Authors: J. A. Faura
Grady and Mullins stood up, picking up their notepads.
“We have a few calls to make. We have to call the district attorney’s office and the lead investigator from the courthouse. They are probably still in the process of analyzing evidence. This will save them a lot of time and resources. We also need to have them go to the building Mr. Loomis has identified to pick up the rifle and collect whatever is at the office he shot from,” Grady said.
Mullins turned to face Steven, “Mr. Loomis, you do understand that given your statements you will be detained here at the station and that once we confirm everything and the DA is informed of this, you will be placed under arrest.”
Zeidler answered for Steven, “Yes, detective, we do understand. I will be contacting the DA myself to discuss bail for Mr. Loomis.”
Mullins nodded, “I understand. He will probably be in front of a judge tomorrow for the bail hearing, but I have to tell you, given the nature of the case and the media attention, it might not be until Wednesday.”
Max was already taking his phone out of his pocket, “Oh, don’t worry, detective, we’ll be in front of the judge tomorrow, but actually, I am going to see if we can get him on the bench tonight.”
Before walking out of the room, Grady also turned to look at Steven and his lawyers, “Make yourselves at home. I will have a uniformed officer stationed outside. I figured this would be better than one of the holding tanks. I’ll be back in a bit. If you need some water or coffee, please let the officer outside the door know.”
He and Mullins walked out of the room and on the way to Grady’s office decided what each would do.
Grady started, “I’ll call the district attorney’s office, you call the team from the courthouse and let them know what they should be looking for and where they need to look.”
Bart Logan was still feeling shell-shocked, even though it had been a few days. The Donald Riche case was going to be his first exposure to a high-profile case, even if it was going to be as assistant counsel. He was also going to be able to work directly with David Neill, the district attorney. In the span of days, that opportunity had been erased, vanished. He was sitting in his office going over the Riche case files, but more than anything he was trying to figure out what his next move should be. As soon as the DA’s office had found out that Loomis had turned himself in, David Neill had quite neatly and ruthlessly ambushed him and Melanie Farris. Of course, he had positioned it as wanting to give Logan another chance at a big case, but the reality was that it had gone from a slam-dunk case to a no-win case in a matter of minutes. He had gone from being a part, a small part, of the prosecution team putting away a hated serial murderer of children to leading the case against the father of one of the victims, an all-American Navy hero who had killed that hated serial murderer.
He was basically going to be a lead prosecutor against a defendant that had been hailed a hero before, would be hailed as an even bigger hero now, and who had lost his daughter to the ‘victim’ in the case. If he convicted Loomis, it would be no big deal, the guy had confessed after all, but if he somehow lost the case, something that was a possibility, a remote one to be sure, but one that the OJ verdict had made possible decades ago, his career with the DA would be over. You just never knew what a jury, a sympathetic jury, a particularly sympathetic jury in this case, might do. If all that weren’t enough, he would have to do it while dealing with Melanie Farris. She was competent enough, a little too zealous at times, but she was a hard-ass in the office and seemed to always be on guard against her male colleagues. He was in it now, though, and if he wanted to hold his position, he would have to do this by the book, no more, no less. Truth was that he had been glad when that monster had been shot. He believed in the justice system and would uphold the law no matter what, but there were times when whatever the justice system had by way of punishment seemed inadequate, and this had been one of those cases.
Neill had said he didn’t want to seem insensitive to the circumstances, so he wanted everything handled carefully, ‘by the book’ he said, and by the book was exactly what he was going to get. He had also warned both of his deputies not to say a word to the press, he would ‘handle them’; he had said it as though he was a strong parent protecting his two vulnerable children. The fact was that he wanted all the media attention that was sure to come after this. Bart was more than willing to let him keep babbling his clichés as much as he wanted to. This was a case where he wanted nothing more than to do his job and keep his head down, and while he didn’t know it yet, soon everyone involved with the case would want nothing more than to do exactly that.
