Chris and Alison talk to groundbreaking criminal defense attorney Ann Finnell in this episode. Ann's work defending Brenton Butler was memorialized in the Oscar-winning documentary, "Murder on a Sunday Morning." She was also part of the defense team representing Casey Anthony. Ann is an expert in defending people who are charged with 1st degree murder and are facing the death penalty.
These conversations are not appropriate for children. People with their own traumatic histories should be aware that we discuss violent crimes, exploitation, sexual trauma, child abuse, and incarceration.
Chris and Alison talk to groundbreaking criminal defense attorney Ann Finnell in this episode. Ann's work defending Brenton Butler was memorialized in the Oscar-winning documentary, "Murder on a Sunday Morning." She was also part of the defense team representing Casey Anthony. Ann is an expert in defending people who are charged with 1st degree murder and are facing the death penalty.
These conversations are not appropriate for children. People with their own traumatic histories should be aware that we discuss violent crimes, exploitation, sexual trauma, child abuse, and incarceration.
Finnell_Transcript.mp3
Chris Moser [00:00:03] This is trauma and justice, this is a podcast about the ways that people confront and manage trauma and the justice system. We also talk about the ways that law school and training have aided or failed the people we interview and ought to be improved. These conversations touch on seriously troubling topics. This podcast is not appropriate for children. People with their own traumatic history should be aware that we discuss violent crimes, exploitation, sexual trauma, child abuse and incarceration
Alison DeBelder [00:00:35] I'm Alison DeBelder.
Chris Moser [00:00:37] And I'm Chris Moser.
Alison DeBelder [00:00:39] Welcome. Our guest today is an Finnell she can be reached at smen lawyers dot com. That's F as in Foxtrot Emison Mike and is in November. Lawyers, LSW, Wii, Ask.com or at nine zero four seven nine one one one zero one. She practices criminal defense, personal injury and family law. And Finnell went to Duke for her undergrad degree at the University of Florida for law school. She's been practicing for more than 40 years. She's taught and lectured all over the country, including for the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys, among many others. She served on the Florida Supreme Court committee on standard jury instructions and criminal cases and on the Criminal Procedure Rules Committee. She was the chair of the Executive Council of the Criminal Law section of the Florida Bar in the past. She served on the bar's judicial nominating procedures committee. She's received the Barnard Award in recognition of outstanding service from the Florida Public Defender Association. She is the star of the two thousand two Oscar winning documentary, Murder on a Sunday morning. She's a master of the Chester Bedel and of court founding member of the Northeast Chapter of the Florida Association of Defense Attorneys, a member of the Jacksonville Bar Association, the Florida Bar and the bar of the Middle District of Florida. She has been the president of the Jacksonville Women Lawyers Association and president of the Jacksonville League of Women Voters. She also previously served on the local Duke Alumni Advisory Admissions Committee. Miss Finnell has handled many high profile cases, including that of Brenton Butler and Casey Anthony. Welcome and thank you for being here.
Ann Finnell [00:02:28] Thanks, Alison. That's a little too much information.
Alison DeBelder [00:02:31] Are there? Do you have any exceptions or corrections?
Ann Finnell [00:02:34] Well, a lot of these things I've done in the past, I'm not currently doing them because I'm pretty occupied with private practice. But a lot of those things I'd forgotten all about, to be honest with you.
Alison DeBelder [00:02:45] Well, I'm glad we could take this trip down memory lane before we get into things. I realize that I don't know how you came to practice criminal law.
Ann Finnell [00:02:56] Well, I was a I was a very young student at University of Florida Law School, and I was really kind of a float. I didn't know where I was going, what I was going to be doing, what kind of law I wanted to practice. I found really the entire area of law, kind of boring and dry and not very interesting. And I thought I wanted to be a tax lawyer. And so one of my friends suggested that I sign up for an internship in the area of criminal law because it might be my only opportunity to see a courtroom. And so I did. I signed up for it and I took a criminal procedure class and signed up for an internship. And they asked me, did I want to be with the state attorney's office or with public defender's office? And I said, look, it doesn't matter. This isn't going to be what I do. Uh, and so needless to say, I got the public defender spot. And so I came to Jacksonville and it was the first time in my entire time in law school that I really was happy. I mean, it was my first it was so fascinating. It was I was just completely enthralled with it and really got into it. And apparently that that was obvious to my boss live for us at the time. And so he offered me a job at the end of my internship and I said, well, I'll think about it. And then I did think about it. And I thought, well, I can always go back to Texas, get my lemon test. And so I went to work at the police office and I never looked back and never went back to get my diploma tax, obviously. And I just I tell law students today, I say, you know, find something that you're interested in and that you're happy doing and do it because that's what you do best at and what's going to make you happy. And so this is what I ended up doing.
