The Madness of Joe Francis: "I thought we were all just having fun. I was wrong." (17 page)

“We are out of checks this morning so we will have to …” Shapiro said, flipping the cash in his wallet with his thumb.

“Dig in your pockets,” Costello joked.

“I might have $20 in cash on me, that’s about it,” Shapiro said.

“Mr. Black has got it,” Costello said, smiling.

“Let him cover it,” Francis laughed, slapping Black on the shoulder.

Costello went through the usual questions with Francis that a judge asks a defendant who is entering a plea. She asked if he was on medication or taking drugs, what his education level was and whether he’d been treated for a mental illness.

When Francis said no to the last question, Costello stopped.

“At one point you were claiming you were having some emotional problems while you were being held in jail in Nevada. Are those problems resolved?” she asked. Francis’ lawyers had asked for bond while he was in Nevada, claiming incarceration was making him crazy and would ultimately make him unfit for trial.

“Ah, yes, for the most part,” Francis answered.

“Your honor,” Black said, “Mr. Francis is a very high energy person and is an excellent business man, he does have some various matters that came to him while he was in custody, that’s why we filed that motion. It was directed at the terms of his incarceration, which were causing that problem. However, there is nothing that interferes with his competency here today to enter this plea.”

“It’s my obligation to make sure that you know what you’re doing,” Costello told Francis. “That you understand all its consequences and that you’re in full control of your faculties. I want to make sure for your best interest as well as everyone else’s, we don’t want to go through this twice.”

“I can assure you that Mr. Francis doesn’t want to go through this twice,” Black said.

“Do you think this is in your best interest, primarily because you’re getting out of jail today?” Costello asked Francis.

“Ah, yes,” he said, struggling to keep the sarcasm down.

Costello read to him the part of the plea that said Francis and his companies had to stay out of the Florida Panhandle for three years. From Pensacola to Marianna, Girls Gone Wild couldn’t even advertise in the area.

“Your honor, I’m happy not to come back. I’m done with Bay County,” Francis said.

There were two telling things about the plea. First, Shapiro told the judge that a condition of the arrangement was that Francis had to drop his prosecutorial misconduct motion. That stipulation jumped out to me because it was a part of a motion to dismiss the charges. Francis, through his plea, was resolving his charges. There should have been no reason to stipulate that he had to drop the motion to dismiss.

The second item was something that Costello caught. She read from the plea form that all the tapes collected as evidence in the 2003 case were to be destroyed. Costello said, instead, they were going to be turned over to the sheriff’s office for safekeeping until she issued another order.

The tapes weren’t evidence in Francis case, but they still were in the case against Mark Schmitz, the cameraman charged along with Francis in the “shower scene” episode. The State Attorney’s Office had just asked for evidence to be destroyed – including the shower scene that was at the heart of the prosecutorial misconduct motion. That was that tape that Meadows showed to Martin Bashir.

Finally, Costello named Francis a convicted felon. First offenders usually get this label withheld, but Francis didn’t seem surprised.

As Francis was being fingerprinted, several cameramen ducked out of the courtroom and took up station in a semi-circle around the door. I waited a few minutes longer, but still left ahead of Francis.

I walked out with attorney Bob Pell. We went down the first flight of stairs and I stopped.

“What do you think? Is that going to help your case?” I asked him.

He sputtered for a minute, trying to find the words. Finally he said, “I’m going to go home and take a shower.”

I was leaning against a bike rack at the end of the ramp leading to the courthouse door when Francis came out, followed by his lawyers and entourage. We shook hands and he moved to a shaded spot on the grass under a tree where the gaggle of reporters who had followed him out of the courthouse formed a half-circle in front of him.

In usual fashion, he got right to it.

“I’m 100-percent innocent of anything I just pled to. Everything I pled to, I pled, like the judge said, to get out of jail. I have been held by this county for 11 months of what I deem illegal incarceration. I have done nothing wrong. I am not guilty of a single thing,” he said.

“This plea negotiation has been going on for quite some time. The state attorney, Steve Meadows, upon Roy Black’s filing of a prosecutorial misconduct motion, has been begging, calling every single day almost in tears for us to make a deal with him.

“I chose to finally plea to a felony just to get out of jail. That was the only reason I pled here to something I did not do. I have never committed a crime and it is just absurd.

“This is embarrassing to the entire criminal justice system. The fact that a few corrupt individuals in Bay County, Panama City, Florida, were able to pull this off and successfully keep an innocent man incarcerated for 11 months.”

A reporter asked him who the corrupt individuals were.

“You’ve got State Attorney Steve Meadows is definitely corrupt. I feel bad for the people of Bay County who have to deal with it. This is not fair, this is not fair to you. The fact that this town and these corrupt individuals in this small town were able to do this to me, railroad me like this, keep me incarcerated for 11 months, seize my plane illegally, say there was cocaine on my plane, which all turned out to be false, the fact that they were able to railroad me like this in the United States of America and keep me incarcerated for that long when they knew I did no wrong, it hurts us all guys because you’re next. If people get away with this then you’re next.

“If I didn’t have money, if I didn’t have notoriety I would have had a very different result. If I didn’t have Roy Black I probably would have had a very different result than I had in that courtroom today. Guys, no time, no probation, this was a total victory for us.

“I’m gonna go back to my life. I’m gonna go back to making great ‘Girls Gone Wild’ videos – not here.”

Black had been standing to the side, mainly looking at the grass and trying not to smile or cringe, depending on the statement. Francis waved him forward so he could say a few words.

