Richard Schlesinger
Appearances
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
That is something she wants the jury to remember. For two months, when she was 18, Susan Wright was a topless dancer.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
How would you describe Ms. Siegler's cross-examination of your sister? I think that she's brutal.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
Brian Weiss, a prominent appellate attorney, believes Susan Wright deserves another chance. He thinks he can get her sentence reduced or even set her free. And this is the woman who could help make it happen.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
Attorney Brian Weiss is working tirelessly and for free. It's like law school final exams. To try to get Susan Wright's 25-year prison term reduced. Four and a half years ago in this courtroom, the system broke down. It is October 2008, and he's in court asking Judge Jim Wallace to grant Susan a new sentencing hearing before a new jury.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
Judge Wallace, who presided over the original trial, says Susan and her new attorney are taking a big gamble. A new jury could give her more time. Well, what's at stake here for Susan Wright?
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
Weiss argues that Susan's lawyers at her original trial should have called more witnesses, especially experts on how battered women behave.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
Without any expert testimony, Weiss says prosecutor Kelly Siegler was able to easily rip apart Susan's claim that she was a battered wife.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
Here's the expert Weiss thinks the original jury should have heard from, psychologist Jerome Brown. He evaluated Susan after her lawyers put her in a psychiatric center the week after Jeff's murder.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
Susan, he says, had grown so terrified of Jeff, she couldn't take it anymore.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
And Weiss says there's another person who could convince a jury of Susan's fear of her husband. Misty McMichael was once engaged to Jeff Wright.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
Jeff agreed to a plea deal on the assault charge and avoided jail. Misty left one night when Jeff wasn't home, although Jeff's father says she never lost interest in his son.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
Misty denies that and says she was already happily married to Steve McMichael, known as Mongo, a former defensive tackle for the Chicago Bears. If you had taken the stand, you would have been cross-examined by Casey.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
But it could have been difficult. Because, like Susan, Misty was once a topless dancer.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
Thank you. After Brian Weiss argues his case, it takes Judge Wallace four months to make up his mind.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
I'm ready to announce my rulings on... It was a million-to-one shot, and it worked. The judge said Susan should have a new sentencing hearing before a new jury. All right, thank you very much. Thank you so much.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
Okay, dear. It was not the news Jeff Wright's father wanted to hear. When you got the word that she had been granted a new sentencing hearing, what did you make of that? I felt like throwing up.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
And Susan could well get more time. It is the great irony of this case that the one move Susan Wright, who's now 34, hopes will set her free, could just as easily keep her in prison for the rest of her life. We're going to proceed directly into the punishment phase of the trial. And that's exactly what the new prosecution team is hoping for.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
They have their own new witnesses lined up and no shortage of theatrics.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
Susan Wright is praying a new jury will shave time off her 25-year sentence. But she knows she could just as easily end up with more time, maybe even life. So why take the risk for a chance to see her children again?
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
It is now the fall of 2010, almost seven years since her conviction for stabbing her husband to death. A more mature Susan Wright shows up in court. Brian Weiss has handed the case over to a new defense team. Well, just what the heck was going on? Led by John Meunier. We're going to prove that she was, in fact, abused.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
The new prosecution team of Connie Spence and John Jordan intend to prove Susan killed Jeff out of anger, not fear. This was a divorce by homicide. Because he cheated on her and abused drugs.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
This time, a prosecutor lies down on the floor. demonstrate how Susan was able to stab Jeff on the top of his head while he was tied up.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
Your next witness, please. The defense is ready with a parade of experts on battered women. They're ashamed by what's happening to them.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
Their star expert is psychologist Jerome Brown. He testifies that when he first met Susan about a week after she killed Jeff, Susan was still scared of her husband and believed Jeff was still alive.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
For the first time since this case began, Cindy is taking the oath taking the stand.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
But nothing frightened her more than what she says she saw a few days after Jeff was killed.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
Susan's mother, who's now 77, testifies she also knew her daughter was being abused.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
But prosecutors believe Susan made up the stories of being beaten. They say she learned all about domestic violence growing up, watching her own parents.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
Ask your next question, please. But at the original trial, Susan's mother denied she was ever a victim while her husband looked on.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
This time around, she's a widow, and prosecutors pushed harder to get her to admit that she lied at the first trial, that Susan did witness abuse at home.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
It's an emotional moment that stuns the courtroom. But the fireworks aren't over. Misty McMichael is about to take the stand.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
I object to the characterization by the person. And nobody can predict how that will go.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
Misty McMichael says she doesn't condone the murder of Jeff Wright, but as a mother, she understands why Susan did it.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
And now she's ready to take the stand at Susan Wright's new sentencing hearing.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
Misty testifies that Jeff Wright didn't just curse at her, that he often beat her and pushed her down a staircase.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
