Weighing the scales of justice

Jeff Kass, News Staff Writer

Sunday, March 18, 2001

Lisl's fight

CANON CITY -- Twice a month, Lisl Auman slips out of her forest-green prison khakis, puts on a regulation yellow T-shirt and gray shorts, and walks from her cell to an American Indian sweat lodge.

"That has become my religion, basically, the Native American religion," says Auman, who has 1/16 native blood.

"I go there and I pray, and for the first time in my life I really feel like my prayers are being heard."

Somebody definitely is listening.

Auman, serving a life sentence at the Colorado Women's Correctional Facility in Canon City, is fast becoming a legal cause celebre. In the past three months, a host of powerful supporters have signed on to help the 25-year-old Auman battle her sentence for the 1997 killing of Denver police officer Bruce VanderJagt.

Her backers are lured by the circumstances of her case: She did not actually shoot VanderJagt. In fact, she was handcuffed, sitting in a squad car, when he was killed.

Author Hunter S. Thompson is helping to spearhead the "Free Lisl" campaign. His columns about Auman on ESPN.com have stirred national interest, sending about 38,000 visitors to a Web site maintained by Auman's father.

The powerful National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers is on board, as is Southern Poverty Law Center founder Morris Dees.

One of the jurors who convicted Auman has even joined the movement. Linda Chin gave $2,000 to Auman's support fund after the trial. She may give more.

From the wealthy outback of Woody Creek to the two-lane blacktop leading to the state women's prison, Auman's supporters hope that hers can be the test case to overturn a legal concept called "felony murder."

Colorado law says that when deaths occur in the commission of certain felonies, such as burglary, all the accomplices are guilty of felony murder, whether they pulled the trigger or not.

The law is hard for some to accept. Including Wallace VanderJagt, uncle of the slain officer.

"I've never been comfortable with that conviction," he said. "I think Bruce himself would have a lot of trouble with the idea of someone being convicted of murder while they were in police custody."

Auman's appeal will most likely be filed by the end of April, setting in motion the next phase of a battle that is becoming higher-profile by the day.

All the attention on Auman grates on VanderJagt's widow.

"I get very angry when I hear Lisl Auman and her family are seeking support and sympathy from others," said Anna Marie VanderJagt, who is now a single mother raising 6-year-old Hayley.

"She gets to talk to her parents, they get to touch her, and Hayley and I get nothing. We have our memories and our photos. That's all we walked away with."

Denver District Attorney Bill Ritter, who prosecuted Auman, maintains that justice was served.

"This case fit in with felony murder," he said. "It's not a case of stretching the law or not.

"She (Auman) is very much at the heart of setting up the burglary. Then you have the flight away from it."

It all started after Lisl Auman and her boyfriend broke up.

On Nov. 12, 1997, she and four others, including a 25-year-old skinhead named Matthaeus Jaehnig whom she had met the night before, drove to Pine. Auman had once lived in a boarding house there with 27-year-old Shawn Cheever.

Auman, then 21, wanted revenge, according to prosecutors, who say her plan was to burglarize her ex-boyfriend's room.

But one witness said Auman wanted to retrieve her own belongings.

And Jaehnig wanted to have sex with Auman, the witness added.

While the group was removing things from the room, someone called police.

Auman and Jaehnig fled in a stolen red Trans Am, Jaehnig behind the wheel. The other three left in another car.

Police chased Auman and Jaehnig as they drove down U.S. 285. At one point, Auman took the wheel as Jaehnig grabbed a gun and shot at police.

Jaehnig and Auman ended up at the Monaco Place condominiums in Denver, 30 miles and from the original crime scene.

Auman surrendered when confronted by police. She was cuffed and put into a police cruiser.

VanderJagt, 47, was a twice-decorated officer with a toddler girl.

Jaehnig was a white supremacist with a rap sheet, whose body was peppered with Third Reich tattoos.

VanderJagt was more than halfway through his doctoral dissertation at the University of Colorado in a multidisciplinary program that included philosphy and education.

Jaehnig was high on methamphetamine, pot and cocaine.

VanderJagt peeked his head around a corner.

Jaehnig shot him 10 times, four of those in the head, with a Chinese SKS semiautomatic assault rifle.

Jaehnig then took VanderJagt's gun, placed it under his chin, and shot himself dead.

Critics say the political details are as important as the legal ones.

One week after VanderJagt was killed, skinhead Nathan Thill killed West African immigrant Oumar Dia in downtown Denver. Three hours later, a dead pig was found in the parking lot of the District 3 police station in south Denver where VanderJagt had worked.

VanderJagt's name was written in marker on the pig's hide.