Alison DeBelder [00:04:48] What year was that? What year did you do your internship or start at the public defender's office in Jacksonville?
Ann Finnell [00:04:54] I did my internship in the summer of nineteen seventy seven, which was a long time ago.
Alison DeBelder [00:05:01] How many women were in the office at that time?
Ann Finnell [00:05:04] There were no women in the office at that time. When I finally got hired and went to the PD office, there was one woman in the office and I mean, thank goodness she was there. I wouldn't have had it really. Anybody? Letchworth It was a different world back then. There were no you couldn't get a job as a litigator, being a female. I mean the law firms just would not hire a female litigator. There was one woman in the in the state attorney's office at the time. And so we were kind of real pioneers, which is how I we ended up kind of starting up the of Women Lawyers Association. I was one of the founding members of that. And we started it because the only women in Jacksonville were all stuck in the back rooms, basically doing research for big civil law firms. And they didn't even know any judges. They had never met a judge unless they were did it socially. And so we started the Jacksonville. Women Lawyers Association really as a as a venue to allow women to interact with judges at the judicial at the annual judicial reception that we held, and it was a way of us all kind of getting together to talk about women's issues and the legal field.
Alison DeBelder [00:06:22] Do you feel like things have changed rapidly or too slowly now?
Ann Finnell [00:06:28] There were some pioneer judges we had here, Judge Pate and Judge Black, obviously, but they you know, they went through law school, went back to the days when the guys used to shuffle their feet when a woman entered the law library. If you can imagine, all the male law students used to shuffle their feet. You were very discouraged from being a lawyer, but also especially in litigation. I remember that our boss sent us all to the National College of Criminal Defense Attorneys where they really kind of focus in on your trial skills and everything. And I had a guy there. This was probably around 1980. I had a guy there insisted that I should not aspire to handle homicide cases because after all, women should not handle homicide cases even as assistant public defenders, because it was just it was either above our capabilities or something. We shouldn't be exposed. I didn't really understand his logic, didn't really have a whole lot to say to him after he office.
Alison DeBelder [00:07:29] Well, that's what I was going to say. How did you respond? When somebody says something, you just say, all right, buddy, and just move on? Or did you confront him?
Ann Finnell [00:07:38] Really, you just needed to move on. It was you weren't going to change his mind. And why really bother to waste your time trying to do so? But I knew what I wanted to do. I mean, if I wanted to be a public defender, I wanted to handle the most serious and most complicated cases there were to handle. And so I that was my aspiration to do death penalty work and ultimately got to do that a little quicker than they allow people to do that now. I mean by nineteen eighty one, 1980, to people like Patrick Alison, they were handling death penalty cases where we really didn't know what we were doing, but we were giving it our best shot because they had really crank back up on the death penalty work, by the way. But we wouldn't have satisfied the standards in place now. But under the Florida bar rules with what we were doing,
Alison DeBelder [00:08:31] how did you manage the judges? Because as I understand it, I mean, there were judges when I started practicing, there was at least a judge when I started practicing who didn't want women wearing pants in his courtroom. But from what I understand, there were judges who didn't want women practicing in their courtrooms. So what did you do when you represented somebody assigned to one of those judges?
Ann Finnell [00:08:55] Well, there was I'll give you an example, there was a juvenile judge who wanted to call all the female attorneys in his courtroom daughter. Which we all thought was pretty strange.
Chris Moser [00:09:07] Oh, my God,
Ann Finnell [00:09:09] there and there was a fairly infamous judge in federal court who didn't want women, blacks or Jews in his courtroom. We all just went in and did our job regardless of his thoughts and feelings. You just you had to put up with a lot of crap, not just from judges, but from colleagues. Sometimes. I mean, some colleagues were very sexist and some of their thoughts and feelings as well. But it was something that we had grown up with and we're kind of used to. I know that sounds probably strange to this generation of women who are going to put up with anything. But in that generation, we were all told when we were youngsters that practicing law was not within the realm of possibilities. I mean, our career choices were supposed to be limited to being a nurse or being a schoolteacher. But really, most girls were encouraged to just think about their future as being a housewife.
Alison DeBelder [00:10:07] So what makes and and was there something special about your parents or somebody in your life that made you think that this was a possibility?
