16. Why were there two prosecutors against one incompetent public defender?
Return to the questions pageAnswer: There is a very plain and simple reason why there were two prosecutors in this case. The case belonged to Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Theresa Crayon, who was eight months pregnant when the trial opened. Had Ms. Crayon gone into an early labor, the trial might have been delayed, so Deputy Prosecuting Attorney David Fry assumed part of the burden to relieve the physical stress and to be prepared to step in and take over the case if necessary.As to their claim of the defense attorney's "incompetence", Horton Lance is not an incompetent lawyer. He is an experienced and respected trial lawyer, but he had no defense to work with, other than his client’s assertion that his "friend" Anstasia had taken an unfortunate detour for no reason while in a state of confusion that no one had ever seen her in, and that he was being accused by a "psycho" ex-girlfriend who saw this as an easy way to punish him for breaking up with her.
Case filed his 29.15 appeal, claiming incompetence on his attorney's part, and that appeal was flatly rejected. One of his accusations against his attorney was that Lance failed to seek a mistrial at one point during the criminal trial, to which Lance responded under oath that it was Case himself who had decided not to do so, primarily because he was so convinced he'd beat the rap. Case tried to blame his lawyer for his own failures.
It has been pointed out that we have had Mr. Lance's name reversed for some time, and that is simply a result of the fact that it is an unusual name that sounds more natural in reversed order. We looked up his resumé with the Public Defender's Office, for which he used to work.
It would be interesting to see how many convicts in Missouri prisons will cite as the main reason for their confinement was "an incompetent lawyer". Welcome to a large fraternity, Mr. Case.
One of the reasons that Case and his supporters considered Mr. Lance to be "incompetent" was his apparent lack of interest in going after Kelly Moffett's psychologist's records as a way of impeaching her testimony. In Case's own words, his "My 'Court Appointed Attorney' thought it wasn't important enough to waste time on."
In fact, Mr. Lance did pursue that angle, but the judge in the trial examined the records of her counselor in camera (privately) pre-trial, concluded that nothing in the records were pertinent to such a pursuit (that is to say, he did not see any information supporting Case's claims), and disallowed such information to be entered.
Case accuses Mr. Lance of having given "limited instructions to the judge regarding what he was to be looking for", as if Mr. Lance should have made it a generalized fishing expedition. While Case would probably have preferred that, Mr. Lance had to state specifically what he was looking for, which was whether the records would show whether or not Ms. Moffett's therapist considered her a "pathological liar" or not. Judge Atwell found no such references in that.
One of Case's responses has been that "It is a common practice among mental health professionals to keep their records intentionally vague to protect patients’ confidentiality in precisely these types of situations", though not stating how he knows such a "fact".
According to the Missouri Mental Health Counselors Association, this is not the case. Doctors' records of their patients' sessions are not left "intentionally vague", as patients' confidentiality is protected by law, and those documents are in nearly all cases shielded from view by others, and there is generally no need for any such "vagueness". Whatever Kelly Moffett's mental health issues were, there was no evidence that her therapist believed her to be the "pathological liar" that Case was hoping to paint her as.
Considering the fact that Case and his supporters published documents on their web site that were still officially considered closed records under Missouri law, and that they have apparently done so with no intent other than to injure Anstasia's family (and we have an email from one such supporter making a direct and malicious threat to do worse before the documents were put on the web), we can only imagine what they would have done with Kelly Moffett's mental health records had they managed to lay their hands upon them.
Back to the original "unanswered" question: why did the prosecution outnumber the defense two to one?
It would not have made a difference if Case’s attorneys outnumbered the prosecution; the evidence and testimony were what made the case, NOT the numbers of attorneys involved.
Are our questioners making the claim that prosecution and defense must be absolutely equal in number in order to be fair? If Byron Case had decided to have no attorney at all, would the Prosecutor’s office then have been obliged not to send an attorney at all?