Cry Rape: The True Story of One Woman's Harrowing Quest for Justice

24. A Strong Case

24 A Strong Case Patty’s agreement with Mike Short required her to pay all expenses as the lawsuit progressed. These included filing fees, copying costs, and, most onerous, depositions. While the court reporter was hired by the party doing the deposition, both sides ordered transcripts, and the tab soon ran into thousands of dollars. Patty, having nowhere else to turn, began borrowing from her businesses. It was a dangerous strategy, but she was desperate. In early April 2000 Hal Harlowe expressed his concern about Patty’s circumstance: “The inarticulate term of art for it is, they’re ‘costing her to death.’” He feared her case would not just be dismissed, which he expected, but that she would be assessed costs. Short brushed this off: “Patty is as judgment-proof as any person I’ve ever seen in my life.” She made eight dollars an hour. Her businesses were struggling. There was no way she could ever repay the vast sums of money Axley Brynelson was expending, as Judge Shabaz had put it, “running up the meter” on its deep-pocketed client. Axley tapped two outside experts—Ray Maida, a local investigator of sensitive crimes who had worked for both the police and district attorney’s office, and Joseph P. Buckley, president of John E. Reid and Associates, a Chicago-based interrogation-training outfit—to review Patty’s case. Buckley, as coauthor of Criminal Interrogations and Confessions , literally helped write the book on techniques used to extract sometimes-false confessions from recalcitrant suspects. Maida was paid $55 an hour for his time; Buckley got $150 an hour, or $1,500 per day, “plus expenses.” Maida, in his written report, found “nothing in the 180 documents” or his interview with Woodmansee to indicate any “wrongdoing ” or violations of common police practices. Buckley, in a threepage report accompanied by a six-page list of materials he professedly reviewed, concluded that police had done “a reasonable investigation,” that Patty’s interviews and interrogation were “conducted in a reasonable manner,” and that her resulting confession “appears to be a voluntary and truthful statement.” That she promptly and consistently repudiated it was not given any credence, or even addressed. In the latter half of April 2000, nine more people were deposed in Patty’s case. Most sessions were brief, averaging just under two hours. The longest were for Misty and Debra Kuykendall, a “direct services supervisor” at the Rape Crisis Center. The shortest were for Dr. Thomas Stevens, Patty’s ophthalmologist; and Nina Bartell, a psychotherapist she visited after the charges were dropped. Also deposed: Connie Kilmark , Linda Moston, Patty’s sisters Brenda and Sue, and Jill Poarch. The Axley attorneys, Modl and Armstrong, divided these depositions between them. Both routinely attacked witnesses when they supported Patty or called the conduct of police into question, as all of them did. For instance, when Misty testified that she had been offended by some of Woodmansee’s questions—like how often she and her boyfriend had sex and in what positions—Modl tore into her. “Did you understand, Misty, that [Dominic] was a suspect?” No, not at that point. “Do you know now that [he] was a suspect?” Yes. “And you understand that your mother said the person who assaulted her assaulted her anally, orally, and vaginally?” Yes. “And knowing what you know now, do you find Woodmansee’s questions to you about positions . . . to be offensive ?” Well, no, but he could have explained himself better. “Did you ask him why . . . he was asking it?” No. Misty, in response to Modl’s leading questions, admitted being surprised that, after the assault, her mother was not more upset. But this had not caused her to doubt that an assault occurred. On this point, Misty was a rock: “I don’t believe my mom would make up a rape.” What made this testimony more compelling was Misty’s insistence that this was always her position: “I never doubted her being raped at all, period.” This meant that while Woodmansee and later Schwartz were pumping her for information to support an obstruction charge, A Strong Case 181 • Misty believed her mother was telling the truth. The only point of disagreement was whether Dominic was to blame. And, from Misty’s perspective , it wasn’t clear “who was focusing more on Dominic between the two of them”—her mother or Detective Woodmansee. Kuykendall’s deposition, conducted...