Hunter S. Thompson's Last Stand
http://www.lewrockwell.com/mcmaken/mcmaken134.html
Dear Dr. Thompson: Felony Murder, Hunter S. Thompson, and the Last
Gonzo Campaign
Reviewed by Ryan McMaken
November 20, 2010
Hunter S. Thompson was one of the 20th century's greatest literary
social critics, and one of the most anti-authoritarian. In the
tradition of Mark Twain and H.L. Mencken, Thompson never flinched at
exposing the hypocrisies and contradictions of American life and
ideology, and his contempt for authority permeated not just his
writing but his life as well.
Thompson killed himself in 2005, shortly before his remains were shot
out of a giant cannon in Aspen, Colorado. Yet, right up to the end,
Thompson made himself a gadfly and a nuisance and an enemy of the
agents of the state who have so much power over the lives of the powerless.
In Dear Dr. Thompson, writer Matthew Moseley has provided an
entertaining first person account of Hunter S. Thompson and his "Last
Gonzo Campaign." Through the book, which is both a true crime account
and a study of Thompson the man, Moseley details Thompson's
involvement in the Lisl Auman case in which, Auman, then barely out
of her teens, was kidnapped by a drug addled gangbanger who murdered
a police officer. Later, prosecutors claimed Auman had assisted the
murderer and, thanks to media hysteria and prosecutorial recklessness
in the name of "sending a message" to cop killers, Auman was
sentenced to life in prison without parole under the felony murder
law in Colorado.
Then one day, while serving her life sentence in a Colorado prison,
Auman wrote a letter to Hunter S. Thompson a few hours away in Aspen.
Thompson's assistant Deborah Fuller read the letter aloud to
Thompson. The letter spawned the "Free Lisl!" campaign which would
turn out to be Thompson's last great campaign against injustice.
The Murder
Lisl Auman was handcuffed in the back of a police car in the parking
lot of an apartment complex when skinhead Matthaeus Jaehnig, whom
Auman had met that morning, murdered a police officer.
Denver's Westword newspaper provides a concise description of the scene:
Freeze this image in your mind.
It's the afternoon of November 12, 1997. Lisl Auman, 21 years old,
is standing in front of a boxy condominium...Behind her is the
hulking form of Matthaeus Jaehnig, struggling frantically with the
lock on the condominium door. In front of Lisl are first two, then
three police officers. She has her hands up. She is taking one, two
hesitant steps forward.
In seconds she will be on the ground, hands behind her for the
handcuffs, an officer's knee in her back, his voice in her ear,
yelling, calling her a bitch. She will be bundled into a police car
and driven a short way off in the condo parking lot.
Jaehnig, meanwhile, will have veered from the door, around a set of
stairs--coming within a few feet of the officers--and into an
alcove...There is no exit from it other than the stairs he has just
passed or the locked doorway to a second condo.
Officer Bruce VanderJagt arrives...VanderJagt is a courageous and
much-admired eleven-year veteran of the Denver Police Department. He
has twice received a Distinguished Service Cross--once for disarming
a gunman terrorizing the employees of Porter Memorial Hospital, once
for running into a burning building to help save the
occupants...VanderJagt peers around the corner. There's a fusillade
of shots. More quickly than the mind can grasp, a bullet rips away
the right side of VanderJagt's head. For long seconds he remains
standing. Then he falls.
Minutes later, Jaehnig takes VanderJagt's service revolver and kills himself.
Auman is taken to the police station for questioning. Police assumed
that Auman had been an accomplice of Jaehnig's and that she and
Jaehnig were allies and perhaps friends. The truth was more complicated.
Auman and Jaehnig had only met earlier that day. Jaehnig was the
friend of a friend whom Auman had asked for help in retrieving some
of her belongings from the apartment of a former boyfriend who had
been abusive and had been keeping many of Auman's belongings in his
apartment at the Hudson Hotel in Buffalo Creek in the mountains above Denver.
Auman's friend invited along Jaehnig, a skinhead with a long history
of violence in Denver. But Lisl Auman didn't know anything about
Jaehnig's past. By the time the group reached Buffalo Creek, it was
apparent that Jaehnig was someone to be feared, and when Jaehnig
started burglarizing Shawn Cheever's apartment, Auman couldn't do
much about it.
