Nicholas Godejohn is not guilty of first-degree murder simply because he didn't have the ability to deliberate. And it's not as simple as the prosecutor just told you. It's a very complex process.
And I'm going to talk about all the things that I've been doing. I want you to consider in deciding whether he did in fact deliberate. And I believe when you hear all of what we all have to say and you think about all of the evidence, you will come to that conclusion. He did not deliberate.
Now, let's get... Let's get one thing straight. Who wanted Claudine Blanchard dead? Who?
Gypsy did. Gypsy wanted Claudine Blanchard dead. And but for that simple fact, we're not here, are we? Gypsy's focus during this entire process was getting out of that home.
That's all she ever thought about. What was Nicholas's focus during that entire time? Gypsy, do you remember the interview with law enforcement when they started asking him questions about this murder?
What did he talk about? Gypsy. He talked about Gypsy.
This whole thing comes back to Gypsy's determination to do whatever it took. Plan A, Plan B, Plan C. it took to get out of that home. And we can understand that. We can absolutely understand that.
She wanted out of that home so bad that she would kill her mother. And let's also not forget why she didn't kill her mother. By that I mean personally.
Why didn't she kill her mother? Because she couldn't do it. She couldn't do it. You saw her.
She's tiny. She's tiny. Plus, I mean, probably she just emotionally couldn't do it. But she wouldn't stop until it was done.
And she was going to find somebody to do it, whatever it took. I want you to think about the ways that she said about doing this. The most important way is she did, in fact, manipulate him.
She did, in fact, manipulate him. And we can call it anything we want. That's what she did.
She manipulated him into doing this. And again, why did she kill her? Because in her mind, she had no choice. She wanted to have a normal life.
She wanted to be a normal person. But her mother wouldn't allow it. Let's also not forget with regard to the three plans, A, B, and C, she actually tried one of them. And I can't remember which one was which, but I think it may have been plan A. And if you remember what that was, she wanted to run away.
And she did. And what happened? Her mother brought her back. And then what happened? Things got worse.
She was chained to a bed. She was deprived of food. She was beaten. That's how that worked.
Remember the other plan? For her to get pregnant. Why? Because if she got pregnant, well then, after all, they could get married or they'd have to be together.
She'd already tried running away. She'd tried everything. And so then she reaches a point where she feels like she's stuck and she's got to do something.
She'd had enough. She did manipulate him, and she herself is fully capable of deception. It was her life. She is fully capable of deception because that's how she lived her life.
She was trained that way by her own mother. She was trained to pretend to be sick, although much of that time she probably didn't realize that she wasn't sick. She was trained to pretend to be a child, and she got tired of that.
She manipulated this situation in so many ways. There are two people in this case that in so many ways are very childlike. Nicholas Godijon and Gypsy for very different reasons.
Gypsy because of the way her mother forced her to live her life. And Nicholas because of the life he had. And if you just think about some of the facts in this case, you think about what you heard. ...and think about the childlike nature of some of this stuff. What did they do with the murder weapon?
They put it in an envelope and mailed it to his house. With what? Her return address. Does that seem like a person that has a lot of capacity? They hung around for Springfield two days after this happened.
For two days. That doesn't seem to make much sense. They went to his parents'home. They thought they were going to get married and move on with their life as if nothing happened.
I think Gypsy said, Hey, I thought they'd forget about me. And I could just go on living my life. They didn't realize these online conversations that went on forever about all kinds of stuff, much of it fantasy, they didn't realize that was being recorded or they'd figure out where they went. They checked into these rooms.
They used what names? Their names. They took cabs. He took a cab from his hotel right to this house. And then after the murder, what did they do?
They took a cab from this house away from it. That is a childlike decision. If you think about it, it's a childlike decision. A real killer would have been a whole lot more smart.
At least a real killer that had the capacity to deliberate. Would have been a lot smarter than that. Even the texts themselves were rather juvenile. And you saw that.
the text. Much of it was fantasy. All kinds of stuff.
All kinds of fantasy. And these two, they got stuck in this fantasy, and it's hard for them to know where fantasy ends and reality starts. Even the, and the prosecutor showed you one of the texts about, I believe it was the tape.
If you looked real close, you'd notice it's a sextoid website. That's a sex toy red site. This case has to be one of the most unique cases you'll ever see in a homicide. There is a unique set of facts in this case that just doesn't seem to come around very often.
