A Silence of Mockingbirds (17 page)

I’
m typing this from a cottage in Fairhope, Alabama. A tangerine
sun is slipping into Mobile Bay. It is Father’s Day, 2008. As I sat on a
bench near the pier, watching the sun disappear, a little girl walked
past, yelling out to anyone listening, “I like that bird! That bird there!
See it!”

She pointed at a long-beaked pelican flying overhead.

The girl was wearing a blue-jean skirt, white sandals, and a pink polo top.
Her white-blonde hair was shoulder-length, like Karly’s had once been. Karly
is frozen in time for me now— forever three, instead of the growing girl she
should be.

I see her when I’m at the grocer’s or when I’m out walking on
the pier. I see her chasing the foamy surf at Gulf Shores, and eating
ice cream at Mr. Gene Beans. I see her standing in line at Winn-Dixie,
itsy-bitsy tattoo stickers spattered about her face like DayGlo freckles.
I see her carrying a pink fishing pole, trailing her daddy, step for step.
Wherever I see Karly, I also think of David.

David sent me a text message and said no one had wished him a
Happy Father’s Day today. I suppose they think it is best not to mention
his loss—as if David could ever forget Karly, reminder or no.

“Karly made me laugh so much,” David said, though I know he
cries now.

David and I have a comfortable relationship. It’s as if we walk
around, slipping in and out of the same worn house slippers. He puts
his grief on, I take mine off. He is the daughterless father; I am the
fatherless daughter. We don’t need to say anything to each other on days
like this, on Father’s Day.

It was Father’s Day, 2001, when David first found out he
was going to be a daddy. The news was a surprise, coming at a time when the
marriage was threatened.

Sarah did as she pleased. When they weren’t getting along, she’d
move out, then back in, a trademark pattern marring Sarah’s relationship
with men. Sarah was back at home after a stint of being gone when she
revealed she was pregnant.

David had made some off-the-cuff comment about hoping any
child they might have wouldn’t be burdened with his big head. David
thinks he has a pumpkin head.

Sarah replied, “We’ll know soon enough.”

“What do you mean?” David asked, confused.

“I’m pregnant,” Sarah said.

David was jubilant. Family meant everything to him. The toughest part about
leaving Ireland was leaving behind the family he loved so well. Families in
Ireland are less fragmented than families in the U.S. That’s partly due to
geography—Ireland is small, compact. Americans are more mobile but the Irish
have an easier time getting together as a family for weekly gatherings, something
David’s family did frequently. In Ireland, family is the social network.

A child would root David in ways a job could not. There would be
soccer matches in his near future—afternoons spent kicking the ball
around with his very own child. A family to call his own in America.

The months that followed, the months when Sarah was pregnant
with Karly, were the happiest times David and Sarah shared. Sarah quit
smoking, drinking, running around at night. She settled in and nested.

Surely, this baby would tether them together and shine some love on them both.

T
he trial of the
State
vs. Shawn W. Field
lasted twenty-six days: twenty-three days of testimony
and three days of jury deliberation. It takes a considerable amount of taxpayer
money to put on a trial, and cash-strapped counties try to avoid such lengthy
trials. In fact, Heiser did offer Shawn a plea agreement: if Shawn would plead
out, Heiser would make sure he only got twenty-five years in the slammer.
But Shawn’s defense attorney, Clark Willes, turned it down. Heiser noted in
his letter to Willes that the purpose of the offer “is to save resources.”

“We can have a meaningful discussion about a possible settlement
of the case without wasting a great deal of time and money,” Heiser
suggested.

The offer was made two days after the grand jury returned a true bill
on June 13, 2005. After hearing testimony from a host of people, Sarah
included, the grand jury charged Shawn with five counts of aggravated
murder; one count of first-degree murder; two counts of murder; three
counts of murder by abuse (torture); four counts of manslaughter in the
first-degree; three counts of assault in the second-degree; two counts
of criminal mistreatment; one count of manufacturing a controlled
substance; and two counts of endangering the welfare of a minor.

A prosecutor generally gets one shot at indictment, so they charge
everything that fits. So many charges may confuse jurors and the public,
but there are strategic reasons for this. It is one way to ensure that those
guilty don’t get away with murder.