Many hours later, as Jaehnig was leading the police on a high speed
chase through the city streets of Denver, Auman had become a hostage
to the heavily armed and obviously violent Jaehnig who forced Auman
to hold the steering wheel while he leaned out the window and fired
wildly at the police in pursuit.
The chase eventually ended at the apartment complex in Denver where
Auman fled from Jaehnig and where Jaehnig murdered Bruce VanderJagt.
Was Auman a hostage or was she an accessory to murder? And if she was
an accessory, could she be charged with first degree murder for a
crime that took place while she was locked in the back of a police car?
Under the felony murder law, the answer to the latter question is yes.
Felony Murder
Moseley describes the concept of felony murder:
Felony murder is a favored statute of prosecutors because it allows
them to cast the widest possible net around a crime to include people
who may have had no intent for the crime to happen. Colorado law
states ' the purpose of the felony murder statute is to hold a
participating robber accountable for a non-participant's death, even
though unintended, as long as death is caused by an act committed in
the course of or in furtherance of the robbery or in the course of
immediate flight therefrom. [Emphasis Moseley's] Prosecutors have
used it to ensnare forty-five people under the age of eighteen in
Colorado, and over 2,000 juveniles in the U.S., who are all serving
sentences of life without parole.
The problem in the Auman case is that it was not clear at all that
Vanderjagt's murder in Denver had anything at all to do with the
theft that occurred in the mountains many, many hours before. Nor was
it clear that Lisl Auman was in the course of immediate flight from
the burglary. Indeed, it was most likely that Auman ran to police
protection in flight from Jaehnig himself, who had obviously been
endangering the life of Auman for hours before the final shoot-out.
However, as one of the attorneys who sympathized with Auman noted,
the way the law was being interpreted by the courts meant that "she
could have jumped out of the car [as Jaehnig sped down the highway]
and she still would be guilty."
A prosecuting attorney later pointed out that the fact that Auman had
been in police custody did not matter: "It does not matter where she
was. She could have been at McMurdo Sound in Antarctica. She could
have been on Mir Space Station." She was still guilty because, as the
prosecutors claimed, both Auman and Jaehnig were in the course of
immediate flight from the burglary of Shawn Cheever at the Hudson
Hotel in Buffalo Creek, Colorado.
Another benefit of the felony murder law is that prosecutors don't
even need to show that the defendant intended to kill anyone.
According to Jeffrey Hartje, a criminal law professor at the
University of Denver, "Conspiracy and felony murder are the favored
children in the prosecutor's nursery...With felony murder and
conspiracy, you don't have to show intention, making a conviction much easier."
Freed of having to show that Auman intended to kill anyone, the
prosecutors simply sought to show that she was somehow in league with
Jaehnig. In order to convince a jury of the justice of locking Auman
away forever, in spite of the fact that she seemingly was no
accomplice at all, prosecutors contended that Auman had handed
Jaehnig the gun he had fired at police. The police had absolutely no
physical evidence of this, but a police officer later changed his
original statement to claim that he had indeed seen Auman hand Jaehnig a gun.
The police and prosecution painted a picture of Auman as a surly
skinhead and as a misfit and as a angry young women who raged against
authority. The local media dutifully repeated and reprinted the
prosecution's theories. The police, the public and the media had
apparently decided that someone had to pay for VanderJagt's death,
and since Jaehnig was dead, Auman was going to have to do.
After an endless number of press conferences organized by
prosecutors, numerous condemnations of Auman in the press, and a
short trial, the jury voted to convict in spite of the fact that no
fingerprints or evidence of gunpowder residue could be produced to
connect Auman to any weapons, and the fact that no intent was ever proven.
Auman was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Auman writes to Thompson
While serving her life sentence, Auman wrote a letter to Thompson,
noting that Thompson's books had been banned from the prison library.
(The prison system says this is not the case.) After being read the
letter, which briefly outlined Auman's plight, Thompson declared to
his staff "What the f*** are you so cheerful about? If I were you I'd
slit my wrists." According to Moseley, from this point on, Lisl's
case slowly "sparked an inner rage" in Thompson.
