JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

Well, loyal readers, if you thought I’d turn the page to another subject today…WRONG!

With the Jungerman trial reaching its climax yesterday, I left a lot of good material on the cutting-room floor.

I think most of you will appreciate some points of interest that I didn’t have room for yesterday. After all, this is not a case that can quickly be consigned to history. It lingers and haunts and eats at the soul.

So, here we go…

**

Congratulations to Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker, who once again showed herself to be one of the most admirable and capable public officials Jackson County and Kansas City have ever seen. While she did not take a first-hand role in the prosecution, her imprint was all over it. Initially, she assigned to the case one experienced prosecutor, Chief Deputy Dan Nelson, and one or two younger, talented assistants. (Lauren Whiston was there all along, and Ben Cox got on board at some point.)

But Baker realized she needed redundancy and heavy artillery, and so she brought in a ringer — former assistant prosecutor Tim Dollar. In his full-time job, Dollar leads a personal injury firm, but he contracts with the Prosecutor’s Office occasionally.

In January of this year, Dan Nelson resigned from the prosecutor’s office to take a job with a private firm. That would have been a big problem had Baker not had the foresight to hire Dollar, one of those rare attorneys who commands undivided attention in the courtroom.

Dollar has a knack for taking a given piece of evidence or testimony and casting it in a different light. For example, in his closing argument, he talked about a white van, like one Jungerman owned, having been positioned across the street from the Pickert house the morning of the killing.

The defense had never questioned the fact that the van was there, but attorney Dan Ross suggested someone other than Jungerman was in it, and he also asserted that the shooter wasn’t necessarily in the van…that someone else could have shot Pickert from much farther up or down the street.

Dollar turned that speculation completely on its ear in his closing argument when he pointed out that the driver of the van drove away immediately after the second (and fatal) shot was fired.

If the two shots that were fired had not come from the van, Dollar reasoned, what would the van driver — whoever it was — have done after hearing shots and seeing a man collapse on the ground in his front yard?

“You go help!” Dollar said. “You go help him out…” (slight pause)…”unless you’re the guy who pulled the trigger.”

Another smart move Dollar made in his closing argument was directing a courtroom assistant to display on computer screens around the room a breathtaking police photo of Pickert doubled over in his front yard, dead, with blood on the sidewalk next to him.

Dollar left the photo up for just a few seconds, but long enough to trigger sobs and sniffles from some people in the row behind me, where Pickert’s widow, Dr. Emily Riegel, and her supporters were sitting. It also had to jolt the jurors, even though they had seen it earlier in the trial. Coming just before the jury would begin deliberating, the photo was a harsh reminder of what the case was about at its core. Not police mistakes, not the accuracy of time stamps on video of the white van, but an innocent, 39-year-old man getting shot down in a peaceful and ordinarily safe Kansas City neighborhood.

Without that photo, the jury still would have convicted Jungerman. No doubt. But those few seconds of horror reignited could well have been a factor in the jury returning its verdict in the stunningly short time of two hours.

**

I have to tell you that when I first started writing about this case five years ago and went out on a limb pointing the finger of guilt at Jungerman, I was a bit worried that he might come after me.

He wasn’t arrested until five months after the murder in October 2017, and it was clear he was a gun nut with his own perverted sense of how to handle setbacks. Before killing Pickert, he had shot several people who had trespassed on his business property in northeast Kansas City. Pickert had earned Jungerman’s enmity by representing one of those men and winning a $5.75 million civil judgment against Jungerman.

So, I was uneasy. I was watching very carefully when I left home and returned, and I kept the shades down most of the time.

I didn’t rest easy until I met Jungerman in Nevada, MO, on Jan. 9, 2018. As I’ve recounted before, he got on the elevator with me on his way up to a courtroom for a hearing on a low-level criminal case in which he was charged. I introduced myself and told him I had a blog and had been writing about his case.

We talked for a few minutes before he entered the courtroom, and at one point, he abruptly said, “What’s a blog?”

A feeling of relief passed over me: if he didn’t know what a blog was, he hadn’t been reading my posts.

**

Finally, as recently as a week before the trial began, the possibility loomed that I’d be a witness instead of a reporter at the trial.

Prosecutor Ben Cox called and asked me to come down to the courthouse to give a statement. I knew what he wanted to talk about; it was my conversation with Jungerman that day in Nevada, when I asked him if he had killed Pickert and he had replied, “My attorney told me not to answer any questions, so I’m not going to say I did and I’m not going to say I didn’t.”

It was one of many smart-aleck remarks he made to police, reporters and others about the killing, and it was a very strange way to answer that question…unless he was the guy who pulled the trigger.

After I had given a recorded statement to Cox, he told me I might be called as a witness at the trial. I said, “Well, I’ve been planning to cover it, so I don’t want to testify.”

He pointed to a piece of paper he had handed me a few minutes earlier and said, “You’ve just been subpoenaed; you’ll have to appear if we decide to call you.”

Fortunately, he decided not to call me, and I was free to report the story.

I tell you, I would have been one very frustrated person if I couldn’t have covered that trial.