GUILTY Bali - Sheila von Wiese Mack, 62, found dead in suitcase, 12 Aug 2014 #4

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  • #561
Kamille said:
I can't see how AS is going to get away with pocketing even the 50 grand just for himself. There are 5 people involved. Him, the prosecutor and the 3 judges. As it stands now each gets 10 grand. So what will that buy HM? They were looking for 30 grand each but even with the 10 grand I can't see this being a "clean" trial.

MOO
Click to expand...

My point in an earlier post was that Mr. Ary now has the option to keep all of the $50,000 for himself and explain to future clients that Heather didn't come through with the necessary money, so he couldn't get her the result she wanted. He will have numerous internet sources which will corroborate his story on the money. He can additionally tell future clients that murder trials are different from drug trials. How much research are they going to be able to do? Also, Mr. Ary appears to get his best results when called in quickly and in Heather's case he was called in late. He can explain to future clients that his best work is done "working" with police and the evidence that gets passed on to prosecutors.

Moreover, we don't know what he promised Heather (if anything). Since she's pretty stupid, she may actually believe that the death penalty is a reasonable possibility. I don't think it is (but I'm open to being convinced otherwise) since there are very few death sentences meted out each year in Indonesia, about half of which are for drug traffickers, very few are for women, and we keep learning of cases worse than this murder which have resulted in sentences along the lines of 20 years.

So Mr. Ary promises to ensure she won't get death, does nothing special, and his promise "appears" to have been kept.

Lastly: doesn't he only have to bribe two judges? Perhaps the chairman as well as one other?
 
  • #562
Orange Tabby said:
My point in an earlier post was that Mr. Ary now has the option to keep all of the $50,000 for himself and explain to future clients that Heather didn't come through with the necessary money, so he couldn't get her the result she wanted. He will have numerous internet sources which will corroborate his story on the money. He can additionally tell future clients that murder trials are different from drug trials. How much research are they going to be able to do? Also, Mr. Ary appears to get his best results when called in quickly and in Heather's case he was called in late. He can explain to future clients that his best work is done "working" with police and the evidence that gets passed on to prosecutors.

Moreover, we don't know what he promised Heather (if anything). Since she's pretty stupid, she may actually believe that the death penalty is a reasonable possibility. I don't think it is (but I'm open to being convinced otherwise) since there are very few death sentences meted out each year in Indonesia, about half of which are for drug traffickers, very few are for women, and we keep learning of cases worse than this murder which have resulted in sentences along the lines of 20 years.

So Mr. Ary promises to ensure she won't get death, does nothing special, and his promise "appears" to have been kept.

Lastly: doesn't he only have to bribe two judges? Perhaps the chairman as well as one other?
Click to expand...

I hope he does all that and HM gets nothing for her money but wouldn't the others (judges/prosecutor)already know that he is trying to get what appears to be the "standard" amount (since originally it was double that amount for what appears to have been the both of them)? Would they be okay with him pocketing the whole 50 grand? I'm sure they can google and would already know what's going on in the US with regards to HM and that AS has already received 50 grand.

MOO
 
  • #563
  • #564
Kamille said:
Ultimately, Cook County Judge Neil H. Cohen ruled last month that Wiese, who oversees the trust, had to make $150,000 available for Mack’s defense.

But Wiese’s actions may have doomed Mack’s ongoing court case, the court papers say.

“William has not acted in Heather’s best interests,” Mack’s attorney alleges in the filing. “He called Heather’s mental capacity into question. . . . He cast Heather in a negative light by revealing sensitive and private information to the Chicago Tribune.”

Wiese declined to comment when reached Tuesday night.

But in a previous court filing, Wiese said he was concerned that Mack’s initial request to tap the trust lacked “oversight” and amounted to a “blank check” to Indonesian lawyer Ary Soenardi, whose practices Wiese found to be “suspect.”

http://chicago.suntimes.com/news/7/...sold-brother-ships-nieces-belongings-st-louis

In other words, her lawyers are claiming that Sheila's brother may have thwarted the bribe by refusing to give her money to pay it and by calling attention to it? Is that what her lawyers are trying to say?

:notgood:
Click to expand...

It does seem like it...Bali sadly has a well known reputation for accepting bribes in criminal cases. The course of justice is not always very clear...
 
  • #565
Kamille said:
So are we to assume that this "trustee" released $50,000 against the wishes of the deceased person's appointed trustee and deposited to an account monitored by the US consulate and they in turn released the whole amount to an Indonesian attorney without any statement or indication of what the money was being used for?

