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Ronald P. Hanes
"It Would Be Very Difficult
to
Not Get Along With Him"
(Originally published in Pinellas County Review,
January 1995)
By Bob
Andelman
It was the first morning of Ronald P. Hanes'
first week as a private attorney, and it was obvious he hadn't
yet had a chance to make his office at Trombley & Associates
his own.
The Macy's coffee cup was his all right, as
was the picture of his two daughters behind him and the one before
him of the old gang from the Hillsborough State Attorney's Office,
Judge Barbara Fleischer and his four fellow prosecutors from
Felony Division G. But the lithographs on the wall were not his.
They'd be replaced soon by the stack of diplomas indelicately
stacked on the couch.
When the phone rang, it startled him. He eyed
the many buttons tentatively, as if not entirely sure which one
to push. Alone, he might have asked a secretary for help; in
front of a reporter, he took a chance and guessed correctly.
His name hadn't been added to the office register
across from the ground-floor elevator in the Tampa Theatre Building.
Even his suit jacket hadn't made the transition yet. It was hanging
behind the office door, still wrapped in a clear dry cleaner's
bag to keep it clean and crisp.
Today, this could have been anyone's office.
Tomorrow, it will be his.
This was a special moment in time for Hanes,
35, the biggest roll of the dice in his already formidable career.
On November 30, Hanes left the comfortable protective shell (and
guaranteed weekly paycheck) of the State Attorney's Office of
the 13th Judicial Circuit - Harry Lee Coe's place - for the wild
and woolly life of a private attorney. If his co-workers' fond
farewells were any indication, he'll be missed.
"He's highly knowledgeable in all sorts
of crime," said Betsy Chambers, chief assistant state attorney.
"It's a tremendous loss for us."
"He's one of the few people who never
seem under pressure or stressed out," said senior litigation
specialist Karen Cox. "Even in craziness, he's very calm,
very level-headed. It would be very difficult not to get along
with him."
Hanes spent 10 years as a prosecutor and left
at the top of his game - if national publicity counts for anything.
He was the man who tried the "Lobster Boy" case - oow,
how he hates that - a sensationalized murder-for-hire scheme
that attracted daily media coverage in everything from the National
Enquirer to the New York Times and from Gerald
Rivera Live to CNN. That's not the part Hanes is proud of,
though; he had three defendants, tried the case on the same facts
three times before four judges (Judge M. William Graybill, stricken
with tuberculosis, resigned the second Mary Stiles trial) and
eventually won murder convictions in each case. That's what brings
a smile to his face.
Sandra Spoto, deputy chief of Felony Division
G under Hanes, sat second chair during the Stiles trials. "It
was an emotional roller coaster because one judge would rule
one way, the next judge would rule another way," she said.
"But he was able to handle the expert witnesses with great
ease and give the jury real questions about what the experts
were saying."
"It was the most wearing thing,"
Cox said. "But he was just as fired up and motivated for
the third trial as he was the first. It was an exhausting, technical
process. Most people would have been fed up. It didn't faze him."
Hanes insisted - convincingly - that he was
unaware of most media attention paid the case. "It's not
unusual for us to have cameras in the court on first-degree murder,"
he said. "I don't look at (the coverage) during the trial.
Since my jurors aren't supposed to be looking at it, there's
no reason for me to be looking at it."
He believes most the press the case received
was churned by opposing counsel Arnold Levine of Levine Hirsch
Segall & Northcutt. "He was seeking the media attention
for his client," Hanes said.
From across his deep desk, with the midday
sun shining behind him, Hanes looks too young to be a seasoned
prosecutor. Teased about his boyish visage, he stepped around
the desk and leaned his head forward. "Grey," he insisted.
"Very grey. I always get very close to the jury box so they
can see I'm not 21, not just out of law school."
And, he added, it wasn't grey when he joined
the State Attorney's Office.
The Lobster Boy Case - hereafter referred
to as the Stiles Case ("I would really appreciate that,"
Hanes said) - put Hanes on the legal map. Prosecutors tried Mary
Stiles and her son, Harry Glenn Newman III (known as "The
Human Blockhead" in sideshow circles because he hammered
nails into his nose), of paying a teenager $1,500 to kill her
husband, Grady Stiles. The case pitted Hanes against one of Tampa's
toughest criminal defense attorneys, Arnold Levine, and Hanes
came up a winner.
"I thought Ron did an excellent job in
presenting the case for the state," Levine said. "He
was well prepared and made appropriate arguments. He was most
fair and open, someone you could rely upon when he says something
to you. We both litigated hard and asserted our respective positions.
Although I didn't agree with his positions, he had a basis for
them and made me do my homework."
Hanes and Levine came at the trial and retrial
of Mary Stiles from very different places. The prosecution viewed
the case as murder-for-hire: Mary Stiles confessed that she and
her son hired Christopher Wyant to kill Grady Stiles, a former
circus sideshow character whose hands were lobster-like claws
rather than hands and whose legs were stumps. The defense presented
Mary Stiles as the victim, a battered spouse who reached her
limit and snapped. Grady Stiles was described in court as a hard-drinking,
abusive husband and father.
"The jury had so many issues to consider
in the Mary Stiles case," Spoto said. "The battered
spouse syndrome was graphically and well presented. The jury
needed to be reminded that she was responsible under the 'principal'
theory of Florida law, that she was just as guilty as the person
who put the gun to Grady Stiles' head and killed him."
