Where Mercy Is Shown, Mercy Is Given - Duane Dog Chapman [5]
I want to believe that Judge Brodie would have ruled differently if he had been given a brief from our attorney that would have clearly outlined how I’d captured Luster, why I expected to get paid, and the case law that supported my claim. We didn’t face any objections from the district attorney, so the hearing should have been a walk in the park. We used a very high-profile lawyer who we expected would work his magic on this pretty straightforward case. Man, were we mistaken. When it came time to go in front of the judge, our superstar lawyer was ill-prepared, didn’t know the facts of the case, hadn’t read a single document before the hearing, and presented our story all wrong, even claiming Beth had posted the bond on Luster, which she hadn’t. When the judge began asking our attorney questions, he got all flustered, fumbled around, and blew it for us. We were destroyed in court.
Somewhere in the middle of the judge’s “holier than thou” speech that day, Beth and I stood up, grabbed each other’s hand, and turned our backs on him as we walked out of the courtroom. I didn’t understand his anger toward me. I had just spent my life savings helping the United States government capture one of their most wanted fugitives and all I got was a lecture on my conduct? It was absurd. No one wanted to pay me for the work I had done. America’s Most Wanted didn’t pay, Crime Stoppers didn’t pay, and now Ventura County wouldn’t pay us. The FBI didn’t pay us either. All of the rewards that had been offered for Luster were jive. We had nothing and would get nothing.
What little money we had left was constantly going toward our legal expenses and to put food on the table for my family. We were flat broke, living hand-to-mouth, literally surviving by writing one bond at a time and living hand-to-mouth with each one. We’d write a bond and pay a bill. Write a bond, buy some groceries. Write a bond, pay our rent. We owed thousands of dollars on our cell phones because of roaming charges we’d racked up in Mexico. It was terrible. We were seriously behind in all of our expenses, and whatever money we did have was going to our lawyers.
During those months of scraping by, our financial stress was so bad that even the power to our house was shut off several times. The last time they shut us off, all of the fish in my aquarium died. I was devastated. Anyone who has ever had fish knows what it’s like to come home to find them floating upside down. I stared at that tank for an hour before I could bring myself to scoop the poor guys out.
We had no money to speak of until December 24, 2003, when A&E came through with a deal for our television show. They gave us a small down payment of twenty-five thousand dollars to get us through the holidays. That was the only sliver of money we had seen since before my capture of Luster earlier that summer. Although the twenty-five grand was a lot of money, we were so far behind on everything that it didn’t make much of a dent in our debt.
As we began filming the first season of Dog the Bounty Hunter, the excitement I had from finally having my own television series was offset by my constant fear that I could be sent back to Mexico at any moment. I was scared to death because I felt there was nothing I could do about my situation but wait it out and put my absolute trust and faith in the Lord, my lawyers, and the judicial system. At the time, the Lord was the only thing I knew, without any doubt, I could truly trust. The lawyers and the system were still very much in question.
CHAPTER 2
Lucy Pemoni
The impact of what happened in Mexico was hard on the entire family. It took all of us some time to adjust. But after nearly three years, we had gotten back to living life as usual.
Everything seemed fine until the morning of September 14, 2006. That was when a team of federal marshals stormed my home in Hawaii and arrested me for kidnapping