Unlikely to get a conviction
"It was her previous husband that she was having the affair with who was also the one whom she left for beating her."
Indeed. In fact, according to the Lansing [Michigan] _State News_, the sequence was something like this:
- Leon (hubby #3) suspects Clara is getting some on the side.
- Leon gets Clara's gmail password from the list of passwords she keeps on paper by her computer. (This constitutes the sum of the "wonderful" "hacker" "skills" that Jessica Cooper, the Oakland County Idiot, accuses Leon of using.)
- L. discovers evidence in the emails that C. is in fact seeing hubby #2, who had been arrested in the past for beating her in front of her son.[1]
- L. forwards the emails to the boy's father (hubby #1).
So this is the picture the defense paints for the jury: L is concerned about his wife and stepson; he uses a computer that his wife keeps in their home (he's calling it a "family computer", but that's disputed) and a paper record that she keeps in their home to discover she's putting herself and the boy in danger; he notifies the boy's father.
Cooper's out of her frickin' mind if she thinks she's going to win this one.
Unfortunately, this is a perfect example of what's wrong with the US adversarial judicial system. A junior prosecutor's best chance for advancement is to take on crazy, high-profile cases - even if that means constructing them out of bullshit and pixie dust, like this one - regardless of whether "justice" is going to be furthered. And there's precious little accountability in most districts.
[1] Now, anyone with an ounce of intelligence knows that abuse victims often have vexed relationships with their abusers and make poor choices regarding them, so this is not surprising, nor evidence that Clara is an idiot. But she clearly needs help - a lot of help, since she's playing along with these absurd criminal charges. My guess is that she's taking a strong tack on legal advice, trying to stave off a custody battle from her son's father.