Subj : Constitutional Rights??? To : ALL From : JIM HOLSONBACK Date : Mon Feb 26 2001 09:10 am Hello to ALL. For sure, the TECH echo isn't the place to post this - Here is an article which started on Page 1 of yesterday's Orlando Sentinel, forwarded without comment from me (for now). Sorry some of the punctuation got messed up in translation from HTML. Not much need to worry if end of msg is truncated; you'll get the pixture in the first few paragraphs. - - -JimH. ************ Death was coming and cops knew it - Henry Pierson Curtis - of the Sentinel Staff - - February 25, 2001 Lily Levy’s killing took practice. Three gunshots to the head didn’t work. Neither did pistol-whipping nor choking her. She survived so many potentially lethal injuries one day last summer that Orange County investigators called her "the miracle lady." Then a month after the July 11 attack, Levy did what up to 80 percent of domestic violence victims do: She refused to testify against the man accused of attacking her. The Orange-Osceola State Attorney’s Office responded by doing what it had done 13 prior times since 1993 when Levy’s boyfriend -- the suspect in her shooting -- had been accused of brutalizing women. It dropped the charges. Levy’s boyfriend, Mark Simmons, is classified as a habitual violent felony offender. His criminal history spans 20 years, 11 aliases and more than 60 pages. Records recount attack after attack on women using knives, a pistol, a metal pipe, a brick and a frying pan. But no one would testify against the man nicknamed "Treacherous." Orange County sheriff’s investigators warned prosecutors that a computer profile of abusers showed that Simmons had a very high likelihood for killing Levy if given a second chance. It had no effect. On Oct. 23, the office of State Attorney Lawson Lamar dropped the attempted murder charge. For a 14th time, Simmons went free. Two days after Christmas, Levy was found stabbed and strangled to death. Apopka police have charged Simmons with her murder. Prosecutors say they did everything they could. Investigators didn’t give them enough evidence, they say. Her refusal to testify against Simmons made it tough to prove the case. Still, you want to ask: Could prosecutors have tried harder? Door kicked in On March 6, 1983, north of Orlando, three women in the mostly poor, mostly black community of south Apopka gave statements saying that 19-year-old Mark Simmons kicked in the door of their house and pistol-whipped his common-law wife, Castella Justice. When all three fought back, Simmons fired two shots into the living room, one witness wrote. Two of Simmons’ children and three other toddlers were playing on the floor. It looked like an open-and-shut case for Simmons’ first recorded arrest as an adult. But Justice and her two friends changed their minds about testifying. The case collapsed, establishing a pattern that would continue almost uninterrupted for two decades. It’s been 18 years, but Justice would not talk about Simmons when contacted recently. Neither would Simmons’ second wife. She picked up where Justice left off, accusing her husband of beatings and other abuse at least 14 times in the 1990s. Thirteen times she refused to testify against him, leading to 13 dismissals. In the 14th case, prosecutors accepted a no-contest plea and Simmons received probation. Office files show that prosecutors thought Simmons eventually would kill her. "Let’s set up an interview with this victim before she ends up on a slab," a prosecutor wrote in reference to a 1997 case accusing Simmons of beating the woman into a stupor with a bottle and then raping her. Weeks later, an unidentified staffer jotted a note saying the woman declined to testify and the case had been dropped, "but he’s going to kill her." Confounding their predictions, she survived. Now serving time on a drug charge, the 35-year-old woman remains loyal to Simmons. "I always loved my husband and I always will love my husband," she said in an interview at the Orange County Jail. "Whenever my husband’s wrong, he’s wrong. But I’m not one to judge him. You understand what I’m saying?" She wanted to help him Love blossomed between Levy and Simmons until money disappeared from her purse. When they met last year, she was working at an indoor-plant nursery. He was loading trucks. At age 35, she had returned home to south Apopka after 13 years in Mississippi. Never married, she had left heavy drinking and an abusive man behind on the Gulf Coast. "She felt like she could help Mark," said Levy’s sister, Eddie Lou Carter. But the money started to vanish. And then Carter noticed their cigarette lighters were always empty, the sort of thing that happens with a crack addict in the house. Finally, the couple’s car vanished. Levy told police that Simmons took her purse and sold their car to buy drugs. When he called on the telephone July 11, they hadn’t talked in weeks. He told Carter that he had bought another car for Levy. At 8 a.m., Levy borrowed a car and left, saying she was meeting Simmons. At 10:30 a.m., she drove into the yard of a house on West 17th Street in south Apopka. Blood covered her face and clothing. Simmons’ mother was sitting outside the house. "Mark shot me," she told her the woman. A teen also heard her blame "Mark." She said he shot her with a 22.