Ft. Lauderdale, Florida 33332-2300
Paula was living with a person by the name of Daniel Flint, the person who ended up losing his life.
Paula will tell you that Flint used to stalk her before they moved in together. He was a very possessive individual who would sometimes turn violent and physically punch Paula until she was blue in the face. Several very violent such incidents are described in detail by witnesses in the trial transcript.
Paula could not leave this creep because she had nowhere else to go. That is, until one of her friends agreed to put her up for a few weeks until she could find somewhere else. She decided the time had come to end the relationship, but needed to return to Flint's apartment to collect her belongings.
Thus we come to the events of the morning of 30 May 1997. Paula was very frightened about going back to the apartment because she feared Flint would attack her physically again when he found out she was about to leave him. That is why she borrowed a gun from a friend, to protect herself. Bear in mind that Paula had never owned a gun, never used a gun and knew absolutely nothing about guns. Anyway, Paula took this gun (which she believed to be not loaded), tucked it into her waistband out of sight and went back to the apartment.
On arrival, an argument broke out with Flint. This ended up with him pushing Paula through a plate glass window. Both the taxi driver that had brought Paula back and two neighbours heard the deafening crash of glass. Paula and Flint got into a fight, grappling with each other. This spilled outside and Flint pushed Paula down some stairs. At that point, the gun fell out of Paula's waistband and Flint saw it. There was a fight to grab hold of the gun and in all the confusion it went off and a small bullet entered Flint's neck. He died very quickly.
Paula thought Flint was playing games at first, but when she eventually realised the true situation, she fled the scene and threw the gun away. She ran 2 miles to the house of the friend that had agreed to put her up (his name is Ken Cooper, known as "Angel"). He arranged for a lawyer to come and collect her. It was in that lawyer's office that Paula took an overdose after agreeing to turn herself in to the police. She tried to take her life again later that day in the hospital where she had been taken to pump out her stomach.
All of the facts above are documented in the trial transcript. Now let me ask you this: if you were going to murder somebody, would you allow them to first push you through a plate of glass and then fight physically with you - and still not produce the gun? Remember, the gun fell out. Paula did not take it out. The gun subsequently went off when both of them were grappling for it.
Now lets see how the press reported it at the time...
Julie Turck remembers what she thought when she met Paula Lynn Grieve in late 1995 at the family's home in New York: "She's no good."
Grieve, a nude dancer, was the girlfriend Turck's older brother, Daniel Flint, had brought from Tampa. She is now charged with killing him Friday during a fight.
Tampa police charged Grieve, 22, with first-degree murder Friday, saying she shot Flint once in the back of the head with a .22-caliber pistol as the two argued early that morning outside the apartment they shared in north Tampa.
Grieve, whose criminal history includes a domestic violence arrest, said through a lawyer that she feared for her safety because Flint had beaten her in the past when she went to the apartment to collect her belongings. Tampa police investigators said Flint had never been charged with a crime in Florida.
Flint, 34, grew up in Albany, N.Y., and moved to Tampa five years ago to pursue a musical career, Turck said. He became lead guitarist in the band Tears In Vain, but changed his mind about two years ago and quit the band.
He enrolled in Hillsborough Community College, studying hotel management, and worked as a clerk at the Tampa Airport Marriott. Around that time, he met Grieve at a bar where she worked.
"He kind of became friends with her and I guess he just tried to straighten out her life," Turck said.
The relationship was not a success. Turck says Flint told her he tried to break up with Grieve, but she would not let him go.
She doesn't believe he beat her.
"My brother was not violent at all."
This article was put together by a journalist who was assigned to report on Paula's arrest. You will observe that the entire piece was based on an interview with Flint's devoted younger sister, with no input from Paula or from any of her friends. It is therefore entirely biased and one-sided. Many of the jurors that sat on Paula's trial a year later will no doubt have read this account.
Now lets see how the press reported the verdict at Paula's sham trial in July 1998 (the trial lasted three days).
Nude dancer Paula Lynn Grieve said the gunshot that killed her boyfriend, Daniel Flint, was an accident, but this week a Hillsborough County jury decided otherwise.
Thursday night, jurors convicted Grieve, 23, of second-degree murder in Flint's death on May 30, 1997.
Grieve testified that Flint, 34, had beaten her for several years and that she had the .22-caliber pistol with her for protection.
Circuit Judge William Fuente set Grieve's sentencing for Aug. 4. She faces a potential sentence of at least 30 years in prison.
Paula's useless public defender decided to base her defence around "Battered Woman Syndrome". In the early-to-mid 1990s, this defence had gradually gained credence in the courts and was being used more and more. However, by 1998 jurisprudence had changed somewhat and courts had become less accepting of it.
Her lawyer should have concentrated on the gun. During the case for the prosecution (and yes, I did say the Prosecution), an expert witness that had examined the gun testified that he could not even be sure whose finger would have been on the trigger when it went off. Bear in mind that there were no witnesses when the gun went off, even though it occurred out of doors in a public area.
Paula was convicted on the basis of her morals; that she was an exotic dancer, a job that she had reluctantly agreed to take on because it fetched her good money. Much was also made of previous, unrelated events at her trial. These events (introduced under Florida's bizarre "Williams Rule") were entirely unrelated to the matter in question and should never have been introduced. This should have been challenged on appeal.
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Paula's trial attorney was a very weak public defender by the name of Joe Registrato. He was dismissed from the public defender's office four months after Paula's trial under suspicion of the molestation of women.
