Officers or prosecutors withheld the existence of multiple witnesses and police reports, including one of an attempted armed robbery at a gas station across the street from the furniture store within hours of the murders. The original judge also behaved inappropriately, the lawyers say, getting a doctor to prescribe Valium to a holdout juror, who only then voted to convict.

Withholding evidence is not that uncommon, unfortunately, but it looks like it was especially bad in this case. And giving Valium to a juror is an egregious overreach. The full details of what happened are even worse than it sounds at first glance.

She was under a lot of pressure because she wanted to talk about the evidence and the other jurors didn’t. They yelled at her and heckled her, basically, until she fainted. The judge finds out and says it’s no problem. Defense lawyer asks for a mistrial, gets turned down. Juror says she doesn’t need a doctor. Then the judge makes a phone call, in secret, and gets her doctor to give her Valium. Enough that the other jurors thought she was “floating.”

The worst part is, the Florida supreme court saw no problem with that. They said it wasn’t judicial misconduct, it was just the judge being concerned and looking out for her.

Eventually, Hecker’s inclusion on the 2018 roster produced the most serious ramification for him. A member of the US military went to law enforcement and reported that he was a teenager in 1975 when Hecker, then a staff member at his high school, strangled him unconscious in a church bell tower – pretending to teach him a wrestling move – then sodomized him.

The archdiocese of New Orleans waited to turn over Hecker’s complete personnel file until June 2023, when it received a subpoena from the local district attorney. Three months later, a grand jury empaneled by the DA charged Hecker with aggravated rape, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated crime against nature and theft.

He’s now claiming he’s not competent to face the charges because he has short-term memory loss. If you read the second article, that doesn’t sound believable (scroll down to number 5).

At the deposition itself, Trahant bluntly asked Hecker: “Do you have a problem remembering things from 15 minutes ago?”

“No,” Hecker answered.

She threw their homework and other things in the trash. Said they had until the end of the day to pay cash or do chores to get it back so they could learn the real value of their things.

She took her son’s bed away for seven months, apparently because he played a prank on his brother.

Oh, and the kids had to make their own school lunch in the morning. The school calls one day because her 6 year old daughter didn’t have any food. She let the girl go hungry. Quote:

My hope is that she’ll be hungry and come home and go, ‘oh man, that was really painful, being hungry all day. I will make sure to always have lunch with me.