THE SENTENCING
Friday morning, July 28, was a day of portent, and the weather outside seemed scripted to match. Powerful things were about to happen. The morning was hot and Michigan-muggy, the kind of stifling combination of heat and humidity visitors this far north never expect. You can find its match in the Everglades, and in the bayou country around New Orleans, but not many other places on earth.
The state is surrounded by the Great Lakes, and filled with thousands of inland lakes, streams and rivers. When the humidity builds, it builds thick, giving the air a gelatinous feel as you walk through it. But a cold front was approaching that day, fast and furious; it was the kind of incoming weather guaranteed to set off massive thunderstorms as the inrushing cold air could no longer hold the water hanging suspended over the state.
Tornadoes were likely, thunder and lightning a certainty, and as early arrivers walked toward the Oakland County Courthouse, the day had already turned to near-night. Streetlights had come on, cars pulled into the parking lot with headlights on.
Seven sheriffs are on duty in Judge Cooper's courtroom. One of them sweeps people with a portable metal detector before they can enter. The TV and radio stations are back en masse. Each row is jammed with bodies packed in tight. A growing crowd waits in the hall, as the light outside the hallway windows is sucked away like air from a vacuum. A black, roiling, thick angry cloud is rolling over the woods and pastures visible from the third floor of the hall windows. CRAASH! A bolt of lightning is followed immediately by thunder, and opaque sheets of rain materialize instantly.
The thunder and lightning seem fitting, God's wrath and judgment coming to join with Cooper's.
Word has gone out through the crowd that there will be a one-hour delay before court begins. Legghio can't get here on time. Fletcher's parents, sick at heart, sit at the left of the front pew, silent, looking lost in thought. The extended Misener family is much more animated, greeting each other, leaning toward each
other to share a story or two. This is the day they've been waiting for.
News accounts in recent days have quoted Townsend as saying he will ask for much more than the sentencing guidelines for second-degree murder call for
—between thirteen and a half and twenty-two and a half years, plus two years for using a gun in the commission of a felony. He will, he says, ask for life in prison. Legghio has scoffed in print at that suggestion and says he will appeal the verdict, in any regard.
Finally, the clerk announces Cooper's arrival. She has the always-weighty task of sentencing someone to prison, and she seems in a rare dark mood. A cell phone jangles and she snaps that whoever has their phones need to turn them off. Moments later, Legghio enters the courtroom.
"Good morning, Your Honor. May I approach?"
"Would you like to explain where you've been?" she asks frostily, clearly not pleased at the delay.
"I did call your office yesterday morning," he offers in explanation. It hardly lightens Cooper's mood. Scheduling conflicts aren't an excuse to her this day. He's got a client on his way to jail, and that should have been his first concern.
Fletcher is brought in. There won't be any more arguments about whether ties match or not. With the jury gone, he is marched in in his Day-Glo orange prison jumpsuit that reads "PRISONER" on the back.
Thunder booms, even through the closed doors of the courtroom. And booms again.
Fletcher is seated in the jury box and the sparring over the presentence report begins.
In Michigan, sentencing guidelines control the minimum amount of sentence. Those convicted get X amount of time for the crime itself, plus extra months for any of a wide number of militating factors, for which points are assessed and jail time accrued. Was a gun used? Was there violence? Were other felonies committed at the same time? Was there an effort to interfere with a police investigation? And so forth.
Legghio has been given a copy beforehand of the presentence report done by court officials, which totals up the extra jail time. In fact, the recommendation is
for life in prison, which Legghio can reduce by successfully arguing objections to the various findings.
Legghio objects to points for predatory behavior. If it were second-degree murder, there was no time for predatory behavior. The judge disagrees. "I will allow that," she says.
He argues against points for three or more contemporaneous felonies, arguing the jury found him guilty of two counts and the judge dismissed a third count. She disagrees, saying that while other charges had not been filed, his guilt means his statements to police at the scene and subsequently were felonious lies.
Legghio then requests a separate hearing, to be scheduled on another day, on each of these and other disputed findings.
Cooper answers, her normally quite quiet voice forceful and emphatic. "Mr. Legghio, I sat through the trial. I don't feel a hearing is necessary. If there are findings to be made, I am in a position to do that."
