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How would justice best be served?

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By TOM JACKSON

tjackson@tampatrib.com

Published: October 14, 2009

Sometime Thursday, Sylvia Maraman Neeley will stand before a circuit court judge and confess to manslaughter. Presumably, she will do so freely but grudgingly, having deemed the alternate scenario too risky a throw of the dice.

She will confess, even as the court of public opinion reserves doubt about her guilt.

Not that the facts are in dispute. It's well-established that Neeley emptied a .357 Magnum into Arthur Danner as he sat on his couch; that Neeley went home to reload and, adding a crime novelist's flourish, returned to fire once into Danner's groin.

And no one disputes Neeley's motivation: Danner had boasted of molesting her 12-year-old, mentally disabled daughter, that he meant to keep right on doing so, and that authorities alerted to the situation had been glacial in their response.

What people wonder, instead, is whether the scenario thus described qualifies as an offense worthy of prison.

No vigilantism here

The state, mindful of its role in limiting of vigilantism, says it is. And, right up until Neeley is delivered before Judge Pat Siracusa on Thursday, the state has the hammer. Which is much of why Neeley's public defender, Violet Assaid, declined pre-sentencing media interview opportunities on behalf of her client.

It was a delicate negotiation, Assaid explained, in which both sides acted with respect and in good faith. She could see no benefit, and much potential harm, in having Neeley go once more on the record before the deal, as struck, was executed.

Well, fine. Neeley already has said plenty, and it has been properly contrite.

If she is thinking she would do it all again, she wasn't saying. And even though an appellate panel rebuked the original trial judge for denying defense's plan to use temporary insanity - the ruling on which she has been free these last seven years - Neeley was properly wary of facing yet another trial on second-degree murder charges.

Life, meet art

And yet, pondering a tale ripe with unexpected twists, the mind can't help entertaining one final pirouette of fortune. Consider:

Late in the 1999 film "Crazy in Alabama," a judge confronted with a prickly contradiction - a convicted murderess who is no threat to society - reaches into the jasmine-perfumed ether and extracts a strong dose of crowd-pleasing justice.

Facing the prospect of sending a woman to the electric chair or to prison, Judge Louis Mead (Rod Steiger) does neither. Instead, he hands down a 20-year prison term, suspends it and orders her to serve five years of probation while getting psychiatric care.

He reasons the only person on the planet to whom the convicted is a threat is her abusive, dispatched husband, and "Bonsoir, it's too late for him." Much the same can be said of Neeley, and Danner.

Keyword: The Jax Files, for Tom Jackson's bonus insights.

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