Oh, What a Tangled Law We Practice

No one disputes the facts in the case of the improbably named Wanda Jo Piety.

No one disputes that early in the morning on May 8, 1992, after letting herself into the Newhall apartment of Joseph Contegiacomo--her 29-year-old on-again, off-again boyfriend--Piety attacked him with a baseball bat as he sat up in bed.

No one disputes that after she hit him on the head, he ran from the apartment, bloody, screaming, “Why are you trying to kill me?” or that he had only a small cut on his scalp and went to work later that day.

No one disputes that a last will and testament of Joseph Contegiacomo was found in Piety’s car nearby, or that Contegiacomo, a successful computer graphics artist who owned thousands of dollars worth of electronic equipment, had never made a last will and testament.

No one disputes that after Piety was arrested, while she was incarcerated at Sybil Brand Institute, she wrote letters soliciting Contegiacomo’s murder to a former cellmate--a convicted prostitute, burglar and drug user who had told her that if Joseph went away, so did the case against Wanda Jo.

And no one disputes that in payment for the murder, Piety offered all of Contegiacomo’s possessions, including his car, electronic equipment and the contents of his bank accounts--for which she promised to provide the secret codes.

But what no one can agree on--including the jury that deliberated for five days after a two-week trial last May--is whether the frail defendant, who stands 5-feet, 7-inches tall and weighed 95 pounds at the time of the attack, is guilty of the crimes with which she has been charged.

Is she, as the prosecution contends, a spurned lover seeking revenge on the much younger man she hoped to wed? Was she nothing more than a con artist who has exploited her waiflike appearance to twist a jury’s sympathy?

Or is she, as the defense counters, a “fine person” who was reduced by Contegiacomo’s domination, humiliation and sexual abuse to a state of nervous collapse in which she was so fearful of him that she cannot be held responsible for her actions? Is she a victim of overzealous prosecution?

The jury declared itself hopelessly deadlocked after hanging 10 to 2 in favor of acquittal on attempted first degree murder and residential burglary; 6 to 6 on assault with a deadly weapon, and 8 to 4 in favor of guilty on solicitation of murder. On June 10 of last year, a mistrial was declared.

After spending more than two years in jail, Wanda Jo Piety went home to Sylmar, to her two teen-age children and a life in shambles.

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I could be wrong, but having spent some time with Piety, the prosecutor and her defense attorney, and reading much of the transcript from her first trial--including psychological reports from defense and prosecution experts--I think the prosecutor will again face an uphill battle overcoming the sympathy factor to win convictions.

The victim, Contegiacomo, came off unsympathetically in the courtroom, according to some observers. He portrayed himself as a generous companion, paying for Piety’s living expenses when she needed help, but under cross-examination, it became clear that some checks he showed as proof of his largess were in fact repayments to Piety for money she had lent him. Two women he knew before beginning his relationship with Piety in 1988 testified that he was not a truthful person.

Piety, whose light-red curls frame a face that looks a decade younger than her 43 years, has no criminal record. But she was not what you’d call a picture of mental health at the time of the attack and solicitation. (“Wacko” is how her attorney apologetically describes her; “literally psychotic” is how the psychologist who testified in her defense put it. The prosecution’s psychiatrist reported that she was depressed at the time of the alleged crimes, but not psychotic; yet he testified: “I think she has a significant problem in keeping facts separate from fiction.”)

Frankly, I wonder if Piety, an artist, illustrator and clothing designer who has recently landed a job with a multimedia production company, has been punished enough. She was incarcerated for more than two years, longer than some people spend in jail for inflicting serious injury or, in some cases, committing manslaughter. A defense attorney cannot, however, argue that in court.

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“Oh, it’s a prosecutor’s nightmare,” concedes Marsh Goldstein, the veteran deputy district attorney who has been assigned to prosecute Piety in her second trial, slated to begin at the end of February. “She is very sympathetic and very glib. She’s not evil incarnate and that’s what makes it so difficult. But I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be her next boyfriend.”

Trying to sound confident, Piety says, “I’m certain that I will have another hung jury. I’m guilty in my mind of spousal assault, which carries a term of one year in county jail.”

“They weren’t married and they had been apart for 14 months,” says Goldstein dryly. “It makes me very angry that a relatively simple, straightforward case is absolutely turned on its head because this defendant is able to persuade people of some things without there being the least bit of corroboration for what she says. She has persuaded herself that she has been abused by this guy. He is foolish, but he is not violent and he is not abusive.”

After the jury hung in the first trial, Judge Morris B. Jones of Compton Superior Court dismissed two of the charges against Piety--attempted murder and burglary. As he declared the mistrial, he outraged prosecutors by comparing the assault on Contegiacomo to the caning of American teen-ager Michael Fay in Singapore last year.

“I figured the jury did the right thing in this case,” Jones said. “And as a matter of fact, this case could be analogized to what happened in Singapore. A person (Piety) was mistreated. Some damage was done to the person and Miss Piety went into the house with a baseball bat, rightfully so. Now, she may have overdone it by the action that she took. But it was just a plain old-fashioned whipping that was planned, not an intent to kill anyone.”

Goldstein is indignant as he recalls the comment: “It makes no sense to me that anything could excuse her conduct. Mitigate it perhaps, but excuse it? Not a chance. I consider what happened in Compton to be a terrible injustice.”

Prosecutors moved the case to Van Nuys, refiled all four charges and added a fifth serious charge, conspiracy to commit murder--which, like the attempted premeditated murder count dismissed by Jones, carries the possible sentence of life in prison.

“It’s really a case of overcharging,” says Jeffrey Brodey, Piety’s high-powered defense attorney. The fifth count, he says, “is a legal tactic to intimidate us into pleading guilty.”

“Brodey has made a big mistake,” Goldstein says. “He has bought into his client’s story hook, line and sinker.”

“I can’t help it,” Brodey says. “The prosecutors have bought into their victim’s story as much as I bought into Wanda’s. This is a classic case of a good person in a bad position. The murder solicitation grew out of her hysteria in jail. Here is a woman who was off her rocker. It is Shakespearean.”

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In the second trial, Brodey plans to use the same defense he used in the first--that under California law, Piety was “unconscious” during the commission of the alleged crimes, and must therefore be found innocent.

The jury instruction that deals with unconsciousness says the definition applies to “persons who are not conscious of acting but who perform acts while asleep, or while suffering from a delirium of fever, or because of an attack of epilepsy, a blow on the head, the involuntary taking of drugs or the involuntary consumption of intoxicating liquor, or any similar cause.”

Goldstein will ask the judge to prohibit Brodey from using that defense.

“I don’t understand that there is a defense to this at all,” he says. “How do you justify asking someone else to kill a third person, what possible justification could there be?” He thinks the public is so fed up with the “abuse excuse” that a second jury--especially one in Van Nuys, where the Menendez brothers’ trials took place--will not be so tolerant.

But he can’t be certain.

“That,” Goldstein says, “is one the beauties and the mysteries of this business. One never knows.”