In death, Aileen Wuornos has the fame she craved in life

by Sue Russell

Today, November 18, 2010, marks the 20th anniversary of serial killer Aileen Wuornos’s final murder. During her bloody killing year, she took the lives of seven men. In the end, she dropped her death row appeals, keen to get on her way to be with God, and was executed in 2002. But, I think she would get a kick out of seeing her face on the opening credits of television’s Criminal Minds amidst the mug shots of Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy, et al. And, I know she would enjoy still being written about. Her appetite for attention and celebrity was so huge that even before her murderous year, she actively tried to find someone to write a book about her life.

She scared off one would-be ghost writer. During their meeting, she hit him up to lend her money and turned ugly when he refused. She promised a great story and hinted at having information about some unsolved murders. But, he got out of there fast and never looked back. I’ve always thought Aileen perhaps witnessed, if not participated in, an act of violence or murder earlier in her life. (I don’t have the space to explain, but you can find out why in my book, Lethal Intent.)

Aileen definitely craved celebrity. She often mentioned her wish to “be like Bonnie and Clyde,” even asking her partner's close friend if she wanted in on her plan. Later, in jail, Wuornos boasted to other inmates, “Don’t you know who I am? I’m Aileen Wuornos of television!” To her partner, Tyria, Wuornos bragged that she'd go down in history.

Her final victim was Walter “Gino” Antonio. On November 17, 1990, Tyria flew out of state to join her family for Thanksgiving. The next day, Mr. Antonio, driving to Alabama to see his fiancée, Aleen, made the deadly mistake of picking up Aileen Wuornos, who was working the interstates as a prostitute. Men on the road, Aileen knew, generally had a good stash of cash. Antonio wore a diamond and gold nugget ring--a special gift from his fiancée.

Aileen later claimed Antonio pulled a badge and, claiming to be a cop, demanded sex for free or he’d arrest her. He was a former reserve cop and did carry a badge, handcuffs, and a police-style billy club in his vehicle. She suspected the badge was a fake, bought through a private detective magazine. She was angry, and they argued.

Even with handcuffs and a billy club in the car, I doubt Antonio ever had the upper hand on her physically. When they argued alongside his car, she said, she reached into her bag for her gun, and they struggled. He fell, got back on his feet and, naked save for his tube socks, fled. Aileen, also naked, shot him in the back as he ran. She couldn’t recall how many shots she fired because she had drunk so much beer. Well, three bullets hit him in the back, a fourth in the back of the head. She regularly used empty beer cans for target practice and was a good shot.

Aileen said Antonio was still alive when she took his prized ring off his finger. If he was, he was likely drawing his last breaths because that year she was leaving behind no witnesses. Cursing, she tossed aside a set of false teeth he kept in the glove compartment, but she grabbed everything of value. She drove away naked, pulled over to get dressed, and threw out more of his personal items. Back at her motel, she parked his Pontiac Grand Prix, removed a suitcase from the trunk, and went inside her room.

When Tyria returned from her trip, Aileen slipped Mr. Antonio’s diamond and gold nugget ring on her finger.

His body was found a day later, and he was identified by his fingerprints. By then, the net was tightening. Sketches of Aileen and Tyria were aired on TV on November 29. Aileen’s longed-for fame was about to explode. That’s when Tyria left her, afraid she would be implicated in the murders.

After her arrest, Aileen confessed to killing seven men, and her conviction seemed inevitable. Even so, speaking to her the night before the verdict, she was so upbeat I knew she fully expected to hear “not guilty.” She was outraged by her conviction. She’d imagined herself being viewed as a hero. What was this serial killer stuff? Knowing how sure she had been that she’d be set free, when Judge Uriel Blount sentenced her to death the next day, my legs felt a little wobbly. She has been gone eight years, but it’s a moment I’ll always remember.

Aileen Wuornos was executed by lethal injection in October 2002, after a decade on Death Row. Award-winning journalist and author Sue Russell’s fact crime book, Lethal Intent, is being re-issued in November 2010 as a Kensington Books' “True Crime Classic.” Follow her on Twitter or Facebook

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Doctors Who Do Harm: Beware the Ghost of Anna Nicole

by Diane Dimond

You may not give a darn about the late buxom sex-pot Anna Nicole Smith, but the recent verdict in a Los Angeles criminal case stemming from her drug-overdose death has certainly captured the attention of doctors nationwide. I’ll bet insurance companies specializing in malpractice medical coverage have snapped to attention as well.