Then-Gov. Roy Romer lashed out at hate crimes.

Days later, then-President Clinton was in Denver for a fund-raiser. He met with Anna VanderJagt, and he spoke publicly about the Dia and VanderJagt shootings.

"We must not tolerate violence and hatred targeted against police officers, the people who put their lives on the line for us everyday," Clinton said.

Auman was held initially for investigation of second-degree burglary, felony menacing and first-degree assault. Days later, Ritter charged her with first-degree murder.

Somebody had to pay in such a politically charged atmosphere, says Rob Auerbach, Auman's stepfather.

"After Matthaeus Jaehnig killed himself, there was nobody to go after," he said.

Ritter said he weighed his ethical duty with the letter of the law and his ability to convince a jury before deciding to prosecute Auman for felony murder.

Politics had nothing to do with it, he says.

"If Jaehnig was still alive, Lisl Auman would have been prosecuted along with him for felony first-degree murder."

Auman went on trial in July 1998, seven months after the shooting.

Prosecutors said Auman set the events in motion that led to VanderJagt's death. She then aided Jaehnig by taking the wheel of the car.

Her defenders said it was an act of self-preservation to prevent the car from crashing, done under Jaehnig's orders.

Also under scrutiny was the testimony of two officers who arrested Auman.

Their first statements did not mention that they had seen Auman dip down before surrendering. That detail was added later.

She was helping Jaehnig grab the assault rifle, said Chief Deputy District Attorney Tim Twining, a co-prosecutor on the case.

Auman's attorneys argued that the new statements were orchestrated to help ensure Auman's conviction. Her fingerprints were not found on the gun.

Twining said the district attorney requested the revised statements when other testimony pointed to a bigger role for Auman.

A jury unanimously found Auman guilty of felony murder, which is considered first-degree murder and carries a mandatory penalty of life without parole or, on rare occasions, death.

The jury also found Auman guilty of other crimes, including second-degree burglary.

The letter was dated Jan. 4, 2001, addressed to Hunter S. Thompson in Woody Creek. It came from the women's prison in Canon City.

"I laughed out loud while reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas during my stay (13 months) at the Denver County Jail," Lisl Auman wrote on yellow legal-size paper in looping, blue ink. "Thank you for helping to bring a smile to my face. During that time."

Auman told Thompson that she was in prison for felony murder. She maintained her innocence. She wrote down her Web site.

"I didn't know what to make of it when I opened the letter," Thompson says. "My attitude is, 'What the f--- are you so cheerful about?' If I were you, I'd slit my wrists."

But something made it stand out for Thompson, who had followed the case when it was front-page news.

"I liked her language," he says.

And she didn't ask for anything. She was just thanking Thompson for the laughs.

He wrote back Jan. 17, typing on a piece of blue-edged stationary with his name across the top.

"Thanks for yr. kind note & yr. Art and yr. joke. 'Ho ho . . . I remember following yr. case in the newspapers and being horrified by it.

"Maybe I can write a story about it & stir up some interest. We'll see."

Auman responded to Thompson on Jan. 23:

"Writing to you, for me, was like a shot in the dark and it was the first time that I had ever just 'reached out' to anybody in such a way. What a surprize (sic) it was for me that you actually wrote back!

"How cool is that? It's even cooler still that you looked into my website and then proceeded to write something about me in your column for ESPN."

Since then, Thompson has mentioned Auman's case three times in his weekly ESPN.com column, a gonzo mix of politics and sports titled hey rube!

"In all my experience with Courts & Crimes & downright Evil behavior by the Law & the Sometimes criminal cops who enforce it, this is the Worst & most Reprehensible miscarriage of 'Justice' I've ever encountered," Thompson wrote Feb. 5.

Visits to Auman's Web site have shot up from 7,000 over almost two years to more than 45,000 in the two months since Thompson first mentioned her. Auman's stepfather thought the site's counter had gone haywire.

"He has done more in a month's time than we've been able to do in three years," said Colleen Auerbach, Auman's mother.

Thompson was soon talking on the phone with Auman's father, the plumbing shop foreman at the University of Denver.

He has also spoken by phone with Auman.

Thompson soon turned to his friends at the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, attorneys such as Gerald Goldstein, Hal Haddon and Abe Hutt, who had come to his aid in the past.

The felony murder law had long troubled the NACDL, says the San Antonio-based Goldstein, a past president.

Thompson persuaded the NACDL to take on the case.

Some of the lawyers had gathered at Thompson's home for Super Bowl Sunday while in Aspen for a legal seminar.

Thompson ushered them around the fire in his study.

"We convened a meeting at halftime," said Thompson, who is known as the poet laureate of the NACDL.

