The Madness of Joe Francis: "I thought we were all just having fun. I was wrong." (4 page)

“How much of this is just trying to pressure some of these employees into testifying against Francis?” I asked.

“Would we do that?” Appleman coyly asked. Then he dropped his voice into his official on-the-record tone. “We feel like we can prove all of these crimes were committed by the persons charged.”

I asked him to give me some details about the type of work these employees did for Mantra.

“I think most of them are cameramen, but you’d have to ask the company what they specifically do,” he said.

I told him I’d already sent an email to Mantra spokesman Jim Horn and Aaron Dyer. I asked Appleman if it was all right to call prosecutor Mark Graham if I had any technical questions. He said that would be fine.

A few minutes into the story I ran into something that I needed guidance with. The language in the information was formal and vague. So I called Graham.

“Hey Mark, I’m doing a story about the amended information against Francis and the Girls Gone Wild employees. I checked with Appleman and he said it would be OK for me to talk to you about it,” I said.

Graham stammered for a second, before he could wrap his mind around the three or four alarming pieces of information I’d just given him.

“How did you get the information?” he finally asked. “And Jim talked to you about it?”

“It’s online,” I told him. “And Jim didn’t have any problems giving me an interview.”

“Jim gave you an interview? About the amended information?” Graham continued to spit out. “When are you running this story?”

“It’s gonna be in tomorrow’s paper. But look, I’m running into some problems making this thing understandable,” I said, not quite grasping what was bothering him so much.

“Tomorrow?” he said, a note of panic entering his voice. “Look, that information was supposed to be sealed. I don’t know how you got a copy of it, but we’re trying to keep it under wraps until we get some of these guys in custody. We don’t want any of them to be tipped off and try to leave the country.”

“Well,” I started, not sure how he would take this last bit of news, “I already emailed Mantra to get more information about these employees and what they do for the company.”

“You sent them the names?” he asked, still not angry, just amazed that his day had come crashing down within the span of a five-minute phone call. “I gotta go.”

He hung up. Now it was my turn to be amazed.

I checked my email and found a response from Jim Horn. He wanted to know if I would send him a copy of the charges. He didn’t, however, answer any of my questions about the employees.

I ignored the email and went back to writing my story.

The phone interrupted that. It was Jimmy Judkins in Tallahassee, another one of Francis’ Florida lawyers. He wanted me to fax him a copy of the charges. I told him I’d have to talk to my editors and got off the phone after he told me he couldn’t answer any of my questions until he got the charges.

Graham called a minute later.

“I know I can’t ask you to hold this story,” he said, meaning he’d like me to volunteer to hold the story. “I checked with Joanne and she said she did put the information online. I know you didn’t do anything wrong in getting it, but if you could just do me one favor and keep the employees’ names out of this story?”

I told him I’d have to talk to my editors and got off the phone.

I didn’t really need to talk to my editors, even though I would to let them know what I was doing. What I really needed was a few minutes to think.

The defense didn’t have the charges, and they wanted them badly.

Graham, I knew, didn’t have any way of keeping me from reporting the story. I’d gotten the document legally and the paper would be on solid ground with any story we ran. I also knew I didn’t have to withhold the names.

But, I had this story all to myself. If I wanted to sit on the names for a day or two I could, but Graham would have to give me something in return.

After filling in my editors, I called Graham back.

“I’ll hold the names,” I said, “for now.”

I didn’t say anything about what I wanted in return. Graham made me an offer.

“They’re supposed to turn themselves in within the week,” he said. “I’ll let you know when that happens.”

That’ll work.

I called Judkins back and told him, reluctantly, that the editors had decided that we couldn’t provide him with the charges. I said it wasn’t our place to do that if the state wouldn’t.

“I understand,” Judkins said, clearly meaning the opposite. “You’ve got to work with the prosecutor. But I wonder what your colleagues in other newspapers in this state would think of your collusion with the state?”

It was a surprisingly effective jab. There’s no denying that small and midsize newspapers in Florida work under the considerable shadow of papers like the Miami Herald and St. Petersburg Times. Newspapers in the Panhandle also have to deal with the reputation of being unprofessional.

Despite the immediate doubt Judkins was able to plant, I stuck to my plan.

“I don’t honestly know how this would be viewed by other papers,” I said, “but this is our decision. You’ll just have to get the information from the State Attorney’s Office.”

Graham had already filed a motion to close the charging document from the public. I was now guaranteed that I would not only have the only other copy, but I would also have first notification when the GGW employees started appearing at the Bay County Jail.

The next day, when Judkins and the defense team were unable to get the information from the clerk’s office they weren’t any happier with the News Herald when I called for comment.

“How can you file something in the public records then say it’s not public?” he asked. “How can you, David Angier, get it and we can’t get it?”

The defense team was especially annoyed that Appleman had given me an interview before Graham moved to have the document sealed.

“The State is seeking only to withhold information from the Defendants, but not the media,” Jacksonville attorney Henry Coxe, one of a battery of lawyers working with the defense, wrote in his response to Graham’s motion.

Unfortunately, Joanne in the clerk’s office was caught in the middle of this skirmish. Even though she had done nothing wrong in posting the information and the clerks had done nothing wrong in releasing it to me when they did, Joanne was questioned by her boss, Clerk of Court Harold Bazzel.

Bazzel also asked me about it, especially the part about my taking the document off Joanne’s desk without her being there.

“Harold,” I said, “it didn’t matter if Joanne was there or not. It wouldn’t matter if it had been locked in her desk. It is against the law for you to deny me a public record.”

