Teresa's Legacy

by Tanya Brannan

Until now, similar domestic violence cases have typically ended up on the cutting room floor before coming to trial, thrown out over the issue of causation (that it couldn't be proven that law enforcement's lack of protection caused the woman's death). That had been the fate of the Macias case as well -- thrown out on summary judgment in 1999.

But the family appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, and in July 2000, the three-judge panel unanimously reinstated the case, ruling that the Constitutional violation involved was not the murder of Teresa Macias, but the Sheriff's Department's failure to provide her equal protection because she was a woman, a victim of domestic violence, and a Latina. With that precedent-setting ruling, the doors to justice were swung open, not just to Teresa Macias, but to domestic violence victims everywhere.

The family's attorney Rick Seltzer introduces the Teresa Macias story to the jury. It is a story of a woman's desperate struggle to free herself from an abusive relationship; a struggle doomed to failure by the sheriff's failure to act. Seltzer outlined:

• Teresa's many reports to the sheriff of both physical and sexual abuse by her husband Avelino over a two-year period -- abuse that also included her three young children

• Teresa's multiple restraining orders prohibiting Avelino from any contact with her, the children or her mother

• The sheriff's repeated failure to enforce those court orders despite Teresa's more than twenty pleas for help.

"The purpose of a restraining order is to prevent violence before it happens again," Seltzer explains. "That order says it's now against the law for you to have any contact with this person. It's meant to prevent violence, prevent stalking, to keep the person safe." In California the violation of a restraining order by stalking is a felony. "Why?" Seltzer asks the jury. "Because it's well known that stalking is a huge red flag indicating imminent danger of violence or even death. 90 percent of domestic violence victims who are murdered were first stalked by their killers."

And stalking is exactly what Avelino Macias did. He stalked Teresa relentlessly from the moment she first tried to break free until the day he tracked her down and murdered her.

The sheriff's department had polices on domestic violence and on restraining orders that looked good on paper, says Seltzer, "but Sheriff Mark Ihde will testify that the true policy -- the actual practice -- of the sheriff's department is very different from what they've written down." In his sworn deposition, Ihde stated that in actual practice the department only required deputies to enforce restraining orders (i.e., arrest the violator) if the violation itself involved a physical assault or threat of immediate harm. With physical assault already a crime, Seltzer points out, "that practice rendered the court order a meaningless piece of paper."

At the plaintiffs' counsel table sit two of the women whose courage and determination have brought us to this moment: Sara Hernandez, mother of Teresa Macias, and Claudia Macias, Teresa's 18 year-old daughter. The women listen intently as Seltzer describes how Teresa's every attempt to claim her right to equal protection was denied by deputies who never arrested Avelino, never cited him, and failed to even document the pattern of constant stalking, threats to kill and numerous other crimes.

• Teresa had changed her story and then recanted her claim of child abuse

• Teresa had made only a few calls to the sheriff, and law enforcement officers -- who cared deeply about domestic violence -- weren't aware of the history of violence and stalking in the Macias family

• Teresa was diagnosed with a "thought disorder with possible paranoid tendencies," implying her word couldn't be trusted

• Teresa had written a "love letter" to Enrique Carmona which was, according to Senneff, the reason for the complete unraveling of "this poor tortured man, Avelino Macias."

THE "BIG LIE" DEFENSE

Sonoma County's thin defense was based on lies: Teresa had never recanted her assertion that Avelino had abused the children; even if she had, there were other corroborating witnesses and sufficent evidence to charge Avelino with multiple felonies. If the career law enforcement officers didn't know the history in the Macias family, it was only because they failed to read the restraining order documents Teresa showed them every time they came out, and because they failed to write reports on all but two of the 20+ incidents they responded to. If the responding deputies had only complied with the California law that requires them to write reports on every such incident, each subsequent deputy would have had a pile of police reports documenting the entire history at his fingertips. Teresa was never diagnosed as mentally ill. According to the Child Protective Services report, Dr. Alvarez, the counselor CPS had forced the couple to see, suggested Teresa be evaluated for such a mental disorder, which she was. That same CPS report shows that the evaluating psychiatrist said Teresa was completely sane and mentally healthy. In fact after the evaluation, Teresa told her mother that the only thing the psychiatrist told her was that, "He [Avelino] is never going to leave me alone." And the love letter? Read on. During the short trial and afterward, the press helped bolster the county's false claim that they had been unjustly accused. The Santa Rosa Press Democrat, San Francisco Chronicle and San Francisco Daily Journal all played up the "love letter" angle (although one reporter confided to me that he only mentioned it because it showed the county's tasteless blame- the- victim stance). Although I apprised each of the reporters of the truth on each of the claims, offering to show them the documentation, no refutation of the "big lies" appeared in the mainstream press. - T.B.

