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Star witness in his handler's clothes
The caretaker job
After Skalnik testified for the state in a Houston riot trial, he stayed free, and the investigator, Kenny Rogers, put him to work as caretaker of his very simple beach house on the coast. Rogers was a workaholic who was rarely there. He figured he knew where his witness was and was getting something out of the arrangement, so he paid him too.
One weekend Rogers finally got away and found the house lived in and a mess, with things out of place and Skalnik nowhere to be found. He left an angry note on the refrigerator and drove back to Houston, where a man phoned to report that Skalnik had run up charges on his credit card while staying with him during the trial. Rogers realized his star witness had committed a crime while testifying for the state, and he asked the local sheriff to go to the house and arrest Skalnik if he was there.
The jail cell
At the Matagorda County Jail, Rogers found Skalnik in his own clothes, holding his own paperback. Skalnik looked up and asked what the problem was. Rogers had given him every chance, and his patience was gone.
Disappearing again
Skalnik served 60 days, then was sent to Florida for violating the probation he had received there over the furniture scam. He was out after a few months and left no forwarding address. His wife, Penny, who had been writing to him in jail, could not find him, and when she filed for divorce she had to run a notice in the newspaper to reach him.
Why can a new crime revoke old probation?
Probation is a suspended sentence: a court holds the prison term in reserve as long as the person follows conditions, and committing a new crime is almost always one of them. Because the original sentence still exists, the state that imposed it can ask a court to revoke probation and carry it out, even when the new offense happened in another state. A revocation hearing usually requires a lower standard of proof than a criminal trial. States coordinate supervision through the Interstate Commission for Adult Offender Supervision, created by a compact that replaced a 1937 agreement.
How does a newspaper notice count as legal notice?
Courts require that a person be told about a lawsuit before it can affect them, and the usual way is to hand over the papers in person. When a spouse cannot be found after a diligent search, many courts allow notice by publication in a newspaper instead. The U.S. Supreme Court set the standard in Mullane v. Central Hanover Bank in 1950, ruling that notice must be reasonably calculated to reach the person involved. It accepted publication only for people whose whereabouts could not be found with reasonable effort.
Why must prosecutors disclose a witness's problems?
In Brady v. Maryland in 1963, the Supreme Court held that prosecutors must hand over evidence favorable to the defense. In Giglio v. United States in 1972, it applied the rule to anything that bears on a witness's credibility, including promises made in exchange for testimony. A jury's verdict can turn on whether it believes one person, so the Court treated what a witness stands to gain as part of the evidence. In Giglio itself, the government's key witness had been promised he would not be prosecuted, and the jury was never told.
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