The Stiles case is currently on appeal, according
to Levine. If the verdict is overturned, Levine will obviously
proceed without Hanes. As for its application of the battered
spouse syndrome, "It's an area the Florida Supreme Court
will have to deal with," Hanes said. He believes the case
could eventually set precedent with regard to self-defense and
what is or is not admissible as evidence in future cases.
It has forever changed the way the former
prosecutor looks at crustaceans. "I'm not going to touch
that one," he said, breaking into a rare chuckle. ("He's
so tactful," Sandra Spoto said. "We would come
in in the morning and have 'lobster breakfast specials' on our
office doors.")
While the Stiles Case permanently etched the
prosecutor's name in the media's memory banks, he can think of
a few other significant cases to his credit. "I tried just
about any case imaginable, from the anti-abortion one where we
had 180 defendants at the Jaeb Theater, to death penalty cases,"
he said.
He remembered his first case. The tabloids
would have called it "The Case of the Shoeless Ballerina."
Hanes, if he could remember her name, would prefer to use it.
A ballet dancer was charged with driving under the influence.
"When she walked the line - if you can picture it - she
missed the line a few times," he said. "She was doing
a very graceful walk, but she had no shoes on and there were
a few stumbles. That was the first jury trial I had."
The "Shoeless Ballerina" was convicted.
Hanes went on to cut his teeth on armed robbery and narcotics
cases just as crack cocaine was hitting the streets on Tampa
in the mid-'80s.
One of the toughest, emotionally, that he
ever tried was when a drunk driver plowed into a crowd of children
from Naples, FL, whose church bus had broken down on Interstate
75 as it crossed the county line into Hillsborough. The driver,
whose blood-alcohol level later tested at 2.0, was speeding in
excess of 100 mph. As the bus was being repaired on the side
of the road, children were scattered about, waiting to resume
their trip to Disney World. That's when the driver veered off
the road, killing five children and injuring eight more.
He was charged with second-degree manslaughter.
But on further investigation, numerous witnesses including long-distance
truck drivers, stepped forward to testify that the driver had
been careening wildly all the way from Fort Myers to Hillsborough
County. As a result, he was convicted of second-degree murder.
"All you can do is try to get the victims
and their families some peace of mind at that point," Hanes
said. "That case touched the whole community of Naples.
I don't think Hillsborough County realized how important that
was."
If the prosecutor's role was so challenging
and rewarding, why did he leave at the height of his powers?
Levine suggested one answer - "He'll
make a lot of money" - but Hanes didn't mention that.
"I think it was a matter of personally
looking for another outgrowth of what we do as advocates, taking
what I've learned to this point and hopefully using it effectively
in other areas of practice," he said. "The cases that
probably will be easiest for me to maneuver into are going to
be the state criminal cases, as well as, hopefully, getting my
feet wet in federal court."
Hanes describes himself as an associate in
Trombley & Associates, but Trombley thinks of him as a partner.
"He has the status and all the privileges of a partner in
the firm. I told him, 'You're your own boss.'"
That he's even in private practice is a happy
accident. He wasn't actively looking for a job. He didn't even
know Gary Trombley, himself an assistant U.S. attorney from 1973-77.
But Trombley, who was actively reading resumes in search of a
polished trial lawyer to join him and two associates, kept hearing
Hanes' name.
"A lot of the top-notch criminal defense
lawyers in town said, 'Why don't you give Ron a call?' "
Trombley said. (Of course, it may have been in their own best
interest to get Hanes out of the prosecutor's office.) The courtship
dance proceeded slowly until Hanes finally said "I do."
Trombley's firm handles federal criminal work,
specializing in the defense of corporations, banks and bankers.
"I'm happy to have Ron," he said. "It puts a real
comfort level in my place. And he seems to be adjusting well
to wearing the black hat of the defense lawyer."
Arnold Levine, who welcomed Hanes to his side
of the aisle, offered this advice: "Having been a prosecutor,
you have to live with the rationalization that it's not your
job to judge your clients. Your job is to make the prosecutor
do his job."
But Hanes, who wanted to be a prosecutor even
before law school, sees prosecution and criminal defense as closely
aligned.
"I see it as the same kind of advocacy
but, I hope, recognizing the same arguments that were there before,"
he said. "A good prosecutor should recognize the arguments
of the opposition and be able to argue them as well as their
own."
"He'll do well," Spoto said, "because
he'll do what is right, fair and intellectually honest. He'll
do it with as much enthusiasm as he prosecuted cases."
Betsy Chambers agreed.
"He's very ethical," she said. "I
would happy to work with him on the other side."
BAY AREA LAWYER PROFILE
Name: Ronald P. Hanes
Position: Associate, Trombley & Associates, P.A.,
Tampa
Birthplace/date:
Marital Status: Divorced
Children: Candace, 16; Lauren, 7
Pre-Law: University of South Florida, undergraduate, 1980;
Florida State University School of Law, 1983
First Law Job: Clerked during law school for Florida Supreme
Court Justice Ben Overton; also did a summer internship with
the Tallahassee State Attorney's Office
Why I Became a Lawyer: "I thought it was fascinating,
the opportunity to present issues in a civil setting. I was always
very interested in all the areas that dealt with evidence."
end
©2000,
All rights reserved. No portion may be reproduced without the
express written permission of the author.
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