Smoke, Mirrors, and Murder

I walk from my car in the driveway—just to my front door—I scan the street and sometimes run, imagining the hit man popping up and shooting me. I’m also scared in my own house late at night, picturing someone behind a corner, waiting.”
    She asked the Court for a maximum sentence, and then turned toward her father. “You should be so incredibly ashamed of yourself.”
    Jenny spoke for several more minutes. Any normal man—father— would have been ashamed.
    William Jensen didn’t seem to be; he was going over his remarks in his head, and gathering a stack of documents he wanted to hand to the Court. He had a different tack to take with Judge Jones, and he was anxious to present it.
    Sue Jensen could not bring herself to speak, but she handed what she had written to the judge. So did Carol Harris.
    The man about to be sentenced had yet another attorney representing him. That lawyer presented a statement, using what ammunition he had—which wasn’t much.
    Cheryl Snow asked the Court to impose a sentence within the standard range for four such heinous crimes. She saw no mitigating factors at all.
    Bill Jensen’s moment had come. Leaning heavily on a cane, he assured Judge Jones that he would look directly into his eyes, and he would tell him the truth “before you sentence me to some place in hell.”
    He had come up with a new argument. “There are two Bill Jensens,” he began.
    In essence, Jensen said he blamed jailers and the jail medical staff for giving him the wrong pain medications, which had changed his thinking, blurred his perception. That wasn’t his fault, of course. He went over the same story he had told during his trial, but blamed his response to Yancy Carrothers’s trickery on his having ingested the wrong meds. His mind had been skewed by OxyContin, ibuprofen, and other drugs—all in the wrong dosage.
    Everything that had happened was someone else’s fault, and Bill Jensen was an innocent victim, catapulted from that “silly Class C felony” to where he was currently.
    What had happened was all a mistake, misunderstandings, people plotting against him. The real Bill Jensen wouldn’t hurt anyone.
    “I want my family to totally understand that from Day One, they have been safe. Whether they believe it or not. I pray that the Lord will bring them there. But they are not in any danger from me, and never have been.”
    He offered the stack of papers to Judge Jones, who thanked him politely and said he would read them over the morning break.
     
    When Judge Richard Jones returned, he commented that most of the documents Jensen had given him were grievances against the King County Jail or law enforcement officers or Jensen’s attorneys. They were not to be considered in this venue. And almost all of the rest of the paperwork had already been before the Court, and a matter of court record already filed.
    “These motions are dismissed and denied.”
    In the judge’s view, the cases Jensen had cited after reading some law books were of “meager assistance” to his arguments.
    Richard Jones is a soft-spoken judge, and during trials, participants only rarely have a sense of what he is thinking. He prefers it that way, determined to be as fair as possible to both sides. But now he prepared to sentence William Jensen.
    And now, at last, his opinions came out for those in the courtroom to hear.
    “Mr. Jensen,” he began, “we find ourselves conducting this sentencing right in the middle of a season that should be geared around peace, hope, and sharing. We are right in the middle of a season when families are crossing miles across the planet to spend a few hours with family.
    “Right now, as we speak, there are young men and women fighting for our country on the other side of the planet—and dying—with their last wish being the chance to spend a few precious moments with family.
    “Mr. Jensen, there are those who will come into existence and spend their entire life chasing a dream of having a family. Mr. Jensen, you had a family. Regardless of the issues you had with your wife, you obviously had children who dearly loved you and cherished you.
    “But, when given the choice, when given the choice of what was more important, instead of showing your children love and affection, you were giving physical descriptions to a hit man. And when asked about the involvement of your son as being a casualty of what was going to take place, your callous response was, ‘Oh, well…’
    “Your