-caliber revolver. At Orlando Regional Medical Center, Levy told the same story to doctors, a chaplain and a social worker. X-rays showed Levy had been shot three times at close range. Lead fragments spattered from front to back on her skull, according to doctors’ notes. Other injuries included scalp cuts from pistol blows and reddening around the neck. In the emergency room, Levy gave the first of two sworn statements to the sheriff’s Domestic Violence Unit. A week later, she gave the second, more detailed account of the attack. According to both statements, Levy said Simmons lured her out to buy a new car but had her drive to an uninhabited, dead-end road. Once there, he asked her to stop and retrieved something from the base of a tree. Returning to the car, Simmons started arguing with her about the robbery charge she filed, saying it would send him to prison for life as a career criminal. "When they get me, you won’t know ‘cause I’m going to blow your ass away," Levy recalled him threatening. "By the time I turned around and I looked at him and he had the gun in my face like pow." Shot twice on the front seat, Levy said she was pulled from the car and shot once more in the head. Then Simmons hit her over and over with the gun before choking her, she said. Evidence technicians found Levy’s blood where she said Simmons had attacked her. Arrested hours later, Simmons told deputies without being asked that he had gone car-shopping with Levy that morning but had not shot her. She hugs detective Detective Mark Hussey, who investigated the shooting, remembers Levy hugging and thanking him for saving her life. At the time, he had no idea the case would never go to court. A member of the sheriff’s Domestic Violence Unit, he is one of six investigators working with a sergeant and four officers who help victims through the court process. Weeks after the shooting, Assistant State Attorney Candra Ogden told him the case likely would be dropped because Levy would not testify. She was working under a deadline because Simmons had demanded a speedy trial. That meant the case had to go to court by mid-October. Despite Ogden’s doubts, Hussey wanted to go to trial. "We’ve got a step-by-step taped statement where she [Levy] told exactly how it happened," Hussey said. "Obviously, she didn’t shoot herself." Hussey also told Ogden about a computer-based personality profile used extensively by domestic violence units. The profile ranked Simmons as a "high" 8 on a 10-scale measuring the risk of his harming or killing Levy if released. "These are all the good things we have," Hussey remembered saying about Levy’s medical records, a 911 tape and the sworn statements. Ogden promised to look at the case again and get back to him, Hussey said. He never heard from her again. Many cases vanish Domestic-violence investigators are used to seeing their arrests evaporate at Lamar’s office. Last year, nearly 60 percent of the 9,600 cases they filed in Orange and Osceola counties were dropped almost as soon as they reached the door. That means 5,551 cases never survived a first review by prosecutors. The office prosecuted 2,657 misdemeanor and felony cases during the year, but close to half -- 1,153 -- were dropped by year’s end, sometimes for the kind of witness problems in Levy’s case. Of the remaining cases, the office accepted pleas by suspects 1,416 times. Judges weighed in, dismissing a handful of cases. In the end, just 69 of the thousands of incidents investigated by police agencies in the counties went to trial. Only 30 ended in guilty verdicts. Bill Vose, Lamar’s chief administrator, said those numbers reflect the high standard of proof required of prosecutors in court. Police make arrests based on probable cause -- a reasonable belief that a crime has been committed -- but prosecutors must prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. "That’s what we’ve been trying to tell cops for the last seven years -- making an arrest does not make a conviction. We need evidence," Vose said. "When the police don’t come up with evidence, juries don’t buy it." It makes little sense to pursue cases that have no chance of conviction, Vose said, so the State Attorney’s Office focuses on those it thinks it can win. "Our job is to do justice. And justice is successfully prosecuting abusers," Vose said. "And I think this unit is very successful. Sure, could it be more successful? Of course it could. But they are very successful compared to the past." Assistant State Attorney Annette Schultz, who reviewed the case for Vose, said prosecutors faced all sorts of problems trying to convict Simmons. They couldn’t find Levy to compel her appearance in court, even with the help of her sisters. Her sworn statements could not be admitted in court without her being there, Vose and Schultz said. None of what Levy told