The Madness of Joe Francis: "I thought we were all just having fun. I was wrong." (32 page)

Francis objected to the testimony about B’s father, but was overruled. Pontikes asked B about the funeral.

B started talking about how isolated she was and Francis objected again.

“This is just ridiculous,” he said. He was overruled again.

“I’m not blaming GGW for my father’s death,” B said, looking at Francis. “I don’t know what killed him. A heart attack, yes. I never blamed GGW for my father’s death, Mr. Francis.”

“Did anyone ever accuse you of killing your father?” Pontikes asked, leaning toward the microphone. Francis objected, but was quickly overruled.

B said her boyfriend at the time had thrown that in her face.

B said “life became too hard.” She’d lost her father, her reputation, friends, family, confidence and could no longer concentrate on her studies.

She moved to Southern California with a boyfriend. There, she began drinking every day and using drugs, including cocaine.

It was also there that she did two more porn videos, but, of course, that’s not something she mentioned on the stand.

Soon after, though, desperate for some normalcy, she’d packed her belongings in a single bag and driven home to her mother. They had a falling out and B left again, this time taking a bus to Fort Lauderdale, the warmest place she could think of.

She said she knew she would be homeless and at least in South Florida she’d be able to sleep on the beach.

“So,” Ponitkes began, bending toward the microphone and dripping each word with sweet midwestern honey, “what happened when you were a homeless, sleeping on the beach?”

She got arrested. But not for sleeping on the beach. She got arrested for underage drinking in a bar. Instead of going to jail, though, B said the cops took her to a mental hospital.

She was medicated and soon after she was allowed to transfer to a mental hospital in her former hometown in Louisiana. She was released from there, but ended up in a third institution before being sent home with a list of medications to take.

She went to live with her mother again, who took her to a pawn shop to buy a new guitar.

“Objection, your honor,” Francis said, climbing to his feet and slapping his pad down on the table again. “Relevance. Where is this going? I mean, a guitar shop? Really?”

“Mr. Francis,” Smoak snapped, “come up here.”

After the sidebar, B resumed her story. She said she weaned herself off the medication that she’d been prescribed in her last hospital stay.

“I got myself back to stabilization, I guess you could say. I was building strength back, to be a part of society again.”

Pontikes wanted to use the viewer to introduce a document as evidence. The viewer was supposed to send the image to the attorneys’ monitors, and the judge’s, so it could be discussed before being shown to the jury.

“My screen is dead,” Francis said, looking quickly from one side of his monitor to the other. “Somebody unplugged it.”

He went to the other monitor and looked at the small image of the letter on the screen.

“I can’t see this. Does someone have some reading glasses,” he said, chuckling and turning to the audience. Pontikes looked a little annoyed with the interruptions and asked for help in enlarging the image.

The document was a letter from the Department of Justice informing B that she’d been listed as a victim in the federal records keeping case against Girls Gone Wild. She was asked to submit a victim impact statement and include any monetary damages she thought she deserved compensation for.

She responded to the letter with the victim impact statement that Smoak had insisted Francis read in 2006 when his company had entered the plea.

Francis objected to the letter, saying it was only meant to inflame the jury. Pontikes said the plea agreement that the letter referenced was already in evidence, so it couldn’t be prejudicial to him.

“How did you feel when you received this letter?” Pontikes asked B.

“I was just getting my feet under me. I received this letter about the video and it shook me up. Things were working out in my life and I get this letter and, I’m like, ‘Wow, child pornography.’”

B said she met with two FBI agents a short time later, who pulled out a stack of forms related to other underage girls who had been included in those films.

“I thought, ‘Wow, I’m not alone. There are thousands of other girls out there that GGW had targeted.’”

Objection. They went into a relatively quiet sidebar, which apparently worked out well for Francis who told the judge, “Ok. Cool. Thanks.”

Smoak sustained the objection and Pontikes dropped the subject. She moved on to the victim impact statement and B read out loud the same portion that Francis had read aloud nearly five years earlier.

B then told jurors about a few times that she was recognized from the video. She talked about a “big trucker” guy who’d called her a whore in a grocery store.

“What was your reaction to that?”

“It killed me. It just killed me inside.”

The name calling and confrontations were taking their toll. She had problems keeping a boyfriend.

“Let me tell you, it’s not really easy with a pornographic video in your past to get involved in a relationship. Within two months they were out the door.

“Self image was another thing. When you know that millions have seen you fully exposed, self esteem isn’t really high on the agenda.”

“Did you develop an issue with your eating?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” B said after a pause. She said she didn’t sleep much anymore either.

“It keeps me up at night, thinking about what kind of world it’s become.”

What about depression and anxiety problems?

“This was so close to putting me over the edge.”

“Do you regret what happened the night of March 31, 2002?”

“I hate the word regret, but I regret that. It changed the course of the next decade after that day. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

.

Chapter 36

Right triangle

P
ontikes said she was done with her questions and returned to her seat. Francis asked the judge for a short break so he could prepare his cross examination. Smoak allowed him a very short break, one minute.

“Can I get two?” Francis asked as he rushed from the room, not waiting for an answer.

A bailiff went into the hallway and retrieved Francis after roughly two minutes had passed. He burst back into the room and asked to approach the bench with a procedural question.

As usual, his sidebar was punctuated with exaggerated gestures, bobbing and the occasional outburst.

“Ah, this is the case,” he said loudly at one point. “This is crucial. This is the crux of the case.”

Smoak pointed a finger at Francis, but spoke too softly to be heard. After a few minutes, the judge asked the jury to take a break.

With the jury out of the room, the sidebar discussion resumed from the podium.

Smoak told Francis that he had to limit his cross-examination to only things that Pontikes had asked B during her direct examination. Smoak said B “did not testify as to what happened.”

