14
FALLOUT
In a February 2002 hearing, Richard Crouter started a process of appeal to try and overturn the sentencing decision concerning Ryan Hoyt. He addressed factors of aggravation and mitigation, noting that the jury had already rejected the special circumstance of kidnapping for extortion and found that the killing had occurred during a “simple kidnapping.”
Crouter stated that the killing had not been “particularly egregious” in that it wasn’t prolonged, nor had Nick been tortured before being killed. Crouter admitted that any murder was morally wrong, but compared to many murders that had been seen in court, this particular killing had not been prolonged or as brutal as some that had gone through the Santa Barbara County judicial system.
A mitigating factor, according to Crouter, was that Hoyt had been under extreme mental and emotional disturbance at the time of the crime. From evidence presented during trial, Crouter related that it had been proven that Hoyt suffered from a dependent personality disorder with an avoidant personality component. Even the prosecution’s psychologist had admitted to the same thing. Because of these disorders, Crouter alleged, Hoyt had been dominated by Jesse James Hollywood and followed his orders without hesitation. Crouter argued, “Witnesses agreed that Mr. Hoyt had a mild-mannered personality which caused him to attempt mediation rather than violence in conflicted circumstances. Circumstantially, Mr. Hoyt was led to the killing here by his dependence on Jesse Hollywood for acceptance and recognition.”
In her argument against the death sentence, Cheri Owen even put forth some of Ron Zonen’s own words spoken to the grand jury in 2000. “What about the fact,” Ron Zonen had said, “that for a period of time their security wasn’t really security. I mean, could Nick have walked away at different times? Certainly. the two hours that he was over at Natasha Adams’s house, Rugge wasn’t even there for much of that time. None of the original kidnappers were there, he was in that house, he elected to go with everybody else back to Rugge’s house.”
Owen got into the particulars of the interrogation of Ryan Hoyt on August 17, 2000, and said that after Hoyt repeated that he didn’t know who brought the gun to Santa Barbara, and he told the detectives he wanted to “stop there, for now.” Owen said at that point Hoyt had invoked his right to remain silent and the interrogation should have ended, but didn’t. Soon after that, Hoyt asked for another request to remain silent when he wanted to take a break, but he wasn’t allowed to do so, according to Owen.
Owen argued, “After this request to remain silent, the detectives ‘felt’ that Hoyt wanted to keep talking, and kept interrogating him. Only until Hoyt made further incriminating statements against himself and asked, once again, that he wanted to stop talking, did the detectives finally feel that the interview of Hoyt was to be concluded.”
Owen also argued that the entire indictment should have been thrown out because the deputy district attorney failed to present relevant exculpatory information to the grand jury. Chief among these was whether Jesse James Hollywood coerced Hoyt into playing a role in the crime.
This was Cheri Owen’s “last hurrah” for her client, however. Soon she would be in plenty of trouble herself.
It all began when Robert Sanger became the new attorney for Ryan Hoyt, on Hoyt’s request. Sanger told a judge that he’d requested documents from Cheri Owen, and “it has been two weeks since I substituted in as attorney of record for Ryan Hoyt and I have not been able to obtain either Cheri Owen’s or Richard Crouter’s file. I am simply unable to move forward without the files, materials and transcripts.”
Sanger was absolutely stunned when he discovered from Richard Crouter that even Crouter was not able to get in touch with Cheri Owen anymore. Tara Haaland, an attorney who was an associate of Sanger’s, tried phoning the number given for Cheri Owen and the phone number had been disconnected. Haaland phoned the California State Bar Association, and they had no new phone number listed for Owen.
Then Sanger discussed something else. Sanger told the judge, “On February 12, 2002, Cheri Owen, along with paralegal Gloria Pernell, met with Ryan Hoyt at the Santa Barbara County Jail. It appears that Ms. Owen’s visit to meet with Mr. Hoyt was for the sole purpose of obtaining Ryan’s signature on two relatively unprofessional documents which purported to have Ryan Hoyt convey any and all rights, including literary rights, to Ms. Owen. First he signed a waiver of attorney client privilege, and the second document Mr. Hoyt signed was entitled ‘Unconditional Grant of Rights.’” This last document concerned all rights pertaining to literary and media concerning the case.
