The Madness of Joe Francis: "I thought we were all just having fun. I was wrong." (51 page)

“No matter what Francis did to these girls,” Pontikes wrote in her motion, “once they were painted as sluts, Francis could not damage them.”

She pointed out that the jurors found that Francis had acted outrageously, even criminally, but had decided that he hadn’t damaged these girls.

“This verdict is a miscarriage of justice. It finds that a pornographer can exploit teenage girls without damaging them, which declares open season on teenage girls and invites their sexual exploitation by adult men. This record requires this court to grant plaintiffs a new trial.”

As of the date of this book’s publication, the appeals court had not ruled on Pontikes’ motion.

On September 10 and 11, 2012, Joe Francis’ good fortune in court turned into a fortune in damages when a jury awarded casino mogul Steve Wynn $40 million in a slander suit against Francis.

Francis had said in court, then repeated several times to reporters, that Wynn had threatened to kill him and bury him in the desert because of $2 million in gambling debts Francis owed to Wynn. Wynn sued him in 2008 in an effort to collect the debt and Francis first made the comment during a court hearing in that case.

After the verdicts, Francis vowed to appeal, saying he still believed that Wynn intended to kill him.

“I’m the victim here.”

.

Epilogue

The Q&A with Juror 6

Juror 6 is a handsome woman, a description most Southern women hate, somewhere in her 50s or 60s, with golden blonde hair, strong features and quick, appraising eyes. When she introduced herself in the lobby of O’Charlie’s Restaurant on May 26, she gripped my hand quickly and firmly, looked me in the eyes with a genuine smile on her face.

While watchful of others she wasn’t automatically distrustful and was also quick to say exactly what she was thinking.

She’d been the foreperson on the jury and agreed to talk to me as long as I didn’t use her name. We sat in a booth in the bar. I ordered a tall beer and she had an amaretto sour, which she nursed through the 90-minute interview.

“When they first came in, when they first brought the plaintiffs in,” Six said, getting into the interview after a small amount of small talk, “and I saw B, as in boy, before I knew anything about her, to me she looked like a rich girl that had got caught. The other three I figured they were just trailer trash, and that’s what I thought.”

She said she didn’t think she’d be picked as a juror because she knew one of the lawyers, Robert Fleming.

“My son played football with him at Rutherford (high school) and they said, ‘What do you think about this trial.’ I said, ‘I believe everybody deserves their day in court whether it’d been Joe whether it’d been the girls. I believe everybody deserves their day in court.’”

She made a bet with another woman in the jury pool as to which of the two of them would be picked for the jury.

“The girl that was sitting directly in front of me, when we had to come back in the jurors box, the girl in front of me said, ‘You’re gonna get picked.’ I said to her, “I’ll bet you a Coke-Cola I don’t get picked.” And she said, ‘I’ll bet you.’”

When juror number six was selected, the woman turned around and said with a smile
, “Let me give you the money for a Coke because you’re gonna need it.

“The one sitting next to me who got picked along with me, she said, ‘You’re gonna get picked.’ And I said, ‘Oh no, I’m not,’ and she said, ‘I’m not gonna picked. I know those girls.’ And she had been one of the one’s who had stated she knew the girls and they called her back into the conference room and she stated how she knew them and everything. Whenever I got picked she tapped me on the shoulder and she said, ‘See, you’re it.’ When they called her name I said, ‘Whoo and you’re there with me.’”

Juror 4 was a surprise. She was young, had a 14-year-old daughter and said she had issues with GGW. Another woman on the front row was “very, very opinionated.” When the jury was selected they were excused for a few minutes and they met together in the jury room for the first time as a group.

“We had to go back there in the back, the young girl from Graceville was very upset and the school teacher next to me was very upset. They both were crying. Before the trial ever started they said what a scumbag he was and everything else and what I said to them was, I could see myself there, where he was. We left and come back the next day and I figure you make the best of it is what you do, you make the very best of the situation. I was intent on it but I wasn’t a prude about it. I think you can look at things in a different manner.”

On the first day of testimony, Tuesday, Juror 6 began to take stock of the people around her. Not just Joe Francis and the Chicago lawyers, but the other women on her jury.

“We came in and that next morning, I kinda watched the different ones. I read people pretty pretty good and I figured in that point in time there was gonna be three people I was gonna have problems with and it was the young girl from Graceville, the older lady, and the one sitting next to me.”

When you say, the ones you’re gonna have problems with, what does that mean?

“They’re not gonna look at the facts. They’re not gonna look at the law. They’re emotion driven. They didn’t want to be there and I didn’t want to be there either, but I still believe that everybody deserves their day in court. So when we first started out and they told us whatever jurors we were and what we’d have to do and everything, the next morning we went out there and Joe started. Do I like him? No, I don’t like him. Do I think he’s a scumbag? I think he’s a scumbag. But a statement was made in the very opening by the opposite team and it still sticks to me today and I kept thinking this the whole time: There’s someone in this community that believes that Mr. Francis should pay. That’s almost verbatim what they said that day. I sat there and I thought about it. I was thinking about it as everything else was going on and the way that Joe handled himself. When we went back for our first break, the first time we got taken out of the courtroom later in the day, I just sat there, and there was things being said and I said, ‘Everybody … we don’t know, so we don’t know what it’s all about.’ And the school teacher was just very abrupt with me. And I told her, ‘I’m gonna tell you something, to every one of ya’ll right now, I am very straightforward. I will tell you what I think and I’m not easily swayed just because that’s what you want. I think there’s more to this story than we probably will ever know but I believe everybody deserves their day in court.’

