Justice for Bonnie by Karen Foster & I.J. Schecter

Author:Karen Foster & I.J. Schecter [Foster, Karen & Schecter, I.J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2014-09-02T00:00:00+00:00

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It is two years after Kenneth Dion’s indictment, a year and a half since the first pretrial hearing. The trial date has been continually pushed back, and the reasons are increasingly frustrating. Initially, the trial was set for September 2008. The judge had given both sides more than a year to prepare, so there would be no reason to change the date. Then September 2008 was changed to January 2009, and January to May. The public defender needed extra time to go through the files. More information was needed on the DNA evidence. The judge’s family vacation. A change in defense attorneys. A few days earlier, the initial judge assigned to the case was arrested for drunk driving and withdrawn.

To make matters worse, after the initial defense attorney is taken off the case, the new one discovers a conflict and has the case turned over to the Office of Public Advocacy. We’re starting from scratch. Andrew Lambert, now the third attorney assigned to represent Kenneth Dion, tells the judge that the previous two attorneys did basically nothing, and he is going to need another year to prepare his case.

My body and mind are a mess the night before each scheduled hearing. I feel on the verge of tears or hyperventilation. It is a terrible buildup of anxiety, usually for the sake of five or ten minutes of disappointment. I see Dion once more, in orange prison garb. He attends only when forced to, his typical absences making everything seem even less real.

My friends have done everything they can to lift my spirits. I get together with my girlfriends. We go shopping, eating, hiking, camping, white-water rafting. I even train for a marathon. It all helps, but only temporarily. It’s strange to me that now—with the case at hand, even if it is delayed again and again—feels like the right time for me to leave Alaska. As I stare at the map, I feel a pull I haven’t felt before. During the last fifteen years here, I’ve thought about moving many times. For the past five, I’ve been talking about retiring to Naples, Florida, where you can park your boat in your backyard. Now I’ve been offered a position in Florida that I feel I can’t turn down. That I don’t want to turn down.

This chapter of my life has presented its purpose. I will continue the part of the fight that I can wage for my stolen daughter, but given the chance to fight it with greater strength and support, I can’t say no. If I can help one other family avoid going through what we have gone through, it will be worthwhile.

A month earlier, while attending a meeting of the Surviving Parents Coalition in Boca Raton, Florida, in mid-February 2009, I’d met Hank Asher, a wealthy Floridian who had made a fortune in data mining. Hank had donated a quarter of a million dollars to help the SPC lobby for laws to protect children. I learned that,

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