As to the last part, about literary and film rights, it was more than just pie in the sky. There was already talk floating about that people in the film industry were interested in making a movie about the events of August 2000. Sanger argued that these documents created a “conflict of interest” between Cheri Owen and her client.
Then Sanger blasted Owen on a much more serious matter in his presentation to the judge. He claimed that Ryan Hoyt’s elderly grandmother had initially sought Owen’s services to represent Ryan on the death penalty case, when, in fact, Owen had no expertise in that area and was in way over her head. Sanger blasted Owen with the statement, “Ms. Owen was an ambitious, quite frankly greedy lawyer who talked her elderly receptionist (Hoyt’s grandmother) into paying a sizeable retainer consisting of her entire retirement and savings, on behalf of her grandson. Ms. Owen accepted the money and the case, knowing that she did not have the training or experience to handle such a serious and specialized manner. But Ms. Owen did not stop there. She took part of the money paid to her by the grandmother and used it to pay off accounts with an investigator for work done on other cases. Greed and ambition.”
Sanger went on to say that Owen had treated the case as a media opportunity from the very start, never objecting to cameras in the courtroom, although she did try to keep Hoyt’s police interview tape out. Sanger said that Owen actually encouraged filming in the courtroom because she hoped for a book deal and movie rights later on.
Sanger then argued that Owen didn’t even have the minimum experience and training needed to handle a capital case. Sanger noted that there was a new proposal in the California Rules of Court to have an attorney who handled capital cases be an active trial practitioner for ten years in the field of criminal law, and to have had experience in at least ten prior serious or violent felony jury trials. At the time Cheri Owen took on Hoyt’s case, she had been practicing law for fourteen months and didn’t even come close to those standards.
Backing up Sanger’s statements was Anne Stendel, Ryan Hoyt’s maternal aunt. In a declaration to the court, Stendel stated that she had only spoken to Owen’s investigator, George Zeliff, briefly in 2000, and to Investigator Danny Davis for maybe twenty minutes. According to Stendel, Cheri Owen had told her numerous times that she would not be testifying in the penalty phase and not to worry because “Ryan will be home by Christmas.”
Then the penalty phase arrived, and Stendel was suddenly called on to testify. Stendel said it had happened so suddenly that she had not dressed properly, she was on medication that day and not clearheaded, and she had trouble recalling certain incidents because of the medication. If she had been properly aware that she was going to testify, Stendel said, she would have told the jurors all the mental-health issues that Ryan’s mother, grandfather, niece and aunt had suffered from. Stendel noted, “I spent a lot of time with Ryan while he was growing up, and witnessed firsthand his day-to-day life and the struggles he went through with the abuse and the chaotic family setting he was forced to deal with on a daily basis.” She added that she had wanted to tell the jury what a loving and caring person Ryan was, and how he adored his brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews, but she had not been asked any questions related to that.
Anne Stendel, the sister of Ryan’s mother, Victoria Hoyt, had some new things to add about Victoria and Ryan’s chaotic childhood. She related to the judge that she thought her family was extremely dysfunctional. She said that her father suffered from depression for many years and was suicidal for most of his life, and added that Victoria (Ryan’s mother) had been diagnosed with mental illness when she was sixteen years old. Anne declared, “Vicki still experiences outrageous behavior and violent outbursts, but is not currently seeking treatment. She would often take any drugs that were prescription and is an alcoholic.”
Anne related that when Vicki got married to Jim Hoyt, things only got worse for her. “He had a very bad temper. There was violence and fighting. Jim would hit Vicki and then say, ‘What happened?’ as if he’d blacked out. The fights occurred frequently in front of Ryan, Jonathon and Kristina.”
Regarding Kristina, Ryan’s sister, Anne said that the girl would “play house” at the age of three and pretend to be smoking crack cocaine. Kristina ran away from home at the age of thirteen and “turned to drugs. She was found begging in front of a McDonald’s in Hollywood, which soon led to prostitution.”
