Midway between hearings to gain financial justice for his ailing mother over the loss of her murdered pregnant daughter, Gerald Bennett believes insufficient media exposure and scrutiny of his family’s tragedy has harmed their cause.
“Our case was not like, say, the Rodney King story where the video played a big part in the outcome,” Mr. Bennett told the newspaper. “But here there wasn’t any coverage, especially for the most recent hearing last January. That allowed the state Attorney General’s office to sit back and say, ‘We are not going to give them anything.’ And that is where it is now. The media is not in the forefront, and there is no pressure on the attorney general.”
Aug. 24 will mark the four-year anniversary of the Friday afternoon that National Guard Sgt. Scott Ansman, whose wife had just delivered their third child, killed the pregnant JoAnn Crystal Harris, in a rage, believing the baby was his. Convicted of first-degree murder with special circumstances (the pregnancy) and now serving a life-without-parole term in Northern California, the Bennett-Harris family later sued the state of California since the murder occurred at the Guard Armory in Culver City.
While Ms. Harris’s 71-year-old mother, Martha Harris, is in frail health and hospitalized following a stroke and prolonged illness, her son, Gerald, stoutly has maintained his warrior-fighting-for-the-family stance that he assumed days after his sister’s brutal death.
“I have been thinking about the young man who was killed in Oakland by the BART officer,” Mr. Bennett said as an example of a high profile case. “Not only is the officer out of jail, they found enough to give his mother $1.3 million and his baby’s mother $1.3 million, too.
“Now my mother lost her daughter, as well as a potential grandchild, and the state of California is talking about not even giving her $200,000. She would receive around $180,000, minus taxes. It is as if the state is saying, ‘We don’t care what happened to your daughter. So be it. This is what we do.’”
Still four months removed from the next hearing on damage awards, Mr. Bennett said he is planning to sue an earlier family attorney, Robert McNeil, “because (he and others allegedly) maliciously, deceitfully tried to manipulate my mother last year while she was heavily medicated in the ICU unit. They tried to get her to take something so they could beat her out of her money.”
Mr. Bennett says he remains puzzled, frustrated actually, over why the dispute with the state couldn’t have been settled at the latest hearing last January. “Because of the lack of media exposure,” he concluded, “this is what happens. We didn’t have a video, so there has been no public outcry. They don’t start moving until there is a public outcry.”