Think about the unique set of facts. In some ways, everybody involved in this case is a victim, sort of. And I use that word very cautiously, because I don't want to say something outrageous.
DeeDee was certainly... Certainly victimized Gypsy in horrible ways. Horrible ways.
Gypsy manipulated Nick, a low-functioning person with autism. And then Gypsy pressures Nick into committing a homicide against her mother. And that's the way that it's sort of a triangle, and they all sort of victimize each other in some ways.
It's also unique in that you have this 23-year-old woman who has to pretend to be 16. And she acted the part well. She learned to manipulate. She was forced to live in a wheelchair.
by her mother, and she acted the part well. And again, she was so desperate that she felt like the only option for her to have a life was to kill. Her mother, her mother lived off charity. That's why Gypsy was in a wheelchair. Gypsy learned that.
Gypsy learned to steal, just like her mother. She was stealing from her mother, among other places. That's all she knew.
That's what she was taught. Her mother used manipulation to take advantage of people, so certainly so would she. And then when you take in somebody in the situation that Nicholas Goatyjohnny is in, with the cognitive deficits that he has, it's not real hard to manipulate him, is it? It's not real hard.
The prosecutor talked about some of the things that, but for Nick, wouldn't have happened. You'll also notice, but for Gypsy, they wouldn't have happened either. Not anything would have happened in this case, but for Gypsy.
She was tired of not being able to grow up. She wanted a real life. And with Nick, she felt like she had one.
And she felt like he was her rescuer, and she felt like he could do what she needed done. And she manipulated Nick. She planned virtually the entire thing. She obtained the gloves, she obtained the knife, she paid for everything.
He didn't have any money. He couldn't have paid for anything. She paid for everything.
I guess she's technically stolen, I guess. But she told him when, and she made the decision to move it up. She decided, we need to do this quicker because you're about out of money. That was her decision. It was her decision to kill her mother.
She talked him into it. He didn't talk her into doing it. She talked him into doing it. Let's talk about, you know, go to John for a second.
We had one job. Couldn't hold it. Not because he's a bad person, because he just didn't have capacity to hold the job. It wasn't a terribly difficult job, but like all jobs it is difficult, and it's important work.
It's good work. It's honest work. But he couldn't hold it.
Didn't have a driver's license. It comes up with this story, according to the prosecutor, of what they're going to tell the police when they get caught or if they get caught. Which is interesting, since they didn't think they were going to get caught.
I'm not sure why they really needed this story. But if you stop and think about this story, it doesn't even make any sense. The story is, if we get caught, we're going to say I ran into you out by the motel and I took you to Wisconsin.
But you notice something about that story. What does it not account for? Her mother's death. There's no explanation as to how they're going to explain that. It doesn't account for that.
This is a story they're going to tell his mother about why Gypsy's in Wisconsin. That's the point of this story. Nick was so completely in love with her and so obsessed with her that he would do anything. And Gypsy knew that.
And Gypsy knew that. In his mind, he thought exactly like her, that there was no alternative. He was told she tried to run away. He was also told why she couldn't run away that day.
Remember, her mom had papers. What does that mean? Well, not only can she go get her, but she can force her to come back legally, even though she's 23 years old.
Nicholas Godejohn wanted Gypsy to be happy, and he wanted her to have the life she deserved. In his own mind, he thought of himself as her rescuer. Again, we're recognizing that that doesn't make what he did right, but you have to look at it from his perspective, with his cognitive condition.
He worshipped her. He'd lived an isolated life. The prosecutor liked to talk to these girlfriends he had. They were all online. Those were not girlfriends, as we normally think of it.
Gypsy was his girlfriend. He now had the life he wanted, just like she had the life, or saw the life she wanted. His disability is clear from all this, including the tape, the interviews. You can see it.
It's obvious. His disability is clear, and that would have affected his mind. There's a lot of discussion of text in this case, and you'll notice most of these texts are just meaningless conversation.
And one of the things to keep in mind about any kind of text or email or anything like that is it only has real meaning if you see the whole context. And to take little portions of it and try to spin it in the worst possible way and make it as bad as possible. There's talk about a dark side and a good side. He made the same comment with the reporter. Remember that?
He talked about that. He even said she talked about running away. The fact of the matter is the texts don't really tell us a lot.