Ann Finnell [00:10:16] Well, you know, it wasn't just me by the time I got to law school, it was like 40 percent of the class was Web and it was one of the first few years that was I started law school in seventy five and you could see this coming. I mean, there was a whole relaxation of I hate to say this, but I think it's true in many senses. Our ability to have birth control freed up and made the women's movement because it freed women from the burden of having children and which took away their ability to have a career. So there were certain things that gave us the ability to think beyond just, you know, getting married and having a family. Right. And that would have started in the early 70s. I mean, you know, I mean that that generation of women that had choices and a lot of us chose to make those choices that we wanted a career as well as a family, that these were equal considerations for us. And it allowed women the opportunity to make a decision about what they wanted to do in life. So when I got to law school in September of 1975, 40 percent of my class were women, that ultimately most of those women go on to practice law. No, they did. In fact, some guys were really pissed off at us for taking the place of a man who could be earning a wage for his family. And they were resentful of that fact. We got that kind of kickback from guys that we were taking the spot that otherwise, you know, some guy who should be supporting the family should have and some of that carried through to our jobs that we got here when we first started out in practice, the pay wasn't necessarily as good. The raises were as good. In fact, I remember going in and having a chat with my boss because somebody else got a raise that was more than me. And he said, well, you know, he's got to support a family. And I looked at him and said, well, you know, I do, too. I did, too. If it was like a light bulb went off in his head. So there were those kinds of groundbreaking things, obstacles that we had to overcome. But the bottom line, I think we were the first generation that had a choice and what we did and a lot of us decided to take that choice.
Alison DeBelder [00:12:43] I was talking to a mutual friend and I said to him, I'd like to talk to Anne about sexism in the law and her experiences. And I said, I don't really know where to start or how to ask about that. And he said, well, she's always the smartest person in the room. Maybe ask her what it's like when people assume that that's not the case because she's a woman. And I thought, yeah, that pretty much sums it up, I guess my first question to build off of that is, is there anybody at this point that you have professional dealings with that you think underestimates you because you're a woman? Or do you think that you are just such an icon at this point that everybody knows that they ought to take you seriously?
Ann Finnell [00:13:32] I have no idea what other people think, but I think we as women have gotten way beyond where we were. I think that some service people may try to still take advantage of us when we go to buy a car. And we're not as savvy maybe in terms of some things as guys might be or that they think we're not the savviest as we should be about some things. But I'll be honest with you, I think women have come so far in certain professions and in medicine and in the law that I don't think that there's any thoughts about that anymore. I think a lot of people feel that women may be better at some things because we are women, because we're a little more compassionate and a little more understanding and a little more. I'll be honest with you. I mean, as a supervisor, the public defender's office, I encourage my bosses to hire women because they did a better job. They showed up to work. They worked at work generally that they weren't skipping out at three o'clock in the afternoon. They did their job and felt like that's what they were there to do. They didn't take things for granted. So I was real happy back in the old days and the older PD's office, when they were a lot of women working there, because I realized we can all be moody, but we also have a tendency to understand responsibility and getting the job done and not taking things for granted.
Alison DeBelder [00:14:58] I agree, I also am concerned, though, I may push back a little bit on how much progress has been made, because I have a child who's a boy who's raised in a home where everybody's really super thoughtful about not complying with maybe typical gender roles in the home. My husband does the bulk of the housework, frankly, cooking, cleaning. We're mindful of the messages that we're sending associated with gender. And I remember when a couple of years ago he was little. He was talking about a doctor and said to him, you know, who will he be or something? It was clearly that he had in mind a man. Now, his pediatrician was a woman and his grandmother is a doctor. The only two doctors he had ever had contact with in his life were women. And somehow he internalized from I don't know where that doctor is, a man and a nurse or something as a woman. So I don't know where that stuff comes from. And I like it, though.
Ann Finnell [00:16:04] No, and I think the, you know, going to this is not going to go away overnight. It's not going to go away in my lifetime. I mean, when you think about how much progress we've made in nineteen sixty eight in the state of Florida, a married woman cannot own property in her own name. It wasn't until the amendment to the Constitution when a married woman could own her own property, it wouldn't automatically revert to her husband. So that's coming a long way in 50 years.
Alison DeBelder [00:16:36] Yeah. Did you feel when you started handling cases, serious cases with upsetting facts, high stakes. So sex cases, homicides, did you feel like you couldn't express any feelings associated with that to other people for fear that you might be seen as being weak? Or was that not an issue?
Ann Finnell [00:17:01] It wasn't an issue for me when you're representing somebody charged with that horrible having done a horrible thing and you know they did it. You have to kind of block that out because otherwise you wouldn't be really motivated to help them out very much. And I always felt like when I got a case that I needed to do the best job I could do, regardless of whether the person was guilty or innocent or whether I felt they were guilty or innocent. Because if I dropped the ball on that and they were really innocent, that I'd really be dropping the ball. Somebody was going to get convicted, shouldn't be convicted. So I've always done I've put my compartmentalize that part of my feelings away. Otherwise, I don't know that you could do this job. But, you know.
