Audio By Carbonatix
Larry Debus is perhaps the highest-profile criminal defense lawyer in town. He draws more than his share of the big criminal cases. His batting average is extremely high. Walk into court with Debus at your side and your chances of walking out a free person are excellent.
Debus is one of the first lawyers you call if you’re in serious trouble and have the money to pay his fees.
But like all successful criminal lawyers, he is the subject of almost constant criticism. When he wins, Debus is accused of representing people who don’t deserve to be set free. When he loses, his skills as a trial lawyer are questioned.
Debus lives well. His income is far above average because the question of the cost of a criminal defense never becomes matter for bargaining. You pay the price or you look for a less-skilled lawyer.
Defendants facing the death penalty or a jail term will pay any amount they can raise. And when it’s over, they’re so happy to be out of jail that they rarely complain.
Joyce Lukezic is different. She reportedly paid Debus $350,000 for defending her. She claims to have paid a total of $750,000 for her three trials.
Lukezic was accused of being the mastermind of the contract murder of Patrick Redmond and his family on New Year’s Eve in 1980.
She first hired Debus, who lost the case. This drew the wrath of not only Lukezic but of Tom Thinnes, the lawyer who took over and eventually got her acquitted after two more trials.
All of this would have been quietly forgotten. But Lukezic has now written a book that lays bare the behind-the-scenes infighting between leading members of the criminal bar in Arizona.
False Arrest, written by Lukezic with the help of free-lance writer Ted Schwarz, tells the story of her three murder trials and of her experiences in jail.
What it also places on the record is the bitter feud between Debus and Thinnes.
Lukezic writes:
“Thinnes was more aggressive, self-assured, abrasive. He also hated Larry Debus . . . . I didn’t know if Thinnes was determined to win because he wanted to do something Debus hadn’t done or because he believed in my innocence . . . but I think his beating Debus was a little more important than I was.” Thinnes was interviewed for the book. He expressed his views about the handling of the first trial by Debus and Michael Kimerer without hesitation.
“When Debus and Kimerer were making their motion for a directed verdict of acquittal before Judge Rudy Gerber, they were so cocksure that they had it won they were up at Durant’s having a beer at lunch time. This is while they were on trial.” Thinnes continued:
“Debus isn’t one to be neat. He was shooting his mouth off as to how Gerber had no alternative and no choice but to grant the directed verdict.
“We went through the trial transcripts and it was obvious to us that the people who had, for lack of a better term, represented Joyce in the first trial had completely missed the obvious defendant . . . and I thought it was intentional because it was so obvious.” Thinnes’ denunciation of Debus goes on:
“I arrived at the conclusion that this gal had been sold down the river by her previous defense lawyers and that’s what I told the jury in the second trial. And when we met with the jurors after the second trial, one of the questions they asked was whether these two characters are still practicing law? And we said, unfortunately yes.” Thinnes adds that Debus filed a bar complaint against him for saying he would sell his client down the river but that the complaint was dismissed.
Thinnes admits in the book that he received a lot of criticism from other lawyers for mounting a defense in which he attacked other lawyers.
“If we hadn’t mounted that defense for her,” Thinnes insists, “she’d be on death row right now.” Thinnes believes that one of the things that helped him win the case was that he transformed Lukezic into a more sympathetic character for the jury.
“At the first trial, Joyce looked like Frank Sinatra used to describe Dorothy Kilgallen, the columnist. `She had a mouth like a ripped pocket.’ “She had her hair pulled back so damned tight it was a wonder she didn’t get gangrene of the nose. And her face was always so cold . . . Bela Lugosi may have been in charge of her make-up and she looked hideous. She looked guilty.” Thinnes added that Lukezic’s appearance aggravated the perception of the jurors that Debus and Kimerer didn’t like her and tried to avoid making contact with her.
“They would circle her. I mean they looked like the Indians and the settlers. You know that just gives the jury the impression that this son of a bitch must be guilty.” Lukezic comes out of the experience remembering how much money it cost.
“Just paying Larry Debus’ fees ultimately took my home and much of my cash,” she writes. “To pay Thinnes, I sold my share of the family holdings in Manhattan, jewelry, and also used the remaining cash. The total defense cost me at least $750,000.” Lukezic has more to say about the criminal defense lawyers she encountered.
Craig Mehrens, who aided Thinnes in the trials that set her free, is described as being “clothes-conscious and more concerned with the cut of his three-piece suit and the position of his pressed handkerchief than he did about me.” She writes devastatingly about others, barely disguising their identity.
She mentions a prominent lawyer who operates out of Harvard University, who promised to get back to her and never did.
She writes about a lawyer she says is one of the most famous of criminal defense lawyers in Arizona:
“Pay me $15,000 up-front,” Lukezic says he told her, “and I’ll take your transcripts to the beach to read over the weekend. If I’m interested, I’ll come back and we can discuss my fee.” Lukezic still lives here in Arizona. She says that writing her book has helped to put her past in perspective. She is ready to move forward with her life now that she no longer faces the threat of prison or even execution in the gas chamber.
During her time in prison, her husband, Ron, brought another woman into her home to live with their children. The Lukezics are now divorced.
Her brother Arthur Ross, who was suspected of being the man who plotted the Redmond murders with her, fled the state.
It’s an angry, vicious book. And there’s nowhere that I can find a single reference to Marilyn Redmond. As far as Lukezic is concerned, there is no necessity to express sorrow that Redmond’s husband was murdered and she was shot in the head by a group of hired assassins.
Lukezic still insists she was set up by police investigators for a crime she knew nothing about. The only problem with that is that sworn courtroom testimony connects her with almost everyone else in the case.
The Redmond murder case is history now. But the animosity that Thinnes’ comments will stir up may prove lasting.
The irony is that all four of the lawyers mentioned here–Debus, Kimerer, Mehrens, and Thinnes– are rated as topflight criminal defense attorneys. That they criticize each other’s methods harshly should be no more surprising than that surgeons criticize each other in private, too.
What Joyce Lukezic has done is bring it to the surface and give it a forum.
I asked Debus if he wanted to read parts of the book in which he was mentioned before commenting.
Debus read the portions of the book. Then he smiled. But it was a sad, quizzical smile.
“Life is so short,” he said, “what’s the sense of getting in a pissing match with somebody like Thinnes?” Debus thought about it for a few more minutes.
“This whole thing is ludicrous,” he said. “Kimerer and I fought like banshees to get Joyce Lukezic a new trial.
“We were the ones who discovered new evidence which the state had hidden. It was that new evidence that earned the new trial. In effect, we handed that case to Thinnes on a platter. With our new evidence, it was an easy case for anyone to win.
Debus grinned.
“As a matter of fact, you might say that we were surprised it took Thinnes two more trials before he could finally convince a jury to let her go.” “If we hadn’t mounted that defense for her, she’d be on death row right now.” “She had her hair pulled back so damned tight it was a wonder she didn’t get gangrene of the nose.”
As far as Lukezic is concerned, there is no necessity to express sorrow that Redmond’s husband was murdered and she was shot in the head.