I'm still baffled by all this. :confused:
Click to expand...

Why do you put “trustee” in snear quotes? Benjamin Mackoff is currently serving as trustee and we have no reason to believe that William Wiese even contemplates appealing that legal decision by Judge Cohen. I haven’t seen anyone offer any argument against what appears to be a clear conflict of interest on the part of WW as long as Heather does face a potential death sentence. (This, even though as I explained earlier that I think it highly unlikely she will be sentenced to the firing squad.)

It is as distressing to me as to others on this board that Heather is able to benefit from her mother’s trust. But because American law is bound by the very reasonable concept of “presumed innocent until proven guilty” the powerful and just Slayer Rule does not yet apply.

This isn’t special to Heather. We know it happened in the Menendez case, someone posted a very recent New York case, and someone I know who is a lawyer recounted to me a northern California case with the same situation, although he couldn’t remember the names of the parties.

I’m angry with estate lawyers. The Menendez case was far more famous than our case here, and it should have resulted in the creation of simple boilerplate language in trusts to foresee this situation and stop heirs being prosecuted for the murder of their benefactors from using trust money for their defense. Why hasn’t it?

Also: we don’t know what Ary Soenardi had to provide to obtain the first $50,000. Add to that the terrible problem that with anyone providing intellectual skills as their primary product there is no clear objective way of determining what that product is worth. Who is to say that Gerry Spence isn’t worth millions? And if he’s worth millions, who is to say that Ary Soenardi isn’t worth $50,000? This is how shady lawyers operate: in the shadow of those who follow the rules.

I asked at the time Judge Cohen approved the release of funds for a lawyer what anyone here would offer to William Wiese in the way of information to fight that ruling and only a few newspaper excerpts were provided, and to the best of my recollection none of them even used the word bribe.

It is perfectly reasonable for us to draw conclusions from the Ormsby and Ponder cases (the only two I recall being discussed here with respect to Mr. Ary) but the information I’ve seen here is hardly enough to stand up against Heather’s highly unfortunate legal right to at least some of that money.

I wish that William Wiese had fought this by using FBI witnesses, or whoever it was in law enforcement who had alerted him to the corruption possible with the use of Mr. Ary as defense counsel, before Judge Cohen. He might have also been able to proffer evidence showing what typical defense lawyers earn in Indonesia. However, he didn’t do these things.

Yes, it is awful. It sickens me. But I don’t think it is mysterious at all.
 
  • #566
  • #567
Kamille said:
Series of interviews. On Tuesday. Not Monday when she was at the courthouse with her "lawyer" and his cell phone but Tuesday when she was back in prison with her own contraband cell phone.

WTH is going on? How did AS even get the first "installment" without providing a statement to the trustee of what he's been doing besides buying her McDonalds and promising her she'll walk free if he gets his money. He should not have gotten one penny until he provided something that resembles a true account of what attorneys actually do for a client over there.

How many expert witnesses is he hiring and flying in to go over the evidence and present their reports during the trial? How many labs does he have involved in double checking DNA evidence? Communication evidence? How many depositions has he had to take? How many motions has he filed? Surely the judge in the US realizes what defence funds are typically spent on. Surely he realizes that no such thing happens in Bali.

:gaah:

MOO
Click to expand...

I totally agree there is no way a lawyer in Bali would ever cost $50K per week. Sounds like Ary is a crook and has Heather as an accomplice. I thought that amount sounds like a bribe for a judge. $150K in Bali would set you up for life.
 
  • #568
Orange Tabby said:
My point in an earlier post was that Mr. Ary now has the option to keep all of the $50,000 for himself and explain to future clients that Heather didn't come through with the necessary money, so he couldn't get her the result she wanted. He will have numerous internet sources which will corroborate his story on the money. He can additionally tell future clients that murder trials are different from drug trials. How much research are they going to be able to do? Also, Mr. Ary appears to get his best results when called in quickly and in Heather's case he was called in late. He can explain to future clients that his best work is done "working" with police and the evidence that gets passed on to prosecutors.

Moreover, we don't know what he promised Heather (if anything). Since she's pretty stupid, she may actually believe that the death penalty is a reasonable possibility. I don't think it is (but I'm open to being convinced otherwise) since there are very few death sentences meted out each year in Indonesia, about half of which are for drug traffickers, very few are for women, and we keep learning of cases worse than this murder which have resulted in sentences along the lines of 20 years.