In January 2001, Thompson used his Hey Rube column at ESPN.com, which
the editors thought was supposed to be about sports, to write a
column denouncing the treatment of Auman, thus beginning Thompson's
public campaign to free Lisl Auman.
At his high-powered Super Bowl party that year, Thompson called
together all the powerful and influential friends he could muster,
including various well-connected attorneys and politicos, "and the
National Committee to Free Lisl Auman was born that night."
Thompson wouldn't accept that someone could be locked in prison for
life for a crime that occurred when the "guilty" party was locked in
the back of a police car. He also refused to believe that there was
anything unique about Auman's story, or that she was justly paying
the price for her carelessness, or that she was "asking for it." For
Thompson, Auman was exactly like a million other non-criminal young
women, except that they had been lucky enough to not find themselves
on the wrong end of a police smear campaign. For Thompson, America is
a place where people end up on the wrong side of the law without much effort.
As Thompson would later write in an appeal for help from friends and
colleagues:
There is no such thing as Paranoia. Your worst fears can come true
at any moment... What happened to Lisl Auman can happen to Anybody in
America, and when it does, you will sure as hell need friends....Take
my word for it, folks. I have been There, and it ain't Fun.
Thompson Joins the Fight
There's no room to delve into the legal details of Lisl Auman's
appeal here, but what is important is that, by shining light on the
Auman case, Thompson shone a light on prosecutorial misconduct,
police corruption, and the injustice of the felony murder statutes.
This suited Thompson perfectly well. Dear Dr. Thompson provides a
variety of amusing and interesting insights into Thompson's views of
police power and the corrupting nature of government power.
Thompson's gift for thoroughly accurate hyperbole would rub many the
wrong way, but his disdain for official abuse of power seemed to know
no bounds, and this came through in his comments and behavior
throughout the campaign to free Auman.
Thompson was well aware of the political nature of the district
attorney's office, and he doubted the scruples of then district
attorney Bill Ritter who would later use his position as a launching
pad to become governor of Colorado.
According to Moseley, "Thompson thought Ritter wouldn't support Lisl
because of pressure from the police union, which he called a mafia.
'The police union needs a cooperative DA and the DA needs a
cooperative police union...[But you shouldn't be] allowed to abuse
just because you have a gun and a badge. It is savage behavior. It's
uncivilized. It goes back to the law of the tooth and the fang...'"
For Thompson, the prosecutors served the police and the police served
the prosecutors. The public, on the other hand, was on its own. This
cozy arrangement was all the more troubling to Thompson because he
saw that so little was being done about it.
When queried on the matter, Thompson would become rather animated.
"They (the police) just think they can get away with it. They tell
each other that. 'We the brave, the true, the just.' S**t on them."
he said getting peeved and pounded on the kitchen cabinet. "See I get
a little excited when I think about taking on the cops again.
Somebody says 'Aren't you worried about this [his involvement in the
Lisl Auman case] Aren't you concerned to fight the police? After all
they are very powerful.' Well, they are as powerful as you let them be."
By the time he got to commenting on the chief of police at the time,
Thompson certainly wasn't holding back:
Richard Nixon was so crooked he had to have his servants screw his
pants on every morning, and so is Denver Police Chief Gerry Whitman.
He and his force have committed more crimes against humanity than
Lisl Auman ever dreamed of.
The sheer ferocity of Thompson's outrage in the matter was what made
Thompson such an effective force behind the Free Lisl! Campaign.
Thompson vowed to overturn the felony murder law and free Lisl Auman.
He railed against the injustice of her imprisonment to influential
friends, lawyers, celebrities and reporters. Lisl Auman, who had been
locked away years earlier and forgotten, was suddenly someone
Thompson would not let be forgotten. He worked behind the scenes,
"work[ing] the phones every night," to make sure that Auman's appeal
to the Colorado Supreme Court was the best that could be mustered.