A
PI: Manhattan, New York
January 12, 2012 by Felix Garcia/New York Chronicle
Prosecutors have announced that they have a suspect in custody for the shooting death of Donald Riche. Riche was shot as he was being transferred at the superior courthouse last Wednesday at approximately 2:30 in the afternoon. Riche was being arraigned for the torture and murder of nine girls from across New York’s five boroughs. One of Donald Riche’s victims was Tracy Loomis, age six. The man in custody accused of Donald Riche’s murder is Steven Loomis, Tracy Loomis’s father. Loomis is a senior executive with Globalview Intelligence Consultants, an international security firm under contract with the federal government. Loomis was in the Special Forces, having served in the Gulf, Bosnia and Afghanistan as a member of the Navy’s elite DEVGRU SEAL team, better known as SEAL Team Six. Sources within the police department and the district attorney’s office have confirmed that Loomis walked into a police station and confessed to the shooting. “He made a brief statement accompanied by his attorneys. That is all we can say as we are in the middle of an investigation,” confirmed Detective Robert Grady, a lead investigator on the Donald Riche case and one of the detectives that took Steven Loomis’s confession. Loomis is scheduled to be arraigned tomorrow at downtown superior court, the same place where Donald Riche was shot. It is expected that the district attorney will ask for no bail for Mr. Loomis, as according to the district attorney’s office he poses a serious flight risk. Steven Loomis is represented by Max Zeidler and Drew Willis of the firm of Corliss, Zeidler and Kirk. Mr. Zeidler is confident that his client will be able to remain free on bail during his trial, “Mr. Loomis has been an upstanding member of society who has served his country with honor and who has a loving family that supports him. We are confident that a reasonable bail will be set.” Although neither side would confirm it, there is strong indication that there will be a motion for a speedy trial, as the key facts of the case do not appear to be in dispute. In his statement to the press, District Attorney David Neill said that while the case was tragic in many ways, the district attorney’s office would pursue the case by the book, “I think we can all sympathize with Mr. Loomis and what he and all of the other families were put through, but in the end we are a nation and a state of laws, and we have always allowed those laws to dole out justice whenever it is needed. The people of the state of New York expect this office to uphold the law and that is precisely what we intend to do. Irrespective of how we pursue the case, we will not forget the tragedy that has led us here.” Authorities had cleared Steven Loomis after receiving a video of a meeting he had been in at the time of the shooting, but during his confession Mr. Loomis revealed he had doctored the tape. Barton Logan and Melanie Farris will be the deputy district attorneys handling the case for the prosecution.
Steven was being held at the holding tank at the courthouse. Zeidler and Willis had come to see him shortly after he had been brought there. They briefed him on how things were going to be moving from this point on but held off discussing anything of substance about the case until after the arraignment and the bail hearing. The arraignment and bail hearing were closed to the media and thus did not become the media spectacle everyone expected. There really wasn’t much by way of legal wrangling, as the core facts of the case were not in dispute. When it came to setting bail, Bart Logan made a solid argument against setting any bail, but in the end Loomis’s record and support from family and friends convinced the judge to set the bail at $1 million. Zeidler had more than that amount in the escrow account that the General had set for just such an instance and went about posting the bail immediately.
Upon being released from jail, Steven went directly home. More than anything he wanted to take a long, hot shower and to prepare himself something to eat at his own house. Zeidler had wanted to meet at the firm to talk about the case, but Steven had not budged, so they would be meeting in his living room. Now, with cold drinks in front of them, Zeidler, Drew and Steven prepared to discuss the nuts and bolts of what would be Steven’s defense.
Max began, “Well, Steven, I think we are all in agreement that the crux of this case is going to have to deal with your mindset at the time the crime was committed. You’ve confessed to the shooting, the method and the intent, so for all intents and purposes, we can almost stipulate to all of that so we can get to the matter at heart.”
Steven took a sip from his iced tea, “And what do you think is the matter at heart?”
