EPILOGUE

Brian Legghio did the seeming impossible after the Fletcher trial—he took on an even more high-profile case, at least to those in the younger demographics. The popular white rapper Eminem, AKA Marshall Mathers III, a Warren native, was arrested in June, just as the Fletcher trial was about to start, and charged with assault after he pulled a gun in the parking lot of a Warren bar and threatened to kill a man he saw smooching his wife.

The gun? A Smith & Wesson.

At a hearing on August 31 in Warren District Court, to determine if the case should move on, Legghio was photographed standing behind his client, with the photo running in color on the front page of the Metro Section in the next day's Detroit News. Legghio got the judge to allow his client to remain free so he could continue a national tour.

Coincidentally, the very first hearing on the Eminem case was on June 8, as jurors were being selected for the Fletcher trial. And it was held in front of none other than Susan Chrzanowski.

It got even more coincidental and curious at the August 31 hearing. That hearing was scheduled for Judge Dawnn Gruenburg, Mick Fletcher's other lover. But Gruenburg recused herself because her father, Roy, had once been Eminem's lawyer. What's more, she and Mathers had grown up in the same neighborhood and knew each other.

Dawnn showed up at the hearing, though, and as Eminem left the court, she had a smile and a wiggle of her fingers for him.

Later, at the subsequent hearing in Circuit Court in October, Macomb County Prosecutor Carl Marlinga told the judge he was seeking 17 months of jail time for the rapper. Legghio entered a not-guilty plea, got the hearing adjourned until December and got the judge to allow his client to remain free on a bond of

$10,000. (More of the small-world nature of southeastern Michigan: Marlinga was in the midst of running for re-election against Susan Chrzanowski's father, Robert.)

In addition to threatening to kill the man, it was alleged Eminem smacked him with the butt of the gun three or four times. The alleged victim, John Guerra, also filed a civil suit, seeking a jury trial and damages in excess of $25,000.

Eminem also faced charges in Oakland County for a separate incident involving a threat with the same gun against the manager of a rival white rap group, the Insane Clown Posse. It was alleged that Eminem pulled the gun after the manager called him a homosexual in front of Eminem's wife.

Later, the wife, Kim Mathers, attempted suicide, then moved out and filed for divorce.

Legghio stood to get more business, too, if members of the Fletcher jury ever ran into legal trouble. Following the verdict, jury members took turns doing a trial post-mortem with both the prosecution and the defense, to see what the jury found compelling, what it didn't, what it liked, what it disliked, etc. When it was Legghio's turn, several of them asked him for his business card, a pretty high compliment for the losing attorney.

"Just in case, you know?" said jury foreman Rob Jensen. "Because we were so impressed with him."

Legghio remains convinced of Fletcher's innocence. Those who watched talk shows on the O. J. Simpson case may remember some of his lawyers steadfastly sidestepping questions about whether they thought their client was innocent by using the old dodge of "Under our system, everyone is entitled to a defense," or "The prosecution didn't prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt." Legghio is more forthright.

"I do not believe that he is guilty of killing her. I honestly believe that. This guy would walk away. He is the most non-confrontational guy. He is the classic example of what a lot of guys have as a character trait, particularly when it comes to women and issues and confrontation. Men are avoidance–denial people. We're poor communicators. We do anything but deal with the issue. He tried leaving Chrzanowski three times. This guy is just incapable of doing some act or deed that is so irrreversible."

Legghio said that he and Marla McCowan, because of the admittedly odd timing of Leann getting shot immediately after she'd been to the firing range the

first time, initially thought that Fletcher had shot her by accident, then, fearing no one would believe him, had lied about the circumstances. "But MacDonell convinced us. He said, 'If he'd shot her, he'd have been covered in blood.'"

Legghio said the trial continues to haunt him, particularly the comment by some jurors that the 911 tape—which he fought to get admitted—is what pushed them to conviction. "This has been and is the most unsettling verdict of my career, both in terms of the evidence and in terms of my feelings for my client," he said. He said the case wakes him up in the middle of the night and continues to pop into his head unbidden. "I always think about the case. On a regular basis."

