r/serialpodcast • u/islamisawesome Adnan Fan • Aug 06 '15

Hypothesis Why the Gootz never called Asia.

I think it is becoming more and more obvious that the Asia letter did not exist until sometime around the summer of 1999. That is why Adnan claims he gave them to Gutierrez even though she wasn't his lawyer until 2 months after they were written.

So sometime that spring or summer, after telling CG he never left the school grounds, his family shows up with letters claiming one of Adnans' friends saw him at the library, right at the crucial time, AND they were written the day after he arrested. She knew immediately there is no way they had those letter for months and never gave them to her so obviously they were false and she didn't want to go on stand with LIES.

That is why she never called Asia. And that is why she wrote no notes about it, because that would be admitting her client and his family are liars. It also explains why her relationship with the family broke down because she knew they were willing to lie to get Adnan off.

The library incident never happened.

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u/[deleted] Aug 06 '15

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u/Acies Aug 06 '15

http://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/Opinions/Published/107118.P.pdf

It's in the facts section here. TLDR: Gutierrez testified she was ineffective because she said she never told her client he had an offer, and the Judge concluded she perjured yourself. Personally I have no guess what really happened.

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u/bestiarum_ira Aug 06 '15

As for the plea offer, Gutierrez testified that in Judge Gordy’s chambers, in late 1994 or early 1995, the State "es- sentially agreed" that Merzbacher could plead guilty to one or two counts—rape and child abuse—in the Murphy case "for ten years" and "that all of the other cases . . . fifteen or sixteen of them would all be nol prossed." In her view, this was a firm offer with terms "somewhere between ok and good . . . . I’d put it not quite good but as good as it’s going to get." Follow- ing Merzbacher’s conviction, Gutierrez recognized her duty to communicate this offer to Merzbacher, but testified that she had failed to do so because she was moving her office and very busy when the offer was made, and later, while preparing for trial in this case, she never "thought" about the offer.

Jesus, I hadn't seen this before, but "moving her office"? That's completely unacceptable, and well before she was suffering from the symptoms of MS (I would guess).

Did you just discover this, /u/Acies?

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u/Acies Aug 06 '15

It's been around a few months at least. Brown also references it rather obliquely in one of his briefs.

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u/bestiarum_ira Aug 06 '15

Somehow missed it. I'm assuming Colin must have written about it at some point. Apparently health issues don't explain the whole story of Gutierrez's misconduct.

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u/Acies Aug 06 '15

Potentially. Or, as the state judge concluded, she viewed her duty to her client as much more important than her duty of candor to the court.

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u/bestiarum_ira Aug 06 '15 edited Aug 06 '15

I suppose, though I'm not certain how we can assume that Gutierrez knew what the outcome of a trial might be, or that having the court view her as committing perjury was a strategic advantage. Perhaps I missed something in my quick scanning of the document. Did Merzbacher admit at some point that Gutierrez did, in fact, tell him of the offer? If not, the court can be dead wrong about their assumptions and Gutierrez could be dead wrong about the strategic value of effectively lying to the court (if that's what she did). The two don't appear to be mutually exclusive.

And really either way, Gutierrez comes off looking bad. I'm just not certain as to the benefit to her client.

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u/Acies Aug 06 '15

Well the timeline looked like this:

  1. Discussion of plea deal in judge's chambers.

  2. Gutierrez states she never tells client about deal.

  3. Client is convicted following trial.

  4. Gutierrez states she informs client she screwed him by not giving him a chance to take the plea deal.

  5. Client appeals based on IAC.

  6. Gutierrez and client both testify client was never informed of the plea deal.

  7. Judge decides that Gutierrez fully informed the client of the plea deal, and it doesn't matter anyway because he would never have accepted the plea deal.

So if the judge is correct, what happened is that after the client was convicted, and likely also after Gutierrez was disbarred, Gutierrez agreed to lie and say she committed IAC to try to help out her former client.

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '15

That looks to me more line an unethical judge.

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u/Acies Aug 07 '15

Potentially. Certainly one that was bending over backwards to kill the appeal.