The NACDL has agreed to file an amicus, or friend of the court, brief on Auman's behalf.

It is the first time in recent memory, and possibly ever, that the organization has taken on the concept of felony murder.

"It is an issue that affects more than this case, and has nationwide consequences," said Goldstein. "This (Auman) case represents probably the outer limits of what anyone's ripe imagination could conjure up."

Goldstein said the NACDL files amicus briefs on behalf of 15 cases a year, out of hundreds that are considered.

Dees, of the Southern Poverty Law Center, recently called Auman's attorney to wish her well. Dees is a longtime Thompson friend and a NACDL member.

Thompson says a benefit concert with Lyle Lovett, Warren Zevon, Bonnie Raitt and Little Feet is possible.

His battle cry is a quote from 18th Century British statesman Edmund Burke: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

Thompson adds: "Very seldom in your lifetime do you get a chance to right a wrong while it still matters."

He likens Auman to a political prisoner.

"When a cop is killed, somebody must go down," he says.

"I call it a lynch mob. It was a lynching in Denver. It was viciously handled by the district attorney, who claimed he was only responding to public opinion.

"He's in for a jiggly ride."

Ritter is aware of Thompson's interest.

"The price you pay for the First Amendment is that people like Hunter S. Thompson get to say what they want about police and prosecutors," he says.

"We have to keep our eyes focused on what our ultimate goal is -- that's justice. We can't be distracted by a group of celebrities."

Don Auman sits in a booth at Piccolo's Italian restaurant near the University of Denver.

Drawings of shop tools float across his wide, tan suspenders -- a red crescent wrench, a yellow welding torch, and blue pipes. The suspenders also carry a black-and-white Lisl.com button with a red rose.

Auman launched the Web site in March 1999. Visitors can click on icons such as "Why?", "Jaehnig Rap Sheet," and "Facts."

Also in his PR arsenal are glossy business cards and postcards.

"Why is Lisl Auman in prison for the rest of her life?" read the cards. "Who is really to blame for Denver Police Officer Bruce VanderJagt's death? Certainly not Lisl Auman, who was handcuffed and in police custody for ten minutes before the officer was murdered."

Auman has passed out the cards at concerts and political rallies featuring Raitt, Bob Dylan and Jackson Browne. He pressed them into the hands of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, who was freed from prison after a federal judge found racial bias in the case against him. Jane Fonda has received a press packet.

Auman has been there when O.J. Simpson attorney Barry Scheck spoke in Denver, and during the Martin Luther King Day parade.

Auman recalls running into Ritter at one event. He introduced himself.

"This is a justice issue I'm going to keep working on," Auman says he told Ritter.

Ritter's reaction?

"He just looked really uncomfortable," Auman says.

Don Auman knew VanderJagt.

Auman wrote a March 9, 1999, letter to DU friends and associates.

"When I started my employment at DU in 1984, Bruce was a DU security guard," Auman wrote. "I had many encounters with him in the course of my job and came to like and respect him."

Lisl Auman says she wanted to go to college after graduating from Littleton High School.

Instead, she went to nightclubs, stayed up late, and partied.

Before the shooting, she was earning $15 an hour doing flood prevention in Buffalo Creek. She enjoyed the hard work outdoors digging trenches and filling sandbags.

When that job ended, she was bundling firewood in exchange for free room and board in Pine.

She was easygoing, but not really going anywhere.

Until she went to prison in 1998.

During a recent interview, she is in the visitor's center of the Canon City women's prison. It has the sparse look and feel of a cafeteria, with industrial carpet, some two dozen small, round tables and blue plastic chairs. Vending machines sell candy bars and coffee.

Auman wears lip liner and mascara. Her ash blond hair falls to her shoulders, her oval glasses are stylish.

She wears white, long-sleeve thermals to hide the pre-prison tribal vine tattoo snaking up her right arm, but it peeks out from under the cuff. A curlicue, Celtic tattoo rings her left middle finger.

She works on the prison electrical crew, takes college correspondence courses, and reads Man's Search for Meaning by Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankel.

Reading about a man who chooses to give away his last piece of bread, Auman says she has learned that everyone has choices.

"That was basically the only thing he had left, was his choice," she said. "Like my choice to be angry or not angry."

But she had no choice on Nov. 12, 1997, Auman says.

And that is why she maintains her innocence.

"I didn't have anything to do with VanderJagt's murder," she says. "It was beyond my control."

It is a message she takes to the sweat lodge.

"I pray for justice, and that the truth be heard," she says.

"And I believe that so many things are happening now. I believe it has a lot to do with my prayers and the prayers of other people, too."