*

Susan Chrzanowksi remained embroiled in her own legal troubles long after the trial was over. She was removed from the 37th District Court with pay, $118,285 a year, by the Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission, an arm of the state Supreme Court, in July, the same day Mick was being sentenced to life in prison. At issue were the 64 cases she assigned to Fletcher between April of 1998 and August of 1999, while they were having an affair—and which netted him some $17,000 in legal fees, the vast majority of his earnings for that period. Not only did she assign the cases, but she heard them, too. During that same period, the other three Warren judges combined gave him 22 cases worth $6,000 in work. What was worse, she was accused of lying to police. In her first interview with Sgt. Larry Hendricks the day after the shooting, she said the affair with Fletcher had ended in March, even though she had had sex with him just two days earlier. And she denied having spoken to Mick after the shooting, though in

fact she had returned a page from him and talked to him briefly on the phone.

Also in July her attorneys met with retired Supreme Court Justice Charles Levin, who had been appointed a special "master" to conduct a hearing on her case. At the July meeting, groundwork was laid for a trial in August.

The process was cumbersome and confusing. The Tenure Commission had recommended her removal pending formal hearings and the justices of the Supreme Court had concurred. Levin would issue his own opinion, which the

eight-member Commission could either agree with or overrule at its own hearing later. Both Levin's and the Commission's decisions would then be weighed by the full Supreme Court.

She faced a wide range of outcomes, from an immediate return to the bench, to suspension with pay, suspension without pay or even disbarment.

At her hearing in September in downtown Detroit, family members testified that if Chrzanowski gave untruthful answers to Hazel Park investigators in the days after the shooting—and the cops testified that she did—it was because she was in a state of shock and not responsible for her actions.

Gregory Townsend was a star witness—for Chrzanowski. Continuing the kid-gloves treatment she got at the Fletcher trial, he testified on her behalf, saying: "She volunteered information. She answered questions fully and completely." And he said that she had seemed truly ashamed of the whole affair when she came face to face with him for the first time following revelations of her affair. "Judge Chrzanowski, when she first saw me, broke down in tears. I believe she was very embarrassed."

When she got on the stand, the judge also said that any misinformation was a result of her shock and confusion and wasn't willful. "I don't know what they asked and I don't know what I answered," she said under oath. "I was not thinking about my professional life. I was thinking, 'Oh, my God, someone is dead and they're saying that he killed her, and I've been going out with him.' And then they told me she was pregnant."

As to giving Mick Fletcher legal work, she admitted passing assignments his way but said that no court rules prohibited such conduct and that male judges routinely give work to "their buddies."

Another witness was a lawyer friend named Stephen Rabault, who had gone to help her out when she found out Leann had been killed. "She was clearly distressed, crying, very upset," he testified. "It took some time to generate a dialogue. She was not in a position to communicate with them [police] or anyone else." (Rabault happened to be Legghio's first partner upon entering private practice.)

On December 9, 2000, Levin issued his finding in a 50-page report, which

shocked most legal observers. He absolved Chrzanowski of misconduct, a finding the Tenure Commission was expected to appeal to the Supreme Court early in 2001.

Levin agreed that her emotional state in her interview with Hendricks made it impossible to conclude willful deceit. And he said that however distasteful it might have been that she funneled cases to her lover, there was no rule against such judicial behavior and that, in fact, judges routinely assign a disproportionate number of cases to close, if platonic, friends.

He did mention an e-mail in which Chrzanowski talked of an upcoming sexual rendezvous and then promised Fletcher she would throw him "an extra appointment or two" beforehand. "The messages do not, indeed, look good," wrote Levin, adding that the Judicial Tenure Commission had not established "a policy respecting disproportionate assignments to close personal friends."