After Anna Nicole Smith died in February 2007, three of the people closest to her--her attorney and lover Howard K. Stern, her psychiatrist, Dr. Khristine Eroshevich, and her personal physician, Dr. Sandeep Kapoor were criminally charged. Among the most serious of the original 23 charges was “providing controlled substances to a known addict.”

Interestingly, the trio was never accused of actually causing Smith’s death, and along the way some of the other charges were dismissed. It came down to a trial about whether they’d engaged in a conspiracy to help the 39-year-old former Playboy cover girl and TV personality obtain prescription drugs through the use of false names and misrepresentation.

During nine weeks, the jury testimony boiled down to this:

Stern, Eroshevich and Kapoor finagled prescriptions using both real and fictitious names to get mountains of drugs for Smith. She had recently given birth to a baby girl and a few days later she suffered through the overdose death at her hospital bedside of her 20-year-old son, Daniel. So, as the defense team presented it at trial, no wonder the poor woman needed drugs to get her through the ordeal! The prosecution argued this threesome of so-called professionals--an attorney and two doctors--acted not only unethically but that they each also crossed the line sexually with Anna Nicole Smith.

The 11 drugs found in Smith’s systems ranged from methadone (10 pills a day as prescribed by Dr. Kapoor and taken even while Smith was pregnant), to powerful sleep aids like chloral hydrate, and a long list of narcotic painkillers like Vicodin (prescribed by Dr. Eroshevich). The name found most often on her prescription bottles was Howard K. Stern but the doctors also used Jane Brown, Susie Wong and Vickie Lynn Marshall, which just happens to be Anna Nicole’s real name. Dr. Eroshevich was warned by two different pharmacists that the type and amount of prescriptions she was writing for her patient amounted to “pharmaceutical suicide.” Still, the state said, Eroshevich personally transported massive amounts of prescription drugs to Smith in both Florida and the Bahamas.

The jury ultimately acquitted Dr. Kapoor but found Stern and Dr. Eroshevich guilty of the false name conspiracy. While the dead starlet’s supporters moaned that it wasn’t enough of a conviction, the verdict still sent an earthquake sized shock through Hollywood’s celebrity, medical and legal communities.

California defense lawyer Harlan Braun told the Associated Press that writing bogus prescriptions in today’s paparazzi inspired media atmosphere is routine. “It’s absolutely necessary for survival in Hollywood. If … keeping these people anonymous is a criminal act, a lot of doctors will have to refuse to take celebrity patients.”

Do famous people deserve privacy about their medical conditions? You bet. Do their doctors get to break the law while attempting to facilitate their privacy? No way. I, for one, hope we’re witnessing the beginning of a trend where over-prescribing doctors are charged with serious crimes and lose their medical licenses permanently if convicted.

Prescription drug abuse is at epidemic levels. We spend millions on campaigns against street drugs like cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin but we say little about the scourge of desperation and crime left behind by those drugs that come via a prescription pad or an illicit internet “pharmacy.” I quoted studies in this space last year saying a total of 34 million Americans are currently taking painkillers or anti-depressants. Our kids watch us do it and many mimic the behavior.

L.A.-based attorney and addiction intervention specialist Darren Kavinoky agrees: “The fact is that we, as a nation, love our drugs. Pharmaceuticals appeal to a broader (and sadly, younger) audience, because they don’t have the stigma associated with street drugs, and are readily available … pills are now number two behind marijuana for young people, and we are seeing more addiction and more overdose deaths because of it.”

On the verdict in the Anna Nicole case Kavinoky says there’s one upcoming defendant who should be shaking in his boots. He is Dr. Conrad Murray who was tending to Michael Jackson when the entertainer died last June and who is set to go on trial soon on charges of involuntary manslaughter. Kavinoky explains that to reach their guilty finding the Smith jury had to have dismissed the expert medical testimony, “We’re all taught to believe doctors, to trust their judgment as being superior to our own. Those jurors had to disregard this notion in order to get to a conviction. This willingness to disregard the judgment, wisdom and experience of a medical professional should make Dr. Murray righteously nervous.”