Because Sarah testified before the grand jury, she was exempt from
being charged with any crime. The decision to put her before the grand
jury, to not charge her with any crime, was made solely by District
Attorney Heiser.

He denies his decision was the result of being manipulated by Sarah.
Heiser and police investigators said they figured out pretty quickly
Sarah was a flirt who employed her wiles to try to influence them.

I tried numerous times to meet Heiser in person, but we were unable
to work out our schedules. We finally agreed to a phone interview. I had
one question in particular I wanted him to answer: Why did he not
charge Sarah with any crime?

“There was probable cause to charge Sarah for exposing her
daughter to Shawn Field,” Heiser said. “At a minimum, she was reckless.
She analyzed everything from her own interest first.”

But Heiser said his decision to not charge Sarah was purely an
emotional one.

“I chose not to charge Sarah Sheehan with anything, recklessly
endangering a minor or neglect, because I weighed the cost benefit.
What do we bring to the safety of the community by raking her through
the coals? It was a mercy decision, based solely on empathy and grief. I
felt like she had already paid a high enough price.”

Besides, he noted, there wasn’t enough evidence to prove Sarah had
physically abused her daughter in any way. Heiser remains on the fence
about whether Sarah was involved in the scheme to extort money from
David.

“The question is, was she involved or did she have knowledge about
the plan to frame David and to extort money from him?” Heiser said. “I
don’t believe she was, but she may have been. I wouldn’t be shocked to
find out that she was.”

District attorneys make compromises. Their positions require it of
them. Heiser was willing to sacrifice the wrongs committed by Sarah
Sheehan against her daughter in an effort to build a stronger case
against Shawn Field.

Somewhere in those first few days after Karly’s death, Heiser
convinced himself Sarah Sheehan’s betrayal of her daughter was not
sufficient to warrant a criminal conviction. He told himself Karly’s
death was punishment enough for this mother.

Heiser’s decision not to charge Sarah with any crime wasn’t all that
surprising. Historically, the courts have been far more lenient toward
women than men. Until recently, women were less likely to be formally
charged with crime, and more often than not, when they were charged,
they were likely to receive probation.

“The woman nearly always gets a lesser sentence and is viewed
merely as a compliant accomplice, especially if men are handling the
case,” said Kathleen Ramsland. Ramsland teaches forensic psychology
at DeSales University and has written numerous books on forensics and
crime. “I think men are afraid of knowing women might be capable of
real brutality, so they default to a softer view, mostly to preserve their
own sense of insecurity. Some admit it, too.”

But those views of women are changing.

The Bureau of Justice reports that between 2000 and 2008 the
number of women incarcerated increased by thirty-three percent. The
biggest contributing factor is drug and alcohol abuse. According to
her friends, Sarah’s drug of choice was alcohol and a smorgasbord of
prescription drugs. Investigators had discovered what they described as
a “ton of prescriptions” in Sarah’s name.

“Sarah could be lot of fun,” said one of her former girlfriends. “But
she had mood swings. She’d be high for five minutes and then it was like
she went catatonic. She’d be very flat, like she was in her own world. I
pulled back after I saw too many troubling things in her personality. I
didn’t know how stable a person she was.”

While Human Services investigators were relentless in their
assumptions about David, they were disturbingly negligent in their
assumptions about Sarah. If the roles of father and mother had been
reversed in the death of Karly, what are the chances prosecutors would
have determined the father had suffered enough already? Would the
system have overlooked any contributory role David may have played
in his daughter’s death the way they did with Sarah?

Highly unlikely, said Eugene attorney Bill Furtick. A man who’d
worked with the state’s juvenile court system for decades, Furtick was
called in on one of Oregon’s most notorious crimes: the case of Diane
Downs.

On May 19, 1983, a young woman reported she had been carjacked
on a rural road in Springfield, Oregon, by an unidentified male, who,
she then claimed, shot her and her children. One child, a seven-year-old girl, was killed. The two surviving children, a girl, age eight, and a
boy, age three, suffered paralysis as a result of the shooting. Furtick was
the court-appointed attorney for the living children.