Macomb County Prosecutor Carl Marlinga, who had filed charges against her because of her dismissal of drunk-driving charges against one of Fletcher's clients, said after Levin's ruling that "I feel bad I ever got this whole thing rolling. It did cross the line, but this was not a person who was trying to hide and duck and weave. She took full responsibility and she understands what she did was wrong."

Her attorney said he would ask the Supreme Court to reinstate her immediately pending a possible appeal.

*

The Chrzanowski name no longer held its polling-booth magic. Chrzanowski's dad, Robert, who preceded her on the Warren bench and later moved up to Circuit Court before retiring, had surprised everyone by announcing his candidacy for Macomb County prosecutor. A long-time Democrat, he ran as a Republican, and rumors began floating around that the fix was in.

As was mentioned earlier, Michigan's Supreme Court is notoriously politicized. Candidates are nominated at party conventions, but run without party affiliation as part of a charade that the court is above party politics. Just the opposite. Under Republican Governor John Engler, the court grew even more

political, and that wasn't easy. The court even began, on its own, without being asked in the form of appeals or lawsuits, going back and overturning previous court decisions and eradicating liberal precedents.

The rumors that were floating—and at least one columnist for The Macomb Daily in Mt. Clemens gave voice to them in print—was that if Chrzanowski would be a sacrificial lamb against Democratic incumbent Marlinga, his daughter would ultimately keep her seat on the Warren bench. (Levin is highly respected and no one would dare accuse him of being part of any such fix, but the rumors persisted.)

Marlinga trounced the elder Chrzanowskí by a two-to-one margin to win a fifth term.

It continued a string of losses for the family. In the August primaries, another relative, E. J. Chrzanowski, had finished a distant third in the Republican primary for Macomb County Sheriff (an election that was necessary because the long-time incumbent, William Hackel, had just begun serving a long jail term for raping a woman at a convention while his wife was in their room on another floor), and an uncle, Richard Chrzanowski, was second by fewer than 2,000 votes out of 32,000 cast in the Republican primary for county treasurer.

*

The Miseners and Fletchers got embroiled in a bitter and costly struggle over Hannah. Following Mick's arrest, the Miseners refused the Fletchers visitation. Mick's parents saw their granddaughter a total of two hours between her mother's death on August 16 and Christmas of 1999. Eventually a court order was granted and the Fletchers began seeing her, first in a supervised setting at county child-care facilities, then on alternate weekend visits in March of 2000.

Those visits didn't last long. Two weeks before the trial in June, news was leaked to the press—the Fletchers and Legghio think it was a concerted effort by public officials—that the county's Family Independence Agency was investigating unspecified allegations of child abuse against the Fletchers and in the meantime their visitation rights were being terminated.

Their attorney, James Williams, called the allegations frivolous but said state

law prohibited him from discussing details. "My clients are fine, Christian people, and no one ever accused them of anything like this. If you'd meet them, you'd conclude they are closer to walking on water than any of us. This is a travesty. This is just one more attempt to harm the Fletchers at the expense of poor, little Hannah."

At the trial, the rumor spread that the allegations involved sexual abuse. Lisa Rodela called them "evil people" as she walked by the Fletchers with friends out in the hall during a break in the trial one day. Months after the verdict, people were still asking, "So, whatever happened to those sex-abuse charges?"

According to the Fletchers, they were contacted by FIA officials based in Oakland County, demanding a visit to their house. Subsequently a visit to their Marysville home was made by St. Clair County child-welfare officials, who told them there had been an allegation that they had been locking Hannah in her room.

John showed them to Hannah's nursery, which has no lock on the door. The only explanation he could come up with was a lightweight screen, about two feet high and with a thin metal frame, that they placed across Hannah's open doorway when she spent the night. The Fletchers said they used it with their other grandkids, too, and if one of them wandered out of their room during the night, the screen would fall, hit the floor and awaken one or the other of the grandparents. Maybe Hannah had said something about it and it had been misconstrued.