I'm not saying they don't tell us anything, because they do tell us some things, but they don't tell us anything about deliberation, anything about cool reflection. All they tell us about is discussions they had. Now, all of this has to be viewed in the context of the experts, Dr. Franks and Dr. Denny.
Dr. Franks gave you an honest, straightforward explanation of what he found. He found, after evaluating Nicholas Godejohn, that he suffered from, or he had, excuse me, had autism spectrum disorder level 2, requiring... support with accompanying impairment. And we know that Nick didn't have a lot of support at home. He pretty much lived on his own.
Dr. Franks felt like a person in that situation might very well struggle to deliberate. That was his opinion. Dr. Denny mostly talked about Dr. Denny.
He mostly talked about his CV and all the papers he wrote and all that stuff. All at $150 an hour. If you're wondering why he talked so much, there's your answer. He didn't really tell us much about Nicholas Govey John. He mostly wanted to criticize Dr. Franks.
What was his experience with persons with autism? Evaluating four to five. Not a whole lot of real experience. Not a whole lot of real experience. He tried to downplay his own IQ scores for Nick, even though it was lower than Dr. Frank's.
Had this chart, bell chart, and had this extensive discussion of where the median is. Bottom line, his number was 76. intellectual disability is 70. He also said there's numbers have a little bit of play. And despite the fact that that was in single digits in terms of percentile, I want to say it was less than 10. meaning more than 90% of the population would have a higher IQ.
He tried to somehow explain that and put it in the middle. Remember his little chart? And he also told you that most of the numbers were close to 100. I believe that was his testimony because he said the higher up you went and that would be toward 100, the numbers kind of began to congregate. But he kind of explained it as if most people are all in this small range. People fit along that chart and there's a reason why.
that Nicholas Goatyjohn's IQ is 23 points lower than the average person, and that's significant. Even he had to admit that's borderline. He also talked about Dr. Franks'data being off.
despite the number being bigger. But he never really told you how it was messed up. He figured, he fixed it.
That's how he did that. And he said something that's really interesting. He said, the data is what the data is. That is 77. All evidence in this case demonstrates that Nicholas Cody John has a low IQ. That is undisputed by anybody.
The simple fact of the matter is, Nicholas Godejohn did not have the ability for cool reflection. And if you look at the instruction, and you'll have a copy, you may have copies, on instruction number 6, paragraph 3, the prosecutor's shown you that. And it says, that defendant did so after deliberation, which means cool reflection upon the matter for any length of time, no matter how brief. Let's take the second part, or the last part, first. For any length of time, no matter how brief, it's not a function of time.
It doesn't say if it's less than five seconds or more than five seconds. It's saying the time, it doesn't matter, no matter how brief. The real important part is the cool reflection.
That's the important part, the cool reflection. Far more important than the other part, because if you have that, it doesn't matter for how long, but you have to have it. That we don't have in this case. When you consider all the evidence, does he really have the ability to deliberate? Does he really have the capacity to deliberate, given all the evidence in this case?
When you consider his cognitive disorder, when you consider the pressure she put on him to do this, her unwillingness to consider other alternatives. He talks about his dark side. And he still talked about that when he was interviewed by, I believe, the reporter.
We don't have the cool reflection in this case. I would ask every one of you to think long and hard about the facts of this case. And consider all the facts. And consider all the evidence and all the witnesses. Including our witnesses we put on.
Gypsy Blanchard and Dr. Franks. Consider all the evidence and decide what's appropriate. And have some compassion for everybody in this case. Dee Dee deserves compassion.
She really does. I mean, I know she did a lot of horrible stuff. And I agree with the prosecutor, she should have been prosecuted rather than murdered.
Gypsy deserves a lot of compassion, obviously, given what she went through. Have a little bit for Nick as well. I'm not asking you not to spread it out. I'm just asking you to have a little bit for Nick too.
Consider his situation. It's not as simple as the prosecutor said. Consider his situation.
And I'm talking about his entire situation. He was only trying to help the woman he loved. He didn't do it the right way. We all agree with that.
But he was only trying to help the woman he loved. Nick is not guilty of first degree murder because he simply lacked the ability to deliberate. Find Nick not guilty of first-degree murder, and then look at the alternatives, the other homicides that are available to you, and decide which one best fits the facts.
I believe after all the evidence that you consider, there is reasonable doubt as to his capacity to deliberate for first-degree murder. And I believe the appropriate verdict in this case is one of the lesser homicides. Thank you very much for your time.