the hospital staff would be allowed as testimony either. The statement "Mark shot me," wasn’t any good because Levy didn’t say Mark who, Schultz said. Prosecutors sent letters to Simmons mother but she would not testify. Then they couldn’t find the teenage neighbor, Schultz said. Sheriff’s investigators never found the gun used to shoot Levy and lab tests of Simmons’ clothes when arrested turned up no blood or other incriminating evidence. Asked how the office would have proceeded had Levy died in the July attack, Vose suggested that the Sheriff’s Office would have done a better job of investigating a killing. In domestic violence situations, he said, "They don’t do that 110 percent that they do in a homicide case." Sheriff’s Lt. Mike Easton, who supervises both the homicide and domestic violence units, bristled at the suggestion that his deputies fell short. "No one even contacted the Domestic Violence squad to ask for assistance to try to make a better case," Easton said. Prosecutor’s office criticized In 1997 a statewide Governor’s Task Force on Domestic and Sexual Violence issued a report highly critical of how Lamar’s office handled domestic violence cases. Findings included little to no training in domestic violence for prosecutors; the absence of a domestic violence unit; and tension between prosecutors and police. The panel also faulted Lamar for dropping an inordinate number of cases for insufficient evidence without trying to develop those cases. Nothing like that interfered with the Levy case, Vose said. Domestic violence specialists contacted for this story declined to critique the Levy case. But they said they would have prosecuted the July 11 attack. "If you wait for the victim to testify, you’re going to find her in a body bag," said San Diego City Attorney Casey Guinn, who started the nationwide legal trend in California in the late 1980s to pursue cases with uncooperative victims. Citing a study released several years ago, Guinn said the fatal threat to the victim jumps significantly with an abuser who has had three or more contacts with the court system. "Once you get to 13 you’re off the charts for lethality," he said, referring to the dropped cases involving Simmons. In Florida, Jacksonville often is cited as a city where prosecutors and police cooperate to aggressively fight domestic violence. The State Attorney’s Office routinely prosecutes cases where victims refuse to testify. There, unlike Orlando, domestic violence prosecutors meet regularly with sheriff’s investigators and deputies. "I don’t mean to sound callous but, from the beginning, we assume the victim is dead," said Laura Baer, who leads the Duval County state attorney’s Special Assault Unit. "We would have handled that case differently." Unit members get to know deputies who investigate domestic violence and are on 24-hour call to respond to crimes. Prosecutors also lecture patrol officers on how to investigate domestic violence. The rapport with law enforcement helps build strong cases, Baer said. Jacksonville deputies present their domestic violence cases to prosecutors in face-to-face meetings where they can pick over the evidence and brainstorm over what to do. That’s a big difference from Orange County, where sheriff’s investigators send their paperwork to the State Attorney’s Office and usually don’t learn the outcome until the case has been dropped and they get a notice in the mail, investigators said. In Orlando, several cases have been prosecuted successfully without cooperation from victims, according to Schultz, who leads the state attorney’s Domestic Violence Unit. Her group only handles misdemeanor assaults, however. Felony domestic assaults are assigned to senior prosecutors who handle a variety of violent crimes. Lamar’s office does not keep track of the "victimless" felony cases it prosecutes. Sisters want justice Ten days before she died, Levy summoned a deputy sheriff to the home she still shared with Simmons. Her boyfriend was gone. With a swollen lip, she said Simmons had attacked her when she announced she wanted to leave him. She said she was tired of being abused and would testify in court. On Dec. 27, a passerby found her body in woods about a mile from her home. Simmons, who is awaiting his trial, refused to be interviewed about the case. Back in south Apopka, two of Levy’s sisters read the Bible and compare what it tells them about justice and what they’ve seen in Orange County. "I don’t understand their laws, their rules," said Christine Simpson, recalling how she went to court before Levy’s death to help prosecutors. "When we were talking to that lady, she was flipping through her papers and she’s got her [Lily] laying up there in color with bullets in her head. What more proof did she need?" Henry Pierson Curtis can be reached at hcurtis@orlandosentinel ..com or at 407-420-5257. Copyright © 2001, Orlando Sentinel .... Bother, said Pooh, as Eeyore violated Piglet's constitutional rights --- MultiMail/MS-DOS v0.32 * Origin: The NeverEnding BBS/Deltona,FL/407-860-7720/bbs.never (1:3618/555) .