St. Clair officials filed a report saying the allegations seemed groundless, but by then, the trial was over, the Miseners were seeking to adopt Hannah and the general perception remained that the Fletchers were child abusers. Their visitation rights were not reinstated pending the adoption proceedings and ongoing court custody battle. None of the daily newspapers ran a story that the original allegations had proven baseless.

Despite their son's verdict, the Fletchers continued to fight, through their attorney, for custody of Hannah. The result was a foregone conclusion—the court was clearly not going to turn over custody of the four-year-old to the parents of the convicted murderer when the parents of the murdered wife wanted

her.

At a hearing in Oakland County Family Court on August 7, a week after he was sentenced to life in prison, Mick's parental rights were terminated by Judge Edward Sosnick, but his parents fought on.

Fletcher appeared at the hearing in his bright orange jail uniform, and pleaded no contest to charges that he was an unfit father.

That same day, heartbroken at the impending loss of their granddaughter on top of the loss of their son, whose innocence they continued to maintain, Fletcher's parents filed a petition seeking custody of Hannah. They fought the Miseners for custody until late October, even undergoing physical examinations and psychological testing at their own expense to prove their worthiness.

Finally, with the handwriting evident, the Fletchers said they would drop proceedings if the Miseners would make a "gentlemen's promise" to allow them to visit their granddaughter.

The Miseners agreed, with Gloria telling a reporter that while she didn't want to deprive Hannah of her other grandparents, she needed some assurance first that they wouldn't proclaim Mick's innocence to her. Then, on November 20, ABC aired a "20/20 Downtown" show on the case. The Miseners were enraged at a comment made on air by Darla, who said that while she loved Leann and thought she was sweet, "she had another side, too."

The Miseners' adoption of Hannah became official on November 28, and shortly after, they told a reporter they'd never let the Fletchers see their granddaughter, again. They were still angry about the TV show and accused the Fletchers of refusing to return things they'd taken from the Hazelwood Avenue house in the days after the shooting. The Fletchers say they took some items back at Mick's direction and others because they assumed they'd be having Hannah some of the time and would need them.

After the formal decree was made final by Judge Sosnick that allowed the Miseners to officially adopt Hannah, the judge invited Jack and Gloria into his chambers. When they walked in, they were greeted by a surprise party. In attendance were many of the principals, including Townsend and Ortlieb, Hazel Park police chief David Niedermeier and some of his officers, and Dr. Dragovic.

Champagne was popped and cake cut. Their compassion for what seemed a fitting end to this whole sad affair was understandable, especially given the belief by most in attendance at the party that they'd played crucial roles in putting a cruel murderer behind bars. Still, it struck some as unseemly that the party would be held in the chambers of the very judge overseeing the case, on county and taxpayer time. The Fletchers weren't notified about the final proceedings.

No one who knew the Fletchers could doubt their love for their granddaughter—Darla was the one who moved in with Mick and Leann for a week when Hannah was born, sleeping on the couch next to the baby's bassinet; they'd redone one of their bedrooms in their Marysville house into a nursery, filled with toys and stuffed playthings; and they'd babysat frequently for Hannah, as they did for their other grandchildren. (When the trial was over, they resumed babysitting five afternoons a week for Ben's infant daughter.)

The day the adoption was final, the Miseners began making plans to have Lindy adopt her, in turn. Hannah's last name was changed to Misener.

*

Mick Fletcher was taken first to the foreboding Jackson Prison—the largest walled prison in the U.S.—for processing, and then transferred to the western part of the state in Muskegon, a more modern facility.

Having spent $250,000 on his trial—forcing them to remortgage their home and sell off a prized show Corvette—John and Darla Fletcher could not afford an appeal. Instead, one was filed on Mick's behalf by Peter Van Hoek of the State Appellate Defender's Office, a branch of the state's Supreme Court. In his application for a state-appointed appellate lawyer, Fletcher listed $150,000 in unpaid legal bills owed by his parents and $75,000 in student loans.

