Murder of Janet March

Perry March and Janet Levine met as undergraduate students at the University of Michigan (or Michigan) in the early 1980s. Both Perry and Janet had been educated at exclusive private schools in their respective communities. Perry and Arthur March Perry Avram March was born in 1961 to Arthur and Tziporah March. His father, a pharmacist, changed his surname from Markovich in 1956 after the United States Army, which often called him to duty from the reserves while he worked in healthcare administration, kept misspelling it on checks. Both of Perry's parents were of Eastern European and Jewish ancestry, his paternal grandfather having been an immigrant from Romania and his maternal grandparents having emigrated to Israel from Minsk. The couple had two more children following Perry. Following Tziporah's death, the March family moved to their vacation home at Michiana, Michigan. Arthur sent Perry to La Lumiere School in La Porte, Indiana, where he excelled in academics and athletics. In his spare time, Perry took karate classes, eventually reaching the rank of first-degree black belt. Arthur retired from the Army in 1978, having attained the rank of lieutenant colonel; his pension was his chief income afterward. led him to become one of the most prominent lawyers in Nashville and made him socially prominent within the city's Jewish community. Janet was the first of their two children. Aspiring to become an artist, Janet had already exhibited her work in Nashville's Jewish Community Center and several local restaurants by the time she graduated high school. 1990s marital difficulties While his father was dealing with bankruptcy, Perry was facing his own career setback. A paralegal at Bass Berry found the first of a series of anonymous typewritten letters on her desk, containing lewd messages from a secret admirer. In mid-August, when the final US$12,500 payment to the former Bass Berry paralegal would have been due, he wrote her a letter saying he was having trouble coming up with the money and asking if she could wait until October 1996. Janet may have finally reached the point of ending the marriage. Deneane Beard, the Marches' cleaning lady, recalled seeing a book on divorce on Janet's night table earlier in 1996. On August 14, Ella Goldshmid, the children's nanny, who came two days a week, said that instead of chatting with her on her arrival as she normally did, Janet, more withdrawn than usual, said she would be working on the computer all day, and closed the office door behind her, something she said Janet had never done before. The next day, friends of Janet who saw or talked to her said she also seemed distracted and a little afraid of Perry. Janet and Carolyn made an appointment to see a divorce lawyer on August 16. == Disappearance ==

On August 15, two cabinetmakers who had worked on the house during its construction came to the March house in the afternoon to do warranty work, installing two countertops in the kitchen and tightening a faucet. Janet supervised them closely while Perry played with the children. They completed their work within an hour and left, the last people outside her family to have seen Janet. By that time, the end of the week, both Perry and his in-laws were beginning to fear Janet was in trouble, as Samson's sixth birthday party was to be held on August 25, the end of the 12-day period, and no one believed she would voluntarily miss that. Their own efforts to find her had been fruitless. Perry wanted to report her disappearance to the police; he says the Levines did not want to as they feared embarrassing Janet. They in turn later claimed he had resisted calling authorities. Samson's birthday party went ahead as scheduled on August 25. Guests from outside the family were told a variant of one of Perry's accounts—that Janet had been visiting her brother in California, where she had contracted an ear infection that precluded her from flying home until it was cured. Many said later that they accepted this. Arthur March attended his grandson's birthday party, but left for Chicago the next day. When Carolyn Levine asked her son-in-law why, he said his dad "ha[d] a big mouth [and] tells everything." Later he exclaimed "That fucking Janet has ruined my life!" Carolyn had never heard Perry talk that way about his wife before. On August 29, with Janet's whereabouts still unknown after two weeks, the Levines notified the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department (MNPD) that Janet was missing. Janet's alleged list Janet's family found the list she had supposedly given Perry of things to do while she was away to be the most troubling aspect of her disappearance. While she, like Perry, typically organized her instructions to others as lists, many aspects of this list were inconsistent with how she made hers: • Janet, her mother said, usually either wrote out her lists by hand or dictated them for others to write down, instead of writing them on a computer and printing them out; • When she did write, she used lower-case letters exclusively, whereas her list to Perry employed normal capitalization; • Janet typically dated her lists at the top of the page, while the list was dated at the bottom, as Perry more commonly did. The