Alison DeBelder [00:17:47] What does that look like? How do you compartmentalize because I mean and also for the people listening, how many let's just say murder cases have you handled in your career?
Ann Finnell [00:17:58] You know, that's hard to say. Alison was full time. I was a full time member of the homicide team from, let's say, eighty one to eighty five. And then in eighty five I was promoted or I felt like it was promotion. I'm not sure what it was to be a felony court supervisor. And I still handled homicide. So I've handled hundreds. I don't know, you know, I don't know how well.
Alison DeBelder [00:18:21] So that's something. Hundreds of homicides. And I know you've handled cases involving shootings, shootings, stabbings, strangulation.
Ann Finnell [00:18:31] Absolutely. All of the above.
Alison DeBelder [00:18:33] You've had bodies that have been in water, depth,
Ann Finnell [00:18:37] water, plastic buried. I can't think of anything I haven't really done.
Alison DeBelder [00:18:43] You've had children who were murdered.
Ann Finnell [00:18:45] Yes, sometimes by children.
Alison DeBelder [00:18:49] Right. You've represented children charged with murder. And so the enormity of that, when you say you compartmentalize it, what does that look like? Are there things that you specifically do to deal with that trauma that you necessarily have to experience when you're confronted with those facts? Or is it just that you have a clinical mindset when you approach the actual work? I don't know. Is it fishing?
Ann Finnell [00:19:18] I don't know what it is. It's tough for everybody. I tell you that. And sometimes it's not for me. I remember distinctively one time I was in the prosecutor's office, we were in there and somehow a case for discussion came up and it wasn't my case. Thankfully, it just was not my case. And she whipped out a picture of the victim and I could not get that. I literally had to walk out of the room. It was troubling, is very troubling to me. And I was a pretty seasoned defense attorney at that point, and I could not get that picture out of my head for a week. I still think about what
Alison DeBelder [00:19:55] happened, describe it,
Ann Finnell [00:19:57] describe the picture.
Alison DeBelder [00:19:59] What was it about it?
Ann Finnell [00:20:00] There was a picture of a female victim who was sitting on the floor with her back up against the sofa and the top half of her head was blown off with a shotgun. And the only thing that was left of the top half of her head was her skull, which was completely denuded of hair or anything else, which was sitting like an eggshell on top of a cushion on the sofa. Oh, my God. It was it was a horrible picture. Yeah, and I didn't know anything about it, I didn't know anything about the circumstances of the case. I know nothing about who did it. I knew nothing about that case. It was a troubled trouble for a little while. It trouble just I don't know. It was just a very disturbing case I had I did have another case down in another county and I had the codefendant and the defendant that was on trial was represented by somebody else. And this was another troubling one for me. The young man had walked into a convenience store for no reason whatsoever to rob it, obviously, and had put a gun in the clerk's face. And it was obvious the clerk was getting the money of the cash register. And for no reason, for no reason whatsoever, he had just pulled the trigger and shot the man. And it was all on video. And then the man collapsed to the floor. And so I watched that at least 10 times, trying to see some reason for that to have happened and I could not find an answer. I'm in the trial watching the jury, and they were very interested in the case. And you could see they were leaning forward and looking at the video. And the minute they saw that, they completely tuned out, completely tuned out. It did not matter what that defense attorney said after that. That jury was completely tuned out. They were unwilling to listen to anything else then. It was understandable to me because there was no justification for that to happen. Fortunately, I had the getaway driver who and all of this was completely out of his control. He couldn't have stopped it. He couldn't have done anything to keep that from happening. So I didn't have any issues with my representation of him, which was for a different day. But it was just sometimes as a as a criminal defense attorney, what you don't what you're dealing with is incomprehensible.
Chris Moser [00:22:23] What I find really interesting and both of your examples, you were sort of more outside of the zone of danger. The first one wasn't your client at all. And the second example was you representing a co defendant who had very little involvement, maybe didn't even know what was about to happen. And maybe there's something about that that let you be vulnerable or see it from the perspective. Most people see it because those examples just struck me as being similar in that way.
Ann Finnell [00:22:58] I think you're right, because it had been my client, I'm sure I would have been looking for anything to justify what had happened.
Chris Moser [00:23:07] But how you say you compartmentalize? Did you bring your work home on the weekends or the evenings or do you only work in your office? How are some logistical ways that you think you were able to do that?
