The Madness of Joe Francis: "I thought we were all just having fun. I was wrong." (16 page)

Judge Costello had responded to Meadows’ interviews by issuing an order reminding the attorneys on both sides that they had a legal and ethical obligation to limit their comments in the press. Burke saw that order as another attempt to salvage the case by warning Meadows that he was talking too much.

Three weeks later I got a copy of “The Bashir tape.” It was about 30 minutes long and never once was Bashir in the video. It was clearly his voice from off camera, but Brooke Keats, with the Washoe County, Nev., Sheriff’s Department, said the videos are shot of the defendants, and so the camera stayed trained on Francis and attorney David Houston.

Much of what was on the tape was Francis fidgeting and arguing with Bashir. But Bashir did say some interesting things and described enough to make it certain that he’d seen sexual activity.

He staunchly refused, however, to say who showed him the shower scene. He only said that when the story aired there would be no doubt where he got it.

The defense had asked Costello to order Bashir’s appearance at a hearing on the prosecutorial misconduct. It was a complicated issue because Bashir lived out of state. Costello would have to issue an order, then it would have to go to a judge in Bashir’s home state for consideration and a ruling there. Costello, however, put off her order for some time, even with the hearing fast approaching.

Meadows requested a continuance of the hearing so they could better prepare. He also asked Costello to quash the subpoena requiring his testimony, and that of three of his prosecutors. In exchange, prosecutors said, they wouldn’t fight an order compelling Bashir’s appearance.

It was another puzzling move. Meadows wouldn’t fight the one guy who could bury them with his testimony, but didn’t want the three guys who were on his side to testify.

The defense didn’t hesitate to sign off on that deal.

“Here’s a quote for your next story,” Francis said to me. “My lawyers and I often sit around asking ourselves if Mike Nifong is personally advising Steve Meadows in this case.”

Nifong was the notorious prosecutor of the Duke Lacrosse team, who finally resigned after a series of public blunders and terrible interviews.

Francis said Meadows was desperate to avoid the hearing and was making plea offers to settle the case.

“I’m not kidding, they call me every other day asking me to take a plea. The day before Meadows filed his response, they called me 12 times. Twelve times. I literally told my lawyers to tell him to go fuck himself. I told him, ‘I’m going to bury your fat, fucking piggly ass.”

He said the offer was to a single felony count of child abuse, time served, no probation to follow.

“Are you sure you don’t want to take that plea?” I asked. “You’d be out of jail today. It would be done.”

“I’ll be out of jail very soon,” he said. “I’m only sitting here on principal. I’m only staying in jail to give you a better ending for your book.”

Joe Francis filed six requests for bond in the 11 months he was incarcerated. His pleas were so desperate that Reality TV star Dog the Bounty Hunter gave Costello his personal guarantee that if she released Francis from jail on bond he would track him down and bring him back if he absconded.

“The guy with the hair?” Costello asked when I told her about it. I wanted a comment for my story, which she wouldn’t give me. She just smiled and walked away.

Francis asked for bond on account of his deteriorating mental condition.

“You can tell just by watching him that he’s not the same,” Aaron Dyer said months after he was off the case.

Francis hired a New York attorney to file a single motion saying Costello’s refusal to allow him to post bond was unconstitutional, based on the offense and her reasons for holding him. She reminded the lawyer that her ruling had been upheld on appeal.

Francis was stubborn, but the denials wore on him. He got his hopes up every time a bond motion was filed.

His last bond request was in federal court. His newest lawyer, Fred Atcheson of Nevada, asked a judge to find that Panama City federal Judge Richard Smoak had effectively placed Francis in federal hands when he ordered his removal from Panama City despite Costello’s objections.

Atcheson argued that the Nevada court had the authority to override Costello’s detainer and release Francis from custody on a bail. Francis even promised to hire a retired FBI agent to follow him and assure his return to court.

It was a good argument, but it was denied just the same. The order was designed to leave the matter with the appeals court and Francis’ lawyers said they felt confident it would be overturned and Francis would finally make bail.

Francis, however, was going to have to sit in jail for another few months. He was crushed. Despite his bravado in interviews with Martin Bashir and Greta Van Susteren, Francis was desperate to get out of custody.

Finally, he agreed to Meadows’ plea offer.

Prosecutor Joe Grammer confirmed the plea deal on March 10. He wouldn’t talk about it too much, saying the plea was for a felony, but he wouldn’t talk terms. Negotiations were ongoing and he’d know by the end of the day whether Francis would resolve his case.

“If Judge Costello signs an order lifting her detainer, that should tell you that the deal is done,” Grammer said.

“That would be the only reason?”

“I can’t think of any other reason,” he said.

Costello had put a detainer on Francis in May 2007, saying he’d have to return to Bay County to face his charges is he was released from the Nevada jail.

A U.S. District Judge in Reno had issued a $1.5 million bond on the federal cases, which Francis could easily pay. But Francis’ greatest fear was returning to the Bay County Jail where he believed the guards had tortured him.

So instead of making bond, Francis stayed in the Washoe County Jail in Reno until March 10, 2008, when Atcheson handed a clerk a cashier’s check for $1.5 million and Francis jogged out the front door to a waiting car.

Costello had lifted the detainer. Francis was free and due to be in Costello’s court in two days.