Frankly, I hope it makes over-prescribing doctors everywhere mighty nervous.

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On the Horizon: What Are Bacterial Fingerprints?

by Andrea Campbell

“Messieurs, c’est les microbes qui auront le dernier mot.”
Translation: “Gentlemen, it is the microbes who will have the last word.” —Louis Pasteur, (see: photo at left)

Microbes Are Us

You know the National Geographic documentaries you’ve seen that show a rhino with birds sitting on its back? According to the African Wildlife Federation, his feathered friends are called "oxpeckers," also known as tick birds. The oxpeckers are actually nibbling on all sorts of bugs. They also feast on the blood from sores and, even though they obstruct sores from healing, they also help to warn the rhino of danger. This is what is referred to as a symbiotic relationship.

Humans also have their own riders. They are organisms called “microbes.” Microbes live on us by the billions. Scientists have examined six different people’s forearms and found more than 240 distinct microbes hanging on. The skin’s ecosystem, for want of a better term, is as unique as a person's wardrobe. While there is some overlap in microbe types between people, in the study, microbe types are still thought of as being distinct and unique to each individual. (As an aside, what is interesting is that a change in soap, laundry detergent, or even the fabric we wear has an affect on the “skin flora,” which is what scientists really call the microbes.)

Skin Flora and Forensic Science

This past spring, there were some reports about how this phenomenon could be used for identification purposes through a process called bacterial fingerprinting. Scientists in Colorado are surmising that one day, bacteria fingerprinting may find itself in the courtroom. Noah Fierer of the University of Colorado, in Boulder, is one of the scientists who studies the bacteria that live on skin, and he says, "We leave this trail of bacteria everywhere we go, and the idea was could we use this trail to identify who had touched a given object or surface.”

Testing It Out

As a test, Fierer and his colleagues swabbed bacterial DNA from the individual keys of three personal computer keyboards, "and then matched those keys to the bacteria on the fingertips of the owners of the keyboard. And we showed that we could basically identify whose keyboard it was pretty well."

According to U.S. News and World Report, the team used powerful gene sequencing techniques to conduct the analysis. The process involved examining a specific bacterial gene from each sample. The gene, called the 16S ribosomal RNA gene, is a useful tool for identifying bacterial species. All cells carry a 16S gene, but the gene changes just enough over time to distinguish one species from another. Each bacterial sample is capable of generating a unique “signature” of all the bacteria that are present. Comparing those signatures, which derived from algorithms developed by Rob Knight, another member of the Boulder team, can identify two microbial communities as being closely related. In this case, the 16S profiles from the fingers of the keyboard users closely matched the 16S profiles from each user’s keyboard.

For the Future

Right now law enforcement relies heavily on fingerprints, blood, saliva or other tissue evidence. DNA is still difficult to locate and often there is not enough sufficient material for identification. And, let’s face it, without standardization between evidence collection and processing, all identification is an uneven process, and prohibitive both money and time-wise. But still, it is an interesting concept since bacterial cells are always being shed. You can wash your hands, but the microbes, but your "native community" will still come back. And this immature study bore results that seem to be about 70- to 90-percent accurate.

Legal Restrictions

Getting this science to pass a legal hurtle, however, is doubtful to arrive soon. “While there are legal restrictions on th e use of DNA and fingerprints, which are ‘personally-identifying,’ there currently are no restrictions on the use of human-associated bacteria to identify individuals,” Fierer said. “This is an issue we think needs to be considered.”

Nathaniel Burney, a white-collar criminal defense lawyer in New York, is not getting excited. He says, "...the media took this modest finding and blew it way out of proportion. The study’s authors insist that the project 'is still in its preliminary stages.' The media make it sound like we’ll be seeing this stuff in court before we know it. The fact is that using microbial DNA to link a suspect to a crime scene is not going to be a reality any time soon, if ever." Burney says the uniqueness of your bacteria being truly singular is very much an open question. And he points out that bacteria is functionally different on different parts of the body, so coming up with isolated bacterium would be a nightmare for comparison.

Still, it’s an interesting idea considering the possibility; because like that rhino, we all have a symbiotic relationship with the bacteria riding on our own skins.