“Yes she did, your honor,” Francis insisted. If he would be allowed to play the videotape of her encounter with GGW at this time it would contradict everything she said about what had happened.

“She’s done, cooked and fried. This jury needs to know, the American people need to know, who this witness is.”

He said he had the right to impeach the witness, to ask her about contradictory statements she’d made in the past.

“She has perjured herself for the last hour and a half.”

But Smoak was adamant. He would not allow Francis to use the videotape in his cross examination. It was improper, he said.

He then cautioned Francis about his questions and handling of B.

“This would be a challenge for a most experienced trial attorney, to affectively cross examine a victim such as that. What you’re going to be doing …”

Francis began to say something.

“Mr. Francis, shut up until I tell you to talk. You’re going to end up with that whole jury hating you and willing to believe anything that’s said against you. The best thing you can do is leave her alone.”

“Your honor, they are gonna hate her for lying to them for the last hour and a half.” He again asked to be allowed to play the video. “I don’t understand why I can’t show it.”

Smoak told him it would be a tactical mistake, that it would backfire on him.

“Let me make the mistake, your honor. Let me make it. I have the right to show that tape.” He said he didn’t even want to play the sexual portion of it, just the part where Plaintiff B and her friend are walking into the hotel and B says Girls Gone Wild is “her favorite thing in the world.”

“That’s not true,” Pontikes said.

“If it’s not true, Miss Pontikes, then let’s play it.”

“This tape is the crux of the case. This tape is the case. This jury is gonna hate her, hate her. You gotta trust me on this one.”

But Smoak continued to argue that Francis was going to do more harm than good. That he needed to go easy on Plaintiff B.

Pontikes objected, saying she understood that the judge was trying to be extra cautious with Francis, because he was representing himself, but she would have to draw the line at step-by-step instructions from the bench.

Smoak ignored her and went back to arguing with Francis over the videotape.

“You don’t listen,” Smoak told Francis. “You get yourself in a lot of trouble by being a bad listener.”

“This is my whole case,” Francis beseeched him. “She lied about everything. Every, little, thing. You honor, please, please, this is my case. The video is my case.”

Smoak insisted it was improper to use the tape in his cross and he expected Pontikes to put the video in with her evidence.

“What if she doesn’t?” Francis asked.

“She’s already said she’s going to.”

“Are you going to play it?” Francis asked Pontikes.

“Your honor, I would like to move on. I’m not going to answer questions from …”

“You see, your honor. What if she doesn’t play it? My whole case is this tape and these tapes of all these girls and she sat here and perjured herself. This is impeachment. This is impeachable evidence that my case is based off. Of course, your honor, she’s never going to play that tape.”

Smoak insisted that Francis could not use the video in his cross examination, but said he would consider allowing Francis to use it when he presented his defense. He again told Francis to limit his questions to what Pontikes had brought up in her direct examination.

But Francis couldn’t let it go.

“I play that video and it’s over,” he said, then pointed to Pontikes. “She’s never, never, never gonna play that video.”

Smoak said he’d made his ruling. He told Francis he would be smart to keep his cross-examination to just four questions.

“You may be as smart as any entrepreneur in the world, but you’re not a trial lawyer.” He said Francis would end up making B look better with a brutal cross examination.

“I don’t think they feel bad about her,” Francis said. “I don’t think they’re buying it. I’m gonna look great. I’m gonna be great.”

B was brought back into the room. Then the jury returned and Francis approached the podium.

“Hello,” he said to B. “So, Plaintiff B. So, right off, have we ever met before? Have you ever seen me in person before?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Was I there that night, that this happened to you, that you have nothing to do with?”

She didn’t think so.

He then asked for her birthdate. June 1, 1984. That made him stop. He thought her birthday was in early April and she had been a few days shy of turning 18 when she did the video. Now he had to do the math.

“How old were you?”

“I would have been 17.”

“And when would you have turned 18?”

“I turned 18 on June 1, 2002.”

“So, you were a couple of months away from turning 18. Do you know what the age of consent is to be involved in pornography?”

She said she thought it was 17, but Pontikes was already objecting to the question.

“So you were of the legal age?”

Objection.

“So how old were you when you posed for GGW?”

“I was 17.”

“Seventeen. And you turned 18 a few months later?”

“I was 17.”

“Do you feel like you were the victim at 17 and 10 months? Do you feel like you were the victim of child pornography?”

“Yes.”

But isn’t age just a number?

Pontikes objected again. The questions were improper and Francis was arguing with the witness.

“Do you have any tattoos?”

Objection, relevance.

“What’s your relevance of the tattoo?” Smoak asked Francis at sidebar.

“She lied. She lied about her age.”

“Why?”

“She lied about her age to get the tattoo. She forged it.”

“So, she got a tattoo.”

“She was underage.”

Plaintiff B listened to the sidebar discussion, which was taking place a few feet away from her. She scrunched up her face, then recoiled, putting a hand over her heart like she’d been offended.

Smoak sustained the objection and Francis dropped the subject.

After the sidebar, Francis asked her about where she was living when she did the video. He asked her if she’d ever lived in Southern California.

“Did you do any acting?”

“Yes.”

“Modeling?”

“Yes.”

“Were you ever paid to be on camera?”

“Yes.”

“For what?”

Objection. Outside the scope of Pontikes’ direct examination.

At sidebar, Pontikes accused him of trying to get the other porn films in. But Francis insisted he was not.

“I’m not going there. She also did modeling and all this other crap.”

Smoak said it was beyond scope of Pontikes’ direct examination.

Francis dropped it and went back to how old B was in March 2002.

“Did you lie about your age to a GGW camera operator?”

“I don’t remember.”

Did you sign a release after the taping?

“I remember signing something. I don’t remember what it was or what it was for.”