Said Marla McCowan in a candid admission: "That's for people who spend all their money on the trial and have nothing left for an appeal. But Van Hoek is as good as they come. You couldn't buy a better appeals attorney."

Among possible appealable issues—any ruling could be years off—were improper jury conduct involving their coming up with their own theory of events

and then play-acting their way to a verdict; and Cooper's refusal to toss out the charges involving the death of an unborn infant before the trial. She tossed them out midway though, after the jury had heard them, and some jurors later said the baby's death played a part in what they thought Fletcher's sentence should be.

McCowan, who had attended law school with Fletcher but didn't get to know him until she asked Legghio if she could help with the case, remains convinced of Fletcher's innocence, and angry, even bitter, at his conviction. "My take on his guilt or innocence is that he is not guilty, period. Looking back, it seems like I dedicated nearly ten months of my life and my career to proving his innocence. I would do it again in a minute if I thought it could help. The number one lesson is that there is no justice when cases are tried in and by the media. My hope is that Fletcher will someday get another trial. Speaking of appeals, a reversal of his conviction is the only way Michael Fletcher will ever get out of prison.

"If it makes Judge Cooper feel better morally or ethically to keep him behind bars forever, then that is what she will do. Her 'judgment' in that regard has nothing to do with principles of law. That was proven when she invited her husband to attend Michael Fletcher's sentencing. Somehow, it was personal to her, and she will continue to act accordingly. All of these factors make the appeal so important."

McCowan said her sense of Mick's innocence arises not from having grown close to him, but from having spent so much time with the defense witnesses, who convinced her during preparation for trial that Fletcher couldn't have done it, and that Leann, quite plausibly, could have. "Somewhere along the line, the jurors shifted the burden onto us to prove that he didn't do it, and when we didn't, they came up with a conviction by default. The injustices of this case are almost unbearable for me to think about."

McCowan went on maternity leave in December and her first child was due in January.

*

Jessica Cooper won election to the four-county second district of the Court of Appeals and finished up her tenure as a trial judge. She got the recommendations

of both the liberal Detroit Free Press and the conservative Detroit News and trounced her opponent by 102,000 votes, even beating him in his home county of Macomb. In her county, Oakland, she got 61 percent of the vote.

Having promised some juicy reflections on the trial and on Fletcher if elected to the Court of Appeals, following her win, she was more judicious. "I really said all I had to say about Fletcher at the sentencing," she said.

Her files, she stressed, would make it clear to her successors that Fletcher, to her mind, should never get out of jail. Her campaign literature referred to her role in both the Kevorkian and Fletcher cases.

In an interview for this book she said that the one thing that convinced her of Fletcher's guilt more than anything was Woodford's testimony that there had been copious amounts of blood in the sink and yet none on the phone that Fletcher used to call 911. If he had washed that much blood off his hands before making his call, he was obviously guilty.

*

On Dec. 1, 2000, Officers Cleyman, Hendricks, Welch, Arthur, Weimer and Heisler received unit citations by Chief David Niedermeier and were honored at a banquet for their roles in the case.

*

John and Darla Fletcher continued to maintain their son's innocence.

"I knew before this whole thing even started—beyond a shadow of a doubt— but the trial proved to me that there was no evidence," said John more than three months after his son was sentenced, sitting in the front room of his home during one of the weeks he pulled the evening shift at work. "Every day we went to court, and I'd come home at night feeling more reassured that my feelings were right.

"I understand how it looks. I understand the implications. But, first of all, Mick's not that stupid. Remember those shows—'The World's Dumbest Criminals'? If Mick had done it, he'd have qualified. Let's face it."

"For him to have done it," said Darla, "he absolutely would have had to have

lost his mind. And he would not have recaptured his mind so quickly if he'd done something like that. This is just totally not him."