Resources:

Next in Forensics: Bacterial 'Fingerprints' US News and World Report

For more information: The findings appear in an issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

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The Arrogance of Psychopaths

by Pat Brown

People often wonder how smart psychopaths can make such stupid mistakes that cause them to get caught for their crimes and make it easy for the state to get a conviction. In one word: arrogance.

Arrogance is going to put Prince George's County, Maryland's County Executive Jack Johnson behind bars for the rest of his life and we who live in his jurisdiction are ecstatic. Jack has a massive ego, and he ran this county like the corrupt leader of a poor African nation. In spite of this, Johnson has been in office for almost eight years. Why the voters here reelected this scumbag, I will never understand. During his two administrations, Johnson has contributed to the demise and bad reputation of our county by giving his unqualified buddies large contracts, ignoring the requirement that these jobs have to be bid on and the work given to the company with the best offer. He and his wife have been arrested for tampering with evidence and he is accused of taking large kickbacks for giving his friends numerous deals that they would not have won if they had gone through the required process.

Graft, extortion and corruption have been rampant in Prince George's County for a very long time. A number of politicians have been arrested in the last few years for using their appointments to pad their pockets. In spite of these arrests, the ever arrogant Johnson thought he was above it all.

The height of his brain-clouding arrogance was Jack Johnson's incredibly stupid last few minutes before he and his wife were arrested. As the FBI descended on his home, his wife called him in a panic and this is the conversation that ensued:

"Don't answer it [the door]," Jack Johnson told his wife, according to the records. He told her to go to a bedroom drawer and grab a check from a developer--believed to be for $100,000, agents wrote. Leslie Johnson asked if she should get rid of cash that was in the drawer as well.

"Tear it up!" he said of the check. She asked about cash that was in the basement. "Put it in your bra and walk out or something...."

Mrs. Johnson must have gone from a 32B to a 38DD with almost $80,000 stuffed in her bra when she met the agents looking like Pamela Anderson. It really didn't matter, though, that she looked ridiculous. The FBI had it all on tape. They had been wiretapping Jack's cell phone since January of this year.

Now, one might think the county executive had no clue he was under suspicion. When others in his administration had been arrested and search warrants had been served in 2008 on the homes and offices of two of his top aides, ya think he would have had an inkling he was being watched. Heck, I was told over a year ago by folks in the know (that would be anyone on the Prince George's County police force who despises Johnson because of his strong anti-law enforcement attitude and any one of the employees of the county government) that he was going to go down.

He was so well known as a crook that when his office asked if Jack Johnson could come to my home to have a photo op with my pet pig (the famous Gwendolyn, who the county tried to send off to die after she had lived on my property for twenty years) I told them, "No, only one swine allowed on the property at a time."

Yet, Jack seemed to think he was above it all and kept right on wheeling and dealing. It apparently never occurred to him that his phones were tapped. Stupidity or arrogance? I would say arrogance.

Arrogant to the very end, Johnson vows to finish out the last three weeks of his term declaring he is innocent of any wrongdoing. His equally arrogant wife/partner-in-crime is planning to be sworn in on December 6 as one of our new council members.

County government "won't be impacted in the least," county spokesperson Jim Keary said.

Thanks, Jim! That is comforting....

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Donna Pendergast opens up for the WCI interview

By Kathryn Casey

Sometimes we take those around us for granted. That shouldn't be, but it's human nature. Then we step back, take a look and say, you know, I wonder if readers understand how truly amazing some of these women are. Donna Pendergast is one of those women. She's one of our stalwarts, here with us from day one. And she's been repeatedly described as one of the top prosecutors in the nation. I recently asked her to sit down for an interview. I'm sure you'll agree that Donna is one incredible woman.

KC: Why are you a prosecutor? What in your past led you to law school and the Michigan Attorney General’s office?

DP: I'm a prosecutor because I want to make a difference. When I look back on my life, I want to know that I helped people. It's a difficult and stressful job, but I feel like it's my calling. My father was a police officer in Detroit for 39 years and that is probably where I get my law enforcement bent. When I went to law school I realized quickly that I was comfortable and did well in the litigation-type classes and exercises. I decided that I wanted to spend my career in a courtroom. There is no area of law where you get as much courtroom time as criminal law. I sure didn't want to represent the other side. As I have been quoted as saying, "I understand that everyone is entitled to a defense. I just don't want to be the one providing it."

