OPENING ARGUMENT

The long-awaited, often-postponed murder trial of the State of Michigan vs. Michael Fletcher finally began on Monday, June 12, 2000. Originally scheduled for January, it was pushed back to February, then April and finally June as both sides awaited the crucial DNA tests.

At 8:15 a.m. the courtroom of Judge Jessica Cooper, one of the most highly regarded judges in the state and, by luck of the draw, judge of seemingly every high-profile case in affluent Oakland County the last few years—including several trials of Dr. Jack Kevorkian—is packed to overflowing.

Fletcher's parents, Darla and John, his sister Amy, and a family friend sit at the very left of the front row. About 45 of Leann Fletcher's extended family— who had been hugging each other out in the hallway earlier, take up most of the rest of the seats, with reporters from local TV and radio stations and the area's numerous weekly and daily newspapers getting seats if they arrive half an hour early, getting sent down the hall to a media-overflow room to watch TV feeds if they don't. Two newspaper photographers and a free-lance camera crew working for ABC's "20/20" show position themselves in the back right-hand corner of the courtroom. A TV technician is duct-taping wires and checking microphones.

Leann's three sisters sit in the front pew. They and others of the Misener family have a certain look about them, almost a Sixties look of teased hair dyed blond and hairsprayed. The look may be passé elsewhere, but it speaks here, in Oakland County, to their working-class roots; it also visually represents their "family-ness." They are together in this spiritually and emotionally and their similarity of appearance announces their unity to anyone in the court who cares to look, Mick's parents included. Mrs. Misener shares the same look, though for now, she must remain out in the hall, until her testimony is concluded.

At 8:25, Mick Fletcher is led into the court, sheriff deputies in front and behind. His hands are cuffed in front of him. His face is fuller than at his arraignment last summer, his skin sallow from months of jail time. His black hair is slicked back into a bit of a duck's tail, teeth marks from his comb clearly

visible, a small spit curl dangling over his forehead. He's wearing a black suit, white shirt open at the collar. Marla McCowan hands him a tie and he quickly puts it on. Today, there is no argument over whether or not it matches.

(Each time he leaves the court, for a recess or for lunch, he must remove the tie, presumably so he won't use it as a weapon or commit suicide. Each time he comes back, he has to retie it. It's another way the system reminds him of his status, suit or no suit.)

At 8:30, Judge Cooper enters, the courtroom stands, then sits. The jury is brought in, and Greg Townsend stands to deliver his opening statement.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, a beautiful 29-year-old young woman named Leann Fletcher had a dream—of having a large family like the family she grew up in," he begins. Townsend is the antithesis of slick. An expert on forensic evidence, and presenting it to a jury, he depends on organization and fact, not showmanship or charisma. His suit looks off-the-rack. He has kind of a plain, everyman look that sits well with juries.

He recounts for the panel the events leading up to Leann's death—the dinner with the Miseners on August 15 and the Fletchers' seeming happiness over the news of Leann's pregnancy. He tells them, too, that after the dinner was over, Mick had claimed a need to go to the office, but instead had driven over to Judge Susan Chrzanowski's for sex, where he professed his love for her and his hope they would have a life together.

The next day, "On August 16, Leann's dreams of a large family disappeared. Leann Fletcher was dead. She died when a .45-caliber bullet went in her head right here," says Townsend, pointing behind his right ear, a moment of rare theatricality for him. "It went through her brain and killed her instantly. If this case wasn't so sad, it could almost be a made-for-TV movie. But in a movie the actress gets up and walks away."

Why had Fletcher pulled the trigger? What was his motive? "Susan Chrzanowski had demanded he not have sex with his wife. And he had promised her he wasn't. But this lie would soon be exposed, because he had found out his wife was expecting."

Townsend lays out a timeline. In November of 1998, Mick had bought the

Smith & Wesson .45. But it wasn't till August 16 that he had ever taken her to the gun range; it wasn't till then that she had ever so much as picked it up. The day ended in her death but began so much sweeter, with Fletcher giving her a card, in which he had written, recounts Townsend to the jury, "I love you so much, sweetheart. Whether our child is a boy or a girl, I'll love it because it's part of you."

He'd bought the card in the morning, after a stint at the office and before the trip to the gun range.

Townsend then tells the jury about the evidence it will hear—that a state police scientist will testify that he found blood in the trap of the bathroom sink, the first time he had ever found blood in a trap in 19 years; that it usually washes away, so this is proof of fresh blood and lots of it. They will hear about something called stippling, a tattooing of Leann's skin caused by gunpowder residue, and that the pattern of the stippling will prove that the shot was fired too far from her head to be self-inflicted.

He tells them there was no gunpowder residue on Leann's hand, that she must have washed her hands after getting home from the gun range. Had she pulled the trigger, there should have been some there. He tells them there were blood droplets on the right cuff of Fletcher's shirt, droplets that were part of a mist of blood blown out of Leann's head.

