Carman: Is karma finally catching up with those involved in the case of Lisl Auman?
And then, when you see it happen, the brilliance of karmic justice can give you such a rush you can hardly contain your denied sense of relief and satisfaction.
Karma can't be hurried, though. Even if you're certain it will come to set things right after a particularly gross injustice, it can test the patience of the most devout Buddhist.
For the family of Lisl Auman, the only person in Colorado ever convicted of murder for a killing that occurred while she was in police custody, ripples of karma have washed over them in the years since she was freed from prison in 2005.
They believed it would come. They watched for it. And they've seen it happen, if only in small ways.
Auman was 22 and in the midst of a bad breakup in 1997 when she went to her apartment with a friend and some guys she had met the night before to retrieve her belongings. A neighbor called police when he saw the guys hauling the ex-boyfriend's stereo equipment out of the apartment.
A high-speed chase ensued. One of the guys, Matthaeus Jaehnig, high on meth, started shooting at the cops pursuing him and Auman on the highway from Buffalo Creek.
In Denver, police surrounded them in the courtyard of an apartment complex and trained their guns on the two taking cover in an alcove.
Auman surrendered and was in handcuffs in the back of a police car when Jaehnig shot and killed Denver cop Bruce Vanderjagt with a rifle. Then Jaehnig scrambled out of the alcove and grabbed Vanderjagt's service weapon just before officers unleashed a hail of gunfire in his direction. Back in the alcove, he denied them the satisfaction of killing him, blowing his brains out on the scene.
The lurid story riveted Denver for days, then years.
The naive Auman was charged with felony murder. Her companions, all of whom had had previous brushes with the law, lawyered up, sought immunity and got it.
Throughout her trial, the courtroom was a sea of blue. Several cops at the trial had filed reports from the crime scene and, despite that no one disputed that Jaehnig was the killer, their outrage left them hellbent on retribution.
Two cops went the extra mile in their quest to see Auman convicted.
In their initial reports, officers Marc Bennett and Jason Brake provided no information incriminating Auman in the shooting. They described her emerging with her hands up. They recalled officers cuffing her and putting her in the police car.
Then, two days after the incident they revised their reports, saying they saw Auman appeared to "dip" and hand a rifle to Jaehnig before leaving the alcove. They said it was merely coincidence they both suddenly remembered that crucial detail on the same day. They insisted they hadn't discussed it before they revised their reports using remarkably similar language.
Auman strenuously denied it.
The reports were so suspicious, even the jurors said they didn't believe Bennett and Brake's testimony.
Still, under Colorado's felony murder law, Auman's involvement in bringing the guys to help move and their apparent actions to rip off her old boyfriend constituted a felony. The jurors said they believed they had no choice.
She was convicted of felony murder in 1998 and sentenced to life without parole.
One juror, Linda Chin, said she regretted her decision immediately and was tormented every day for years for her vote to convict. She had no idea the sentence would be life in prison and that intensified her feelings of regret.
When the Colorado Supreme Court overturned Auman's conviction in 2005, it gave everyone the chance to move on.
Auman worked hard to rebuild her life after more than seven years in prison and her family hunkered down in private to recover from the trauma. Still, over the years they kept track of many of the players in the drama — particularly Bennett and Brake — and continued to believe in the inevitability of karmic justice.
Bennett left the Denver Police Department and reportedly had a brush with the law in Florida 21 years ago.
Then last month, Brake, a sergeant in the DPD, found himself sitting in jail in Commerce City. He was charged with felony menacing after a road rage incident Oct. 3 in which he allegedly pointed his service weapon at a motorist during an argument.
Brake said the other guy had pointed a gun at him first, but investigating officers did not find a second gun on the scene.
It was just one of many disputed details in the incident.
Nothing can bring Bruce Vanderjagt back to life or restore the lost years Lisl Auman spent in prison. Nobody can make the families and the jurors and all those involved feel whole again.
Even karma has its limits.
But when the dark side of human nature descends and all hope seems lost, there's refuge in knowing that karma has a way of evening the score.
Shakespeare's version was to say a villain would be "hoist on his own petard."
The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., quoting the abolitionist Theodore Parker, often said , "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."
And the Pinterest crowd says: "Karma bus delayed due to high demand. No worries. It's coming."
No worries. Count on it.
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