Blurring the Line Between Victim and Aggressor

The prosecutor readily admitted the problem.

“This is,” he said, “a case of intangibles.”

Indeed, everyone agreed on the facts in the case of the People vs. Wanda Jo Piety. What the prosecutor meant was that Piety would be judged not on the whats of her deeds, but the whys.

Piety, without a doubt, sneaked into her on-again, off-again boyfriend’s Newhall apartment in May, 1992, and hit him on the head with a small ash baseball bat as he sat up in bed. While she was in jail, she wrote letters to someone about getting rid of him. As a result, she was charged with attempted first-degree murder, assault with a deadly weapon, residential burglary and solicitation of murder.

Her attorney argued that she was in the grip of a mental unraveling at the time of the alleged crimes. This would be the sticking point. Did her boyfriend--who denied her claims that he sexually and emotionally abused her--drive her to violence? Jurors in a first trial were unable to reach verdicts on any of the charges.

Going into a second trial in what he hoped would be abuse-excuse-weary Van Nuys, the prosecutor knew that the big variables were emotional ones--how would the jury react to the defendant? To the victim? To the main prosecution witness, who had major credibility problems? Would a jury buy the defense lawyer’s argument that Piety had been reduced to near-insanity by the tortured relationship she endured at the hands of the victim, Joseph Contegiacomo? Would jurors believe her when she said he alternately professed his love, then said he wished she would die? How much weight would they place on the fact that the victim received only a scalp wound and went to work later that day?

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Judges and prosecutors, by obligation if not by nature, cannot condone violence.

Jurors, however, can and do so all the time.

Often, they are helped down that path by skillful defense attorneys. In Jeffrey Brodey, Piety had one of the best. At sentencing, even Judge Candace Beason said he was a “Rolls-Royce.”

In the end, Piety’s jurors voted their hearts. They liked the defendant; they detested the victim. Jurors said they were turned off by the fact that Contegiacomo did not tell the truth about his height while on the stand, that he grabbed for tissue to wipe his eyes when in fact they were dry, and that three people who knew him professionally testified that he was deceitful and could not be trusted.

Jurors said they detested the main prosecution witness--a convicted prostitute, drug user and burglar--who befriended Piety in jail and who offered to put her in touch with someone who could kill Contegiacomo.

Piety was found guilty of a single charge: assault with a deadly weapon. Instead of life in prison, she got five years’ probation and credit for time served.

I wrote about Piety’s case in January, when she was between trials. I doubted whether the prosecutor could win the case, and thought Piety, who had already spent more than two years in jail and had never committed a crime previously, had been punished enough, especially given the minor injuries she inflicted and her deteriorating mental state at the time she was alleged to have solicited Contegiacomo’s murder in jail. (A psychologist testifying on her behalf said she was “psychotic” at the time.)

Piety had told me she felt she was a victim of gender bias--that prosecutors threw the book at her and kept her in jail without bail for so long because she was a woman. Though she had individual supporters, the case never became a rallying point for local women’s groups. The facts--especially the alleged murder solicitation--were too compromising.

If bias played a role in the case, it probably worked both ways in the long run. Piety, 43, is an extremely sympathetic figure--frail and angelic with red curls that frame her face (a “born victim” said one of the male jurors in the second trial).

In fact, jurors--six of whom showed up as a gesture of support at her sentencing last Thursday--felt almost protective toward her.

“She never meant to hurt anyone,” said jury foreman Bob LeMoine.

“His injuries were not severe,” said juror Ron Kelley. “They should have been worse.”

“He was a phony, a liar,” said another. “She is not a danger to society.”

How did prosecutors so badly misjudge a case?

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Deputy Dist. Atty. Marsh Goldstein doesn’t think he did. He knew the case would be tough--”a prosecutor’s nightmare,” he called it back in January--but he also said, “There is no question she did what we are alleging.”

I am not privy to the internal politics of the district attorney’s office and cannot say why prosecutors pursued Piety so ferociously.

The reason may be as simple as the one that led jurors to forgive Piety her most serious trespasses: They are only human. Perhaps prosecutors felt not only righteous, but stung by the judge who presided over Piety’s first trial.

After declaring a mistrial, Compton Superior Court Judge Morris Jones dismissed two of the charges against Piety--attempted first-degree murder and residential burglary--a sign to many that he believed she had been “overcharged” by prosecutors. (In response, the D.A.’s office not only added a fifth serious charge--conspiracy to commit murder--but transferred the case to the Valley.)

But Jones went a step further. He compared Piety’s actions to the caning of American Michael Fay in Singapore and said Contegiacomo had simply got what he had coming--”just a plain old-fashioned whipping.”

This really ticked off the prosecutors. Judges, as I mentioned, are not supposed to condone these things.

In the end, however, the Van Nuys jury validated the Compton judge’s appraisal.

The jurors who turned out for Piety’s sentencing were quite satisfied with their work.

“She was sweet and he was a user,” one said. “Justice prevailed.”

* Robin Abcarian’s column is published Wednesdays and Sundays.