Christopher J. Wood is in prison for 51.75 years after he lost trial on the charges of
raping his wife. If the State followed the law and presented the truth, and if
his public defender presented any of the following evidence, then Mr. Wood
would have never been found guilty, in fact, the case would have never gone to
trial.
ALL FACTS LISTED BELOW ARE DOCUMENTED WITH TRANSCRIPTS AND DEPOSITIONS
Mr. Wood was arrested on January 14, 2007, but his story begins a few months before
that. Mr. Wood and his wife of 14 years owned a house in Titusville, Florida (an hour from Orlando, FL)
and lived there with their three small children. They were having financial
problems and their home was being foreclosed on. In November 2006 they filed
chapter 13 bankruptcy (the repayment plan) in order to save their home.
On January 15, 2007, their second payment was due. They had very little money, so
Mr. Wood’s wife, Amy, asked her motherher if they could borrow some money to pay
their mortgage. Her mother, Ruth Rodgers, told her that if she left Mr. Wood
she would help her and the children out any way they needed, by buying them a
house, a car, paying their bills, etc. Mrs. Rodgers admitted this in her
deposition and explains that she never liked Mr. Wood because he came from a
poor family, did not work at NASA like her husband and was home-schooled as a
child. (Mrs. Rodgers is a school teacher).
However, Amy told her mother that she could not divorce Mr. Wood and explained in her
deposition that Mr. Wood had enough evidence to put her in jail and get custody
of their children. Here lies the motives for her actions against her
husband.
Mr. Wood explained that the evidence he had against his wife was indication of her
being involved in criminal activity but mainly of her inability to care for
their children. It was so bad that Mr. Wood feared leaving his children alone
with her. He then started taking pictures, videos and notes concerning events
that were occurring to his children. Amy asked what he was doing and he told
her that he was building a case against her because if she didn’t stop he was
going to divorce her and get custody of their children.
Mr. Wood even asked their neighbors Dennis and Sharon Pogar to talk to Amy and
explain her problems to her and how serious they are. Sharon Pogar has a
degree in psychology and has known Mr. and Mrs. Wood since they started dating
in high school. However, even this did not help the situation. Amy just
continued doing what she did, probably thinking that she didn’t have to change
because her parents would take care of her and the children once she figured
out a way to, “get out of the relationship and be with the children.”
However, the week before their payment was due Mr. Wood pawned and sold everything he
could to get enough money, yet to no avail. Then Amy suggested making a
bondage movie to sell on the Internet. Amy wrote short stories and sold them
on the Internet before, and both made bedroom bondage movies for themselves, so
all they had to do was find a theme that was selling and make a movie like it.
Furthermore, they had the video equipment and Amy had several years experience
in drama, so the idea was one that would work if they could find a buyer in
that short of time.
After researching everything on the Internet, they found the theme for the movie and
found a few buyers whom after viewing the movie would buy it for up to $4,000.
They only needed $1,500, so it seemed extremely possible. The theme was going
to be a rape and bondage movie out in the woods.
Mr. Wood found an area a few miles from their home and Amy asked her mom to watch
their children for that Saturday. The wooded area could only be reached by
canoe, and Mr. Wood kept a canoe in the woods nearby, but it had a leak in it.
He told Amy to meet him out there with the equipment because he had to fix the
leak before putting so much equipment in the canoe.
Mr. Wood rode his bike 4.5 miles with the patch kit, which was recovered at the
scene. He fixed the canoe, and Amy met him out there, loaded the canoe and
paddled off through the woods. They got to the area and set up their
equipment, started making the movie, but ran into some problems. One of the
problems was that Mr. Wood could not sustain an erection. Mr. Wood said at
trial that he did not enjoy the idea of a woman being raped. They enjoyed
bondage but not rape. The video shows this problem and the two of them
discussing it.