Chief Assistant Public Defender Joe Registrato resigned Friday in the wake of allegations that he groped a female lawyer during an after-work get-together at an Ybor City bar.
The 26-year-old lawyer reported to her boss, Public Defender Julianne Holt, that Registrato had made "unwanted and inappropriate sexual advances" during a going-away party for a fellow lawyer Nov. 13.
Holt said she accepted the resignation Friday after completing her investigation, which included interviews with several people who attended the gathering that night. The report does not specifically say whether Holt found Registrato to have behaved improperly.
"An allegation was brought to my attention, I investigated it, and I believe that the resolution is in the best interest of this office," Holt said.
Registrato, most recently in the news for representing Valessa Robinson, the 15-year-old charged with killing her mother, denies the allegation.
"That's not how I behave," said Registrato, 52, who was Holt's second-in-command. "I would not have done something offensive. If I offended the lady by accident, I am very, very sorry."
That Friday night, several employees from Holt's office were saying goodbye to two people leaving the office, starting out at a downtown bar and moving on to the Tampa Bay Brewing Co. in Ybor City.
Assistant Public Defender Jennifer D'Angelo later told Holt that members of the group were preparing to go to another bar when Registrato asked if she was with a male lawyer in the group.
She said that when she told him no, Registrato offered to "take care of" her, grabbed her breast and her buttocks, and put his tongue in her ear, Holt's report said. She said she was shocked, pulled away and left the bar.
In a taped interview, one lawyer said she was standing near D'Angelo and Registrato in the bar when she saw Registrato grab her breast and then pull her to him as if he was whispering in her ear.
Another lawyer said he saw Registrato make a motion toward D'Angelo's breast and saw Registrato pull her toward him. Two others said they felt Registrato "hugged Ms. D'Angelo for what they considered to be a long period of time," according to Holt's report. Others said they hadn't seen anything.
Witnesses said D'Angelo quickly left the bar and was crying on a bench outside. She told at least two people that night Registrato had groped her, according to investigative records.
Friday, Registrato said many people were coming and going in the bar that night and that he did not specifically recall touching D'Angelo.
"However, I want to make clear I would not have touched her inappropriately," he told Holt in a taped statement.
Registrato said if he had touched her inappropriately, it was inadvertent, and that the allegation involving her ear "just did not happen - that's just not possible."
D'Angelo apparently went into the office the Sunday after the party and sent Holt a message marked "personal." She asked to schedule an appointment to talk to Holt about "a very uncomfortable incident . . . involving a high-ranking member of your administrative staff," according to an e-mail message.
D'Angelo declined to comment Friday.
On Monday, Nov. 16, Registrato adamantly denied he had done anything inappropriate but offered to resign his $93,000-a-year job, saying the allegation would "cause Miss Holt a great deal of grief."
Holt asked Registrato to allow her to complete the inquiry and accepted his resignation Friday.
Registrato, a former city editor for the Tampa Tribune, said he will go back to private practice, handling criminal defense and family law cases. He said he will offer to continue to represent Robinson, the teenager charged with murdering her mother, as well as Ray Johnston, accused of killing a Carrollwood woman.
"Joe was a hardworking employee dedicated to the representation of our clients," Holt said. "I hope he'll still consider himself my friend."
Chief Assistant Public Defender Joe Registrato resigned Friday in the wake of allegations that he groped a female lawyer during an after-work get-together at an Ybor City bar.
The 26-year-old lawyer reported to her boss, Public Defender Julianne Holt, that Registrato had made "unwanted and inappropriate sexual advances" during a going-away party for a fellow lawyer Nov. 13.
Holt said she accepted the resignation Friday after completing her investigation, which included interviews with several people who attended the gathering that night. The report does not specifically say whether Holt found Registrato to have behaved improperly.
Last year, I obtained a copy of Paula's original trial transcript and spent many weeks analysing in depth the facts contained in it. There can be absolutely no doubt that Paula was wrongly convicted and that the jury was manipulated into returning a guilty verdict. This was achieved by the highly questionable admission of so-called "Williams Rule" evidence. This allows for evidence to be heard relating to previous events not directly related to the charges being faced. Put quite simply, this would not be permitted in any court anywhere else in the world. A case could be presented from that transcript alone that would prove beyond any shadow of doubt that what happened that day was no more than a tragic accident. That case could be made so convincingly that no sane and intelligent person could ever reasonably convict her from it.
At the time of her trial, Paula was taking a cocktail of prescribed medication to treat her severe depression, having tried to take her own life on more than one occasion. It is highly questionable that she was even fit to stand trial. Paula has always maintained her innocence, although at the time she had absolutely no self-esteem and so did not really put up anything of a fight.
The police detective that investigated Paula's case was called Randy Bell. Shortly before Paula's case came to court, he and his co-worker Rick Childers were murdered while investigating a separate incident.->separate incident
The murder of these police officers caused a public outcry at the time and there was a mood prevailing in the press and elsewhere to see a positive closure of the cases these officers had been working on.
Earlier this year, Paula discovered a fundamental error in her original trial. The Judge had issued an incorrect instruction to the jury, leading them to believe that a lower burden of proof was required to convict Paula than was in fact the case.
In March, Paula lodged papers with the district court of appeals stating this fact and claiming ineffective assistance of counsel, citing three other similar precedents in law. In one of those cases, Demetrius Fair Vs. State, the defendant was recently granted a new, belated appeal.
Paula has also lodged a writ of mandamus with the Supreme Court of Florida, to force a the district court of appeals to rule on her submission. That case is open and still ongoing.