So Mr. Ary promises to ensure she won't get death, does nothing special, and his promise "appears" to have been kept.

Lastly: doesn't he only have to bribe two judges? Perhaps the chairman as well as one other?
Click to expand...

BBM - I think that relates to how quickly the bribe can be paid or organised. This has made headlines around the world and I don't think they will back down now with everyone watching. AS can still take as much money as he can get out of them, doesn't mean you get a result.
 
  • #569
Kamille said:
I hope he does all that and HM gets nothing for her money but wouldn't the others (judges/prosecutor)already know that he is trying to get what appears to be the "standard" amount (since originally it was double that amount for what appears to have been the both of them)? Would they be okay with him pocketing the whole 50 grand? I'm sure they can google and would already know what's going on in the US with regards to HM and that AS has already received 50 grand.

MOO
Click to expand...


I have no idea what Ary Soenardi’s M.O. is. I don’t even know if he is a shady lawyer. Or if he is a shady lawyer, if he engages in corrupt practices in each and every one of his cases. But I’m being open-minded on this, and am looking at the proceedings with an eye to unethical dealings because so many people here are convinced he is deeply questionable and William Wiese was specifically concerned about the high legal fees being requested.

One thing seems pretty clear to me: that if any hanky-panky took place in the Ormsby or Ponder cases, it happened at the police level. By the time those cases got to court, there wasn’t much evidence. (I have no idea what evidence, if any, was made to disappear.)

That makes those cases very different from Heather’s and Tommy’s. The evidence we know about is very strong again the pair of them. And it has literally already been hauled into court.

I don’t have any speculation on what Mr. Ary has done to this point. I don’t have any speculation as to whether prosecutors and judges have expectations based on lawyer fee agreements they read about in newspapers. I don’t have any speculation on what is a “standard” bribe (except to suspect there is no such thing, and that corrupt practitioners simply go for as much as they can). I don’t have any speculation as to whether the original $300,000 was meant to cover two dirty verdicts instead of one.

I just know that Mr. Ary originally asked for $300,000 and appears in danger of getting no more than $50,000. Under those circumstances I maintain it’s reasonable to assume that he may not be in a position to do what he originally agreed with Heather to do.

Note that in a previous post I specifically suggested the possibility that he never intended to do anything special or corrupt, but only promised Heather that she wouldn’t get the death penalty. Since even in a clean trial I don’t think that sentence would be issued, his “corruption” may amount only to a con-game with his client. This is speculation, so I don't hold to this idea in any strong way. And I only introduce the idea to make the point that if we are going to speculate, then we ought to be open and far-ranging in our thinking, and not merely assume that a particular amount of money automatically means these defendants will get a wildly good deal.
 
  • #570
Orange Tabby said:
Why do you put “trustee” in snear quotes? Benjamin Mackoff is currently serving as trustee and we have no reason to believe that William Wiese even contemplates appealing that legal decision by Judge Cohen. I haven’t seen anyone offer any argument against what appears to be a clear conflict of interest on the part of WW as long as Heather does face a potential death sentence. (This, even though as I explained earlier that I think it highly unlikely she will be sentenced to the firing squad.)

It is as distressing to me as to others on this board that Heather is able to benefit from her mother’s trust. But because American law is bound by the very reasonable concept of “presumed innocent until proven guilty” the powerful and just Slayer Rule does not yet apply.

This isn’t special to Heather. We know it happened in the Menendez case, someone posted a very recent New York case, and someone I know who is a lawyer recounted to me a northern California case with the same situation, although he couldn’t remember the names of the parties.

I’m angry with estate lawyers. The Menendez case was far more famous than our case here, and it should have resulted in the creation of simple boilerplate language in trusts to foresee this situation and stop heirs being prosecuted for the murder of their benefactors from using trust money for their defense. Why hasn’t it?

Also: we don’t know what Ary Soenardi had to provide to obtain the first $50,000. Add to that the terrible problem that with anyone providing intellectual skills as their primary product there is no clear objective way of determining what that product is worth. Who is to say that Gerry Spence isn’t worth millions? And if he’s worth millions, who is to say that Ary Soenardi isn’t worth $50,000? This is how shady lawyers operate: in the shadow of those who follow the rules.

I asked at the time Judge Cohen approved the release of funds for a lawyer what anyone here would offer to William Wiese in the way of information to fight that ruling and only a few newspaper excerpts were provided, and to the best of my recollection none of them even used the word bribe.