“Joe, he reminded me of a cat or a lion that was caged up and he knew that someone was either fixing to cut his throat or shoot him and he was fightin’ for his life. That’s what I took of it. I then thought, I kinda figured he must’ve been ADHD. I often wondered if he was hyped up on coke. He might have been; he might very well have been.

“He went back to the jurors’ room and I shared what I thought and I said, ‘I can’t say I would be any different than him.’ If I felt like that everything I had and had worked for I was fixin’ to lose, I would probably be worse than him. And one of the jurors, which was another one of the older ladies that was on the front row, she looked at me and she and I were on the same wavelength. I knew the one sitting next to me, the older lady, she had lost her husband, she knew those girls and she made a couple comments that those girls aren’t what they are putting them out there to be.

“The school teacher said, ‘We are not to discuss that.’ I said, ‘We’re not discussing anything. They’re talking freely, I believe I have the right to say what I think.’ At that point, I knew that was my number one trouble right there (the school teacher). I knew that was my number one trouble.”

It was obvious from early in the trial that you were going to be the foreperson.

“They had said early on, ‘Do we need to pick a foreperson?’ And I said, ‘No, not till the end.’ And they said, ‘We already know who it is.’ And I said, ‘Nah, I’m not gonna be the foreperson.’ The more I thought about it, I thought as the trial went on and I saw how certain individuals were going, in the manner that they did, I just thought, ‘Okay, I’m not gonna say anything but if that’s what it takes then that’s what it takes.’”

I caught you more than once watching Joe and I didn’t think you liked what you were watching.

“I didn’t. Some of his stuff I didn’t. But I will tell you, when it come up that he told Plaintiff V, is that the (does the handjob motion), okay, V as in victor, when he was talking to her it was very obvious that those girls had been coached. When he asked her how much money do you want, she didn’t look at him. She looked at those attorneys. And when he said to her … she had said, ‘I took the money off of the bed’ and he called her, ‘Well aren’t you a prostitute?’ We got nicely escorted out but didn’t know anything about the contempt of court at that point in time. That’s where he brought things out that probably … well, I wouldn’t put it past Rachel, but I think probably it never would have come out.

“In that sense in the manner, I think he did himself a justice, not an injustice. He showed someone fighting for themself. I think he’s always pretty much gotten what he’s wanted, that’s my take on it. I sat and I watched him. He was arrogant, but i could read that he was intently nervous. He was up against all these powerful lawyers. Probably the striking point for me was, he went over to the plaintiffs table and he asked, I call her Miss Poochy Butt …”

Pontikes?

“Pontikes, he asked her for something. She scribbled it and he said to her, I can’t read it. Could you write it out for me or something?’ And she didn’t, she pushed it at him. That right there said she wasn’t going to be fair to him. Whether he is a lawyer or he’s not a lawyer you have to be fair. I also noticed that every time they had to go to sidebar, when he started first she jumped her flat tail up in front of him and then sling her head and make her facial gestures. I don’t hide my facial expressions very well, she doesn’t either. She would do that every time and I watched that.

“When the (Virgas) come in, they were totally different. When I sat and watched them I saw Miss Po-Po said, ‘Well, I got some real McCoys here. Now I gotta act in the manner that I should be acting as an attorney,’ even though you didn’t give that other person the same respect. That goes a long way for me.”

What did you think of Lebowitz?

“She talked in circles and she chased her tail. When she compared those girls to men in combat … (shakes her head in disbelief). When I first found out where they was from I went back and I told (the other jurors), ‘I can tell you exactly where this come from, Robert Fleming went to Duke. Those Chicago big dogs thought they was dealing with a bunch of dumbasses. They was coming to the Redneck Riviera and all we was was a bunch of dumb dumbs.”

That seemed clear even in the way that Pontikes and Selander spoke when they were at the podium.

“Yes, it was like you weren’t smart enough to figure it out. More than one time when they had to go to sidebar and we had to go out I would sit back there and say, ‘You know, they might think I’m a dummy, but I’m not a dummy and I’m not buying into this.’ Early on I said there’s more to this story; Like Paul Harvey used to say ‘and the rest of the story is …’ My friend from Wassau over there said, ‘You’re right sister.’ She’s very educated. Juror 4 was emotional. She was so stern in her body language, everything about her, she didn’t really have much of a poker face. It was just such a nice jury to have good solid people.

“One thing that the school teacher didn’t like, she never went to lunch with us. She finally went one day. We didn’t talk at lunch about the case. We talked about our kids and what we did for a living and how good the food was where we went. We went to different places and I think the reason the school teacher went was … I think she went so she could … thinking she would pick up on something we were saying that she could take to the judge.

“She kept talking about how she had a son, she had a daughter. Her husband was retired military. They were very, very big in the church. I said to her on more than one occasion, ‘I don’t believe he held a gun to their heads.’

“And probably the changing for the young lady with the longer hair was when they showed the tape of those girls, whenever they first showed the tape and there was no audio. My opinion, and its strictly my opinion, was that was on purpose and it may not have been that they didn’t want any audio. The prosecution didn’t. I felt like it was on purpose the reason the audio was not there because the prosecution said, ‘You’re honor, they’ve seen it.’ And Rachel spoke up and said, ‘Your honor, there was no audio.’ And he took us out to the jury room. We stayed out there about 30 minutes and he brung us back in and he said, ‘I apologize.’ And we heard the audio. The audio was just more clarification that those girls were not under duress. Those girls were not being forced to do that. When they said those girls had never been to the beach, you know what I looked at? I looked at their swimsuits. Those weren’t brand new swimsuits. Those were well-used swimsuits.”