To say that young Ryan Hoyt’s home life was chaotic was a vast understatement. His grandmother Carol Stendel related to Sanger that “Ryan told me that he was never given a fair chance in life and he never felt wanted.” Perhaps the only place he got that feeling was at the Hollywood household. Carol Stendel said, “Jack Hollywood made Ryan feel as if he was part of that family.”
Carol added that Jesse James Hollywood took advantage of Ryan and dominated him. She said if the phone rang and it was Jesse, Ryan would drop everything and go do whatever errand Hollywood wanted him to perform. According to Carol, Jesse Hollywood got food poisoning one time, and instead of having his parents take him to the hospital, he made Ryan drive him there.
Anne Stendel also had some very damaging things to say about Cheri Owen. She related that her family had paid Owen close to $100,000—her mother alone having taken $60,000 out of a retirement account to help in the defense of Ryan. Anne Stendel had paid Owen close to $15,000, and added that Owen kept asking during the trial for more money. According to Stendel, Owen told her, “The Rugges mortgaged their home, why can’t you?”
She also said that Owen would sit in a hotel for hours speaking with attorneys regarding a lawsuit against Owen at the time, rather than prepping for Ryan’s upcoming trial. During the trial, Anne related, “Cheri Owen would drink a lot of wine in the evenings after trial. On one occasion when we were sharing a room at a hotel, she drank so much it resulted in her passing out on the bed.”
One of Stendel’s most damning comments was “On the afternoon of October 31, 2001, Cheri Owen left the court early, informing the judge that she was sick. I drove Cheri Owen to a hotel and then she had me drop her off so that she could go shopping. After she returned from shopping, she spent the rest of the afternoon on the telephone with her lawyer, Joanne Robbins, discussing her case with the state bar.”
As if things weren’t murky enough, court documents came to light that showed exactly what had been distracting Cheri Owen so greatly while she was supposed to be putting on a defense for Ryan Hoyt. Owen was embroiled in a civil suit against a corporation called American Justice Publications Inc. Its primary business was the publication of a magazine for lawyers. This magazine was distributed to inmates in prisons around California, and they, in turn, could contact attorneys who advertised in the magazine. Catrina Carruth was the president of American Justice Publications.
Professional Account Services (PAS) was an organization that supposedly dealt with accounting, bookkeeping and a collection service for American Justice. Catrina Carruth just happened to be an executive in PAS, and her mother, Terry, also had some title within the corporation. In the summer of 1999, Cheri Owen submitted her résumé after reading an ad in the Daily Journal that stated: Criminal attorneys wanted . . . flexible hours . . . good pay. Owen eventually met with Brent Carruth, father of Catrina and husband of Terry.
According to Owen, once she got there, she wasn’t offered a job, but rather services in how to develop a criminal practice. Specifically, the Carruths said that they sold advertisement space in American Justice magazine, which was distributed to potential clients in prisons. In the process, these clients would have their families contact PAS, send money to that organization, and PAS would credit money to the attorney’s account, and allow the attorney to practice law without having to handle all the bookkeeping.
Owen signed an agreement to advertise in American Justice and paid them for the services. Owen later said this worked satisfactorily for a while. Then sometime in 2000, PAS requested that Owen give them her court calendar so they could determine her availability for new clients. Owen did so, and after this point things began to turn sour. She said that new information on clients was incomplete, inaccurate and sometimes completely missing. Owen added that she would be contacted by PAS about a certain client that she had never heard of, and be told that the person in question had been assigned to her. Owen stated, “This situation typically came to light when a court appearance for the client had been missed, and the client had called PAS to complain.” All money from clients and their families was going to PAS before Cheri Owen saw any of it.
Because of all these problems, clients and their families began to complain to the state bar and file small claims against Cheri Owen. Owen said as she became aware of all the problems, she began to request that PAS return money to certain clients, and PAS refused.
Then in the summer of 2000, Owen learned that Brent Carruth was a disbarred attorney who had a shady past. In response she severed all ties with PAS and American Justice magazine, but the damage had already been done. Owen now went into such a state of “emotional shock,” as she put it, that she sought help from physicians and therapists, and for a time was unable to attend the daily affairs of her practice. It was a nightmare that just wouldn’t go away, however.
