Best Cross-Examination Ever! Divorce Expert Witness Gets Destroyed by Top Prosecutor at Murder Trial

[00:00:00] Linda Bailey: but there's no legal basis for this, so don't worry. And my understanding is that is what she communicated to Wendy. [00:00:05] Speaker 2: And when you communicate these things to your clients, hey, this is no big deal, this is no problem, this is a bunch of gibberish, do they always accept that? Well, that's not the way I would present it, but... Do they ever get upset about the gibberish in the pleadings, the offensive materials in the pleadings, regardless of whether or not it's going to impact their chance of success in court? It can be emotionally charged, can it? Well, I would say annoying more than emotionally charged. You would not say that divorce and child custody issues are emotionally charged? [00:00:50] Speaker 3: The Donna Adelson trial was a high-stakes murder trial. The defense brought in a divorce expert to prove that there was no motive for the Adelsons to have Dan Markell murdered. What was supposed to help Donna Adelson did the exact opposite in court, because by the time Prosecutor Georgia Kappelman was done with her cross-examination, the credibility of the entire defense took a massive hit. At Donna Adelson's trial, Prosecutor Georgia Kappelman approaches the lectern with a sense of confidence. Trenchcoat buttoned to the top, she is completely in control. She approaches her cross-examinations with authority. She doesn't allow the defense's witness to avoid answering her tough and insightful questions. She seeks not only to destroy the witness before her, but to also use the other side's witness to improve her case against the defendant. At Donna's trial, the defense gave her many opportunities to bite, and she took full advantage. Her cross-examination of the defense divorce expert was not just effective, it was devastating. Donna Adelson, the matriarch of the Adelson crime family, was on trial for the murder of her former son-in-law, Dan Markell. And the defense had a problem, motive. Writings by Donna to her beloved daughter, Wendy Adelson, where Donna constantly berated Wendy's late ex-husband, Dan Markell. Those familiar with Dan Markell, former professor at Florida State University College of Law, and Wendy Adelson, then clinical professor at the same law school, know that their divorce was quite contentious. This highly public divorce was discussed across the FSU law school and in academic circles as well. The defense, however, painted the divorce as the opposite. According to their star lawyer witness, the divorce was routine. This supported the defense's theory that everything was kosher between the Adelson family and Dan Markell, so there was no reason for any of them to want Dan Markell dead. The defense's expert witness, longtime divorce lawyer and mediator, Linda Bailey, was brought in to review the file. And during the direct examination, she told the jury that this case was not particularly contentious. She had seen far, far worse. The defense walks Linda through her pro-Donna testimony, expecting Linda to say that the Adelson's knew Wendy's chances of relocating to South Florida were slim, and that Dan Markell's post-divorce filings, including requests for sanctions and restrictions on the defendant's access to the children, were not especially threatening or meritorious. Essentially, the defense's direct examination of Linda Bailey tries to suggest that there was no motive. By the end of the direct examination, it seemed that Linda felt proud of herself, that she delivered exactly what the defense needed, money well spent. Not so fast, Linda. You haven't faced Georgia's cross yet. And then came Georgia Kappelman. She stepped up to the lectern and skillfully used the defense's own expert witness to consolidate proof that the divorce was contentious and that the Adelson's indeed had plenty of motive to have Dan Markell killed. Here she is, a shark ready to hunt, and she went for the bite. Let's take a look at one of the best cross-examinations you will ever watch. We will show you the very end of the direct examination for context, and then we will jump right into this juicy cross-examination. [00:04:31] Speaker 4: Everyone, can you sit up? Ms. Bailey, please rise to be sworn. Ms. Bailey, please rise to be sworn. Do you swear or affirm the testimony you're about to give will be the truth. [00:04:44] Linda Bailey: I do. [00:04:45] Speaker 4: You may take your seat. You may examine as you're ready. [00:04:50] Speaker ?: Thank you, Linda. [00:04:58] Speaker 5: Good morning. Can you please introduce yourself to the jury? [00:05:01] Linda Bailey: Yeah, my name is Linda Bailey, and I'm a family law attorney here in Tallahassee. [00:05:06] Speaker 4: Good morning from Desita. Please continue with your examination. [00:05:13] Speaker 5: Thank you, guys. Ms. Bailey, how did the Adelson-Markell divorce compare across the variety of cases that you've handled? [00:05:27] Linda Bailey: Simply, it was routine. Simply, it was routine. It was amicable. I've done similar cases that have had anything from two-day to seven-day trials. I've had them range from $200,000 to half-million dollars in fees and costs. I've had multiple financial experts, child development experts, vocational experts, all retained, deposed, testifying. I've had cases with multiple, multiple, multiple discovery issues, discovery of psychological records, financial records, third-party subpoenas, two full days of deposition of just one party. This was an easy case compared to many. [00:06:23] Speaker 5: Did it look worse than it was because of the way in which Mr. Markell's pleadings were drafted? [00:06:29] Linda Bailey: Yeah, I mean, he drafted pleadings, motions, I think, and responses would be more appropriate than pleadings, but that's kind of technical. He drafted them like he was drafting a law review article or something. Not, they weren't technically correct. They were verbose. They were hyperbolic. You know, he used a lot of inflammatory language, but when you really looked closely at his requests of the court, they were, there was no, there was no there, there. There was no foundation for his asks. [00:07:07] Speaker 4: Nothing further, Your Honor. Cross-exam. [00:07:16] Speaker 2: What is it you were asked to do in this case? [00:07:18] Linda Bailey: I was asked to review the documents I was given and to opine about whether this was truly a highly contentious custody case, essentially. [00:07:33] Speaker 2: And why would your opinion about whether it was a highly contentious custody case matter? [00:07:40] Linda Bailey: Well, that's for somebody else to decide. I mean, I've done 2,000 cases or give or take 100 on each side, and I think I have a pretty good judge of where this falls as far as contentiousness. [00:07:52] Speaker 2: Sure, but you're somebody that has vast experience with a ton of divorces, right? Sure. The parties only have experience with one divorce, right? [00:08:01] Linda Bailey: I don't know how many they have experience with, but sure. [00:08:04] Speaker 2: So isn't the contentiousness in the eye of the beholder in the sense that to you it might not seem like a big deal, but to the parties it might be the most important thing in the whole wide world? [00:08:13] Speaker 4: Do you agree that a case as a lawyer might be routine, whereas to the parties it's the most important thing in the world? [00:08:35] Linda Bailey: Do you agree? [00:08:36] Speaker ?: I agree. [00:08:36] Linda Bailey: That's one reason I called Kristen, is Ms. Adamson, in particular, of the lawyers in our community, of the Family Law Bar, is extremely measured and calm, and I find that when I litigate against her, we reach resolutions that people stay measured and calm, and we get things done. She's not one of the other lawyers in town who may stir cases up or play on those emotions, so our job as lawyers is to explain to our clients when we get a motion, if I get something, for example, that, although I've never had, something similar to what Mr. Markell would file, the immediate response is to call your client and go, I know you're going to read this at first glance, it's going to seem messy, but there's no legal basis for this, so don't worry. And my understanding is that is what she communicated to Wendy. [00:09:31] Speaker 2: And when you communicate these things to your clients, hey, this is no big deal, this is no problem, this is a bunch of gibberish, do they always accept that? Well, that's not the way I would present it. Do they ever get upset about the gibberish in the pleadings, the offensive materials in the pleadings, regardless of whether or not it's going to impact their chance of success in court, it can be emotionally charged, can it? Well, I would say annoying more than emotionally charged. You would not say that divorce and child custody issues are emotionally charged? They can be, but in this case, they weren't. [00:10:07] Linda Bailey: They weren't? How do you know? From the pleadings, because I don't have 10,000 