KC: You’re well known for prosecuting murder cases, which is understandable since you’ve taken on more than 100 such cases. You’ve never lost one, right?

DP: I have prosecuted hundreds of cases but my specialty is homicide cases. I have prosecuted 100 homicide cases through verdict and won 98 of those cases. The two that I lost--there really was very little evidence. In one case, the main witness recanted and we were left with an identification of the murderer by another witness who said he saw his face "in a dream." The judge dismissed the case at the preliminary examination. The Court of Appeals reversed that decision and ordered it to trial. The other case involved a voice ID made by a mentally challenged person--tough cases.

KC: Tell us about the first murder case you tackled?

DP: Edna Hollis killed her husband while he was sleeping in bed. We never really did learn her reason for doing so. I have my suspicions but they are based on speculation so I won't mention them. Edna fled the scene and was apprehended after a car accident. In a stranger than life twist, a passerby to the accident scene stole the murder weapon from the scene. It was never recovered.

KC: You’ve been called Michigan’s best prosecutor. What case taught you the most about your profession?

DP: That's a flattering characterization, but I don't know about the best-prosecutor thing. There are a lot of topnotch prosecutors out there. I just try to do my very best in every case. When you hold people's lives in your hands, you have to be able to look in the mirror after a trial and know that no matter what the result was, you did your very best. I honestly can say that I have never given less than 100%. But, trust me, it takes its toll.

KC: What was your most important lesson?

DP: Very early on I learned never to say to the surviving victims of a homicide case: "I understand how you feel," because as a homicide victim's family member once told me,"You could never understand how I feel." Instead I learned to say "I know that I could never understand how you feel, but I've been through this with other families before, and this is what I have seen in the past..." I've also learned that there is true evil in the world. How else do you explain something as diabolical as a serial murderer like Coral Eugene Watts? As I often tell juries, "There is no explanation for pure evil--just recognition of what it is."

KC: Looking back, you’ve handled so many sensational murder cases. In the Lady in the Lake case, the murder of Florence Unger, you had little forensic evidence, only the bits and pieces of circumstantial evidence to work with. Tell us about that case.

DP: The Unger case was a mammoth undertaking. The case was circumstantial, and the medical evidence was very complex. We were also up against a very well funded defense and multiple lawyers on the defense team. Fortunately, I had two great teammates. I'm usually the lone prosecutor in the courtroom, so this was a new experience. My two teammates were brought in specially for the trial. One teammate was my former boss when I was a county Assistant Prosecutor. He was brought onto the team because of his extensive medical malpractice knowledge. My other teammate was a former colleague at the same prosecutors office. My other teammate had been his boss as well. The second teammate had been involved in the child parental-rights termination proceedings against Mr. Unger, and was intimately familiar with the case like I was. In the nearly three years that it took to get the case to trial, he had left the prosecutor's office and gone into private practice. He came on board as a special prosecutor for that case only. It was such a wonderful experience having three very experienced trial lawyers working together for a common goal. When they came on the team we all agreed that I would be the ship's captain. We were all used to being the alpha dog in the courtroom and were not sure how it was going to work. It was a dream experience--we all worked together; there were no egos involved.

KC: Have the shows like CSI influenced juries? Do you have to account for the public’s fascination with forensics?

DP: There is no question that shows like CSI have influenced how juries think. In the Prosecution world, we call it the CSI effect. Jurors see things on TV and expect real life to be the same way. It's not. As prosecutors, we have to work very hard, beginning during jury selection, to educate jurors so that they understand that forensic evidence is not always left at a crime scene. In the case of serial murderer Coral Watts, he killed many many women and never left behind ANY forensic evidence at any of his crime scenes. In fact, as prosecutors we often present what we call negative evidence. Say there are no fingerprints at a crime scene. Often, I will call an expert in just to explain what factors figure in to whether or not fingerprints are left behind and how common it is for there to be no fingerprints at a crime scene or on a weapon, etc. Things like temperature, weather, humidity, the smoothness of the surface and whether or not a person is perspiring all affect whether or not a fingerprint is left behind. That's just one example.

