Dee and Lyndee's Finest Hour

The benefit of being present in the courtroom is that I’ve had the opportunity to observe the media covering the trial as well as the witnesses, attorneys, jury members and defendants. Make no mistake about it; Dee Hall was all puffed Friday when her star informant Lyndee Wall Woodliff took the stand.

Hall even dressed up for the main event, trading in her oversized parka and comfortable shoes for a pair of cropped black pants, nylons and heels. Was she anticipating being rushed by the cameras? I guess we’ll never know, since the Judge Ebert asked Hall to leave the courtroom during Steve Morgan’s cross examination of Woodliff.

On the other hand witness Woodliff appeared in jeans and a sweater. She wore her hair straight, though much darker than it appeared in previous newspapers photographs, and she had on little if any makeup.

While Woodliff’s look was understated, her testimony was quite animated as she frequently talked with her hands and turned to look around the room. At one point she put her index finger to her mouth while looking upward as she considered the question put before her.

She started out like most witnesses, simply answering the questions asked but not offering additional detail or injecting her opinion. From time to time she glanced over at the defendants and appeared to be somewhat remorseful.

As time went on, Woodliff came alive with detailed commentary, though her memory of events was somewhat selective, an irony that made her giggle at times. For example, she had difficulty remembering how many times she met with investigators or exactly when and how often Dee Hall visited the Assembly Republican Caucus, an event that she said sparked a major directive from her boss to keep campaigning under wraps.

Most notably Woodliff could not remember when her most recent meeting with prosecutors took place, though she believed it was within the last week and a half. (Now I have short term memory issues --- Did I just take that vitamin? Why did I run all the way upstairs?) ---but I think I’d remember the exact date I made arrangements to travel from Janesville to Madison, especially if I had a job and a small child.

It must have made prosecutors nervous when Morgan requested Woodliff’s copy of prosecutors notes of her interviews, complete with the handwritten notes and highlights she made in order to “refresh” her memory prior to testifying.

Morgan confirmed that the written interviews represented the prosecutor’s interpretation of the interviews, rather than a written transcript of a tape recording. Woodliff said she was asked to review the interviews and to notify prosecutors of any inconsistencies. She said she found no “glaring mischaracterizations.”

But Morgan found at least one. Investigators wrote that Woodliff said ARC Director, Jason Kratochwill had locks installed on two inner offices after Dee Hall’s first visit to ARC offices. Wall told Morgan she did not think she said the locks were installed but rather that Jason told staff to start keeping those doors locked. Kratochwill had also told Woodliff that Dee Hall tried to steal documents from his desk during that meeting. Could that be why he wanted the doors locked?

Morgan also wanted to know what Woodliff had studied to allow her to know within one week at the ARC that the law was being broken. She said had no prior legal training and that she was not aware that all four partisan campaign committees are constituted in the statutes.

Woodliff, who remained in the job for nine months despite her “immediate” knowledge that she was breaking the law, could not say why she kept a copy of a fax that Sherry Schultz had sent during the evening of October 8, 2000. Maybe she was just being helpful, the same way Eric Grant was being helpful by stealing all those documents that had nothing to do with his tenure at the Caucus.

Though the jury will never hear the possible motives Woodliff and Grant might have had for stock piling documents and testifying with enthusiasm, I doubt either one was validated by their day in court.

Grant was forced to admit that he not only did campaign work on state time for his state salary, but he also used his state position to do free lance campaign work for several other candidates. A fact he apparently concealed from investigators.

As for Lyndee Wall Woodliff, she was still hanging around the 8th floor corridor at least a half hour after she was excused from the witness stand. I wonder what she was waiting for?