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With Jana Hawkes sprung from prison, and forgiven for killing Carmen Mesta without the convening of a Kangaroo Court to justify her total exoneration, I can't help but think back to July last year when Jana was tossed onto the God Have Mercy Medical Center psycho ward without a court order for her own protection. I recall a nurse saying the GHM had this right and since Jana didn't have a lawyer, or any friends who could get her one, or ask the ACLU how the hell someone can be locked away on a whim, Jana accepted her fate despite having 24/7 access to a phone. She did call the brother of one of her victims to ask for free legal representation, but attorney Michael Baldwin declined.

Knowing how easy it is to sneak a gun in the hospital and out again to facilitate his own escape, Kevin Fisher was so afraid Jana would escape and try to kill him again he told ADA Heather Stevens as much and that Jana would "haunt" him for the rest of his life. His fear flicked away like an annoying nose booger, Stevens didn't so much as assure Kevin that Jana would be watched around the clock. In fact, there were no guards on the psycho ward at all. Kevin used this to his advantage when he waltzed onto the ward and told Jana that the next time she saw him it would be at her trial.

That Kevin was allowed to visit the person who tried to kill him was of no concern to anyone except those of us who were aghast. We were stunned when, from the nut ward, Jana called members of the victim's family to threaten them and was allowed to have sharp objects like pens and pencils with which to write in her diary. That Jana was allowed to wear street clothes wasn't as shocking as the dialog which I've paraphrased here from one of her meetings with Kevin.

"Kevin, please don't be mad. I didn't mean to hurt anyone. I thought the fire would only scare you and that bitch, Colleen. I thought when I agreed to meet you at the warehouse you wanted me? I thought we'd have hot, sticky sex right there on the dusty floor and twelve months later I'd have your baby. What went wrong, Kevin? Why are you mad?"

As Kevin kept saying he would be the "star witness" at Jana's trial, he was never questioned by Stevens or the public defender Jana said later had been assigned to her case but never once met with her or interviewed Kevin.

While Kevin wailed that he wanted the State of Wisconsin to reinstate the death penalty, and for Jana to become only the second person the state had ever put to death, a nurse happened by to give Jana some nice drugs, was not at all surprised that Jana had a visitor and told Kevin not to freak if Jana started having a fit. She did, after all, have a brain tumor!

Right on cue, Jana had a fit. Kevin said she was faking it, but since he didn't really know how one fakes such things, Kevin later looked it up on the Internet. That was the day Kevin changed his tune so radically members of his family said he'd become "obsessed". And he had such that Kevin wanted Jana moved to Ohio where there was a hospital specializing in brain tumors.

Who can forget that the next day, having found where Jana once lived and pretending to be a doctor, Kevin questioned her neighbors and found out that in addition to going by the name "Elizabeth Borden", as in Lizzie Borden who is said to have given her father and step-mother a few whacks in the head with a hatchet, Jana had been known to have a few screws loose.

By late August, thanks to his mother putting up the money, Kevin had found a surgeon to operate on Jana's head. Not a complete success in that a portion of the tumor remains in Jana's brain today, following the operation Gloria Fisher Abbott Bardwell to Jana, "Listen to me you evil bitch. Nobody will ever know if the tumor caused your behavior. You may have survived the surgery, Jana. But if you ever go after my son again you won't survive me."

And we've all seen how that worked out. Not only did Gloria capitulate, Michael took Jana's case pro-bono presumably because they'd grown tired of hearing Kevin say that Jana didn't kill anyone, the tumor did. We saw too the incredible coincidence that Jana would share a prison cell with Phyllis Newman and that she'd be able to order books from Amazon with titles like her favorite, "The Mindset of a Killer." We also saw that at the prison people calling Phyllis and Jana at all hours could leave messages when they didn't pick up. Kevin and Jana grew so close they consider themselves the new "Starsky and Hutch" and have spoken often of the day they'll be riding off into the sunset on their "hogs" as Jana had also been reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Crazy as the seven months since Jana was locked up have been, like you may be, I'm torn. Jana's rights have been ignored; she deserves to be free and I can't see a judge ruling any other way, but Carmen Mesta is still dead. Shouldn't there be a price to pay for murder? Shouldn't Mesta's family be demanding justice? They should, but they aren't, and if they don't care if Jana goes free, why should we?

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