Ann Finnell [00:23:22] I take work. I take work on vacations. It's it's unfortunate that especially in private practice, you literally work all the time. I think the difference is talking to the client. I think the difference is you have a human being who you're representing and your job is to try to do what's right by that human being. You can't get in a time machine and go back and change what has already happened. So the only person that you can still help is the client. You know, if you could go back in a time machine and keep it from ever happening, you would do that to save the victim. But you can't do that, right? So the only person that you have to help is your client. And so that's how I think I justify things. It's like I can't do anything to change what's happened. I can only do things to change what is going to happen to this individual. And so I need to understand why it happened. So my big thing is to try to find out why this happened, because we all want to kill the spider on the floor in the kitchen at three o'clock in the morning, which is how the rest of the world is looking at your client. So you have to kind of give them a reason or a justification for not doing that. You have to find out why something happened so that they can understand why something happened and maybe they won't exact the ultimate penalty.
Chris Moser [00:24:54] Right. It's a clear definition of your role and your oath, I think, is how you've been able to do it, because that's at the forefront of your mind.
Ann Finnell [00:25:04] I think that's putting it correctly, perhaps better than I was expressing.
Alison DeBelder [00:25:09] When you talk about figuring out how or what led to something happening, do you feel like in your homicide cases, you always get that answer when you're investigating and looking for mitigation in a client's background, do you have the sense that there's always something that you've been able to point to or come to believe is the turning point that led down this path?
Ann Finnell [00:25:35] Generally, I do feel that there is always the there have been a few people I've represented who are clearly psychopathic, who are sociopaths, they're anti-social personality disorder people. But even that can be a mitigator because it can't be changed. It's the way they are.
Alison DeBelder [00:25:54] And do you see that trace back to stuff like in their childhood, typically or not? Always.
Ann Finnell [00:25:59] No, I sometimes I think they're just wired that way. But with with the majority of people who aren't suffering from antisocial personality disorder, there is some reason it is or something in their childhood abandonment issues, neglect issues. Just sometimes we're talking about the work that can even be prenatal neglect. I mean, some of these kids have never had a chance. In life, period, have mother still one of them? Nobody wanted them. They were just really left to fend for themselves. So they have no social structure. They have no moral structure. They have no structure really at all in terms of guidance from an adult. A lot of brain damage from their mother using and abusing substances or alcohol. A lot of them are mentally retarded or borderline retarded. I mean, there's such a host of problems out there that cause people to get into trouble with the law and have impulse control issues. Most of it is related to the way their brain is. I'll just be honest with you. I mean, most people with impulse control, there's a reason why they have impulse control problems. So it's just finding it. It's getting some good quality experts to help you. And it's getting out in the field and talking to family members who aren't impaired and who can tell you what it was really like for this kid growing up. Teachers sometimes, although, you know, we need to do a better job of maintaining school records for longer periods of time because sometimes they're really hard to find.
Alison DeBelder [00:27:36] What do you think the key is to doing that side of the work, by which I mean getting people to open up to you? I mean, in that I think relates to our earlier conversation about sometimes people being hostile towards a woman, especially when you started in this career. You're having to go out into people's homes and talk to them about incredibly private, often shameful things. How do you do that? Why are you so good at that? What's the trick?
Ann Finnell [00:28:04] Well, first of all, you have to get out there and go. I mean, you have to get out of the and you can't expect somebody to come into your office. You have to get out. You have to talk to them. You have to sit down on their porch or sit in their living rooms. And sometimes that's not particularly a nice place to be, but you have to be willing to do that. I think the bottom line is you just have to care enough to do it. And sometimes, you know, I don't come across as necessarily a huge caring person. I do care. I obviously get out there and do it. But that's not my personality necessarily to come across that way. So I don't know why they do open up to me sometimes you just have to be really persistent about it and say, look, you know, your son's looking at the death penalty. And unless you open up to me and tell me some of the stuff, you're going to be a mother. He's counting down the minutes until our son is lethally injected or back in the day when they used to be electrocuted. I mean, the bottom line is, you know, we as a society take better care of animals that have been violent than we do of people who have been violent or more compassionate towards an animal because we realize that they don't have the ability to exercise good judgment. But some of these defendants don't either. And we really need to kind of take a new approach to how to deal with the problem that we have.
Alison DeBelder [00:29:29] Do you have clients who have been sentenced to death?
Ann Finnell [00:29:32] You know, the only person I have on death row has gotten her first relief when I supposed to mention names. But so I don't know what's going to happen there. Hopefully he's going to get a new penalty phase. It was a case, Miss Hanania and I tried. So hopefully that won't happen and I won't have a person on death row. I've been very, very lucky throughout the years now that I have some death cases pending here. So I don't know what ultimately is going to happen, but hopefully we can keep that from happening.