Diane Downs, the children’s mother, was later convicted of the
attack, a deed she carried out as an attempt to hang on to a married
boyfriend who didn’t want children. Downs, a verifiable narcissist, was
sentenced to life in prison.

Getting the conviction took some doing.

“The construct of the entire investigative and training paradigm
for the State of Oregon is built on the idea that only men do domestic
violence,” Furtick said. “Men are seen as the abusers. Fathers, not
mothers. Of course that’s not always true.”

Mothers acting alone commit the bulk of child abuse, but the
judicial system has cultivated a bias toward men and allotted women
preferential treatment. “There is a bias,” said Dr. Debra Esernio-Jenssen,
medical director for the Children Protection Team at the University of
Florida. “I think society accepts that a man may not be a good caregiver.
As a whole, society expects women to be nurturing caregivers.”

After Karly’s death, Mindy Brill, Sarah’s former sister-in-law and
close friend, told investigators that Sarah lacked a bond with Karly.

“Are you saying the nurturing mechanism was absent?” asked
Detective Stauder.

“Yes,” Mindy said. “But Carol and Sarah aren’t very close. I think
that has something to do with her relationship with Karly. And she
gave Hillary up for adoption. I think that’s affected her with Karly a lot.
I think she’s tried, but Sarah needs to get past that self-centeredness
she has.”

A former childcare provider for Karly said, “Sarah was a party
mom. Everybody knew David was there to pick up the pieces.”

S
cott Heiser asked a deputy
district attorney who had turned in her resignation the week prior to take
on the case. It was an unusual move. District attorneys typically handle the
high-profile stuff themselves, for obvious political reasons. But it had been
a hectic couple of years for Heiser and the Corvallis Police Department.

Heiser felt Joan Demarest would be the best woman for the
job. He makes no bones about the fact that he appointed a woman attorney as
the lead prosecutor for tactical reasons. He knew having a woman prosecutor
would earn some favor with the jury in a child murder case.

Demarest grew up in Corvallis and earned her law degree from the University
of Oregon. The victimization of women was a common topic of discussion in
her childhood home. Joan Demarest’s mother, Merry Demarest, has been a longtime
member of the National Organization for Women, and has served on the organization’s
national board.

Demarest’s father, Harry, is the former chair of the Benton County Democratic
Party. The family continues to be politically active. They campaigned heavily
for Hillary Clinton during the 2008 presidential election. Demarest’s parents
celebrated their thirty-sixth wedding anniversary by testifying before the
Benton County Commissioners in support of same-sex marriage.

Demarest began her career in Corvallis as a law intern, and continued working
for as a deputy district attorney for Benton County after passing the bar
in 1998. But tensions around the courthouse and the birth of her first child
had her rethinking her career choice. She’d already given her two-weeks notice
when she stopped by Heiser’s office one afternoon.

“It’s too bad you’re leaving,” Heiser said. “I was going to assign you the
Field case.”

Because Demarest had been off on maternity leave in the three months prior
she wasn’t familiar with Shawn Field. Heiser took the next few hours to explain
the case to her. Demarest asked for the weekend to consider it.

Before she could accept the job, Demarest had to come to terms with her own
position on the death penalty. She had previously been an opponent. Shawn
Field changed her thoughts about that.

After consulting with her husband and her parents, Demarest took the job on
a contract basis.

“This was a case where I knew I could make a difference,” Demarest said. “Shawn
Field was a monster who needed justice and I was determined to not let Sarah
Sheehan jeopardize his shot at life in prison or the death penalty.”

When Demarest and I met a few times at a coffee house in Corvallis, she brought
along her children. Demarest is a hands-on, attentive mom.

Our meetings were scheduled to accommodate nap times and play dates.

There’s no question the lady lawyer felt she was defending Sarah as much as
she was prosecuting Shawn Field. “I’m convinced Sarah had nothing to do with
Karly’s abuse or death, aside from picking Shawn Field as a mate,” Demarest
said.

It was Heiser who irrevocably determined that Sarah would be a victim in a
murder trial and not a co-defendant when he subpoenaed her to testify at the
grand jury hearing. The Fifth Amendment ensured that Sarah would never face
charges in her daughter’s death.

