Jacqueline McLean walked out of court Friday afternoon in desolate triumph. Her life was in self-described ruin, but she had a sort of freedom. Her political career was long gone, her marriage ended, her emotional demons still on the loose. But she'd beaten a prison rap.
When Judge Donald Gilmore pronounced sentence -- three years in prison, every minute of it suspended; five years of probation and community service -- McLean hugged her attorney, Cristina Gutierrez, and the two of them dabbed handkerchiefs at their eyes to wipe away tears of utter joy and relief.
Only McLean knows precisely how creative she's been with the truth. Under public scrutiny, she first declared herself innocent, then changed her story when cornered, then began her various gestures, some more flirtatious than others, at suicide.
In court last week, her consulting doctors marched in and pronounced her depressed, despondent, melancholic, a threat to commit suicide. Dr. John Lion, one of the state's most respected psychiatrists, called her "a depleted soul."
No one denies her depression; only a fool would fail to be depressed after finding herself in such a legal pickle, and McLean, until her choreographed thievery, was nobody's fool.
But no one, not the doctors and not McLean herself, ever explained why she took the money. Maybe, simply because it was there, and she thought nobody was watching. She was the one elected to watch it, and instead she decided to steal $25,000 of it.
"Why?" McLean asked in a quivery voice, moments before sentencing. "I have no idea. I don't know why. I'm just learning who I am. I've lived my life through other people. I didn't know what I was."
Some call this psychobabble. In her extended hour of public shame, it is possible to feel sorry for McLean, and yet wonder about various manipulating, which even her doctors seemed not to notice.
She told one, Dr. Dennis Kutzer, she'd stolen the money for her constituents. This was crazy talk, of course. But such business was related in court in the same context in which McLean was being described as suffering deep remorse and shame.
Then she changed stories for Dr. Lion, telling him something about stealing to pay for a cruise for her parents. This was more baloney. She used the money to pay off her own credit card bills and telephone bills and outstanding debts from her defunct travel agency. But, again, the alleged cruise for her parents was presented in the same context with descriptions of McLean as one who accepted all guilt and now wallowed in humiliation.
She couldn't face up to the prospect of a trial, we were told. When Dr. Kutzer informed her that she'd lost a bid for trial postponement, he testified, "She became quiet. She stared. I felt she saw no reason to live. . . . The signs were ominous."
He had her committed to Sheppard Pratt; she thus got the trial postponement. But, within hours, health professionals there were making notations describing her as "friendly and bright with her peers, spent two hours talking on the phone." The next day: "Good spirits, laughing and joking."
Which one is the real McLean: the one who called herself filled with shame, or the one who complained to doctors she was "a victim," "treated like a mass murderer"?
Finally, in court on Friday, McLean's daughter and her best friend testified about her. The daughter, Michele, said her mother never had any friends come to their home. Then the best friend, Mary Sue Welcome, said McLean had no other friends in the world. She'd known her for 30 years, and there was no one else, it was just friendless, friendless Jackie.
The heart went out to her, except . . .
Except, who were all these people in the courtroom? They were there when McLean walked in Thursday morning, and it had the look of MacArthur's return to Corregidor. She waved to them all, and they waved back, and then she walked into the crowd of them, hugging some, kissing others, exchanging whispers, all of it very loving, very intimate, very supportive.
They were there at the end, too, lots of them, congratulating her in her moment of desolate triumph. It was a triumph, you know. Call it justice, call it a sham, but she did win a little victory. She stayed out of prison after stealing all that money.
Is that fair? Yes, said Cristina Gutierrez, as she watched McLean leave court with her arm wrapped around her daughter, it was "fair and merciful. The judge was moved [by her emotional condition], as judges should be."
Might she not have been given home detention then, thus handing out punishment as a sign that even the big shots get some form of incarceration, while still showing mercy?
Who knows, maybe home detention's redundant at this point. Jacqueline McLean really does have to live inside the prison of her own soul. It's not just the knowledge that she stole, and everyone will remember it whenever they see her; it's that she moved certain truths around to stay out of jail.
We're not sure which truths they are anymore -- how deep her emotional problems are, or how much she finessed them; how profound her shame, or how deep this notion that McLean is herself a victim.
The truth is, McLean herself probably doesn't know the difference anymore.