The problems continued and they were unable to complete the movie because it got
late. Amy actually said at trial that she knew it was late because “while
being raped and tortured: she started to get hungry and knew it was around
dinnertime. Amy then suggested they leave everything out there because they
were going to come back the next day and finish making the movie. (This was
recorded on video). Mr. Wood gave Amy the video, and they left to go get their
children.
Mr. Wood dropped her off at the car with the video and keys to the car while he put
the canoe up in the woods. Amy drove them both back to her parents’ house
where she turned the car off at the base of her parents’ long driveway. She
said it stalled, but it was most likely turned off so she could put distance
between her and Mr. Wood for this next event.
Amy then got out of the car and told Mr. Wood to pull the car up so they could get
the children and go home. (Amy admitted this at trial). Amy then ran into her
parents’ house and told her parents that Mr. Wood was going to kill her and
that he had knives in the car. (Mr. Wood did not have any knives in the car.
Although the video did record Amy giving Mr. Wood a knife out in the woods and
suggesting he take it back with him, he declined).
Meanwhile, Mr. Wood pulled the car up and waited for Amy and the kids to come out. After
several minutes the police came, went into the house then asked Mr. Wood if he
just tied his wife up in the woods, raped and tortured her and video taped it
against her will to sell on the Internet to pay their mortgage. Mr. Wood told
the police they were correct except for it was Amy’s idea to make the movie, so
it was not against her will.
After several hours of talking to Amy and trying to get her facts straight, the
police arrested Mr. Wood. Mr. Wood asked if he could waive his right to remain
silent and tell them what was going on. The police started recording and told
him to go ahead. Mr. Wood explained everything that he and his wife had been
doing and why they had been doing it. He told them that everything he said
could be proven with their computer at their house. He then explained that
this computer contained some very incriminating evidence against his wife and
asked if they could get it right then, so his wife didn’t destroy it. The
police told him that they would get the computer the next day because their
shift was over and it was late.
Detective Buggs of the Brevard County Sheriff’s Department was the one called to the
house that night. He viewed only a minute of the video before he arrested Mr.
Wood. Though if he had viewed the entire video, he would have seen that it
contradicted everything Amy said and corroborated everything Mr. Wood said
because unbeknownst to Amy and Mr. Wood the camera recorded not only the movie
but the “behind the scenes” conversations about making the movie, which shows
Amy telling Mr. Wood what to do to her.
However, the media was all over the arrest. For a solid week the case was on every news
media outlet in Central Florida, CNN, and even in the UK. With this kind of
coverage apparently the detective was left with a decision: to admit he was
wrong or only collect the evidence that would corroborate Amy’s story. He
apparently chose the latter, because not all the evidence was
collected.
The following day, the detective interviewed Amy, which the record shows that her
story changed a third time in twenty four hours. Then he asked her to turn
over the computer, which contained evidence against Amy and corroborated Mr.
Wood’s story. She did not until a week later. Then he went to the scene in
the woods and only collected evidence that showed a movie was made. Nothing
was collected that would impeach her.
When Mr. Wood went to his first appearance the Judge set his bond at $3.017 million.
Mr. Wood had never before been charged with a crime, and he had lived in
Titusville since 1985. He had no money, so the maximum amount at which bond
should have been set should not have exceeded $10,000. Apparently, because of
the publicity the courts wanted to make a good show, even though this bond was
illegal under the Constitution.
While in jail, Mr. Wood called the detective and state attorney to tell them about
the five years worth of bondage movies at their house. No one would talk to
Mr. Wood. He even offered to take a lie detector test, but they didn’t give
one. Mr. Wood then asked his friends, family and neighbors to get the videos.
When they went over to talk to Amy about them, she said she destroyed them. In
her deposition, Amy said she beat one with a hammer, burned it, and buried it
in the backyard, and admitted to taping over one. It seems she really didn’t
want anyone to see any of these videos.