Alison DeBelder [00:30:03] What do you I mean, do you have a crystal ball as far as the law goes on death penalty stuff? What do you think's going to happen?
Ann Finnell [00:30:11] You know, Alison, I've given up on trying to predict that I remember back when Ring versus Arizona came out, I was I remember lecturing at some conference and saying that I thought the whole procedure was going to change. After reading, it took, what, 15, 20 years for Florida to pick up the ball. And networks seem to be going in the opposite direction. But everybody says that the death penalty seems to be going out the window. I don't know that that's necessarily true in states like Florida, Georgia, Texas, Florida has always been a little bit of an outlier. I think the legislature has changed since Paul came out because they realized that would make Florida even more of an outlier. But I mean, who knows what what's going to happen. So I've given up on trying to predict with crystal balls. I wish they'd get rid of the death penalty for any number of reasons. First of all, I think it's a complete waste of money, time, energy. I mean, you name it, but some people just have to have their pound of flesh.
Alison DeBelder [00:31:15] I think Bryan Stevenson regularly makes this argument, and I find it compelling also that when the death penalty is a possibility, when it's on the table for discussion, it sets the boundaries for what is acceptable in the realm of punishment in these really bizarre extremes. Right. So it necessarily sets that backdrop for the conversation about everything else.
Chris Moser [00:31:39] And can you discuss just really briefly the pool decision and the ring decision? You mentioned them in passing and just so people kind of have an idea, when I started, my first job was at CCRC and two thousand one and I literally took it. One of the reasons, because I thought, well, the death penalty isn't going to be around for very long. And that's one factor in my mind at the time, taking it, thinking any second now it's going to be abolished in Florida and in the nation.
Ann Finnell [00:32:10] Sure. Back in the day with the death penalty first get reinstated, the Florida death was decided based upon a majority vote of the jury. So if a jury who was made up of 12 persons on a death case voted six, six, six for death and sex for life, then the tie went to the defendant and he got a life sentence, or at least that was the recommendation to the judge, seven five, seven jurors for death, five for life. But the jury's recommendation was death. So anything more than that, eight, four, nine, three, etc. would be death recommendations. But the judge used to be able to make the ultimate finding as to whether or not death should be imposed. OK, and then Arizona versus Ring came out in Arizona versus reading, talked about the fact that aggravating factors, which are those factors in a death case that would make it or more likely to think death was the appropriate penalty versus mitigating factors, which are those factors which might make an individual juror think that life was the most appropriate thing, that those things should be found by the jury to exist beyond a reasonable doubt. In other words, the state should have the burden of proving those aggravating factors beyond and to the exclusion of a reasonable doubt, which was the standard for guilt, innocence. And so rain came out and said that that needed to be the way things were, or that anything that affects sentencing that a judge could use to impose an enhanced penalty. A jury should be required to make a finding of fact as to the existence of that. And so we thought after Arizona versus reading that our death penalty statute would be changed. And instead, it wasn't until we bumped along above rather than the first case came out first versus Florida, which was a very kind of simple decision by the Florida Supreme Court, ultimately the United States Supreme Court. And then it was implemented in Florida that aggravating factors had to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. That had to be a finding of that by the jury. But it suggested the Hurst decision suggested also that death should be decided by a unanimous jury. And so our statute was changed. The legislature hurriedly passed a statute that required that the aggravating factors had to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt and the jury recommendation had to be 12 zero in order for death to be imposed.
Chris Moser [00:34:52] Yeah, thank you so much, because I think most people just assume it's a unanimous verdict all the way down the line, and to hear that it used to be a simple majority is probably pretty surprising to people that aren't familiar.
Ann Finnell [00:35:06] I don't think your average citizen I mean, certainly some are very strongly in favor of the death penalty, but I think a lot of people view it as a an option of last resort. At least I like to think that they do. OK, so I think that forcing the jury to make a decision about life or death. Forces them to take in a little more seriously, because back in the old days that a juror could say, well, you know, we could recommend death, and if the judge doesn't think it's the right thing to do because he or she is probably in a better position to know these things than we are right, then they can always impose a life sentence. So there was a cop out for them to allow the judge to do it. Now, I think forcing the jurors to actually think that what they recommend is going to be what the person gets. I think that's good for a defendant because I honestly think that most jurors don't really want to impose a death sentence unless they think they absolutely there's no you know, there's just no other safe recourse to do. I just don't think they do.
Alison DeBelder [00:36:24] All the stuff I ever did write, I feel like I did right, because you or somebody else told me, you know. How did you learn this stuff?