The family was trying to rebuild as much as it could—Halloween decorations still remained on the front porch, and he and Darla were in the midst of house-breaking a new Shitzu, Gerty. They hadn't been able to see Hannah for months. As Christmas of 2000 approached, Amy and Darla had just visited Mick upon his transfer to Muskegon, where his mother, for the first time since the family car was pulled over on the freeway and Mick had been arrested some 15 months earlier, was able to give him a hug.

What made John the angriest was watching the "20/20" news show that ran in November and seeing jurors describe how they discarded the prosecution's theory about the chain of events and re-created their own.

"I'm just thankful every day—it didn't turn out the way we wanted—but I don't go to bed at night wondering if there was anything more we could have done," said John. "Because we did everything we could. If we had spent a million dollars, we couldn't have had a better attorney than Brian. We're not in the poorhouse, but I don't know if I'll be retiring at 55, like I'd planned."

"I've never been prouder of my parents in my life than I am now, seeing how they've handled this," said Amy by phone from El Cajon, after a trip to Michigan to visit her brother in prison. "They've been battered and pounded. But even during the custody hearings they told me if they got custody they'd let the Miseners have visitation because that was the right thing to do. I was like, 'What!' but my dad, 'No, no, it'd be the right thing to do.'"

John can no longer stand to watch his favorite TV show, "Law and Order." He doesn't believe so clearly in bad guys and good guys anymore. And he no longer believes in capital punishment. "Imagine how many innocent people are in jail. People who couldn't afford a quarter of a million dollars for a defense."

Their outside Christmas tree lights were up, too, on a reporter's last visit.

There was a wreath and an angel on the door.

Darla was finishing up a pink tutu for Hannah for a would-be Christmas present. "It's the last thing she asked me for. But I don't know if I'll ever have a chance to give it to her."

*

Sheryl Tortigian, Woodford's assistant with the Michigan State Police, gave a presentation in October at the annual meeting in Tucson, Arizona, of the International Association of Bloodstain Pattern Analysts—an organization of some 650 founded by Professor Herbert MacDonell. The topic was the Fletcher case and how the bloodstain evidence was processed and then used to gain a conviction.

MacDonell was furious—partly because he thought it improper for a case on appeal to be discussed, but more so because he remained convinced that Woodford and Tortigian badly misinterpreted the blood evidence and helped send an innocent man to jail. MacDonell said he remained silent during Tortigian's presentation, but will be making one of his own at next year's gathering in Tucson.

MacDonell said Woodford saw evidence that wasn't there (the myriad of supposed blood-mist dots on the shirt that didn't exist) and put Leann in a position where it was physically impossible for her to be given the other stains (kneeling on the floor). Moreover, says MacDonell, Woodford missed the evidence that was there—Leann's blood was sprayed around the small bedroom, in 360 degrees. Fletcher was a fairly big man. If he had shot Leann from close range, his body would have served as a shield. "It would have had to have blocked some of the blood," said MacDonell. "But there was blood in all four directions. It wasn't intercepted. It was all over the room. There was no place for Fletcher to be in that room. I don't see how he could have been in that room and fired the shot. I don't think he was involved. It's at the least reasonable doubt.

"At our next meeting, I'm going to say, Okay, you heard one side of this case last year, and now you're going to hear the other side," said MacDonell after the convention. "I'm going to blow Woodford out of the water."

*

Frederick Wentling, the 26-year Pennsylvania state cop and firearms expert, remained convinced that Fletcher is innocent. And he said so in the strongest of

terms in an interview after the "20/20" show for this book. Stressing that what he was about to say came from a retired cop and not some shill for defense attorneys, he used the words "I was stunned" to characterize what he said was the poor quality of the police investigation and of their subsequent testimony at trial, which he read in transcript form. He said, for example, that it was inexplicable that in a case where the suspect claims he loaded a gun and chambered a round, which meant it was cocked, that the firearms examiner wouldn't test the pull required to fire the gun in single-action mode.

