look at the interview and think if there’s anything you know about this case that could lead Sgt. Terry McGee one step forward.  That’s all he needs in this case.

If I’m being a little adamant about this, consider: you don’t light this candle and then hide it under a bushel basket.  Please noise it up if you can, get some chatter going.  Somebody, somewhere knows something. In the language of the police world: this is a solvable complaint.

And consider this: two days hence Shelley would have been celebrating her 58th birthday.

So, think about her, think about her husband.  And keep both of them in your prayers.