pages in front of me. [00:10:13] Speaker 2: You're not in the mind of the people whose lives are impacted by these pleadings. It's not just about pieces of paper and a binder, is it? I don't think that's what I said. If people's lives are impacted by the decisions that go on in court, which for you are routine, would you agree? [00:10:35] Linda Bailey: In this instance, they reached agreement on all issues, so they had complete control of what was coming out of the court. [00:10:41] Speaker 2: Ma'am, could you please answer my question? Are people's lives impacted in drastic ways by routine matters that we see in court as lawyers? [00:10:54] Linda Bailey: People's lives change after divorce, certainly. [00:10:58] Speaker 2: So, like, I may think I've got a bag of stinky garbage, but the garbage man might not think it's stinky at all. Do you get the reference? I don't. What is no big deal to us is a big deal to these litigants, right? You can't agree with that. Perhaps. You can't agree with it. Strike the question. You were asked, let me ask you this. Let's go on with something else. Have you ever had people get murdered or commit suicide based on the issues that are going on in your family law litigation? [00:11:45] Linda Bailey: I've never had anyone murdered. I had, in one instance, a Middle Eastern person committed suicide just because there was a divorce, and that was shameful. So nothing was, it was literally the day after the petition was filed, and he had threatened, "If you file, I'm going to kill myself," and indeed he did. [00:12:04] Speaker 2: And to you, divorce is not shameful, is it? To me, divorce is not shameful. Divorce is not a basis to commit suicide, is it? [00:12:14] Linda Bailey: Not according to me, but I didn't grow up in Iran or wherever this custom or feeling derived. [00:12:21] Speaker 2: Exactly, Ms. Bailey. To that person, it was a reason to commit suicide, right? [00:12:26] Linda Bailey: Apparently so. [00:12:30] Speaker 2: Aren't these issues raised in these pleadings potential fuel to make people upset? [00:12:43] Linda Bailey: Potential fuel to possibly make people upset? Yes, ma'am. [00:12:46] Speaker 2: For example, you were asked about what we've called the grandma mission. You say, "Oh, it's no big deal. It wouldn't be granted. It was buried in there." But the allegation is, "Grandma is disparaging me to these kids, and I won't tolerate it." Right? Couldn't that be upsetting to grandma? [00:13:06] Linda Bailey: You'd have to ask grandma. [00:13:08] Speaker 2: Exactly. [00:13:09] Linda Bailey: It shouldn't have been. It shouldn't have been. There was no proof. [00:13:14] Speaker 2: It shouldn't have been in your opinion. In my opinion. But in your opinion, divorce is no reason to commit suicide, right? True. Jibbers, according to the evidence in this case, means Jew in boots. It's not a flattering term by that definition or by your definition of someone that speaks gibberish. Can we agree it's not a flattering term? [00:13:41] Linda Bailey: No, it's probably not flattering, but I've seen far, far worse. You've seen worse. [00:13:48] Speaker 2: I have. If Mr. Markell wasn't paying by the deadline, isn't that something that would be potentially upsetting to the parties or their family members? [00:14:05] Linda Bailey: I don't know how upsetting $80,000 would be. I don't know. [00:14:09] Speaker 2: $80,000 is a lot of money, isn't it, Miss Bailey? It depends on who you are. Exactly. So we'd have to ask the parties, right? Right? Sure. Okay. [00:14:22] Linda Bailey: Yeah, I think on that issue, he clearly had the assets. So at the end of the day, he was going to pay. It was just a matter of jumping through hoops to get the money. [00:14:31] Speaker 2: He was either going to pay, or he was going to get sanctioned by the court, or he was going to end up in jail, right? [00:14:37] Linda Bailey: I don't see any possibility he was going to end up in jail. Okay. [00:14:41] Speaker 2: Well, you sat in the courtroom during Ms. Adamson's testimony, didn't you? And Ms. Adamson said that that was one alternative, an extreme alternative, obviously. But that's what contempt means, right? Ultimately. [00:14:52] Linda Bailey: It wouldn't even come into play until the motion for enforcement, and then he didn't abide by that. And then the judge asked him to do something else, and then he didn't abide by that. I think jail was pretty far-fetched. [00:15:06] Speaker 2: Well, as long as he pays. Ultimately, the teeth is, you go to jail. No, that's not true. That's not