Demarest was left to deal with the fallout of that. Under Oregon Law, Sarah
was by definition a victim as the mother of a murdered child.

“Most people vilify Sarah without understanding the circumstances she was
in, and without looking further,” the attorney said. “I know that some of
Sarah’s personality traits and choices make it easy to do that.

Through my work on this case I learned that emotional abuse is more effective
than physical abuse at controlling other people.”

But it was physical abuse that caused Karly’s death.

Demarest asked the jury to weigh the evidence against Shawn and overlook any
wrongdoing on Sarah’s behalf. If the jurors had begun to divvy up the blame
for Karly’s death between Shawn and Sarah, it could have derailed the entire
criminal case. The prosecution needed to keep the focus on Shawn.

“It wasn’t until after I had spent hours with experts that I was able to see
Sarah with a more sympathetic eye,” Demarest said. “Shawn Field undermined
whatever self-confidence she may have had, convinced her she knew nothing
about parenting and that she was a bad mother.”

Sarah said Shawn trained her to not question him. So she didn’t.

Except that one time, when she confronted him about the gay pornography she
found on his computer. Certainly, that took some steely-eyed gumption. So
why did Sarah leave Karly with Shawn after seeing her daughter in such physical
distress Friday morning? Instead of leaving Karly alone with Shawn, breaking
a repeated promise to David and DHS, why didn’t Sarah take Karly to daycare?
David had already paid for it. If she had to go to work, why not take Karly
to Delynn’s on her way?

Perhaps Sarah knew Delynn would take one look at Karly’s ruptured eyeball,
those swollen and bruised feet, and do the thing Sarah had failed to do that
morning: take Karly to the ER immediately. Sarah did not take Karly to Delynn’s
because she was covering for Shawn. Sarah knew Delynn was on to her and Shawn;
he didn’t want the state poking around anymore.

Demarest knew this, of course, which is why she had to build a case to explain
away Sarah’s actions. “I tried to find a way to make sense of what Sarah did
and everything that happened,” Demarest said. “The abuse and control made
the most sense, even though it didn’t explain everything.”

I wondered if Demarest’s upbringing didn’t predispose her to see Sarah as
a victim, rather than someone complicit in her daughter’s death. Demarest
became visibly annoyed when I told her that some community members had suggested
as much. Her cheeks flushed hot, and she sat back rigidly in her chair.

“Who said that?” she asked. “Clark Willes? Did he say it?” Clark Willes was
one of Shawn’s defense attorneys, although not the lead lawyer on the case.
Dan Koenig, who has cultivated a reputation for getting the bad guy off, had
that honor. But the contention between Demarest and Willes stretches back
to the early 1800s and a religious leader by the name of Joseph Smith, founder
of the Mormon Church.

At the time of Shawn Field’s trial, Willes was an active Mormon bishop. Demarest
told me her parents had, at their own request, been excommunicated from the
Mormon Church. She said it was their way of protesting the church’s stand
regarding minorities in the priesthood.

Clark Willes likes to wear long-sleeve white shirts, which he rolls up
on his thick forearms. His bushy dark eyebrows are prominent over his
thin-framed glasses. He’s a bit rumpled around the edges.

Willes is a study in contrasts. He is a Mormon bishop who helped
defend a child killer, an attorney who often finds himself on the wrong
side of the law. He’s been brought before the Oregon Bar on disciplinary
charges, and most recently was arraigned on charges of tampering with
a witness.

I told Willes and Koenig I wasn’t out to retry this case, that I trusted
the jury had found the right person guilty. So what compelled Willes to
turn over his case files on Shawn Field’s defense to me? I asked Willes
why he gave me access to the files during one of the several times we
met. I’m not sure I ever got a satisfactory answer from him. It’s an
unusual move for an attorney to grant complete access to every bit of
evidentiary material he amassed during the course of a trial. I was as
surprised by it as anyone.

I understood why professionals like Heiser and Demarest might not
like Clark Willes. As a former court reporter, I’d had intense arguments
with Dennis Hachler, one of Oregon’s best defense attorneys, about why
he would defend some of the state’s worst criminal offenders.