And he paints a chilling scene for the jury members, one they will remember long after the trial—he tells them that fresh semen, Mick Fletcher's semen, was found in Leann's vaginal cavity, that she had been found naked from the waist down and that she had been shot with her head nine to fourteen inches from the bedroom floor. The implication is clear: Mick Fletcher is such a cold-blooded murderer that he has sex with his wife while she kneels on their bedroom carpeting, and while his sperm is fresh in her vagina, he picks up his Smith & Wesson and shoots her behind the right ear.

The opening statement is powerful. And it is brief, just 25 minutes of quickly moving narrative.

*

At 9:35, Brian Legghio stands up and takes his turn before the jury. He paints a picture of a different Mick Fletcher, a picture of an All-American kid who grew up in the small town of Marysville on the St. Clair River an hour northeast of Detroit.

He has a brother and a sister and loving parents. He meets Leann at a Halloween party while a student at Michigan State and falls in love. They buy a 900-square-foot bungalow in the working-class suburb of Hazel Park. Mick works at Radio Shack and Leann styles nails at a beauty shop, a typical struggling young couple. He goes to law school at night. He had wanted to be a cop but Leann wants something better for him, for them, and so she urges him to become a lawyer.

Their daughter, Hannah, is born in 1996. And, yes, there are marital troubles. From June of 1998 to April of 1999, Mick moves in and out of the family home. But through the various separations, there is never, not once, any assaultive behavior.

In 1997, Mick begins working in the Warren city attorney's office, and it is there that he meets a young judge, Susan Chrzanowski.

"He found some solace, or what he thought to be solace, in another human being," says Legghio. "We can talk about sex and have a good giggle, but that's not what this was about. This was about two human beings finding something in another human being they wanted—social, intellectual and emotional."

In January of 1999, Fletcher moves out and files for divorce. In March or April, he decides to move back with Leann and Hannah, telling the judge he has to go back and give it a try.

On August 12 Leann finds out she's pregnant. On Saturday, August 14, the Fletchers go out to dinner with Leann's sister, Lindy, and break the happy news to her. On Sunday, they take her parents out to dinner, Mick says he wants a boy, which upsets Leann. On Monday, Mick buys a card of apology and writes a note to Leann telling her he will love the child with all his heart, boy or girl. "He's telling her, 'Leann, I might not always tell you, but you mean the world to me.'"

Mick drives a pick-up truck, Legghio tells the jury. They live in a small house. He's not overly motivated or hard driven in his job. He often works in the

morning, then takes a long lunch or the afternoon off. And that's what they decide to do Monday. He'll work in the morning, they'll drop Hannah off at her parents' house and go to the gun range over lunch.

They take two cars to the Miseners' house in the nearby city of Troy. That way, he can drop her off and go straight back to work, and she can go to the park with her sister and parents for an afternoon stroll.

But, as young couples will, especially young couples in the midst of a reconciliation and happy with the news of a new baby, the Fletchers decide to prolong their time together—they decide to go back to their bungalow and have sex first, before going back to the Miseners'.

But something tragic happens, a horrible accident. Mick is loading the gun, has to go to the bathroom and asks Leann to put the last bullet in the clip. While in the bathroom, he hears a loud roar, finds his wife on the floor in a pool of blood and calls 911. The 911 operator asks him to feel for a pulse. He can't find one and is told to leave the room.

The police arrive and from the start don't believe him. One Hazel Park investigator—Legghio tells the jury with disdain dripping from his voice—even rushes to judgment because of a TV show a few days earlier on the History Channel. The show was on the Kennedy murder and showed Jackie in her pink dress, covered with blood from holding Jack as he died. And since Fletcher wasn't drenched in blood, he must not have been holding Leann, and if he wasn't holding her, he must not have loved her, and if he didn't love her, he must have killed her.

And then there's the cop who figures Fletcher must be guilty because he hasn't been able to get his wife to the shooting range in 13 years on the force, and if his wife didn't want to go to the range, why would Fletcher's?

"That's the Hazel Park Police Department," sneers Legghio.

Legghio then tells the jury that his experts will corroborate Fletcher's innocence. He says the prosecution will tell them about a dime-sized spot of blood found on Mick's shirt and supposed blood mist, but that the state police's own crime lab could not get a positive DNA match, "and you can get sufficient DNA from a single cell."

The DNA tests confirm the defense's own expert on blood evidence that the spots on Fletcher's shirt were not from blood-mist blown out from Leann's head. "It's not our job to tell you how Leann was shot. I don't know how she was shot. I don't think there will be any clear answer. But that's not our burden. I urge you to listen to the forensic evidence, for as the prosecutor says, that's where the case lies. Without any DNA, we suggest to you there just is no

compelling forensic evidence."

Legghio's opening has lasted for 50 minutes. At 10:25 a.m. on the first day of two weeks of testimony, the court takes its first recess.