content of the list also raised questions. It did not mention the playdate Janet had scheduled for the following day with Marissa Moody, which Janet's family believes she would have included if she had written the list. Perry later disputed Moody's account, saying he, not Janet, had arranged the playdate. Two members of Janet's family also later testified to incidents that further supported their belief that Perry had actually written the list. According to Carolyn Levine, when she helped Perry put the children to bed on the night after Janet disappeared, she noticed a yellow legal pad next to the Marches' computer with a handwritten list of chores, similar to those on Janet's list. At the top the words "two weeks" were written in Perry's handwriting and circled. Mark Levine said that on a day when he and Perry had been at his parents' house shortly after Janet's disappearance, he had asked Perry if he could see the list on the Marches' computer. Perry agreed, and the two left for the Forest Hills house in their own cars. Mark said that Perry drove there very quickly and arrived earlier; when he got there the door was locked and Perry let him in only after he had rung the doorbell several times. Perry let him see the file on the computer. He conceded at cross-examination later that he saw from the file's timestamp that it had been saved at 8:17 p.m. on August 15, consistent with Perry's account of Janet's actions that evening. But he also found another file, six pages long, single-spaced and unindented, that appeared to be a list made by Janet of times Perry had wronged her. While Perry told him he could print it out if he wanted, Mark did not know how to do so on the Marches' computer, and Perry did not explain. Mark was never able to print it out at any other time. Later, the police detective who originally investigated the case found the timeframe odd, as well. The 12-day period would have made sense on its face since that would have had her return on Samson's birthday, he agreed. But by the time of her purported disappearance, invitations to Sammy's party on August 25, two days earlier, had been sent out to friends and family. He did not think Janet would have deliberately missed that. ==Police investigation==

After taking the Levines' report, detectives looked through local hospital admissions and Janet's credit card and bank accounts, but found no trace of her. Janet's brother Mark had come to Nashville from California by this time, and recalled that shortly after the report was made an MNPD police car came to the Levines' house. Perry, who was also there, became so anxious at the sight that it took him several tries to stand up from his chair due to his uncontrollable shaking. He then asked Mark to call his own brother, Ron. The first break in the case came a little over a week later, on September 7, when Janet's Volvo was found backed into a parking space at an apartment complex roughly from the house. Inside were most of the items Perry said Janet had taken when she left. The detective who processed the Volvo later testified that there was a layer of dust and pollen on the exterior, suggesting it had been parked there, unused, for some time. There were cobwebs in the wheel wells, and when the tires were removed, the brake rotors were found to have rust on them, further confirming this supposition. Inside, police found a purse with Janet's identification, credit cards, passport and $11 in cash; a suitcase packed with clothing and a small canvas bag with toiletry items. A gray suitcase Perry said Janet had taken was not in the vehicle. A 50-dollar bill was in the glove compartment. The front passenger seat had been pushed back, while the drivers' seat was up close to the wheel. On the floor in front, the former detectives found a pair of Janet's white sandals. The footwear appeared to have been "carefully positioned", they later told a reporter, rather than discarded as a wearer might after taking them off. Investigators also considered it unusual that while Janet's suitcase had been packed with sundresses a woman might wear at that time of year, she had apparently not packed any bras. Nor did her toiletry bag contain any toothpaste or hairbrush. That same day, a private investigator hired by the Levines spoke to Perry. She noted that he referred to Janet in the past tense. After the interview, she went to the apartment complex where Janet's car was found and attempted to speak to residents there about whether they might have seen anyone leave the Volvo there. Perry apparently found out she was doing so and called her, angrily demanding that she fax him a list of everyone she had talked to and what they said after she was done, then hung up. Five days later, the MNPD searched Perry's Jeep. The same detective who had searched Janet's Volvo later testified that hair and fiber evidence was recovered from the back seat. He admitted under cross-examination that the vehicle did not appear to have been cleaned recently, but said he did smell some type of cleaner or disinfectant. On September 10, police interviewed Perry. The detective said he appeared nervous as he was advised of his rights to avoid self-incrimination and refuse consent for a search of his house, rights Perry said