Lisa Randall was held on $500,000 bond.
The Randalls are not a wealthy family, but Lisa's five siblings agreed to try to hire a good defense attorney to represent her. They retained David Cantor, a hard-working Tempe-based lawyer who doesn't come cheap.
courtesy of the Randall Family
Lisa Randall feeds one of her seven grandchildren.
Lisa Randall's mug shot after her November 2007 arrest.
Randall's son, Jared, explains how they raised the money: "My brother took out a loan for $60,000. The remainder of the initial fees came from what little savings we had. I refinanced my truck, sold a vehicle, an aunt sold her home, my mom's good friend gave a large amount of an inheritance, my sister-in-law's mom and husband took out a large loan, we sold my mom's house, had approximately 10 car washes, a charity concert at a local restaurant, and some folks here at work helped out with some money, as well.
"I was working three jobs to help keep up with the fees. One of my mom's friends also put up their house as collateral for the bond — the 10 percent cash [for the bond] came from family and friends."
The dollar amount so far, according to Jared Randall, has been about a quarter-million dollars.
"It's not cheap to prove your innocence," he says.
In January 2008, Gary Donahoe reduced Lisa Randall's bond to $160,000 after a hard-fought evidentiary hearing in which it became apparent to the judge that the prosecution's case was, at the least, fraught with questions.
The family collected the necessary $16,000 in cash and put up a home as collateral in the unlikely prospect that Randall split for parts unknown.
But she was free for only a few days.
In a move that reeked of we're-tough-on-crime politics, Andrew Thomas' prosecutors suddenly announced that they would seek the death penalty against Lisa Randall.
She again was yanked into custody, this time without the opportunity to make bail.
But in April 2008, Judge Donahoe remanded the Randall murder case to the grand jury, citing misrepresentations and omissions by Peoria detective Moran during his presentation to the panel.
Donahoe gave prosecutors one month to secure a new indictment and ordered them to present their case against Randall to the tribunal more accurately.
During the new proceedings in May 2008, the grand jury asked prosecutor Belle Whitney if it could hear from Lisa Randall.
Cantor, Randall's attorney, told Whitney that his incarcerated client was eager to appear, so long as he could be present and Randall was allowed to dress in civilian clothes.
Randall composed a statement that she planned to read to the grand jury, scheduled to meet May 22, 2007.
She was going to tell them a little about herself — born at Phoenix Good Samaritan Hospital in 1961, one of 11 children, graduated from Phoenix East High, mother of five, grandmother of seven.
If allowed, she also wanted to tell them that her only previous brush with the law was a traffic ticket at age 16.
Randall planned to go into everything she recalled about April 18, 2007, and would conclude, "I did not harm Dillon in any way, nor did I see any of the children in the house harm Dillon."
Cantor brought a dress to court on the scheduled date for Lisa's grand-jury testimony. But the Sheriff's Office (which then was in an escalating war with the Superior Court administration, especially then-presiding criminal judge Donahoe) did not provide a female detention officer to watch her change.
Citing security concerns, the deputies wouldn't allow Randall to don civilian clothes without a female officer on hand.
Cantor wasn't about to let his client appear in a black-and-white striped jail jumpsuit. Randall's grand-jury testimony was canceled.
An irate Judge Donahoe soon granted a defense motion to dismiss the murder case but left the door open legally for prosecutors to file new charge.
The judge also ordered Randall's immediate release from custody, under house arrest.
Within days, the County Attorney's Office filed a "direct complaint" with the court instead of seeking an indictment.
Judge Donahoe heard testimony at a preliminary hearing to determine whether prosecutors had shown "probable cause" to move the Lisa Randall case forward.
Donahoe ruled that they did.
Lisa Randall was locked up yet again.
But the judge soon took the rare step of allowing the death-eligible defendant to re-post the $160,000 bond, which led to a third release from custody.
It's early July, a month before the scheduled start of Lisa Randall's murder trial.
Legally, not much of import has happened in the Randall case in the previous two years, except for the recent decision by prosecutors not to seek the death penalty against Lisa anymore.
New Times is at the beautiful Peoria home of Carl and Andrea Cox, parents of three children, ages 12, 11, and 8. Cox's mother opens the front door for her son, who suffers from Lou Gehrig's disease (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) and is wheelchair-bound.
Though his body is broken, the 40-year-old Cox's mind is keen and his attitude about life positive.
He ran his own insurance company in Central Phoenix until illness made that impossible a few years ago. His wife is the human resources director for a large company.
Same as Jason and Tara Uutela, the Coxes looked around for a daycare home when their firstborn child was about 3 months old.