Golden Tamarack
Echos from chainsaws and guns
Autumn has arrived.
Fall is in full swing here in Grant County. We took a break from Real Life and did a bit of wood cutting/photo shoot. Even though the murder trial is over, there's still the sentencing to prepare for and an interesting e-mail to repond to. More State v. Bratcher posts coming later this week. In the meantime, enjoy autumn photos from our little paradise.
GUILTY BUT INSANE!!!!!
This is just what we wanted!
Jessie will be going to a PTSD treatment center and not prison!
WE WON!!!!!
Closing arguments happened a day early, late Tuesday afternoon. I hate closing arguments. I always get ticked off at closing arguments. I think this is the part where attorneys get a bad reputation. The DA starts off with his opinion of how the trial had gone and what he thinks the jury should focus on. Then the defense attorney gets a turn and this closing argument could be a bit harsh depending on whether the DA’s closing was an honorable one or was a pissy one. Then the DA gets to rebut the defense’s closing and that could be REALLY pissy depending on how the defense responded to the DA’s first argument. So can you imagine what it was like near the end of the day Tuesday? Well, it wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been but I was stressed. I don’t like the DA insinuating that our doctors are lying or their diagnoses are wrong. I don’t like listening to him attack my lovely hubby. Actually, what can the guy do? This case should never have gone to trial and it did because the DA wanted a specific outcome that had nothing to do with the findings of the doctors on both sides. His only option was to hit below the belt and hope that he was able to fool the jury. Folks, this is what happens when a smart person with power issues end up with power. Now the jury has been out for a day and a half and we have no idea how much longer they’ll take.
Markku and I are spending today at home. I thought I’d be at the office for the afternoon but I just couldn’t make it. Markku crashed yesterday and I’m crashing today. He’s out in his wood shop cutting boards and I’m in the house doing a little bit of laundry, a little bit of cleaning, a little bit of writing, a little bit of yarn shopping, a little bit of a ton of things, getting absolutely nothing done. Sigh. I’ve just gotta snap out of it. I can’t even decide between this lace weight merino at $19.95 for 1531 yards or this lace weight alpaca at $4.29 for 437 yards. I mean, what is THAT about? Cripes! CHOOSE for Pete’s sakes! Sigh. Maybe I need more coffee.
It’s time to start paying attention to myself. I need to pay attention to how I’m processing everything that has to do with this case and see what colors and patterns feels close to explaining how I see all this. Did that last sentence make any sense? Maybe it’s time to start dying my own yarn so I won’t be limited to other people’s colors. Maybe I need to get a book on dying yarn, and maybe a DVD too so I can do it right. I think I need to buy special pots so I won’t be ruining any that we use for cooking. Don’t I need rubber gloves and a mask too? So what do you guys think of this yarn? And how about these dyes? Man, I looooooove planning new projects! I’m feeling a bit better already. I think I’m going to just log off, forget the housework and dive into my pile of UFOs (Un-Finished Objects).
I am having a problem posting daily on this topic. It's soooo hard not to be too negative. I'll try posting again tomorrow morning after coffee. In the meantime, here's a link to the most recent article in our local weekly newspaper.
Warm kitty on lap
Markku typing arguments
Monday night at work
BWEEPBWEEPBWEEPBWEEPBWEEP!!!!!
Tonight’s post contains a couple of profane words in regard to the idiotic rabbit trails this trial has gone down. If you are sensitive to profanity, come back tomorrow.
So I was going to write every day and look what happened. I skipped Friday night and didn’t even try to make it up over the weekend. Bad, bad blogger.
The trial today and last Friday were all about the doctors. You see, nobody is arguing over whether Jessie killed the guy or not. The whole trial is about what society is going to do with him. The DA wants our client in prison for as many years as possible. We believe he is a mentally ill Iraq veteran who needs to go to a special PTSD clinic instead of the state spending thousands of dollars per year keeping him ill in prison so when he comes out 25 years later, he’ll do something awful again. There are about 7-8 doctors who have said our client has PTSD and needs treatment. The DA, at the last minute, found a doctor who DOES NOT SPECIALIZE IN PTSD ISSUES LIKE ALL THE OTHERS but was willing to say ALL those other doctors were wrong and our client is not mentally ill.