Ann Finnell [00:36:36] We got to the public defender's office. It was a I don't know what it was about it. These older guys there who really couldn't care less about what they were doing. I mean, they were obviously going through the motions. But then there was this group of us, younger people, Pat McGinnis being one of them, lowest being one Peggy Fox. And that was up in New York. I mean, there was this group of people that had graduated within the last couple of years. And we were all fascinated with this process. And so we were kind of in a friendly competition. I mean, Patrick was very inspirational to me in terms of his ability to ask questions. I mean, I had learned a lot from Pat and I guess we all learned from each other, but it was kind of a friendly competition and we were all trying to do the same thing, which was find out as much information as the discovery rules to our advantage. And we were becoming very successful. And then Chipperfield came along and he joined into the group. And so we had a really robust group of young lawyers and the police officers who really cared about what they were doing. And I think we all kind of learned from each other, I think is the bottom line, because we all really wanted to be doing this work. It wasn't a stepping stone to something else. It was we all wanted to be the best we could be. And we were all kind of mavericks about it. I mean, really I mean, we all have kind of quirky little personalities. And we were having fun, you know, in the DA's office. It was kind of a sink or swim type of environment that thrown in the deep end of the pool the first day out and said, look, be resourceful, get going and do your own swimming. And the ones that swam, swam and the ones that sink to the bottom, they moved on very quickly somewhere else. You know, we had a lot of swimmers. So that was the good thing about them in. A lot of people really liked it. You can't baby people. I know that that's true. Even in private practice, you have to kind of let people learn their own system and learn their own way of practicing law and give them some kind of friendly advice and what have you. But everybody's got to learn their own style and what have you. And I think we had a lot of really successful lawyers come out of this.
Alison DeBelder [00:39:00] Is there anything that you have been reflecting on in anticipation of our conversation today? Anything that has to do with trauma in the criminal justice system or the justice system more broadly, that had been on your mind that we haven't talked about,
Ann Finnell [00:39:17] the only thing we haven't really talked about vis a vis the death penalty is the fact that sometimes you get a client who really just wants to die. Hmm. Yeah, I've had a few of those and I've had to talk them out of that notion, being a volunteer for the death penalty, because generally as the client that really wants to die, because they have the ability to reflect on what they've done and see almost the ultimate type of remorse for what they've done. And so you have to kind of talk them out of it. And I've had to do that. And it's sometimes it's been a process. And some defense attorneys have had volunteers and they haven't been able to talk them out of it. But I always was able to at least talk them out of it to go through the process. That's a real odd contradiction in terms. I remember one client I had wanted to die because he had killed a woman and her child. He was in a post. I could talk a little bit about the facts because he was his sister's deceased, that she died of cancer well, while serving a life double life sentence. But he had he had been indicted, died in that state, was seeking the death penalty. And he really could not deal with the fact that he had killed this woman and her child. He had thought they were some something. They worked it come off a ship that had been attacked by Iraqi missiles and had had to go down to fight the fires of this berthing area. And all his friends had been killed on the ship. And so he was suffering from an extreme form of post-traumatic stress disorder. And he had killed this woman and a child, thinking that at the moment I think they were Iraqis and hammered them to death and he wanted to die. He had no prior record before this, he was a US Navy person and I had to talk him out of it the night he tried to kill himself. And so extreme contradiction of it was, is that he slit his wrists in his jail cell and they had found him semi-conscious and had rushed him to the hospital to save his life. And I'm thinking to myself, this is not making any sense to me here, where the sheriff's office is rushing him to the hospital to save his life. He wants to die, and then they tried to kill him after that. I mean, it's wild. So they ended up they did save his life and we went to trial. He got a life recommendation from the jury and a life sentence, life sentences from the judge and ultimately died in prison of cancer. But I just know sometimes what we do doesn't make any sense. Sometimes the system doesn't make any sense in that particular instance of the state attorney's response to him being rushed to the hospital was that they wanted him to be brought in and tried on a stretcher. Crazy, crazy stuff. But anyway, I did reflect on that and I thought that that's something we need to think about and contemplate a little bit, because in those instances, and I'm sure this was a unique circumstance, that really this death penalty stuff just doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Alison DeBelder [00:42:43] So at the end of these interviews, because we're grateful for you giving us your time and spending it talking about things that are kind of a bummer, we've asked some people to reflect upon what your work means so that we can end on a happy note.
Ann Finnell [00:43:03] Happy note. This has been kind of a downer about
Alison DeBelder [00:43:10] all these murders and whatnot. So anyway, so we just have a couple of those to read to you.
