Richard Schlesinger
👤 PersonPodcast Appearances
That is something she wants the jury to remember. For two months, when she was 18, Susan Wright was a topless dancer.
How would you describe Ms. Siegler's cross-examination of your sister? I think that she's brutal.
Siegler left the jurors with one last powerful image.
The jurors convicted Susan Wright of murdering her own husband.
But at least one courtroom observer thought Susan got a raw deal.
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.
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.
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?
Weiss argues that Susan's lawyers at her original trial should have called more witnesses, especially experts on how battered women behave.
Without any expert testimony, Weiss says prosecutor Kelly Siegler was able to easily rip apart Susan's claim that she was a battered wife.
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.
Susan, he says, had grown so terrified of Jeff, she couldn't take it anymore.
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.
But like Susan, Misty says Jeff Wright had another side.
Unlike Susan, after one attack, Misty filed a police report.
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.
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.
But it could have been difficult. Because, like Susan, Misty was once a topless dancer.
Thank you. After Brian Weiss argues his case, it takes Judge Wallace four months to make up his mind.
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.
Weiss calls his client in prison to tell her the good news.
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.
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.
They have their own new witnesses lined up and no shortage of theatrics.
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?
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.
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.
And the curtain goes up on the latest act of this legal drama.
The bed is back, minus the old blood-soaked mattress.
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.
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.
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.
but Cindy Stewart says her sister couldn't manipulate anyone.
In fact, she says, Susan could barely manage her own life.
For the first time since this case began, Cindy is taking the oath taking the stand.
But nothing frightened her more than what she says she saw a few days after Jeff was killed.
Susan's mother, who's now 77, testifies she also knew her daughter was being abused.
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.
Ask your next question, please. But at the original trial, Susan's mother denied she was ever a victim while her husband looked on.
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.
It's an emotional moment that stuns the courtroom. But the fireworks aren't over. Misty McMichael is about to take the stand.
I object to the characterization by the person. And nobody can predict how that will go.
Misty McMichael says she doesn't condone the murder of Jeff Wright, but as a mother, she understands why Susan did it.
And now she's ready to take the stand at Susan Wright's new sentencing hearing.
She'll testify that Jeff Wright abused her.
Misty testifies that Jeff Wright didn't just curse at her, that he often beat her and pushed her down a staircase.
I mean, did you ever do anything intentional to him?
It is memorable testimony, especially when Misty describes the night she had Jeff Wright arrested.
Misty is eager to help Susan. Listen to my question. Sorry. Sorry, I'm sorry.
Ma'am. Ma'am. Last ma'am. No more ma'ams. Let her finish.
She's not just difficult. She's defiant.
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.
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.
There apparently is no shortage of Jeff Wright's ex-girlfriends. Prosecutors have found one for their side.
Marcy Holloway says Jeff Wright was a great boyfriend.
She says she still carried a torch for Jeff after they broke up. She called him at home and Susan answered the phone.
The testimony is over, but the drama is not. It is time for closing arguments.
John Jordan appears to be reenacting... former prosecutor Kelly Siegler's reenactment.
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.
After two days... With the jury having made a negative finding... The new sentence surprises everyone.
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.
Ron Wright Jr., Jeff's brother, speaks for his family.
Susan's too devastated to talk to us anymore, but her lawyer has a plea for everyone involved in this case.
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.
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.
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.
Why did you expect them to find you not guilty?
Cindy Stewart saw her sister taken away after her conviction and has never stopped fighting to prove that Susan's story is true.
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.
That's prosecutor Kelly Siegler playing the part of Susan Wright and leaving nothing to the imagination.
Susan believes her young attorneys were no match for the toughest little prosecutor in Texas.
And they never put on proof of her claim. that she was a battered wife.
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.
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.
And then, she says, the abuse became physical.
Cindy says she was worried for her sister's safety and at one point helped her leave Jeff.
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.
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.
Susan testified that Jeff had come home high and agitated.
But Bradley didn't want to play. He was just four years old.
Did Jeff end up hitting Bradley in the cheek?
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.
Susan told the court later that night, Jeff raped her.
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?
Prosecutor Kelly Siegler doesn't believe a word of it.
Prosecutor Kelly Siegler did not mince words.
She ridiculed Susan Wright's claim that she killed her husband, Jeff, in self-defense.
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.
And that's why Siegler brought the bed into the courtroom.
Medical examiner Dwayne Wolf backed up the prosecution's theory that Jeff Wright could not fight back.
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?
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.
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.
Susan claimed she was in a fog the next few days.
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.
Kelly Siegler had a lot of questions about what Susan did. Siegler spent months preparing for this moment, her cross-examination of Susan Wright.
Siegler wanted to convince the jury that the real Susan is a scheming seductress.