Clay LeJeune, one of Lavergnes defense attorneys, told HLN Friday that his client had been prepared to offer the location of the body without conditions. The defense team began discussing the possibility of a plea deal with prosecutors before Lavergnes arraignment and they spent the ten days after the discovery of the body negotiating acceptable language.
LeJeune said Lavergne had seen the Shunick familys pain and suffering and wanted to plead guilty and reveal the truth out of a sense of remorse.
He needed to give them something to close this out, LeJeune said.
http://www.hlntv.com/article/2012/08/20/man-pleads-guilty-mickey-shunick-lisa-pate-murders
Gives us another look at the LP case
Well, I know that a lot of folks think Brandon had no remorse, and used revealing Mickey's location just to save himself.
Reading what his defense attorney says, it sounds like that he convinced at least his attorney that remorse was a factor in the revelation. Now of course, he could have fooled his own attorney; we don't know the tone of the discussions.
It makes me think of what he thought when he saw the massive community reaction. I'm sure it surprised him, because it sure was a full-court press form family and friends. I'll venture that this full-court press did indeed affect him.
If you think about it, he would have felt differently had Mickey's disappearance just faded from the news, and so he didn't have to constantly see it. Imagine how many flyers he saw. They were unavoidable. Imagine how he felt each time he saw one. It kept it fresh in his mind, and didn't even allow him to compartmentalize it and forget about it himself. It put the family's pain in his face all the time.
From what I've seen of Brandon, he seems to snap. Both in the case of the assault on his wife's cousin, and Lisa Pate, it's a sudden rage. Some people are like this. I'm not trying to make excuses at all; what I'm saying is that it's possible that Brandon has his rages, and then returns to a calmer state of mind, and can't undo what he did. If this is true, then he had enough time to return to that state of mind, before his arrest and then after, that indeed he may have regretted to some degree the pain he had caused. Killers are complicated, and I do believe that some are just emotionless machines, like Derrick Todd Lee, and like Charles Manson, while others have a classic homicidal rage.
We don't know enough to tell, but it is interesting to me that his attorney maintains that remorse plays a factor. I hope that he wrote a sincere letter to the Shunicks. I also understand that they probably are not emotionally prepared to read it, because it could go either way.
) Mon Dieu.... I was just freakin' there this morning.