KC: You’re also the prosecutor who kept serial killer Coral Eugene Watts from being released from prison. As I remember it, a paperwork mistake had cleared the way for his release. How anyone could consider releasing a serial killer from prison is beyond my imagination, but it was happening, and there was nothing anyone in the Lone Star State could do to stop it. That’s when you stepped in and prosecuted Watts in Michigan for the 25-year-old murder of Helen Dutcher. The pressure must have been overwhelming, knowing who Watts is, what he’s capable of, and that if you failed, a serial killer would go free. What was that like?

DP: The pressure was enormous. The stakes were so very high, and the case was covered live on national TV. Luckily, we had a judge who admitted similar evidence and testimony so I was able to present evidence of Watts' diabolical pattern of behavior. Thank goodness for an awesome appellate lawyer who wrote the brief and argued the motion to admit similar acts testimony. Being able to present that testimony at trial made a huge impact on the jurors.

KC: Like the Dutcher case, many of your cases are what we’d call cold cases, some decades old. What are the added challenges in these cases?

DP: The Dutcher case was 25 years old when it went to trial. A cold case presents a unique set of challenges. Memories fade and evidence can get lost. When a case is as old as the Dutcher case, oftentimes the witnesses are now deceased. As a prosecutor, you also have the unique challenge of explaining to jurors why the case is being prosecuted years later. As I often tell jurors in a cold case---justice is a concept that doesn't get old.

KC: Another of your sensational cold cases is that of the Duvall brothers, Raymond and Donald, whom you prosecuted for the 1985 murders of two Michigan hunters, cutting up their bodies and feeding them to the pigs. I have to admit that particular case reminded me of the old movie Deliverance. You prosecuted the Duvalls in 2003 and got convictions, resulting in life sentences. Looking back, how do you see the Duvall case? Why wasn’t it prosecuted sooner? How could anyone be that evil?

DP: The Duvall case has often been referred to in the same sentence as the word Deliverance. The Duvall case was like a Michigan legend. Two hunters went up hunting the weekend before Thanksgiving in 1985 and disappeared off the face of the earth. Their bodies and their vehicles were never found. I remember being in law school when the case happened. Every year when hunting season came around there would be stories in the newspaper and the case would be talked about. I, like everyone else, wondered what happened to them. I never dreamed that nearly two decades later I would be the one prosecuting the people who murdered the hunters. The case wasn't prosecuted earlier because everyone was afraid of the Duvall brothers--in fact, terrified of them. A very determined detective from the Michigan State Police found the eyewitness who eventually testified at trial. It took him two years to gain her confidence before she told what she saw. As it turns out, the case was prosecuted just in time. The key eyewitness died a year or so after the trial. There is no understanding of the evil in that case. It's evil, plain and simple.

KC: I know you’ve had a lot of tough cases, but what was the most challenging you’ve ever tackled? Why?

DP: The Mark Unger trial was the most difficult that I have tackled based on the complexity of the evidence and the length of the trial (nine weeks). However, there was a case when I was a Wayne County prosecutor that logistically was nearly as difficult. It was a case with three defendants who each had their own jury. To have three juries going at the same time is extremely difficult. To complicate things further, it was a case without a body, and the officer in charge of the case was arrested the night before the trial started. So, I was in the courtroom alone with no officer in charge to coordinate. That is an experience that I don't want to repeat.

KC: You’ve been portrayed in, I believe, four true crime books. As a crime writer, I’m wondering what that experience is like. If I popped in on your next trial, would you be glad to see me?

DP: When I'm in trial, I don't really notice the media once I launch into my case. A trial is all-consuming. If you start worrying about the media, it's going to affect your performance--and not in a good way. It is a strange experience to see yourself portrayed in print in a book. You ask yourself: "Wow. Do I come across like that?"

KC: I worry that spending so much time writing about terrible crimes affects the way I see those around me. I don’t honestly know if that’s good or bad, but do you have the same concerns? Do your experiences color your worldview?

