Murder trial, estate auction prompt reflections on justice, life

Nevada state Controller Kathy Augustine was found unconscious in her bed a year ago this week. She died a few days later.

I happened to be having dinner a short time later with a couple of degreed members of the medical profession, one of whom once did some of the kind of work for our government which, if he told you about it, he might have to kill you.

(They always smile when they say that. That means they’re not serious, right?)

Official suspicion had just begun to focus on Ms. Augustine’s fourth husband, critical care nurse Chaz Higgs, who had also been caring for the third Mr. Kathy Alfano (that being former Delta Air Lines pilot Charles Augustine, 63) when husband No. 3, recovering from a recent stroke, himself took a turn for the worse and departed this vale of tears.

“He hit her with a shot of sux,” one of my dinner guests asserted.

“That can’t be picked up in an autopsy,” nodded the other.

“Oh, no,” said the first medico. “It used to be they couldn’t pick that up in an autopsy.” He then proceeded to recount an amusing tale about a government assassin laboring under the false impression this was still the case, therefore finding himself with some hasty and highly sphincter-tightening cleanup to do when he learned they can now test for succinylcholine, a serious muscle relaxant used to paralyze the breathing and relax the windpipe when they insert breathing tubes at hospitals.

(When I say “amusing,” I mean “for those who have reached a certain level of jadedness about such matters,” you understand.)

Anyway, the old-timer seems to have called it right.

On June 18, Reno District Judge Steven Kosach began selecting a jury for the trial of Higgs, 43, on charges of murdering Kathy Augustine by injecting her with succinylcholine. On June 29, that jury convicted Higgs, sentencing him to life in prison with the possibility of parole.

It doesn’t seem to have been that hard a call. If Higgs is innocent, he was confronted by an assemblage of circumstantial evidence so towering that it wouldn’t even fly in one of those Harrison Ford movies where everyone likes Tommy Lee Jones better, anyway. Other than the primary one — that divorce, no matter how costly, still beats murder — surely the lesson from Mr. Higgs’ case is that if you’re planning to kill your wife, you should: 1) not repeatedly express this desire to your co-workers, and, 2) not tell them how you’re going to do it.

Defense attempts to assert some GOP leader might have snuck in and snuffed the feisty campaigner (Augustine was impeached for campaign irregularities back in 2004 but allowed to keep her office) for embarrassing the party were a nice try, but apparently Dick Cheney’s whereabouts could be accounted for.

Am I being too flippant, here? Because Kathy Augustine routinely reported to these premises for her endorsement interviews (she was always running for something) she knew me well enough to boldly stride over and buttonhole me whenever we crossed paths at a local political or charity event. She would cheerfully remind me that we’d never endorsed her for anything, despite her being a conservative Republican woman. I would tell her the editorial board liked her well enough, but that she kept running for offices for which she didn’t appear to have any particular qualifications.

She’d smile and tell me she was going to keep running, too, till she finally got the vindication of that Review-Journal endorsement. She was not the slightest bit bitter about it.

I liked the spunky former stewardess; I can’t find it in myself to get all gloomy and morose when discussing Nevada’s latest curious murder case.

I attended the public auction of her jewelry and furnishings at her Las Vegas home two weekends ago. It made me think about living in the moment, not holding off on important stuff “till after we retire,” or whatever. Kathy Augustine was 50.

But I can’t report having sensed any ghosts. Kathy died in Reno, which is where Chaz Higgs went on trial. The balconied Las Vegas cul-de-sac house felt empty, even as the air conditioner struggled to cool 60-odd bidders, most apparently interested in picking up a bargain on some used jewelry. I bought a few books (the recurrent topic being women who “broke the glass ceiling”) and — at the bitter end, when nobody else expressed an interest — the big plastic white-on-red Augustine campaign banner which had been hung from the balcony to let auction-goers know this was the place.

The sale was authorized by Kathy’s daughter, Dallas, the timing during the murder trial perhaps a bit odd, but well-chosen to generate the most public interest. I suspect the sterility of the event was enhanced by the fact that there were no clothes or footwear offered for sale, with the exception of furs and a single pair of pricey oyster-white silk Italian heels, worn once and put away in their original box, which turned up in a cardboard carton full of bedspreads. I wonder if there’s a story there.

As for the Higgs trial, since concluded, we can only hope the high-handedness of Judge Kosach hasn’t laid the groundwork for otherwise uncalled-for appeals. He barred the press from watching the first 45 minutes of jury selection, the procedure that can arguably do the most to impair a defendant getting a fair trial. He claimed there wasn’t room in his courtroom, even though reporters offered to stand at the back. The Reno Gazette-Journal sent a lawyer to complain.

Kosach relented, for a time. Reporters got to see one prospective juror, who identified herself as “a taxpayer,” ask the judge whether jurors would get to see “all the evidence.”

“Are we going to find some evidence was not given us?” she asked.

The judge admitted he planned to withhold some of the relevant evidence from this jury, despite the fact that witnesses are still required to swear they’re going to “tell the whole truth.”

But the jurors shouldn’t worry, Judge Kosach reassured them. They’d be able to find out what evidence was withheld from them after they rendered their verdict.

Honest. He really said that.

Finally, so shaken was this black-robed bureaucrat (the paycheck for the “impartial arbiter” comes from the same place as the prosecuting attorney’s, after all) by the prospect of having to operate under public scrutiny that at a point where 16 prospective jurors had been dismissed and 64 remained, Kosach invited the attorneys back to his office, and this little coterie, this little cabal, made the final selection of 12 jurors and three alternates.

Juries — at the risk of hectoring the obvious — are supposed to be chosen at random from a cross-section of the people. There is no legitimate reason for this to be done in secret. Most modern “jury selection” amounts to jury stacking in search of a more docile panel who’ll follow the judge’s orders, in violation of all the court rulings and jury instructions cited at www.friesian.com/jury.htm and http://deoxy.org/juryrite.htm.

Law school is mostly about learning “how the government wants this done.” American defense attorneys fear being held in contempt if they refuse to go along with the high-handed and anti-democratic “jury selection” exercise, though it would be interesting to see one move that “Defendant would like to be tried by prospective jurors 9 through 20, and objects that any further questioning which violates the randomness of the jury so chosen will be grounds for appeal.”

In the Higgs case, I doubt it would have made any difference. But you still have to wonder why the courts are so afraid of that random panel of citizens — their employers — that lies at the heart of our system of justice.

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the daily Las Vegas Review-Journal and author of the novel “The Black Arrow.” See www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?vci=51238921.