Worse Than Death: The Dallas Nightclub Murders and the Texas Multiple Murder Law

10 For the State

149 c hapter ten For the State “It was not accidental; it’s not self defense. What else can he say but ‘I was crazy.’” —Norman Kinne Assistant District Attorney I The genius of the American Constitution is that it was written to protect unpopular people and ideas. Freedom of the press protects unpopular print; freedom of speech protects unpopular speech. Popular ideas seldom need protection. So it is with individuals . Due process, search and seizure limitations, access to legal representation, the right to remain silent, and other rights are designed to assure that even the most reprehensible of American society, even those deemed unfit to live among us, have an opportunity to, at least nominally, defend themselves against the state. Like democracy, civil liberty, for only the few and the popular, is an oxymoron. Defending Abdelkrim Belachheb was a defense of Constitutional rights all Americans enjoy. Forcing the state to answer an insanity plea, and thus prove guilt, assures caution and thoughtfulness by the state whenever it brings a defendant, even those clearly guilty of committing a heinous act, to trial. “Defense lawyers have a bonded obligation to represent those accused of the most vicious, heinous crimes. If you can’t do that, 150 • CHAPTER TEN you don’t deserve to be called a criminal defense attorney,” Frank Jackson announced publicly when he agreed to take the case. It was no reflection on the Public Defender’s Office, Jackson asserted, he just believed that his background in insanity defenses made him more qualified to present the Belachheb case before a jury. By 1984, Jackson had presented three felony cases to juries using an insanity defense. Two were acquitted outright and the third ended in a hung jury. In the early ’80s, Jackson defended Alfred Riccomi, a computer engineer prosecuted for the shooting deaths of his fifteen-year-old daughter and her friend. The verdict came in as not guilty by reason of insanity. Even more significant was the 1977 case of Gary Noble, an ex-Assistant District Attorney who had been charged with stealing more than 2,000 pills from a court’s evidence room. The state presented two psychiatrists who testified to Noble’s sanity, but Jackson brought in a doctor who convinced the jury that Noble was “mentally deficient” at the time of his arrest . It was the first not guilty by reason of insanity verdict in the history of Dallas County. The prosecutors of the Noble case were none other than Norman Kinne and Rider Scott.1 In 1984, Frank Jackson was a forty-four-year-old former football star from Southern Methodist University. He had played pro football for the Dallas Texans, Kansas City Chiefs, and the Miami Dolphins of the old American Football League. He had good looks and the build of a professional athlete. Terry Rippa thought of him as a “pretty boy attorney,” and he was, as Judge Meier said, “very, very smooth.” But, she was quick to add, in the Belachheb case his defense was “ . . . creative and he did a good job. Most lawyers would have had nothing at all.”2 The genesis of that “creative” defense came to Jackson during a convention of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL). While discussing the case with his friends, Dennis Roberts and Sandy Phelan, Jackson developed an insanity defense for Belachheb based on cultural maladaptation. They had been exploring cultural issues involving the “Black Rage” defenses in FOR THE STATE • 151 San Francisco. (Roberts had been associated with William Kuntsler during the “Chicago Seven” trials.) “That discussion was the seed for my cultural insanity defense,” Jackson recalled. The underlying precept was that the Moroccan culture relegated women to inferior positions. In America, the rejection of Belachheb’s advances , in addition to brain damage brought about by head traumas , drove him into a state that was uncontrollable. It was a unique approach, even for an insanity plea. But, as Jackson was to admit later, “[t]here was really no other defense.”3 Of course, the danger of the insanity route is that the defendant admits that he did, in fact, commit the act of which he is accused. In that regard, Belachheb had no choice; there was absolutely no doubt that he was the man who did the killing in Ianni’s. Further, Jackson knew that the crime scene photos of five dead bodies (Marcell Ford had been taken to...