Then about two months after his arrest, the state must have realized that this case
could easily be beat, so they took Mr. Wood’s felony public defender off his
case and gave him a misdemeanor public defender, Jeffrey Nuss. Mr. Nuss had
never been to trial before and now he was facing a trial in four months which
involved seven life felonies.
Meanwhile, Amy was selling everything she and Mr. Wood owned. Once it was all sold, she
filed for a divorce, stating that they had no items for the court to disperse.
Her parents got her a place to live, bought her an SUV and paid all her bills,
even to this day just like they promised.
Five months later, Amy, her parents, and Mr. Wood’s neighbors were deposed. Amy
apparently had not seen the video before being deposed, because she
contradicted almost everything on it. She didn’t know it recorded the “behind
the scenes” conversations, so that further contradicted her story. Furthermore,
Amy contradicted everything their neighbors and her parents had said. The
state truly knew now that Amy was lying because she even said that Mr. Wood did
some very disturbing things to her during the movie, which was not true because
the video recorded everything. It was was turned on and left on the whole time
these things were said to have happened.
What the state did next was beyond sickening. Mr. Wood had a hearing where he
demanded trial. That gave the state forty five days to be ready for trial.
Mr. Wood told the state that he would not accept any plea bargains even if it
was time served. So, somehow Commander Susan Jeter of the Brevard County Jail
became aware of this and had Mr. Wood taken from his cell in general
population, stripped naked, and put in an empty cell to sleep on the floor
until he was evaluated by mental health. Mr. Wood was evaluated and cleared to
be released from the mental ward every other day for two weeks. Ms. Jeter
would not release him, until a State Senator’s office called to see what was
going on. Then he was released with profuse apologies. Mr. Wood has no mental
health history. By law the only way the state could get Mr. Wood to waive his
right to a speedy trial, was to find him incompetent or under the care of
mental health when it come time for trial. Mr. Wood now has a $13 million
lawsuit against Susan Jeter because of this. (Case #
6;09-CV-762-0-1-22KAS.)
Trial started on July 9th 2007, and the first sign that Mr. Wood was in trouble was
when his attorney asked how many jurors they needed to pick for trial. Then he
didn’t present any evidence because he thought he could only rebut what the
state presented. This is not true. At one point he was trying to impeach Amy.
The state objected because it was improper, so the Judge said that it wasn’t
his job to teach the public defender how to impeach a witness, but he could see
that the trial was going nowhere without this. So the Judge instructed Mr.
Nuss, but Mr. Nuss still did not get it. The Judge even walked Mr. Nuss
through it, but Mr. Nuss still failed to understand and never attempted to
impeach her again. Keep in mind this whole trial depended on impeaching Amy.
She had over twenty six material contradictions on which to impeach her. For
example:
1) Amy said she never took any drama or TV productions classes. School records show
she had five years of drama and a year of TV production.
2) Amy said Mr. Wood had been out there all day setting the scene up and she brought
nothing. Then she said that Mr. Wood spent the morning helping her father cut
down a pine tree and left that afternoon.
3) Amy said she asked her mother that Saturday to watch the kids, yet her mom said the
same as Mr. Wood, that it was in fact Thursday when Amy asked her mother to
watch the kids on Saturday. It was planned in advance.
4) Amy said it was Mr. Wood’s idea to leave everything out in the woods because he
said they were coming back out there, but the video recorded Mr. Wood saying
that he was going to pack up all of “their” stuff that “they” brought out
there. Then Amy told Mr. Wood to leave the equipment because they were coming
back to finish making the movie. Then Amy tried handing Mr. Wood the knife,
which he refused. However, even though this was a prop knife with the point
and all of the edges ground down, it still would have put him in the possession
of a deadly weapon when she went in the house yelling he was going to kill her,
and that he had knives with him. Besides, who that has just been “raped and
tortured” and is afraid for their life gives their attacker a
knife?