Now let’s just ponder for a moment here on how fucked up this situation is. OK, if, for example, I had something weird growing on my right forearm so I went to a dermatologist to check it out. He said it’s A Big Ass Wart but he doesn’t know why it’s so big so he’s going to have me see other doctors who are dermatologist and some of them specialize on Big Ass Warts so we can come up with effective treatment. After a half a dozen dermatologists all agree, the insurance company decides that they don’t like unconventional treatment so they hire their own doctor to check me out and very quickly punch out a report that refutes the dermatologists. This Dumb Ass Doctor has very little experience with Big Ass Warts but he IS an expert with arms. The Dumb Ass Doctor decides that the details of the Big Ass Wart has very little to do with the function of the arm so I’m probably lying about my symptoms and that Big Ass Wart on my arm probably isn’t REALLY a Big Ass Wart anyway. So, the insurance company should just disregard all the dermatologists and I should just do something more conventional with my arm instead. This is the logic behind the DA’s case. Sigh. I need a fucking vacation.
It is late, late, late. We’ve just got to get out of this office and get some sleep. We’ll may have closing arguments tomorrow, which is early. I’ll give you a somewhat biased opinion on both attorneys tomorrow.
Thursday was Jessie Bratcher’s birthday. It was also our wedding anniversary. With all this good karma built into the day, the trial had to go well this day, don’t you think?
And you know what? Thursday was alright.
Markku’s strategy includes showing how much the war in Iraq had changed Jessie, so his non-expert witnesses all testified about their experiences with Jessie’s personality. The first and the most memorable witness was Jessie’s grandfather who raised him since he was three years old. This man is the kind of person people would stereotype as the traditional sweet, kind, innocently wise grandpappy from the country. He is dying from emphysema so, just in case the grandfather didn’t last until trial, Markku and the DA had taped a deposition last summer to use in trial. Well, obviously determination kept him going and he toddled into the courtroom when it was his turn to testify. The grandfather was amazingly thin, overwhelmed by his plaid flannel shirt and dark, clean Dickies. His papery white skin and near translucent hair made his little blue eyes pop like cornflower blue crocus buds peeping out of a snowy garden. His speech was animated and slow, simple and solid. Whenever I spend some time with this grandfather, I leave our conversation strangely affected. This man has a level of innocence, simplicity and honesty that is, well, to me, quite spiritual. I become somewhat humbled and reflective every time I listen to the grandfather. I wonder how the jury was affected by his testimony.
So are you guys wondering what we did for our 15th wedding anniversary in the middle of the week and in the middle of a murder trial?
None of your business.
I guess the DA’s witnesses were mainly supporting facts that everybody knew already. We all knew that our client shot the poor guy, that’s not what this trial is about. He was just flying through his witnesses and ended up about a day ahead of schedule. He even called on about half of OUR witnesses and got them over with. If he hadn’t try to fill his time with so many of ours, he would’ve been over in a day and a half instead of the three days he scheduled. Sigh. When a trial lawyer with not enough trial experience goes to trial without a trial lawyer with more experience helping you, you do things like misjudge how much time you need for your own witnesses.
Wanna know what all this meant to us? It meant we had to re-schedule as many of our witnesses as we could and have them show up a day early. Well, cripes already! Can you imagine being a witness, subpoenaed into appearing in court. You’re notified by the attorney about a month in advance so you can tell your employer/family/babysitter you wouldn’t be available within a short block of days. Then, the week before trial, you’re told which day you’re going to be there so you can be even more helpful for your employer/family/babysitter. Then two days before you’re suppose to appear, you’re told everything is moved up a day. Another sigh.
One of our witnesses that the DA called was a BIG mistake. He called Jessie’s platoon sergeant. To me, this man is the stereotypical military hero/GI Joe. The guy is chiseled from top to bottom, in excellent shape. He stands, walks, sits tall, even though I don’t think he’s even 5”10’. His mannerisms are impeccably respectful and he’s obviously smart. He’s not young but he would probably still be in the military if it wasn’t for the medical discharge. He said on the stand that only 3 of his men were killed but 40 out of 110 were wounded. When he started to describe how Jessie’s best friend died, the sergeant started to cry. He said this guy was his best friend too. It was absolutely stunning to watch GI Joe cry.
This witness was not helpful for the prosecution’s argument.
Check out how all this has been published so far in our local paper, Blue Mountain Eagle.