It is memorable testimony, especially when Misty describes the night she had Jeff Wright arrested.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
Misty is eager to help Susan. Listen to my question. Sorry. Sorry, I'm sorry.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
The judge has to repeatedly remind her of proper courtroom etiquette. There are certain things you can do and you can't do as a witness.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
Could I have five minutes? Susan's attorney wants a timeout and escorts Misty out of the courtroom. When she returns, she's a little calmer.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
There apparently is no shortage of Jeff Wright's ex-girlfriends. Prosecutors have found one for their side.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
She says she still carried a torch for Jeff after they broke up. She called him at home and Susan answered the phone.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
The testimony is over, but the drama is not. It is time for closing arguments.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
John Jordan appears to be reenacting... former prosecutor Kelly Siegler's reenactment.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
As the hours go by, the jury sends out three notes asking about probation with community supervision. Cindy and her mother began preparing to bring Susan home.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
After two days... With the jury having made a negative finding... The new sentence surprises everyone.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
Twenty years in prison, with credit for time served. It's only five years off her current sentence and a long way from probation, which Susan Wright had hoped for. The jury has spoken. And then, one last surprise. In a voice barely above a whisper, she apologizes to Jeff Wright's family.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
Susan's too devastated to talk to us anymore, but her lawyer has a plea for everyone involved in this case.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
It is a tall order for two families who lost a son and a daughter, and two children who lost both parents in one bloody night.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
He had a full life ahead of him and so did I. Susan Wright has had years in a Texas penitentiary to reflect on the bloody end to her troubled marriage while longing for the children she's now legally prohibited from seeing.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
State of Texas versus Susan Lucille Wright. It was March 2004. A Houston jury convicted Susan of murder. Guilty of murder as charged in the indictment. And sentenced her to 25 years for stabbing her husband, Jeff, almost 200 times.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
Cindy Stewart saw her sister taken away after her conviction and has never stopped fighting to prove that Susan's story is true.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
While Susan Wright remained locked up waiting for someone to hear her appeal, the key piece of evidence remained locked up in storage. Jeff Wright was killed on this bed, and it caused quite a stir, to say the least, when the prosecutor brought it into the courtroom.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
That's prosecutor Kelly Siegler playing the part of Susan Wright and leaving nothing to the imagination.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
Susan believes her young attorneys were no match for the toughest little prosecutor in Texas.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
And they never put on proof of her claim. that she was a battered wife.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
Anyone who wants to understand what happened the night she killed Jeff, Susan says, first needs to know what happened in the years leading up to it.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
When they married, Susan was 22 and Jeff was 30. He was a successful carpet salesman. Susan says Jeff changed shortly after the birth of their first child, Bradley. She testified at her trial that Jeff started doing drugs and became abusive.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
Cindy says she was worried for her sister's safety and at one point helped her leave Jeff.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
But the very next day, Jeff showed up where Susan and Bradley were staying with a moving van and took them back home. There's not a doubt in my mind that she made up the whole story. Ron Wright is Jeff's father.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
Jeff's father says in the four years Susan and his son were married, he never saw any sign of abuse. And in fact, Susan never filed a single police report. before exploding in violence on the night of January 13, 2003.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
Susan said she put Bradley and his younger sister, Kaylee, to bed and then confronted her husband, told him she would leave if he didn't get help.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
She said Jeff was holding a knife. According to her, she kicked Jeff in the groin, grabbed the knife, and started stabbing. Where did you stab him?
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
She ridiculed Susan Wright's claim that she killed her husband, Jeff, in self-defense.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
The evidence, Siegler says, tells a very different story. That's because Jeff's naked body was found with ties around his wrists and ankle. It was, according to Siegler, all part of an elaborate seduction scene.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
Medical examiner Dwayne Wolf backed up the prosecution's theory that Jeff Wright could not fight back.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
Regardless of what Dr. Wolf says, Susan insists Jeff was not tied up, at least when she started stabbing him. But something made her stop. What did you hear that made you stop?
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
While Susan was slashing at her husband, Bradley, their four-year-old son, woke up and knocked at the bedroom door. Susan had to stop stabbing his father to put Bradley back to bed. And that's when, she says, she tied up her husband.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
After calming Bradley, Susan says she got a fresh knife from the kitchen, came back into the bedroom, and started stabbing Jeff again. When she finally finished stabbing him, she dragged his body off the bed and tied him to a dolly. But she didn't take him very far. This is the patio. This is where Jeff Wright ended up. In a shallow hole he dug himself as part of a home improvement project.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
Kelly Siegler eagerly pointed out that Susan cleaned up the bloody bedroom and emptied out the joint bank account. And for the first time, she filed an abuse complaint against Jeff after he was already dead.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
Kelly Siegler had a lot of questions about what Susan did. Siegler spent months preparing for this moment, her cross-examination of Susan Wright.
48 Hours
A Fight for Freedom
Siegler wanted to convince the jury that the real Susan is a scheming seductress.