Max looked over at Drew for some help, but got none, “The matter at heart is the why. The motive is clear, going through what you went through, but what made you take matters into your own hands and kill Riche is what is at the heart of this. We have been researching temporary insanity defenses, heat of passion defenses, and not guilty by reason of insanity.
“Your behavior after the shooting makes for a great foundation for making any of those arguments. The things you saw, the loss of your daughter, all point to the fact that you snapped and lost touch with reality, but believed you were doing the right thing all along.”
Zeidler was standing and pacing now. Drew and Steven were just watching him.
He was on a roll, “That’s why you came in and confessed. It fits perfectly.”
Loomis waited for Zeidler to finish, put down his glass, and asked, “So if I understand what you are saying, you want to mount a defense where experts will get up on the stands and say that because of everything that happened to my family and me, I lost track of reality and that while I was in this state of ‘temporary insanity’ I shot Donald Riche, but afterwards, once I came out of it, I was the same great guy I have always been. Does that pretty much cover it?”
Zeidler had stopped pacing, “There are many nuances and technical aspects to it, but yes, that’s what we will be arguing.”
Steven looked down at the coffee table and then back up, “Mr. Zeidler, Max, I appreciate your expertise and your efforts, but I have no intention of claiming that I was insane while I did this, temporarily or not. I have no intention of saying that I did not know that what I was doing might be breaking a law.
“I plan on stating that it was my full intention to shoot Donald Riche in the way in which I did and that it was my intention to kill him.
“I also plan on stating that I planned on doing this in advance and made arrangements to procure the weapons to do it with.
“I plan on stating that I did all of this by myself with no assistance from anybody, and I plan on stating that throughout the entire episode, I did not have a single break with reality.”
Zeidler’s mouth dropped open as if he was about to say something, but no words came out. Drew sat motionless, stunned. This had to be the only time he had ever seen Max Zeidler left speechless.
He jumped in, “Steven, what you are basically saying is that we won’t be having a trial to argue anything, that you are guilty of every one of the charges the state is accusing you of, and that the only thing for us to do is to try to argue to get the lightest sentence possible.
“You have basically taken every element we could have made an argument about out of play and left us with absolutely nothing to present to any jury to convince them of your innocence, actually forget about innocence, to convince them that there might be mitigating circumstances! If we do not bring in your state of mind, then it is very likely that the judge would not allow us to bring in anything relating to what Riche did to your daughter or any of the other little girls.”
Zeidler was still perplexed, “What did you want an attorney for? To hold your hand while you said ‘Yes, I am guilty of first-degree murder’?”
Steven listened to both of them with a touch of amusement. Truth be told, he should have been more forthcoming with them, but with everything else going on, he needed them to at least get him through the arraignment and the bail hearing.
“Gentlemen, please sit down. I understand everything you are saying, but you are mistaken. I do intend to fight these charges through a jury trial and I do intend to claim that I am not guilty of first-degree murder.
This is not a pipe dream or some sort of a delusion. I have thought about it very carefully and I have done the research. This case is winnable.”
Drew and Zeidler looked at each other and wondered whether their client had lost touch with reality.
Very gently, Drew sat next to Steven and spoke to him, “Steven, how exactly do you figure you can argue you didn’t do it when you walked into a police station and said that you actually committed the murder of Donald Riche and you are now telling us that you meant to do it and that you planned for it?
“All of those things, Steven, are precisely what make you guilty of first-degree murder, so how exactly would you expect us to argue that you are not guilty?”
Now it was Steven’s turn to stand, “Incorrect, Drew, incorrect! I most certainly did not state that I was guilty of the murder of Donald Riche, I made a statement that I had been the one that had shot Donald Riche.”
Drew was now more confused, “Okay, so you are saying that you confessed to shooting and killing Donald Riche, but that it doesn’t mean you committed murder? Well, Steven, I’ll bite, what the hell are you saying, exactly?”