Owen learned that PAS was still trying to collect fees from people who were not her clients anymore. This went on even after she had severed her ties with PAS. When certain of these clients asked PAS about Cheri Owen, she claimed, PAS replied that she was “stealing from defendants, been fired by defendants, was incompetent, and similar false allegations.” In response, Cheri Owen began suing American Justice and PAS for fraud, defamation and negligence. She was seeking $1 million in damages, but by now her practice was in real jeopardy. With all of this going on, it may have been the reason she took on Ryan Hoyt as a client, even when she had no experience in defending a person in a capital case. The allure of a possible book or movie deal about the case might have been a factor. At least that’s what Ryan Hoyt’s new attorney, Robert Sanger, thought.
Things for Cheri Owen only got worse when George Zeliff, her former investigator on the Hoyt case, chimed in, in support of Sanger’s contentions. Zeliff wrote a declaration to a judge that he had been hired by Owen for $30,000, but all she ever paid him was $4,500 for services rendered. Zeliff wrote: On several occasions, I told Ms. Owen that I needed to go to Santa Barbara to discuss the case with Mr. Hoyt. Ms. Owen instructed me to not talk with Mr. Hoyt and told me that she did not want me speaking with him or contacting him in any way. In my experience in dealing with capital cases, one of the first and most important steps of investigation is to contact the client for complete details. Zeliff wondered much later if he was told not to speak with Ryan Hoyt because Cheri Owen did not want anyone else to have information from him that she could use in a book or movie deal.
Zeliff had made up a list of witnesses he wanted to talk to, but according to him, Owen only let him interview certain people. Then Zeliff wrote that he had asked Owen what should be done with the $25,500 that had not been used on Hoyt’s case. According to Zeliff, she told him to use that money on other cases she was handling. Zeliff eventually spent the money on two other cases he was working on for her. After about four months on Hoyt’s case, Owen quit returning Zeliff ’s phone calls, letters and e-mails.
Roger Best, who was an investigator, was assigned by Sanger to look into all the allegations concerning Cheri Owen and the defense of Ryan Hoyt. Best made a declaration to the judge that he was “diligently investigating the case,” and noted that preceding counsel Cheri Owen should have retained a criminalist or a forensic specialist to review the physical evidence supposedly tying Ryan Hoyt to the murder. Best talked with Investigator Zeliff and found out that Zeliff had been instructed not to talk to these witnesses. Best noted, This type of instruction, to Mr. Zeliff, by counsel, is unheard of in a capital or any major case. Who knows better what happened than the client?
Best claimed that he would have interviewed as many witnesses as possible, and these would have led him to other witnesses. Best also started interviewing Danny Davis, an investigator that Cheri Owen had hired at one point. Davis told Best that he had worked with Owen for a year on Hoyt’s case, and no one had been able to contact Cheri Owen since the trial ended with Hoyt’s death penalty conviction. She would not answer her telephone, cell phone or her door. The only way to still reach her was by her message machine.
Davis added that during his initial investigation, even when he met in person with Cheri Owen, he rarely received written instructions from her, as if she didn’t want a paper trail. Davis told Best he wasn’t even sure if he’d ever been given a witness list by Owen. Davis added that no attorney he’d worked for on a death penalty case had ever gone about it the way Cheri Owen had. “In the end I knew it was going to come back and bite her in the butt,” he said.
Davis did interview Hoyt’s mom, grandparents and a neighbor or two, but when he was on the road to Reno to interview Ryan’s father and stepmother, Owen phoned him and told him to cancel the trip. Davis had visited the crime scene area briefly, but only took photos of the nearby road, and not the actual murder location near Lizard’s Mouth. Davis added that he had tried to locate an alibi for Ryan Hoyt, but he had not been successful in that regard.