It is perfectly reasonable for us to draw conclusions from the Ormsby and Ponder cases (the only two I recall being discussed here with respect to Mr. Ary) but the information I’ve seen here is hardly enough to stand up against Heather’s highly unfortunate legal right to at least some of that money.

I wish that William Wiese had fought this by using FBI witnesses, or whoever it was in law enforcement who had alerted him to the corruption possible with the use of Mr. Ary as defense counsel, before Judge Cohen. He might have also been able to proffer evidence showing what typical defense lawyers earn in Indonesia. However, he didn’t do these things.

Yes, it is awful. It sickens me. But I don’t think it is mysterious at all.
Click to expand...

I put the first trustee in quotes because he is not the trustee that Sheila appointed to oversee her estate in the event of her death so I personally don't consider him to be the trustee of her estate. And I don't think her wishes should be just arbitrarily overruled like that. Yes there is a conflict. But neither Sheila or WW are responsible for that conflict. So the person who created the conflict should not be benefitting from it IMO. And that is all it is...my opinion. Obviously the law sees it differently. Although gitana1 also doesn't think Judge Cohen has made very good decisions in this situation and she IS a family lawyer.

I agree with you. This situation needs to be addressed in estate law so this doesn't keep happening.

MOO
 
  • #571
groverbones said:
I've been lurking since August... had to post this, because I just found it and haven't seen you guys discussing it! I wish I could high-five Sheila's brother!
http://http://chicago.suntimes.com/news/7/71/342463/condo-owned-woman-slain-bali-sold-brother-ships-nieces-belongings-st-louis
Click to expand...

Welcome groverbones :welcome:

That link is not working for me but we have posted a link to that story on the page before this one I believe. It's the story about the condo being sold right?
 
  • #572
Heather physically brutalized her mother in the past over a period of years. I wish some family member or friend from the U.S. could testify as a witness to refute Heather's claims of loving her mother so much. It's pretty obvious, at least to me, that she wanted her mother dead and was willing to pay someone to do it. She didn't just fake her smiles after her mother was dead - she had sex, the both of them with Sheila's blood on their hands.

The world is watching. Can she bribe her way to innocence using her mother's estate money now? :curses:

All MOO with a cow or two thrown in.
 
  • #573
Okay, first thing I can find for today just popped up ... a photo.

inbj36.jpg


Heather Mack (R) leads Tommy Schaefer (C) of the US as they walk to a prison van at Kerobokan prison in Denpasar on Bali island on February 4, 2015


http://www.gettyimages.com.au/detai...f-the-us-as-they-walk-to-news-photo/462732058
 
  • #574
  • #575
They're going to court there. But it's bedtime here! Thanks to SouthAussie, I can sleep knowing I'll be able to catch up in the morning.

.....................................................................:offtobed:
 
  • #576
  • #577
  • #578
Additional photo from bottom of Orange Tabby's link .... just arriving in court. It is now 5:15pm in Bali. Surely some news reports will be released soon.

i58yzn.jpg


US nationals Heather Louis Mack (R) and Tommy Schaefer (L) arrive for another day of trial over the murder case of her mother, US Sheila von Wiese Mack at Denpasar district court in Bali, Indonesia, 04 February 2015.

http://www.epa.eu/crime-law-and-jus...s-photos/murder-trial-in-bali-photos-51781332
 
  • #579
SouthAussie said:
Additional photo from bottom of Orange Tabby's link .... just arriving in court.
Click to expand...

I'm crap at posting photos. Why don't you post the one with Smiley Translator using his pointing fingers to tell the two of them ... who knows what?
 
  • #580
Orange Tabby said:
I'm crap at posting photos. Why don't you post the one with Smiley Translator using his pointing fingers to tell the two of them ... who knows what?
Click to expand...


Here ya go. :) Doesn't look like anyone is in the big chair yet. Looks as though they are off to the side at one of those benches.
(Be good if they could spell February .. I keep correcting it for them - from Febrary.)

I'm wondering what time their court hours are. Is it possible that they have court later in the day sometimes, when it is a bit cooler?

2u882uc.jpg


US nationals Heather Louis Mack (R) and Tommy Schaefer (L) listen to their unidentified interpreter (C) during another day of trial over the murder case of her mother, US Sheila von Wiese Mack at Denpasar district court in Bali, Indonesia, 04 February 2015.
 
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