Cook's Secret Apology

by Mark Scaramella

Mason Cook's letter of apology in the Willits News, required as part of his sentence for being found guilty by a jury of false imprisonment of his office manager back in April still hasn't appeared almost two months later. Curious, I went to the County Courthouse to have a look at Cook's case file to see if the file contained anything about the court-ordered letter of apology. I found a note from a "case status meeting" in May -- the victim was not present -- that said that Cook was no longer required to publish a letter of apology in the Willits News; all he had to do was mail a "private letter to victim, in the file, not sealed." The note, then, said Cook's apology was in the public file I held in my very hand. But the file didn't contain the letter. The clerk explained that the letter was in the sealed envelope which is removed from the file before the file is handed over to the person requesting it.

"But the note says 'not sealed'," I said.

"It says 'private,' which means it's in the sealed envelope," replied the young female clerk. "No one can see it."

"No, that isn't what it says or what is intended," I argued. "Private means not published in the Willits News, but sent privately to the offended party, in this case Mr. Cook's former employee. Private in this case means it is not required to be published in the newspaper, the Willits News, but it is supposed to be in the file, unsealed because the public should be able to see if the court order was complied with."

"Private means that only the parties to the case can see it," insisted the clerk.

"I guess I don't understand the difference between private and sealed," I insisted.

"I'll check with my supervisor," the clerk said, and I should say here that these ladies, who deal with exasperating persons all day every day, are unfailingly polite. The young woman soon returned. "The top top court person says that it's sealed," she declared.

"Well, it says right here 'not sealed'." I repeated, "but it's obvious you're not going to show it to me," so I left her in peace and trudged downstairs to the DA's office to seek clarification of what appeared to be a convenient deal between Cook and the Judge to spare Cook the indignity of a public apology for his boorish behavior towards his former employee.

A few minutes later prosecutor Kevin Davenport said he was annoyed that the note in the file was unclear and called the clerk himself. Although it had only been ten minutes since I returned the file, the clerk told Davenport that they couldn't find it. "Now you've got me interested," grumbled Davenport. "I'll check and get back to you."

That was Thursday morning and I haven't heard anything since.

The Cook file, incidentally, also contained a note saying that Cook's probation condition prohibiting him from carrying a gun had been lifted.

Cook's attorney, Dave Nelson, explained Friday that he had convinced Judge Ron Brown that the incident had suffered enough publicity since the DA's press release was printed in most of the local papers, and the AVA had run a full-length story on the case. Over the objection of the DA's office, Judge Easy Over decided that a private letter of apology to Cook's former office manager would suffice. "The gun prohibition was a mistake anyway," added Nelson. "The judge initially thought that the false imprisonment charge required such a prohibition, but it does not."

It also turns out that the anger management classes Cook was supposed to take are private. "He's made private arrangements with the guy who does the anger management classes in Willits," explained Nelson. "It's a cycle of classes he has to take with the guy who does the anger management classes."

(The county's on-call Bly Guy, it seems, convenes private tutorials for the better class of citizens. "Now Mason, don't forget to count to ten when you get angry. By the way, do you eat meat? Has anybody ever showed you how to Ommmmmmmmm? Do you do circles? How do you feel about Norm Vroman? Would you like me to come over and feng shui your livingroom? Oh, by the way, 'I'm sorry, bitch,' isn't exactly what the judge meant by an apology.")

"Was the victim invited to the status hearing?," I asked Nelson. "That's certainly not my job," Nelson replied, adding that the DA's office is responsible for victim notifications.

A Courthouse source who'd seen Cook's "private" letter of apology said, "It's not much of an apology." But it was fine by Judge Brown.