It’s June again

I had thought that what happened no longer bothered me. I had thought to let this anniversary tomorrow pass entirely unmarked. For the first couple of years, during the month of June my thoughts were consumed with violent images and the whole month I felt kind of sick. Then it stopped happening, and then last year Rollo was deported to Sudan, and I thought: ah, it’s over now.

But it never really is. People, some of them, were like, “Wow, Meaghan just picked herself up and carried on like nothing had ever happened.” But that’s simply not the case. I have suffered as much as anyone else in my situation would have. I didn’t write about it all here. In fact, those who know me only through my blog actually know very little. Words typed on a screen can never fully represent a person’s life and their personality.

Last week, on Thursday, Michael bought a few movies and told me to pick one to watch. They were all pretty much the same to me, action films starring famous actors. I picked one pretty much at random, doesn’t matter which one it was. Anyway, there’s a scene where a motorcycle gang ran a car off the road and attacked its occupants, a young man and his girlfriend. It showed them dragging the man and the girl out of the car, then the next scene showed the girl after the gang left. She was tied to what was left of the car, nearly naked, and had to be rescued by the police.

The fact that what happened was only implied was worse, in a way, than if it had been shown. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo movie has a very violent, graphic rape scene and I got through it unscathed. But this time my imagination filled in the blanks, and suddenly I realized it was June, and began thinking about what had happened to me, and what had happened to the girl in the film, and became upset. Long story short was that I wound up unable to finish the movie, hiding in the bedroom, crying, all the while feeling guilty for having ruined the evening. And it was the first thing I thought of when I woke up the next day.

I passed all of Friday in a gloom. Although I got a $200 gift card in the mail (a gift from a friend, or payment for services I’d rendered him, depending on how you look at it) and the Journal Gazette photographer came by to take my photo for the article they ran, none of it much mattered to me. In fact it was Sunday before I felt like myself again.

It’s never over, really.

Make-a-List Monday: MWAB cases with mistrials

For obvious reasons, it can be very difficult to prove murder without a body, never mind prove a specific person committed that murder. As my corpus delicti lists indicate, however, most of the time such prosecutions are successful — as of this writing I’ve got over 350 convictions versus a little over 100 acquittals. I thought I’d make a list of MWAB cases on Charley where they had to do multiple trials of the defendant because of a mistrial (usually because the jury failed to reach a verdict).

This is actually two lists. The first is cases where the defendant was ultimately convicted or pleaded guilty. The second is cases where the defendant was either ultimately acquitted, or the prosecution did not bring them to trial again after the mistrial. I don’t count cases that are still pending.

List #1:

1. Frank Lee Black Jr.
2. Jana Carpenter-Koklich
3. Marilyn E. Brinson
4. Crystal Gayle Dittmeyer
5. Jeanette Gomez Espeleta
6. Joaquin Coehlo Esteves
7. Mario Rodriguez Hernandez
8. Faith Nanette Lippe
9. Isabel Rodriguez
10. Robert James Wykel
11. Jeanette Louise Zapata

List #2:

1. Martin Alan Gentry
2. Michael Eugene Golub
3. Michelle Kelly Pulsifer
4. Shelton John Sanders
5. Shamari Taylor