he understood as a practicing attorney. He wrote out by hand a statement giving his account of what happened on the night of August 15. Perry took the children to Chicago over the next weekend, September 14–15, to observe the Rosh Hashanah holiday with his family, although Arthur did not accompany them as Perry said he could not afford the trip. During this time, the MNPD obtained a search warrant for the March house and told March's lawyer on September 16 that they intended to execute it the next day. When they did, they discovered that the computer's hard drive had been forcibly removed and could not be found. The police further investigated Perry's actions since the disappearance. They found that on August 21, almost a week afterwards, he had gone to a local tire store and bought new tires for his Jeep. The tire store owner told them that the existing tires were in excellent condition and he did not see why Perry would have wanted them changed. Perry said he had wanted a different brand. Records also showed that before the disappearance Janet typically used only a Visa credit card and Perry put most of his purchases on a MasterCard, but Janet had not used either since the disappearance while Perry had used both. ==Suspicion of Perry March==

Shortly after the search, Perry moved his children to the Chicago area. He rented a house in Wilmette, where his brother lived, and took most of his and Janet's possessions with him. Andrew Saks, a friend who helped him pack on September 18, recalls that Perry seemed businesslike but aggravated at that time. At one point he said that he wanted to "fuck the Levines and fuck the Nashville police", which Saks found alarming; he noted later that Perry did not respond to his offer to help find Janet. Saks' wife Diane, a longtime friend of Janet's, also later gave testimony to a possibly incriminating remark made by Perry. She was speaking with him on the phone after his move to Chicago when he suddenly asked if she thought he had killed Janet. Before she could answer, Perry elaborated, asking what she might say if he told her that he had put Janet's body in the back of her car, driven away with the children sleeping alone in the house, and returned "like nothing ever happened?" After that, Andrew told Perry not to call them anymore. By the time Perry left the Nashville area the Levines had come to believe this scenario. Many of the Marches' friends came to agree, since Perry had never returned their calls offering support or reached out to them. After the police announced they were treating the case as a homicide, with Perry as their suspect, local media reported on the case. It preoccupied the Nashville area during Fall of 1996 as no local crime had since the Marcia Trimble rape and murder almost 20 years earlier. The police brought in Army helicopters, divers, cadaver dogs, and thermal imaging devices as they searched the area's woods for Janet's body. Perry's lawyer informed the police his client would no longer cooperate with them and that they would need a warrant for any future searches of his property. Suspicion deepened in November when Perry did not attend Janet's memorial service; a friend who said he was not yet convinced of Perry's guilt was discreetly told by an intermediary that he should not come to visit the Levines while they sat shiva for their daughter, to avoid any awkwardness. In early 1997, the Nashville Scene alternative weekly ran a two-part article about the case that disclosed some new information such as the content of the letters Perry had left for the Bass Berry paralegal in 1991 and the questions about his mother's death. It outlined the police theory of the case at that point: that Perry had killed Janet, in all likelihood unintentionally, perhaps through a hold he might have learned through his karate studies (which an instructor told the Scene he would have been capable of doing at the black belt level), fabricated the list and then taken Janet's Volvo to where it was found, packing his mountain bike in the car so he could return home. They believed he had hidden her body, perhaps initially in the rug Marissa Moody saw (but, at the time, no one else claimed to) and then later somewhere more permanent, possibly with his father's help. Perry was interviewed for the article at his home in Wilmette. He compared himself to Richard Jewell, wrongly suspected of the Centennial Olympic Park bombing that summer, and said that he was arranging financing to buy his father-in-law's share of the house and return to Nashville, where he could start his own law firm. "I will not allow one misguided police officer, one vengeful man, and a few low-life journalists to destroy what I've taken years to build," he told the reporter. He also threatened to file defamation suits against the former Michigan classmate who had accused him of assaulting her, The Tennessean newspaper (whose spokesman told the Scene that neither Perry nor his lawyer had complained to the paper about the accuracy of its reporting on the case), and Bass Berry, although Perry's lawyer said he did not think his client would follow through on those threats. Although Lawrence Levine declined to comment, the Scene reported that he was equally committed to seeing that Perry faced justice for killing Janet. None of his friends or law partners would talk on the record. "When Larry is lucid," said one who was not identified, "all he can talk about is destroying Perry." ==Civil litigation==