Even more important, Best identified another witness, Ernest Seymour, mentioned in an early police report. Seymour had been a guest in the room next to Jesse Rugge, Nick Markowitz, Graham Pressley, Kelly Carpenter and Natasha Adams at the Lemon Tree Inn. Seymour was later shown photographs of several people and he indicated that he recognized Jesse Rugge and Jesse James Hollywood as being at the room. He did not recognize Ryan Hoyt as being there. In September 2002, Best was able to interview Seymour, who added some things not mentioned in previous reports. Seymour said while on the balcony he had actually spoken with Jesse James Hollywood. Hollywood introduced himself as Jesse James, and Seymour spoke with him for about twenty minutes. (Though Seymour’s description of Jesse James Hollywood as being six feet tall did not jibe with the reality of Jesse being five-four. He may have mistaken the name “Jesse” as being for Jesse James Hollywood instead of Jesse Rugge.) Seymour believed there were about six other people in the room next to his and they were having a party.
Seymour told Best that after he went to sleep, he was awakened by “banging and scuffling” sounds. He came out of a deep sleep, heard more sounds and thought someone was banging on his door. He said, “Who is it?” and opened the door. No one was out there. Seymour returned to bed and started to go back to sleep. He was drifting in and out of sleep when he heard more banging and scuffling sounds. He said that a person inside that room was screaming in a muffled tone, as if there was a “hand or something else over his mouth.” Seymour did not get out of bed this time to investigate and after a while the noises stopped and Seymour went back to sleep.
When asked about it by Best, Seymour said he believed it was Nick Markowitz who was making the noise at the time by having duct tape placed over his mouth and wrists. He felt bad that he had not intervened that time, because there might have been a different outcome than what happened next.
Seymour added that a person identifying himself as an LAPD police officer wanted to meet with him soon thereafter. Seymour was afraid that he was being set up to be killed, however, by some of the suspects or their friends, and he refused to meet anyone outside a police station. The interview with the supposed LAPD officer never occurred.
Also weighing in on the issue of Cheri Owen’s possible negligence in the case was Robin Hoyt, Ryan’s stepmother. She said that George Zeliff had interviewed her for only fifteen minutes, and Danny Davis, Cheri Owen and Richard Crouter never contacted her at all. Robin said, “I was extremely disappointed that no one ever contacted Ryan’s stepbrothers Ben and Tim Deschaine or followed up with me in regard to Ryan. Had Ben and Tim been contacted, they could have given valuable information with regard to Ryan.”
Robin said that Ryan had lived with them from the time he was six years old, and she considered him a “loving and compassionate child.” Robin added that Ryan had wanted to join the navy after high school but was unable to do so when he tested positive for marijuana. Robin brought up the chaos with Ryan’s sister, Kristina, and how the family had spent $25,000 in drug rehabilitation for her. There was a separation between James, Ryan’s father, and Robin for fifteen months, and James lived with Ryan and Jonathon. Robin said, “James did hit the kids, and probably hit them more than necessary.” She spoke of James hitting Ryan in the head and kicking him in the stomach.
Despite a lot of negative things having been said about her, Vicki, Ryan’s mother, made a declaration to the judge as well. She said that she’d been interviewed briefly by George Zeliff and by Danny Davis for about twenty minutes. She also spoke briefly with Dr. Kania. Vicki wrote: I attended the trial everyday, but at one point Cheri Owen told me that I was not allowed to return. Two days before I testified, I was served a subpoena by someone identifying himself as a friend of Danny Davis. It was 11 P.M. and the man had no information for me and could not answer questions. No one ever contacted me to tell me what was expected of me or gave me any idea what would be required of me in court. I had repeatedly been told by Cheri Owen that I would not testify. I was not prepared to speak on Ryan’s behalf and feel that there were many issues that were never addressed. No one ever discussed with me, nor did I ever have an opportunity to tell the jury about Ryan’s good character.
In the bitter end Cheri Owen signed a form to the Supreme Court of California, tendering her resignation from the state bar and her ability to practice law. The form read in part: The voluntary resignation of Cheri Ann Owen, as a member of the State Bar of California, is accepted without prejudice to further proceedings. Of course, this was much too late for Ryan Hoyt, who now sat on San Quentin State Prison’s death row.
Many people, besides Ryan Hoyt, argued that Cheri Owen’s defense of him had been a disaster. And in some ways, Owen was the latest “victim” of the events that had occurred on August 6, 2000. The kidnapping and murder of Nick Markowitz seemed to spread out in waves from the initial event, an event that Jesse James Hollywood set in motion.