A plain and simple message to the judge

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By MARY JO MELONE

© St. Petersburg Times,
published June 12, 2001

Appeals judges get to sit up high, a comfortable remove from the mess and bother of life, and play the role of First Class Second Guesser.

Nobody does the job better than Christopher Altenbernd of the 2nd District Court of Appeal. This is not a compliment.

Altenbernd wrote the 43-page decision last week in the Bernice Bowen case on behalf of himself and two other judges who heard Bowen's appeal.

You remember Bowen, Hank Carr's girlfriend.

You remember Carr, the killer of three cops, one 4-year-old and himself in May 1998.

A year later, a Hillsborough County jury convicted Bowen of being an accessory to all four deaths and to Carr's escape from police.

She refused for several hours to reveal Carr's real name. She never told investigators that Carr had a handcuff key that enabled him to free himself and shoot two Tampa detectives, Randy Bell and Ricky Childers.

In an opinion released Friday, Altenbernd flat out acquitted Bowen of being an accessory to the death of her child, Joey Bennett, and the murder of a state trooper, Brad Crooks.

The judge said there was no evidence to support either charge.

Then he gave Bowen a new trial on the accessory charges involving the deaths of Bell and Childers, and Carr's escape.

The law requires a peculiar formality, but if I were writing the title to this opinion, it would be: Judge to Prosecutors: Drop Dead.

Altenbernd picked at this case from every angle -- not just points of the law, which he is supposed to do, but the evidence, which is the jury's province.

Bowen had her supporters during the trial. Altenbernd was clearly one of them. He never said he believed Bowen was being made to pay for Carr's crimes because he was no longer alive. He never said he believed she should not have been charged.

He should have. Then the judge would have been straight about the motives behind the ruling -- the very thing that the critics of Bowen's prosecution said the state was not. The critics said prosecutors made Bowen a scapegoat.

Here's a taste of what the appeals court did.

Bowen was charged with being an accessory in her son's death because, prosecutors argued, she suspected Carr shot the boy intentionally and then refused to reveal Carr's true identity when the two of them were taken to the police station.

But the appeals court said there was no evidence that Bowen knew the shooting was anything but an accident.

Altenbernd went on and on about how obviously distraught Bowen was. He neglected to mention that she didn't even bother to cradle the boy in her lap as he lay bleeding in the back seat of a car on the way to get help. She sat in the front, with Carr.

Then Altenbernd dismissed as contradictory the testimony of two women inmates who said Bowen gave them information that backed up the prosecutors' version of events.

The judge all but said their stories couldn't be trusted by virtue of who the women were.

Altenbernd then made what looks like a slip. He overlooked testimony of a detective who said Bowen told her she believed Carr shot Joey intentionally.

Altenbernd wasn't just chastising the prosecutors. He wagged his finger at everybody who was stunned by Carr's crimes -- which pretty much means the Tampa Bay community.

"This is an emotional and tragic case that requires special attention to ensure that any conviction obtained is achieved through appropriate and rational deliberation, not through moral indignation or prejudice," he wrote.

You're right, Judge. Call us human. We were indignant about these crimes. Still are. Now you've given us something else to be indignant about.

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