true. Okay. Ms. Adamson was incorrect on that point, I guess. [00:15:16] Speaker 5: Objection, Your Honor. Is that the question I need to strike? I'll rephrase it. What was the objection I got? [00:15:23] Speaker 2: I said Ms. Adamson was incorrect on that point when she said jail was a potential option. Is that correct? [00:15:39] Linda Bailey: Well, I could break it down. There's two different matters in that financial motion on October 31st. One was the $70,000 still due to Wendy. Jail is not a possibility on that. You don't send people to jail for failure to pay money. We don't do that. The $10,000 in fees to Kristen was more debatable because that could have been in the specter of support and if you don't pay alimony or child support after repeated chances, I guess you could say, jail might be an option, but there's always a purge to that. So if you, I've seen many times in child support, if you don't pay child support, then the judge says, bailiff get, you know, Mr. So-and-so or whatever. And then all of a sudden he comes up with money out of his pocket and he pays and he never goes to jail. So you always have the key to the jail when you owe a support obligation. So technically if he wanted to go to jail rather than pay Kristen the $10,000, eventually there may have been a hearing where that happened. I've just, I've seen one person in my career go to jail every child support. [00:16:48] Speaker 2: Right, because they pay because they don't want to go to jail. If there was no jail and no consequences, they would never pay, right? [00:16:59] Linda Bailey: Some people wouldn't. And that's just support. There's no jail consequence to the $70,000 to Wendy. It was only the $10,000 to Kristen that could have possibly remotely been a possibility. [00:17:10] Speaker 2: Did you see evidence in this case of Wendy taking her mother's suggestions, cutting and pasting them into an email as her own, and then forwarding those questions to Ms. Adamson? [00:17:29] Linda Bailey: No, I didn't see any. [00:17:30] Speaker 2: And did you see in your review of the evidence in this case Ms. Adamson responding to those questions and Wendy then forwarding those answers to her mother? [00:17:40] Speaker ?: I don't recall that. I don't recall saying that. [00:17:42] Speaker 2: Did you review the communications from Donna Adelson, both in the form of email and text messages that suggest that she was in fact extremely disappointed and upset about the outcome of the relocation motion? I did. [00:18:02] Linda Bailey: In probably the five days after the relocation, which was say four weeks before the ultimate settlement in July, there were a flurry of emails where she was obviously upset. [00:18:14] Speaker 2: Did you review Mrs. Adelson's communications after July 31st that suggests she's consistently still upset about this? [00:18:24] Linda Bailey: I wasn't provided. [00:18:27] Speaker 2: So you were... I'm sorry, finish your answer. You weren't provided any... [00:18:31] Linda Bailey: I wasn't provided after the flurry, right after the relocation, before the final judgment was entered in July of 2013. After July 2013, I don't recall seeing any emails from Ms. Adelson, Ms. Donna Adelson about relocation. [00:18:47] Speaker 2: Did you see any emails from her at all post-settlement? [00:18:51] Linda Bailey: Not until, um, maybe December? It was a while, October maybe? Okay. Several months. [00:19:01] Speaker 2: If Dan Markell had agreed to the relocation post-denial, post-stipulation, post-post-post, it could still happen, right? I mean, if he agrees, it could happen. Sure. If he agreed, she could have relocated. All right. And if he was murdered, it could happen, right? Well, obviously. [00:19:28] Linda Bailey: Well, obviously. [00:19:33] Speaker ?: So, you categorized Dan Markell's pleadings in a lot of different ways. [00:19:40] Speaker 2: Baseless, untrue, unenforceable, gibberish, nonsense, suggestion of unethical filings on the part of his lawyer to sign off on them. Are you saying, I think what you're saying is that those things wouldn't amount to much in court, because it's not really effective filings. Is that what you're saying? [00:20:17] Linda Bailey: What I'm saying is his motions post-July 31st were not based in the law, and I don't think that allegations about accounts he knew of not being on an early filed financial affidavit would amount to fraud, and it certainly wouldn't excuse him not paying what he was supposed to pay under the terms of the court order. And the motions related, the