“The reason Joe is particularly upset is that because of the type of charges and the ruling by the court that it was strict liability, that he didn’t have to have the intent to commit a crime, is what I really think has caused this anguish here. He always thought that the young ladies involved were over 18, they said they were over 18, they signed forms saying they were over 18 and they were on videotape saying they were over 18, but they were only 17.

“Because of the way the law’s written in Florida, the court ruled that it makes no difference that they lied and you believe them you’re still guilty of a crime. I will say I think the judge handled this very professionally, I think the actual prosecutors that we dealt with in court like Mark Graham and Joe Grammer were professional and of course I don’t want to characterize anyone else in this case like Joe has.”

“Steve Meadows,” Francis said, smiling.

“I understand why Joe was so upset,” Black continued. “He has a right to be upset because, just think in his business how dangerous this is – expressing your First Amendment rights and the next thing you know they put you in jail for 11 months when none of it was your fault.”

Francis cut back in.

“Yes, I asserted my First Amendment right and all of us have been told just how many rights we have by Bay County, Florida, and it just sucks because this sets us all back. Yeah, I’m walking free but we’re all less free because of what happened in this town and this courtroom today,” he said.

News Herald Managing Editor Mike Cazalas, who had come to the proceedings out of curiosity, asked Francis if it was difficult to plead to a felony.

“I could have taken this exact same deal three months ago when Roy was performing, what I like to call defense sodomy on Steve Meadows and he was …”

“I’d rather not characterize it that way if possible,” Black interrupted.

“He was begging for me to take a felony and that was a sticking point for me. I did not want to plead to a felony but at the end of the day no one was going to believe that two 17 year old girls lie about their age, I wasn’t even present, they show fake ID, falsify a release form and I’m somehow a child abuser? It’s ridiculous. It’s absurd and no one would believe it. So who cares,” Francis said.

Meadows held a press conference a few minutes later. News Herald reporter Ed Offley covered it for me so I could work another angle.

“This case has drawn on now for way too long,” Meadows started. “We have seen the evidence in this case, all the films, suppressed because of some misstatements by law enforcement. We’ve seen a nationwide media blitz in which Mr. Francis attempted to gain favor with the public and to discredit the prosecution through media outlets from coast to coast.

“We’ve seen outrageous claims filed in defense motions attempting to smear and color the prosecution. We’ve seen Mr. Francis personally threaten to fund a political opponent in the upcoming state attorneys race in opposition to me.

“Throughout all of these attacks we have stood strong. We have stood strong in the belief that Mr. Francis should be held accountable for what he did. Wherever he goes from this day forward for the remainder of his life, he will be a convicted child abuser. He will always have to acknowledge that he is a convicted felon.”

Meadows classified Francis’ allegations as “rantings,” but said since Francis was attacking him along with Costello, Smoak and the “people of this community,” Meadows felt like he was in good company.

He talked about the condition that Francis and Mantra stay out of the Panhandle for three years – an entirely unenforceable caveat that meant next to nothing. Even the advertising condition didn’t apply to the late night national ads that Francis had built his empire on.

“Mr. Francis has made his living exploiting young women throughout this country but thanks to this agreement he will not, for at least the next three years, make his living from Pensacola to Tallahassee. Girls Gone Wild cannot operate filming girls within this community for the next three years,” Meadows said.

He said he wanted the video tapes destroyed so the “people who were captured will not ever have to be concerned about their images having to appear in future Girls Gone Wild productions.”

He gave a different take on the plea negotiations. He said he would not accept anything less than a felony plea and Francis had been unwilling to “come forward and admit his felonious conduct.”

There’s no doubt that this plea came about through a combination of things. The prosecutorial misconduct motion and upcoming election were factors for Meadows.

For Francis, his most recent bond motion before U.S. District Judge Robert McQuaid, Jr. had gone badly. McQuaid denied the motion, saying only that Francis’ lawyers had raised some excellent points and the decision had been a close one.

The lawyers felt confident that the circuit court of appeals would look favorably on the argument and overturn McQuaid’s ruling. But that meant months more time in jail awaiting the appeal.

Francis had run out of patience with incarceration.

Meadows ended his speech saying he felt the sentence was appropriate.

“I feel that we can now move forward in this community with the self assurance that in spite of continued rantings of Mr. Francis that he cannot change the fact that he is a convicted child abuser,” he said.

Offley asked him if the prosecutorial misconduct motion played a part in the plea negotiations.

“Absolutely not,” Meadows answered. “I felt for sure it was meritless. In fact, the defense, in their subsequent filings, have now withdrawn any suggestion of inappropriate display.”

That last statement went unchallenged. What “subsequent filings” was he talking about?

“Anytime we have somebody like Mr. Francis, who has never before in the history of this country been prosecuted for this type of conduct, to come to this area and know that we take these crimes seriously, and it didn’t matter how long it took, we were willing to stay with it and stand strong and that his money and his rantings and that his smear campaign were not going to deter us. We’ve continued to stand strong today.

“We have taken a year of his life, almost.”

Meadows also said the re-election had nothing to do with resolution of the case, but he was the one who talked about Francis’ threat to fund a political opponent in the upcoming race. He wasn’t asked to explain that either.

The questions ended and the event was over.

When Offley and online editor Tony Simmons left the room they were talking about the striking difference in Meadows’ body language compared to Francis. Simmons said Meadows had positioned himself in front of a wall and looked trapped.