"Initially I told Brian when he called to see if I'd help in the case—like I tell everyone—'I'll be happy to look at the evidence and the reports, but generally the police get it right.' Boy, did I have to eat those words! The police didn't get it right. They tried to make the facts fit into their theory and when you do that, bad things happen. The facts just weren't there."

While acknowledging the obvious, that he can't know for sure that Fletcher is innocent, "there's nothing in my experience as a firearms expert that leads me to believe he did it." He said the time-line was too short and there was much too much blood scattered around the room, in every direction, for Fletcher to have done it without getting covered in blood. "Once I was in the room and saw it, I was convinced. That room is just so small and there was blood everywhere. He should have had a lot of blood on him, and he didn't. You just can't shoot someone from a foot away and not get blood all over you. It's just not possible."

His reaction to the jury reeanctments on "20/20" and the play-acting that led to the guilty verdict? "Jesus Christ! It's stunning. That's just poor engineering," he said, taking a shot, so to speak, at the three engineers on the jury. "The photos of where the pistol is relative to her body didn't strike me as out of line or odd from the hundreds or thousands of cases I've done. I wouldn't have expected the gun to have gone flying. I wouldn't have expected it to be far from her body. I would have thought it would be close to her hand or even still in it. Just look at suicides. You normally don't see firearms fall away. Usually they're near the body."

As for the seemingly far-fetched possibility that she accidentally pulled the trigger with her thumb, he said the examiners he supervised had been involved in

several cases over the years of similarily inflicted deaths, where murder was suspected at first because of the odd circumstances but later it was proved that the death was caused by the thumb and was accidentally self-inflicted.

"You have a woman who is an absolute novice and her husband is not well skilled—he leaves the gun cocked, we could convict him of stupidity, very easily. But this is how tragedies occur. She doesn't know the gun is cocked, she wants to remove it from the bed, she reaches over and grabs it and is unfortunate enough not to have her thumb hit the trigger guard and BANG! You don't have to be aiming.

"I told someone the strange thing about this case is the prosecution acted like the defense normally acts, and the defense acted like the prosecution. Normally the prosecution argues its case on the facts and the defense throws up road blocks. Here, the roles were reversed. The defense was the one arguing facts.

"The whole case is one of the strangest cases I've ever been involved in. The way the prosecution and police acted like this was some game they had to win. As if it was personal. The way the police did things. You talk about a railroad job. He should never have been convicted."

*

Jeni Hughes continued to wake up hoping it had all been a nightmare and seeing a cat, instead. Lori's oldest boy was able to stop counseling. The Miseners and all their children made plans for Christmas, 2000, dreading that holiday as much as they'd dreaded Christmas, 1999. But Jack Misener, the holiday decorator, sad heart or not, looked forward to getting out the boxes of stuff and spending the week or so it would take to get everything up, just so.

By early December he wasn't done, yet, but already the yard and outside of the house included giant replica lollipops stuck into the lawn, huge candy canes, a towering angel, two Santas and a snowman.

Hannah was enrolled in preschool at the same elementary school in Troy that her mother used to attend. She was in counseling. And she continued to tell people about the things she used to do with her mom, and think up possible ways to out-trick God and get her mother back.

*

Ben Fletcher, who went into the Hazelwood Avenue house to get his brother's things out of the bedroom the night of the shooting, will always remember what he saw and smelled in that room, but the nightmares seem to have passed.

"I'll never be able to get it out of my mind. It was absolutely one of the most horrific things I've ever seen or had to go through in my life. At the time I just tried to block it out as much as I could because I knew my brother needed my support, he needed someone with a rational mind to support him.

"For a long time I blocked it out, but a couple of months after it happened I would have sleepless nights just thinking about it. Walking into that room and that smell. I'd fall asleep and wake up and have that smell in my nose."

*

Danielle Blais, one of the friends much of the world seemed to think Mick never had, wrote Fletcher after his transfer to Muskegon: "We love you and always will," she said.