motion in March, March 26th related to parenting, he was trying to enforce things that weren't in the marital settlement agreement. There was no court order to make her do the things he wanted her to do. So there's no basis for the court to have granted his motion. [00:21:01] Speaker 2: Right. So they weren't going to be successful. It's your opinion. They weren't going to be successful. Yes. That's my opinion. But would you agree that the things he was putting in there are inflammatory? I would agree that they were inflammatory. And they potentially could make the parties or their relatives upset to read those pleadings and those inflammatory accusations. Sure. [00:21:22] Linda Bailey: Nobody wants to read those allegations, true or not, about themselves in a public record. [00:21:27] Speaker 2: You were shown a bunch of binders on a case. That case has nothing to do with this case, right? No, it was a relocation case. [00:21:34] Linda Bailey: Right. [00:21:35] Speaker 2: And that case, was anybody murdered in that case? No. Okay. So if somebody had been murdered in that case, there might have been a lot less paper, right? Case would have been shorter if somebody had gotten murdered, wouldn't it, Ms. Bailey? [00:21:55] Linda Bailey: Well, if there wasn't a party, the case would have ended. [00:21:59] Speaker 2: If that's right. And if our case, we hadn't had a murder, we might have a lot more paper in our case, wouldn't we? [00:22:06] Linda Bailey: No, because the divorce was over in July. [00:22:09] Speaker 2: The divorce was over in July, but they kept filing papers, didn't they? [00:22:14] Linda Bailey: Well, and the case was set for hearing March 15th, I mean, excuse me, May 15th, 2014. So the motion that Ms. Adamson filed in October, and the motion that Mr. Markell filed in February, and then the motion he filed in March, were all set for hearing May 15th. And then Mr. Markell amped it up again. And on May 5th, he filed the motion that accused Kristen of fraud. So she had to withdraw, so they had to move that motion. So had that not been filed, they would have had a resolution on May 15th. [00:22:49] Speaker 2: We don't know that. How do you know it was going to go on May 15th? Could have gotten continued for any zillion different reasons, couldn't it? [00:22:57] Linda Bailey: It was set for May 15th, and it was noticed for May 15th. [00:23:00] Speaker 2: Set for May 15th. But at the time of Dan Markell's murder, litigation was still ongoing in this case. Yes? Yes. And even after that was resolved, there would be nothing stopping them from having a bunch of other time-sharing issues or whatever come up. And they might have ended up with reams of paper, right? [00:23:18] Speaker 5: Objection order calls for speculation. [00:23:21] Linda Bailey: I guess my response to that would be, I think it would have been to Wendy's benefit to proceed with those hearings, because nothing makes someone stop filing nonsense pleadings and motions better than having them ordered to pay the other side's attorney's fees. So, had they gone to the hearing on May 15th, and had Wendy had been successful, he would have very likely had to pay Wendy's attorney's fees. And I really encourage my clients in these situations to take it to hearing, so once the other side gets kind of slapped down, if you will, by the court and made to pay your fees, then they tend to back off. But that hadn't happened yet. It had not happened yet. [00:24:09] Speaker 2: And we'll never know when that was going to happen, because we never got to that point, right? Clearly. Because he was murdered. Clearly. May I have a moment to confer, Judge? [00:24:21] Speaker 4: Yep. [00:24:24] Speaker 3: Ouch. Poor Linda Bailey. But really, there's no reason to feel sorry for her. She came off as insensitive, dull, and mean. She took unnecessary shots, not only at the murder victim, Dan Markell, but also at his lawyers, questioning their ethics over filings she suggested that he had drafted. For someone trying to portray the divorce as routine and non-contentious, her responses revealed quite the opposite. They revealed that Linda and her colleague, who once represented Wendy, may still harbor a grudge against Dan Markell. So much for a non-contentious divorce. That is it for this video. If you enjoyed this video and would like to see our continued coverage of cases like this, please subscribe to the Mentor Lawyer Justice Network, and make sure to also check out our main channel, Deep Dive True Crime. I'll see you all in the next one.