Jennelle’s Defense, Implying a Monstrous Conspiracy, Terms Charges of Child Rape the Fabrications of a Jilted Wife

The prosecution’s case against Michael Jennelle, who went on trial today on capital and life felony charges of raping and molesting his granddaughter before she was 12, is more straightforward than the familial relationships behind it.

In a very brief opening argument to the jury this afternoon, which was more exposition than argument, Assistant State Attorney Melissa Clark told the six women and two men of the jury (including the two alternates) that Jennelle started abusing Diana (*) when she was 7 and continued to do so until she was about 10, and that he did so at an apartment in Palm Coast and at the Hilton Garden Inn. Jennelle, 53, has been at the Flagler County jail awaiting trial since July 2023.




Diana is Jennelle’s biological granddaughter. She is also his daughter. She was removed from her biological mother’s custody when she was about 4. Over many years, Jennelle and his wife pursued adoption proceedings and finally won adoption in March 2022. Over that timespan the marriage between Jennelle and his wife faltered. He filed for divorce in Flagler County in November 2022, when his wife was living in Virginia and he was at the Hilton–where he brought the children down from Virginia after they’d moved there, and where two of the counts against him originated.

His wife contested the divorce filing with a motion to dismiss the filing by claiming that she’d herself filed for divorce in Virginia. The motion was granted. But she had not actually filed. The defense will make much of that to attack and undermine her credibility.

Months later, she called the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office to report Diana’s allegations of abuse against Jennelle, referring to him as her ex-husband even though they were not divorced. Jennelle re-filed for divorce in Flagler from jail two months ago. In the first divorce filing, Jennelle listed his two adopted children. He did not do so in the latest filing, suggesting that the adoption has been revoked. The girl is now 12, the boy is 9. Both are expected to testify at trial. So is Jennelle, of whom Circuit Judge Dawn Nichols asked in a re-trial a few weeks ago: “You want to put her through that?”

“I didn’t do it. So yes,” Jennelle told the judge.




Diana initially revealed the alleged abuse to her mother’s sister in March 2023, who reported it to Jennelle’s wife. Once she contacted law enforcement, Diana was interviewed by forensic interviewers through so-called Child Protection Teams trained in such things, when the child is put at ease and asked with non-leading questions to describe what took place in the alleged situations. Diana, according to the prosecutor, became very descriptive, offering up the sort of granular details that may be difficult for a child of 10 to invent or fabricate.

But the trial will hinge on the girl’s believability. There is no DNA evidence. There are no witnesses. There are only the girl’s accounts, closely contemporaneous to the last alleged assaults, and Jennell’s denials. He faces mandatory life in prison if the jury convicts him. The judge will have no discretion. To avoid that, the defense must convince the jury that the girl is lying.

That’s what the defense will attempt to show the jury–that the girl, in conspiracy with her adopted mother (who is also her grandmother), concocted a story of abhorrent and recurring abuse over many years–which would put the accusers in league with the abomination of the accusations. The jury would have to believe that the mother/grandmother is so depraved as to be willing to use her daughter/granddaughter as a weapon in a tug-of-war, if not as a shield to her inhumanity, and to have the girl and herself publicly dragged through the humiliations of a trial and its attorneys’ torments.

“There was a–not a domestic dispute, but there’s a divorce that was going to be pending here in Flagler County,” James Disinger, Jennelle’s defense attorney, told the jury in an opening argument more brief than Clark’s six minutes. “That divorce was filed in November of 2022 and after that divorce was filed is when all these allegations started to come out.” The attorney revealed that he’ll be cross-examining Jennelle’s wife about the divorce that wasn’t.




Disinger also previewed what the jury would hear about the case manager who regularly met with the Jennelle children during the adoption proceedings, which stretched over a long time. “She actually developed a personal, very personal relationship with Diana, and was comfortable with her, would give her hugs, that sort of thing,” Disinger told the jury. “You’re going to hear that Diana never said anything to her in the entire time that she was here monthly, for several years, and that was during this entire time frame when this was supposedly happening.”

It is not uncommon–it is, in fact, the case–that children suffering abuse will typically not reveal the abuse to anyone, even to people they’re comfortable with, or hug, like their teachers or extended family members. They eventually choose to do so–if they do so–selectively. Dissimulation and denialism are the norm, not the exception. The prosecution usually establishes those facts, reported here based on previous testimonies in cases of the same nature, through expert witnesses.

“You’re going to hear from, I assume, from Diana herself, that in fact she was asked about these allegations in 2022,” the defense attorney told the jury, “and that she told someone that nothing was happening. She was very specific about it. Said that nothing was happening.”

Jury selection had begun around 9 as a storm was raging outside and the lights were flickering in Courtroom 401. Jennelle, as usually placid as he’s been in every court appearance, wore an open-collar green-grayish shirt over a black t-shirt, the first civilian clothes he’s been allowed to wear in the 619 days since his incarceration on June 30, 2023. He followed proceedings intently, with a court-provided hearing aid. A half dozen family members or friends sat in the gallery’s backmost pew throughout. A bailiff admonished them and Jennelle sharply when he walked in not to communicate with each other. Defendants are forbidden from facing the gallery or communicating with anyone there absent a judge’s permission, or when they sit facing the jury pool, as Jennelle would for the next few hours.

(*) The name is a pseudonym.