The next morning, though, I stopped at a bakery and bought twenty-four fresh muffins. Bazzel saw me coming into the courthouse with the two batches of muffins in hand walking toward the clerk’s office.

“You’re a smart man,” he said, grinning.

Later that week, and over a two-day period, all of the GGW employees named in the new information reported to the Bay County Jail. They were quickly booked and allowed to leave on a preset bond.

The first day, the News Herald had the exclusive, with photographers roaming the jail’s parking lot. I showed up late in the morning to watch the show and met up with one of the photographers. A clerk who was taking a break came out to complain to me about how aggressive the photographers were being. She could see the jail parking lot from her office window.

“Why do they have to chase them?” she asked, not realizing one of the photographers was standing next to me.

“Because they ran,” the cameraman said.

.

Chapter 5

“I’ll be your lawyer today”

A
s they came before Circuit Judge Michael Overstreet’s bench on November 20, 2003, Assistant Public Defender Matt Meredith met each Girls Gone Wild defendant with the same handshake, smile and greeting, “I’m Matt Meredith, I’ll be your lawyer today.”

Meredith couldn’t represent all nine. A defendant’s lawyer has to be free to make decisions that would be in that defendant’s best interest without worrying about the impact on a co-defendant.

The Public Defenders Office itself could only represent one defendant because of the same conflict of interest. So private attorneys, paid by the state for their work on this case, would be assigned to eight of the nine Girls Gone Wild employees.

After Meredith introduced himself he stepped aside and let Overstreet assign a private attorney. Only cameraman Charles Rapp would have a public defender as his lawyer: Brantley Clark Jr.

Clark, who would years later become circuit judge, was a burly man with thick eyebrows and forearms. He was not only physically imposing, but he also had a sharp legal mind which he disguised with a friendly and soft-spoken demeanor. Clark was as typical Bay County as Aaron Dyer was Southern California, and always looked ready to ditch his suit, grab a rifle and dive into the woods to hunt deer.

Rapp, who was 28 when he was arrested, was a part of the production crew, a “camera-toter” as one lawyer put it. He was trying to start up his own production company in New York when he was hired to do some work for Girls Gone Wild.

For doing one day of camera work and some odds and ends over a six-week stint in Panama City Beach, Rapp got charged with racketeering, conspiring to commit racketeering and two misdemeanors. He was looking at 30 years in prison.

Most people who are assigned a public defender think they’ll get subpar legal service. Of course, the public defender’s office is where many recently graduated law school students go for a first job. These fresh-faced, even pimply, kids are asked to stand with career criminals against 20-year prosecutors and state-minded judges.

But public defenders grow up fast, and they have an office full of experienced trial attorneys to help them. They have twice the caseload of a private attorney and half the chance of striking a favorable deal for their clients. Private attorneys lose money if they go to trial – it is essential to their reputations and their bottom line to be able to work out good deals.

Brantley Clark was a seasoned public defender. He worked evidence creatively and doggedly and even had a good trial record. So when he inherited Charles Rapp’s case, he began working the evidence.

Rapp was the only Girls Gone Wild defendant to see his charges dropped. Prosecutor Mark Graham cut him loose in October 2004 after Rapp agreed to testify against his co-defendants if called upon.

Two weeks later, David Youngpeter, another “camera-toter,” pleaded no contest to two misdemeanor charges – with his 30-year felonies dropped – in exchange for his testimony. Youngpeter was represented by Waylon Graham, one of the hardest-working, most expensive and personable private attorneys in the circuit.

Youngpeter only had to pay a $500 fine and Waylon Graham vowed to have his record expunged.

He said on the day the plea was signed that the prosecutor had to look at “the big picture” to realize that it was unfair to charge such “low-level” employees with 30-year racketeering charges.

Lead prosecutor Mark Graham probably was looking at the big picture when he worked out the plea agreements and that picture was of Joe Francis’ smiling face. Graham was lining up the pawns to take down the king.

Every employee except Noah Tannenbaum and Mark Schmidt entered a plea before Joe Francis’ case was over. None went to jail and all agreed to testify against Francis.

Tannenbaum spent only two weeks working for Girls Gone Wild before his arrest. At the time, he was a student at the University of Southern California, had already earned a Master’s degree from the University of Florida and in 1999 was named an Anderson Scholar for Outstanding Academic Achievement. His stepfather, Harvey Watnick, a lawyer out of Miami, posted his $250,000 bond and represented him.

Tannenbaum was 24 at the time he was charged with racketeering, conspiring to engage in racketeering activity, conspiring to promote the sexual performance of a child, possessing to sell obscene material and several misdemeanors. His job at GGW had been to seek out girls in the crowd who might want to be in the videos, and he did a little camera work.

Watnick reluctantly agreed to talk to me after a bond hearing.

“Contributing to the delinquency of a minor,” he read off one of the charges against Tannenbaum, his voice heavy with distress. “How can you have that on your resume?”

He said even the allegations were going to affect Tannenbaum’s future.

“It was a fluke job,” Watnick said. “He didn’t have any experience working a camera. He was coached and given advice on what to do.”

Four years later, Tannenbaum, even with his case still open and hanging over him, was able to move on. He got married, had a child and landed a good job. In 2008, after Francis resolved his criminal case, Tannenbaum entered a plea of no contest to a single misdemeanor count of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. He was sentenced to 60 days probation and a $500 fine. The state dropped all other charges.

On October 8, 2003, six girls filed suit in federal court against Joe Francis and Girls Gone Wild for child abuse. The complaint read: On March 31, four of the plaintiffs and an unidentified 16-year-old girl were stopped by a GGW van and solicited into flashing their breasts.