Jennifer Davis mailed him a joke a day when he was in the Oakland County jail. "I didn't think it would last so long," she said. Weeks turned into months, and now very likely into a lifetime. Now, she drives across state for four or five hours on occasion to see him, the last time with his aunt. "We let him know we're all thinking about him."

*

At least some of the jurors continued to have doubts. One of them, a young man, told "20/20 Downtown:" "I think maybe there is some doubt that he didn't do this. What if we're wrong? That's what I keep thinking. Everyone feels that possibly he wasn't guilty, right?"

The reporter, Elizabeth Vargas, asked the other nine jurors whom her producers had gathered for her, if they all felt that way. Was there one percent doubt, two, ten? she asked. No one put a number to it, but one of the engineers, not Jensen, said: "With the evidence, I think we have to have that much doubt."

Dr. Dragovic, who watched the "20/20" show with the three of his children who are in law school, said the doubts the jurors had weren't because Fletcher might be innocent—Dragovic is convinced of his guilt—but because of the preparation put in by Legghio and McCowan. And, by comparison, a lack of preparation by the prosecution.

"Brian Legghio—I give him a 10. He opened up every avenue. He chipped away bit by bit, planting doubt," he said. "With no evidence in their favor, they were able to raise doubts left and right. Legghio clearly demonstrated himself as a master. A master. That's what separates a great defense attorney from the attorneys you usually see in court every day, who just shoot from the hip. I didn't know him before; I turned into his fan."

As for Townsend, Dragovic, a hip-shooter himself when the mood suits, said: "You learn from trials. We learned from this one. This will sound like criticism. It's constructive criticism. The defense spent far more time on preparation than the prosecution. They spent far more time with me than the prosecution did. I think the prosecution thought the evidence would be so overwhelming that they got complacent. We could have spent more time demonstrating the evidence and provided the jury with more information.

"I think there was a lull that set in. They thought the evidence was so straightforward, all they had to do was present it. But that's not enough when you're going against an attorney like Legghio."

From the time Fletcher's shirt was confiscated the day of the shooting, until the lab tests came back a week before the trial, the prosecution and police were convinced that Leann's DNA would show up in the so-called blood mist on the sleeve, proving conclusively, in open-and-shut fashion, that Fletcher shot her at close range. When the tests came back with the shocking result that there was no DNA profile for Leann on the shirt, it was too late to come up with a Plan B. Townsend would be stuck relying on witnesses the jury would hate; in the meantime, Legghio and McCowan had found the best experts they could.

As an example of Townsend's relaxed, overconfident approach to the trial, Dragovic offered two examples. One, he had been on vacation in Europe before the trial and didn't find out he was going to be the first witness until he arrived

home the night before the trial began and had a message on his phone telling him he was first up—a shocking lack of preparation given the stakes. Two, before his reappearance as a rebuttal witness on the last day of the trial, Marla McCowan asked him what he was going to testify to; Dragovic had to tell her he didn't know, because Townsend hadn't discussed the line of questioning with him ahead of time.

*

The Miseners got a phone call one day from someone conducting a survey for Philip Morris.

"No one here smokes," said Jack Misener. "Doesn't Michael Fletcher live there?" "No. He lives in Jackson State Prison."

A pause on the other end, then: "I'll put down he's on an extended vacation." "A life-long vacation," said Jack.

*

Townsend has a new memorial to the bad guys in his small office. It sits atop the small table just to the left as a visitor enters, right next to the framed newspaper photo of Jack Kevorkian, the one with the caption, "Do I look like a criminal?" This newest addition to his collection is a framed color photo of Mick Fletcher, also bears a caption.

Lisa Ortlieb has the same framed photo in her office, with the same caption. The photo was taken indoors and the color of Mick's face is a bit off. It has a green tint. He's in his bright, almost Day-Glo, orange Oakland County prisoner uniform.

The caption at the bottom reads: "He never thought he would be a convicted criminal."