Perry's determination to emerge triumphant, and his father-in-law's resolve to destroy him, reflected civil litigation between Perry and his in-laws that commenced shortly after his move to the Chicago area. In October, Perry filed a petition in Davidson County probate court to have himself appointed the administrator of Janet's assets in her absence. The Levines opposed this, and filed their own motion, first in Tennessee and then in Cook County, Illinois, family court for grandparent visitation rights, which Perry opposed with equal vigor. In 2003, a Tennessee Court of Appeals judge writing for the majority in the last decision in the case called it "[31] months of what can only be described as trench warfare"; a dissenting judge agreed that "the acrimonious relation of the parties is resplendent in these proceedings". In the probate proceeding, the trial court quickly appointed a conservator to protect Janet's property while the parties resolved their dispute. It warned that given the difficult relationship between them, Janet's liquid assets would soon be depleted if the parties continued, which would force the court to require the sale of personal property to which either or both might ascribe great sentimental value. After Perry moved, the Levines argued that when the court ordered Perry to return some of these personal items, he either did not or returned them in a damaged condition. At one point, they claimed, he had moved some of it to Hammond, Indiana, without telling them until they showed up to pick it up, purely, they alleged, to inconvenience them. Perry also refused to be deposed initially, and then walked out when he was; all these actions led to contempt citations against him, which he initially appealed. The Levines filed their visitation petition at the time Perry moved with his children to Wilmette. Perry argued that their real goal was to allow the police and/or the media to interview Samson, which he did not want to permit (in any event, he claimed, the boy was asleep when Janet left). During an October deposition in the case, Perry invoked his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination in response to 15 questions, including when asked if he had killed his wife. This made headlines in the Nashville media and further reinforced the public's perception that he had indeed done so, although legal experts said that was the only thing he could do in that situation. Other evidence that would later be used against Perry came from activities associated with these lawsuits. Carolyn Levine was searching the Forest Hills house in early 1997, after Perry had moved and taken most of the family's possessions to Chicago with him. In the garage, she found two envelopes with the logo of a company only Janet used and her name handwritten on them, both containing typewritten letters. These turned out to be the originals of the ones Perry had sent copies of to the Bass Berry paralegal in 1991, and Carolyn called the police. They theorized that perhaps Janet had discovered these, confronted Perry with them and demanded a divorce that night, which led to his murderous reaction. In March 1999 a court-appointed Chicago-area family lawyer visited Perry at his house to interview him in the visitation case. She testified later that there were no photographs or other mementoes of Janet in the house, which she found disturbing. After she filed a report recommending visitation be granted, she said Perry became angry with her and threatened to disappear with the children to Singapore. == Mexico ==

The court awarded the Levines visitation late in 1999. When they arrived in Wilmette to pick up the children, however, Ron March, one of his brother's attorneys at that time, told them that Perry had moved with them to his father's residence in Mexico. "I brought Perry down here because he didn't have any other place to go", Arthur explained to CBS News later. Back in Nashville, the Levines responded by amending their probate claim to include a wrongful death allegation against Perry. To support it they had Janet declared legally dead. Perry, disbarred earlier that year for misconduct unrelated to his disputes with the Levines, did not appear in court himself, nor retain any lawyer, to defend himself, and so default judgment was awarded to the Levines. He was ordered to pay them US$113.5 million, which he then appealed. Levines' attempt to retake children In May 2000, the Levines came to Ajijic to demand that Perry grant them their visitation rights. He and his father refused to let them see the children, and they returned to Nashville. A month later, the Levines returned. This time they had a Mexican court order as well, and they were able to have Perry arrested by Mexican authorities on charges that he had violated the terms of his visa. He was later able to get the charges dropped, but while he was occupied doing so, the Levines went to the children's school, outran a pursuing Arthur March to the airport and took them back to Nashville. The visitation order limited