Hachler and I got upset with each other after he had me removed
from court once to keep me from reporting on a school counselor who
had sexually abused a child. Hachler told the judge he was going to call
me as a witness because I had interviewed the child, and because I knew
the counselor personally. Afterward, Hachler sent me flowers with an
apology note and signed it, “From the Devil.”

I was not amused. I sent the flowers back to the florist and told
Hachler that he had overstepped his bounds. Despite the sparring,
we respected each other. It was Hachler who told Willes I could be
trusted—and I believe that if it had it not been for Dennis Hachler, I
would never had gained access to hundreds of pages of police reports,
recorded interviews, evidentiary material, photos and pretrial evidence
that were critically important to this story.

District Attorney Heiser had concerns of his own about Clark
Willes, but Heiser had the utmost confidence in Joan Demarest.

“Joan had considerable success with the less-than-honorable
methods employed by Clark Willes,” Heiser said. “And she was capable
of dealing with what was often less than a level playing field in Judge
Holcomb’s courtroom.”

It was a well-circulated rumor around the courthouse that there
was no love lost between Heiser and Judge Holcomb. The two had come
up through the ranks in the district attorney’s office. There are some in
Holcomb’s camp who believe Heiser resented her success. Not so, said
Heiser. It was the judge’s unprofessional approach he resented.

The
Gazette-Times
, the local paper, reported that Heiser went so
far as to file a motion imploring Judge Holcomb to recuse herself from the
trial:

Benton County Circuit Court Judge Janet Holcomb won’t step
aside in the trial of Shawn Wesley Field. Holcomb is presiding over the trial
of Field, who is charged with murder in the June 3, 2005, death of three-year-old
Karla “Karly” Sheehan. Karly was the daughter of his then-girlfriend Sarah
Brill Sheehan.

District Attorney Scott Heiser filed a motion Friday asking
Holcomb to recuse herself because of evident bias against Deputy District
Attorney Joan Demarest. Heiser included in his motion nine statements from
the victim’s family, friends and a sheriff ’s deputy, citing Holcomb’s courtroom
demeanor and expressions during pretrial hearings.

“The motion is without merit,” Holcomb ruled Tuesday. “It
is denied.” She said firmly that the case would be tried on its merits. “It’s
not about the judge or lawyers,” she said. “It’s about Karly.” The case will
be tried without prejudice, fairly and impartially and in the highest judicial
tradition, Holcomb promised.

She did not address complaints from Karly’s father and grandparents,
among others, that she did not maintain the decorum they expected in the courtroom,
decorum they feel is appropriate in a case concerning the death of a three-year-old
child.

Holcomb also did not address any of the specific charges in
Heiser’s motion. All parties declined to comment on Holcomb’s ruling. Present
Tuesday were Sarah Sheehan and David Sheehan, Karly’s parents. Gene and Carol
Brill, Karly’s grandparents, were also present.

“It’s tough,” Gene Brill said, his voice full of emotion.
“It’s been a painful, painful year.”

Although Judge Holcomb was dismayed by Heiser’s complaint,
she remained steadfast in her resolve to conduct the trial professionally
and responsibly. “I didn’t feel there was a legitimate reason for Heiser to
make his request,” Holcomb told me later. “Whatever controversy was there
was his.”

But Holcomb and Heiser did have a history together, and not all of
it had been pleasant. Heiser had not supported Holcomb’s bid for judge;
he had, in fact, asked her not to enter the race. “He was upset about that,
and I was surprised by how much that carried over during his tenure as
district attorney,” Judge Holcomb said.

The trial was difficult enough, given the trauma surrounding the
murder of a three-year-old. Heiser’s actions were disconcerting.

“Heiser added an extra layer of difficulty to a trial that was already
difficult enough in terms of severity of emotions,” Holcomb said. “It
wasn’t about the judge, or the lawyers. It was about Karly’s murder.”

Her goal as judge was to conduct the trial fairly and without
prejudice.

“My rulings were meant to avoid a successful appeal later, so we
didn’t run the risk of trying the case all over again,” Judge Holcomb
said. “I believe I conducted myself with the highest degree of judicial
integrity and I believe justice was served.”