DP: Seeing the terrible things that I do, you try not to let it affect you, but the truth is, it does. So much senseless violence and sadness and so little reason why. It has affected my worldview to the extent that I realize that evil is a very real thing. I am also a far more cautious person than I used to be. When I was young, I didn't think twice about day-to-day actions like getting out of my car to get gas at night. Now I do things like that only when absolutely necessary, and I'm always looking over my shoulder.

KC: I know there are victims and families living with incredible pain and struggling to get a prosecutor’s attention. They or their loved ones have been victimized, and they want the cases pursued. Can you give them any insight into the best way to approach authorities?

DP: Approach them politely and document what they say. Stay in frequent contact but don't become a pest. Above all, never give up. I have prosecuted three cases nearly 30 years old and many more decades or so old. There is always hope that the critical piece of the puzzle will fall into place.

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

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A Lethal Dose of Water

By Deborah Blum

One of the most famous sayings in toxicology is this: The dose makes the poison.

In other words, a milligram of the notorious poison arsenic is unlikely to kill you. Make that 200 milligrams and a cemetery plot awaits. Seems obvious, right? But, what if we're talking about something that is not a poison, a benign substance--say, a drink of cold water? Let's make it really pure water, free of arsenic and any other toxic substances.

If the size of the drink increases enough, for example, if instead of drinking a standard 8-ounce glass of water, you gulp down 160 ounces, then can we call water a poison? Wonderful, healthy water? Absolutely yes.

People have been convicted of homicide in water poisoning cases. Children have died after being punished by parents, or even babysitters, who forced them to drink more than a gallon of water in less than an hour. Athletes have died after gulping down too much water. Fraternity pledges have been killed by water poisoning (also called water intoxication) after hazing events.

A year ago, a jury awarded more than $16 million to the family of a young woman who died of water poisoning after entering a Sacramento radio station contest called "Hold your wee for a Wii." The 28-year-old contestant had been trying to win the game console for her children. She died at home several hours after coming in second in the contest. The jury noted that even callers to the radio show had warned against the stunt.

What happens in a water overdose? The kidneys are overwhelmed by the tidal wave of incoming fluid and cannot cycle the excess away. The cells in the body begin to bloat with excess fluid. Electrolyte balances are disrupted, meaning that normal chemical metabolism falters. Tissues start to swell, most disastrously in the brain. The radio show contest even complained during the show of a blinding headache. A coma follows and, if the imbalances cannot be corrected, then comes death.

So the dose does make the poison rather dramatically in the case of water, changing it from a safe and healthy substance to a lethal one. With a classic poison like arsenic, the point is a little different. Put simply, a person is more likely to survive a low dose than a high one.

I recently read a piece by a physician urging athletes to be careful not to drink too much water when they're rehydrating. He titled his piece "The Balancing Act." But, it's really just another way of saying that the dose makes the poison.

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LUST FOR JUSTICE: The Radical Life & Law of J. Tony Serra

by Cathy Scott

"His trials have garnered him acclaim as one of the greatest criminal-defense attorneys of the century. He's the white tornado in court, a semantic samyrai, a shaman, a bard, a hero to some, a trickster to others, and always a force to be reckoned with, respected by all."

Such is the description of Tony Serra, a renowned, pony-tailed, radical criminal defense attorney in the just-released nonfiction legal biography LUST FOR JUSTICE: The Radical Life & Law of J. Tony Serra.

Courtroom artist, and now author, Paulette Frankl spent 17 years following Serra--and tracking him down--from courtroom to courtroom. LUST FOR JUSTICE is a culmination of those years.

It was in one of those courtrooms, this one in Las Vegas, where I first met Paulette. It was 2000 and I was in Clark County District Court to cover the Ted Binion case--the first of two Binion trials--and Paulette was there to sketch and paint the goings-on for news outlets. We became fast friends. During a dinner downtown near the courthouse after a day in court, I vividly remember Paulette telling me about the book and her work-in-progress. I also remember her saying, "I'm not a writer." She undersold herself; Paulette is every bit a writer with a powerfully descriptive voice, as evidenced in the pages of LUST FOR JUSTICE.

During the Binion prelim hearing for the retrial of defendants Sandra Murphy and Richard Tabish, who were accused of murdering casino heir Binion, I met Tony Serra. He had taken Tabish on as a client after Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz successfully argued before the Nevada Supreme Court for a retrial. Earlier, when a phone call came in to Serra's office asking Tony to consider defending Tabish, Paulette happened to be sitting in Tony's office.