He starts to protest and she cuts him off. "I will not argue with you. I am not in an adversarial position with you. I've made my ruling. Let's move on."
They move on the points for another charge, a threat to the administration of justice, arising from Fletcher's 911 call. If he had murdered Leann, then the call was a phony, and a phony call to 911 is an attempt to interfere with the administration process, argues Townsend.
Legghio is apoplectic. "The only time I've ever seen this administered is when someone in jail has threatened a jailer," he says. "They've already assessed points for contemporaneous crimes. If contemporaneous crimes cover four events, you can't cut it off at three and then apply the other here. I challenge Mr. Townsend to show me one other case where that has ever been scored."
The judge rules against him. All told, Fletcher scores an additional 115 points, which pushes him into the life range, should the judge choose. And by now no one has any doubts at all about Cooper's intentions.
(At one point during the scoring process, Cooper refers to Woodford's testimony. "I believe what Mr. Woodford testified that there was copious amounts of blood in the trap of the sink … his word was—I wrote it down
—'copious.'" She was wrong. Woodford never used that word in his testimony.
The first time he referred to it, he said it was "a fair amount" and later amended the description to "significant." Significant as "significant" is, it's hardly the same thing as copious.)
*
Michigan law calls for victim-impact statements prior to sentencing. They generally have no bearing on the sentence, but serve to let victims stare a perpetrator in the eye and let him or her know what they think.
At murder trials, it is a painful, heart-rending part of the proceedings but one that often serves as the beginning of the healing process. Gloria Misener is first.
"Hannah was playing a game of marbles on the floor with her grandfather and she picked up a marble with blue and gray streaks. 'Isn't this a beautiful marble?' Then she put the marble down and said, 'Please, God, send my mommy back to me for ever and ever.' Then she laid her head down on my shoulder and hugged me. Mick, you've said how much your daughter meant to you. Well, she's never asked about you even once.
"Our daughter was the sunshine of our life, and she looked forward to each day. She loved spending each day with her daughter, and they had such a special bond. Hannah cries for her mother each and every day. I told her…"
Loud sobs and sniffles sound from some of the family behind her. She pauses and continues, like always at this trial and related proceedings, a bedrock. "I told her if I could go to heaven and send her mother back, I would. She asks us, 'How did my mommy die?' What should we tell her, Mick? That her father put a gun to her trusting mother's head and pulled the trigger? Some day she'll find out. What a horrible thing that will be! We lost our second grandchild, too. Maybe it would have been the boy you said you always wanted, Mick.
"I hope they find you in the same humiliating position they found Leann— half naked on the prison floor, dead."
Absolute silence in the court. Mick sits as he has throughout, impassive. He hasn't looked Gloria's way, nor will he look at those to follow.
BOOM! The storm breaks the spell and Lindy gets up and walks toward the lectern.
*
"Leann was an incredible mother, daughter and sister," she says, addressing Judge Cooper. "He has brought such incredible pain to so many people. The pain will last all the rest of our lives, but so will our memories. He's on the way down from the position he had for himself. Maybe he'll realize what a meager human being he is, and maybe then he'll realize what a treasure he had in Leann.
"We won't spend our lives hating Michael Fletcher, for then he'd destroy us, as well. We're strong. We'll persevere. Michael Fletcher thought he had it all, and now he has nothing."
Fletcher's face is frozen, but he is rocking very slowly back and forth, now. More sobs, sniffles, blowing of noses from the crowd.
*
Lori Mays, another sister, goes to the lectern. "This past August has changed our lives forever. We are truly heartbroken. I've got four children of my own, and they loved Leann. My son was 14. I'll never forget the look on his face when I told him Leann was pregnant, and then the next day had to tell him she was dead. He's been in counseling ever since."
Lori told of a combined birthday party a month before the shooting for her eight-year-old and five-year-old. Leann came early with 200 balloons and filled them with water. Later, the kids would bombard her, drenching her. Lori snapped pictures of Leann, wet and joyful. "She never got to see them."
More sobs and sniffles.