The DA here in Grant County reminds me a little of a judge back in Southern Oregon. This judge was a pretty bright guy and he thought he was too. One problem he had was he thought he was so smart that he tried to impress everybody by zeroing in on an obscure detail inadvertently brought up in court and spend an annoying amount of time diverting the court’s attention away from the big picture and obsess over this little tiny detail. Our DA reminded me of this judge this morning during opening arguments.
He’s such a nice, quiet, bright guy, our DA. So soft spoken and pale. Early on in his opening arguments, I watched him slide into his routine of quiet, focused attention over detail.
“So at 8:43 am, blah blah blah blah blah . . . Now at 9:10 am, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. At 9: 25 am, the defendant blah blah blah blah blah blah . . . . “
When the DA started in on something that happened on 11:10 am, the judge handed him a hand-held microphone because the DA was so quiet that the court reporter was unable to record his opening argument. This went on for about an hour and a half. We all got a well- deserved break after that. Then it was Markku’s turn.
Oh, I don’t’ know. What can I say about my lovely fuzzy hubby’s opening argument other than he was absolutely brilliant, speaking passionately about how our country turns our young men into very efficient killing machines but doesn’t bother to re-program them when they return from Iraq or Afghanistan. He brought up how the VA hospital, the defense’s doctor and the DA’s doctor all confirmed that our client had PTSD and he was insane at the moment he committed the crime but the DA didn’t like the findings of his own doctor so he shopped for one who would tell him what he wanted to hear for a price paid for by the county. Markku was such an excellent speaker, so captivating and dynamic. But you know what? I’ll bet that at least 75% of all the people in that room had something else on their minds, muscling out the most outstanding opening argument presented by my most wonderful Markku. Wanna know what that thing is?
Deer tags.
Hunting season opened last weekend and everybody around here are just gaga over it all. One of the cops questioned after opening arguments asked Markku if he’s going to be called back when the Defense takes over the witness stand later in the week. The guy was truly worried over how this trial was going to be cutting into his hunting time. This is Sooooo John Day! Murder trial or no murder trial, Grant County Culture prevails!
Man, I just love living here.
So Markku tells me there was this juror who had an argument with the judge.
Doesn’t that first sentence just FLOOR you already? I mean, have you guys ever watched Judge Judy? Can you imagine what she would do to you if you even LOOKED like you were just THINKING about arguing with her? Cripes!
So OK, Markku tells me there was this juror who had an argument with the judge.
The two attorneys needed to narrow the selection pool down to the last 40 people before the final 12 plus 2 alternates are picked out. It was almost 3:00 pm and they had only 17 people picked. The judge asked if anybody would rather come back tomorrow if jury selection wasn’t done by 5 pm. About 15 people raised their hands. Then he asked if anybody would rather stay until the bitter end instead of finishing off tomorrow. About a thousand people raised their hands so the judge decided to keep going if they didn’t finish by 5 pm. Then one woman requested to say something to the judge. What she said was her job began at 9:30 pm so she’d like to get at least a couple of hours of sleep before she took off for work. Whaaa? So this woman was planning on sitting in on a murder trial 8 hours, go home and take a short nap, go to work for 8 hours, come home and take a short nap, and then sit in on another 8 hours of the murder trial. She was planning on doing this every day for 8 working days. Well THAT should make an alert and helpful jury member and an alert and safe employee, don’t you think? So what did the judge say to her? He said, ”You’re not going to work tonight.”
And so the argument begins.
The judge is such a nice guy. You know, being the Bitch Bigger Than My Dog, I would’ve handled this differently. There’s this perfectly legitimate issue called Contempt of Court that would’ve been very satisfying for me and probably everybody else in that jury pool to toss into the discussion and have that ignorant, unpatriotic, disrespectful middle-aged juvenile wait out the rest of the jury selection process in the jail next door.
But, you know, it’s only my opinion and I could be a bit out of line, this event happening during the first day of an 8-day trial process and all. It’s not like we’re all a bit stressed or tired or anything like that. Sigh. Next post coming up this evening.
First crisp clear fall day
So unintentionally
Mark first day of trial
State v. Jessie Bratcher started today with jury selection. I'm planning on posting something about this trial every day for the next week and a half. I'll start tonight with thoughts on jury selection.
