When Danny Ocean apologizes

In a New York Times feature on the lawyers for Martin Heidgen, published in October, columnist Robin Finn concluded with this observation:
"Whatever the final conviction, two people died because he drank and drove. A bigger mistake is hard to conjure, impossible to repair. According to his lawyers, he is genuinely sorry about that."
Perhaps Heidgen should have hired Finn to write his pre-sentencing statement. It might have been as direct and effective as that column. Instead, Heidgen, who was convicted of killing 7-year-old flower girl Katie Flynn and the man driving her family's limousine, Stanley Rabinowitz, delivered a speech obviously crafted by amateurs. It certainly didn't demonstrate that Heidgen was watching the same trial as the rest of us.
"There is really no easy way to begin this," he told Judge Alan Honorof's courtroom last Wednesday, before receiving a sentence of about-a-decade-'til-parole.
OK, young spindoctors out there, what was wrong with his opening? Well, it sounds like he made the assumption that when a child is murdered, the surviving family will find comfort in the fact that the killer was modest and self-effacing. Perhaps we should be grateful he didn't open with a joke...
"I've wanted to take responsibility for this from the moment it happened," he continued.
Better. Make your lawyers the bad guys. That works. It's certainly believable...
Although... That statement doesn't jive with the incident where he tampered with evidence, ingesting a fellow jail inmate's bodily fluids (gag) in order to beat a DNA test...
Nor does it explain his not guilty plea...
And it sure doesn't explain his use of that "Ocean's Eleven" defense.
For those who didn't hear, Marty -- he prefers Marty -- told investigators he was operating in "self-destruct mode" when he ingested 14 drinks and drove his pickup the wrong way up the Meadowbrook Parkway head-on into the limousine carrying Flynn, 7 of Lido Beach and her family after a wedding in 2005. Apparently, he told the police, he was upset by some drama involving his fiancé.
It turns out -- as Marty confided to friends in a letter from jail that was intercepted by the DA's office -- he got the idea for this defense from the George Clooney movie. In the opening scene, a not-terribly-remorseful Danny Ocean, played by Clooney, tells a parole board that he had committed upscale robberies while wearing dinner attire as a way of acting out because he was upset his marriage to Julia Roberts had ended (I hope I didn't just ruin the movie for anyone). Later Clooney smirks and enjoys lighthearted banter with Brad Pitt as the jail doors close behind him. One wonders if perhaps this is the ending Marty has envisioned for himself when this all blows over...
"First and foremost, I am very sorry every minute, every hour, every day for the deaths of Katie Flynn and Stanley Rabinowitz," Marty added. "Your anger towards me is justified and understandable."
This could pass without comment, except that Neil Flynn, Katie's father, has made several statements to the media during the past 20 months that demonstrate, when it comes to the murder of his daughter he doesn't wait for permission to express anger. In this space two weeks ago he said he wanted to see Marty dead.
In fact, about an hour before Marty made his statement, Flynn, addressing the court, pointed to Marty and vowed, "You and I aren't finished." If Marty weren't under the protection and care of the New York state penal system, he might worry, on top of his other troubles, that his life had just been threatened.
And as a bonus, Flynn, an attorney and member of the New York state bar, later stood on the courthouse steps and called Judge Honorof a "gutless coward" because he knocked a few years of Marty's prison sentence. That sounds like he's skating close to contempt, which for a man in Flynn's profession can be criminal. (Presumably Honorof, like all judges, possesses certain political instincts and will let this go.)
So no, it's not likely Flynn was moved by Marty's offer to validate his feelings...
Finally, Marty's self-deluding apology arrived at its big finish.
"I did not mean or intend for this to happen," he said. "I was just trying to go home."
And what? And your damn limousine got in my way?
Maybe Marty veered from the script at this point. Maybe he truly sees himself as a victim in all this. Maybe if he really were a celebrity he would have gotten away with just a trip to rehab and a half-assed apology.
Over the next decade, his cellmates will disabuse him of that. He'll figure out, eventually, that he got what he deserved, and he can use this down time to construct a better apology. And maybe in that time he'll figure out that when he does finally get to tell it to the parole board, it will be Neil Flynn, and not Brad Pitt, who is waiting for him outside, looking for a smirk.