There are more contradictions that are even worse than those explained above, but
besides these contradictions, she could have been impeached on her motive that
she was either going to jail with the evidence Mr. Wood had against her and he
would get custody of their children or she could put him in jail and get
financial support from her parents and obtain custody of their children and
control of their property. Then the state lied to the jury about what they
were going to hear on the video and solicited all the false testimony they
wanted to make their case sound better. They even failed to disclose the
computer that Amy turned over to them–which took her over a week–because it
would have proven Mr. Wood was right and they were wrong.
At the end of the trial, the jury deliberated for ten and a half hours and asked
many questions including her motive, her lying, and the lack of evidence. The
jury was told that they had to rule only on the evidence that was presented at
trial. They came back with a guilty verdict, and Amy laughed the whole way out
of the court room.
For sentencing Mr. Wood’s neighbors Mr. and Mrs. Pogar paid for a private lawyer,
John Albert. He used to be a state attorney in Brevard County and after
viewing the video and other evidence, with the help of a female associate, he
made a public statement saying that he did not see how Mr. Wood was found
guilty because you could clearly hear Amy telling him what to do to her. “This
is not rape.” He still stands by this today. However, the trial Judge was
bound by law to sentence Mr. Wood, which he sentenced him to the minimum. Then
he said he didn’t understand why he would make this movie allegedly against
Amy’s will then give her the movie and let her go in the house alone to call
the police while he waited outside. The Judge said he didn’t understand the
evidence that was presented at trial. With that said, Mr. Albert was also able
to elicit from the state attorneys the fact that they listened to and recorded
every one of Mr. Wood’s phone calls, including his attorney-client phone calls,
which is quite illegal.
For the appeal, Mr. Wood was appointed another public defender. This one has a
success rate of five wins out of 271 appeals in seven years. Of course, she
wouldn’t raise any grounds that should have been raised and when Mr. Wood
contacted the media about all the errors, his attorney contacted him and
threatened him if he continued talking about his case. His appeal was denied
and Mr. Wood filed a motion raising nineteen grounds of ineffective assistance
of counsel. Mr. Wood knew that the trial Judge Charles M. Holcomb was retiring
three months after he filed his motion, so he filed a “motion to expedite
ruling” because only the original trial Judge can weigh the credibility of the
testimony at trial. The motion to expedite was ignored and as soon as Judge
Holcomb retired a Judge Griesbaum ruled on his motion even though the
supreme-court ruled that only the original trial Judge can rule on this type of
motion.
As for Mr. Wood’s children, Mr. Wood never missed a day of their lives until he
was arrested. Now, he has not talked to them in almost five years. The
criminal court gave jurisdiction over the no contact to the civil court. That
court ruled contact. However, Amy has now ignored these court orders and is
concealing the location of their children. This is parental kidnapping. Mr.
Wood has filed many petitions to the court concerning the contact with his
children; however, the courts have ignored them all until 2008, when they
denied two motions.This must be extremely devastating to these children
because they love their father more than anything in the world.
Then Mr. Wood receives a recantation affidavit from Amy. In it, she says she was
threatened, coerced and bribed by the state to change her story and lie. It
also says the state would take her out to eat and buy her things as a way of
bribing her. Mr. Wood filed a motion on this "recantation," however, a week
later the state goes to Amy and her story changes. Now she's saying she never
filed the affidavit. Interestingly enough, three witnesses reported seeing Amy
eating at Paul's Smokehouse, in Titusville, with one of the head prosecutors.
