The Ramsey Indictment

I was out of town last week, but I can't let the story of the Ramsey indictment pass without comment.

The published indictments were met mostly with a yawn from the mainstream media (in fairness, it was a bit like Geraldo opening the Titanic safe: lots of build up and not a lot of substance), but I can't forget the media frenzy that surrounded the Ramsey story when it was "fresh".

I am sure that you are familiar with the bare bones of the facts: JonBenet, a six-year-old beauty queen, was found strangled to death in her parent's basement the day after Christmas. There were no/few signs of an intruder (no footprints in the snow, nothing stolen, etc.) and several clues that were interpreted as incriminating toward the family (a paintbrush belonging to the mother was used in the strangulation, the ransom note was written on stationary from inside the house and included a specific amount of money that only a family member would know about). The case was a media sensation for months until it finally died down. The mother, Patsy Ramsey, died a few years later, still under a cloud of suspicion. The father and brother moved on with their lives.

The indictment charged the parents with child abuse (essentially that they placed their daughter in a dangerous situation), but don't give many clues about the evidence that purportedly backed these charges. Much has been made of the tension between police and prosecutors in the Ramsey case. There is an insinuation that the Ramsey family "got to" the prosecutors, and/or that they received special treatment because of their wealth and position. I haven't seen any of the news outlets discuss how very, painfully easy it is to obtain indictments. As a former prosecutor, the DA's failure to sign/file the indictment indicates that they did not believe that they could meet the necessary standard of proof to bring the matter to trial, not a sinister plot.

In my jurisdiction, a grand jury indictment is obtained when the prosecutor presents evidence, in complete secrecy, to a panel of citizens who meet at a regular time to consider crimes alleged to have occurred within their jurisdiction. (Sometimes, the defendants are already in custody. For example, in my former jurisdiction, an individual could be arrested on a "complaint". This was an affidavit sworn out by a law enforcement office stating the crime alleged and the facts supporting it. On the strength of the complaint, a defendant could be arrested and detained until they can be brought before a judge for a preliminary hearing. At the preliminary hearing, the accused is entitled to counsel. There is some abbreviated testimony about the facts giving rise to the complaint, and the judge determines whether probable cause exists to believe that the crime occurred. If the judge finds that there is probable cause, the accused may be held (or placed on bond conditions) for a certain period of time in which the prosecution seeks indictment . If the judge fails to find probable cause, the Defendant is ordered released. The prosecution may still seek an indictment, but the Defendant is free while they do).). The threshold for finding probable cause is very low,  and it is extremely uncommon for the Defendant to be represented at, or even notified of the Grand Jury proceeding. Further stacking the deck in favor of the prosecutor is the fact that the usual rules of evidence do not apply. The most important implication is that hearsay (where someone quotes another person instead of testifying from their own knowledge) any other less-reliable forms of evidence are admissible. The testifying officer doesn't even need to have direct knowledge of the case (in fact, it is common in some places for the prosecutor to intentionally use someone who is not expected to testify at trial in order to prevent the defense from having the opportunity to impeach the witness with contradictory facts (since the understanding of a case may change over time and, after an indictment is issued, a transcript of grand jury proceedings is typically available to the defense).


The Grand Jury can be a useful tool to the prosecutor because they have the authority to subpoena witnesses and evidence which the prosecutor may not otherwise be able to obtain (for example, bank records or a hostile witness). It is also helpful when law enforcement wants to keep an investigation on the down-low, since the Grand Jurors and everyone in the Grand Jury room (including the witnesses!) are sworn to total secrecy. When the Grand Jury is used in this way, it is common for the investigation to dissolve with no indictment because, from its outset, the purpose of the hearing was to gather information.

My personal "take" on the Ramsey indictment (or, rather, the lack thereof), is that the DA was using the Grand Jury process to obtain information, probably the testimony of friends and associates of the Ramseys who might otherwise be less forthcoming. Keep in mind that, while the threshold for obtaining an indictment is very low, the threshold for conviction is extremely high. The Ramseys had money and powerful friends, virtually assuring a strong defense team. Given the national spotlight on the Ramsey case, a loss at trial would have been devastating, and it is understandable to me that the prosecution would proceed with extreme caution.

TV-ready Murder

I started this blog to discuss high-profile trials. Thinking back over the "biggies" (Casey Anthony, George Zimmerman, O.J. Simpson (original), etc...) I was struck by just how many of those trials were losers for the prosecution. It isn't coincidence.

Trials that capture the public imagination typically have the same factors in common: a relatable victim (child/wronged spouse/everyman/missing white woman) PLUS some hot-button issue that fires up our passions like sex, racism or religion. Excluding celebrity cases (would anyone care about Lindsay Lohan's DWI's if she wasn't Lindsay Lohan?) we care about "big" cases because we can imagine ourselves or someone we care about suffering through a similar outrage and it makes us angry or afraid. We get invested. Unfortunately, the passion that we feel sometimes makes us overlook the difficulty of proving a case. We see that something horrible happened (i.e. a two year old is killed and her body is left in a swamp to rot) and forget the significant evidentiary challenges that prevent all the gory, outrage-fueling details from presentation to the jury. The juries see very different cases than we do. Accordingly, their verdicts often seem incomprehensible.

The Dr. Martin MacNeill case looks poised to follow this pattern exactly.
The allegations in the MacNeill case are that Dr. MacNeill pressured his wife, Michele to undergo elective plastic surgery. Then, when she was recovering, he intentionally overmedicated her, resulting in a drug-overdose that killed her, clearing the way for him to be with his lover, Gypsy Willis, a mistress straight out of central casting.

The twenty-four hour news cycle has already exposed Dr. MacNeill as a cad in the first degree. At the same time, the court has made evidentiary rulings that will prevent the most explosive and prejudicial tidbits from presentation to the jury. Most significantly, the Court will exclude evidence that Dr. MacNeill changed his will to leave property to his mistress, will exclude as hearsay a statement that Mrs. MacNeill allegedly made to her daughter "If anything happens to me, make sure it wasn't your dad",  and has reserved a ruling on whether or not his youngest daughter (the first person to find the body) will be allowed to testify at all.  This was already an extremely circumstantial case. I predict that Martin MacNeill will walk free- much to the disgust of the news-watching public.

The local Fox affiliate is providing a live stream of the trial: http://fox13now.com/2013/10/17/live-streaming-martin-macneill-murder-trial/