them to 39 days with the children, but they immediately began taking steps toward obtaining permanent custody of them. While the Levines believed they were acting in accordance with the laws of both countries, Perry considered their action an abduction. Two Tennessee lawyers who agreed with that assessment contacted Perry and agreed to represent him pro bono. They brought an action in federal court to have the children returned to Perry in Mexico under the International Child Abduction Remedies Act, which implemented the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction in U.S. federal law. "The bottom line is that this treaty says that you can't steal children and try to make custody determinations in the jurisdiction where you stole them to", Perry told CBS. In October, Judge Aleta Arthur Trauger held for Perry. The evidentiary record, she said, established that the children's habitual residence was Mexico at the time. While the Levines believed Perry had killed their daughter and had won a civil judgment against him on those grounds, they never alleged that the children witnessed it and did not otherwise establish a reasonable possibility that they might be harmed in Perry's care. And while Perry did face outstanding contempt citations, that did not meet the criteria established in case law for barring his petition as a fugitive. Therefore, she said, the Levines had to return the children to Perry once the 39 days expired. A month later the panel unanimously upheld the district court. Judge Richard Fred Suhrheinrich wrote that Trauger's opinion had been "well-reasoned" enough for the appeals court to adopt it in full. Most of his opinion was devoted to elaborating on it and rebuking the Levines. Perry could not have been a fugitive at the time he moved to Mexico, he wrote, since the contempt citations were issued after he went there. He noted that the contempt orders from the probate court stemmed from his failure to return to the Levines a beaded evening bag and a baby blanket, which he called "patently insignificant grounds" for what he characterized as "the Levines' vindictive attempt to deprive March of his day in court". He also noted that the Levines exceeded the authority of the Mexican court order, which only allowed them to take the children as far as Guadalajara, and that by taking them back to Nashville the Levines and their son had incurred kidnapping charges in Mexico, for which an arrest warrant (later dismissed Wrongful death judgment overturned After the children were returned to him, Perry settled into his life in Mexico, working as a business and financial adviser and starting a cafe with his wife. ==Arrest and jail==

The resolution of the civil cases in Perry's favor did not deter the MNPD. Despite the continuing absence of her body, two detectives on the department's cold case squad began looking into Janet's disappearance again. The detectives learned that in 2001, Perry threatened a Mexican lawyer and his client that "he would do away with us the way he did with his wife." In late 2004 the two detectives and prosecutors began secretly presenting evidence against Perry to a grand jury. After hearing 59 witnesses, it returned an indictment on charges of second-degree murder, tampering with evidence and abuse of a corpse. The indictment, like the proceedings that produced it, remained secret while prosecutors worked with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Mexican government to secure the paperwork for Perry's arrest and extradition. In August 2005, Perry was arrested at his restaurant as he prepared to open for the day. He was taken to Guadalajara International Airport and put on a plane to Los Angeles. Once it landed, Mexican authorities turned him over to the FBI and he was arrested on the charges he had been indicted for. The Levines initiated another action for full custody of the grandchildren, which ultimately succeeded. On the plane to Nashville, Perry was escorted by Pat Postiglione, one of the two cold case detectives. Perry began to talk to him, although Postiglione reminded him that he had no legal obligation to do so. Perry said he wanted to talk anyway, and made some admissions related to the case. He told the detective it was "time to close this chapter in my life" and said he was willing to plead guilty if he could be assured a sentence of no more than seven years. If such an agreement were reached with the prosecution, he promised to be completely honest. Postiglione said he would relay that information to the district attorney's office. "Prior to the Janet incident," Perry told Postiglione, "I have not been involved in any other criminal-type activity." He asked about what life was like in prison, the difference between maximum and minimum security. Perry also wanted to know about the evidence against him, whether they had discovered Janet's body or not, and posed as a hypothetical question as to whether someone could be guilty of second-degree murder if the death was accidental. While he had loved Janet intensely, Perry told Postiglione, she had been portrayed somewhat idealistically in the media since her disappearance. Plot to kill the Levines On his return to Nashville, Perry was housed in the county jail. On his