Former Husband In Custody Battle Caught on Video Purchasing Crack Cocaine—Ex Wife Wins Custody of Twin Boys.
The Story:
The importance of the team approach is underscored in the above video. Although the quality and production values of the film are unimpressive, the impact of the video cannot be overstated to the mother who obtained an emergency court order giving her sole custody of her twin sons, in order to get them away from the their father, who had become addicted to crack cocaine.
In L.S. v. R.D., the former husband, a well respected member of a local community, became addicted to crack cocaine. His fall from grace was rapid and dramatic. Within a matter of months, he burned through his economic resources, lost his relatively high paying job, and had several contacts with police, including one where, in the early morning hours, he was arrested after being caught driving erratically with a passenger, both high on the destructive drug.
L.S. feared for her children’s safety, and retained JJK to attempt to wrest custody of the couple’s twin two (2) year old boys from R.D., who obviously was in no condition to be providing adequate parenting.
The problem: The problem was proof. Although it was commonly known that R.D. had become a drug addict, he was in deep denial, and refused to acknowledge to anyone, especially his former spouse, that he had a ‘major league’ drug problem. Despite having two (2) separate criminal actions pending against him, he had not been convicted of either (at this point in time), and the evidence of the criminal cases would likely be inadmissible in the family division proceeding to make the children safe from their father.
We were able to obtain an “emergency” hearing on the issue set in January, but even in mid-December, we had no “concrete” evidence to show the Court that R.D. was in fact a ‘drug addict’. Kirschner persuaded L.S. that surveillance of R.D. could provide the critically necessary evidence.
Investigative Support Specialist Inc.,(http://www.brandonperronpi.com) was brought on board to attempt the surveillance. Because L.S. had finite financial resources, (‘moving’ surveillance is an expensive proposition) the team elected to attempt to “catch” R.D. in the act, on one (1), or possibly two (2) occasions.
New Year’s eve approached quickly, and in this particular year, the holiday fell on a Saturday evening. The team reasoned that R.D. might suspect to be the object of surveillance on Saturday night, so they decided to attempt the first surveillance on Friday night, when R.D. would not likely be suspicious.
R.D. met L.S. at a convenience store to exchange the two (2) year old twin boys from his custody to hers. The surveillance team moved in, and began following R.D.
The payoff: R.D. left the convenience store, and immediately hailed a taxi that drove him to a known drug area, and the team was able to capture the ‘hand-to-hand” drug purchase on video. Check out the video above. It’s pretty “dull” for the first two (2) minutes or so, but at about two (2) minutes fifteen (15) seconds into the film, (about 3/4 of the way through the tape), you can watch the drug purchase.
The result: R.D. took the witness stand at the emergency hearing and elected to lie. He claimed he had neither possessed nor puchased nor used cocaine of any kind since he’d attended college some twenty (20) years earlier. His lawyer called a Urologist to testify that he had been drug-testing R.D. weekly since the hearing had been set some six (6) weeks earlier, and that the testing proved conclusively that R.D. was not using cocaine.
Nationally renowned Investigator Brandon Perron of Investigative Support Specialist, Inc., took the stand on behalf of L.S., and rolled out the video. The vid, along with Perron’s persuasive testimony of how both he and the vidographer had witnessed the drug buy, persuaded the trial Judge that the claimed emergency was real.
The trial Judge’s order specifically made the factual finding that R.D. had been caught purchasing crack cocaine on the night before New Year’s Eve. The children were ordered into L.S.’s exclusive custody pending further order of the Court.
The point: Cases are not necessarily won ‘in the courtroom’. Far more often, winning is the result of preparation, planning, hard work and thoughtful teamwork, by professionals who know what they are doing. Don’t take our word for it…….ask L.S.
