After sharing all of the details with the prosecutor, including highlighting the contradicting evidence in the case, the prosecutor responded by asking if I felt better. In that moment I said yes. I had a brief moment of relief in being able to share everything on my mind.
But then I returned home. Who knew a relatively short drive could crush any last desperately bleak hope I had. When I arrived home, I learned the prosecution had sent the plea agreement to Travis’s attorney earlier in the afternoon just before I had met with the prosecution.
What I shared with them about my concerns, the evidence, objectively reviewing everything meant nothing. Not a single thing. They wouldn’t be looking into any of those factors which at minimum pointed to there being at least one other person involved. They were not seeking truth in this case, they were only seeking a conviction. They were ignoring exculpatory evidence, and by leveraging these short deadlines, it left no time for the prosecution to be questioned about any of their processes. The plea agreement contained even more strategies to bury their procedures and never be questioned about their processes. And with my very last question about due process, the prosecutor had even outed the game they play: push cases through.
Travis’s defense attorney was certainly not interested in questioning anything: search warrant, how evidence had been obtained, terms of the plea agreement, forensic analysis evidence, if the threats were direct and actually threats or protected by first amendment rights, if an open plea would be better so Travis could retain the many rights he was being leveraged to waive as part of the plea agreement. This is how 20% of the prison population is innocent. I could see it all so clearly now.
From the time Travis received the plea agreement, he had less than 24 hours to decide if he was signing the deal. A meeting had been set for him the very next day. He would need to meet with the prosecution where it was intended for him to sign the deal and then tell them all the details about why and how he committed the crime.
Less than 24 hours to decide if he wanted to concede and face a sentence of two years of incarceration, or fight and spend tens of thousands of dollars funding the fight to end up facing five years in prison with only 1% chance of acquittal. I will never forget the state of panic or paranoia Travis was in when I returned from the interview which had carried on for far longer than expected.
Not only was I crushed for the person I deeply love and care about, I was crushed because the system I thought had moral fortitude and honorably worked to protect society was far from what I had believed the system to be all those years. I felt betrayal, disgust, and deluded.
Should I tell him to not sign the deal? Do we find a way to fight this? I was confident the evidence on his phone with hiring a tech guru would hold a lot of weight in court to cast doubt about whether Travis was always in control of his phone. But would it be enough to determine Travis had not made the threats even if they were being posted through his device by someone else? Could we actually prove this? And based upon what I was witnessing the prosecution ignore thus far, it was going to take some very clear evidence to get the prosecution to concede on this case. I wasn’t confident this would be remedied in the court system. Not the system we were currently dealing with.
There have been far too many sleepless nights to count, but this was another all-nighter. While up all night, Travis noticed the Merit Group/Merit Data visiting his LinkedIn account in the wee hours of the morning. With his curiosity piqued, he decided to look into who the Merit Group is and what they do. He discovered they are located in London and harvest tech data, contracting with several governments and several large companies, including Apple and Facebook. This seemed odd given it was the night before/morning of his meeting to sign the plea agreement on a case that was being prosecuted obviously by the government for activities on a platform owned by Facebook (now Meta). Was all of this merely coincidence?
On no sleep, adrenaline, panic, and fear Travis left the house to go sign his previous law-abiding life away. He returned home officially a felon.
The plea agreement did lessen the charges and penalty of the case, but it also required the waiving of some really important rights: not being able to appeal, never denying guilt, and never being able to get the evidence to the case. Again, what were they hiding? Why can’t a defendant have the evidence of the case in which guilt was admitted?! And Travis’s attorney never advised him of the option to enter an open plea which would allow for him to retain these rights. In fact, his advisements were always to take the plea and never deny guilt. Sign the document and don’t look back.
In addition to signing the plea agreement, the meeting with the prosecution reviewed the evidence of the one profile photo. While posting the photo on a screen for everyone to review, the prosecutor told them to ignore the time stamp on the photo; it was London time. Well, isn’t that a coincidence with having a government contracting company based in London visiting his LinkedIn account just a few hours before this meeting?! Travis’s mind flashed back to the phone call he had received from the lead FBI agent who notified him of the target letter. The agent had very casually mentioned a couple times Travis may have questions for the prosecutor about evidence obtained illegally. It seemed as though we were getting breadcrumbs but didn’t have enough pieces to put the puzzle together yet.
In this meeting, the prosecutor also addressed whether or not they would add charges for Travis “lying” to the FBI and not taking responsibility during the original interview. Luckily no additional charges were added. Travis was then required to share how he had accessed the account to make the threats.
It’s truly a predicament to be telling the truth to the investigators but then possibly face even more charges once you begin lying to take a plea deal enabling you to the “opportunity” of being convicted on lesser charges with a lighter penalty. The situation is a double bind and requires you to lie at one point. And yet it can yield even more ramifications, or charges, for doing so.
What did Travis’s attorney do throughout the duration of this meeting, questioning, and discussion? Doodled!! Yep, he doodled on his legal pad. No notes taken. No questions asked. In fact, in future meetings Travis had with his attorney when Travis would ask his attorney about topics and evidence the prosecutor had shown during this interview, his attorney responded he didn’t know/see these things. The representation was truly a travesty, but we were so overwhelmed, distraught, and unable to speak to anyone to get an objective opinion about how things were going, including the quality of the representation, we lied to ourselves and made excuse after excuse for the attorney’s work: it’s the first case of this kind, it’s a precedent case, he’s a nice guy…
The one thing we had going for us was Travis’s employer was standing behind him, supporting him, and reinforcing the fact he had job security. This was incredible news and I remained committed to the plan to submit my two weeks notice the following Monday and transition into my business full time. At least through all of this one dream could be brought to fruition.
We thought we were at rock bottom. It couldn’t possibly get any worse than this, but in hindsight we can now see we had only fallen about halfway. Still in free fall rock bottom was several more blows away.
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Peace & Love,
Janessa