"Take the case," Paulette told him. After all, she had first-hand knowledge after sitting through every moment of the first lengthy trial--the biggest trial, which ended in guilty verdicts, Las Vegas had seen in recent history. She believed the defendants needed a lawyer like Tony on their side. For the second trial, with Tony at the helm, the case ended in murder acquittals for Serra's client, Tabish, as well as co-defendant Murphy. Binion died from an overdose of prescription and street drugs, which Binion had himself purchased. The prosecution, however, charged Tabish and Murphy with forcing the drugs on Binion, despite no physical evidence against them.

In the midst of the retrial, with nightly prepping for the next day's proceedings, Serra took time out to attend an evening fundraiser where Paulette's art was featured. Attending the event with Serra was his Binion defense team, Shari Greenberger and Anna Ling.

Paulette Frankl's book, with a foreword by attorney Gerry Spence, had been hatched more than a decade earlier. And while she had interviewed Serra multiple times, the idea and content for the book morphed from her early interviews and Tony's soliloquies to the completed literary work we see today, which vividly covers Serra in action in the courtroom.

Yet, Paulette doesn't paint a 100-percent positive portrayal of Serra. She includes the flawed man as well. Despite his foibles, Serra has a following that reaches far and wide. He was the subject of the 1989 movie True Believer, starring James Woods and Robert Downey, Jr., about a Chinatown (San Francisco) murder case in which Serra won an acquittal for defendant Chol Soo Lee. He also successfully represented Huey Newton, leader of the Black Panther Party in a murder trial and represented individuals from groups as diverse and politically charged as the White Panthers, Hells Angels, Earth First! and New World Liberation Front, cases which included clients clients like Patrick "Hootie" Croy, who was wrongly convicted, as well as Ellie Nesler and Symbionese Liberation Army members Sara Jane Olson, Russell Little and Michael Bortin. Serra won the Trial Lawyer of the Year award in 2003 from Trial Lawyers for Public Justice for his successful litigation of Judi Bari against the FBI.

I am so proud of Paulette and her tireless, nearly two-decade effort in capturing lightning in a bottle and pulling together this beautifully written tome. And I'm proud to call her friend. LUST FOR JUSTICE is, as are Paulette's paintings, a brilliant work of art. She is, after all, an artist first, and the artist's brush is evident in her words alongside her illustrations of Tony, which are sprinkled throughout the text.

Tony, a self-described "street lawyer," is anti-establishment, taking a vow of poverty early on not to become a rich lawyer off of the backs of those who need a fair hand in the criminal justice system. He drives old cars, wears second-hand suits, and lives weekends with his longtime girlfriend in the sleepy beach town of Bolinas and weekdays in a modest North Beach apartment in San Francisco near his co-op law office. He owns nothing and only asks for payment to cover his basic expenses. Still, his vow of poverty landed him in hot water a couple of times with the IRS for not filing tax returns.


When Tony, celebrated by filmmakers and fellow lawyers as an advocate for the downtrodden, was sent to the Lompoc Federal Prison Camp for 10 months in 2006 for tax evasion, he assisted fellow inmates with their legal appeals. Also while incarcerated, he corresponded with Paulette. At one point, Paulette sent Tony a painting she titled "Desert Landscape." His letter in return was simple and revealed that at the age of around 70--he won't answer the age question--he was looking forward to returning to the courtroom.

Got your "Desert Landscape." Your art work adorns my gray barracks' cabinet wall. Gives me a lift sometimes when the mind drips dreary.

I'm four-tenths finished--it will be over soon. I'm leaner and stronger. I'm ready for my murder trial re-entry in March. I've had a sufficient "retreat"; I'm ripe to join the struggle again.

Indeed, upon Tony's release from prison, he filed, with three attorneys, a class-action lawsuit seeking minimum wages for himself and other inmates, citing slave wages as unconstitutional. Serra's fight for the underdog goes on, and Paulette artfully covered his unwavering quest for justice in this painstaking work.

The book launch for LUST FOR JUSTICE is Saturday, Nov. 20, at the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco, where Serra is speaking and signing books with Frankl. Order the book direct here.

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