The Smoking Gun: Book Review

“I’d heard of prosecutors with such mettle, but I’d never had the exhilarating experience of meeting one, not in all of my years in the courtroom. Sadly, when it came down to it, too many prosecutors I’d encountered would rather do wrong than admit they were wrong.” This was Gerry Spence speaking of then Lincoln County DDA, Josh Marquis, and DA Stapleton. Stapleton and Marquis were removed from the Sandy Jones murder trial for prosecutorial misconduct, related namely to withholding exculpatory evidence.

Judge Harl Haas said of Marquis, who filed his own complaint against the Judge, apparently out of retaliation for being removed from the Jones case: “I’ve never seen anything like Joshua Marquis in my life”.

Spence continues on Marquis, “I told His Honor that young lawyers had come to me and apologized for the Lincoln County prosecutors.. “’We’re ashamed of that,’ they said. ‘We want you to know they don’t represent our view of what Oregon law is or ought to be.’”

Regarding the ruthless prosecution of an adolescent boy, Spence says, “What made me physically ill,” I wrote, “was that the prosecutor or the juvenile department should demand that this child (14 year old Little Mike) give up his Fifth Amendment rights in order to save himself from the threat of MacLaren (the psychological testing), and I am further repulsed that the mother should face the same threats while her case is pending. This is and has been a serious and egregious threat to the constitutional rights of these citizens and should not be tolerated.”

“This case represents the State of Oregon. How can people retain their respect and their faith in the system that permits a case like this to be tried? Shouldn’t Mr. Brown come forward and say, ‘Your Honor, we didn’t know what we were getting into. We were victims like everyone else. We wish to do justice. That’s our job. We wish this case to be dismissed’?”

“Somebody has to stop this. It appears that good lawyer cannot extricate themselves from this. It appears that good lawyers, zealous for their case, have gotten zealous beyond reason and propriety”.

I read “The Smoking Gun” to get a better look at Josh Marquis. I also learned a lot about Gerry Spence, his humanity, his devotion to justice. Here are some of my favorite quotes from Spence’s book.

(From Spence’s closing argument to Judge Haas in his motion for dismissal of the murder case against Sandy Jones) “Your Honor,” I said to the beat of the drums and the roll of the music (no one claimed responsibility for it, but during Spence’s closing statements, a John Philip Sousa-type band started up “Stars and Stripes Forever”, right outside the Multnomah County Courthouse, so loud, for a moment, Spence had to raise his voice), ‘if justice cannot be heard here”—I was shouting above the music-“if justice cannot spread her protective wings over the likes of Sandy Jones, over the poor and humble and forgotten and the damned, if this case does not belong to justice, then there is nothing left, nothing but the mocking black hole of despair and degradation.

“Justice is a quiet mate. She is as meek and as gentle as any small, weak person whom she is called upon to protect..

“This is not our case, Your Honor. This is hers. It belongs to justice. Thank you, Your Honor.”

Judge Haas, though he made generous rulings in favor of the defense, denied Spence’s motion to dismiss.

Spence did a spectacular job of interviewing jurors during voir-dire. Here are his closing statements to them at the end of the trial: “Ladies and gentlemen..I’ve been a long time with you in a kind of strange relationship. I know each of you in a way I would never know you if I lived next door to you.. We’ve shared laughter, and we’ve shared tears. [Now] We’re going to share justice. That is quite a rich relationship.”

“The Smoking Gun” reads as an indictment, not just of Josh Marquis, but of the entire Oregon Justice System, with prosecutors and attorney generals all “Taking the Fifth” to protect the State against its own people. How many people who have been victimized by SOSCF/CAF have had this experience? The only defense of the State’s child snatchers is silence, when they are confronted in open court with lying, perjury, emotional abuse, and worse.

Spence and his partner, Ed Moriarty, as well as Michele Longo, who also worked on the Jones case, were shocked by the appearance of additional deputies during the proceedings which took place in Multonomah County (because of the press coverage, the case was moved from Lincoln County): “We saw five extra deputies filing into the courthouse. They were armed with nightsticks. They took strategic positions in the building and around the courtroom”. “Why the extra deputies”? Spence asked. Longo: “afraid there’s going to be a riot if they rule against the defendant”. “Why, they’re just ordinary people”?

For anyone who remembers Roger Weidner’s battle with Multnomah County, seeing extra deputies outside a courtroom meant the judges were afraid of having the truth come out. Weidner was repeatedly arrested and jailed, merely for insisting on making a public record. In the end, Roger Weidner was prosecuting the entire system, including judges and attorneys. That is why they tried to keep him from speaking.

Josh Marquis went from DDA of Lincoln to DA for Clatsop County, Oregon. Many, including myself, Roger Weidner, Jesse Lott, and others have made Marquis aware of the probable foul play in the McLaren hunt, which has been going on for over a year and a half now. So far, Marquis has shown no interest in helping this mother and her children. Because of a continued malicious prosecution, and an attempt to steal McLaren’s two young cuties, this family is living an underground existence, as are other families hiding from CPS and trying to avoid for-profit family destruction by the government.

Early on, during the trial against juvenile Mike Jones Jr., because there are no jury trials—no due process, no constitutional rights—no justice really, but only sham proceedings (and anyone who’s been through juvenile court knows this)—in juvenile court, the Lincoln County prosecutors had a small victory (little Mike was convicted of murder), which was later reversed by the Supreme Court.

At the end of the trial, Marquis smugly presented to Spence his book “Gunning for Justice” and asked for his autograph. Graciously, Spence signed the book for him: “To my friend Josh Marquis, who beat me fair and square, mostly--Gerry Spence”. The murder verdict, achieved through a sham juvenile proceeding (sound familiar?) against the teenage boy was later reversed by a higher court.

Marquis was apparently very proud of beating Spence the day the guilty verdict on little Mike was handed down from Judge Gardner. On Marquis’ Web site he refers to Spence and quotes the inscription from “Gunning for Justice”: “To my friend Josh Marquis, who beat me fair and square”. Please note, Marquis omitted the most important word in Spence’s inscription “mostly”. In fact, Marquis behaved ruthlessly and shamefully during the Jones murder trial, by withholding exculpatory evidence, evidence from Monica Gertulla’s failed lie detector test that would have shown that Gertulla’s wife accidentally shot and killed her own husband, while trying to shoot Sandy Jones.

Sandy Jones was photographed by Monica Gertulla just before the murder, as she shooting at Gertulla’s tires (the murder arose out of a long dispute over use of a country road)—hence the famous “smoking gun” photo.

I suppose Gerry Spence must be enjoying a well-deserved retirement by now. I sure wish he would take on one good custodial interference case before he dies. The McLaren case is the real life version of Craig Parshall’s “Custody of the State”. It would be the perfect ultimate showdown between Gerry Spence and his old “friend” Josh Marquis.

Susan Detlefsen