first night, he approached Russell Farris, another inmate who was awaiting trial for attempted murder and some other charges. At first, Perry asked him the same questions he had asked Postiglione about how to manage in prison. Later, he told Farris he wanted to talk more privately, which they were able to do through a crack in Farris's cell door. According to Farris, Perry offered to have his bond posted if he would, in return, kill the Levines. Perry hoped to finance the bond by selling property in Mexico or perhaps receiving a cash advance for a novel he had written in 1997, in which a detective investigates the murder of a small, dark-haired woman. After a month of these conversations, Farris told his attorney, and the two went to the police. They arranged for his conversations with Perry to be surreptitiously recorded. Perry gave Farris Arthur's number in Mexico and a list of code words to use so Arthur would know Perry had authorized the call. Farris was later transferred to the jail in neighboring Williamson County, telling Perry he had been released. Perry gave him the Levines' address on a piece of paper. After the transfer, authorities taped five separate phone conversations between Farris and Arthur. The older man told him the right time of day to go to the Levines, where to get a gun, what kind of gun to use, to wear surgical gloves the whole time, and how to get to Ajijic afterwards. The plans seemed to go through as far as having Arthur go to the Guadalajara airport to meet Farris under his assumed name. When he arrived, an FBI agent, who had had him under surveillance, met him and told him the man had been detained by Mexican immigration authorities. Arthur then returned to Ajijic. Back in Nashville, Perry was arrested again and additionally charged with two counts of solicitation to commit murder by the Davidson County prosecutors, and two counts of conspiring to commit murder by federal prosecutors. Arthur, too, was charged with the same offenses by federal authorities but remained in Mexico, officially a fugitive. He claimed entrapment and promised that he would forcefully resist any attempt to extradite him. Incriminating statements to other inmates After Farris had been transferred to lead Perry to think he had been released, Perry made the acquaintance of Cornelius King, another inmate whose cell was next to his. He talked with King about his children and his life in Mexico. In one of their conversations, King testified later, Perry told him what had really happened with Janet the night she disappeared. The two had been arguing about his infidelities; she said she was going to get a divorce and "take everything." Perry, King said, did not want that, and after that their fight became physical. Perry ultimately hit Janet over the head with a wrench, and claimed that since he had disposed of her body by burning it and pouring the ashes in a lake, he would be acquitted. Another inmate, Reno Martin, had also had a cell next door to Perry. He recalled that one day Perry had returned from one of the child custody hearings visibly agitated. Upset by having to deal with the Levines again, Perry exclaimed "it should have been them that he had taken care of instead of ..." then suddenly stopped himself. Martin recalled that Perry looked pale afterwards. ==Trials==

Perry was a convicted felon even before his murder trial began. In April 2006 he was found guilty of embezzling $23,000 from his father-in-law's firm over the two years before Janet disappeared. Prosecutors presented a predominantly circumstantial case-in-chief against Perry, augmented by some forensic evidence and the incriminating statements Perry had made to Detective Postiglione, the Mexican lawyer, his jail neighbors and the Sakses. The manuscript of his novel was also entered into evidence. Three weeks later, he was sentenced on all the crimes he had been convicted of that year. Neither Perry nor the Levines made any statement at the hearing, although Mark Levine had one read into the record. Perry received a total of 56 years in prison. A five-year sentence for the theft would run concurrently with 24 years for the murder conspiracy, after which would be consecutive sentences of 25 years for second-degree murder, two years for abuse of a corpse and five years for tampering with evidence. On the same day Perry was convicted, his father was sentenced. At the time he made his plea agreement, his lawyers and the federal prosecutor had agreed that he would serve 18 months with a longer period of supervised release afterwards. However, the judge rejected that agreement in favor of a five-year sentence. Three months later, on December 21, Arthur died at the federal prison medical center in Fort Worth, Texas. ==Appeals==