A hearing was held for the affidavit to see if Amy would recant or not; however,
before the hearing got started, Mr. Wood asked Judge Griesbaum if he could
verify who he was and confirm some possible conflicts between them. Judge
Griesbaum confirmed that Mr. Wood had worked for him in the past and caused
damage to his house due to a faulty pipe fitting. Then, when the judge was
asked to confirm his wife's name, he got upset and told Mr. Wood that he was
not going to let him file a motion to disqualify him and made up the excuse
that Mr. Wood had already filed the motion three months prior. (This was not
true as Mr. Wood referred to the record.) (See the Register of Actions Activity
posted on August 29, 2011, on this website under Motions Filed: Criminal Case
and see that the hearing was November 17, 2010, and the Motion to Disqualify
Judge did not show up until November 29, 2010, and December 1, 2010, both after
the hearing, NOT before). Then Judge Griesbaum explained that he would just
deny the motion if it was filed later, so they were going to continue with the
hearing.
The hearing was then rescheduled because a witness failed to show up, and the next
day Mr. Wood filed the motion to disqualify Judge Griesbaum. It failed to show
up after two weeks, so Mr. Wood filed a second motion, then several supporters
contacted the Chief Judge explaining what was going on. A few days later Judge
Griesbaum removed himself from the case.
Mr. Wood's case was then assigned to Judge Burger who granted some small motions of
Mr. Woods and denied one of the state's motions. The hearing was held again
and Amy did not recant. However, she did comically state that everything she
said at trial was correct and true. This is funny because even the court
admits she has told some lies.
The following month the court imposed sanctions on Mr. Wood, at the state's
request, because they thought he filed the recantation affidavit. They
concluded this because Amy said she didn't do it and Mr. Wood was at a prison
where another inmate had documents from the same notary used on the recantation
affidavit. However, what the court failed to consider was that the notary
stamp was not the same. There are no copiers, scanners, computers or printers
for Mr. Wood to create or copy or change a stamp. The phone calls and mail is
monitored, so he could not have had any outside help. The postmark on the
envelope of the affidavit that Mr. Wood received, was from Titusville and he
was in a prison near Pensacola. Not to mention that Amy has a friend on her
facebook page, who is apparently related to the notary and one of her friend's
listings shows her living in the same town as the notary.
After this, all other motions Mr. Wood had pending were denied. Mr. Wood's case was
then transferred to Judge Crawford, a newly-appointed judge . Then we
discovered that on the Clerk of the Courts website, the file location of Mr.
Wood's files were always being checked out by "S. Bausch." After researching
the issue, we found that this was Susan Bausch, who is a staff attorney that
works for Judge Griesbaum. Staff attorneys review pending motions, research
the law, give opinions to judges on how to rule on issues and draft their
orders. Each judge is assigned their own staff attorney; however, Susan Bausch
has been following Mr. Wood's case around when it was transferred to other
judges. Additionally, it was discovered that Susan Bausch may know Amy's
family, because she is listed as a member of the same literary organization as
Amy's mother. She also became assigned to Mr. Wood's case the same month he
was arrested. When considering the power a staff attorney has on a person's
case, this is very bad. (Susan Bausch is the one person in the court system
who has followed Mr. Wood's case for five years!)
We filed some complaints to the chief judge who simply ignored them, discarded
them, and told us to mind our own business. Mr. Wood also filed a complaint
with The Florida Bar, who told Susan Bausch to respond. In her response, she
admits to at least one conflict of interest between her and Mr. Wood, and
called his case "toxic" and "abusive." She then removed herself from the
case.
Now pending is a motion to vacate all of her orders as well as the judgment in this
case (see Motion to Vacate posted on January 5, 2012, on this website under
Motions Filed: Criminal Case) because when a person remains on a case during a
conflict of interest, her actions constitute fraud upon the court. This motion
is before the proper staff attorney, and the proper judge whom we assume will
follow the law and grant the motion.
If you would like more information or proof about this case then please use this
website or contact any of the people listed below. This article was not
written by John Albert. John Albert, the sentencing attorney viewed all the
evidence and knows Mr. Wood is not guilty.
Thank you for your help,
John
Albert, P.A. (Sentencing lawyer)
Disclaimer:
This story was taken from the website on November 2, 2009 (freechristopherjwood.wordpress.com), and edited for
grammar, spelling, and to be accurate and concise.