Another anecdote: She came home recently and one of the boys was tearing up a page of the newspaper. "Don't rip the paper," she told him.
"But it's got a picture of Uncle Mick in it."
"Michael Fletcher's parents can visit him in jail, but we can only visit Leann in the cemetery," she concluded.
*
Then came Jeni Hughes, Leann's best friend. "Leann was more than a friend to
me. We used to joke that we were sisters in a previous life, and we always wanted to raise our children together," she said. "The pain and grief is more than anything I've ever imagined. I only knew her for eight years, so I can't imagine what her family feels like.
"I wake up every morning and pray it was just a nightmare. But then I look over and see her cat laying next to me and I know it wasn't. Your Honor, please remember what Michael Fletcher has done to all of us. He sentenced us to incredible pain for the rest of our lives.
"I used to say to Leann, and it would always make her laugh: 'If I was any better, there'd be two of me.' I'll never say that, again."
*
Family friend Pat Carter goes last: "I just met the Miseners five years ago. Leann was a rare and unique flower in this bouquet of people on this planet. She was not only physically beautiful, but there was an inner light that came from her that made you glad to receive its warmth.… What kind of father leaves a legacy this cold, this heartless to his precious daughter?"
*
Finally, Cooper tells Townsend it is his turn to make a closing statement. He rises. "The family has made such an elocution, I don't think anything by me is necessary."
*
Legghio stands and walks over to the jury box to stand at his client's side. Mick stands, too.
"Your Honor, this is a contested case, and my client, through his attorney, has steadfastly maintained his innocence. This is not a guilty-plea situation. What makes this task so difficult is everyone comes to you with a singular vision
—to cause the greatest damage, to render the toughest sentence you can. We ask you to bring some sensibility and calmness to a very charged situation. Without you, Your Honor, we ought to go back to a time of lynching.
"I'm imploring you, Your Honor, despite the media frenzy … I'm asking the court to take a reasoned and balanced approach when it comes to imposing a sentence. Before he came to this court, he was not unlike others. There are thousands of pictures of him in family albums. He has a warm and loving family that stood by him every day. And they're here today. He was a productive member of society before he came to court, and he can be, again. He will be."
*
All eyes shift to Cooper, who asks: "Michael Fletcher, is there anything you wish to say?"
Fletcher stands and says quietly, without emotion: "On the advice of counsel, no."
"I've spent 22 years on this bench, and I've presided over innumerable trials involving all manner of heinous crimes," says Cooper. "In all those years, I've never seen a crime so incredibly cold-blooded or heartless. You killed your wife, who was pregnant with your child. Your daughter, Hannah, will live her whole life without her mother.
"The jury didn't believe you and the story you told the police, and I don't, either. I don't understand what kind of monstrous arrogance caused you to think you could get away with murder. I don't have any doubts how to sentence you.
"It is the sentence of the court that you be sentenced to life in prison."
Loud cheers erupt. Misener family members jump up and hug each other, tears pouring down. John and Darla Fletcher slump in the pew. Fletcher is quickly led from the court as reporters and camera crews surround Gloria and Jack Misener and their kids. Lindy hollers out, sarcastically: "Goodbye, Mick."
"I feel the family can finally start to heal," says Lindy moments later. "We have justice for Leann. That's a start."
Someone asks her about what she thought of Mick's demeanor. "He was smug. Nothing changed. He was actually laughing. If he was so innocent, why didn't he stand up and say what happened?"
Did she have doubts about the sentence? "I was worried about getting through my speech, but not about what I was going to say. I had no doubts in my
mind."
Gloria: "He got his sentence, but we still don't have our little girl."
John Fletcher, still professing belief in his son's innocence, responded: "If I thought for a second that Mick had done it, I'd have a certain amount of anger myself," claiming the media frenzy over the fact that his son was a lawyer and his lover a judge was to blame for much of this. "If he'd been a pizza man, and she'd been a waitress, none of this would have taken place."
Later that same day, in one of those remarkable coincidences, punishment, albeit much milder, was meted out to Chrzanowski, too. The Michigan Supreme Court suspended her with pay, pending a hearing the next month, for having assigned cases to her lover and then ruling on them.
Leggio