The next day, a Tuesday, rumors were persistent that the State Attorney’s Office was trying to convince Francis to fly to Bay County a day early – without fanfare – and enter his plea quietly.

There was no chance of that. Francis spent most of Tuesday at a spa getting coifed and tanned. He decided not to shave or cut his hair.

On Wednesday, Lt. Bob Willoughby stood at the Bay County Courthouse entrance with three or four other bailiffs. They watched a foreign assortment of reporters, cameramen and gawkers roaming around the covered ramp and steps leading to the door.

Bailiffs in general don’t like disruptions to their routine, but Willoughby looked amused and relaxed. He didn’t anticipate trouble with anything he was seeing, so he didn’t worry.

When I walked in, he asked me the same question everyone else had since Monday afternoon: “What do you think he’s getting?”

I didn’t get a chance to answer, he was too quick with his own guess. He’d seen a notation on a docket for the day indicating that Francis was pleading only to misdemeanor prostitution charges and no felonies. He sent me to the clerk’s office to see if I could find what he’d seen.

I couldn’t. Clerk Brittany Hutchison complained that she didn’t know there was going to be a plea until she read it the day before in the paper. She didn’t really believe it was going to happen.

There wasn’t an empty courtroom that day, so Costello had asked the other judges if she could borrow a room during lunch. Circuit Judge Michael Overstreet was conducting a trial that day on a man charged with seven counts of lewd and lascivious battery – molesting a child.

Overstreet had agreed to vacate the courtroom at noon and even moved a hearing he’d had for the lunch break to his chambers. But Overstreet was adamant that no one was to enter the courtroom until the jurors had left.

For once, Joe Francis was early.

I’d gone inside to say hello to Roy Black and missed the big entrance, but the other reporters followed him like baby ducks. They deposited their cameras – everything from digital camcorders to full-sized television cameras that rested on shoulders like bazookas – on the conveyor belt and stood in line for the metal detector. The first ones that cleared snatched up their cameras and circled Francis and Black like mosquitos.

When Overstreet’s jurors walked out, they ran into the swarm of reporters, who parted reluctantly to let them pass. They looked around a little nervously, hoping that their trial hadn’t gained some unwelcome notoriety that would put them on TV.

Overstreet was still on the bench when I walked in. He glanced up at the crowd pouring in, then went back to gathering his papers. Prosecutor Al Sauline hurried to clear his table and pack up his file box. He would say later that seeing every seat filled with spectators for Joe Francis’ plea was unsettling, considering his trial went unnoticed.

“Here’s a guy charged with seven counts of molesting kids, a really bad guy, and no one cares. Then I look out and see courthouse employees skipping their lunch breaks to watch Joe Francis and I think, ‘What does this say about our society?’”

I took a seat in the jury box, out of camera range. Bob Pell, the lawyer representing Mantra Films President Scott Barbour, took the seat beside me. Barbour was charged with smuggling in the pills Francis was found with back in April. Pell hoped that once Francis’ case was out of the way he could resolve Barbour’s.

Francis walked in, the engine to his lawyer train, in a navy blue pinstriped suit and white shirt opened at the collar. He had a week-old beard and, as usual, he looked at the crowd as he made his way in. He smiled at a few, his hands in his pockets.

He approached the table that Sauline had just vacated and pulled out one of the rolling, padded black chairs. He stood for a minute, looking from the chair to the crowd, uncertain of whether to sit with his back to the audience or stay standing.

Black called him to a table in front of the judge’s bench, saying this wouldn’t take long enough for him to need to sit.

He buried his hands back in his pockets, the bottom of his suit coat bunched up around his forearms. He smiled and glanced around the room.

Bailiff Brian Gilbert led Costello into the room with a gruff “All rise.”

Costello stepped quickly up to her seat. Her hair, usually kept short, was higher off the collar than Francis’. She wore her usual bright red lipstick.

“Are we ready to proceed? Is there an announcement at this time?” she asked.

Roy Black told her Francis was prepared to plead no contest to two amended informations for a sentence of time served – a total of 336 days in jail.

The comprehensive plea was to one felony count of child abuse and four misdemeanors – two soliciting prostitution charges and two violations of posted jail rules for having a water bottle and currency in his jail cell.

The court costs and fines would total more than $70,000. The State Attorney’s Office would received $12,600 for its nearly five years of prosecution. The county would get $38,500 – even though Sheriff Frank McKeithen refused to endorse the plea or even give the prosecutors a dollar amount as to his office’s cost in investigating the case.

“There is no amount of money Joe Francis could pay that would begin to offset the past five years of flagrant and repeated disrespect for the citizens of Bay County,” he wrote in a letter to prosecutor Bill Lewis. “I will not give Mr. Francis the pleasure of thinking he can buy or pay for the services of the Bay County Sheriff’s Office. It is our day-to-day job to protect the citizens of our county from such criminal elements as Joe Francis. This is one segment of his life he will not be able to buy his way out of. There is no price for justice.”

Francis would get his Ferrari back, but he’d have to promise not to sue the sheriff’s office over costs of deterioration. He’d have to take it back “as is.”

The first issue that came up was discrepancy over the amount Francis would have to pay to the Victims’ Compensation Trust Fund. Shapiro thought the amount was $1,600, but prosecutor Mark Graham told him the amount was actually $1,650. That got Shapiro and Black searching their wallets for cash.