Moseley himself, a seasoned public relations man, was enlisted by
Thompson to make sure that the press, which had so obediently
followed the prosecution's line in the court of public opinion during
her trial, might this time give Auman a fair chance. Thompson used
his celebrity status and threatened to crusade against and to even
run for office against local politicians who maintained that Auman
should remain in prison. This wasn't an idle threat. Thompson had
caused political havoc in Colorado before, and everyone knew it. In a
close race, an enraged Hunter S. Thompson could spell defeat for
those he might target.
Thompson wasn't simply thrashing about looking for attention.
Although Auman's freedom essentially came down to a decision by
judges, Thompson wasn't so naive as to think that judges aren't
influenced by the public or the press. Just as politics and a hostile
media had helped lock Auman away, so, Thompson hoped, an overwhelming
campaign to turn public opinion in her favor might help save her.
Thompson knew the public must begin to see "justice" in America as he
saw it, even if just for a little while. As Auman's appeal
progressed, Thompson called long time Denver Post reporter Ed Quillen
and, according to Moseley, "Quillen was so taken with the
conversation that he wrote a provocative column about Lisl's case"
containing the following lessons to be learned:
1. When a policeman is killed, somebody has to pay. If the killer is
already dead, then some other party must be found and prosecuted, no
matter how far the prosecutors have to stretch to make a case, no
matter how many cops have to change their stories before the trial.
2. Do not ever talk to the police without a lawyer, no matter how
innocent you think you are. Until your lawyer gets there, keep your
mouth shut. That's your right and you should exercise it.
3. If you somehow end up in the company of a homicidal maniac whom
you've never met before that day, pray he lives through the shoot out.
Thompson's Last Good Deed
In the end, although the Supreme Court did not overturn the felony
murder law, it did conclude that the jury had received faulty
instructions during her trial, and in 2005 Lisl Auman was freed from
prison and remains out of prison to this day. It was a technicality.
And it was one that called no larger issues of law into question,
suggesting that perhaps the court was looking for a reason to set her
free without upsetting the legal apple cart too much. And ultimately,
it suggests that Hunter's scorched-earth campaign against all who
maintained the justice of Lisl's imprisonment, just might have made
the difference.
Thompson killed himself shortly before the Court handed down its
decision, so he never knew how it had all turned out. But many were
uneasy with the fact that it had taken so much to get justice for Lisl Auman.
"Do you think anyone gave a rat's ass about Lisl until Hunter came
along?" asked Mary Ellen Johnson of the Pendulum Foundation, who
tracks felony murder cases. "No. They didn't and it shouldn't be that
way. I wish no child had to have a guardian angel like Hunter
Thompson and that it was based on justice, but it was not. Lisl's
story is not even that unusual. The only thing unusual about it is
Hunter. Otherwise nobody would care."
And people did care because of Thompson. Not only did he help to free
Lisl Auman, but he inspired those around him to understand that
justice is not free in America, and it's not blind, and it can be
turned against you to serve the political ambitions and the thirst
for vengeance in others.
Lisl's case is not unique, but at least she was actually tangentially
involved in the murder committed by Matthaeus Jaehnig that day.
Others, like Tim Masters or Randall Dale Adams, to just name two,
were not guilty of anything criminal in any way, and were locked away
for years to suit the prejudices of prosecutors and police.
Dear Dr. Thompson is an important contribution to the literature on
miscarriages of justice, but it is also an important account of the
final days of Hunter S. Thompson, who, in addition to writing some of
the best journalistic prose of the last fifty years, never backed
down from a chance to take on the same forces whom he wrote so
forcefully against for so long.
And finally, Moseley himself deserves credit for working to bring the
details of this case to light. The same institution that wanted to
lock up Lisl Auman for life is none too enthusiastic about
advertising the fact.
According to Moseley, the district attorney's office took over a year
to respond to his request to review the case files, and when they
finally did respond, they demanded hundreds of dollars in "retrieval"
and "redaction" fees.
These are just some of the many barriers that the state throws up
against anyone it doesn't want snooping around, and the state holds
almost all the cards. Moseley wasn't discouraged, however, and in the
end he produced a work of journalism which is no doubt an
embarrassment to some powerful people, but is nevertheless an
important account of how the legal system works in America.
.
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