Chris Moser [00:43:15] OK, this is from Lois Ragsdale. She says, I really don't know what to say about the woman I refer to as Annabel. I remember people talking about what a great dancer Fred Astaire was, and he was. But Ginger Rogers did it in heels while dancing backwards. Maybe an odd way to start, but and has never really grabbed the spotlight for herself, and yet she has handled a number of high profile cases and she has handled them well, although I have seen her lose her cool on occasion in general, she just seems to ride the waves, go with the music. When she started as an attorney, she was a woman in a man's world and she more than kept up. She did the dance and she still does, if needed, backwards, but probably not in heels. Love you, Annabel Lewis.
Ann Finnell [00:44:10] That was very nice.
Alison DeBelder [00:44:12] It sounds like Lewis, too. All right. This next one is written by Bill White and did most of her UFF law internship in county court. Lou wasn't yet comfortable with women lawyers and and was appropriately aggressive. She had warned us not to hire an attorney who was openly misogynist, but whose father was influential. Lou hired the man over Ann's and my objections and we regretted it. But Ann was clearly a cut above most of the interns she vigorously presented a motion to suppress, and when it was denied, she appealed it to the circuit court. She lost there and sought a writ of cert in the Florida Supreme Court. Lou and I accompanied her to Tallahassee and we watched her passionate argument. She lost, but Lou was convinced that she was something special. Skip forward to the Brenton Butler case, the courtroom was packed for her direct exam of Brenton. Several prominent defense attorneys commented afterwards that it was brilliant and the best they had ever seen and was tough on unprepared attorneys. She had high standards that could rub some attorneys wrong. And I tried a triple homicide case. The client was an intimidating, pumped up big guy. He had at one time threatened to kill all the lawyers in the case, defense and prosecutors during one break in the trial and was left by the bailiffs locked in the holding cell alone with him. She shared a bunch of cigarets with him. And when we found her after the break, she didn't blink and the client amended his threats, limiting them to the prosecutors. Cheryl Peak and Angela Corey and is the best trial attorney I have known in my forty seven years as an attorney.
Ann Finnell [00:46:05] That's very nice. I remember going to a lot of the cell of Walter.
Chris Moser [00:46:12] Hey, can I tell you again that when I interviewed for the job before I went to talk to Lou, I was with Bill first and he told me the story about you going to the Florida Supreme Court and my job interview, because I was one of those people that watch that movie. And I was like, I want to go work there with those people. And I just distinctly remember him explaining all the things that you've done. And I was just so happy to be in that interview. So when I read what Bill said, I was like, oh, my gosh, that's what you told me. It's pretty cool.
Ann Finnell [00:46:48] Lou took me to eat red beans and rice with onions before the argument. Sort of.
Alison DeBelder [00:47:01] All right. There's one more. It's from
Chris Moser [00:47:02] Pat Kaiser. Big surprise. Sorry we didn't plan it. And Finnell was my supervisor in the public defender's office for over 20 years when she served as the head of the felony division. And that role, she mentored and served as a role model for hundreds of attorneys. She's hardworking and dedicated and expected the same from her attorneys. We had a busy office that Ann was always willing to take the time to teach new attorneys how to figure sentencing guidelines, to discuss legal issues or instruct on questioning experts. She served in that role while taking homicide cases and is a fierce litigator. She is as smart as they come, and she is always well prepared. That preparation comes from the hard work that she puts into all of her cases and is not intimidated by any expert witness. She takes the time to learn the subject matter of the experts field and then uses that information to ask precise questions and answers that are helpful to her defense and is also a master strategist. She once asked me to sit second chair on an armed robbery case where the defense was insanity. The client had a long history of severe mental illness and psychosis, and he was not taking his medication at the time of the offense. However, he was on as prescribed medication at the time. He went to trial and was no longer psychotic and was familiar with all the law as it related to the insanity defense and used it to our client's advantage. She asked me not to talk to our client during the trial so the jury did not get the impression that he was sane. She asked for a jury instruction that our client was currently taking psychotropic medication, she entered into evidence, a prior judgment where our client had been found not guilty by reason of insanity and had never been restored to sanity by the court. The NDEYE, or not guilty by reason of insanity, carried a presumption of insanity under Florida law and masterfully presented the defense that ended with the only Ndeye verdict I have ever heard about in Florida. And Finnell has saved many of her clients lives and has changed the trajectory of countless other clients lives for the better. She is a true hero
Ann Finnell [00:49:37] that Kaiser Furneaux, thank you both.
Alison DeBelder [00:49:42] Trauma injustice is created by Chris Moser and Alison DeBelder and engineered by Chris Higgins. Thanks for listening. Please be sure to like review and read us. It means a lot.