As they had said they would, Perry and his lawyers appealed his conviction to the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA). Their chief claim of error was that the trial court should have suppressed his conversation with Postiglione on the plane from Los Angeles and the taped conversations between himself and Farris, and his father and Farris. All of them, Perry argued, were obtained in violation of his Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights against compelled self-incrimination and to the assistance of counsel, since at those times he was in police custody after his arrest and indictment. a later decision by the same federal First Circuit Court of Appeals that had decided those precedents. He also argued they served primarily to impeach his character without any relevance to the charged offense. that the Sixth Amendment right to counsel is offense-specific and could not be assumed to apply to statements Perry made about Janet's fate while conspiring with Farris since the two crimes were not closely related enough. was inapposite since unlike that man, Perry had committed his crime in Tennessee and then left the state. The U.S. Supreme Court's Jones v. Helms, in fact, had upheld tolling in a similar non-support case where the defendant had left his original state of residence, just as Perry had. More generally, the state's compelling interest in prosecuting crimes allows the encumbrance of the right to travel created by the tolling; since it applied to anyone who committed crimes in Tennessee and then left the state regardless of whether they lived in Tennessee or not it met the equal protection burden. Nor had Perry shown any evidence that it was enforced against him prejudicially. Kevin H. Sharp, a newly appointed judge, heard the case. Perry added some challenges to his conspiracy conviction to his arguments at state appeal: • The conspiracy indictment accused Perry and Arthur of plotting to have the Levines killed, but the facts introduced at that trial focused on Perry's conspiracy with a fellow inmate acting as a government agent, which cannot lead to a conspiracy conviction; • the jury instructions at that trial also allowed the jury to convict Perry of conspiring with a government agent largely due to the actions of Arthur and Farris; • that a mistrial should have been declared when Lawrence Levine accused Perry of previous uncharged offenses during his testimony; • and lastly that the cumulative effect of the errors above denied him a fair trial. In June 2013, Sharp denied both petitions, setting down his reasoning in two lengthy memorandum opinions that extensively quoted the TCCA's summary of the trial. While March had indeed exhausted his state remedies, Sharp said, he was constrained by the provisions of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) in his review. Under its terms, he could only overturn a state court's findings if it had applied federal law in an unreasonable or clearly mistaken way. and Maine v. Moulton, both of which concerned attempts by the government to use undercover agents or informants to elicit incriminating information from an unknowing defendant about a charged offense, was different from how it had been applied in the other case, but not unreasonably so. And again, the jailhouse conversations were only one of many pieces of evidence. Keith wrote for the panel, which considered just the Sixth Amendment questions around the conversation with Postiglione and the jailhouse conversations. On the first, the judges engaged in no analysis of their own, simply assuming for the sake of argument that, as Sharp had found, Perry's right to counsel had been violated. However, they joined Sharp and the TCCA in finding the error harmless due to the weight of the other evidence. In June 2015, however, the Supreme Court denied the petition without comment, exhausting Perry's appeals. ==Aftermath==

All of the civil court actions were eventually disposed. Before Perry's murder trial had even begun, the Tennessee Court of Appeals upheld the 2005 juvenile court decision giving the Levines temporary custody of the children. The probate action ended with the court assessing a $220,000 judgement against Perry's brother and sister for dividing possessions of Janet's that Perry had taken with him to Chicago amongst themselves after he moved to Mexico; that was upheld on appeal the following year with permission to appeal further denied in 2008. Later in 2008, the TCCA upheld Perry's theft conviction, but reduced his sentence for the crime to three years since it agreed with him that his Sixth Amendment rights had been violated when the sentence was enhanced based on a fact not determined by the jury. Perry is currently serving his sentence at Northeast Correctional Complex outside Mountain City. He told the media he volunteers his time in the prison's law library, helping other inmates with their appeals. ==Legacy==

After Perry had been convicted, Lawrence and Mark Levine drafted changes to Tennessee law to remedy what they saw as its shortcomings, based on their experience fighting Perry in family court. They expanded grandparent visitation rights, and allowed judges to terminate custody of parents found criminally or civilly liable for the death of the other parent. After they were introduced into the Tennessee legislature, they were passed quickly by both houses, with unanimous support. Mark would later point to the experience when he successfully ran for a seat in Virginia's House of Delegates in 2015. An art gallery at Nashville's Gordon Jewish Community Center was named for Janet as a memorial. Her case is featured on the Season 2, Episode 3, titled "High Society Sins", from the show, Deadly Sins. == See also ==