It has been a while. A month ago, many of you got an email from Melissa, a co-author of this blog, though she has been a little more hesitant to exercise her authorship. I asked her if I could put this letter here and she totally agreed. I recommend you read it, if only for a glimpse of the kind of ordeal that she had to go through. It's not an easy read, but I think it will do you well.
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February 5th, 2008
Friends and Family,
Many of you have been taking the journey of jury duty along with me as I was assigned to a capital murder case. I know many of you wanted to hear my thoughts and the details afterwards as well. If you do not wish to read this I understand, however, if you chose to read it, please note that there may be some graphic details, although I have done my best to clean it up. Meliss
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On Friday, February first, at 2:00 pm, I, along with 11 other jury members, sentenced a man to death.
It was perhaps one of the toughest decisions I have made in my life. One filled with tears as my body shock at the magnitude of the decision, yet one that contained relief as well as I know my voice sounded for so many that could not speak for themselves.
Floyd Eugene Maestas was a simple man, with a life full of crime. From a young age he witnessed the murder of his sister, and was the victim of abuse, yet he eventually turned to crime himself at the tender age of fourteen when he was first arrested for intoxication and resisting arrest. Full of many second chances, his life was spent in and out of trouble in the juvenile system till his eighteenth birthday. Throughout his adult life, Maestas also found himself face to face with trouble in the criminal justice system and lived many a year behind prison walls. While he still keep up the same antics of his youth involving drinking and theft, Maestas eventually moved on to a life of violence. In 1969, Maestas committed his first major offense against an elderly woman, Ms. Alinda McLean. Found beaten beyond recognition in her home, McLean suffered tremendously from over an hour of beatings from her attacker. The extent of her suffering would later be revealed in reports that the attacker beat her with a bed side lamp until it broke then swiftly continued beating her with the second bedroom lamp. Ms. McLean was brutally raped as shown in the fierce bite marks found on her body and particularly around the breasts. Ms. McLean suffered the loss of one eye from the attack.
Mr. Maestas pleaded down from the attack, and was charged with burglary. The second round of attacks came in 1989, at two separate homes. The first was the home of Ms. Loene Jane Nelson. A kind old woman who tearfully took the stand to finally confront her attacker. Ms. Nelson was the victim to a similar beating in her own home as she was about to go to bed. Her attacker repeatedly told her that he wouldn’t hurt her if she gave up her purse. Yet the tight fists came crashing down on her face even after she had given him the location of the purse. Ms. Nelson would testify that she only escaped death after pretending to pass out and the assailant fleeing the scene. She was left beaten, buised, naked, and with the outline of the boot on her back as her attacker had stomped her so hard.
A week later, Mr. Maestas laid in wait to set another attack on an elderly woman. This time the elderly woman did not live alone. Three Demetropolos sisters lived together. They had left their house that evening to volunteer for the Greek festival. When they arrived home, a man waited in the dark after drinking a beer, watching tv, and rummaging through underwear drawers. A spitfire Ms. Demetropolis testified that they found the man awaiting in one of the bedrooms and that they chased him away like the ‘keystone cops’. These three sisters were some of the lucky few.
Mr. Maestas once again pleaded down from the attacks, and was charged once more with burglary.
Without going into detail on the remaining years in-between, years full of prison time and more thefts, we now move onto the attack in the fall of 2004. The attack for which I became juror #8.
After his release from prison in 2004, Maestas went to the home of his childhood love and ex-wife in Glendsdale. As neighbors and Ms. Salas, his ex-wife, testified he spent just 21 days rekindling his relationship and scoping out the neighborhood until the night of the murder. Ms. Donna Bott, one of his final attacks, lived on the same street as Ms. Salas.
On the night of the murder, Maestas came in contact with three young 19-year-old boys. One was his nephew Nick, the other two, William Irish and Rodney Renzo were just two boys along for a night of fun. After driving them to a party, Maestas left the three boys to their friends to have fun and drink as he waited outside. After a short time at the party, all four plied into the car and headed to carry out the boys’ plan to steal cars. Yet Nick and his uncle got in a fight, and Nick eventually left the group. Maestas then took control and asked the boys if they were down with robbing housing. Both agreed and Mr. Maestras drove them to homes of his choice. The first was that of Donna Bott. All three got in through a back window that was slightly opened. Maestas entered first and ran for the bedroom. The two boys looked for valuables in a cluttered house and found only a coin purse and a cell phone. Both boys witnessed aspects of the brutal beating and eventual murder of Ms. Bott from outside the bedroom door.
Ms. Donna Bott would suffer over 13 head injuries, including a knife to her cheek and evidence of numerous attempts to choke her. The final blow came as her attacker kicked her so hard in the chest that it literally broke her heart.
After escaping the first home, Maestas then took the boys to a second home. Here, a scared Irish would hide in a nearby parking lot, as Renzo and Maestas carried out the crime. A small paving stone was thrown through the back window where an eighty-six-year-old Ms. Chamberlain was watching late night tv. She gingerly looked down to see the stone at her feet. However, in that little time a man was on top of her tearing at her shirt. She cried out in pain as the assailant tore off the skin on both entire arms as he struggled to remove her top. Meanwhile, Renzo grabbed her purse in the other room and noticed a flashing box. A clever Ms. Chamberlain had pushed her emergency care button that she wore around her neck. A button that saved her life.
All three men then dashed for the car and the two boys demanded to go home. Yet the car never made it there and it ran out of gas on a downtown on-ramp to I-15. Both boys hopped a train and ended up in Orem at a Wal-Mart. Maestas was left alone.
Irish and Renzo were swiftly caught and condemned by the cell phone they had stolen and used excessively for a week. Maestas’ fate was damned by fingerprints, scrapes on his arms, DNA under Ms. Botts fingers, Ms. Chamberlain’s purse in his car, and many other factors, along with Irish and Renzo’s testimonies. I will never forget the testimony of Ms. Bott’s granddaughter.
She constantly talked to her grandmother after her own mother passed away. The last conversation they had included the soundly advise of grandmother to granddaughter to live a happy-go-lucky life. This young girl quickly send off a letter to her grandmother with the happiest picture of herself she could find. After learning of her grandmother’s brutal death, she flew home to be with family and help with arrangements. She tearfully spoke of wiping away her grandmother’s blood in the bedroom, and of holding the now blood stained happy picture of herself that proudly stood on her grandmother’s nightstand.
Jurors did not know the Maestas violent past in making our decision of guilt on the case, however, it did become a factor in the penalty phase. Today, both young men still reside to different county jails. Both know their fates may be prison for a night that they were swept up in, for a night they should have stopped.
Today, Mr. Maestas still resides at Salt Lake County Jail. His fate will be temporarily sealed by a judge later this week as I have heard his lawyers already hope to appeal the decision of death.
There are so many interesting facets to this case, one that if you want details I will be happy to provide. Except those details that involve our decisions in the jury room.
Family and Friends, If I can tell you one thing from this case, know this. This life means nothing and creates the horrific images that I have witnessed over the past few weeks, without love. Love your family. Love your friends. To all you young parents, go home and hug your kids. Love them over their lives unconditionally. Provide those open doorways so they if they start to go down a wrong path they can turn to you for advice to live better. My heart breaks for these two young boys who will more than likely live a life in prison as well, because they followed the crowd. They followed a man one deadly night, and they followed the crowd in other crimes they have committed. If you know someone on this path now, you better fight like hell to get them back.
I thank you to all my friends and family for being strong pillars in my life and for always helping through the good and the bad.
Finally, be safe. Go home and double check all the locks: the windows, the doors. For it is through all this, that I have learned the value of life.
Melissa