In early afternoon, Sara Hernandez takes the stand. A Mexican woman of tremendous dignity, she tells the spellbound jurors the story of her daughter's life and death. And Sara knows the whole story, having come from Mexico some months before the murder to help Teresa free herself from Avelino and get her kids back from Child Protective Services (CPS). She saw Teresa's fear, she saw Avelino's stalking, she saw the sheriff's indifference. She was even present at the murder scene; indeed she was also shot by Avelino before he turned the gun on himself.

For the rest of the afternoon and into the next morning, Sara describes Teresa's constant fear of Avelino, a man who had beaten her, raped her, and had shot a man in the head in her living room in front of Teresa and her three young children. He had molested and beaten with broomsticks those same children, and ground out cigarettes on Teresa's arms.

Sara also describes the circumstances around the fabled "love letter" to Enrique -- a letter that Teresa had sent to the friend that Avelino often used to trick Teresa into opening her door. Sara recalls how Enrique would knock, Teresa would unlock the door, and Avelino would force his way inside, sometimes to terorize her, sometimes to lock Teresa in the bathroom where he would rape her. The "love letter," which Avelino knew to be a hoax, was meant to cut that contact.

And then Sara describes the day of the murder.

When she and Teresa arrived for their housecleaning job on the morning of April 15, 1996 Avelino lay in wait. He forced his way into Teresa's car; she escaped and ran into the house. When he forced his way into the house, Teresa fled to the sidewalk. As Sara picked up the phone to dial 911 she heard Teresa plead, "For God's sake, for God's sake, don't do it, don't do it." And then she heard the shot.

Sara went to the front door and saw Avelino running up the sidewalk shooting wildly. "I slammed the door closed and leaned against it because ... I was afraid," Sara testifies. "Then Avelino shot through the door, hitting me [in both legs]. I fell to my knees. As he turned to leave, Avelino said, laughing, 'My stupid mother-in law, I have killed your daughter.'"

With this chilling testimony fresh in mind, the courtroom is stunned by the announcement only moments later that attorneys for the Sonoma County Sheriff have made a $1 million settlement agreement with the Macias family.

Just before she dismisses the jury, Federal District Court Judge Susan Illston comes down from the bench and takes Sara Hernandez' hand: "I want you to know how much I admire you and your family. You are very courageous."

And with that historic settlement -- the first-ever paid by a law enforcement agency for their failure to protect a domestic violence victim leading to her homicide -- one of the most important women's rights cases in U.S. history came to a dramatic end.

To talk about the Macias case in the same breath as Brown v. Board of Education is not an overstatement. As Brown v. Board overcame the horrific legal precedents that had hammered the racist doctrine of "separate but equal" into constitutional law, Macias swept away the barriers put in place by every court ruling since 1989 on cases claiming civil right violations by law enforcement in their handling of domestic violence. The precedent-setting 9th Circuit Appellate decision in the Macias case will be the solid foundation that future cases addressing police departments' deadly failure to protect women will stand on.

And with the force of the historic $1 million pay-out behind it, the case sends police the clear message that to continue their practice of treating domestic violence as an annoyance rather than a crime will cost them millions. As a result, police agencies nationwide will begin to revamp policies, retrain officers, and discipline the kind of police behavior that led to the murder of Maria Teresa Macias.

For the Macias family, this victory not only means some small restitution for the wrong that was done to them, it is the fulfillment of Teresa's last wish. "If I die," Teresa told Sara in the days before her death, "I want you to tell the world what happened to me. I don't want other women to suffer as I have suffered; I want them to be listened to."